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Best Famous Mayday Poems

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

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Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

Three Songs For Mayday Morning

 ( I )


for ‘JC’ of the TLS

Nightmare of metropolitan amalgam

Grand Hotel and myself as a guest there

Lost with my room rifled, my belongings scattered,

Purse, diary and vital list of numbers gone – 

Vague sad memories of mam n’dad

Leeds 1942 back-to-back with shared outside lav.

Hosannas of sweet May mornings

Whitsun glory of lilac blooming

Sixty years on I run and run

From death, from loss, from everyone.

Which are the paths I never ventured down,

Or would they, too, be vain?

O for the secret anima of Leeds girlhood

A thousand times better than snide attacks in the TLS

By ‘JC’. **** you, Jock, you should be ashamed,

Attacking Brenda Williams, who had a background

Worse than yours, an alcoholic schizophrenic father

And an Irish immigrant mother who died when Brenda was fifteen

But still she managed to read Proust on her day off

As a library girl, turned down by David Jenkins,

‘As rising star of the left’ for a place at Leeds

To read theology started her as a protest poet

Sitting out on the English lawn, mistaken for a snow sculpture

In the depths of winter.

Her sit-in protest lasted seven months,

Months, eight hours a day, her libellous verse scorching

The academic groves of Leeds in sheets by the thousand,

Mailed through the university's internal post. She called

The VC 'a mouse from the mountain'; Bishop of Durham to-be

David Jenkins a wimp and worse and all in colourful verse

And 'Guntrip's Ghost' went to every VC in England in a

Single day. When she sat on the English lawn Park Honan

Flew paper aeroplanes with messages down and

And when she was in Classics they took away her chair

So she sat on the floor reading Virgil and the Chairman of the

Department sent her an official Christmas card

'For six weeks on the university lawn, learning the

Hebrew alphabet'.





And that was just the beginning: in Oxford Magdalen College

School turned our son away for the Leeds protest so she

Started again, in Magdalen Quad, sitting through Oxford's

Worst ever winter and finally they arrested her on the

Eve of the May Ball so she wrote 'Oxford from a Prison

Cell' her most famous poem and her protest letter went in

A single day to every MP and House of Lords Member and

It was remembered years after and when nobody nominated

Her for the Oxford Chair she took her own and sat there

In the cold for almost a year, well-wishers pinning messages

To the tree she sat under - "Tityre, tu patulae recubans

Sub tegmine fagi" and twelve hundred and forty dons had

"The Pain Clinic" in a single day and she was fourteen

Times in the national press, a column in "The Guardian"

And a whole page with a picture in the 'Times Higher' -

"A Well Versed Protester"

JC, if you call Myslexia’s editor a ‘kick-**** virago’

You’ve got to expect a few kicks back.

All this is but the dust

We must shake from our feet

Purple heather still with blossom

In Haworth and I shall gather armfuls

To toss them skywards and you,

Madonna mia, I shall bed you there

In blazing summer by High Wythens,

Artist unbroken from the highest peak

I raise my hands to heaven.

( II )

Sweet Anna, I do not know you from Eve

But your zany zine in the post

Is the best I’ve ever seen, inspiring this rant

Against the cant of stuck-up cunts currying favour

I name no name but if the Dutch cap fits

Then wear it and share it.

Who thought at sixty one 

I’d have owned a watch 

Like this one, chased silver cased

Quartz reflex Japanese movement

And all for a fiver at the back of Leeds Market

Where I wander in search of oil pastels

Irish folk and cheap socks.

The TLS mocks our magazine

With its sixties Cadillac pink

Psychedelic cover and every page crimson

Orange or mauve, revolutionary sonnets 

By Brenda Williams from her epic ‘Pain Clinic’

And my lacerating attacks on boring Bloodaxe

Neil Ghastly and Anvil’s preciosity and all the

Stuck-up ****-holes in their cubby-holes sending out

Rejection slip by rote – LPW


Written by Dorothy Parker | Create an image from this poem

Verse For a Certain Dog

 Such glorious faith as fills your limpid eyes,
Dear little friend of mine, I never knew.
All-innocent are you, and yet all-wise.
(For Heaven's sake, stop worrying that shoe!)
You look about, and all you see is fair;
This mighty globe was made for you alone.
Of all the thunderous ages, you're the heir.
(Get off the pillow with that dirty bone!)

A skeptic world you face with steady gaze;
High in young pride you hold your noble head,
Gayly you meet the rush of roaring days.
(Must you eat puppy biscuit on the bed?)
Lancelike your courage, gleaming swift and strong,
Yours the white rapture of a winged soul,
Yours is a spirit like a Mayday song.
(God help you, if you break the goldfish bowl!)

"Whatever is, is good" - your gracious creed.
You wear your joy of living like a crown.
Love lights your simplest act, your every deed.
(Drop it, I tell you- put that kitten down!)
You are God's kindliest gift of all - a friend.
Your shining loyalty unflecked by doubt,
You ask but leave to follow to the end.
(Couldn't you wait until I took you out?)
Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Bucolics

 Mayday: two came to field in such wise :
`A daisied mead', each said to each,
So were they one; so sought they couch,
Across barbed stile, through flocked brown cows.

`No pitchforked farmer, please,' she said;
`May cockcrow guard us safe,' said he;
By blackthorn thicket, flower spray
They pitched their coats, come to green bed.

Below: a fen where water stood;
Aslant: their hill of stinging nettle;
Then, honor-bound, mute grazing cattle;
Above: leaf-wraithed white air, white cloud.

All afternoon these lovers lay
Until the sun turned pale from warm,
Until sweet wind changed tune, blew harm :
Cruel nettles stung her angles raw.

Rueful, most vexed, that tender skin
Should accept so fell a wound,
He stamped and cracked stalks to the ground
Which had caused his dear girl pain.

Now he goes from his rightful road
And, under honor, will depart;
While she stands burning, venom-girt,
In wait for sharper smart to fade.
Written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Create an image from this poem

The Epochs

 ON Petrarch's heart, all other days before,

In flaming letters written, was impress d

GOOD FRIDAY. And on mine, be it confess'd,
Is this year's ADVENT, as it passeth o'er.

I do not now begin,--I still adore

Her whom I early cherish'd in my breast;,

Then once again with prudence dispossess'd,
And to whose heart I'm driven back once more.

The love of Petrarch, that all-glorious love,

Was unrequited, and, alas, full sad;

 One long Good Friday 'twas, one heartache drear

But may my mistress' Advent ever prove,

With its palm-jubilee, so sweet and glad,

 One endless Mayday, through the livelong year!

 1807.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry