10 Best Famous Reserve Poems

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

• All Famous Reserve Poems

 Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily and in segments;
Parting might make us meet anew, entire.

You asked me once, and I could give no answer,
How far dare we throw off the daily ruse,
Official treacheries of face and name,
Have out our true identity? I could hazard
An answer now, if you are asking still.
We are a small and lonely human race
Showing no sign of mastering solitude
Out on this stony planet that we farm.
The most that we can do for one another
Is let our blunders and our blind mischances
Argue a certain brusque abrupt compassion.
We might as well be truthful. I should say
They're luckiest who know they're not unique;
But only art or common interchange
Can teach that kindest truth. And even art
Can only hint at what disturbed a Melville
Or calmed a Mahler's frenzy; you and I
Still look from separate windows every morning
Upon the same white daylight in the square.

And when we come into each other's rooms
Once in awhile, encumbered and self-conscious,
We hover awkwardly about the threshold
And usually regret the visit later.
Perhaps the harshest fact is, only lovers--
And once in a while two with the grace of lovers--
Unlearn that clumsiness of rare intrusion
And let each other freely come and go.
Most of us shut too quickly into cupboards
The margin-scribbled books, the dried geranium,
The penny horoscope, letters never mailed.
The door may open, but the room is altered;
Not the same room we look from night and day.

It takes a late and slowly blooming wisdom
To learn that those we marked infallible
Are tragi-comic stumblers like ourselves.
The knowledge breeds reserve. We walk on tiptoe,
Demanding more than we know how to render.
Two-edged discovery hunts us finally down;
The human act will make us real again,
And then perhaps we come to know each other.

Let us return to imperfection's school.
No longer wandering after Plato's ghost,
Seeking the garden where all fruit is flawless,
We must at last renounce that ultimate blue
And take a walk in other kinds of weather.
The sourest apple makes its wry announcement
That imperfection has a certain tang.
Maybe we shouldn't turn our pockets out
To the last crumb or lingering bit of fluff,
But all we can confess of what we are
Has in it the defeat of isolation--
If not our own, then someone's, anyway.

So I come back to saying this good-by,
A sort of ceremony of my own,
This stepping backward for another glance.
Perhaps you'll say we need no ceremony,
Because we know each other, crack and flaw,
Like two irregular stones that fit together.
Yet still good-by, because we live by inches
And only sometimes see the full dimension.
Your stature's one I want to memorize--
Your whole level of being, to impose
On any other comers, man or woman.
I'd ask them that they carry what they are
With your particular bearing, as you wear
The flaws that make you both yourself and human.

 In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller
with his big-band sound,
and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,
and cried for a while because you were not dancing,
and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.
Now, forty years later, things have changed,
and it's baby lima beans.
It's necessary to reserve a secret vice.
This is what comes from forgetting to eat
at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,
drain, add cream and pepper,
and amble up and down the stairs,
scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,
talking to yourself out loud.
You'd be surprised if you got an answer,
but that part will come later.

There is so much silence between the words,
you say. You say, The sensed absence
of God and the sensed presence
amount to much the same thing,
only in reverse.
You say, I have too much white clothing.
You start to hum.
Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn't now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone's been run over.
The century grinds on.

 The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.

The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets
which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing:
There's a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.

The man we surround, the man no one approaches
simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps
not like a child, not like the wind, like a man
and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even
sob very loudly - yet the dignity of his weeping

holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him
in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,
and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him
stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds
longing for tears as children for a rainbow.

Some will say, in the years to come, a halo
or force stood around him. There is no such thing.
Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him
but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,
the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us

trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected
judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream
who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children
and such as look out of Paradise come near him
and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.

Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops
his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit - 
and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand
and shake as she receives the gift of weeping;
as many as follow her also receive it

and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more
refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,
but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out
of his writhen face and ordinary body

not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,
hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea -
and when he stops, he simply walks between us
mopping his face with the dignity of one
man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.

Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.

 How does Love speak? 
In the faint flush upon the tell-tale cheek, 
And in the pallor that succeeds it; by
The quivering lid of an averted eye –
The smile that proves the parent to a sigh –
Thus doth Love speak.

How does Love speak? 
By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak
Of bounding pulses that stand still and ache, 
While new emotions, like strange barques, make
Along vein-channels their disturbing course; 
Still as the dawn, and with the dawn’s swift force –
Thus doth Love speak.

How does Love speak? 
In the avoidance of that which we seek –
The sudden silence and reserve when near –
The eye that glistens with an unshed tear –
The joy that seems the counterpart of fear, 
As the alarmed heart leaps in the breast, 
And knows, and names, the greets its god-like guest –
Thus doth Love speak.

How doth Love speak? 
In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek –
The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender
And unnamed light that floods the world with splendour, 
In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace
In all things to one beloved face; 
In the shy touch of hands that thrill and tremble; 
In looks and lips that can no more dissemble –
Thus doth Love speak.

How doth Love speak? 
In the wild words that uttered seem so weak
They shrink ashamed to silence; in the fire
Glance strikes with glance, swift flashing high and higher, 
Like lightnings that precede the mighty storm; 
In the deep, soulful stillness; in the warm, 
Impassioned tide that sweeps through throbbing veins, 
Between the shores of keen delights and pains; 
In the embrace where madness melts in bliss, 
And in convulsive rapture of a kiss –
Thus doth Love speak.

 Not for the love of women toil we, we of the craft, 
Not for the people's praise; 
Only because our goddess made us her own and laughed, 
Claiming us all our days, 
Claiming our best endeavour -- body and heart and brain 
Given with no reserve -- 
Niggard is she towards us, granting us little gain: 
Still, we are proud to serve. 

Not unto us is given choice of the tasks we try, 
Gathering grain or chaff; 
One of her favoured servants toils at an epic high, 
One, that a child may laugh. 

Yet if we serve her truly in our appointed place, 
Freely she doth accord 
Unto her faithful servants always this saving grace, 
Work is its own reward!

Salaam,
To everyone, salaam
To the hand that holds
And brandishes the rod, salaam,
With my left hand on my rear
For fear of the boot,
A right-handed salaam,
To the one who watches me closely, salaam,
To the one who doesn’t watch and doesn’t care, salaam,
To the one who’d like to buy me out, salaam,
To his unseen boss, who orders him to buy me out, salaam,
Salaam, dear friends, to everyone, salaam.
It is a long poem, and it ends:
To every one of you, a reverential salaam.
If I had several arms and hands,
Like our sacred pantheon,
With every one of them I would have salaamed.
Forgive me, mortal as I am,
That I have only two:
The left I reserve for my rear,
And with the right I offer you
A simple, one-handed salaam.

 Let me take this other glove off
As the vox humana swells,
And the beauteous fields of Eden
Bask beneath the Abbey bells.
Here, where England's statesmen lie,
Listen to a lady's cry.

Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy
We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be,
Don't let anyone bomb me.

Keep our Empire undismembered
Guide our Forces by Thy Hand,
Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,
Honduras and Togoland;
Protect them Lord in all their fights,
And, even more, protect the whites.

Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots' and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.
Lord, put beneath Thy special care
One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.

Although dear Lord I am a sinner,
I have done no major crime;
Now I'll come to Evening Service
Whensoever I have the time.
So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,
And do not let my shares go down.

I will labour for Thy Kingdom,
Help our lads to win the war,
Send white feathers to the cowards
Join the Women's Army Corps,
Then wash the steps around Thy Throne
In the Eternal Safety Zone.

Now I feel a little better,
What a treat to hear Thy Word,
Where the bones of leading statesmen
Have so often been interr'd.
And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait
Because I have a luncheon date.

 I have no brief for gambling, nay
 The notion I express
That money earned 's the only way
 To pay for happiness.
With cards and dice I do not hold;
 By betting I've been bit:
Conclusion: to get honest gold
 You've got to sweat for it.

Though there be evil in strong drink
 It's brought me heaps of fun;
And now, with some reserve, I think
 My toping days are done.
Though at teetotal cranks I laugh,
 Yet being sound and hale,
I find the best of drinks to quaff
 Is good old Adam's ale.

I do not like your moralist,
 Who with a righteous grin
Informs you o'er a pounding fist:
 "Unchastity is sin."
I don't believe it, but I grant,
 By every human test,
From parson, pimp and maiden aunt,
 Morality is best.

Yet what a bore our lives would be
 If we lived as we should;
It's such a blessing to be free,
 And not be over-good.
I value virtues great and small,
 As I in life advance:
But O the greatest sin of all
 I count--INTOLERANCE.

 I

Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I give you credit, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

II

Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice, where the merchants were the kings,
Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

III

Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by... what you call
... Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival;
I was never out of England—it's as if I saw it all!

IV

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

V

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,— 
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?

VI

Well (and it was graceful of them) they'd break talk off and afford
—She, to bite her mask's black velvet, he to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

VII

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished sigh on sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—"Must we die?"
Those commiserating sevenths—"Life might last! we can but try!"

VIII

"Were you happy?"—"Yes."—"And are you still as happy?"—"Yes—and you?"
—"Then, more kisses!"—"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?"
Hark—the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!

IX

So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
"Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"

X

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

XI

But when I sit down to reason,—think to take my stand nor swerve
While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,
In you come with your cold music, till I creep thro' every nerve.

XII

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned— 
"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned!
The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned.

XIII

"Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
Butterflies may dread extinction,—you'll not die, it cannot be!

XIV

"As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and drop,
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

XV

"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

 He had offices in Sydney, not so many years ago, 
And his shingle bore the legend `Peter Anderson and Co.', 
But his real name was Careless, as the fellows understood -- 
And his relatives decided that he wasn't any good. 
'Twas their gentle tongues that blasted any `character' he had -- 
He was fond of beer and leisure -- and the Co. was just as bad. 
It was limited in number to a unit, was the Co. -- 
'Twas a bosom chum of Peter and his Christian name was Joe. 

'Tis a class of men belonging to these soul-forsaken years: 
Third-rate canvassers, collectors, journalists and auctioneers. 
They are never very shabby, they are never very spruce -- 
Going cheerfully and carelessly and smoothly to the deuce. 
Some are wanderers by profession, `turning up' and gone as soon, 
Travelling second-class, or steerage (when it's cheap they go saloon); 
Free from `ists' and `isms', troubled little by belief or doubt -- 
Lazy, purposeless, and useless -- knocking round and hanging out. 
They will take what they can get, and they will give what they can give, 
God alone knows how they manage -- God alone knows how they live! 
They are nearly always hard-up, but are cheerful all the while -- 
Men whose energy and trousers wear out sooner than their smile! 
They, no doubt, like us, are haunted by the boresome `if' or `might', 
But their ghosts are ghosts of daylight -- they are men who live at night! 

Peter met you with the comic smile of one who knows you well, 
And is mighty glad to see you, and has got a joke to tell; 
He could laugh when all was gloomy, he could grin when all was blue, 
Sing a comic song and act it, and appreciate it, too. 
Only cynical in cases where his own self was the jest, 
And the humour of his good yarns made atonement for the rest. 
Seldom serious -- doing business just as 'twere a friendly game -- 
Cards or billiards -- nothing graver. And the Co. was much the same. 

They tried everything and nothing 'twixt the shovel and the press, 
And were more or less successful in their ventures -- mostly less. 
Once they ran a country paper till the plant was seized for debt, 
And the local sinners chuckle over dingy copies yet. 

They'd been through it all and knew it in the land of Bills and Jims -- 
Using Peter's own expression, they had been in `various swims'. 
Now and then they'd take an office, as they called it, -- make a dash 
Into business life as `agents' -- something not requiring cash. 
(You can always furnish cheaply, when your cash or credit fails, 
With a packing-case, a hammer, and a pound of two-inch nails -- 
And, maybe, a drop of varnish and sienna, too, for tints, 
And a scrap or two of oilcloth, and a yard or two of chintz). 
They would pull themselves together, pay a week's rent in advance, 
But it never lasted longer than a month by any chance. 

The office was their haven, for they lived there when hard-up -- 
A `daily' for a table cloth -- a jam tin for a cup; 
And if the landlord's bailiff happened round in times like these 
And seized the office-fittings -- well, there wasn't much to seize -- 
They would leave him in possession. But at other times they shot 
The moon, and took an office where the landlord knew them not. 
And when morning brought the bailiff there'd be nothing to be seen 
Save a piece of bevelled cedar where the tenant's plate had been; 
There would be no sign of Peter -- there would be no sign of Joe 
Till another portal boasted `Peter Anderson and Co.' 

And when times were locomotive, billiard-rooms and private bars -- 
Spicy parties at the cafe -- long cab-drives beneath the stars; 
Private picnics down the Harbour -- shady campings-out, you know -- 
No one would have dreamed 'twas Peter -- 
no one would have thought 'twas Joe! 
Free-and-easies in their `diggings', when the funds began to fail, 
Bosom chums, cigars, tobacco, and a case of English ale -- 
Gloriously drunk and happy, till they heard the roosters crow -- 
And the landlady and neighbours made complaints about the Co. 
But that life! it might be likened to a reckless drinking-song, 
For it can't go on for ever, and it never lasted long. 

. . . . . 

Debt-collecting ruined Peter -- people talked him round too oft, 
For his heart was soft as butter (and the Co.'s was just as soft); 
He would cheer the haggard missus, and he'd tell her not to fret, 
And he'd ask the worried debtor round with him to have a wet; 
He would ask him round the corner, and it seemed to him and her, 
After each of Peter's visits, things were brighter than they were. 
But, of course, it wasn't business -- only Peter's careless way; 
And perhaps it pays in heaven, but on earth it doesn't pay. 
They got harder up than ever, and, to make it worse, the Co. 
Went more often round the corner than was good for him to go. 

`I might live,' he said to Peter, `but I haven't got the nerve -- 
I am going, Peter, going -- going, going -- no reserve. 
Eat and drink and love they tell us, for to-morrow we may die, 
Buy experience -- and we bought it -- we're experienced, you and I.' 
Then, with a weary movement of his hand across his brow: 
`The death of such philosophy's the death I'm dying now. 
Pull yourself together, Peter; 'tis the dying wish of Joe 
That the business world shall honour Peter Anderson and Co. 

`When you feel your life is sinking in a dull and useless course, 
And begin to find in drinking keener pleasure and remorse -- 
When you feel the love of leisure on your careless heart take holt, 
Break away from friends and pleasure, though it give your heart a jolt. 
Shun the poison breath of cities -- billiard-rooms and private bars, 
Go where you can breathe God's air and see the grandeur of the stars! 
Find again and follow up the old ambitions that you had -- 
See if you can raise a drink, old man, I'm feelin' mighty bad -- 
Hot and sweetened, nip o' butter -- squeeze o' lemon, Pete,' he sighed. 
And, while Peter went to fetch it, Joseph went to sleep -- and died 
With a smile -- anticipation, maybe, of the peace to come, 
Or a joke to try on Peter -- or, perhaps, it was the rum. 

. . . . . 

Peter staggered, gripped the table, swerved as some old drunkard swerves -- 
At a gulp he drank the toddy, just to brace his shattered nerves. 
It was awful, if you like. But then he hadn't time to think -- 
All is nothing! Nothing matters! Fill your glasses -- dead man's drink. 

. . . . . 

Yet, to show his heart was not of human decency bereft, 
Peter paid the undertaker. He got drunk on what was left; 
Then he shed some tears, half-maudlin, on the grave where lay the Co., 
And he drifted to a township where the city failures go. 
Where, though haunted by the man he was, the wreck he yet might be, 
Or the man he might have been, or by each spectre of the three, 
And the dying words of Joseph, ringing through his own despair, 
Peter `pulled himself together' and he started business there. 

But his life was very lonely, and his heart was very sad, 
And no help to reformation was the company he had -- 
Men who might have been, who had been, but who were not in the swim -- 
'Twas a town of wrecks and failures -- they appreciated him. 
They would ask him who the Co. was -- that ***** company he kept -- 
And he'd always answer vaguely -- he would say his partner slept; 
That he had a `sleeping partner' -- jesting while his spirit broke -- 
And they grinned above their glasses, for they took it as a joke. 
He would shout while he had money, he would joke while he had breath -- 
No one seemed to care or notice how he drank himself to death; 
Till at last there came a morning when his smile was seen no more -- 
He was gone from out the office, and his shingle from the door, 
And a boundary-rider jogging out across the neighb'ring run 
Was attracted by a something that was blazing in the sun; 
And he found that it was Peter, lying peacefully at rest, 
With a bottle close beside him and the shingle on his breast. 
Well, they analysed the liquor, and it would appear that he 
Qualified his drink with something good for setting spirits free. 
Though 'twas plainly self-destruction -- `'twas his own affair,' they said; 
And the jury viewed him sadly, and they found -- that he was dead.