Famous Long Good Night Poems

Famous Long Good Night Poems. Long Good Night Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Good Night long poems

See also: Long Member Poems

 Inside many of us
is a small old man
who wants to get out.
No bigger than a two-year-old
whom you'd call lamb chop
yet this one is old and malformed.
His head is okay
but the rest of him wasn't Sanforized?
He is a monster of despair.
He is all decay.
He speaks up as tiny as an earphone
with Truman's asexual voice:
I am your dwarf.
I am the enemy within.
I am the boss of your dreams.
No. I am not the law in your mind,
the grandfather of watchfulness.
I am the law of your members,
the kindred of blackness and impulse.
See. Your hand shakes.
It is not palsy or booze.
It is your Doppelganger
trying to get out.
Beware . . . Beware . . .

There once was a miller
with a daughter as lovely as a grape.
He told the king that she could
spin gold out of common straw.
The king summoned the girl
and locked her in a room full of straw
and told her to spin it into gold
or she would die like a criminal.
Poor grape with no one to pick.
Luscious and round and sleek.
Poor thing.
To die and never see Brooklyn.

She wept,
of course, huge aquamarine tears.
The door opened and in popped a dwarf.
He was as ugly as a wart.
Little thing, what are you? she cried.
With his tiny no-sex...
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 Give me life at its most garish

Friday night in the Square, pink sequins dazzle

And dance on clubbers bare to the midriff

Young men in crisp shirts and pressed pants

‘Dress code smart’ gyrate to ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’

And sing along its lyrics to the throng of which I’m one

My shorts, shoulder bag and white beard

Making me stand out in the teeming swarm

Of teens and twenties this foetid Friday night

On my way from the ward where our son paces

And fulminates I throw myself into the drowning

Tide of Friday to be rescued by sheer normality.

The mill girl with her mates asks anxiously

"Are you on your own? Come and join us

What’s your name?" Age has driven my shyness away 

As I join the crowd beneath the turning purple screens 

Bannered ‘Orgasm lasts for ever’ and sip unending 

Halves of bitter, as I circulate among the crowd, 

Being complete in itself and out for a good night out,

A relief from factory, shop floor and market stall

Running from the reality of the ward where my son 

Pounds the ledge with his fist and seems out to blast

My very existence with words like bullets.

The need to anaesthetise the pain resurfaces 

Again and again. In Leeds City Square...
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  The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
  Glowed on the marble, where the glass
  Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
  From which a golden Cupidon peeped out                                  80
  (Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
  Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
  Reflecting light upon the table as
  The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
  From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
  In vials of ivory and coloured glass
  Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
  Unguent, powdered, or liquid— troubled, confused
  And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
  That freshened from the window, these ascended                          90
  In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
  Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
  Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
  Huge...
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 What! you don't like him; well, maybe -- we all have our fancies, of course: 
Brumby to look at, you reckon? Well, no; he's a thoroughbred horse; 
Sired by a son of old Panic -- look at his ears and his head -- 
Lop-eared and Roman-nosed, ain't he? -- well, that's how the Panics are bred. 
Gluttonous, ugly and lazy, rough as a tipcart to ride, 
Yet if you offered a sovereign apiece for the hairs on his hide 
That wouldn't buy him, nor twice that; while I've a pound to the good, 
This here old stager stays by me and lives like a thoroughbred should; 
Hunt him away from his bedding, and sit yourself down by the wall, 
Till you hear how the old fellow saved me from Gilbert, O'Meally and Hall. 
* 

Gilbert and Hall and O'Meally, back in the bushranging days, 
Made themselves kings of the district -- ruled it in old-fashioned ways -- 
Robbing the coach and the escort, stealing our horses at night, 
Calling sometimes at the homesteads and giving the women a fright: 
Came to the station one morning (and why they did this no one knows) 
Took a brood mare from the...
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 Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower...
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Listen, my children, and you shall hear 
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, 
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five: 
Hardly a man is now alive 
Who remembers that famous day and year. 

He said to his friend, "If the British march 
By land or sea from the town to-night, 
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch 
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,-- 
One if by land, and two if by sea; 
And I on the opposite shore will be, 
Ready to ride and spread the alarm 
Through every Middlesex village and farm, 
For the country-folk to be up and to arm." 

Then he said "Good night!" and with muffled oar 
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, 
Just as the moon rose over the bay, 
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay 
The Somerset, British man-of-war: 
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar 
Across the moon, like a prison-bar, 
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified 
By its own reflection in the tide. 

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street 
Wanders and watches with eager ears, 
Till in the silence around him he hears 
The muster of men at the barrack door, 
The sound of arms, and...
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 We chanced in passing by that afternoon 
To catch it in a sort of special picture 
Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees, 
Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass, 
The little cottage we were speaking of, 
A front with just a door between two windows, 
Fresh painted by the shower a velvet black. 
We paused, the minister and I, to look. 
He made as if to hold it at arm's length 
Or put the leaves aside that framed it in. 
"Pretty," he said. "Come in. No one will care." 
The path was a vague parting in the grass 
That led us to a weathered window-sill. 
We pressed our faces to the pane. "You see," he said, 
"Everything's as she left it when she died. 
Her sons won't sell the house or the things in it. 
They say they mean to come and summer here 
Where they were boys. They haven't come this year. 
They live so far away--one is out west-- 
It will be hard for them to keep their word. 
Anyway they won't have the place disturbed." 
A buttoned hair-cloth lounge spread scrolling arms 
Under a crayon portrait on the wall 
Done sadly from an old...
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 Though not for common praise of him, 
Nor yet for pride or charity, 
Still would I make to Vanderberg 
One tribute for his memory: 

One honest warrant of a friend
Who found with him that flesh was grass— 
Who neither blamed him in defect 
Nor marveled how it came to pass; 

Or why it ever was that he— 
That Vanderberg, of all good men,
Should lose himself to find himself, 
Straightway to lose himself again. 

For we had buried Sainte-Nitouche, 
And he had said to me that night: 
“Yes, we have laid her in the earth,
But what of that?” And he was right. 

And he had said: “We have a wife, 
We have a child, we have a church; 
’T would be a scurrilous way out 
If we should leave them in the lurch.

“That’s why I have you here with me 
To-night: you know a talk may take 
The place of bromide, cyanide, 
Et cetera. For heaven’s sake, 

“Why do you look at me like that?
What have I done to freeze you so? 
Dear man, you see where friendship means 
A few things yet that you don’t know; 

“And you see partly why it is 
That I am glad for what...
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 A pencil, sir; a penny -- won't you buy?
I'm cold and wet and tired, a sorry plight;
Don't turn your back, sir; take one just to try;
I haven't made a single sale to-night.
Oh, thank you, sir; but take the pencil too;
I'm not a beggar, I'm a business man.
Pencils I deal in, red and black and blue;
It's hard, but still I do the best I can.
Most days I make enough to pay for bread,
A cup o' coffee, stretching room at night.
One needs so little -- to be warm and fed,
A hole to kennel in -- oh, one's all right . . .

Excuse me, you're a painter, are you not?
I saw you looking at that dealer's show,
The croûtes he has for sale, a shabby lot --
What do I know of Art? What do I know . . .
Well, look! That David Strong so well displayed,
"White Sorcery" it's called, all gossamer,
And pale moon-magic and a dancing maid
(You like the little elfin face of her?) --
That's good; but still, the picture as a whole,
The values, -- Pah! He never painted worse;
Perhaps because his fire was lacking coal,
His cupboard bare, no money in his purse.
Perhaps . . . they say he labored hard and long,
And...
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 [First published in Schiller's Horen, in connection 
with a
friendly contest in the art of ballad-writing between the two
great poets, to which many of their finest works are owing.]

ONCE a stranger youth to Corinth came,

Who in Athens lived, but hoped that he
From a certain townsman there might claim,

As his father's friend, kind courtesy.

Son and daughter, they

Had been wont to say

Should thereafter bride and bridegroom be.

But can he that boon so highly prized,

Save tis dearly bought, now hope to get?
They are Christians and have been baptized,

He and all of his are heathens yet.

For a newborn creed,

Like some loathsome weed,

Love and truth to root out oft will threat.

Father, daughter, all had gone to rest,

And the mother only watches late;
She receives with courtesy the guest,

And conducts him to the room of state.

Wine and food are brought,

Ere by him besought;

Bidding him good night. she leaves him straight.

But he feels no relish now, in truth,

For the dainties so profusely spread;
Meat and drink forgets the wearied youth,

And, still dress'd, he lays him on the bed.

Scarce are closed his eyes,

When a form in-hies

Through the open door with silent tread.

By his glimmering lamp discerns he now

How, in veil and garment white array'd,
With a black and gold band round...
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 MAKE war songs out of these;
Make chants that repeat and weave.
Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;
Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs,
 Going along,
 Going along,
On the roads from San Antonio to Athens, from Seattle to Bagdad—
The boys and men in winding lines of khaki, the circling squares of bayonet points.

Cowpunchers, cornhuskers, shopmen, ready in khaki;
Ballplayers, lumberjacks, ironworkers, ready in khaki;
A million, ten million, singing, “I am ready.”
This the sun looks on between two seaboards,
In the land of Lincoln, in the land of Grant and Lee.

I heard one say, “I am ready to be killed.”
I heard another say, “I am ready to be killed.”
O sunburned clear-eyed boys!
I stand on sidewalks and you go by with drums and guns and bugles,
 You—and the flag!
And my heart tightens, a fist of something feels my throat
 When you go by,
You on the kaiser hunt, you and your faces saying, “I am ready to be killed.”

They are hunting death,
Death for the one-armed mastoid kaiser.
They are after a Hohenzollern head:
There is no man-hunt of men remembered like this.

The four big brothers are out to kill.
France, Russia,...
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 Lancaster bore him--such a little town, 
Such a great man. It doesn't see him often 
Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead 
And sends the children down there with their mother 
To run wild in the summer--a little wild. 
Sometimes he joins them for a day or two 
And sees old friends he somehow can't get near. 
They meet him in the general store at night, 
Pre-occupied with formidable mail, 
Rifling a printed letter as he talks. 
They seem afraid. He wouldn't have it so: 
Though a great scholar, he's a democrat, 
If not at heart, at least on principle. 
Lately when coming up to Lancaster 
His train being late he missed another train 
And had four hours to wait at Woodsville Junction 
After eleven o'clock at night. Too tired 
To think of sitting such an ordeal out, 
He turned to the hotel to find a bed. 
"No room," the night clerk said. "Unless----" 
Woodsville's a place of shrieks and wandering lamps 
And cars that shook and rattle--and one hotel. 
"You say 'unless.'" 
"Unless you wouldn't mind 
Sharing a room with someone else." 
"Who is it?" 
"A man." 
"So I should hope. What kind of man?" 
"I...
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 'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of fatigue, nor strain
at lamplit tasks-'tis given, as for a royal boon
to beggarly outcasts in homeless vigil, to watch
where uncurtain's behind the great windows of space
Heav'n's jewel'd company circleth unapproachably-
'Twas at sunset that I, fleeing to hide my soul
in refuge of beauty from a mortal distress,
walk'd alone with the Muse in her garden of thought,
discoursing at liberty with the mazy dreams
that came wavering pertinaciously about me; as when
the small bats, issued from their hangings, flitter o'erhead
thru' the summer twilight, with thin cries to and fro
hunting in muffled flight atween the stars and flowers.
Then fell I in strange delusion, illusion strange to tell;
for as a man who lyeth fast asleep in his bed
may dream he waketh, and that he walketh upright
pursuing some endeavour in full conscience-so 'twas
with me; but contrawise; for being in truth awake
methought I slept and dreamt; and in thatt...
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 So here's your Empire. No more wine, then?
Good.
We'll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away.
(You'll know that fat old fellow with the knife --
He keeps the Name Book, talks in English too,
And almost thinks himself the Government.)
O Youth, Youth, Youth! Forgive me, you're so young.
Forty from sixty -- twenty years of work
And power to back the working. Ay def mi!
You want to know, you want to see, to touch,
And, by your lights, to act. It's natural.
I wonder can I help you. Let me try.
You saw -- what did you see from Bombay east?
Enough to frighten any one but me?
Neat that! It frightened Me in Eighty-Four!
You shouldn't take a man from Canada
And bid him smoke in powder-magazines;
Nor with a Reputation such as -- Bah!
That ghost has haunted me for twenty years,
My Reputation now full blown -- Your fault --
Yours, with your stories of the strife at Home,
Who's up, who's down, who leads and who is led --
One reads so much, one hears so little here.
Well, now's your turn of exile. I go back
To Rome and leisure. All roads lead to Rome,

Or books -- the refuge of the destitute.
When you ... that brings me back to India. See!
 Start clear. I couldn't....
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 SHE stood against the kitchen sink, and looked
Over the sink out through a dusty window
At weeds the water from the sink made tall.
She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand.
Behind her was confusion in the room,
Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people
In other chairs, and something, come to look,
For every room a house has—parlor, bed-room,
And dining-room—thrown pell-mell in the kitchen.
And now and then a smudged, infernal face
Looked in a door behind her and addressed
Her back. She always answered without turning.

“Where will I put this walnut bureau, lady?”
“Put it on top of something that’s on top
Of something else,” she laughed. “Oh, put it where
You can to-night, and go. It’s almost dark;
You must be getting started back to town.”
Another blackened face thrust in and looked
And smiled, and when she did not turn, spoke gently,
“What are you seeing out the window, lady?”

“Never was I beladied so before.
Would evidence of having been called lady
More than so many times make me a lady
In common law, I wonder.”

“But I ask,
What are you seeing out the window, lady?”

“What I’ll be seeing more of in the years
To come as here I stand and go the round
Of many plates with towels many times.”

“And what...
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