10 Best Famous Ness Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Ness poems. This is a select list of the best famous Ness poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Ness poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of ness poems.

• All Famous Ness Poems

 Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence 
Behold the Forms of nature. They discern 
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities 
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn. 
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying, 
Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear, 
High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal 
Huge Principles appear.

The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of 
Arboreal life, how from earth's salty lap 
The solar beam uplifts it; all the holiness 
Enacted by leaves' fall and rising sap;

But never an angel knows the knife-edged severance 
Of sun from shadow where the trees begin, 
The blessed cool at every pore caressing us 
-An angel has no skin.

They see the Form of Air; but mortals breathing it 
Drink the whole summer down into the breast. 
The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing 
Sea-smells, the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest. 
The tremor on the rippled pool of memory 
That from each smell in widening circles goes, 
The pleasure and the pang --can angels measure it? 
An angel has no nose.

The nourishing of life, and how it flourishes 
On death, and why, they utterly know; but not 
The hill-born, earthy spring, the dark cold bilberries. 
The ripe peach from the southern wall still hot 
Full-bellied tankards foamy-topped, the delicate 
Half-lyric lamb, a new loaf's billowy curves, 
Nor porridge, nor the tingling taste of oranges.
—An angel has no nerves.

Far richer they! I know the senses' witchery 
Guards us like air, from heavens too big to see; 
Imminent death to man that barb'd sublimity 
And dazzling edge of beauty unsheathed would be. 
Yet here, within this tiny, charmed interior, 
This parlour of the brain, their Maker shares 
With living men some secrets in a privacy 
Forever ours, not theirs.

 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fair.
Whose mothers taught: You'd better not be cruel!
You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!
Herein they kiss and coddle and assault
Anew and dearly in the innocence
With which they baffle nature. Who are full,
Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all
Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,
Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt
Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.
To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.
To be a random hitching post or plush.
To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.
Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor--passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is--something less than derelict or dull.
Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!
God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!
The noxious needy ones whose battle's bald
Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down.
But it's all so bad! and entirely too much for them.
The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans,
Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains,
The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they're told,
Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn
Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs.
The soil that looks the soil of centuries.
And for that matter the general oldness. Old
Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old.
Note homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe.
Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic,
There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, no
Unkillable infirmity of such
A tasteful turn as lately they have left,
Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their cars
Must presently restore them. When they're done
With dullards and distortions of this fistic
Patience of the poor and put-upon.
They've never seen such a make-do-ness as
Newspaper rugs before! In this, this "flat,"
Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the rich
Rugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered . . . ),
Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon.
Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look,
In horror, behind a substantial citizeness
Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart.
Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door.
All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor
And tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft-
Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt.
Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost.
But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put
Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers
Tipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems . . . 
They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra,
Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks,
Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin "hangings,"
Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They Winter
In Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend,
When suitable, the nice Art Institute;
Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunter
On Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind.
Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fibre
With fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringings
Of loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungers
So old old, what shall flatter the desolate?
Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling
And swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage
Of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames
And, again, the porridges of the underslung
And children children children. Heavens! That
Was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long
And long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies'
Betterment League agree it will be better
To achieve the outer air that rights and steadies,
To hie to a house that does not holler, to ring
Bells elsetime, better presently to cater
To no more Possibilities, to get
Away. Perhaps the money can be posted.
Perhaps they two may choose another Slum!
Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!--
Where loathe-lover likelier may be invested.
Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what they manage of a canter,
And, resuming all the clues of what they were,
Try to avoid inhaling the laden air.

 This is a song to celebrate banks,
Because they are full of money and you go into them and all
you hear is clinks and clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.
Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits
and discourage withdrawals,
And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe
betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless
they don't need it.
I know you, you cautious conservative banks!
If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny
them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving
of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks;
Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must
look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the
jungle,
And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had
better go get the money from their wife's aunt or ungle.
But suppose people come in and they have a million and they
want another million to pile on top of it,
Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you
urge them to accept every drop of it,
And you lend them the million so then they have two million
and this gives them the idea that they would be better off
with four,
So they already have two million as security so you have no
hesitation in lending them two more,
And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm,
And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the
money sent or do they want to take it withm.
Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks,
the jackasses who go around saying that health and happi-
ness are everything and money isn't essential,
Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant
money to maintain their health and happiness they starve
to death so they can't go around any more sneering at good
old money, which is nothing short of providential.

 He's gone. She can't believe it, can't go on. She's going to give up painting. So she paints Her final canvas, total-turn-off
Black. One long
Obsidian goodbye. A charcoal-burner's Smirnoff, The mirror of Loch Ness Reflecting the monster back to its own eye.
But something's wrong. Those mad Black-body particles don't sing Her story of despair, the steel and
Garnet spindle
Of the storm.
This black has everything its own sweet way, Where's the I'd-like-to-kill-You conflict? Try once more, but this time add
A curve to all that straight. And opposition White. She paints black first. A grindstone belly Hammering a smaller shape
Beneath a snake
Of in-betweening light. "I feel like this. I hope that you do, too, Black crater. Screw you. Kiss" And sees a voodoo flicker, where two worlds nearly touch
And miss. That flash, where white
Lets black get close, that dagger of not-quite contact,
Catspaw panic, quiver on the wheat
Field before thunder -
There. That's it. That's her own self, in paint, Splitting what she was from what she is. As if everything that separates, unites.

Copyright
from Voodoo Shop (Chatto, 2002), copyright © Ruth Padel 2002, used by permission of the author and the publisher

 You flaunt your beauty in the rose, your glory in the dawn, 
Your sweetness in the nightingale, your white- ness in the swan.

You haunt my waking like a dream, my slumber like a moon, 
Pervade me like a musky scent, possess me like a tune. 

Yet, when I crave of you, my sweet, one tender moment's grace, 
You cry, "I sit behind the veil, I cannot show my face."

Shall any foolish veil divide my longing from my bliss? 
Shall any fragile curtain hide your beauty from my kiss?

What war is this of Thee and Me? Give o'er the wanton strife, 
You are the heart within my heart, the life within my life.

 This admirable gadget, when it is
Wound on a string and spun with steady force,
Maintains its balance on most any smooth
Surface, pleasantly humming as it goes.
It is whirled not on a constant course, but still
Stands in unshivering integrity
For quite some time, meaning nothing perhaps
But being something agreeable to watch,
A silver nearly silence gleaning a still-
ness out of speed, composing unity
From spin, so that its hollow spaces seem
Solids of light, until it wobbles and
Begins to whine, and then with an odd lunge
Eccentric and reckless, it skids away
And drops dead into its own skeleton.

 As home from church we two did plod,
"Grandpa," said Rosy, "What is God?"
Seeking an answer to her mind,
This is the best that I could find. . . .

God is the Iz-ness of our Cosmic Biz;
The high, the low, the near, the far,
The atom and the evening star;
The lark, the shark, the cloud, the clod,
The whole darned Universe - that's God.

Some deem that others there be,
And to them humbly bend the knee;
To Mumbo Jumbo and to Joss,
To Bud and Allah - but the Boss
Is mine . . . While there are suns and seas
MY timeless God shall dwell in these.

In every glowing leaf He lives;
When roses die His life he gives;
God is not outside and apart
From Nature, but her very heart;
No Architect (as I of verse)
He is Himself the Universe.

Said Rosy-kins: "Grandpa, how odd
Is your imagining of God.
To me he's always just appeared
A huge Grandfather with a beard.

 Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;
Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.
From reef and rock and skerry -- over headland, ness, and voe --
The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!

Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors;
Through the yelling Channel tempest when the siren hoots and roars --
By day the dipping house-flag and by night the rocket's trail --
As the sheep that graze behind us so we know them where they hail.

We bridge across the dark and bid the helmsman have a care,
The flash that wheeling 
 That use in London Town.

Coastwise -- cross-seas -- round the world and back again --
 Where the flaw shall head us or the full Trade suits --
Plain-sail -- storm-sail -- lay your board and tack again --
 And that's the way we'll pay Paddy Doyle for his boots!

We bring no store of ingots,
 Of spice or precious stones,
But that we have we gathered
 With sweat and aching bones:
In flame beneath the tropics,
 In frost upon the floe,
And jeopardy of every wind
 That does between them go.

And some we got by purchase,
 And some we had by trade,
And some we found by courtesy
 Of pike and carronade --
At midnight, 'mid-sea meetings,
 For charity to keep,
And light the rolling homeward-bound
 That rode a foot too deep.

By sport of bitter weather
 We're walty, strained, and scarred
From the kentledge on the kelson
 To the slings upon the yard.
Six oceans had their will of us
 To carry all away --
Our galley's in the Baltic,
 And our boom's in Mossel Bay!

We've floundered off the Texel,
 Awash with sodden deals,
We've slipped from Valparaiso
 With the Norther at our heels:
We've ratched beyond the Crossets
 That tusk the Southern Pole,
And dipped our gunnels under
 To the dread Agulhas roll.

Beyond all outer charting
 We sailed where none have sailed,
And saw the land-lights burning
 On islands none have hailed;
Our hair stood up for wonder,
 But, when the night was done,
There danced the deep to windward
 Blue-empty 'neath the sun!

Strange consorts rode beside us
 And brought us evil luck;
The witch-fire climbed our channels,
 And flared on vane and truck:
Till, through the red tornado,
 That lashed us nigh to blind,
We saw The Dutchman plunging,
 Full canvas, head to wind!

We've heard the Midnight Leadsman
 That calls the black deep down --
Ay, thrice we've heard The Swimmer,
 The Thing that may not drown.
On frozen bunt and gasket
 The sleet-cloud drave her hosts,
When, manned by more than signed with us,
 We passed the Isle o' Ghosts!

And north, amid the hummocks,
 A biscuit-toss below,
We met the silent shallop
 That frighted whalers know;
For, down a cruel ice-lane,
 That opened as he sped,
We saw dead Henry Hudson
 Steer, North by West, his dead.

So dealt God's waters with us
 Beneath the roaring skies,
So walked His signs and marvels
 All naked to our eyes:
But we were heading homeward
 With trade to lose or make --
Good Lord, they slipped behind us
 In the tailing of our wake!

Let go, let go the anchors;
 Now shamed at heart are we
To bring so poor a cargo home
 That had for gift the sea!
Let go the great bow-anchors --
 Ah, fools were we and blind --
The worst we stored with utter toil,
 The best we left behind!

Coastwise -- cross-seas -- round the world and back again,
 Whither flaw shall fail us or the Trades drive down:
Plain-sail -- storm-sail -- lay your board and tack again --
 And all to bring a cargo up to London Town!

 Mr. Ramsbottom went to the races, 
A thing as he'd ne'er done before,
And as luck always follers beginners, 
Won five pounds, no-less and no-more.

He felt himself suddenly tempted
To indulge in some reckless orgee, 
So he went to a caffy-a-teerer 
And had a dressed crab with his tea.

He were crunching the claws at the finish
And wondering what next he would do, 
Then his thoughts turned to home and to Mother,
And what she would say when she knew. 

For Mother were dead against racing 
And said as she thought 'twere a sin 
For people to gamble their money 
Unless they were certain to win.

These homely domestic reflections 
Seemed to cast quite a gloom on Pa's day
He thought he'd best take home a present 
And square up the matter that way.

' Twere a bit ofa job to decide on 
What best to select for this 'ere,
So he started to look in shop winders 
In hopes as he'd get some idea.

He saw some strange stuff in a fruit shop 
Like leeks with their nobby ends gone,
It were done up in bundles like firewood- 
Said Pa to the Shopman, "What's yon?"

"That's Ass-paragus-what the Toffs eat" 
Were the answer; said Pa "That 'll suit,
I'd best take a couple of bundles, 
For Mother's a bobby for fruit."

He started off home with his purchase 
And pictured Ma all the next week
Eating sparagus fried with her bacon 
Or mashed up in bubble-and-squeak.

He knew when she heard he'd been racing 
She'd very nigh talk him to death,
So he thought as he'd call in the ' Local' 
To strengthen his nerve and his breath.

He had hardly got up to the counter 
When a friend of his walked in the bar,
He said "What ye got in the bundle?" 
"A present for Mother," said Pa.

It's 'sparagus stuff what the Toffs eat " 
His friend said "It's a rum-looking plant,
Can I have the green ends for my rabbits?" 
said Pa "Aye, cut off what you want.

He cut all the tips off one bundle,
Then some more friends arrived one by one, 
And all of them seemed to keep rabbits 
Pa had no green ends left when they'd done.

When he got home the 'ouse were in dark ness,
So he slipped in as sly as a fox, 
Laid the 'sparagus on kitchen table 
And crept up to bed in his socks.

He got in without waking Mother, 
A truly remarkable feat,
And pictured her telling the neighbours 
As 'twere 'sparagus-what the toffs eat.

But when he woke up in the morning 
It were nigh on a quarter to ten,
There were no signs of Mother, or breakfast
Said Pa, "What's she done with her-sen?"

He shouted "What's up theer in t' kitchen?"
She replied, "You do well to enquire,
Them bundles of chips as you brought home 
Is so damp... I can't light the fire."

 when they look into his mind they find a hill town
somewhat surprised they go off to their learned books
outside (architecturally) he’d seems a little wind-blown
not special – a common sort of shackman by his looks
not the sure kind to want the sun to get its hooks
into his self-containment (his bunched-up notions)
thoughts crammed like the heads of ripened corn in stooks
who has a well-stocked feel – runs deep but no commotions
cool as a many-crypted church at its devotions

the learned books do say something about deception
how when you pass him in the street his back is turned
as if (of who you are) he harbours no conception
so you (of him) though wary cannot be that concerned
appearances appearances (its kudos earned)
the book crows - being too aware of inside-outs
knowing full well the volte-face nature of the scorned
the dullest horses may best play havoc with the touts
nor hillside towns dispel the speeding tourist’s doubts

you have to turn off - want to know what’s their attraction
to nose into narrow ways (climb through streaks of sun
and deep sharp shadow - such a lung’s exaction)
to catch a sense of busy life close to the bone
worn tracks between doors (waft of voices) eyes in stone
smells of food (enticing) splashes of unleashed wine
water rills carrying old bridges (a faint drone
descending like a bee-swarm) courtyards – a cool shrine
a sudden market’s noise (a local-produce mine)

and then the topmost square with church or water towers
a dance of bustling shops and sparkling language banter
and every crevice cranny bosoming out with flowers
a busy-ness of purpose and a heart’s enchanter
(the sun distributes gold – allows the blood to saunter)
the bricks of buildings glow with centuries of nous
as though the wisest grape best pours from this decanter
both tempered peace and passion welter in its throes
and fountain sprays refract what such life knows

so with the man – whose innerness the world at large
shuts out or rushes past (its own deep rifts demanding)
but to himself (in that dark realm where he’s in charge)
with all his senses geared to sapience longstanding
there’s not a day goes by without his flairs expanding
in every passageway his mind has set up stalls
and diverse thoughts and voices do their blending
so what that he (from outside rush and guff) withdraws
he and the hilltown share each other’s stilled applause