10 Best Famous Reserves Poems

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

• All Famous Reserves Poems

 Against the enormous rocks of a rough coast
The ocean rams itself in pitched assault
And spastic rage to which there is no halt;
Foam-white brigades collapse; but the huge host

Has infinite reserves; at each attack
The impassive cliffs look down in gray disdain
At scenes of sacrifice, unrelieved pain,
Figured in froth, aquamarine and black.

Something in the blood-chemistry of life,
Unspeakable, impressive, undeterred,
Expresses itself without needing a word
In this sea-crazed Empedoclean Strife.

It is a scene of unmatched melancholy,
Weather of misery, cloud cover of distress,
To which there are not witnesses, unless
One counts the briny, tough and thorned sea holly.

 Year after year the princess lies asleep 
Until the hundred years foretold are done, 
Easily drawing her enchanted breath. 
Caught on the monstrous thorns around the keep, 
Bones of the youths who sought her, one by one 
Rot loose and rattle to the ground beneath.

But when the Destined Lover at last shall come, 
For whom alone Fortune reserves the prize 
The thorns give way; he mounts the cobwebbed stair 
Unerring he finds the tower, the door, the room, 
The bed where, waking at his kiss she lies 
Smiling in the loose fragrance of her hair.

That night, embracing on the bed of state, 
He ravishes her century of sleep 
And she repays the debt of that long dream; 
Future and Past compose their vast debate; 
His seed now sown, her harvest ripe to reap 
Enact a variation on the theme.

For in her womb another princess waits, 
A sleeping cell, a globule of bright dew. 
Jostling their way up that mysterious stair, 
A horde of lovers bursts between the gates, 
All doomed but one, the destined suitor, who 
By luck first reaches her and takes her there.

A parable of all we are or do! 
The life of Nature is a formal dance 
In which each step is ruled by what has been 
And yet the pattern emerges always new 
The marriage of linked cause and random chance 
Gives birth perpetually to the unforeseen.

One parable for the body and the mind: 
With science and heredity to thank 
The heart is quite predictable as a pump, 
But, let love change its beat, the choice is blind. 
'Now' is a cross-roads where all maps prove blank, 
And no one knows which way the cat will jump.

So here stand I, by birth a cross between 
Determined pattern and incredible chance,
Each with an equal share in what I am. 
Though I should read the code stored in the gene, 
Yet the blind lottery of circumstance 
Mocks all solutions to its cryptogram.

As in my flesh, so in my spirit stand I 
When does this hundred years draw to its close? 
The hedge of thorns before me gives no clue. 
My predecessor's carcass, shrunk and dry, 
Stares at me through the spikes. Oh well, here goes! 
I have this thing, and only this, to do.

About a year has passed. I've returned to the place of the battle 
to its birds that have learned their unfolding of wings
from a subtle
lift of a surprised eyebrow or perhaps from a razor blade
- wings now the shade of early twilight now of state
bad blood.

Now the place is abuzz with trading
in your ankles's remanants bronzes
of sunburnt breastplates dying laughter bruises 
rumors of fresh reserves memories of high treason 
laundered banners with imprints of the many
who since have risen.

All's overgrown with people. A ruin's a rather stubborn
architectural style. And the hearts's distinction
from a pitch-black cavern
isn't that great; not great enough to fear
that we may collide again like blind eggs somewhere.

At sunrise when nobody stares at one's face I often 
set out on foot to a monument cast in molten
lengthy bad dreams. And it says on the plinth "commander
in chief." But it reads "in grief " or "in brief "
or "in going under."
1985 translated by the author.

 We speak with the lip, and we dream in the soul,
Of some better and fairer day;
And our days, the meanwhile, to that golden goal
Are gliding and sliding away.
Now the world becomes old, now again it is young,
But "The better" 's forever the word on the tongue.

At the threshold of life hope leads us in--
Hope plays round the mirthful boy;
Though the best of its charms may with youth begin,
Yet for age it reserves its toy.

 Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,
unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:
as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee:
the wood that long resisted the advancing flames
which thou kept flaring, I now am nourishinig
and burn in thee.

My gentle and mild being through thy ruthless fury
has turned into a raging hell that is not from here.
Quite pure, quite free of future planning, I mounted
the tangled funeral pyre built for my suffering,
so sure of nothing more to buy for future needs,
while in my heart the stored reserves kept silent.

Is it still I, who there past all recognition burn?
Memories I do not seize and bring inside.
O life! O living! O to be outside!
And I in flames. And no one here who knows me. 



[Written in December 1926, this poem was the last
entry in Rilke's notebook, less than two weeks before his
death at age 51.]

 THE partial Muse, has from my earliest hours, 
Smil'd on the rugged path I'm doom'd to tread, 
And still with sportive hand has snatch'd wild flowers, 
To weave fantastic garlands for my head: 
But far, far happier is the lot of those 
Who never learn'd her dear delusive art; 
Which, while it decks the head with many a rose, 
Reserves the thorn, to fester in the heart. 
For still she bids soft Pity's melting eye 
Stream o'er the ills she knows not to remove, 
Points every pang, and deepens every sigh 
Of mourning friendship or unhappy love. 
Ah! then, how dear the Muse's favours cost, 
If those paint sorrow best--who feel it most!

 NO better Dog e'er kept his Master's Door 
Than honest Snarl, who spar'd nor Rich nor Poor; 
But gave the Alarm, when any one drew nigh, 
Nor let pretended Friends pass fearless by: 
For which reprov'd, as better Fed than Taught, 
He rightly thus expostulates the Fault. 

To keep the House from Rascals was my Charge; 
The Task was great, and the Commission large. 
Nor did your Worship e'er declare your Mind, 
That to the begging Crew it was confin'd; 
Who shrink an Arm, or prop an able Knee, 
Or turn up Eyes, till they're not seen, nor see. 
To Thieves, who know the Penalty of Stealth, 
And fairly stake their Necks against your Wealth, 
These are the known Delinquents of the Times, 
And Whips and Tyburn. testify their Crimes. 

But since to Me there was by Nature lent 
An exquisite Discerning by the Scent; 
I trace a Flatt'rer, when he fawns and leers, 
A rallying Wit, when he commends and jeers: 
The greedy Parasite I grudging note, 
Who praises the good Bits, that oil his Throat; 
I mark the Lady, you so fondly toast, 
That plays your Gold, when all her own is lost: 
The Knave, who fences your Estate by Law, 
Yet still reserves an undermining Flaw. 
These and a thousand more, which I cou'd tell, 
Provoke my Growling, and offend my Smell.

 I 

Its roots are bristling in the air 
Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair; 
The loud south-wester's swell and yell 
Smote it at midnight, and it fell. 
 Thus ends the tree 
 Where Some One sat with me. 

II 

Its boughs, which none but darers trod, 
A child may step on from the sod, 
And twigs that earliest met the dawn 
Are lit the last upon the lawn. 
 Cart off the tree 
 Beneath whose trunk sat we! 

III 

Yes, there we sat: she cooed content, 
And bats ringed round, and daylight went; 
The gnarl, our seat, is wrenched and sunk, 
Prone that ***** pocket in the trunk 
 Where lay the key 
 To her pale mystery. 

IV 

"Years back, within this pocket-hole 
I found, my Love, a hurried scrawl 
Meant not for me," at length said I; 
"I glanced thereat, and let it lie: 
 The words were three - 
 'Beloved, I agree.' 

V 

"Who placed it here; to what request 
It gave assent, I never guessed. 
Some prayer of some hot heart, no doubt, 
To some coy maiden hereabout, 
 Just as, maybe, 
 With you, Sweet Heart, and me." 

VI 

She waited, till with quickened breath 
She spoke, as one who banisheth 
Reserves that lovecraft heeds so well, 
To ease some mighty wish to tell: 
 "'Twas I," said she, 
 "Who wrote thus clinchingly. 

VII 

"My lover's wife--aye, wife!--knew nought 
Of what we felt, and bore, and thought . . . 
He'd said: 'I wed with thee or die: 
She stands between, 'tis true. But why? 
 Do thou agree, 
 And--she shalt cease to be.' 

VIII 

"How I held back, how love supreme 
Involved me madly in his scheme 
Why should I say? . . . I wrote assent 
(You found it hid) to his intent . . . 
 She--DIED . . . But he 
 Came not to wed with me. 

IX 

"O shrink not, Love!--Had these eyes seen 
But once thine own, such had not been! 
But we were strangers . . . Thus the plot 
Cleared passion's path.--Why came he not 
 To wed with me? . . . 
 He wived the gibbet-tree." 

X 

- Under that oak of heretofore 
Sat Sweetheart mine with me no more: 
By many a Fiord, and Strom, and Fleuve 
Have I since wandered . . . Soon, for love, 
 Distraught went she - 
 'Twas said for love of me.

 What heartache -- ne'er a hill!
Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill
The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low.
With one poor word they tell me all they know;
Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain,
Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again.
They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name:
Always the same, the same.

Nature hath no surprise,
No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes
From brake or lurking dell or deep defile;
No humors, frolic forms -- this mile, that mile;
No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes
Beyond the bend of roads, the distant slopes.
Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame:
Ever the same, the same.

Oh might I through these tears
But glimpse some hill my Georgia high uprears,
Where white the quartz and pink the pebble shine,
The hickory heavenward strives, the muscadine
Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling shade
Darkens the dogwood in the bottom glade,
And down the hollow from a ferny nook
Bright leaps a living brook!

  One time, 'way back where the year marks fade,
    God said: "I see I must lose my West,
  The prettiest part of the world I made,
    The place where I've always come to rest,
  For the White Man grows till he fights for bread
  And he begs and prays for a chance to spread.

  "Yet I won't give all of my last retreat;
    I'll help him to fight his long trail through,
  But I'll keep some land from his field and street
    The way that it was when the world was new.
  He'll cry for it all, for that's his way,
  And yet he may understand some day."

  And so, from the painted Bad Lands, 'way
    To the sun-beat home of the 'Pache kin,
  God stripped some places to sand and clay
    And dried up the beds where the streams had been.
  He marked His reserves with these plain signs
  And stationed His rangers to guard the lines.

  Then the White Man came, as the East growed old,
    And blazed his trail with the wreck of war.
  He riled the rivers to hunt for gold
    And found the stuff he was lookin' for;
  Then he trampled the Injun trails to ruts
  And gashed through the hills with railroad cuts.

  He flung out his barb-wire fences wide
    And plowed up the ground where the grass was high.
  He stripped off the trees from the mountain side
    And ground out his ore where the streams run by,
  Till last came the cities, with smoke and roar,
  And the White Man was feelin' at home once more.

  But Barrenness, Loneliness, suchlike things
    That gall and grate on the White Man's nerves,
  Was the rangers that camped by the bitter springs
    And guarded the lines of God's reserves.
  So the folks all shy from the desert land,
  'Cept mebbe a few that kin understand.

  There the world's the same as the day 'twas new,
    With the land as clean as the smokeless sky
  And never a noise as the years have flew,
    But the sound of the warm wind driftin' by;
  And there, alone, with the man's world far,
  There's a chance to think who you really are.

  And over the reach of the desert bare,
    When the sun drops low and the day wind stills,
  Sometimes you kin almost see Him there,
    As He sits alone on the blue-gray hills,
  A-thinkin' of things that's beyond our ken
  And restin' Himself from the noise of men.