1. Juliet - written by Hilaire Belloc
Read 918 times on Poetry Connection.

How did the party go in Portman Square?
I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there.

And how did Lady Gaster's party go?
Juliet was next me and I do not know.(Read full poem)

When young I was a Socialist
          Despite my tender years;
No blessed chance I ever missed
          To slam the profiteers.
Yet though a fanatic I was,
          And cursed aristocrats,
The Party chucked me out because
          I sported... (Read full poem)

3. The Avenue - written by Paul Muldoon
Read 1895 times on Poetry Connection.

Now that we've come to the end
I've been trying to piece it together,
Not that distance makes anything clearer.
It began in the half-light
While we walked through the dawn chorus
After a party that lasted all night,
With the blackbird, the... (Read full poem)

Unrhymed, unrythmical, the chatter goes:
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.

Beneath each topic tunelessly discussed
The ground-bass is reciprocal mistrust.

The names in fashion shuttling to and fro
Yield, when deciphered, messages... (Read full poem)

5. From The Long Sad Party - written by Mark Strand
From The Late Hour. Published in 1973. Read 3161 times on Poetry Connection.

Someone was saying
something about shadows covering the field, about
how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning
and the morning goes.

Someone was saying
how the wind dies down but comes back,
how shells are the coffins of wind
but the weather... (Read full poem)

For nations vague as weed,
For nomads among stones,
Small-statured cross-faced tribes
And cobble-close families
In mill-towns on dark mornings
Life is slow dying.

So are their separate ways
Of building, benediction,
Measuring love and money
Ways of... (Read full poem)

7. A Sad Child - written by Margaret Atwood
Read 3377 times on Poetry Connection.

You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.

Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your... (Read full poem)

With a jar of wine I sit by the flowering trees.
I drink alone, and where are my friends?
Ah, the moon above looks down on me;
I call and lift my cup to his brightness.
And see, there goes my shadow before me.
Ho! We're a party of three, I... (Read full poem)

9. The Centenarian - written by Robert William Service
From Rhymes for My Rags. Read 705 times on Poetry Connection.

Great Grandfather was ninety-nine
     And so it was our one dread,
That though his health was superfine
     He'd fail to make the hundred.
Though he was not a rolling stone
     No moss he seemed to gather:
A patriarch of brawn and bone... (Read full poem)

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done.
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy... (Read full poem)

11. Peter - written by Marianne Moore
From The Riverside Anthology of Literature. Published in 1935. Read 2231 times on Poetry Connection.

Strong and slippery,
built for the midnight grass-party
confronted by four cats, he sleeps his time away--
the detached first claw on the foreleg corresponding
to the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small tuft of fronds
or katydid-legs above each... (Read full poem)

But my Hiawatha's patience,
His politeness and his patience,
Unaccountably had vanished,
And he left that happy party.
Neither did he leave them slowly,
With the calm deliberation,
The intense deliberation
Of a photographic artist:
But he... (Read full poem)

13. To Eliza - written by Lord Byron
Read 566 times on Poetry Connection.

Eliza, what fools are the Mussulman sect, 
Who to woman deny the soul's future existence!
Could they see thee, Eliza, they'd own their defect,
And this doctrine would meet with a general resistance.

Had their prophet possess'd half an atom... (Read full poem)

Truce, gentle Love, a parley now I crave; 
Methinks 'tis long since first these wars begun; 
Nor thou nor I the better yet can have; 
Bad is the match where neither party won. 
I offer free conditions of fair peace, 
My heart for hostage that... (Read full poem)

15. Wirers - written by Siegfried Sassoon
Read 834 times on Poetry Connection.

‘Pass it along, the wiring party’s going out’— 
And yawning sentries mumble, ‘Wirers going out.’ 
Unravelling; twisting; hammering stakes with muffled thud, 
They toil with stealthy haste and anger in their blood. 

The Boche sends up a flare.... (Read full poem)

Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to... (Read full poem)

17. The Federal Bus Conductor and the Old Lady - written by Andrew Barton Paterson
Read 404 times on Poetry Connection.

Now 'urry, Mrs New South Wales, and come along of us, 
We're all a-goin' ridin' in the Federation 'bus. 
A fam'ly party, don't you know -- yes, Queenslans's comin', too, 
You can't afford it! Go along! We've kep' box seat for you.... (Read full poem)

Bob Briggs went in for Government,
      And helps to run the State;
Some day they say he'll represent
      His party in debate:
But with punk politics his job,
      I do not envy Bob.
      
Jim Jones went in for writing books,
      Best sellers... (Read full poem)

19. Silver Wedding - written by Vernon Scannell
From From "Ten Contemporary Poets" compiled and edited by Maurice Wollman, Harrap 1963. Read 1747 times on Poetry Connection.

Silver Wedding

The party is over and I sit among
The flotsam that its passing leaves,
The dirty glasses and fag-ends:
Outside, a black wind grieves.

Two decades and a half of marriage;
It does not really seem as long,
Of youth's ebullient... (Read full poem)

Pro Bono Publico 
Went out the streets to scan, 
And marching to and fro 
He met a seedy man, 
Who did a tale unfold 
In solemn tones and slow 
And this is what he told 
Pro Bono Publico. 

"For many years I led 
The people's onward... (Read full poem)

21. Come Gather Round Me, Parnellites - written by William Butler Yeats
From New Poems. Published in 1938. Read 1690 times on Poetry Connection.

Come gather round me, Parnellites,
And praise our chosen man;
Stand upright on your legs awhile,
Stand upright while you can,
For soon we lie where he is laid,
And he is underground;
Come fill up all those glasses
And pass the bottle round.

And... (Read full poem)

Chris Watson, of the Parliament, 
By his Caucus Gods he swore 
That the great Labor Party 
Should suffer wrong no more. 
By his Caucus Gods he swore it, 
And named a trysting day, 
And bade his Socialists ride forth, 
East and west and south... (Read full poem)

23. The All Right Un - written by Andrew Barton Paterson
Read 543 times on Poetry Connection.

He came from "further out", 
That land of fear and drought 
And dust and gravel. 
He got a touch of sun, 
And rested at the run 
Until his cure was done, 
And he could travel. 
When spring had decked the plain, 
He flitted off again 
As... (Read full poem)

[This little song describes the different members 
of the party just spoken of.]

WHY pacest thou, my neighbour fair,

The garden all alone?
If house and land thou seek'st to guard,

I'd thee as mistress own.

My brother sought the... (Read full poem)

25. Concert Party - written by Siegfried Sassoon
Published in 1918. Read 586 times on Poetry Connection.

(EGYPTIAN BASE CAMP)


They are gathering round.... 
Out of the twilight; over the grey-blue sand, 
Shoals of low-jargoning men drift inward to the sound— 
The jangle and throb of a piano ... tum-ti-tum... 
Drawn by a lamp, they come 
Out of... (Read full poem)