poets-from-rhode-island

"Fill every beaker up, my men, pour forth the cheering wine: There’s life and strength in every drop,—thanksgiving to the vine!"

"Old Grimes is dead, that good old man We never shall see more; He used to wear a long black coat All buttoned down before."

"Since what unnumbered year Hast thou kept watch and ward And o’er the buried Land of Fear So grimly held thy guard?"

"You might have deemed our long gun-deck Two hundred feet of hell."

"Up the River of Death Sailed the Great Admiral!"

"The shy little may-flower weaves her nest; But the south wind blows o'er the fragrant loam, And betrays the path to her woodland home."

"The summer skies are darkly blue, The days are still and bright, And Evening trails her robes of gold Through the dim halls of Night."

"Again the fair azalea bows Beneath her snowy crest."

"Raven from the dim dominions On the Night's Plutonian shore, Oft I hear thy dusky pinions Wave and flutter round my door— See the shadow of thy pinions Float along the moonlit floor."

"Tell him I lingered alone on the shore, Where we parted, in sorrow, to meet nevermore; The night-wind blew cold on my desolate heart But colder those wild words of doom,—“Ye must part.”"

"Star of resplendent front! Thy glorious eye Shines on me still from out yon clouded sky."

"The sweet imperious mouth, whose haughty valor Defied all portents of impending doom."

"And still the aster greets us, as we pass, With her faint smile,—among the withered grass."

"When summer gathers up her robes of glory, And, like a dream of beauty, glides away."

"Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning Beneath dark clouds along the horizon rolled, Till the slant sunbeams, through the fringes raining, Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold."

"Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow, Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground, With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow, The gentian nods, in dewy slumbers bound."

"Enchantress of the stormy seas, Priestess of Night's high mysteries!"

"A boy's hunched body loved out of a stalk The first song of his happiness, and the song woke His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy."

"I feel like Galway Kinnell has been a teacher, even though I have never met him. I love his work. I think that what he has is a beautiful balance between technique and music. He is such a poet. He's a poet's poet with the music"

"I take a wolf's rib and whittle it sharp at both ends and coil it up and freeze it in blubber and place it out on the fairway of the bears."

"The sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them: the long, perfect loveliness of sow."

"The appeal to heaven breaks off. The petals begin to fall, in self-forgiveness. It is a flower. On this mountainside it is dying."