Top Author Poems

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• This surprising late poem concentrates Frost’s lifetime of thinking and working as a poet. “Drink and be whole beyond confusion,” he says at the end, mapping out the inner life of any reader. It is blank verse cast in Frost’s trademark craggy voice, and it might be considered a local response to Eliot’s more cosmopolitan “The Waste Land.”

• Take this kiss upon the brow!
  And, in parting from you now,
  Thus much let me avow–
  You are not wrong, who deem
  That my days have been a dream;
  Yet if hope has flown away
  In a night, or in a day,
  In a vision, or in none,
  Is it therefore the less gone?
  All that we see or seem
  Is but a dream within a dream.
• I stand amid the roar
  Of a surf-tormented shore,
  And I hold within my hand
  Grains of the golden sand–
  How few! yet how they creep
  Through my fingers to the deep,
  While I weep–while I weep!
  O God! can I not grasp
  Them with a tighter clasp?
  O God! can I not save
  One from the pitiless wave?
  Is all that we see or seem
  But a dream within a dream?

• The tree has entered my hands,
  The sap has ascended my arms,
  The tree has grown in my breast-
  Downward,
  The branches grow out of me, like arms.
• Tree you are,
  Moss you are,
  You are violets with wind above them.
  A child – so high – you are,
  And all this is folly to the world.

• Cinder Girl

  An ember sparked will softly glow,
  and fed by fuel, will grow and grow.
  I once was cinder, sparked by you,
  first timid. . . till the flames then grew.

  And so our start was touch of dawn,
  with amber hue, for I was drawn
  to eyes so welcoming and warm
  I never guessed you’d do me harm.

  Like morning glory, love in June
  the rapture of mid-afternoon,
  romance of which the ancients wrote,
  our passion had no antidote.

  And with the dusk, though scarlet tinged,
  our love began to come unhinged,
  for clouds arrived, which filled your eyes,
  extinguishing bright twilight skies.

  With cold of night came shadows’ pall,
  and I could not tear down your wall.
  By midnight’s hour, the fire was dead.
  Mere ashes smoldered in its stead.

  You left, and should you reappear,
  I’ve vowed to shun you.  Now I fear
  the very thing for which I yearn –
  one touch. . . and then again – to burn.

  Written by Andrea Dietrich
  Published 2007 in “Dancing the Unicorn: Lyrical Blooms 2”

Andrea Dietrich

• The ring is on my hand,
  And the wreath is on my brow;
  Satin and jewels grand
  Are all at my command,
  And I am happy now.

  And my lord he loves me well;
  But, when first he breathed his vow,
  I felt my bosom swell-
  For the words rang as a knell,
  And the voice seemed his who fell
  In the battle down the dell,
  And who is happy now.

  But he spoke to re-assure me,
  And he kissed my pallid brow,
  While a reverie came o’er me,
  And to the church-yard bore me,
  And I sighed to him before me,
  Thinking him dead D Elormie,
  “Oh, I am happy now!”

  And thus the words were spoken,
  And this the plighted vow,
  And, though my faith be broken,
  And, though my heart be broken,
  Here is a ring, as token
  That I am happy now!

  Would God I could awaken!
  For I dream I know not how!
  And my soul is sorely shaken
  Lest an evil step be taken,-
  Lest the dead who is forsaken
  May not be happy now.

  Edgar Allan Poe

• I have known rivers:
  I have known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
  flow of human blood in human veins

  My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

  I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young
  I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
  I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
  I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
  went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
  bosom turn all golden in the sunset

  I have known rivers:
  Ancient, dusky rivers.

  My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

  Langston Hughes

• I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

  The free bird leaps
  on the back of the wind
  and floats downstream
  till the current ends
  and dips his wings
  in the orange sun rays
  and dares to claim the sky.

  But a bird that stalks
  down his narrow cage
  can seldom see through
  his bars of rage
  his wings are clipped and
  his feet are tied
  so he opens his throat to sing.

  The caged bird sings
  with fearful trill
  of the things unknown
  but longed for still
  and his tune is heard
  on the distant hill for the caged bird
  sings of freedom

  The free bird thinks of another breeze
  and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
  and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
  and he names the sky his own.

  But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
  his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
  his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
  so he opens his throat to sing

  The caged bird sings
  with a fearful trill
  of things unknown
  but longed for still
  and his tune is heard
  on the distant hill
  for the caged bird
  sings of freedom.

• Letter from the Ice Field, December

  In the dream, you stand at the end
  of the field beyond the house.

  You bury something.
  Your hands glow like milk in the dark.

  You bend, your shovel lifts pieces
  of moonlight into the air.

  I try to call you inside
  but my mouth locks with frost.

  The room of the skull floods with snow.
  I have forgotten how you sound.

  Your hands fall like milk
  into the well of darkness you dig

  and I cannot see beyond it.
  This is to say, I wake

  with a deeper void. I am beginning
  to see the body as a well

  and your absence as a thirst
  that pushes its hands

  down my throat, lifts the bucket,
  drinks and drinks. A saint said

  when the dead visit us in dreams
  they cannot know what they do.

  You came to the field.
  You cut off your ears.

  Your hands fell through me—
  two lights I almost broke

  in half wanting. Tell me
  what you thought you were doing

  when you tried to lay your body
  into that ground.

• Days have passed, months came, years are on their way.
  How I wish you were still here with me today.
  Thoughts of you linger in my head,
  Wondering how life would be if you weren’t dead.
  They say time will heal all our pain.
  Somehow it feels like my whole life went down the drain.

  I still can’t believe that you’ve gone so soon,
  Leaving behind just memories of you.
  I’ll miss your smile, the one you’d always wear,
  And your laughter and open arms you always shared.

  You’ll always be missed by your children too.
  Don’t you worry, we’ll tell them all about you.
  You can look over us from the heavens above
  While we continue to share your love.

  Days have passed, months came, years are on their way.
  Even though you’re gone, your love won’t ever go astray!

  Kaui Mauga

• April is the cruelest month, breeding
  Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
  Memory and desire, stirring
  Dull roots with spring rain.
  Winter kept us warm, covering
  Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
  A little life with dried tubers.
  Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
  With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
  And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
  And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

  T S Eliot