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Best Famous Honeysuckle Poems

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

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Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)

 Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues.
She is stuck in the time machine,
suddenly two years old sucking her thumb,
as inward as a snail,
learning to talk again.
She's on a voyage.
She is swimming further and further back,
up like a salmon,
struggling into her mother's pocketbook.
Little doll child,
come here to Papa.
Sit on my knee.
I have kisses for the back of your neck.
A penny for your thoughts, Princess.
I will hunt them like an emerald.

Come be my snooky
and I will give you a root.
That kind of voyage,
rank as a honeysuckle.
Once
a king had a christening
for his daughter Briar Rose
and because he had only twelve gold plates
he asked only twelve fairies
to the grand event.
The thirteenth fairy,
her fingers as long and thing as straws,
her eyes burnt by cigarettes,
her uterus an empty teacup,
arrived with an evil gift.
She made this prophecy:
The princess shall prick herself
on a spinning wheel in her fifteenth year
and then fall down dead.
Kaputt!
The court fell silent.
The king looked like Munch's Scream
Fairies' prophecies,
in times like those,
held water.
However the twelfth fairy
had a certain kind of eraser
and thus she mitigated the curse
changing that death
into a hundred-year sleep.

The king ordered every spinning wheel
exterminated and exorcised.
Briar Rose grew to be a goddess
and each night the king
bit the hem of her gown
to keep her safe.
He fastened the moon up
with a safety pin
to give her perpetual light
He forced every male in the court
to scour his tongue with Bab-o
lest they poison the air she dwelt in.
Thus she dwelt in his odor.
Rank as honeysuckle.

On her fifteenth birthday
she pricked her finger
on a charred spinning wheel
and the clocks stopped.
Yes indeed. She went to sleep.
The king and queen went to sleep,
the courtiers, the flies on the wall.
The fire in the hearth grew still
and the roast meat stopped crackling.
The trees turned into metal
and the dog became china.
They all lay in a trance,
each a catatonic
stuck in a time machine.
Even the frogs were zombies.
Only a bunch of briar roses grew
forming a great wall of tacks
around the castle.
Many princes
tried to get through the brambles
for they had heard much of Briar Rose
but they had not scoured their tongues
so they were held by the thorns
and thus were crucified.
In due time
a hundred years passed
and a prince got through.
The briars parted as if for Moses
and the prince found the tableau intact.
He kissed Briar Rose
and she woke up crying:
Daddy! Daddy!
Presto! She's out of prison!
She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear --
the fear of sleep.

Briar Rose
was an insomniac...
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence.
If if is to come, she said,
sleep must take me unawares
while I am laughing or dancing
so that I do not know that brutal place
where I lie down with cattle prods,
the hole in my cheek open.
Further, I must not dream
for when I do I see the table set
and a faltering crone at my place,
her eyes burnt by cigarettes
as she eats betrayal like a slice of meat.

I must not sleep
for while I'm asleep I'm ninety
and think I'm dying.
Death rattles in my throat
like a marble.
I wear tubes like earrings.
I lie as still as a bar of iron.
You can stick a needle
through my kneecap and I won't flinch.
I'm all shot up with Novocain.
This trance girl
is yours to do with.
You could lay her in a grave,
an awful package,
and shovel dirt on her face
and she'd never call back: Hello there!
But if you kissed her on the mouth
her eyes would spring open
and she'd call out: Daddy! Daddy!
Presto!
She's out of prison.

There was a theft.
That much I am told.
I was abandoned.
That much I know.
I was forced backward.
I was forced forward.
I was passed hand to hand
like a bowl of fruit.
Each night I am nailed into place
and forget who I am.
Daddy?
That's another kind of prison.
It's not the prince at all,
but my father
drunkeningly bends over my bed,
circling the abyss like a shark,
my father thick upon me
like some sleeping jellyfish.
What voyage is this, little girl?
This coming out of prison?
God help --
this life after death?


Written by Robert Desnos | Create an image from this poem

Cascade

 What sort of arrow split the sky and this rock?
It's quivering, spreading like a peacock's fan
Like the mist around the shaft and knot less feathers
Of a comet come to nest at midnight.

How blood surges from the gaping wound,
Lips already silencing murmur and cry.
One solemn finger holds back time, confusing
The witness of the eyes where the deed is written.

Silence? We still know the passwords.
Lost sentinels far from the watch fires
We smell the odor of honeysuckle and surf
Rising in the dark shadows.

Distance, let dawn leap the void at last,
And a single beam of light make a rainbow on the water
Its quiver full of reeds,
Sign of the return of archers and patriotic songs.
Written by Gerard Manley Hopkins | Create an image from this poem

St. Winefreds Well

 ACT I. SC. I

Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following.

T. WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me? 

W. You came by Caerwys, sir? 
T. I came by Caerwys. 
W. There
Some messenger there might have met you from my uncle. 
T. Your uncle met the messenger—met me; and this the message:
Lord Beuno comes to-night. 
W. To-night, sir! 
T. Soon, now: therefore
Have all things ready in his room. 
W. There needs but little doing. 
T. Let what there needs be done. Stay! with him one companion,
His deacon, Dirvan Warm: twice over must the welcome be,
But both will share one cell.—This was good news, Gwenvrewi. 
W. Ah yes! 
T. Why, get thee gone then; tell thy mother I want her.

Exit Winefred.

No man has such a daughter. The fathers of the world
Call no such maiden ‘mine’. The deeper grows her dearness
And more and more times laces round and round my heart,
The more some monstrous hand gropes with clammy fingers there,
Tampering with those sweet bines, draws them out, strains them, strains them;
Meantime some tongue cries ‘What, Teryth! what, thou poor fond father!
How when this bloom, this honeysuckle, that rides the air so rich about thee,
Is all, all sheared away, thus!’ Then I sweat for fear.
Or else a funeral, and yet ’tis not a funeral,
Some pageant which takes tears and I must foot with feeling that
Alive or dead my girl is carried in it, endlessly
Goes marching thro’ my mind. What sense is this? It has none.
This is too much the father; nay the mother. Fanciful!
I here forbid my thoughts to fool themselves with fears.

Enter Gwenlo.
. . . . . . . . 

ACT II.—Scene, a wood ending in a steep bank over a dry dene, Winefred having been murdered within. Re-enter Caradoc with a bloody sword.

C. My heart, where have we been? What have we seen, my mind?
What stroke has Caradoc’s right arm dealt? what done? Head of a rebel
Struck off it has; written upon lovely limbs,
In bloody letters, lessons of earnest, of revenge;
Monuments of my earnest, records of my revenge,
On one that went against me wh?reas I had warned her—
Warned her! well she knew. I warned her of this work.
What work? what harm ’s done? There is no harm done, none yet;
Perhaps we struck no blow, Gwenvrewi lives perhaps;
To makebelieve my mood was—mock. O I might think so
But here, here is a workman from his day’s task sweats.
Wiped I am sure this was; it seems not well; for still,
Still the scarlet swings and dances on the blade.
So be it. Thou steel, thou butcher,
I c?n scour thee, fresh burnish thee, sheathe thee in thy dark lair; these drops
Never, never, never in their blue banks again.
The woeful, Cradock, O the woeful word! Then what,
What have we seen? Her head, sheared from her shoulders, fall,
And lapped in shining hair, roll to the bank’s edge; then
Down the beetling banks, like water in waterfalls,
It stooped and flashed and fell and ran like water away.
Her eyes, oh and her eyes!
In all her beauty, and sunlight to it is a pit, den, darkness,
Foam-falling is not fresh to it, rainbow by it not beaming,
In all her body, I say, no place was like her eyes,
No piece matched those eyes kept most part much cast down
But, being lifted, immortal, of immortal brightness.
Several times I saw them, thrice or four times turning;
Round and round they came and flashed towards heaven: O there,
There they did appeal. Therefore airy vengeances
Are afoot; heaven-vault fast purpling portends, and what first lightning
Any instant falls means me. And I do not repent;
I do not and I will not repent, not repent.
The blame bear who aroused me. What I have done violent
I have like a lion done, lionlike done,
Honouring an uncontrolled royal wrathful nature,
Mantling passion in a grandeur, crimson grandeur.
Now be my pride then perfect, all one piece. Henceforth
In a wide world of defiance Caradoc lives alone,
Loyal to his own soul, laying his own law down, no law nor
Lord now curb him for ever. O daring! O deep insight!
What is virtue? Valour; only the heart valiant.
And right? Only resolution; will, his will unwavering
Who, like me, knowing his nature to the heart home, nature’s business,
Despatches with no flinching. But will flesh, O can flesh
Second this fiery strain? Not always; O no no!
We cannot live this life out; sometimes we must weary
And in this darksome world what comfort can I find?
Down this darksome world c?mfort wh?re can I find
When ’ts light I quenched; its rose, time’s one rich rose, my hand,
By her bloom, fast by her fresh, her fleec?d bloom,
Hideous dashed down, leaving earth a winter withering
With no now, no Gwenvrewi. I must miss her most
That might have spared her were it but for passion-sake. Yes,
To hunger and not have, y?t hope ?n for, to storm and strive and
Be at every assault fresh foiled, worse flung, deeper disappointed,
The turmoil and the torment, it has, I swear, a sweetness,
Keeps a kind of joy in it, a zest, an edge, an ecstasy,
Next after sweet success. I am not left even this;
I all my being have hacked in half with her neck: one part,
Reason, selfdisposal, choice of better or worse way,
Is corpse now, cannot change; my other self, this soul,
Life’s quick, this k?nd, this k?en self-feeling,
With dreadful distillation of thoughts sour as blood,
Must all day long taste murder. What do n?w then? Do? Nay,
Deed-bound I am; one deed treads all down here cramps all doing. What do? Not yield,
Not hope, not pray; despair; ay, that: brazen despair out,
Brave all, and take what comes—as here this rabble is come,
Whose bloods I reck no more of, no more rank with hers
Than sewers with sacred oils. Mankind, that mobs, comes. Come! 

Enter a crowd, among them Teryth, Gwenlo, Beuno.
. . . . . . . .

After Winefred’s raising from the dead and the breaking out of the fountain.

BEUNO. O now while skies are blue, now while seas are salt,
While rushy rains shall fall or brooks shall fleet from fountains,
While sick men shall cast sighs, of sweet health all despairing,
While blind men’s eyes shall thirst after daylight, draughts of daylight,
Or deaf ears shall desire that lipmusic that ’s lost upon them,
While cripples are, while lepers, dancers in dismal limb-dance,
Fallers in dreadful frothpits, waterfearers wild,
Stone, palsy, cancer, cough, lung wasting, womb not bearing,
Rupture, running sores, what more? in brief; in burden,
As long as men are mortal and God merciful,
So long to this sweet spot, this leafy lean-over,
This Dry Dene, now no longer dry nor dumb, but moist and musical
With the uproll and the downcarol of day and night delivering
Water, which keeps thy name, (for not in r?ck wr?tten,
But in pale water, frail water, wild rash and reeling water,
That will not wear a print, that will not stain a pen,
Thy venerable record, virgin, is recorded).
Here to this holy well shall pilgrimages be,
And not from purple Wales only nor from elmy England,
But from beyond seas, Erin, France and Flanders, everywhere,
Pilgrims, still pilgrims, m?re p?lgrims, still more poor pilgrims.
. . . . . . . .
What sights shall be when some that swung, wretches, on crutches
Their crutches shall cast from them, on heels of air departing,
Or they go rich as roseleaves hence that loathsome c?me hither!
Not now to n?me even
Those dearer, more divine boons whose haven the heart is.
. . . . . . . .
As sure as what is most sure, sure as that spring primroses
Shall new-dapple next year, sure as to-morrow morning,
Amongst come-back-again things, th?ngs with a revival, things with a recovery,
Thy name…
. . . . . . . .
Written by Sara Teasdale | Create an image from this poem

If Death Is Kind

 Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.

We will come down at night to these resounding beaches
And the long gentle thunder of the sea,
Here for a single hour in the wide starlight
We shall be happy, for the dead are free.
Written by William Carlos (WCW) Williams | Create an image from this poem

from Asphodel That Greeny Flower

 Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
 like a buttercup
 upon its branching stem-
save that it's green and wooden-
 I come, my sweet,
 to sing to you.
We lived long together
 a life filled,
 if you will,
with flowers. So that
 I was cheered
 when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
 in hell.
 Today
I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers
 that we both loved,
 even to this poor
colorless thing-
 I saw it
 when I was a child-
little prized among the living
 but the dead see,
 asking among themselves:
What do I remember
 that was shaped
 as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
 with tears.
 Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
 though too weak a wash of crimson
 colors it
to make it wholly credible.
 There is something
 something urgent
I have to say to you
 and you alone
 but it must wait
while I drink in
 the joy of your approach,
 perhaps for the last time.
And so
 with fear in my heart
 I drag it out
and keep on talking
 for I dare not stop.
 Listen while I talk on
against time.
 It will not be
 for long.
I have forgot
 and yet I see clearly enough
 something
central to the sky
 which ranges round it.
 An odor
springs from it!
 A sweetest odor!
 Honeysuckle! And now
there comes the buzzing of a bee!
 and a whole flood
 of sister memories!
Only give me time,
 time to recall them
 before I shall speak out.
Give me time,
 time.
When I was a boy
 I kept a book
 to which, from time
to time,
 I added pressed flowers
 until, after a time,
I had a good collection.
 The asphodel,
 forebodingly,
among them.
 I bring you,
 reawakened,
a memory of those flowers.
 They were sweet
 when I pressed them
and retained
 something of their sweetness
 a long time.
It is a curious odor,
 a moral odor,
 that brings me
near to you.
 The color
 was the first to go.
There had come to me
 a challenge,
 your dear self,
mortal as I was,
 the lily's throat
 to the hummingbird!
Endless wealth,
 I thought,
 held out its arms to me.
A thousand tropics
 in an apple blossom.
 The generous earth itself
gave us lief.
 The whole world
 became my garden!
But the sea
 which no one tends
 is also a garden
when the sun strikes it
 and the waves
 are wakened.
I have seen it
 and so have you
 when it puts all flowers
to shame.
 Too, there are the starfish
 stiffened by the sun
and other sea wrack
 and weeds. We knew that
 along with the rest of it
for we were born by the sea,
 knew its rose hedges
 to the very water's brink.
There the pink mallow grows
 and in their season
 strawberries
and there, later,
 we went to gather
 the wild plum.
I cannot say
 that I have gone to hell
 for your love
but often
 found myself there
 in your pursuit.
I do not like it
 and wanted to be
 in heaven. Hear me out.
Do not turn away.
I have learned much in my life
 from books
 and out of them
about love.
 Death
 is not the end of it.
There is a hierarchy
 which can be attained,
 I think,
in its service.
 Its guerdon
 is a fairy flower;
a cat of twenty lives.
 If no one came to try it
 the world
would be the loser.
 It has been
 for you and me
as one who watches a storm
 come in over the water.
 We have stood
from year to year
 before the spectacle of our lives
 with joined hands.
The storm unfolds.
 Lightning
 plays about the edges of the clouds.
The sky to the north
 is placid,
 blue in the afterglow
as the storm piles up.
 It is a flower
 that will soon reach
the apex of its bloom.
 We danced,
 in our minds,
and read a book together.
 You remember?
 It was a serious book.
And so books
 entered our lives.
The sea! The sea!
 Always
 when I think of the sea
there comes to mind
 the Iliad
 and Helen's public fault
that bred it.
 Were it not for that
 there would have been
 no poem but the world
 if we had remembered,
 those crimson petals
spilled among the stones,
 would have called it simply
 murder.
The sexual orchid that bloomed then
 sending so many
 disinterested
men to their graves
 has left its memory
 to a race of fools
or heroes
 if silence is a virtue.
 The sea alone
with its multiplicity
 holds any hope.
 The storm
has proven abortive
 but we remain
 after the thoughts it roused
to
 re-cement our lives.
 It is the mind
the mind
 that must be cured
 short of death's
intervention,
 and the will becomes again
 a garden. The poem
is complex and the place made
 in our lives
 for the poem.
Silence can be complex too,
 but you do not get far
 with silence.
Begin again.
 It is like Homer's
 catalogue of ships:
it fills up the time.
 I speak in figures,
 well enough, the dresses
you wear are figures also,
 we could not meet
 otherwise. When I speak
of flowers
 it is to recall
 that at one time
we were young.
 All women are not Helen,
 I know that,
but have Helen in their hearts.
 My sweet,
 you have it also, therefore
I love you
 and could not love you otherwise.
 Imagine you saw
a field made up of women
 all silver-white.
 What should you do
but love them?
 The storm bursts
 or fades! it is not
the end of the world.
 Love is something else,
 or so I thought it,
a garden which expands,
 though I knew you as a woman
 and never thought otherwise,
until the whole sea
 has been taken up
 and all its gardens.
It was the love of love,
 the love that swallows up all else,
 a grateful love,
a love of nature, of people,
 of animals,
 a love engendering
gentleness and goodness
 that moved me
 and that I saw in you.
I should have known,
 though I did not,
 that the lily-of-the-valley
is a flower makes many ill
 who whiff it.
 We had our children,
rivals in the general onslaught.
 I put them aside
 though I cared for them.
as well as any man
 could care for his children
 according to my lights.
You understand
 I had to meet you
 after the event
and have still to meet you.
 Love
 to which you too shall bow
along with me-
 a flower
 a weakest flower
shall be our trust
 and not because
 we are too feeble
to do otherwise
 but because
 at the height of my power
I risked what I had to do,
 therefore to prove
 that we love each other
while my very bones sweated
 that I could not cry to you
 in the act.
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
 I come, my sweet,
 to sing to you!
My heart rouses
 thinking to bring you news
 of something
that concerns you
 and concerns many men. Look at
 what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
 despised poems.
 It is difficult
to get the news from poems
 yet men die miserably every day
 for lack
of what is found there.
 Hear me out
 for I too am concerned
and every man
 who wants to die at peace in his bed
 besides.


Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

The Caterpillar

 Under this loop of honeysuckle, 
A creeping, coloured caterpillar, 
I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray, 
I nibble it leaf by leaf away. 

Down beneath grow dandelions,
Daisies, old-man’s-looking-glasses; 
Rooks flap croaking across the lane. 
I eat and swallow and eat again. 

Here come raindrops helter-skelter; 
I munch and nibble unregarding:
Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm. 
I’ll mind my business: I’m a good worm. 

When I’m old, tired, melancholy, 
I’ll build a leaf-green mausoleum 
Close by, here on this lovely spray,
And die and dream the ages away. 

Some say worms win resurrection, 
With white wings beating flitter-flutter, 
But wings or a sound sleep, why should I care? 
Either way I’ll miss my share.

Under this loop of honeysuckle, 
A hungry, hairy caterpillar, 
I crawl on my high and swinging seat, 
And eat, eat, eat—as one ought to eat.
Written by Robert Francis | Create an image from this poem

Silent Poem

 backroad leafmold stonewall chipmunk
underbrush grapevine woodchuck shadblow 

woodsmoke cowbarn honeysuckle woodpile
sawhorse bucksaw outhouse wellsweep 

backdoor flagstone bulkhead buttermilk
candlestick ragrug firedog brownbread 

hilltop outcrop cowbell buttercup
whetstone thunderstorm pitchfork steeplebush 

gristmill millstone cornmeal waterwheel
watercress buckwheat firefly jewelweed 

gravestone groundpine windbreak bedrock
weathercock snowfall starlight cockcrow
Written by William Browne | Create an image from this poem

Memory

 SO shuts the marigold her leaves
At the departure of the sun;
So from the honeysuckle sheaves
The bee goes when the day is done;
So sits the turtle when she is but one,
And so all woe, as I since she is gone.

To some few birds kind Nature hath
Made all the summer as one day:
Which once enjoy'd, cold winter's wrath
As night they sleeping pass away.
Those happy creatures are, that know not yet
The pain to be deprived or to forget.

I oft have heard men say there be
Some that with confidence profess
The helpful Art of Memory:
But could they teach Forgetfulness,
I'd learn; and try what further art could do
To make me love her and forget her too.
Written by Adam Lindsay Gordon | Create an image from this poem

The Sick Stockrider

 Hold hard, Ned! Lift me down once more, and lay me in the shade. 
Old man, you've had your work cut out to guide 
Both horses, and to hold me in the saddle when I swayed, 
All through the hot, slow, sleepy, silent ride. 
The dawn at "Moorabinda" was a mist rack dull and dense, 
The sun-rise was a sullen, sluggish lamp; 
I was dozing in the gateway at Arbuthnot's bound'ry fence, 
I was dreaming on the Limestone cattle camp. 
We crossed the creek at Carricksford, and sharply through the haze, 
And suddenly the sun shot flaming forth; 
To southward lay "Katawa", with the sand peaks all ablaze, 
And the flushed fields of Glen Lomond lay to north. 
Now westward winds the bridle-path that leads to Lindisfarm, 
And yonder looms the double-headed Bluff; 
From the far side of the first hill, when the skies are clear and calm, 
You can see Sylvester's woolshed fair enough. 
Five miles we used to call it from our homestead to the place 
Where the big tree spans the roadway like an arch; 
'Twas here we ran the dingo down that gave us such a chase 
Eight years ago -- or was it nine? -- last March. 
'Twas merry in the glowing morn among the gleaming grass, 
To wander as we've wandered many a mile, 
And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass, 
Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while. 
'Twas merry 'mid the blackwoods, when we spied the station roofs, 
To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard, 
With a running fire of stock whips and a fiery run of hoofs; 
Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard! 
Aye! we had a glorious gallop after "Starlight" and his gang, 
When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat; 
How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang, 
To the strokes of "Mountaineer" and "Acrobat". 
Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath, 
Close beside them through the tea-tree scrub we dash'd; 
And the golden-tinted fern leaves, how they rustled underneath; 
And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crash'd! 
We led the hunt throughout, Ned, on the chestnut and the grey, 
And the troopers were three hundred yards behind, 
While we emptied our six-shooters on the bushrangers at bay, 
In the creek with stunted box-trees for a blind! 
There you grappled with the leader, man to man, and horse to horse, 
And you roll'd together when the chestnut rear'd; 
He blazed away and missed you in that shallow water-course -- 
A narrow shave -- his powder singed your beard! 

In these hours when life is ebbing, how those days when life was young 
Come back to us; how clearly I recall 
Even the yarns Jack Hall invented, and the songs Jem Roper sung; 
And where are now Jem Roper and Jack Hall? 
Ay! nearly all our comrades of the old colonial school, 
Our ancient boon companions, Ned, are gone; 
Hard livers for the most part, somewhat reckless as a rule, 
It seems that you and I are left alone. 
There was Hughes, who got in trouble through that business with the cards, 
It matters little what became of him; 
But a steer ripp'd up Macpherson in the Cooraminta yards, 
And Sullivan was drown'd at Sink-or-swim; 
And Mostyn -- poor Frank Mostyn -- died at last, a fearful wreck, 
In the "horrors" at the Upper Wandinong, 
And Carisbrooke, the rider, at the Horsefall broke his neck; 
Faith! the wonder was he saved his neck so long! 

Ah! those days and nights we squandered at the Logans' in the glen -- 
The Logans, man and wife, have long been dead. 
Elsie's tallest girl seems taller than your little Elsie then; 
And Ethel is a woman grown and wed. 

I've had my share of pastime, and I've done my share of toil, 
And life is short -- the longest life a span; 
I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil, 
Or for wine that maketh glad the heart of man. 
For good undone, and gifts misspent, and resolutions vain, 
'Tis somewhat late to trouble. This I know -- 
I should live the same life over, if I had to live again; 
And the chances are I go where most men go. 

The deep blue skies wax dusky, and the tall green trees grow dim, 
The sward beneath me seems to heave and fall; 
And sickly, smoky shadows through the sleepy sunlight swim, 
And on the very sun's face weave their pall. 
Let me slumber in the hollow where the wattle blossoms wave, 
With never stone or rail to fence my bed; 
Should the sturdy station children pull the bush-flowers on my grave, 
I may chance to hear them romping overhead. 

I don't suppose I shall though, for I feel like sleeping sound, 
That sleep, they say, is doubtful. True; but yet 
At least it makes no difference to the dead man underground 
What the living men remember or forget. 
Enigmas that perplex us in the world's unequal strife, 
The future may ignore or may reveal; 
Yet some, as weak as water, Ned, to make the best of life, 
Have been to face the worst as true as steel.
Written by Delmore Schwartz | Create an image from this poem

Poem (Remember midsummer: the fragrance of box)

 Remember midsummer: the fragrance of box, of white
 roses
And of phlox. And upon a honeysuckle branch 
Three snails hanging with infinite delicacy
-- Clinging like tendril, flake and thread, as self-tormented
And self-delighted as any ballerina,
 just as in the orchard,
Near the apple trees, in the over-grown grasses
Drunken wasps clung to over-ripe pears
Which had fallen: swollen and disfigured.
For now it is wholly autumn: in the late
Afternoon as I walked toward the ridge where the hills
 begin,
There is a whir, a thrashing in the bush, and a startled
 pheasant, flying out and up,
Suddenly astonished me, breaking the waking dream.

Last night
Snatches of sleep, streaked by dreams and half dreams
- So that, aloft in the dim sky, for almost an hour,
A sausage balloon - chalk-white and lifeless looking--
 floated motionless
Until, at midnight, I went to New Bedlam and saw what I
 feared
 the most - I heard nothing, but it
 had all happened several times elsewhere.

Now, in the cold glittering morning, shining at the
 window,
The pears hang, yellowed and over-ripe, sodden brown in
 erratic places, all bunched and dangling,
Like a small choir of bagpipes, silent and waiting. And I
 rise now,
Go to the window and gaze at the fallen or falling country
-- And see! -- the fields are pencilled light brown 
 or are the dark brownness of the last autumn
-- So much has shrunken to straight brown lines, thin as
 the
 bare thin trees,
Save where the cornstalks, white bones of the lost forever dead,
Shrivelled and fallen, but shrill-voiced when the wind
 whistles,
Are scattered like the long abandoned hopes and ambitions 
Of an adolescence which, for a very long time, has been
 merely
A recurrent target and taunt of the inescapable mockery of
 memory.
Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry