Famous Payment Poems by Famous Poets

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...nder trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-
And Christ comes with a January flower....Read more of this...

by Kavanagh, Patrick

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...ses:

This is the barrenness
Of harvest or pestilence
And the wife leaning out the window
With her hand extended, as in payment,
And the seeds
Distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree....Read more of this...

by Gluck, Louise

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...d’s son, throughout all the northern lands. (ll. 12-19)

So ought a young man to make good his disposition,
gracious payments from the start, even in the lap of his father,
so that loyal companions should linger with him
in old age, when war comes soon,
the people should follow him. By these praiseful deeds
one ought to flourish in every tribe everywhere. (ll. 20-25)

Then Scyld turned himself away at his given hour—
faring full of greatness—into the covenant of the...Read more of this...

by Anonymous,

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...ster-of-clans
failed full oft to favor at all.
Slack and shiftless the strong men deemed him,
profitless prince; but payment came,
to the warrior honored, for all his woes. --
Then the bulwark-of-earls {29a} bade bring within,
hardy chieftain, Hrethel’s heirloom
garnished with gold: no Geat e’er knew
in shape of a sword a statelier prize.
The brand he laid in Beowulf’s lap;
and of hides assigned him seven thousand, {29b}
with house and high-seat. They held in commo...Read more of this...

by Anonymous,

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...seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether.
 That drags us back how'er so far we roam.
 Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered raiment --
 India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
 If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
 The door is hut -- we may not look behind.

Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin their chorus --
 As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us, and th...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard

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...of finally feeling the happiness
you were afraid you didn't deserve--
the forbidden fruit of my life's labor
--the just payment I have avoided
since my father taught me how--
the forbidden fruit of the secret
language of our survivors' souls as
they unfold each others secret
ballots--the ones where we voted
for our first secret desires to come
true--there's so much more
I want to say to you--but for
the first time in my life I'm at
a loss for words--because
(I understand at l...Read more of this...

by Lally, Michael

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...they were caught 
Into the pulse of Nature and possessed 
By the same light that consecrates it so. 
Love! -- 'tis the payment of the debt we owe 
The beauty of the world, and whensoe'er 
In silks and perfume and unloosened hair 
The loveliness of lovers, face to face, 
Lies folded in the adorable embrace, 
Doubt not as of a perfect sacrifice 
That soul partakes whose inspiration fills 
The springtime and the depth of summer skies, 
The rainbow and the clouds behind the hill...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan

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...ull-blood sahib
Had come among them. Thus he spent his time,
Deeply indebted to the village shroff
(Who never asked for payment), always drunk,
Unclean, abominable, out-at-heels;
Forgetting that he was an Englishman.

You know they dammed the Gauri with a dam,
And all the good contractors scamped their work
And all the bad material at hand
Was used to dam the Gauri -- which was cheap,
And, therefore, proper. Then the Gauri burst,
And several hundred thousand cubic tons
Of wat...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard

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...paid tax,
Rolex and Timex 
and brands beneath naming
will change hands for the price of a bevy,
a fish supper
or a down payment 
on early retirement
on a horse called Clockwork
running in the three-thirty at Aintree.



 John Lindley...Read more of this...

by Lindley, John

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...Undying love to buy
I wrote upon
The corners of this eye
All wrongs done.
What payment were enough
For undying love?

I broke my heart in two
So hard I struck.
What matter? for I know
That out of rock,
Out of a desolate source,
Love leaps upon its course....Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler

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...lman unawares --
And as you cry, Impossible,
A step is on the stairs.
One keeps getting the same dream
Delayed, marked "Payment Due,"
The bill that one has paid
Delayed, marked "Payment Due" --
Twice a day, in rotting mailbox,
The white grubs are new:
And Faith, once more, is mine
Faithfully, but Charity
Writes hopefully about a new
Asylum -- but Hope is as good as new.
Woe's me! woe's me! In Folly's mailbox
Still laughs the postcard, Hope:
Your uncle in Australia
Has died an...Read more of this...

by Jarrell, Randall

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...regard;
The Pastor's iterated "sin";--
These things could I endure, and count
No overstrain'd, unjust amount;
No undue payment for such bliss--
Yea, all things bear, save only this:
That you, who knew what thing would be,
Have wrought this evil unto me.
It is so strange to think on still--
That you, that you should do me ill!
Not as one ignorant or blind,
But seeing clearly in your mind
How this must be which now has been,
Nothing aghast at what was seen.
Now that the tale i...Read more of this...

by Levy, Amy

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...ual, clothe, accoutre,
Adjourn our conquests by essoin,
Check Howe's advance, and take Burgoyne;
Then makes all days of payment vain,
And turns all back to rags again.
In vain great Howe shall play his part
To ape and counterfeit his art;
In vain shall Clinton, more belated,
A conj'rer turn to imitate it.
With like ill luck and pow'rs as narrow,
They'll fare, like sorcerers of old Pharaoh;
Who, though the art they understood
Of turning rivers into blood,
And caused their frog...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John

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...wandering in appetite,
Counting your glories and yet bringing none,
Finding in you occasions of delight,
A thief of payment for no service done.
But when of labouring life I make a song
And bring it you, as that were my reward,
To let what most is me to you belong,
Then do I come of high possessions lord,
And loving life more than my love of you
I give you love more excellently true.
XI 	What better tale could any lover tell
When age or death his reckoning shall w...Read more of this...

by Drinkwater, John

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...heath’d, hooded, sharp-tooth’d touch!

Did it make you ache so, leaving me?

Parting, track’d by arriving—perpetual payment of perpetual loan; 
Rich, showering rain, and recompense richer afterward. 

Sprouts take and accumulate—stand by the curb prolific and vital: 
Landscapes, projected, masculine, full-sized and golden. 

30
All truths wait in all things;
They neither hasten their own delivery, nor resist it; 
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surg...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt

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...penance,
*There as he wist to have a good pittance:* *where he know he would
For unto a poor order for to give get good payment*
Is signe that a man is well y-shrive.
For if he gave, he *durste make avant*, *dared to boast*
He wiste* that the man was repentant. *knew
For many a man so hard is of his heart,
He may not weep although him sore smart.
Therefore instead of weeping and prayeres,
Men must give silver to the poore freres.
His tippet was aye farsed* full of knives *stu...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey

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...Brenda alone,

Scrubbing the boards. She saw him scowl as he punched the limp turf

With his calloused hands, demanding payment, angry at her innocence.



4

Brudenell Road had no garden to speak of,

A couple of feet at the front with a broken wall

And the back bare and hard from children’s play,

The privet was matted with shards of glass, worn tennis balls and broken toys,

So tattered I cut it back to the wall, I sat on the top step and read,

Watching the children play...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry

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...ted at a price "carriage and
insurance
free to London"; and the Bill of Lading etc. were to be handed
to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.
Notes 196 and 197 were transposed in this and the Hogarth Press edition,
but have been corrected here.
210. "Carriage and insurance free"] "cost,
insurance and freight"-Editor.
218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a
"character,"
is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest.
Just as the o...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

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...s but to this crumb; 
My stock's so small I know not how to pay, 
My bond remains in force unto this day; 
Yet for part payment take this simple mite, 
Where nothing's to be had, kings loose their right. 
Such is my debt I may not say forgive, 
But as I can, I'll pay it while I live; 
Such is my bond, none can discharge but I, 
Yet paying is not paid until I die....Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne

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...ir.
For since gray hairs been powdered in your sable,
The thing ye seek for, you must yourself enable
To purchase it by payment and by prayer,
Ye old mule....Read more of this...

by Wyatt, Sir Thomas

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