Explore Poems: Toasts & Celebrations

Dear ferocious dreamer. Dear maven of song and surveyor of every flung star. Dear meandering romantic, audacious witness, dear listener with the whole of your covetous heart. Dear listener to the air’s brutal and gorgeous music, soft dancer to ballads...

Fore there neidfaerae naenig uuiurthit

The wine of Love is music,
   And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
   Love sits long:

Sits long and ariseth drunken,
   But not with the feast and the wine;
He reeleth...

Pastime with good company
I love and shall unto I die.
Grudge whoso will, but none deny,
So God be pleased, this live will I.
For my pastance
Hunt, sing, and dance.
My heart is set
All godely sport
To...

It’s up and away from our work to-day,
    For the breeze sweeps over the down;
And it’s hey for a game where the gorse blossoms flame,
    And the bracken is bronzing to brown.
With the turf ’neath our...

Here’s to the men! Since Adam’s time
      They’ve always been the same;
Whenever anything goes wrong,
      The woman is to blame.
From early morn to late at night,
      The men fault-finders are;
They blame us if they oversleep,
      Or if...

What makes for a happier life, Josh, comes to this:   
Gifts freely given, that you never earned;   
Open affection with your wife and kids;   
Clear pipes in winter, in summer screens that fit;   
Few days in court, with little consequence;   
A quiet mind, a strong...

My heart is like a singing bird
                  Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
                  Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
                  That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all...

The first lily of June opens its red mouth.
All over the sand road where we walk
multiflora rose climbs trees cascading
white or pink blossoms, simple, intense
the scene drifting like colored mist.

The arrowhead is spreading its...

1.
Of the gardens of Adonis, Lydia, I love
Most of all those fugitive roses
         That on the day they are born,
         That very day, must also die.
Eternal, for them, the light of day:
They're born when the sun is already high
         And...

Now, in a breath, we’ll burst those gates of gold,
   And ransack heaven before our moment fails.
Now, in a breath, before we, too, grow old,
   We’ll mount and sing and spread immortal sails.

It is not time that makes eternity.
   Love and an hour...

My gentle friend! I hold no creed so false
As that which dares to teach that we are born
For battle only, and that in this life
The soul, if it would burn with starlike power,
Must needs forsooth be kindled by...

THE single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.
Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
Thy sultry hair up from...

Even in a palace, life may be led well!
So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,

Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
And drudge under some foolish master's ken
Who...