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Best Famous Arabian Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Arabian poems. This is a select list of the best famous Arabian poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Arabian poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of arabian poems.

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Written by William Shakespeare | Create an image from this poem

The Phoenix and the Turtle

 Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou, shrieking harbinger,
Foul pre-currer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-defying swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou, treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.

So they lov'd, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen
'Twixt the turtle and his queen;
But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine,
That the turtle saw his right
Flaming in the phoenix' sight:
Either was the other's mine.

Property was thus appall'd,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was call'd.

Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together;
To themselves yet either-neither,
Simple were so well compounded.

That it cried how true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none
If what parts can so remain.

Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supreme and stars of love;
As chorus to their tragic scene.

THRENOS.

Beauty, truth, and rarity.
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclos'd in cinders lie.

Death is now the phoenix' nest;
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity:--
'Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be:
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.


Written by John Greenleaf Whittier | Create an image from this poem

Burning Drift-Wood

Before my drift-wood fire I sit, 
And see, with every waif I burn, 
Old dreams and fancies coloring it, 
And folly's unlaid ghosts return. 

O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft 
The enchanted sea on which they sailed, 
Are these poor fragments only left 
Of vain desires and hopes that failed? 

Did I not watch from them the light 
Of sunset on my towers in Spain, 
And see, far off, uploom in sight 
The Fortunate Isles I might not gain? 

Did sudden lift of fog reveal 
Arcadia's vales of song and spring, 
And did I pass, with grazing keel, 
The rocks whereon the sirens sing? 

Have I not drifted hard upon 
The unmapped regions lost to man, 
The cloud-pitched tents of Prester John, 
The palace domes of Kubla Khan? 

Did land winds blow from jasmine flowers, 
Where Youth the ageless Fountain fills? 
Did Love make sign from rose blown bowers, 
And gold from Eldorado's hills? 

Alas! the gallant ships, that sailed 
On blind Adventure's errand sent, 
Howe'er they laid their courses, failed 
To reach the haven of Content. 

And of my ventures, those alone 
Which Love had freighted, safely sped, 
Seeking a good beyond my own, 
By clear-eyed Duty piloted. 

O mariners, hoping still to meet 
The luck Arabian voyagers met, 
And find in Bagdad's moonlit street, 
Haroun al Raschid walking yet, 

Take with you, on your Sea of Dreams, 
The fair, fond fancies dear to youth. 
I turn from all that only seems, 
And seek the sober grounds of truth. 

What matter that it is not May, 
That birds have flown, and trees are bare, 
That darker grows the shortening day, 
And colder blows the wintry air! 

The wrecks of passion and desire, 
The castles I no more rebuild, 
May fitly feed my drift-wood fire, 
And warm the hands that age has chilled. 

Whatever perished with my ships, 
I only know the best remains; 
A song of praise is on my lips 
For losses which are now my gains. 

Heap high my hearth! No worth is lost; 
No wisdom with the folly dies. 
Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust 
Shall be my evening sacrifice! 

Far more than all I dared to dream, 
Unsought before my door I see; 
On wings of fire and steeds of steam 
The world's great wonders come to me, 

And holier signs, unmarked before, 
Of Love to seek and Power to save,—
The righting of the wronged and poor, 
The man evolving from the slave; 

And life, no longer chance or fate, 
Safe in the gracious Fatherhood. 
I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait, 
In full assurance of the good. 

And well the waiting time must be, 
Though brief or long its granted days, 
If Faith and Hope and Charity 
Sit by my evening hearth-fire's blaze. 

And with them, friends whom Heaven has spared, 
Whose love my heart has comforted, 
And, sharing all my joys, has shared 
My tender memories of the dead,—

Dear souls who left us lonely here, 
Bound on their last, long voyage, to whom 
We, day by day, are drawing near, 
Where every bark has sailing room. 

I know the solemn monotone 
Of waters calling unto me; 
I know from whence the airs have blown 
That whisper of the Eternal Sea. 

As low my fires of drift-wood burn, 
I hear that sea's deep sounds increase, 
And, fair in sunset light, discern 
Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.
Written by Alan Seeger | Create an image from this poem

Paris

 First, London, for its myriads; for its height, 
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; 
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths 
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . . 


Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days 
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays 
Than, having beauty and your twenty years, 
You have the means to conquer and the ways, 


And coming where the crossroads separate 
And down each vista glories and wonders wait, 
Crowning each path with pinnacles so fair 
You know not which to choose, and hesitate -- 


Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom 
Of some old quarter take a little room 
That looks off over Paris and its towers 
From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, -- 


So high that you can hear a mating dove 
Croon down the chimney from the roof above, 
See Notre Dame and know how sweet it is 
To wake between Our Lady and our love. 


And have a little balcony to bring 
Fair plants to fill with verdure and blossoming, 
That sparrows seek, to feed from pretty hands, 
And swallows circle over in the Spring. 


There of an evening you shall sit at ease 
In the sweet month of flowering chestnut-trees, 
There with your little darling in your arms, 
Your pretty dark-eyed Manon or Louise. 


And looking out over the domes and towers 
That chime the fleeting quarters and the hours, 
While the bright clouds banked eastward back of them 
Blush in the sunset, pink as hawthorn flowers, 


You cannot fail to think, as I have done, 
Some of life's ends attained, so you be one 
Who measures life's attainment by the hours 
That Joy has rescued from oblivion. 

II 


Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west. 
The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats. 


The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves: 
Come out under the lights and leaves 
to the Reine Blanche on Saint Germain. . . . 


Now crowded diners fill the floor of brasserie and restaurant. 
Shrill voices cry "L'Intransigeant," and corners echo "Paris-Sport." 


Where rows of tables from the street are screened with shoots of box and bay, 
The ragged minstrels sing and play and gather sous from those that eat. 


And old men stand with menu-cards, inviting passers-by to dine 
On the bright terraces that line the Latin Quarter boulevards. . . . 


But, having drunk and eaten well, 'tis pleasant then to stroll along 
And mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel. 


Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic: 
Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport; 


Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads, 
and courtezans like powdered moths, 
And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths 
bright-hued and stitched with golden threads; 


And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes 
In corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties; 


And lovers wander two by two, oblivious among the press, 
And making one of them no less, all lovers shall be dear to you: 


All laughing lips you move among, all happy hearts that, knowing what 
Makes life worth while, have wasted not the sweet reprieve of being young. 


"Comment ca va!" "Mon vieux!" "Mon cher!" 
Friends greet and banter as they pass. 
'Tis sweet to see among the mass comrades and lovers everywhere, 


A law that's sane, a Love that's free, and men of every birth and blood 
Allied in one great brotherhood of Art and Joy and Poverty. . . . 


The open cafe-windows frame loungers at their liqueurs and beer, 
And walking past them one can hear fragments of Tosca and Boheme. 


And in the brilliant-lighted door of cinemas the barker calls, 
And lurid posters paint the walls with scenes of Love and crime and war. 


But follow past the flaming lights, borne onward with the stream of feet, 
Where Bullier's further up the street is marvellous on Thursday nights. 


Here all Bohemia flocks apace; you could not often find elsewhere 
So many happy heads and fair assembled in one time and place. 


Under the glare and noise and heat the galaxy of dancing whirls, 
Smokers, with covered heads, and girls dressed in the costume of the street. 


From tables packed around the wall the crowds that drink and frolic there 
Spin serpentines into the air far out over the reeking hall, 


That, settling where the coils unroll, tangle with pink and green and blue 
The crowds that rag to "Hitchy-koo" and boston to the "Barcarole". . . . 


Here Mimi ventures, at fifteen, to make her debut in romance, 
And join her sisters in the dance and see the life that they have seen. 


Her hair, a tight hat just allows to brush beneath the narrow brim, 
Docked, in the model's present whim, `frise' and banged above the brows. 


Uncorseted, her clinging dress with every step and turn betrays, 
In pretty and provoking ways her adolescent loveliness, 


As guiding Gaby or Lucile she dances, emulating them 
In each disturbing stratagem and each lascivious appeal. 


Each turn a challenge, every pose an invitation to compete, 
Along the maze of whirling feet the grave-eyed little wanton goes, 


And, flaunting all the hue that lies in childish cheeks and nubile waist, 
She passes, charmingly unchaste, illumining ignoble eyes. . . . 


But now the blood from every heart leaps madder through abounding veins 
As first the fascinating strains of "El Irresistible" start. 


Caught in the spell of pulsing sound, impatient elbows lift and yield 
The scented softnesses they shield to arms that catch and close them round, 


Surrender, swift to be possessed, the silken supple forms beneath 
To all the bliss the measures breathe and all the madness they suggest. 


Crowds congregate and make a ring. Four deep they stand and strain to see 
The tango in its ecstasy of glowing lives that clasp and cling. 


Lithe limbs relaxed, exalted eyes fastened on vacancy, they seem 
To float upon the perfumed stream of some voluptuous Paradise, 


Or, rapt in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued, 
In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm and sensual delight. 


And only when the measures cease and terminate the flowing dance 
They waken from their magic trance and join the cries that clamor "Bis!" . . . 


Midnight adjourns the festival. The couples climb the crowded stair, 
And out into the warm night air go singing fragments of the ball. 


Close-folded in desire they pass, or stop to drink and talk awhile 
In the cafes along the mile from Bullier's back to Montparnasse: 


The "Closerie" or "La Rotonde", where smoking, under lamplit trees, 
Sit Art's enamored devotees, chatting across their `brune' and `blonde'. . . . 


Make one of them and come to know sweet Paris -- not as many do, 
Seeing but the folly of the few, the froth, the tinsel, and the show -- 


But taking some white proffered hand that from Earth's barren every day 
Can lead you by the shortest way into Love's florid fairyland. 


And that divine enchanted life that lurks under Life's common guise -- 
That city of romance that lies within the City's toil and strife -- 


Shall, knocking, open to your hands, for Love is all its golden key, 
And one's name murmured tenderly the only magic it demands. 


And when all else is gray and void in the vast gulf of memory, 
Green islands of delight shall be all blessed moments so enjoyed: 


When vaulted with the city skies, on its cathedral floors you stood, 
And, priest of a bright brotherhood, performed the mystic sacrifice, 


At Love's high altar fit to stand, with fire and incense aureoled, 
The celebrant in cloth of gold with Spring and Youth on either hand. 

III 


Choral Song 


Have ye gazed on its grandeur 
Or stood where it stands 
With opal and amber 
Adorning the lands, 
And orcharded domes 
Of the hue of all flowers? 
Sweet melody roams 
Through its blossoming bowers, 
Sweet bells usher in from its belfries the train of the honey-sweet hour. 


A city resplendent, 
Fulfilled of good things, 
On its ramparts are pendent 
The bucklers of kings. 
Broad banners unfurled 
Are afloat in its air. 
The lords of the world 
Look for harborage there. 
None finds save he comes as a bridegroom, having roses and vine in his hair. 


'Tis the city of Lovers, 
There many paths meet. 
Blessed he above others, 
With faltering feet, 
Who past its proud spires 
Intends not nor hears 
The noise of its lyres 
Grow faint in his ears! 
Men reach it through portals of triumph, but leave through a postern of tears. 


It was thither, ambitious, 
We came for Youth's right, 
When our lips yearned for kisses 
As moths for the light, 
When our souls cried for Love 
As for life-giving rain 
Wan leaves of the grove, 
Withered grass of the plain, 
And our flesh ached for Love-flesh beside it with bitter, intolerable pain. 


Under arbor and trellis, 
Full of flutes, full of flowers, 
What mad fortunes befell us, 
What glad orgies were ours! 
In the days of our youth, 
In our festal attire, 
When the sweet flesh was smooth, 
When the swift blood was fire, 
And all Earth paid in orange and purple to pavilion the bed of Desire!
Written by Henry David Thoreau | Create an image from this poem

Inspiration

 Whate'er we leave to God, God does, 
And blesses us; 
The work we choose should be our own, 
God leaves alone. 
If with light head erect I sing, 
Though all the Muses lend their force, 
From my poor love of anything, 
The verse is weak and shallow as its source. 

But if with bended neck I grope 
Listening behind me for my wit, 
With faith superior to hope, 
More anxious to keep back than forward it; 

Making my soul accomplice there 
Unto the flame my heart hath lit, 
Then will the verse forever wear-- 
Time cannot bend the line which God hath writ. 

Always the general show of things 
Floats in review before my mind, 
And such true love and reverence brings, 
That sometimes I forget that I am blind. 

But now there comes unsought, unseen, 
Some clear divine electuary, 
And I, who had but sensual been, 
Grow sensible, and as God is, am wary. 

I hearing get, who had but ears, 
And sight, who had but eyes before, 
I moments live, who lived but years, 
And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore. 

I hear beyond the range of sound, 
I see beyond the range of sight, 
New earths and skies and seas around, 
And in my day the sun doth pale his light. 

A clear and ancient harmony 
Pierces my soul through all its din, 
As through its utmost melody-- 
Farther behind than they, farther within. 

More swift its bolt than lightning is, 
Its voice than thunder is more loud, 
It doth expand my privacies 
To all, and leave me single in the crowd. 

It speaks with such authority, 
With so serene and lofty tone, 
That idle Time runs gadding by, 
And leaves me with Eternity alone. 

Now chiefly is my natal hour, 
And only now my prime of life; 
Of manhood's strength it is the flower, 
'Tis peace's end and war's beginning strife. 

It comes in summer's broadest noon, 
By a grey wall or some chance place, 
Unseasoning Time, insulting June, 
And vexing day with its presuming face. 

Such fragrance round my couch it makes, 
More rich than are Arabian drugs, 
That my soul scents its life and wakes 
The body up beneath its perfumed rugs. 

Such is the Muse, the heavenly maid, 
The star that guides our mortal course, 
Which shows where life's true kernel's laid, 
Its wheat's fine flour, and its undying force. 

She with one breath attunes the spheres, 
And also my poor human heart, 
With one impulse propels the years 
Around, and gives my throbbing pulse its start. 

I will not doubt for evermore, 
Nor falter from a steadfast faith, 
For thought the system be turned o'er, 
God takes not back the word which once He saith. 

I will not doubt the love untold 
Which not my worth nor want has bought, 
Which wooed me young, and woos me old, 
And to this evening hath me brought. 

My memory I'll educate 
To know the one historic truth, 
Remembering to the latest date 
The only true and sole immortal youth. 

Be but thy inspiration given, 
No matter through what danger sought, 
I'll fathom hell or climb to heaven, 
And yet esteem that cheap which love has bought. 
___________________ 

Fame cannot tempt the bard 
Who's famous with his God, 
Nor laurel him reward 
Who has his Maker's nod.
Written by Billy Collins | Create an image from this poem

On Turning Ten

 The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.


Written by W. E. B. Du Bois | Create an image from this poem

The Riddle of the Sphinx

Dark daughter of the lotus leaves that watch the Southern Sea!
Wan spirit of a prisoned soul a-panting to be free!
The muttered music of thy streams, the whisper of the deep,
Have kissed each other in God's name and kissed a world to sleep.
The will of the world is a whistling wind, sweeping a cloud-swept sky,
And not from the East and not from the West knelled that
soul-waking cry,
But out of the South,—the sad, black South—it screamed from
the top of the sky,
Crying: "Awake, O ancient race!" Wailing, "O woman, arise!"
And crying and sighing and crying again as a voice in the
midnight cries,—
But the burden of white men bore her back and the white world
stifled her sighs.
The white world's vermin and filth:
All the dirt of London,
All the scum of New York;
Valiant spoilers of women
And conquerers of unarmed men;
Shameless breeders of bastards,
Drunk with the greed of gold,
Baiting their blood-stained hooks
With cant for the souls of the simple;
Bearing the white man's burden
Of liquor and lust and lies!
Unthankful we wince in the East,
Unthankful we wail from the westward,
Unthankfully thankful, we curse,
In the unworn wastes of the wild:
I hate them, Oh!
I hate them well,
I hate them, Christ!
As I hate hell!
If I were God,
I'd sound their knell
This day!
Who raised the fools to their glory,
But black men of Egypt and Ind,
Ethiopia's sons of the evening,
Indians and yellow Chinese,
Arabian children of morning,
And mongrels of Rome and Greece?
Ah, well!
And they that raised the boasters
Shall drag them down again,—
Down with the theft of their thieving
And murder and mocking of men;
Down with their barter of women
And laying and lying of creeds;
Down with their cheating of childhood
And drunken orgies of war,—
down
down
deep down,
Till the devil's strength be shorn,
Till some dim, darker David, a-hoeing of his corn,
And married maiden, mother of God,
Bid the black Christ be born!
Then shall our burden be manhood,
Be it yellow or black or white;
And poverty and justice and sorrow,
The humble, and simple and strong
Shall sing with the sons of morning
And daughters of even-song:
Black mother of the iron hills that ward the blazing sea,
Wild spirit of a storm-swept soul, a-struggling to be free,
Where 'neath the bloody finger-marks thy riven bosom quakes,
Thicken the thunders of God's Voice and lo! a world awakes!
Written by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope | Create an image from this poem

Australia

 A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey 
In the field uniform of modern wars, 
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws 
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away. 

They call her a young country, but they lie: 
She is the last of lands, the emptiest, 
A woman beyond her change of life, a breast 
Still tender but within the womb is dry. 

Without songs, architecture, history: 
The emotions and superstitions of younger lands, 
Her rivers of water drown among inland sands, 
The river of her immense stupidity 

Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth. 
In them at last the ultimate men arrive 
Whose boast is not: "we live" but "we survive", 
A type who will inhabit the dying earth. 

And her five cities, like five teeming sores, 
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state 
Where second hand Europeans pullulate 
Timidly on the edge of alien shores. 

Yet there are some like me turn gladly home 
From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find 
The Arabian desert of the human mind, 
Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come, 

Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare 
Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes 
The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes 
Which is called civilization over there.
Written by Matthew Arnold | Create an image from this poem

The Future

 A wanderer is man from his birth.
He was born in a ship
On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and joy
He spreads out his arms to the light,
Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
Whether he wakes,
Where the snowy mountainous pass,
Echoing the screams of the eagles,
Hems in its gorges the bed
Of the new-born clear-flowing stream;
Whether he first sees light
Where the river in gleaming rings
Sluggishly winds through the plain;
Whether in sound of the swallowing sea— 
As is the world on the banks,
So is the mind of the man.

Vainly does each, as he glides,
Fable and dream
Of the lands which the river of Time
Had left ere he woke on its breast,
Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.
Only the tract where he sails
He wots of; only the thoughts,
Raised by the objects he passes, are his.

Who can see the green earth any more
As she was by the sources of Time?
Who imagines her fields as they lay
In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?
Who thinks as they thought,
The tribes who then roamed on her breast,
Her vigorous, primitive sons?

What girl
Now reads in her bosom as clear
As Rebekah read, when she sate
At eve by the palm-shaded well?
Who guards in her breast
As deep, as pellucid a spring
Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure?

What bard,
At the height of his vision, can deem
Of God, of the world, of the soul,
With a plainness as near,
As flashing as Moses felt
When he lay in the night by his flock
On the starlit Arabian waste?
Can rise and obey
The beck of the Spirit like him?

This tract which the river of Time
Now flows through with us, is the plain.
Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.
Bordered by cities and hoarse
With a thousand cries is its stream.
And we on its breast, our minds
Are confused as the cries which we hear,
Changing and shot as the sights which we see.

And we say that repose has fled
For ever the course of the river of Time.
That cities will crowd to its edge
In a blacker, incessanter line;
That the din will be more on its banks,
Denser the trade on its stream,
Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead;
That never will those on its breast
See an ennobling sight,
Drink of the feeling of quiet again.

But what was before us we know not,
And we know not what shall succeed.

Haply, the river of Time— 
As it grows, as the towns on its marge
Fling their wavering lights
On a wider, statlier stream— 
May acquire, if not the calm
Of its early mountainous shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.

And the width of the waters, the hush
Of the grey expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with foam
As it draws to the Ocean, amy strike
Peace to the soul of the man on its breast— 
As the pale waste widens around him,
As the banks fade dimmer away,
As the stars come out, and the night-wind
Brings up the stream
Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.
Written by Nazim Hikmet | Create an image from this poem

Regarding Art

 Sometimes, I, too, tell the ah's
of my heart one by one
like the blood-red beads
of a ruby rosary strung
 on strands of golden hair!

But my
poetry's muse
takes to the air
on wings made of steel
like the I-beams
 of my suspension bridges!

I don't pretend
 the nightingale's lament
to the rose isn't easy on the ears...
But the language
 that really speaks to me
are Beethoven sonatas played
on copper, iron, wood, bone, and catgut...

You can "have"
galloping off
in a cloud of dust!
Me, I wouldn't trade
for the purest-bred
 Arabian steed
the sixth mph
 of my iron horse
 running on iron tracks!

Sometimes my eye is caught like a big dumb fly
by the masterly spider webs in the corners of my room.
But I really look up
to the seventy-seven-story, reinforced-concrete mountains
 my blue-shirted builders create!

Were I to meet
the male beauty
"young Adonis, god of Byblos,"
on a bridge, I'd probably never notice;
but I can't help staring into my philosopher's glassy eyes
or my fireman's square face
 red as a sweating sun!

Though I can smoke
third-class cigarettes filled
on my electric workbenches,
I can't roll tobacco - even the finest-
in paper by hand and smoke it!
I didn't --
 "wouldn't" -- trade
my wife dressed in her leather cap and jacket
for Eve's nakedness!
Maybe I don't have a "poetic soul"?
What can I do
 when I love my own children
 more
 than mother Nature's!
Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Create an image from this poem

The Place Where The Rainbow Ends

There's a fabulous story
Full of splendor and glory,
That Arabian legends transcends;
Of the wealth without measure,
The coffers of treasure,
At the place where the rainbow ends.
Oh, many have sought it,
And all would have bought it,
With the blood we so recklessly spend;
But none has uncovered,
The gold, nor discovered
The spot at the rainbow's end.
They have sought it in battle,
And e'en where the rattle
Of dice with man's blasphemy blends;
But howe'er persuasive,
It still proves evasive,
This place where the rainbow ends.
I own for my pleasure,
I yearn not for treasure,
Though gold has a power it lends;
And I have a notion,
To find without motion,
The place where the rainbow ends.
The pot may hold pottage,
The place be a cottage,
That a humble contentment defends,
Only joy fills its coffer,
But spite of the scoffer,
There's the place where the rainbow ends.
Where care shall be quiet,
[Pg 247]And love shall run riot,
And I shall find wealth in my friends;
Then truce to the story,
Of riches and glory;
There's the place where the rainbow ends.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry