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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How Solemn as One by One

by Walt Whitman
 HOW solemn, as one by one, 
As the ranks returning, all worn and sweaty—as the men file by where I stand; 
As the faces, the masks appear—as I glance at the faces, studying the masks; 
(As I glance upward out of this page, studying you, dear friend, whoever you are;) 
How solemn the thought of my whispering soul, to...Read more of this...

An ODE

by Anne Killigrew
 ARise my Dove, from mid'st of Pots arise, 
 Thy sully'd Habitation leave, 
 To Dust no longer cleave, 
Unworthy they of Heaven that will not view the Skies. 
[Page 83]

 Thy native Beauty re-assume, 
 Prune each neglected Plume, 
 Till more than Silver white, 
 Then burnisht Gold more bright, 
Thus ever ready stand to take thy...Read more of this...

The Last of the Light Brigade

by Rudyard Kipling
 1891

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they kuew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of...Read more of this...

Sonnet LI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LI. Del mar Tirreno alla sinistra riva. THE FALL.  Upon the left shore of the Tyrrhene sea,Where, broken by the winds, the waves complain,Sudden I saw that honour'd green again,Written for whom so many a page must be:Love, ever in my soul his flame who fed,Drew me with memories...Read more of this...

To Brenda Williams ‘writing Against The Grain'

by Barry Tebb
 It was Karl Shapiro who wrote in his ‘Defence of Ignorance’ how many poets

Go mad or seem to be so and the majority think we should all be in jail

Or mental hospital and you have ended up in both places - fragile as bone china,

Your pale skin taut, your fingers clasped tight round a cup, sitting in a pool

Of...Read more of this...

When I do think my meanest line shall be

by Fernando Pessoa
When I do think my meanest line shall be

More in Time's use than my creating whole,

That future eyes more clearly shall feel me

In this inked page than in my direct soul;

When I conjecture put to make me seeing

Good readers of me in some aftertime,

Thankful to some idea of my being

That doth not even my with gone true soul rime;

An anger...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...

New Eyes Each Year

by Philip Larkin
 New eyes each year
Find old books here,
And new books,too,
Old eyes renew;
So youth and age
Like ink and page
In this house join,
Minting new coin....Read more of this...

Julot The Apache

by Robert William Service
 You've heard of Julot the apache, and Gigolette, his mome. . . .
Montmartre was their hunting-ground, but Belville was their home.
A little chap just like a boy, with smudgy black mustache, --
Yet there was nothing juvenile in Julot the apache.
From head to heel as tough as steel, as nimble as a cat,
With every trick of twist and kick, a...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 Simple Line

by Laura Riding Jackson
 The secrets of the mind convene splendidly,
Though the mind is meek.
To be aware inwardly
of brain and beauty
Is dark too recognizable.
Thought looking out on thought
Makes one an eye:
Which it shall be, both decide.
One is with the mind alone,
The other is with other thoughts gone
To be seen from afar and not known.

When openly these inmost sights
Flash and speak fully,
Each head at...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...

Man Alone

by Louise Bogan
 It is yourself you seek
In a long rage,
Scanning through light and darkness
Mirrors, the page,

Where should reflected be
Those eyes and that thick hair,
That passionate look, that laughter.
You should appear

Within the book, or doubled,
Freed, in the silvered glass;
Into all other bodies
Yourself should pass.

The glass does not dissolve;
Like walls the mirrors stand;
The printed page gives back
Words by another hand.

And your infatuate eye
Meets...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...

From an Essay on Man

by Alexander Pope
 Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to...Read more of this...

The Long Small Room

by Edward Thomas
 THE long small room that showed willows in the west 
Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, 
Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed 
What need or accident made them so build. 

Only the moon, the mouse, and the sparrow peeped 
In from the ivy round the casement thick. 
Of all they saw and heard there...Read more of this...

After All

by Henry Lawson
 The brooding ghosts of Australian night have gone from the bush and town; 
My spirit revives in the morning breeze, 
though it died when the sun went down; 
The river is high and the stream is strong, 
and the grass is green and tall, 
And I fain would think that this world of ours is a good world after...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...

Sonnet CVIII

by William Shakespeare
 What's in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must, each day say o'er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow'd...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...

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...

Dram-Shop Ditty

by Robert William Service
 I drink my fill of foamy ale
I sing a song, I tell a tale,
I play the fiddle;
My throat is chronically dry,
Yet savant of a sort am I,
And Life's my riddle.

For look! I raise my arm to drink-
A voluntary act, you think
(Nay, Sir, you're grinning)>
You're wrong: this stein of beer I've drained
to emptiness was pre-ordained
Since Time's beginning.

But stay! 'Tis I...Read more of this...

Interim

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 The room is full of you!—As I came in
And closed the door behind me, all at once
A something in the air, intangible,
Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!—

Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed
Each other room's dear personality.
The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers,—
The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death—
Has strangled that habitual breath of home
Whose expiration leaves all houses dead;
And...Read more of this...

Ode For Mrs. William Settle

by Philip Levine
 In Lake Forest, a suburb of Chicago,
a woman sits at her desk to write
me a letter. She holds a photograph
of me up to the light, one taken
17 years ago in a high school class
in Providence. She sighs, and the sigh
smells of mouthwash and tobacco.
If she were writing by candlelight
she would now be in the dark, for
a living flame would...Read more of this...

Without The Wherewithall

by Barry Tebb
 To Thushari Williams 

Dear Thushie, the six months you spent with us 

Will never be forgotten, the long days you laboured

In the care home, your care-worn comings home

To sit with Brenda Williams, po?te maudit sang pur,

Labouring together to bring to light poems buried alive

And turn them into a book, the living text 

Proof enough of your divine gift as...Read more of this...

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