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Best Famous Noons Poems

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

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Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

A light exists in spring

A light exists in spring
   Not present on the year
At any other period.
   When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
   On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
   But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn;
   It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
   It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
   Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
   It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
   Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
   Upon a sacrament.


Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

It makes no difference abroad --

 It makes no difference abroad --
The Seasons -- fit -- the same --
The Mornings blossom into Noons --
And split their Pods of Flame --

Wild flowers -- kindle in the Woods --
The Brooks slam -- all the Day --
No Black bird bates his Banjo --
For passing Calvary --

Auto da Fe -- and Judgment --
Are nothing to the Bee --
His separation from His Rose --
To Him -- sums Misery --
Written by Emile Verhaeren | Create an image from this poem

I thought our joy benumbed for ever

I thought our joy benumbed for ever, like a sun faded before it was night, on the day that illness with its leaden arms dragged me heavily towards its chair of weariness.
The flowers and the garden were fear or deception to me; my eyes suffered to see the white noons flaming, and my two hands, my hands, seemed, before their time, too tired to hold captive our trembling happiness.
My desires had become no more than evil weeds; they bit at each other like thistles in the wind; I felt my heart to be at once ice and burning coal and of a sudden dried up and stubborn in forgiveness.
But you said the word that gently comforts, seeking it nowhere else than in your immense love; and I lived with the fire of your word, and at night warmed myself at it until the dawn of day.
The diminished man I felt myself to be, both to myself and all others, did not exist for you; you gathered flowers for me from the window-sill, and, with your faith, I believed in health.
And you brought to me, in the folds of your gown, the keen air, the wind of the fields and forests, and the perfumes of evening or the scents of dawn, and, in your fresh and deep-felt kisses, the sun.
Written by John Greenleaf Whittier | Create an image from this poem

An Autograph

 I write my name as one, 
On sands by waves o'errun 
Or winter's frosted pane, 
Traces a record vain. 

Oblivion's blankness claims 
Wiser and better names, 
And well my own may pass 
As from the strand or glass. 

Wash on, O waves of time! 
Melt, noons, the frosty rime! 
Welcome the shadow vast, 
The silence that shall last! 

When I and all who know 
And love me vanish so, 
What harm to them or me 
Will the lost memory be? 

If any words of mine, 
Through right of life divine, 
Remain, what matters it 
Whose hand the message writ? 

Why should the "crowner's quest" 
Sit on my worst or best? 
Why should the showman claim 
The poor ghost of my name? 

Yet, as when dies a sound 
Its spectre lingers round, 
Haply my spent life will 
Leave some faint echo still. 

A whisper giving breath 
Of praise or blame to death, 
Soothing or saddening such 
As loved the living much. 

Therefore with yearnings vain 
And fond I still would fain 
A kindly judgment seek, 
A tender thought bespeak. 

And, while my words are read, 
Let this at least be said: 
"Whate'er his life's defeatures, 
He loved his fellow-creatures. 

"If, of the Law's stone table, 
To hold he scarce was able 
The first great precept fast, 
He kept for man the last. 

"Through mortal lapse and dulness 
What lacks the Eternal Fulness, 
If still our weakness can 
Love Him in loving man? 

"Age brought him no despairing 
Of the world's future faring; 
In human nature still 
He found more good than ill. 

"To all who dumbly suffered, 
His tongue and pen he offered; 
His life was not his own, 
Nor lived for self alone. 

"Hater of din and riot 
He lived in days unquiet; 
And, lover of all beauty, 
Trod the hard ways of duty. 

"He meant no wrong to any 
He sought the good of many, 
Yet knew both sin and folly, -- 
May God forgive him wholly!"
Written by John Keats | Create an image from this poem

Ode On Indolence

 One morn before me were three figures seen,
 I With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp'd serene,
 In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;
They pass'd, like figures on a marble urn,
 When shifted round to see the other side;
 They came again; as when the urn once more
Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;
 And they were strange to me, as may betide
 With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.

How is it, Shadows! that I knew ye not?
 How came ye muffled in so hush a masque?
Was it a silent deep-disguised plot
 To steal away, and leave without a task
My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
 The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
 Benumb'd my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
Pain had no sting, and pleasure's wreath no flower:
 O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense
 Unhaunted quite of all but---nothingness?

A third time came they by;---alas! wherefore?
 My sleep had been embroider'd with dim dreams;
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o'er
 With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams:
The morn was clouded, but no shower fell,
 Tho' in her lids hung the sweet tears of May;
 The open casement press'd a new-leav'd vine,
Let in the budding warmth and throstle's lay;
 O Shadows! 'twas a time to bid farewell!
 Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.

A third time pass'd they by, and, passing, turn'd
 Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
Then faded, and to follow them I burn'd
 And ached for wings, because I knew the three;
The first was a fair maid, and Love her name;
 The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,
 And ever watchful with fatigued eye;
The last, whom I love more, the more of blame
 Is heap'd upon her, maiden most unmeek,---
 I knew to be my demon Poesy.

They faded, and, forsooth! I wanted wings:
 O folly! What is Love! and where is it?
And for that poor Ambition---it springs
 From a man's little heart's short fever-fit;
For Poesy!---no,---she has not a joy,---
 At least for me,---so sweet as drowsy noons,
 And evenings steep'd in honied indolence;
O, for an age so shelter'd from annoy,
 That I may never know how change the moons,
 Or hear the voice of busy common-sense!

So, ye three Ghosts, adieu! Ye cannot raise
 My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass;
For I would not be dieted with praise,
 A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce!
Fade sofdy from my eyes, and be once more
 In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn;
 Farewell! I yet have visions for the night,
And for the day faint visions there is store;
 Vanish, ye Phantoms! from my idle spright,
 Into the clouds, and never more return!


Written by Alexander Pope | Create an image from this poem

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 4

 But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppress'd, 
And secret passions labour'd in her breast.
Not youthful kings in battle seiz'd alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,
Not ardent lovers robb'd of all their bliss,
Not ancient ladies when refus'd a kiss,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinn'd awry,
E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,
As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravish'd hair.

For, that sad moment, when the Sylphs withdrew,
And Ariel weeping from Belinda flew,
Umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite,
As ever sullied the fair face of light,
Down to the central earth, his proper scene,
Repair'd to search the gloomy cave of Spleen.

Swift on his sooty pinions flits the Gnome,
And in a vapour reach'd the dismal dome.
No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows,
The dreaded East is all the wind that blows.
Here, in a grotto, shelter'd close from air,
And screen'd in shades from day's detested glare,
She sighs for ever on her pensive bed,
Pain at her side, and Megrim at her head.

Two handmaids wait the throne: alike in place,
But diff'ring far in figure and in face.
Here stood Ill Nature like an ancient maid,
Her wrinkled form in black and white array'd;
With store of pray'rs, for mornings, nights, and noons,
Her hand is fill'd; her bosom with lampoons.

There Affectation, with a sickly mien,
Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen,
Practis'd to lisp, and hang the head aside,
Faints into airs, and languishes with pride,
On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,
Wrapp'd in a gown, for sickness, and for show.
The fair ones feel such maladies as these,
When each new night-dress gives a new disease.

A constant vapour o'er the palace flies;
Strange phantoms, rising as the mists arise;
Dreadful, as hermit's dreams in haunted shades,
Or bright, as visions of expiring maids.
Now glaring fiends, and snakes on rolling spires,
Pale spectres, gaping tombs, and purple fires:
Now lakes of liquid gold, Elysian scenes,
And crystal domes, and angels in machines.

Unnumber'd throngs on ev'ry side are seen,
Of bodies chang'd to various forms by Spleen.
Here living teapots stand, one arm held out,
One bent; the handle this, and that the spout:
A pipkin there, like Homer's tripod walks;
Here sighs a jar, and there a goose pie talks;
Men prove with child, as pow'rful fancy works,
And maids turn'd bottles, call aloud for corks.

Safe pass'd the Gnome through this fantastic band,
A branch of healing spleenwort in his hand.
Then thus address'd the pow'r: "Hail, wayward Queen!
Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen:
Parent of vapours and of female wit,
Who give th' hysteric, or poetic fit,
On various tempers act by various ways,
Make some take physic, others scribble plays;
Who cause the proud their visits to delay,
And send the godly in a pet to pray.
A nymph there is, that all thy pow'r disdains,
And thousands more in equal mirth maintains.
But oh! if e'er thy gnome could spoil a grace,
Or raise a pimple on a beauteous face,
Like citron waters matrons' cheeks inflame,
Or change complexions at a losing game;
If e'er with airy horns I planted heads,
Or rumpled petticoats, or tumbled beds,
Or caus'd suspicion when no soul was rude,
Or discompos'd the head-dress of a prude,
Or e'er to costive lap-dog gave disease,
Which not the tears of brightest eyes could ease:
Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin;
That single act gives half the world the spleen."

The goddess with a discontented air
Seems to reject him, though she grants his pray'r.
A wondrous bag with both her hands she binds,
Like that where once Ulysses held the winds;
There she collects the force of female lungs,
Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues.
A vial next she fills with fainting fears,
Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears.
The Gnome rejoicing bears her gifts away,
Spreads his black wings, and slowly mounts to day.

Sunk in Thalestris' arms the nymph he found,
Her eyes dejected and her hair unbound.
Full o'er their heads the swelling bag he rent,
And all the Furies issu'd at the vent.
Belinda burns with more than mortal ire,
And fierce Thalestris fans the rising fire.
"Oh wretched maid!" she spread her hands, and cried,
(While Hampton's echoes, "Wretched maid!" replied,
"Was it for this you took such constant care
The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare?
For this your locks in paper durance bound,
For this with tort'ring irons wreath'd around?
For this with fillets strain'd your tender head,
And bravely bore the double loads of lead?
Gods! shall the ravisher display your hair,
While the fops envy, and the ladies stare!
Honour forbid! at whose unrivall'd shrine
Ease, pleasure, virtue, all, our sex resign.
Methinks already I your tears survey,
Already hear the horrid things they say,
Already see you a degraded toast,
And all your honour in a whisper lost!
How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend?
'Twill then be infamy to seem your friend!
And shall this prize, th' inestimable prize,
Expos'd through crystal to the gazing eyes,
And heighten'd by the diamond's circling rays,
On that rapacious hand for ever blaze?
Sooner shall grass in Hyde Park Circus grow,
And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow;
Sooner let earth, air, sea, to chaos fall,
Men, monkeys, lap-dogs, parrots, perish all!"

She said; then raging to Sir Plume repairs,
And bids her beau demand the precious hairs:
(Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane)
With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face,
He first the snuffbox open'd, then the case,
And thus broke out--"My Lord, why, what the devil?
Z{-}{-}{-}ds! damn the lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil!
Plague on't! 'tis past a jest--nay prithee, pox!
Give her the hair"--he spoke, and rapp'd his box.

"It grieves me much," replied the peer again,
"Who speaks so well should ever speak in vain.
But by this lock, this sacred lock I swear,
(Which never more shall join its parted hair;
Which never more its honours shall renew,
Clipp'd from the lovely head where late it grew)
That while my nostrils draw the vital air,
This hand, which won it, shall for ever wear."
He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spread
The long-contended honours of her head.

But Umbriel, hateful gnome! forbears not so;
He breaks the vial whence the sorrows flow.
Then see! the nymph in beauteous grief appears,
Her eyes half-languishing, half-drown'd in tears;
On her heav'd bosom hung her drooping head,
Which, with a sigh, she rais'd; and thus she said:

"For ever curs'd be this detested day,
Which snatch'd my best, my fav'rite curl away!
Happy! ah ten times happy, had I been,
If Hampton Court these eyes had never seen!
Yet am not I the first mistaken maid,
By love of courts to num'rous ills betray'd.
Oh had I rather unadmir'd remain'd
In some lone isle, or distant northern land;
Where the gilt chariot never marks the way,
Where none learn ombre, none e'er taste bohea!
There kept my charms conceal'd from mortal eye,
Like roses, that in deserts bloom and die.
What mov'd my mind with youthful lords to roam?
Oh had I stay'd, and said my pray'rs at home!
'Twas this, the morning omens seem'd to tell,
Thrice from my trembling hand the patch-box fell;
The tott'ring china shook without a wind,
Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind!
A Sylph too warn'd me of the threats of fate,
In mystic visions, now believ'd too late!
See the poor remnants of these slighted hairs!
My hands shall rend what ev'n thy rapine spares:
These, in two sable ringlets taught to break,
Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck.
The sister-lock now sits uncouth, alone,
And in its fellow's fate foresees its own;
Uncurl'd it hangs, the fatal shears demands
And tempts once more thy sacrilegious hands.
Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize
Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!"
Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

Behind the Arras

 I like the old house tolerably well, 
Where I must dwell 
Like a familiar gnome; 
And yet I never shall feel quite at home. 
I love to roam. 
Day after day I loiter and explore 
From door to door; 
So many treasures lure 
The curious mind. What histories obscure 
They must immure! 

I hardly know which room I care for best; 
This fronting west, 
With the strange hills in view, 
Where the great sun goes,—where I may go too, 
When my lease is through,— 

Or this one for the morning and the east, 
Where a man may feast 
His eyes on looming sails, 
And be the first to catch their foreign hails 
Or spy their bales 

Then the pale summer twilights towards the pole! 
It thrills my soul 
With wonder and delight, 
When gold-green shadows walk the world at night, 
So still, so bright. 

There at the window many a time of year, 
Strange faces peer, 
Solemn though not unkind, 
Their wits in search of something left behind 
Time out of mind; 

As if they once had lived here, and stole back 
To the window crack 
For a peep which seems to say, 
"Good fortune, brother, in your house of clay!" 
And then, "Good day!" 

I hear their footsteps on the gravel walk, 
Their scraps of talk, 
And hurrying after, reach 
Only the crazy sea-drone of the beach 
In endless speech. 

And often when the autumn noons are still, 
By swale and hill 
I see their gipsy signs, 
Trespassing somewhere on my border lines; 
With what designs? 

I forth afoot; but when I reach the place, 
Hardly a trace, 
Save the soft purple haze 
Of smouldering camp-fires, any hint betrays 
Who went these ways. 

Or tatters of pale aster blue, descried 
By the roadside, 
Reveal whither they fled; 
Or the swamp maples, here and there a shred 
Of Indian red. 

But most of all, the marvellous tapestry 
Engrosses me, 
Where such strange things are rife, 
Fancies of beasts and flowers, and love and strife, 
Woven to the life; 

Degraded shapes and splendid seraph forms, 
And teeming swarms 
Of creatures gauzy dim 
That cloud the dusk, and painted fish that swim, 
At the weaver's whim; 

And wonderful birds that wheel and hang in the air; 
And beings with hair, 
And moving eyes in the face, 
And white bone teeth and hideous grins, who race 
From place to place; 

They build great temples to their John-a-nod, 
And fume and plod 
To deck themselves with gold, 
And paint themselves like chattels to be sold, 
Then turn to mould. 

Sometimes they seem almost as real as I; 
I hear them sigh; 
I see them bow with grief, 
Or dance for joy like any aspen leaf; 
But that is brief. 

They have mad wars and phantom marriages; 
Nor seem to guess 
There are dimensions still, 
Beyond thought's reach, though not beyond love's will, 
For soul to fill. 

And some I call my friends, and make believe 
Their spirits grieve, 
Brood, and rejoice with mine; 
I talk to them in phrases quaint and fine 
Over the wine; 

I tell them all my secrets; touch their hands; 
One understands 
Perhaps. How hard he tries 
To speak! And yet those glorious mild eyes, 
His best replies! 

I even have my cronies, one or two, 
My cherished few. 
But ah, they do not stay! 
For the sun fades them and they pass away, 
As I grow gray. 


Yet while they last how actual they seem! 
Their faces beam; 
I give them all their names, 
Bertram and Gilbert, Louis, Frank and James, 
Each with his aims; 


One thinks he is a poet, and writes verse 
His friends rehearse; 
Another is full of law; 
A third sees pictures which his hand can draw 
Without a flaw. 


Strangest of all, they never rest. Day long 
They shift and throng, 
Moved by invisible will, 
Like a great breath which puffs across my sill, 
And then is still; 


It shakes my lovely manikins on the wall; 
Squall after squall, 
Gust upon crowding gust, 
It sweeps them willy nilly like blown dust 
With glory or lust. 


It is the world-ghost, the time-spirit, come 
None knows wherefrom, 
The viewless draughty tide 
And wash of being. I hear it yaw and glide, 
And then subside, 


Along these ghostly corridors and halls 
Like faint footfalls; 
The hangings stir in the air; 
And when I start and challenge, "Who goes there?" 
It answers, "Where?" 


The wail and sob and moan of the sea's dirge, 
Its plangor and surge; 
The awful biting sough 
Of drifted snows along some arctic bluff, 
That veer and luff, 


And have the vacant boding human cry, 
As they go by;— 
Is it a banished soul 
Dredging the dark like a distracted mole 
Under a knoll? 


Like some invisible henchman old and gray, 
Day after day 
I hear it come and go, 
With stealthy swift unmeaning to and fro, 
Muttering low, 


Ceaseless and daft and terrible and blind, 
Like a lost mind. 
I often chill with fear 
When I bethink me, What if it should peer 
At my shoulder here! 


Perchance he drives the merry-go-round whose track 
Is the zodiac; 
His name is No-man's-friend; 
And his gabbling parrot-talk has neither trend, 
Beginning, nor end. 


A prince of madness too, I'd cry, "A rat!" 
And lunge thereat,— 
Let out at one swift thrust 
The cunning arch-delusion of the dust 
I so mistrust, 


But that I fear I should disclose a face 
Wearing the trace 
Of my own human guise, 
Piteous, unharmful, loving, sad, and wise 
With the speaking eyes. 


I would the house were rid of his grim pranks, 
Moaning from banks 
Of pine trees in the moon, 
Startling the silence like a demoniac loon 
At dead of noon. 


Or whispering his fool-talk to the leaves 
About my eaves. 
And yet how can I know 
'T is not a happy Ariel masking so 
In mocking woe? 


Then with a little broken laugh I say, 
Snatching away 
The curtain where he grinned 
(My feverish sight thought) like a sin unsinned, 
"Only the wind!" 


Yet often too he steals so softly by. 
With half a sigh, 
I deem he must be mild, 
Fair as a woman, gentle as a child, 
And forest wild. 


Passing the door where an old wind-harp swings, 
With its five strings, 
Contrived long years ago 
By my first predecessor bent to show 
His handcraft so, 


He lay his fingers on the aeolian wire, 
As a core of fire 
Is laid upon the blast 
To kindle and glow and fill the purple vast 
Of dark at last. 


Weird wise, and low, piercing and keen and glad, 
Or dim and sad 
As a forgotten strain 
Born when the broken legions of the rain 
Swept through the plain— 


He plays, like some dread veiled mysteriarch, 
Lighting the dark, 
Bidding the spring grow warm, 
The gendering merge and loosing of spirit in form, 
Peace out of storm. 


For music is the sacrament of love; 
He broods above 
The virgin silence, till 
She yields for rapture shuddering, yearning still 
To his sweet will. 


I hear him sing, "Your harp is like a mesh, 
Woven of flesh 
And spread within the shoal 
Of life, where runs the tide-race of the soul 
In my control. 


"Though my wild way may ruin what it bends, 
It makes amends 
To the frail downy clocks, 
Telling their seed a secret that unlocks 
The granite rocks. 


"The womb of silence to the crave of sound 
Is heaven unfound, 
Till I, to soothe and slake 
Being's most utter and imperious ache, 
Bid rhythm awake. 


"If with such agonies of bliss, my kin, 
I enter in 
Your prison house of sense, 
With what a joyous freed intelligence 
I shall go hence." 


I need no more to guess the weaver's name, 
Nor ask his aim, 
Who hung each hall and room 
With swarthy-tinged vermilion upon gloom; 
I know that loom. 


Give me a little space and time enough, 
From ravelings rough 
I could revive, reweave, 
A fabric of beauty art might well believe 
Were past retrieve. 


O men and women in that rich design, 
Sleep-soft, sun-fine, 
Dew-tenuous and free, 
A tone of the infinite wind-themes of the sea, 
Borne in to me, 


Reveals how you were woven to the might 
Of shadow and light. 
You are the dream of One 
Who loves to haunt and yet appears to shun 
My door in the sun; 


As the white roving sea tern fleck and skim 
The morning's rim; 
Or the dark thrushes clear 
Their flutes of music leisurely and sheer, 
Then hush to hear. 


I know him when the last red brands of day 
Smoulder away, 
And when the vernal showers 
Bring back the heart to all my valley flowers 
In the soft hours. 


O hand of mine and brain of mine, be yours, 
While time endures, 
To acquiesce and learn! 
For what we best may dare and drudge and yearn, 
Let soul discern. 


So, fellows, we shall reach the gusty gate, 
Early or late, 
And part without remorse, 
A cadence dying down unto its source 
In music's course; 


You to the perfect rhythms of flowers and birds, 
Colors and words, 
The heart-beats of the earth, 
To be remoulded always of one worth 
From birth to birth; 


I to the broken rhythm of thought and man, 
The sweep and span 
Of memory and hope 
About the orbit where they still must grope 
For wider scope, 


To be through thousand springs restored, renewed, 
With love imbrued, 
With increments of will 
Made strong, perceiving unattainment still 
From each new skill. 


Always the flawless beauty, always the chord 
Of the Overword, 
Dominant, pleading, sure, 
No truth too small to save and make endure. 
No good too poor! 


And since no mortal can at last disdain 
That sweet refrain, 
But lets go strife and care, 
Borne like a strain of bird notes on the air, 
The wind knows where; 


Some quiet April evening soft and strange, 
When comes the change 
No spirit can deplore, 
I shall be one with all I was before, 
In death once more.
Written by William Cowper | Create an image from this poem

Epitaph on a Hare

 Here lies, whom hound did ne’er pursue,
Nor swiftewd greyhound follow,
Whose foot ne’er tainted morning dew,
Nor ear heard huntsman’s hallo’,

Old Tiney, surliest of his kind,
Who, nurs’d with tender care,
And to domestic bounds confin’d,
Was still a wild Jack-hare.

Though duly from my hand he took
His pittance ev’ry night,
He did it with a jealous look,
And, when he could, would bite.

His diet was of wheaten bread,
And milk, and oats, and straw,
Thistles, or lettuces instead,
With sand to scour his maw.

On twigs of hawthorn he regal’d,
On pippins’ russet peel;
And, when his juicy salads fail’d,
Slic’d carrot pleas’d him well.

A Turkey carpet was his lawn,
Whereon he lov’d to bound,
To skip and gambol like a fawn,
And swing his rump around.

His frisking wa at evening hours,
For then he lost his fear;
But most before approaching show’rs,
Or when a storm drew near.

Eight years and five round rolling moons
He thus saw steal away,
Dozing out all his idle noons,
And ev’ry night at play.

I kept him for his humour’s sake,
For he would oft beguile
My heart of thoughts that made it ache,
And force me to a smile.

But now, beneath this walnut-shade
He finds his long, last home,
And waits inn snug concealment laid,
‘Till gentler puss shall come.

He, still more aged, feels the shocks
From which no care can save,
And, partner once of Tiney’s box,
Must soon partake his grave.
Written by Philip Larkin | Create an image from this poem

Ambulances

Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.

Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
They whisper at their own distress;

For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there

At last begin to loosen. Far
From the exchange of love to lie
Unreachable insided a room
The trafic parts to let go by
Brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are.

1964
Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

How lonesome the Wind must feel Nights --

 How lonesome the Wind must feel Nights --
When people have put out the Lights
And everything that has an Inn
Closes the shutter and goes in --

How pompous the Wind must feel Noons
Stepping to incorporeal Tunes
Correcting errors of the sky
And clarifying scenery

How mighty the Wind must feel Morns
Encamping on a thousand dawns
Espousing each and spurning all
Then soaring to his Temple Tall --

Book: Reflection on the Important Things