Our latest spring poetry selection
Our poetry is chosen from the work of both well-known and new poets, and assessed by a practising psychotherapist for suitability for patients waiting to see their doctor. We hope you enjoy our latest selection.
This Lovely Earth
When you are young and all the world is new,
When you are old and it is home to you,
And all through life, in pleasure, hope and pain,
Laughing in sunlight, resting under rain,
Taking all weathers at their welcome worth,
To love and love and love this lovely earth!
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
When you are young and all the world is new,
When you are old and it is home to you,
And all through life, in pleasure, hope and pain,
Laughing in sunlight, resting under rain,
Taking all weathers at their welcome worth,
To love and love and love this lovely earth!
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
The Orchard
There’s no garden like an orchard,
Nature shows no fairer thing
Than the apple trees in blossom
In these late days o’ the spring.
Here the robin redbreast’s nesting,
Here, from golden dawn till night,
Honey bees are gaily swimming
In a sea of pink and white.
Just a sea of fragrant blossoms,
Steeped in sunshine, drenched in dew,
Just a fragrant breath which tells you
Earth is fair again and new.
Just a breath of subtle sweetness,
Breath which holds the spice o’ youth,
Holds the promise o’ the summer -
Holds the best o’ things, forsooth.
There’s no garden like an orchard,
Nature shows no fairer thing
Than the apple trees in blossom
In these late days o’ the spring.
Jean Blewitt (1862-1934)
There’s no garden like an orchard,
Nature shows no fairer thing
Than the apple trees in blossom
In these late days o’ the spring.
Here the robin redbreast’s nesting,
Here, from golden dawn till night,
Honey bees are gaily swimming
In a sea of pink and white.
Just a sea of fragrant blossoms,
Steeped in sunshine, drenched in dew,
Just a fragrant breath which tells you
Earth is fair again and new.
Just a breath of subtle sweetness,
Breath which holds the spice o’ youth,
Holds the promise o’ the summer -
Holds the best o’ things, forsooth.
There’s no garden like an orchard,
Nature shows no fairer thing
Than the apple trees in blossom
In these late days o’ the spring.
Jean Blewitt (1862-1934)
Star Thought
I shall see a star tonight
From a distant mountain height;
From a city you will see
The same star that shines on me.
‘Tis not of the firmament
On a solar journey bent;
Fixed it is through time and weather;-—
‘Tis a thought we hold together.
Francis Shaw (1872-1937)
I shall see a star tonight
From a distant mountain height;
From a city you will see
The same star that shines on me.
‘Tis not of the firmament
On a solar journey bent;
Fixed it is through time and weather;-—
‘Tis a thought we hold together.
Francis Shaw (1872-1937)
Discovery
Beauty walked over the hills and made them bright.
She in the long fresh grass scattered her rains
Sparkling and glittering like a host of stars,
But not like stars cold, severe, terrible.
Hers was the laughter of the wind that leaped
Arm-full of shadows, flinging them far and wide.
Hers the bright light within the quick green
Of every new leaf on the oldest tree.
It was her swimming made the river run
Shining as the sun;
Her voice, escaped from winter’s chill and dark,
Singing in the incessant lark….
All this was hers - yet all this had not been
Except ‘twas seen.
It was my eyes, Beauty, that made thee bright;
My ears that heard, the blood leaping in my veins,
The vehemence of transfiguring thought -
Not lights and shadows, birds, grasses and rains -
That made thy wonders wonderful.
For it has been, Beauty, that I have seen thee,
Tedious as a painted cloth at a bad play,
Empty of meaning and so of all delight.
Now thou has blessed me with a great pure bliss,
Shaking thy rainy light all over the earth,
And I have paid thee with my thankfulness,
John Freeman (1880-1929)
Beauty walked over the hills and made them bright.
She in the long fresh grass scattered her rains
Sparkling and glittering like a host of stars,
But not like stars cold, severe, terrible.
Hers was the laughter of the wind that leaped
Arm-full of shadows, flinging them far and wide.
Hers the bright light within the quick green
Of every new leaf on the oldest tree.
It was her swimming made the river run
Shining as the sun;
Her voice, escaped from winter’s chill and dark,
Singing in the incessant lark….
All this was hers - yet all this had not been
Except ‘twas seen.
It was my eyes, Beauty, that made thee bright;
My ears that heard, the blood leaping in my veins,
The vehemence of transfiguring thought -
Not lights and shadows, birds, grasses and rains -
That made thy wonders wonderful.
For it has been, Beauty, that I have seen thee,
Tedious as a painted cloth at a bad play,
Empty of meaning and so of all delight.
Now thou has blessed me with a great pure bliss,
Shaking thy rainy light all over the earth,
And I have paid thee with my thankfulness,
John Freeman (1880-1929)
The Bird at Dawn
What I saw was just one eye
In the dawn as I was going:
A bird can carry all the sky
In that little button glowing.
Never in my life I went
So deep into the firmament.
He was standing on a tree,
All in blossom overflowing;
And he purposely looked hard at me,
At first, as if to question merrily:
‘Where are you going?’
But next some far more serious thing to say:
I could not answer, could not look away.
Oh, that hard, round, and so distracting eye:
Little mirror of all the sky!--
And then the after-song another tree
Held, and sent radiating back on me.
If no man had invented human word,
And a bird-song had been
The only way to utter what we mean,
What would we men have heard,
What understood, what seen,
Between the trills and pauses, in between
The singing and the silence of a bird?
Harold Monro (1879 -1932)
What I saw was just one eye
In the dawn as I was going:
A bird can carry all the sky
In that little button glowing.
Never in my life I went
So deep into the firmament.
He was standing on a tree,
All in blossom overflowing;
And he purposely looked hard at me,
At first, as if to question merrily:
‘Where are you going?’
But next some far more serious thing to say:
I could not answer, could not look away.
Oh, that hard, round, and so distracting eye:
Little mirror of all the sky!--
And then the after-song another tree
Held, and sent radiating back on me.
If no man had invented human word,
And a bird-song had been
The only way to utter what we mean,
What would we men have heard,
What understood, what seen,
Between the trills and pauses, in between
The singing and the silence of a bird?
Harold Monro (1879 -1932)
Easter
The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.
Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)
The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.
Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)
Blossoming Antlers
It is enough that I can tell
The sky was scalloped like a shell,
That in a black and silver wood
So fanciful a creature stood;
That through the pattern of thin trees
His shadowy haunches, breast and knees,
The instant that I softly spoke,
Were gone as soundlessly as smoke.
It’s startling to have been so near
The polished eye, the pointed ear,
And to have seen, above his brows,
The little strong and twisted boughs.
But it would be too strange to tell
How silver pollen loosed and fell,
Of gentle petals that were shed
From that hard orchard on his head.
Winifred Welles (1893-1939)
It is enough that I can tell
The sky was scalloped like a shell,
That in a black and silver wood
So fanciful a creature stood;
That through the pattern of thin trees
His shadowy haunches, breast and knees,
The instant that I softly spoke,
Were gone as soundlessly as smoke.
It’s startling to have been so near
The polished eye, the pointed ear,
And to have seen, above his brows,
The little strong and twisted boughs.
But it would be too strange to tell
How silver pollen loosed and fell,
Of gentle petals that were shed
From that hard orchard on his head.
Winifred Welles (1893-1939)
Daffodils
Yearly miracle yet
yearly catching unawares,
an astonishment of daffodils
greets my breakfast eyes
with their not-there-
yesterday yellows,
and I share
with the prospecting robin
just how upliftingly marvellous
these crumbs are.
Dorothy Pope (1935- )
Yearly miracle yet
yearly catching unawares,
an astonishment of daffodils
greets my breakfast eyes
with their not-there-
yesterday yellows,
and I share
with the prospecting robin
just how upliftingly marvellous
these crumbs are.
Dorothy Pope (1935- )
Easter Poem, 2021
A thousand ways of seeing
have arrived in my lap,
a thousand blessings
waiting to be unwrapped.
Two doors away camelias
magnifying themselves appear,
as lights, illuminating the darkest
corners of our small gardens.
Pauline Hawkesworth (1943- )
A thousand ways of seeing
have arrived in my lap,
a thousand blessings
waiting to be unwrapped.
Two doors away camelias
magnifying themselves appear,
as lights, illuminating the darkest
corners of our small gardens.
Pauline Hawkesworth (1943- )
Editor: Helen :Lee
Copyright title and collection Poems in the Waiting Room 2023. Copyright of recent poems retained by the authors.
Copyright title and collection Poems in the Waiting Room 2023. Copyright of recent poems retained by the authors.
