Famous Kathleen Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Kathleen poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous kathleen poems. These examples illustrate what a famous kathleen poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Moore, Thomas
...aid,
"Woman ne'er shall find my bed."
Ah! the good Saint little knew
What that wily sex can do.
'Twas from Kathleen's eyes he flew --
Eyes of most unholy blue!
She had loved him well and long,
Wish'd him hers, nor thought it wrong.
Wheresoe'er the Saint would fly,
Still he heard her light foot nigh;
East or west, where'er he turn'd,
Still her eyes before him burn'd.
On the bold cliff's bosom cast,
Tranquil now he sleeps at last;
Dreams of heave...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Change
Said the sun to the moon,
You cannot stay.
Change
Says the moon to the waters,
All is flowing.
Change
Says the fields to the grass,
Seed-time and harvest,
Chaff and grain.
You must change said,
Said the worm to the bud,
Though not to a rose,
Petals fade
That wings may rise
Borne on the wind.
You are changing
sai...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Wanting to know all
I overlooked each particle
Containing the whole
Unknowable.
Intent on one great love, perfect,
Requited and for ever,
I missed love's everywhere
Small presence, thousand-guised.
And lifelong have been reading
Book after book, searching
For wisdom, but bringing
Only my own understanding.
Forgive me, forgiver,
Whether you b...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...I saw the sun step like a gentleman
Dressed in black and proud as sin.
I saw the sun walk across London
Like a young M. P., risen to the occasion.
His step was light, his tread was dancing,
His lips were smiling, his eyes glancing.
Over the Cenotaph in Whitehall
The sun took the wicket with my skull.
The sun plays tennis in the c...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Day is the hero's shield,
Achilles' field,
The light days are the angels.
We the seed.
Against eternal light and gorgon's face
Day is the shield
And we the grass
Native to fields of iron, and skies of brass....Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...This war's dead heroes, who has seen them?
They rise in smoke above the burning city,
Faint clouds, dissolving into sky —
And who sifting the Libyan sand can find
The tracery of a human hand,
The faint impression of an absent mind,
The fade-out of a soldier's day dream?
You'll know your love no more, nor his sweet kisses —
He's forgotten you, girl, and i...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find there?
Fear, fear,
Fear of the jaws of the rock,
Fear of the teeth and splinters of iron that tear
Flesh from the bone, and the moist
Blood, running unfelt
From the wound, and the hand
Suddenly moist and red.
If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find?
Grief, grief,
Grief for the life unlived,
For the...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...grub was mostly milk.
He also owned a Jersey cow to furnish him the same,
So soft and sleek and mild and meek, and Kathleen was her name.
And so his source of nourishment he got to love her so
That everywhere the captain went the cow would also go;
And though his sleeping quarters were ridiculously small,
He roped a section of them off to make Kathleen a stall.
So every morn she'd wake him up with mellifluous moo,
And he would pat her on the nose and go to wake t...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Primrose, anemone, bluebell, moss
Grow in the Kingdom of the Cross
And the ash-tree's purple bud
Dresses the spear that sheds his blood.
With the thorns that pierce his brow
Soft encircling petals grow
For in each flower the secret lies
Of the tree that crucifies.
Garden by the water clear
All must die who enter here!...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Yours is the face that the earth turns to me,
Continuous beyond its human features lie
The mountain forms that rest against the sky.
With your eyes, the reflecting rainbow, the sun's light
Sees me; forest and flower, bird and beast
Know and hold me forever in the world's thought,
Creation's deep untroubled retrospect.
When your hand touches mine i...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Earth no longer
hymns the Creator,
the seven days of wonder,
the Garden is over —
all the stories are told,
the seven seals broken
all that begins
must have its ending,
our striving, desiring,
our living and dying,
for Time, the bringer
of abundant days
is Time the destroyer —
In the Iron Age
the Kali Yuga
To whom can we pray
at the end of an era
but the L...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Night comes, an angel stands
Measuring out the time of stars,
Still are the winds, and still the hours.
It would be peace to lie
Still in the still hours at the angel's feet,
Upon a star hung in a starry sky,
But hearts another measure beat.
Each body, wingless as it lies,
Sends out its butterfly of night
With delicate wings, and jewelled eyes.Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Where is the seed
Of the tree felled,
Of the forest burned,
Or living root
Under ash and cinders?
From woven bud
What last leaf strives
Into life, last
Shrivelled flower?
Is fruit of our harvest,
Our long labour
Dust to the core?
To what far, fair land
Borne on the wind
What winged seed
Or spark of fire
From holocaust
To kindle a star?...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Reaching down arm-deep into bright water
I gathered on white sand under waves
Shells, drifted up on beaches where I alone
Inhabit a finite world of years and days.
I reached my arm down a myriad years
To gather treasure from the yester-milliennial sea-floor,
Held in my fingers forms shaped on the day of creation.
Building their beauty in th...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...A Gaelic bard they praise who in fourteen adjectives
Named the one indivisible soul of his glen;
For what are the bens and the glens but manifold qualities,
Immeasurable complexities of soul?
What are these isles but a song sung by island voices?
The herdsman sings ancestral memories
And the song makes the singer wise,
But only while he sings
Songs that we...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Now he is dead
How should I know
My true love's arms
From wind and snow?
No man I meet
In field or house
Though in the street
A hundred pass.
The hurrying dust
Has never a face,
No longer human
In man or woman.
Now he is gone
Why should I mourn
My true love more than mud,
than mud or stone?...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...In my first sleep
I came to the river
And looked down
Through the clear water -
Only in dream
Water so pure,
Laced and undulant
Lines of flow
On its rocky bed
Water of life
Streaming for ever.
A house was there
Beside the river
And I, arrived,
An expected guest
About to explore
Old gardens and libraries -
But the car was waiting
To drive me away....Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...I came too late to the hills: they were swept bare
Winters before I was born of song and story,
Of spell or speech with power of oracle or invocation,
The great ash long dead by a roofless house, its branches rotten,
The voice of the crows an inarticulate cry,
And from the wells and springs the holy water ebbed away.
A child I ran in the wind on a wi...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Strange that the self’s continuum should outlast
The Virgin, Aphrodite, and the Mourning Mother,
All loves and griefs, successive deities
That hold their kingdom in the human breast.
Abandoned by the gods, woman with an ageing body
That half remembers the Annunciation
The passion and the travail and the grief
That wore the mask of my humanity,
...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...Wearing worry about money like a hair shirt
I lie down in my bed and wrestle with my angel.
My bank-manager could not sanction my continuance for another day
But life itself wakes me each morning, and love
Urges me to give although I have no money
In the bank at this moment, and ought properly
To cease to exist in a world where poverty
Is a shameful...Read more of this...
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