TEI | Collected Poems of John Holmes | ID: c821gw134

Collected Poems of John Holmes

Holmes, John A., Jr.

2002

Old groping

This old groping that men know,

That makes them search -

Search blindly, in that they do not know

Their aim, that in a church

Makes them shield their eyes

And pray; that makes them sail

Around the earth to find

New lands, and lose, and die, and fail

In searching -

What is this quest?

Why do they blindly grope,

What lights the clear and steady flame

That burns them? Why do they dream and hope,

And what is the end,

And what the ultimate aim?

Information
Table Of Contents

Description

This text is a compilation of poems by John Holmes.

This object is in collection

John A. Holmes papers

Subject

Temporal

2002

Permanent URL

http://hdl.handle.net/10427/14894

Extent

1358934bytes

ID:: c821gw134
Component ID:: tufts:UA069.005.DO.00013
To Cite:: TARC Citation Guide EndNote
Usage:: Detailed Rights

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	Title Page
	Editor's Note
	On hearing someone say that every possible subject has been covered in poetry
	Reminder
	Sonnet [To someone I know]
	Low fog
	[Lines about a great space]
	Sanctuary
	To Joanne
	The soul's loneliness
	You, who understood
	Morning
	What things I can
	The father
	The gleam
	My tree
	My little world
	The vale impassable
	The forgotten hero
	The garden
	Verbosity
	[Man]
	A monument
	A death at evening
	Recipe for a journey
	Evening
	From a window
	Sight and death
	In the days when the eternal hills go down
	Something from the soft wind
	Noon
	The moon
	In a time of misunderstanding
	Demand
	The constant battle
	Sleepless
	A prayer [A prayer on failing eyesight]
	On being thankful
	Pleasant solitude
	[Untitled]
	Somehow, sometime, somewhere
	[Untitled]
	The pines
	A shield and a strong defence
	The high heart
	Bewilderment in church
	Advice on success in writing poetry
	Pierrot
	Encouragement
	Three wishes
	Swinging
	Tobacco and a pipe
	Grandmother's parlor
	Sailing
	O little sails, make haste!
	Night
	Walking on the beach
	From the Window
	On the contemplation of vastness
	The king passes by
	Youth
	Beneath a tree
	Beyond the hill
	Books
	To a statuette of a little girl
	Wanderer's song
	Joshua Peabody
	Against poms and carelessness
	The way of least resistance
	Voice of the sea
	A letter unopened on my desk
	Fragments: Far horizon
	Fragments: The inquiring mind
	Fragments: The cigarette
	Fragments: History repeats
	Fragments: Yesterday, to-day, to-morrow
	Fragments: After the forest fire
	Fragments: Down to earth
	Fragments: Butter side down
	Fragments: A conversation
	Fragments: Fear
	Fragments: Inconsistency
	Fragments: A secret laughter
	To a small boy learning to read
	Reading sonnets late at night
	Autumn
	Lonely
	Walking home at night
	A ship's figure-head
	This house will never need
	Conversation
	Dusk falls down the roofs
	Moment
	Words for a minuet
	Make yourself a way
	Languor
	A childish chant
	Twice born
	Suddenly I knew
	Coming home from the library
	The visitor
	Four Songs
	The willow tree
	Rhymes of a very small boy
	Big enough
	Baggage into the land of Nod
	Song - Come again with me to Plymouth
	Portrait
	Portrait [The Great Man]
	A hopeful lover
	Portrait of a girl
	Writing in the woods
	Memory of A. L.
	Portrait
	The prisoner
	The warehouseman
	A timid lover
	Message to be found a hundred years hence
	What poetry is
	Wind on a hill
	Two o'clock
	Song
	Another sleeps
	Portrait [His enemy]
	Portrait
	Departure
	A fancy
	At the end
	The eyesore
	The candle
	An intruder
	Counterpoint
	The street car
	Equality
	Petulant
	On a hillside
	Gifts
	An old man tells a story
	Peccavi
	Old groping
	Make believe
	Josita's banjo song
	Let it be said
	A yonge manne; an olde tale
	The cantadours pass by
	I sing
	Thoughts of a man asleep
	To poets: advice
	Amaze
	The reverent lover
	A quotation
	The unseen lady
	My bookshelf
	Thoughts at night
	Suspicion
	Fall in Massachusetts
	Music
	America
	I remember
	Lines to an old dish
	Window glass
	Sonnet
	At a funeral
	Disillusionment
	The seekers
	Il Penseroso (R.S.)
	Effect of praise
	When hearts are young
	The clean winds
	The lover serenades
	The little street
	Laughter
	To one gone
	The dancers
	A poet burns some poems
	Writing
	Walking in the rain
	A sacrifice to the sun
	To my cousin, H.R.B.
	The boat
	Poem
	Overture
	Snow
	Hope
	A song for you
	Window dreaming
	Rain the morning after
	A man's club
	From the tower
	Fairies by night
	The young poet
	Rain
	Say good night
	The thought of you
	A youth
	Nocturne
	Courage
	Cinquain
	Circles
	The cabin boy climbs the crow's nest
	On going to bed
	Three roads
	1492
	October
	Pan
	Soldiers
	To a girl who has black eyes
	The hilly place
	The call
	Lines
	The poet's prayer
	Futility
	The priest
	Meditation
	Two songs
	Cappricco
	Stars
	Westward ho!
	Rain
	A man remembers suddenly
	At the museum
	Morning in the forest
	A charm to keep away evil
	The lover grows older
	An apology
	An old legend retold on the occasion of a certain death
	Aftermath
	Old words
	Raw material
	Masks
	The grace of god
	Fragment
	Dusk
	The skylark's flight
	The old chief
	Sudden pity
	To a young man cleaning a motor-car
	Labor
	An old friend
	Fragment from an old dance
	A parting of the way
	Song of my elf
	Moon to a vagabond child
	The violinist
	A toast
	Dream places
	The second-hand bookshop
	The fireplace
	The breeze
	The seeker
	The market
	The world, the world...
	Trees
	You asked
	Excuse
	Ideals
	Recapture
	Ask me not now
	Youth goes forth
	Peace
	Outburst
	Prayer against blindness
	A memory
	Who has not known
	The pure of heart
	A life
	At camp-fire
	Book-reading
	The end of day
	In the arbor
	A fireplace in December
	Poems on pictures
	Laus perennis
	Steps
	The angel of love
	Matinata
	To a player at the Globe
	A portrait [My sister]
	An old poet
	Pageant
	Ruin
	From a hollow in the woods
	Twenty
	October dusk
	Life
	Direction
	The shining road
	Old music
	Song to be said to my pillow
	Sounds
	If ever
	Fragment
	A door
	After
	Relief
	Passing
	Trees in the wind
	Candles
	Weary
	The fog
	The puddle
	[Mood] Workman
	Conrad has an evening
	The child on the other shore
	Song
	A pale lady looks in a deep well
	A life
	Poetry and music [Poem] [A poem can tell]
	For the grave of unknown citizens
	To himself
	The coward
	[Moment macabre: symphony]
	Midnight
	Girl with a Spanish shawl (a picture)
	Conrad sleeping
	Tell me why
	Questioning
	An inscription
	An old, old man
	Rather than this
	If this were the last
	Portrait [His World]
	A letter in March
	Rocks
	Your head
	Money
	The old man and the moon
	The flaming lights
	Home
	The long watch
	On quiet hill
	Consideration of a friend
	Song
	Price of wisdom
	Consecrate
	Jingle verse: The Boston Wanderlust
	A sailor's R.I.P.
	Turn from the fire
	Ballad of an ordinary man
	What might have been
	Ease after pain
	An April afternoon
	Stone and roots
	To Peter, who is not a real person
	Two sonnets on death and immortal man [The cold shadow]
	To a girl I know
	My enemy
	On the new moon
	Mowing
	The shore
	Wind in the night
	Quickening
	On awakening suddenly
	To the easily forgotten
	On seeing the title 'Heart of darkness'
	The marchers in the shadow
	Poem
	The hour
	Peter has an evening
	Sonnet
	Tower of glass
	My attic room
	Tir na n'og
	Keys
	The philosopher at home
	Counsel from a poet, middle-aged
	The answer afterwards
	Waking [One way of waking]
	The servants of the heart
	The password
	An armchair journey
	In praise of my god
	A tide of dreams
	Good bye to a garden
	The old men
	Prayer to be shouted
	The clock strikes ten [The bell]
	To a careful young man
	Now!
	This was the way
	For he hath fed
	Memory
	Program
	Cazevieille [Part one: The fire; Part two: Walking and rowing; Part three: Others; Part four: Things there are only one of; Part five: Plum island
	Knowing what I know
	To losers
	Rainy April noon
	Passage to India [What dragons]
	The word [Bird of the morning sea]
	To music first
	The right word
	Burn!
	Who that has heard him
	Einsteinian [Wind like music]
	Ten years old before the mast
	Three woodcuts: Motor at midnight; Ship in the night; Downtown ritual
	The way the eagles die
	Even a prayer
	Adventures in the dark
	March 17, 1939 [Matriarch]
	Native timber
	The launching
	Circumstance unforeseen
	Special performance
	A matter of time
	Whatever I have said before [Sun Worshipper]
	New England names
	Class poem 1929, Tufts College
	Sell it to them, ad man!
	In a college coffee house [College coffee house]
	Prologue for poems
	Dutch dream
	Marginal notes
	Change
	Citizen saint
	Civic ceremony
	Clean tall green still
	Collectives
	Coming of age
	Cool
	Country morning
	Day among many
	Death be not proud
	Death this year
	Portrait
	Sometimes to be alone
	Monument
	Lying awake
	Election
	The eleventh commandment
	Errata
	Every day in books
	Faculty committee on teaching
	Familiar tale
	The family face
	Family letter [In our times]
	Father
	Hard times
	Hinbad
	A meditation
	Barberry
	Like spring
	The symbols
	Bless
	The soul in the possession
	Being so
	The fear of dying
	Fieldbook revised [Fieldbook for summer]
	The flying earth
	Ritual - For a cow to be killed [For a cow before killing] [Cow be killed]
	Four and a half [Boy]
	Grass
	Go, cries the heart
	Great law
	The green door
	Having New England fathers
	Hearing music
	Heart's almanac
	Herself
	I can hardly wait
	I live in a world
	Incredible greeting
	Journey's end
	The known world [Map of my country]
	The landmark
	Rock in the ground
	Do you know?
	The laws [Order clearly asking]
	Let them stand: for Robert Nichols, geologist
	The letter
	Letter to my mother
	Lines beginning 'I'
	Address to the living
	Alarm
	Along the row
	Anecdote of Robert Frost
	The architects
	As the heart beats
	Auction
	Birthday: at Richard Eberhart's fiftieth
	Boy in August
	Boy to anyone
	Bucyrus [Booth, Bucyrus & Brazil]
	Business-like letter
	Carry me back
	The flowers (first version) [Home from Woodlawn]
	The certainty
	Edward Hicks's old picture
	Faithful reader
	The new porch
	Two of a kind
	In the Gardner museum
	The war between the states
	Margaret's choice
	Everyone knows about Boston
	Mailman blues
	The mask the living wear
	Memorandum of agreement
	Memory [Memory's color]
	Mercator
	Metaphor for my son
	The mirror
	Montaigne's pate
	Misery [Essay on misery]
	People in the street [At thirty-five]
	Do not pity the young
	West mountain spring [West mountain water]
	The second wonder
	The place he seeks
	The enduring
	New Proverbs
	The new view [Youth and age]
	Noah his ark
	Northward letter [In this moment]
	Nothing told me
	Old men and young men
	One day's rain
	Ordeal by love
	The overgrown back yard
	Panther in my mind [The panther in the mind]
	The people's peace
	Peter at his mirror
	But choose
	The pity is
	The place of light
	Portrait
	Open letter [Christmas letter] [From tonight]
	Pour down
	Puritan ancestor
	Questions for the candidate
	Reading aloud
	The rebellion
	The saving grace
	Seasonal wisdom
	The secret
	Self portrait
	Send, send
	Silence
	Since you asked
	The skin of your face
	Sleep and poetry
	Sonnet for solace [O heart be quick]
	To the queen's men [Sonnet to the queen's men]
	Spring is the peace
	Summer morning porch (Chautauqua Lake)
	Summer opera
	September valentine
	Better than all [Better than all these]
	Take home this heart
	Then the sun came out
	The new art
	Then he will sleep
	Till music cries again
	To keep and not to keep [These conditions] [What to keep, what to lose]
	To live in
	The tower stands
	To my sisters and my brother [To my teacher]
	Truth about pictures
	Two and a little house
	The unforgiven
	Unlikely tale
	Unpublished preface to a Ph.D. thesis
	Ten-thirty class
	The valiant
	Very young, very old
	The voice
	Poem for my 27th year [For the poet's birthday]
	All except Mary Ann
	The way the stars went up
	Weather making
	What the books do
	Who are they?
	A willing suspension
	Without honor
	The wreath
	Hello
	Underwater
	[Untitled]
	[Untitled]
	Sally [Warning with love]
	One place
	These ghosts
	Mellow and merry
	Living in cities
	Various loyalties
	Arrows and angry snakes
	Old Adam in us
	After two years
	King time
	The secret epilogue [Epilogue untold]
	That is the way you look [Face to face]
	Legend and truth
	From everlasting unto everlasting
	If I were old [The bitter thought]
	The mind by day
	Poets take heart
	You living look [A hundred years from now]
	Two kinds: bold and shy
	The voice
	Hold it up to the light
	Words of my own
	Dialogue alone [Even now]
	A cure of guilt
	The core [One sound]
	Country senses
	Chair in the field
	The broken one
	Between thousand and thousands
	Few in a million
	The fiery element
	The flower
	The folding key
	For sports section of Jumbo Book
	The fortune teller
	From Brooklyn
	Guard of honor
	Hamlet with a license
	Hearing Margaret, aged four
	Her walking
	Holiday, with gods
	I am singing. We are singing.
	I never get any work done
	If not silence, then restraint
	Living music
	Maybe for love [The carver and the wood]
	A lot going on
	The modern poet
	Moment of truth
	Mr. Holmes's brother
	My father's silence
	On a magazine picture of a mass burial
	Out of the room
	The oyster [The oyster as art]
	The pains of poetry
	Photograph of Robert Frost
	Plain girl: Sunday noon
	Portrait [Biography]
	A prayer on the night before Easter [Prayer on the night before Easter]
	Re-arrangements
	Remembering you, long after
	The room
	The secret
	The Somerset Dam for supper
	To my mother
	Dog in the house
	The sickle
	It says in the book
	Poem number three ninety three
	Instead of albums
	The library: capitol of the world
	The Murdock saga
	Incoming mail [I can manage multiplicity]
	The good guys and the bad guys
	The ballad of Albert Woolson
	[Untitled]
	Poor Johnny roll
	The pipe which I was gave by Santa Claus
	Man as bear
	My old schools
	The thrifty elephant
	Do I not rage?
	For Sam Moses, printer
	Alight on the hill
	Time and my father's cousin
	The poet
	Billingham street [Our street]
	Biography
	Books
	Love poems
	[Untitled]
	[Untitled]
	Bird pavilion
	On the twenty second anniversary
	The crisis at Valley Forge, 1931
	Contradictions in an ultimate spring
	Any next year
	Cultivator
	Talk
	Weathermen
	Overheard
	To be forty
	Something out there
	Letter to S.V.B. [Stephen Vincent Benet] [Dear Steve]
	Thoughts on beginning another shaving stick
	Group photograph
	Program note [Three P's presents...]
	Goodbye to the campus
	Let the joyful speak [Your kind of joy]
	The fence
	Spring on the Hill
	Letter about weather
	The source
	The praise of poetry
	For Charles Gott [Lament for the dead] [The inconsolable]
	Boy reading
	The old professor
	The rewards of teaching
	Faculty counselor [In the dean's office]
	Teaching program
	In a classroom
	The name
	Somebody's bad luck
	The spiral
	The sword &
	A taste for revenge
	Teacher retired to Maine
	The thought
	Time no time
	To the girls formerly of Sigma Kappa at Tufts University and Cornell University
	To the gurnet
	True murder's course
	King Richard seventh
	The valley
	The wind in the elm trees
	A wish
	The word heart
	World the way it is
	Dream
	Figure of speech
	For D.H.
	I can never be alone
	In cities
	Interior
	Young man's poem
	Tireless testament [Testament]
	The chest of time
	Brother to brother, 1859
	The phoenix promise
	At a country fair
	Fable
	In danger safely
	Aware of legends
	Diver
	Death in the back yard
	The expectation [Expectations]
	O Lord of stars and sunlight
	Lady is a lady
	The long walk alone [Renewal]
	Odd moment
	The good, the great, the wise
	The secret tide
	The mountain farm
	An old song with a new refrain
	Penny for your thoughts
	Portrait two
	Street scene
	The summer after
	Remembered nights
	Moonrise
	Nine o'clock
	Once in August
	The time is good
	The winter
	The apple
	Voices in a new world
	The woman who would not close her eyes
	Green things growing
	Death of a leaf
	Come and play
	Moment
	Fears
	He knows it is safe
	Is calm the thing?
	Maybe tomorrow
	Not you like music
	O Time!
	On finding certain lines marked in Santayana's sonnets
	Plainly said
	Prayer for to-morrow
	Sonnet to a friend twice my age
	Things I love
	Wars that rage: sonnet
	The watcher in the street
	Weave a circle round him
	Young promise
	Page in a diary: For Doris to remember the day by
	Pain I gave you
	A penny poem
	Perfectly deathless poem to Betty Rosenthal from John Holmes on receiving a necktie
	Photographer's Sunday
	Plato's table
	Poem for my 32nd birthday
	Poetry [Living for poetry]
	Whatever winds
	Reflection of a shadow
	The responsibilities
	Rhyme of going to the store [Going to the store]
	Shake well, throw away
	Should I?
	Sky once more
	Some in dreams
	Song
	Sonnet to a dancing-partner
	Sort of spring song, with ah!
	So you will know
	Spring: a sermon [The double root]
	Spring morning
	Subject for a poem
	Suddenly birds
	Sword on the wall
	Take a lot of people
	The tall men
	The Passing king
	To one I dislike
	A thing to say
	Time's noise
	...To a desert island
	Advice
	Against growing old
	Average reader
	Belladonna
	Big girl now
	Book-review
	Bumps in the night
	Children try
	Clouds on a summer night
	Country quiet remembered
	Curse
	Deep shore
	Dorothy
	The druids
	At night
	Epitaph for Peter if he should die
	Essay of saints
	Examination
	An exercise in humility
	Ezra Pound
	The face
	Wings
	Four friends
	Gathering poem [Your move]
	Golden egg
	Hullaballou
	Holy Ballou
	Hello Ballou
	Hail Ballou
	The hamlet
	Hearing them speak
	His dazzled look [The look]
	How do I love thee?
	To a friend too kind
	To be tacked on the bulletin board at any writers' conference
	To Isabel with some poems
	Twenty eight Billingham Street
	Two men talking
	Understandable poem
	The visiting poets
	Cal Lowell [The visiting poets]
	We are waiting
	Wherever you lie
	[Untitled]
	Window
	Word from the west
	Words are so exciting
	The young men speaking
	[Untitled]
	Hush
	I do it myself [I always did]
	In a dark wood
	A kind of silence
	Ladies and gentlemen ...
	Last night
	Letter to a young poet
	Letters: a metaphor
	A long poem entitled 'I love the Hillside Hardware & Paint Co.'
	First love recalled
	A man who came home late at night
	Margaret
	Music to me
	My pasenger [My passenger]
	My wife's grandfather's ring
	New name
	New woman in the house
	Next year's music
	No more music
	One act play
	One beautiful moment
	Love-child
	The cottage of broken dreams
	Woodrow-Wilson was-a-hero
	Open letter [Maybe you]
	Preface
	Winter solstice
	Look east, look west
	The weight
	Past understanding
	A station in the journey
	Interruption
	1918: Armistice
	The change
	[Untitled]
	[Untitled]
	[Untitled]
	[Untitled]
	[Untitled]
	[Untitled]
	[Untitled]
	[Untitled]
	[Untitled]
	Historical event
	All the dead and some poets
	The world in my time [The world in my own time]
	Whose name was writ in water
	Warning
	Primitive
	Totem
	Slow child
	This time surely
	Portrait: My wife
	The island
	You have an interesting mind
	The world is one
	A man's world
	Child: Spring
	Cook's tour
	A room with books [Room with books]
	Far enough
	Hat weather
	The late Mr. Thorpe
	Looking at books
	A natural law
	First day
	Being young
	Fable with no moral
	Mornings at eleven
	The bookworm turns
	A sweet hope once
	Sweetly solemn thought
	Those were the days
	Table for one
	Work in progress
	The critic on the pan
	Dinner for eight
	The miserable gardener
	Good-night! Good-night!
	Letter to three men
	Political strategy
	To my teachers
	Notes for a history of sleep
	Thinker in bed
	[Untitled]
	[Untitled]
	Design for a skyscraper
	Problem father
	Wallpaper poem
	The double life
	Fair warning
	This one is father
	[Untitled]
	Incredulous
	A year after
	[Untitled]
	Ode for the hundredth birthday of William Upham
	[Untitled]
	Peter sleeping
	Epitaph for any New Yorker
	Peter reads far into the night
	Letter from an exile
	Usually
	The blessing
	Nineteen fifty one
	Old cheese and cold beer
	What the book salesman said
	Words enough
	Do you remember
	The hunted
	Tomorrow you
	Ballad of some of the boys
	The talking mirror
	Color
	The day's news
	What we hate most
	The snow-child
	For Karl Magnus Armens
	Boy at four
	Hummingbird and seagull
	The extent of his acres
	To remember one another
	All's well that ends
	John Holmes, his book
	The chance
	Lesson in the monkey-house
	The title-page
	Faculty and administration section
	The senior class section
	The activities section
	The organizations section
	The fraternities section
	Ode for scene 1, 'Hullaballou'
	Poetry defined
	On a cage of mice brought home for the week of school vacation
	Nothing odd
	Free will and fire-truck
	Verses in a very old tradition
	The stone
	The spring sun
	The fifty-first
	Overheard
	A prayer
	Evening meal in the twentieth century
	A little night-wording