Beauty

  Behold the cloud-graced monoliths That stretch against the sky Into the boundless sanctity Where wind swift eagles fly. Primal valleys bloom to life As tumbling waters sing, Resurrected from...

  "Write on!" the Masters from the shadows cried. "By your thin air we breathe, nor ever died; Your modest dress, our glorious raiment shares And witness to our sun, your candle bears. "Ignored,...

  The Age of Poetry They say that poetry’s a young man’s game, indulged while still limber, lithe, and healthy enough to dance all night with energy. Without concern for funding and fickle...

by James Sale Carol Smallwood In the Measuring is a substantial new collection of 77 poems by Carol Smallwood. Carol is well-known to readers of The Society of Classical Poets, as her poems regularly...

  In Officio Exsequarium Come, let us bid the last of our farewells To one who sleeps on the retiring ship; November’s breath respires the mournful knells; “Lord, give him rest” is murmured...

Autumn Wind by Yuan Xi, translated by Jennifer Zeng and Damian Robin From far off, Autumn wind runs at us in a rush! Across a thousand miles, displacing clouds with sky, (And crowding through the dark,...

John of the Mountains To him we owe a mammoth debt, our grateful thanks and praise, For the lasting conservation trails with foresight he did blaze. A “voice calling in the wilderness,” like John the...

This universe of ours will end As we then return to the source. No more wounds to tend or to mend, As the source will chart a new course. When all the sands of time run out And existence must start...

The Ballerina Just before the break of day she woke from dreams of grand jeté and knelt beside her bed to pray. Like a feather, then she rose and slipped into her warm-up clothes to dance in silence...

Blasted granite marks the trail Guttered through eternal rock. Windborne smoke and ashes veil Mountain peaks through which we walk. Upward blue sky’s endlessness; Downward glimpse of lakes...

by Evan Mantyk Where is Homer? The epic poems of the famous Greek bard were the cornerstone of education for young Socrates, Alexander the Great, Roman emperors, William Shakespeare, and every serious...

Birthday Greetings As themes show signs of nature's stay, And time’s propitious dates hold sway, The evidence augurs your bloom, From sculptured years that now have hewn A shapened belle upon a...

Sonnet 201. The Force that Through the Green Fuse Pulls the Poem. Written in the Dylan Thomas Museum, Swansea. July 2017 Oh to be the Poet! Love the words And see them wound around the teeth and tongue, To...

Cherubic laugh; sly, impish grin; Angelic face; wild chimp within. It does not matter; sleep awhile As soft mirth tickles forth a smile. Gray moths will hum a lullaby Of feathery wings, then you and...

Solid Ground Our greatest philosopher David Hume, Whose logical doubts leave naught to assume, Used skeptical arguments he had found To leave nothing on solid ground Until a Kant came walking along And...

by Joseph Charles MacKenzie Read the Selected Poems from Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal online. Purchase the book here. Two arts are beautifully displayed in Helen Palma’s Selected Poems from...

  I woke this day beside the two-way Wye, at peace with wars too often waged inside between the push of how, the pull of why. The river, calm against the ebbing tide, displayed an ease I had not...

United They Fall Exhausted armies cling to noble trees along the margin of a meadow mown two weeks ago.  It's fifty-five degrees, and summer's long campaign is at an end, the bugles stilled, except...

Ah, now comes the mellow season, Marks its time with jackdaws caws. Autumn with its rusty reason Offers forth its season’s laws. Now no more the pretty laces, Florals found along the way. Brackish...

  For Elizabeth La Cienega slept on a muted afternoon At old Las Golodrinas, when I spied a nest Of swallows beneath the age-worn latias, hewn By a hand that is gone with the days that were...

In his bedsitter years, he was alone And all his dreams were haunted by some girl More wonderful than any precious stone Who’d bring fulfilment to his empty world. The loneliness pressed on him, dense...

by Charles Eager William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770—the same year as gave us Beethoven, Hegel, and Hölderlin—and died at the age of eighty, rich in the knowledge of his...

Death Is the Cooling Night by Heinrich Heine Death is the cooling night, Life is the sultry day, But now darkness settles And I long for respite. Outside my window looms a tree; In it sings the...

For John McCain, Ernest C. Brace, & Alexander Solzhenitsyn I season my pen with the sonnet's blood, And do not reason with a moonless sky, Thus, in durance, we hearken to the wry Whisper of words from...

a Petrarchan sonnet Life’s hills have been trampled since first we met, That mad, magic moment long years ago, When your smile lit fires in the candle’s glow And trapped me forever in Venus’...

  Pure of any mortal mote ___and boundless (but for sight): The deep dry sky of Autumn ___inscribes the shadows bright. (For what could dusty leaves conceal ___from such an endless eye? What...

  The butterfly, the sea anemone, And snowflake, though possessive of the true Design of grace and perfect symmetry, Seem crude and ugly when compared to you. The stars that line the deep, black...

The Coworker A “need-to-know” it’s called in Personnel and I’m just high enough to need to know she’s going through that quiet hell of watching someone’s life she loves recede. A bit more...

Painted, woody there it stands, this door behind which kingdom fans. Bright with order, calm with ease, a wooden plank with hidden seas. A plight to pick which path is best, the fallen stairs or the...

by James Sale Wind in the Cave, Finishing Line Press, 2017 Out of Nothing, Shanti Arts Publishing, 2018 Recently in a poetry review of another poet on these pages I commented that the poet had included 33...

The Country Club To think about a country club Begun for whisky in a tub, Distilled from fields of golden corn In a town where I was born, For folks to gather, have a blast In golden days, in time long...

Check-Mate by a Pawn for my sons We parry, thrust: This game of wits, Where each pawn must Deflect your hits. My mounted knight Skips overhead, First back, then right; Your knight is dead. But...

Sonnet for a Cosmetic Company Ah Youth! To whom each maiden plights her troth To coax and woo each winsome charm to stay ‘Tis difficult to match your coat to cloth So ill designed and irksome in its...

I. I’ve awed at the Atlantic’s bluest depths, and peered at the Pacific’s deepest blues; the warm blue summer waters of Key West, and cold blue winter on the Charles, too. I’ve watched the moon...

Lay your hand in mine dear, ___Lay your hand in mine; If you will lay your hand in mine We shall like eager, fruitful vines ___Intertwine: Then I’ll be yours ___And you’ll be mine. Place your lips...

Ye boundless vaults of heaven without an end, __Thy silvery fields of azure stars unfold Above the earth, and verdurous spruces bend __Toward the western halls of mellow gold; There, through their...

I Taught a Lesson to My Toes I taught a lesson to my toes, They’d overstepped the mark, Escaping time and time again From nylon prisons dark. I warned them of the consequence Should they destroy more...

a rondeau Cape Disappointment, battered and distressed, Besieged, beset, by brute-force waves hard-pressed As broad and deep Columbia collides With Chinook-whipped Pacific Ocean tides— Leviathans...

Left to Write It isn't difficult to find __the works the masters left behind, and others too have written verse, __some for the better, some for worse. So can there still be ground to break, __and are...

Her name is like the rain-perfumèd air Of summer on a lost and winsome day: I breathe it and am free of every care, I say it and want nothing more to say. Her name is laden like the honeycomb Whose...