P. K. Page Poems

A collection of select P. K. Page famous poems that were written by P. K. Page or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.

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Clouds Above The Sea

by Philip Levine
 My father and mother, two tiny figures,
side by side, facing the clouds that move
in from the Atlantic. August, '33.
The whole weight of the rain to come, the weight
of all that has fallen on their houses
gathers for a last onslaught, and yet they
hold, side by side, in the eye of memory.
What was she wearing, you ask, what did he
say to...Read more of this...

The Page And The Millers Daughter

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 PAGE.

WHERE goest thou? Where?
Miller's daughter so fair!

Thy name, pray?--

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.

'Tis 
Lizzy.

PAGE.
Where goest thou? Where?
With the rake in thy hand?

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
Father's meadows and land

To visit, I'm busy.

PAGE.
Dost go there alone?

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
By this rake, sir, 'tis shown

That we're making the hay;
And the pears ripen fast
In the garden at last,

So I'll pick them to-day.

PAGE.
Is't a silent thicket I yonder view?

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
Oh, yes!...Read more of this...

the seed of endymion

by Rg Gregory
 or how most great achievements
 stem from accidental discoveries

two beauties are a joy for ever
ejaculated keats
lusting in ecstasy towards
well-breasted fanny brawne

no no my dearest john
sighed fanny
facing the quivering man
you've got it wrong -from where i am
she whispered - creeping
downwards with her hands
it's better said
a thing of beauty is a joy for ever

the poet leapt with pleasure
at such passionate emendation
he...Read more of this...

Fighting Mac

by Robert William Service
 A Life Tragedy

A pistol shot rings round and round the world;
 In pitiful defeat a warrior lies.
A last defiance to dark Death is hurled,
 A last wild challenge shocks the sunlit skies.
 Alone he falls, with wide, wan, woeful eyes:
Eyes that could smile at death -- could not face shame.

Alone, alone he paced his narrow room,
 In the bright...Read more of this...

VERSES Occasioned by a Young Ladys asking the Author What was a Cure for Love?

by Thomas Godfrey
 From me, my Dear, O seek not to receive
What e'en deep-read Experience cannot give.
We may, indeed, from the Physician's skill
Some Med'cine find to cure the body's ill.
But who e'er found the physic for the soul,
Or made th' affections bend to his controul?
When thro' the blaze of passion objects show
How dark 's the shade! how bright the colours glow!
All the...Read more of this...

The Ghosts

by Robert William Service
 Smith, great writer of stories, drank; found it immortalized his pen;
Fused in his brain-pan, else a blank, heavens of glory now and then;
Gave him the magical genius touch; God-given power to gouge out, fling
Flat in your face a soul-thought -- Bing!
Twiddle your heart-strings in his clutch. "Bah!" said Smith, "let my body lie
 stripped to the buff in swinish...Read more of this...

The School of Night

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 What did I study in your School of Night? 
When your mouth's first unfathomable yes 
Opened your body to be my book, I read 
My answers there and learned the spell aright, 
Yet, though I searched and searched, could never guess 
What spirits it raised nor where their questions led. 

Those others, familiar tenants of your sleep, 
The whisperers,...Read more of this...

White

by Charles Simic
 A New Version: 1980

 What is that little black thing I see there
 in the white?
 Walt Whitman


One

Out of poverty
To begin again: 

With the color of the bride
And that of blindness,

Touch what I can
Of the quick,

Speak and then wait,
As if this light

Will continue to linger
On the threshold.



All that is near,
I no longer give it a name.

Once a stone hard...Read more of this...

The Lost Pilot

by James Tate
 for my father, 1922-1944

Your face did not rot
like the others--the co-pilot,
for example, I saw him

yesterday. His face is corn-
mush: his wife and daughter,
the poor ignorant people, stare

as if he will compose soon.
He was more wronged than Job.
But your face did not rot

like the others--it grew dark,
and hard like ebony;
the features progressed in their

distinction. If I could cajole
you to come...Read more of this...

R.t.s.l. (1917-1977)

by Derek Walcott
 As for that other thing
which comes when the eyelid is glazed
and the wax gleam
from the unwrinkled forehead
asks no more questions
of the dry mouth,

whether they open the heart like a shirt
to release a rage of swallows,
whether the brain
is a library for worms,
on the instant of that knowledge
of the moment
when everything became so stiff,

so formal with ironical adieux,
organ and choir,
and I...Read more of this...

A Word dropped careless on a Page

by Emily Dickinson
 A Word dropped careless on a Page
May stimulate an eye
When folded in perpetual seam
The Wrinkled Maker lie

Infection in the sentence breeds
We may inhale Despair
At distances of Centuries
From the Malaria --...Read more of this...

Sestina of the Tramp-Royal

by Rudyard Kipling
 Speakin' in general, I'ave tried 'em all
The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.
Speakin' in general, I'ave found them good
For such as cannot use one bed too long,
But must get 'ence, the same as I'ave done,
An' go observin' matters till they die.

What do it matter where or 'ow we die,
So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it...Read more of this...

Bards of Passion and of Mirth written on the Blank Page before Beaumont and Fletchers Tragi-Comedy The Fair Maid of the Inn

by John Keats
 BARDS of Passion and of Mirth, 
Ye have left your souls on earth! 
Have ye souls in heaven too, 
Doubled-lived in regions new? 
Yes, and those of heaven commune 
With the spheres of sun and moon; 
With the noise of fountains wondrous, 
And the parle of voices thund'rous; 
With the whisper of heaven's trees 
And one another, in soft...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XXXV. Il figliuol di Latona avea già nove. THE GRIEF OF PHŒBUS AT THE LOSS OF HIS LOVE.  Nine times already had Latona's sonLook'd from the highest balcony of heavenFor her, who whilom waked his sighs in vain,And sighs as vain now wakes in other breasts;Then seeking wearily, nor knowing...Read more of this...

A Valentine

by Edgar Allan Poe
 For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,
Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly the lines!- they hold a treasure
Divine- a talisman- an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure-
The words- the syllables! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you...Read more of this...

Old Susan

by Walter de la Mare
 When Susan's work was done, she'd sit 
With one fat guttering candle lit, 
And window opened wide to win 
The sweet night air to enter in; 
There, with a thumb to keep her place 
She'd read, with stern and wrinkled face. 
Her mild eyes gliding very slow 
Across the letters to and fro, 
While wagged the guttering candle flame...Read more of this...

The Wife

by Robert William Service
 "Tell Annie I'll be home in time
To help her with her Christmas-tree."
That's what he wrote, and hark! the chime
Of Christmas bells, and where is he?
And how the house is dark and sad,
And Annie's sobbing on my knee!

The page beside the candle-flame
With cruel type was overfilled;
I read and read until a name
Leapt at me and my heart was stilled:
My eye...Read more of this...

The Thought-Fox

by Ted Hughes
 I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the...Read more of this...

Take Back the Virgin Page

by Thomas Moore
 Written on Returning a Blank Book


Take back the virgin page, 
White and unwritten still; 
Some hand, more calm and sage, 
The leaf must fill. 
Thoughts come, as pure as light 
Pure as even you require; 
But, oh! each word I write 
Love turns to fire. 

Yet let me keep the book: 
Oft shall my heart renew, 
When on its...Read more of this...

At His Grave

by Alfred Austin
 LEAVE me a little while alone, 
Here at his grave that still is strown 
With crumbling flower and wreath; 
The laughing rivulet leaps and falls, 
The thrush exults, the cuckoo calls, 
And he lies hush’d beneath. 

With myrtle cross and crown of rose, 
And every lowlier flower that blows, 
His new-made couch is dress’d; 
Primrose and cowslip, hyacinth wild,...Read more of this...

My Aviary

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 THROUGH my north window, in the wintry weather,--
My airy oriel on the river shore,--
I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together
Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar.

The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen,
Lets the loose water waft him as it will;
The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden,
Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still.

I see the solemn gulls in...Read more of this...

You said that I was Great -- one Day --

by Emily Dickinson
 You said that I "was Great" -- one Day --
Then "Great" it be -- if that please Thee --
Or Small -- or any size at all --
Nay -- I'm the size suit Thee --

Tall -- like the Stag -- would that?
Or lower -- like the Wren --
Or other heights of Other Ones
I've seen?

Tell which -- it's dull to guess...Read more of this...

The Snowflake Which Is Now And Hence Forever

by Archibald MacLeish
 Will it last? he says.
Is it a masterpiece?
Will generation after generation
Turn with reverence to the page?

Birdseye scholar of the frozen fish,
What would he make of the sole, clean, clear
Leap of the salmon that has disappeared?

To be, yes!--whether they like it or not!
But not to last when leap and water are forgotten,
A plank of standard pinkness in the dish.

They also...Read more of this...

Koening Of The River

by Derek Walcott
 Koening knew now there was no one on the river.
Entering its brown mouth choking with lilies
and curtained with midges, Koenig poled the shallop
past the abandoned ferry and the ferry piles
coated with coal dust. Staying aboard, he saw, up
in a thick meadow, a sand-colored mule,
untethered, with no harness, and no signs
of habitation round the ruined factory wheel
locked hard in rust,...Read more of this...

The Critick and the Writer of Fables

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Weary, at last, of the Pindarick way, 
Thro' which advent'rously the Muse wou'd stray; 
To Fable I descend with soft Delight, 
Pleas'd to Translate, or easily Endite: 
Whilst aery Fictions hastily repair 
To fill my Page, and rid my Thoughts of Care, 
As they to Birds and Beasts new Gifts impart, 
And Teach, as Poets shou'd, whilst they Divert....Read more of this...

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