Best Horse Poems

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
...

'Is there anybody there? ' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest's ferny floor;
...

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
...

Where is the Jim Crow section
On this merry-go-round,
Mister, cause I want to ride?
Down South where I come from
...

Calm is all nature as a resting wheel.
The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,
Is cropping audibly his later meal:
...

Deep in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes, mean or great:
Unknown to Cromwell as to me
Was Cromwell's measure or degree;
...

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses - he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
...

I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
...

My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue.
...

But, lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by,
A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud,
Adonis' trampling courser doth espy,
And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud;
...

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.
...

Until tonight they were separate specialties,
different stories, the best of their own worst.
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first
...

I worked for a woman,
She wasn't mean--
But she had a twelve-room
House to clean.
...

The beautiful, the fair, the elegant,
Is that which pleases us, says Kant,
Without a thought of interest or advantage.
...

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
...

Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen
...

My pants could maybe fall down when I dive off the diving board.
My nose could maybe keep growing and never quit.
Miss Brearly could ask me to spell words like stomach and special.
(Stumick and speshul?)
...

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
...

He had drifted in among us as a straw drifts with the tide,
He was just a wand'ring mongrel from the weary world outside;
He was not aristocratic, being mostly ribs and hair,
With a hint of spaniel parents and a touch of native bear.
...

(My student, thrown by a horse)

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
...

Weep not, weep not,
She is not dead;
She's resting in the bosom of Jesus.
Heart-broken husband--weep no more;
...

I’M travellin’ down the Castlereagh, and I’m a station hand,
I’m handy with the ropin’ pole, I’m handy with the brand,
And I can ride a rowdy colt, or swing the axe all day,
But there’s no demand for a station-hand along the Castlereagh. +
...

Don't let that horse
         eat that violin
cried Chagall's mother
...

sway with me, everything sad -
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
...

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street.
Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
...

Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
...

I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
...

When the Dean said we could not cross campus
until the students gave up the buildings,
we lay down, in the street,
we said the cops will enter this gate
...

Friendship, as love, is but a name,
Save in a concentrated flame;
And thus, in friendships, who depend
On more than one, find not one friend.
...

In the betting line the other
day
man behind me asked,
"are you Henry
...

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
...

You see, the thing was this way -- there was me,
That rode Panopply, the Splendor mare,
And Ikey Chambers on the Iron Dook,
And Smith, the half-caste rider on Regret,
...

What does the horse give you
That I cannot give you?

I watch you when you are alone,
...

She wore a 'terra-cotta' dress,
And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,
Within the hansom's dry recess,
Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless
...

I like Canadians.
They are so unlike Americans.
They go home at night.
Their cigarettes don't smell bad.
...

Across the floor flits the mechanical toy,
fit for a king of several centuries back.
A little circus horse with real white hair.
His eyes are glossy black.
...

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that caught the cycling craze;
He turned away the good old horse that served him many days;
He dressed himself in cycling clothes, resplendent to be seen;
He hurried off to town and bought a shining new machine;
...

If I rest for a moment near The Equestrian
pausing for a liver sausage sandwich in the Mayflower Shoppe,
that angel seems to be leading the horse into Bergdorf's
and I am naked as a table cloth, my nerves humming.
...

I'll settle for the 6 horse
on a rainy afternoon
a paper cup of coffee
in my hand
...

AMONG all lovely things my Love had been;
Had noted well the stars, all flowers that grew
About her home; but she had never seen
...

they talk down through
the centuries to us,
and this we need more and more,
the statues and paintings
...

I am restless. I am athirst for far-away things.
My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.
...

I read how Quixote in his random ride
Came to a crossing once, and lest he lose
The purity of chance, would not decide
...

In this evil year, autumn comes early...
I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters,
The wind on my hat...And you? And you, my friend?
...

Where it says snow
read teeth-marks of a virgin
Where it says knife read
you passed through my bones
...

Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
...

O God, in the dream the terrible horse began
To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows,
Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane,
And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose.
...

See the waters of the Yellow River leap down from Heaven, Roll away to the deep sea and never turn again! See at the mirror
in the High Hall Aged men bewailing white locks - In the morning, threads of silk, In the evening flakes of snow. Snatch the joys
of life as they come and use them to the full; Do not leave the silver cup idly glinting at the moon. The things that Heaven made
Man was meant to use; A thousand guilders scattered to the wind may come back again. Roast mutton and sliced beef will only
...

1 When all the world is young, lad,
2 And all the trees are green;
3 And every goose a swan, lad,
4 And every lass a queen;
...

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,
...

He drank strong waters and his speech was coarse;
He purchased raiment and forbore to pay';
He stuck a trusting junior with a horse,
And won gymkhanas in a doubtful way.
...

I have walked through tougher Harlem where few strangers dare to go
And I've been in London City in the rain and in the snow
And I've worked in inner Melbourne in the searing summer heat
And believe me if I tell you I have earned the bread I eat.
...

Waken, lords and ladies gay,
On the mountain dawns the day;
All the jolly chase is here
With hawk and horse and hunting-spear,
...

The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day
For half his flock were in their beds
Or under green sods lay.
...

See how the Yellow River's water move out of heaven.
Entering the ocean,never to return.
See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers,
Though silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow.
...

[Dedicated to George Raffalovich]


In the Years of the Primal Course, in the dawn of terrestrial
...

In Memoriam: Robert Lowell

I can make out the rigging of a schooner
a mile off; I can count
...

I I have proved and stayed as dark horse
Nobody would come to know without code Morse
People disregard me and pass the curse
Always non starter and unavailable force
...

I recall that man and not two centuries
have passed since I saw him,
he went neither by horse nor by carriage:
...

It was a time when they were afraid of him.
My father, a bare man, a gypsy, a horse
with broken knees no one would shoot.
Then again, he was like the orange tree,
...

The contingent of virus
hidden in Trojan horse, Anopheles
breach the frail armour of epithelium.
Now intruders march in veins,
...

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
...

Moving from left to left, the light
is heavy on the Dome, and coarse.
One small lunette turns it aside
and blankly stares off to the side
...

Because the pleasure-bird whistles after the hot wires,
Shall the blind horse sing sweeter?
Convenient bird and beast lie lodged to suffer
The supper and knives of a mood.
...

To-day, this insect, and the world I breathe,
Now that my symbols have outelbowed space,
Time at the city spectacles, and half
The dear, daft time I take to nudge the sentence,
...

I CALL on those that call me son,
Grandson, or great-grandson,
On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts,
To judge what I have done.
...

ABOUT the sheltered garden ground
The trees stand strangely still.
The vale ne'er seemed so deep before,
Nor yet so high the hill.
...

'Up, Timothy, up with your staff and away!
Not a soul in the village this morning will stay;
The hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds,
And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds.'
...

Thee the ancientest peer, Duke of Burgundy, rose from the monarch's right hand, red as wines
From his mountains; an odor of war, like a ripe vineyard, rose from his garments,
...

STRANGE fits of passion have I known:
   And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
   What once to me befell.
...

"He ought to be home," said the old man, "without there's something amiss.
He only went to the Two-mile -- he ought to be back by this.
He would ride the Reckless filly, he would have his wilful way;
And, here, he's not back at sundown -- and what will his mother say?
...

'Tis eight o'clock,--a clear March night,
The moon is up,--the sky is blue,
The owlet, in the moonlight air,
Shouts from nobody knows where;
...

The beautiful, the fair, the elegant,
Is that which pleases us, says Kant,
Without a thought of interest or advantage.
...

Barada, oh father of all rivers
Oh, horse that races the days
Be, in our sad history, a prophet
...

I want to take birth,
Humble wish to come on earth
See for self and breathe fresh air,
Is it not right for baby girl chance fair?
...

The prairie blows the grasses
And whips the horse’s mane.
They travel, horse and rider,
Through the sea of amber grain
...

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
Rescue my Castle, before the hot day
Brightens the blue from its silvery grey,
...

Because the pleasure-bird whistles after the hot wires,
Shall the blind horse sing sweeter?
...

See, as the prettiest graves will do in time,
Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime;
Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods
Have struggled through its binding osier rods;
...

You ask me: what I expect
Well! It is just a ‘date'.
While the abetting inky night
is writing down a tasteful menu,
...

It chanced out back at the Christmas time,
When the wheat was ripe and tall,
A stranger rode to the farmer's gate --
A sturdy man and a small.
...

The rain comes flapping through the yard
like a tablecloth that she hand-embroidered.
My mother has left it on the line.
It is sodden with rain.
...

Have the poets left in the garment a place for a patch to be patched by me; and did you know the abode of your beloved after reflection?2

The vestige of the house, which did not speak, confounded thee, until it spoke by means of signs, like one deaf and dumb.
...

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
...

One way to be very happy is to be very rich
For then you can buy orchids by the quire and bacon by the flitch.
And yet at the same time People don't mind if you only tip them a dime,
Because it's very funny
...

...and when "the future" is uttered, swarms of mice
rush out of the Russian language and gnaw a piece
of ripened memory which is twice
as hole-ridden as real cheese.
...

.
Are you getting tired of the same old same old?
Are things about as exciting as watching leaf mold?
Are you bored with the infinite tedium of your day?
...

He lives deep inside himself with burnt out emotions,
He can stll hear his piercing scream's,
When he had a bad fall from a horse in a race,
That ended all his dream's,
...

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
...

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
...

The blue forest, chilled and blue, like the lips of the dead
if the lips were gone. The year has been cut in half
with dull scissors, the solstice still looking for its square
on the calendar. Perhaps the scissors were really
...

The tired cars go grumbling by,
The moaning, groaning cars,
And the old milk carts go rumbling by
Under the same dull stars.
...

Who shall declare the joy of the running!
Who shall tell of the pleasures of flight!
Springing and spurning the tufts of wild heather,
Sweeping, wide-winged, through the blue dome of light.
...

The sun strikes down with a blinding glare;
The skies are blue and the plains are wide,
The saltbush plains that are burnt and bare
By Walgett out on the Barwon side --
...

'Make a song, father, a new little song,
All for Jenny and Nancy.'
Balow lalow or Hey derry down,
Or else what might you fancy?
...

Fleas, lice,
a horse peeing
near my pillow.
...

All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food.

The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably
...

To all to whom this little book may come--
Health for yourselves and those you hold most dear!
Content abroad, and happiness at home,
And--one grand Secret in your private ear: --
...

In January everything freezes.
We have two children. Both are she'ses.
This is our January rule:
One girl in bed, and one in school.
...

Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love,
And in that sophistry, Oh, thou dost prove
Too subtle: Foole, thou didst not understand
The mystic language of the eye nor hand:
...