Beauty

For Elizabeth My morning’s mountain wears the lavish light Of candid clouds and truth-engendered white. Ah, heavens, spread your opalescent ray, And open earth-blind eyes to boundless sight, That love...

Bristlecone Longevity The beauty of the tree is not how old, Indeed how ancient in its gnarling now, Not in its silent history yet untold, Nor in the pre-historic roots and bough— Their age—but in its...

Translator's Preliminary Note This is an original translation of a poem by Sappho (630-580 BC), traditionally known as the “old age poem” or the “Tithonus poem” (in the standard numbering by Lobel...

Heritage I like to say I’d an Egyptian father If that is too obscure for you, I’d rather Explain it just by citing preservation. They preserved mummies, he his indignation At how the world had gone...

Poet’s Note: I wrote this poem in the same metrical form as the song “America the Beautiful” (but without the internal rhyme). You can sing it if you want, but I think it is most effective when simply...

Two Lives by Michael Maibach When soldiers die, They give two lives. The one they had, And the one denied. The spouse not met, The child unknown, The life unsaved, The welcome home. The hill...

Garden Waltz a terza rima sonnet in dactylic pentameter with a truncated foot at the end of each line Radishes sway to the rhythm of sunlight and rainfall, Carrots to minerals present in alkaline...

The Lord’s Supper They’re gathered round, astonished, full of dread, round him who like a wise man must decide, and who leaves those with whom he’s broken bread, and who comes like a stranger from...

The Fall Revisited The implications of the fall are endless in their reach; that lowly serpent had such gall, Eve's failure to beseech. Though what they chose when they did bite that infamous red...

It's first of sweaty, sweltering daybreaks of summer new. The fewer trailing steps of parting spring are still moist-fresh with drakes' claw prints and redolent green pollen specks. The waters in the...

  While strolling around an illustrious lair, I was caught by a breeze of regret in the air, For gazing I was on old buildings of stone, All graced with such courage and dignity their own, With...

Born at Constantinople in 1762 of a French father and Greek mother, André Chénier grew up in pre-revolutionary France and studied at Paris. Well-read, and enamored with ancient Greece, he is considered one...

03.27.18 A smattering of rain above a hall That holds her earthy fragments, broken, spent, A woman who, in life, out-did them all, And e’en in death defies the elements. O, what would she make now of...

Note: Joseph Charles MacKenzie would like to offer a 25% discount on the first edition hardcover of Sonnets for Christ the King to his fellow poets and readers of the Society of Classical Poets, in gratitude...

  I may have borne them each, but it was you, Whose shoulders carried weight I never knew, You set the bar so high, so straight, so true, The surest, strongest Dad?  Well, that was you. I may...

Form Sonnet Turn the page and write again today Make something come out of an eager mind Make something in a new and different way In something both of earthy and refined For when I strive it seems that...

A short film by Gleb Zavlanov. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxnDmkKqaF4&feature=youtu.be Sonnet 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds...

  I Love This Life a rondeau I love this life in spite of all the trying times and every wall I must tear down to find success, although sometimes my happiness is thwarted, slowing to a...

Curtain Up! Sunset and the robins sing, nightingales reply song that summer evenings bring, weeping willows sigh from lawns and from thickets a chorus of crickets ____serenades but remains out of...

Canto 2 is part of a sequence of 33 Cantos called The English Cantos that James Sale is attempting to write in the style – and using the terza rima – of Dante. His aim is to create a contemporary epic of...

Wild Strawberry On summer strolls, I often find. Wild strawberry flowering in the wood, White leaf, gold bud, my cheerless mood Is ruffled clear, as fragrant wind Blows equally through flower, through...

I have not been to Medford, nor Milan; I have not seen a war, nor won the peace; I’ve risen to six thousand cloudy dawns that – not once – promised sun, and storms to cease. I have not stood to spurn...

Sometimes, when the light and the mists of the day _Settle holy and soft on the edge of the night, When the sights and the sounds of the world melt away, _And the vision that lives in the soul takes...

for Czesław Miłosz For a moment as brief and long as eternity he sees what the blind man sees in the blink of an eye: a sun that never sets, forms wrought from gold, purity before it falls or is restored...

My Garden Lush, fresh-pruned verdure shades the cobbled path, It bursts with rich-hued blossoms strewn about Whence sweet aromas waft, blend, and enswathe, And droops with luscious, nectar-swollen...

The intricacies of script and figure are amazing. Kudos to the faithful who made contributions large or small. By far this volume is the greatest ever to present illuminated gospel. Ink was carefully...

The Seabirds Seagulls, on the air they glide, Over the waves to the land; Soaring across the sky, so wide, To softly land on the sand. Pelicans, floating in the sky, Upon the wind, so free; Across the...

Translation by David B. Gosselin   If I from this darkened valley Where the gloomy vapors creep Might by some wonder swiftly flee My soul could blessedly weep! Gazing upon this pure...

. . Boasted Viridian Said Viridian Green to Cerulean Blue, “The waves would be boring without me and you, The crashing unflashing, the sheen without glow, Silver unplugged: not luminous Bro.” . . Of...

Song of Us Face to face, polite and careful, Tentative we were, and prayerful, Neither one of us would dare pull More from this than met the eye. . . . Yet Side by side we worked together, Hands of...

  Napoleon in New Orleans So the sun of Austerlitz has set. I had many triumphs, but it’s the few defeats – Leipzig, Waterloo especially – I struggle to forget. I struggled to rearrange...

Poet's Note: In this sonnet I'm paying tribute to the patriotic bikers who make their annual pilgrimage to Washington DC to participate in Rolling Thunder's First Amendment Demonstration Run every year on the...

By James A. Tweedie Call me a snob but I am generally attracted to what is commonly referred to as “great art” or the “masterpieces.” Over the years I have looked at famous paintings and I have looked...

Heritage as Hope I saw the cricket scene in evening light, In Windsor light with calm men moving through The evening air and dressed in cricket white. Long centuries are contained beneath the blue Of...

All poems translated from Russian. The Rock A gold cloud rested the whole night Upon the breast of a huge rock; And cheerfully at dawn it dashed Into the blue not to come back Wet traces in the...

Joy Comes Softly silent; kindly kept, ___the haunted hours crept. Moonlit minutes—marked and mute, ___the lonely doubt takes root. The tendrils twine; the rootlets reach. ___Somehow the sun must...

Bridge of Memories a symmetrelle in mixed syllabic meter A bridge built of memories spans the gap between future and past. Although life may speed by us too fast, from every experience, knowledge we...

The Archaeological Gardens at Giardini-Naxos 7 March 2018 The stones are overgrown with clover now, Drowned by daisies, fresh cape sorrel too; Orange or lemon globes gleam from each bough; Mankind’s...

The pika climbs the snowless slopes in hope of finding cooler climes. A tailless kin to hares, he shelters under stones to cope with rising temps within his furry skin. The ball of fur appears to roll...

  Tulip Tree in Bloom, January Every working day I pass a tulip tree on yellow grass and strain to see, when it appears, petals out this time of year. Even our southern winter's strong-- it...