Famous Short August Poems
Famous Short August Poems. Short August Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best August short poems
by
Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
by
Raymond Carver
It's August and I have not
Read a book in six months
except something called The Retreat from Moscow
by Caulaincourt
Nevertheless, I am happy
Riding in a car with my brother
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.
We do not have any place in mind to go,
we are just driving.
If I closed my eyes for a minute
I would be lost, yet
I could gladly lie down and sleep forever
beside this road
My brother nudges me.
Any minute now, something will happen.
by
Li Po
I met Tu Fu on a mountaintop
in August when the sun was hot.
Under the shade of his big straw hat
his face was sad--
in the years since we last parted,
he'd grown wan, exhausted.
Poor old Tu Fu, I thought then,
he must be agonizing over poetry again.
by
Derek Walcott
Broad sun-stoned beaches.
White heat.
A green river.
A bridge,
scorched yellow palms
from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.
Days I have held,
days I have lost,
days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.
by
Emily Dickinson
That sacred Closet when you sweep --
Entitled "Memory" --
Select a reverential Broom --
And do it silently.
'Twill be a Labor of surprise --
Besides Identity
Of other Interlocutors
A probability --
August the Dust of that Domain --
Unchallenged -- let it lie --
You cannot supersede itself
But it can silence you --
by
Li Bai
I met Du Fu on a mountaintop
in August when the sun was hot.
Under the shade of his big straw hat
his face was sad--
in the years since we last parted,
he'd grown wane, exhausted.
Poor old Du Fu, I thought then,
he must be agonizing over poetry again.
by
Emily Dickinson
Further in Summer than the Birds
Pathetic from the Grass
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.
No Ordinance be seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness.
Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify
Remit as yet no Grace
No Furrow on the Glow
Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now
by
Katherine Mansfield
Most merciful God
Look kindly upon
An impudent child
Who wants sitting on.
This evening late
I went to the door
And then to the gate
There were more stars--more
Than I could have expected,
Even I!
I was amazed,
Almighty, August!
I was utterly dazed,
Omnipotent! Just
In a word I was floored,
Good God of Hosts--Lord!
That at this time of day
They should still blaze away,
That thou hadst not rejected
Or at least circumspected
Their white silver beauty--
Was it spite? Was it duty?
by
Elinor Wylie
When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;
Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern,
With her dusty laces' pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by.
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Dornburg, 25th August, 1828.
WILT thou suddenly enshroud thee,
Who this moment wert so nigh?
Heavy rising masses cloud thee,
Thou art hidden from mine eye.
Yet my sadness thou well knowest,
Gleaming sweetly as a star!
That I'm loved, 'tis thou that showest,
Though my loved one may be far.
Upward mount then! clearer, milder,
Robed in splendour far more bright!
Though my heart with grief throbs wilder,
Fraught with rapture is the night!
1828.
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
YOU remember, I suppose,
How the August sun arose,
And how his face
Woke to trill and carolette
All the cages that were set
About the place.
In the tender morning light
All around lay strange and bright
And still and sweet,
And the gray doves unafraid
Went their morning promenade
Along the street.
by
Emily Dickinson
Praise it -- 'tis dead --
It cannot glow --
Warm this inclement Ear
With the encomium it earned
Since it was gathered here --
Invest this alabaster Zest
In the Delights of Dust --
Remitted -- since it flitted it
In recusance august.
by
Emily Dickinson
There is a Zone whose even Years
No Solstice interrupt --
Whose Sun constructs perpetual Noon
Whose perfect Seasons wait --
Whose Summer set in Summer, till
The Centuries of June
And Centuries of August cease
And Consciousness -- is Noon.
by
Emily Dickinson
In lands I never saw -- they say
Immortal Alps look down --
Whose Bonnets touch the firmament --
Whose Sandals touch the town --
Meek at whose everlasting feet
A Myriad Daisy play --
Which, Sir, are you and which am I
Upon an August day?
by
Carl Sandburg
SEVEN nations stood with their hands on the jaws of death.
It was the first week in August, Nineteen Hundred Fourteen.
I was listening, you were listening, the whole world was
listening,
And all of us heard a Voice murmuring:
"I am the way and the light,
He that believeth on me
Shall not perish
But shall have everlasting life.
"
Seven nations listening heard the Voice and answered:
"O Hell!"
The jaws of death began clicking and they go on clicking.
"O Hell !"
by
Constantine P Cavafy
Just because we've torn their statues down,
and cast them from their temples,
doesn't for a moment mean the gods are dead.
Land of Ionia, they love you yet,
their spirits still remember you.
When an August morning breaks upon you
a vigour from their lives stabs through your air;
and sometimes an ethereal and youthful form
in swiftest passage, indistinct,
passes up above your hills.
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
Song of Khan Zada
Only in August my heart was aflame,
Catching the scent of your Wind-stirred hair,
Now, though you spread it to soften my sleep
Through the night, I should hardly care.
Only last August I drank that water
Because it had chanced to cool your hands;
When love is over, how little of love
Even the lover understands!