The Giant Book of Poetry (2006)

William H. Roetzheim

Level 4 Press (2006)

Rating:

★★★★☆

Tags:

Juvenile Nonfiction, Poetry, General, Anthologies, American, Collections, English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh

Juvenile Nonfictionttt Poetryttt Generalttt Anthologiesttt Americanttt Collectionsttt English; Irish; Scottish; Welshttt

Product Description

Winner or finalist in the "Best Books" National Book Award Poetry Anthology of the Year; Benjamin Franklin Audio Book of the Year; Foreword Magazine Audio Book of the Year; and the Bill Fisher Award for Best New Fiction. Be prepared for the unusual as professional actors bring the poems of The Giant Book of Poetry to life in these dramatic interpretations. Poems are grouped by Priorities; The march of time; Dust unto dust; A passageway; Heaven, hell, purgatory; Immortality; and The end of the world. Fifty-One poems in total.

The Giant Book of Poetry

2006 | 752 | ISBN: 0976800128

The Giant Book of Poetry is an illustrated anthology of over 575 poems, more than 750 pages and over 60 illustrations representing ancient, classical, modern, and contemporary time periods along with a good selection of English translations of world poets. Footnotes include notes on form, definitions for unusual words, and hints on interpretation. The book includes an introduction by the editor and an appendix covering poetry meter, as well as indexes by author, title, subject, source language, and first line. ...

About the Author

William Roetzheim authored seventeen published books, over 100 articles, three columns, and fifteen spoken word CDs. He was winner or finalist in "Best Books" National Poetry Anthology of the Year and Poetry Book of the Year; Benjamin Franklin Audio Book of the Year; Foreword Magazine Audio Book of the Year; and the Bill Fisher Award for Best New Fiction.

The Giant Book of Poetry

William H. Roetzheim, Editor

Copyright acknowledgements for poems contained in this work are contained in the acknowledgement section at the end of this work, which shall be considered an extension of this copyright page.

The special contents of this edition

are Copyright © 2006 by William H. Roetzheim

This book was illustrated by

William H. Roetzheim

The author would like to thank Chris McDonald for assistance researching author dates of birth and Marshall Harvey for help with copyediting the manuscript.

Published by Level Four Press, 13518 Jamul Drive,

Jamul, CA 91935-1635 USA.

www.Level4Press.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Giant Book of Poetry

edited by William H. Roetzheim

p. cm.

1. Poetry 2. English poetry. 3. American Poetry. I. Roetzheim, William H.

Library of Congress Control Number:2005903197

This book is printed on acid-neutral archival Quality paper.

Printed and bound in the Canada.

Dedication

To my wife Marianne—

our relationship is the poetry that matters.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction

Level Four Poetry Manifesto

Organization of the Poems

A Note on Meter

A Request for Understanding and Assistance

Poems

Unknown (possibly 4,000 BC)

Ishtar

Archilochos (circa 700 BC – 650 BC)

Will, lost in a sea of trouble

The Bible

Address of Ruth to Naomi

Mei Sheng (Circe 140 BC)

The Beautiful Toilet

Horace (65 BC – 8 BC)

The young bloods come less often now

Norse Myth (circa 50 BC)

from The Longbeards’ Saga

Petronius Arbiter (27 AD – 66 AD)

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short

Tao Yuan-ming (To-Em-Mei) (365-427)

The Unmoving Cloud

Li Po (701 – 762)

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

Omar Khayam (1044-1123)

XI

XXIII

XXVIII

LI

Moritake (1452 – 1540)

One fallen flower

Sir Philip Sidney (1554 – 1586)

A Ditty

Be Your Words Made, Good Sir of Indian Ware

Loving in Truth

To Sleep

Robert Greene (1560 – 1592)

Content

Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

Love’s Farewell

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

All the World’s a Stage

Sonnet XVII

Sonnet XVIII

Sonnet XXXII

Sonnet LV

Sonnet CXXX

Sonnet CXXXVIII

Sonnet CXLIII

Sonnet CXLVII

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Thomas Campion (1567 – 1619)

Integer Vitae

Sir Henry Wotton (1568 – 1639)

Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton′s Wife

John Donne (1572-1631)

Community

Confined Love

Death

The Computation

The Curse

William Drummond (1585 – 1649)

Life

Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674)

To the Virgins

Upon Julia’s Clothes

Thomas Carew (1595 – 1639)

Ingrateful Beauty Threatened

John Milton (1608 – 1674)

On His Blindness

Sir John Suckling (1609 – 1642)

Song: Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667)

Drinking

Richard Lovelace (1618 – 1658)

To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars

William Walsh (1663 – 1708)

Love and Jealousy

William Congreve (1670 – 1729)

False though she be to me and love

Ryusui (1691 – 1758)

A lost child crying

Jokun (circa 1700)

Ah! I intended

William Blake (1757 - 1827)

The Garden of Love

The Sick Rose

The Tiger

To See a World in a Grain of Sand

Robert Burns (1759 1796)

Epitaph for James Smith

Epitaph on a Henpecked SQuire

Epitaph on William Muir

Inconstancy in love

To A Louse

To A Mountain Daisy

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room

The Solitary Reaper

We are Seven

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Robert Southey (1774 – 1843)

After Blenheim

The Scholar

Walter Savage Landor (1775 – 1864)

On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday

Well I Remember

Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852)

An Argument

‘Tis the Last Rose of Summer

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)

She Walks in Beauty

So, we’ll go no more a-roving

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)

Music

Mutability

Song from Charles the First

Ozymandias

John Clare (1793 – 1864)

Badger

William Cullen Bryant (1794 – 1878)

A Presentiment

Mutation

Thanatopsis

The Hurricane

The Murdered Traveler

The Poet

The Strange Lady

To a Waterfowl

John Keats (1795 – 1821)

Isabella

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

O Blush Not So

This living hand, now warm and capable 1

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thomas Hood (1799 – 1845)

The Poet’s Fate

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)

Days

Hamatreya

The Rhodora

The Snow-Storm

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861)

Sonnets from the Portuguese – I

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XIV

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XX

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XLIII

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)

A Nameless Grave

Jugurtha

Killed at the Ford

King Witlaf’s Drinking-Horn

Nature

The Beleaguered City

The Fire of Drift-Wood

The Landlord’s Tale

The Phantom Ship

The Potter’s Wheel

The Rainy Day

The Three Silences of Molinos

Travels by the Fireside

Twilight

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 – 1892)

Autumn Thoughts

By their Works

Forgiveness

Trust

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894)

Sun and Shadow

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

Annabel Lee

For Annie

The Raven

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)

Come Not, When I am Dead

Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Vivien’s Song

Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)

A Toccata of Galuppi’s

Meeting at Night

My Last Duchess

Never the Time and the Place

Porphyria’s Lover

The Confessional

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Edward Lear (1812 – 1888)

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

Emily Bronte (1818 – 1848)

I am the Only Being Whose Doom

Charles Kingsley (1819 – 1875)

Young and Old

Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)

Darest Thou Now O Soul

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

My Legacy

O Captain! My Captain

Song of Prudence

This Compost

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867)

A Carrion

from Fuses I – on Love

from Fuses I – on Art

from Fuses I – on God

Heautontimoroumenos

Metamorphoses of the Vampire

Spleen

The Flask

The Ghostly Visitant

The Murderer’s Wine

The Pit

The Vampire

Coventry Patmore (1823 – 1896)

The Toys

Richard Henry Stoddard (1805 – 1923)

The Jar

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

A deed knocks first at thought

A narrow fellow in the grass

A word is dead

After great pain a formal feeling comes

Apparently with no surprise

Because I could not stop for death

Hope is the thing with feathers

I felt a funeral in my brain

I had been hungry all the years

I heard a fly buzz when I died

I like to see it lap the miles

I taste a liQuor never brewed

I’m nobody! Who are you?

I’ve Known a Heaven, Like a Tent

My life closed twice before its close

The Last Night

The Props Assist the House

The way I read a letter’s this

There came a wind like a bugle

There’s a certain slant of light

To make a prairie it takes a clover

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark

Wild nights! Wild nights!

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 – 1894)

Goblin Market

Remember

Song

The First Day

Lewis Carroll (1832 – 1898)

The Walrus and the Carpenter

Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928)

Channel firing

I look into my glass

The oxen

The Ruined Maid

Sidney Lanier (1842 – 1881)

The Revenge of Hamish

The Waving of the Corn

To Nannette Falk-Auerbach

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889)

Binsey Poplars

Carrion Comfort

Spring and Fall

The Windhover

Edward Rowland Sill (1847 – 1881)

Five Lives

William Ernest Henley (1849 – 1903)

Invictus

Eugene Field (1850 – 1895)

Little Boy Blue

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894)

Requiem

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 – 1919)

Solitude

A.E. Housman (1859 – 1936)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Terence, This is Stupid Stuff

They say my Verse is Sad: No Wonder

To an Athlete Dying Young

James B Naylor (1860 – 1902)

Authorship

Charles Perkins Stetson (1860 – 1935)

An Obstacle

Black Elk (1863 – 1950)

Everything the Power of the World Does is done in a circle

Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1930)

If

The Way Through the Woods

We and They

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)

A Dream of Death

Politics

The Ballad of Father Gilligan

The Indian upon God

The Sad Shepherd

Shiki (Masaoka Tseunenori) (1867 – 1902)

By that fallen house

Edgar Lee Masters (1868 – 1950)

Alexander Throckmorton

Aner Clute

Conrad Siever

Fiddler Jones

Silas Dement

Tom Beatty

Roka (1868 – 1927)

Winter rain deepens

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935)

Amaryllis

An Old Story

Haunted House

John Evereldown

Karma

Mr. Flood's Party

Reuben Bright

Richard Cory

Souvenir

Supremacy

The Dead Village

The Growth of “Lorraine”

The Mill

The Pity of the Leaves

The Sheaves

The Tavern

Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900)

In the desert

W.H. Davies (1871 – 1940)

Leisure

Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)

“Out, Out—”

A Brook in the City

A Dream Pang

A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey's Ears, and Some Books

A Late Walk

After Apple-Picking

An Old Man’s Winter Night

Birches

Death of the Hired Man

Fire and Ice

For Once, Then, Something

Good-by and Keep Cold

Home Burial

In a Disused Graveyard

Into My Own

Mending Wall

Misgiving

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Storm Fear

The Aim was Song

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things

The Onset

The Road Not Taken

The Vantage Point

The Wood-Pile

Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925)

A Decade

New Heavens for Old

Patterns

Robert Service (1874 – 1958)

Just Think!

Lost

My Madonna

On the Wire

The Ballad of Pious Pete

The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin

The Cremation of Sam McGee

The Shooting of Dan McGrew

The Smoking Frog

The Soldier of Fortune

The Wee Shop

Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946)

from Idem the Same, A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson, A Very Valentine

Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967)

Last Answers

The Junk Man

To Know Silence Perfectly

Vachel Lindsay (1879 – 1931)

The Horrid Voice of Science

Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)

The Snow Man

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Marjorie Allen Seiffert (1881 – 1968)

Cubist Portrait

William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

Danse Russe

The Act

The Last Words of My English Grandmother

The Red Wheelbarrow

The Three Graces

To Mark Anthony in Heaven

This is Just to Say

Tract

Sara Teasdale (1884 – 1933)

There will come soft rains

D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

From The Ship of Death

New Year’s Eve

Snake

Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

A Pact

Francesca

In a Station of the Metro

Lustra (from the Introduction)

Tame Cat

Salutation

The Eyes

The Garden

The Plunge

The Tree

Louis Untermeyer (1885 – 1972)

Long Feud

Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915)

The Soldier

Robinson Jeffers (1887 – 1962)

Fawn’s Foster-Mother

Joyce Kilmer (1887 – 1918)

Trees

Marianne Moore (1887 – 1972)

I May, I Might, I Must

Injudicious Gardening

Poetry

To a Steam Roller

T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Hysteria

Anna Akhmatova (1889 – 1966)

ReQuiem – Instead of a Preface

Archibald MacLeish (1892 – 1982)

Ars Poetica

Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950)

First Fig

Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918)

Dulce et Decorum Est

Lucian Blaga (1895 – 1961)

I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders

Miyazawa Kenji (1896 – 1933)

Daydreaming on the Trail

Louise Bogan (1897 – 1970)

from Beginning and End—Knowledge

Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1960)

from Wanderings — Chapter Heading

Wen I-to (1899 – 1946)

Dead Water

Anonymous

The Anvil—God’s Word

Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967)

Dream Deferred: Harlem

Evil

Maybe

Suicide’s Note

Stevie Smith (1902 – 1983)

Not Waving but Drowning

Sunt Leones

W.H. Auden (1907 – 1973)

Dichtung and Wahrheit

From Selected Shorts

Marginalia (Extracts)

Zawgee (1907 – 1973)

The Way of the Water-Hyacinth

Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979)

Filling Station

In the Waiting Room

One Art

Sestina

The Armadillo

May Swenson (1913 – 1989)

A Couple

David Ignatow (1914 – 1997)

The Bagel

Randall Jarrell (1914 – 1965)

Bats

Next Day

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

William Stafford (1914 – 1993)

Traveling Through the Dark

Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953)

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Robert Lax (1915 – 2000)

Alley Violinist

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 – 2000)

A Song in the Front Yard

The Boy Died in my Alley

Robert Lowell (1917 – 1977)

Reading Myself

Keith Douglas (1920 – 1944)

Vergissmeinnicht

Howard Nemerov (1920 – 1991)

Gyroscope

Money

Snowflakes

Hayden Carruth (b. 1921)

Little Citizen, Little Survivor

Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

A Summer Morning

Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985)

An Arundel Tomb

Talking In Bed

This Be the Verse

James Dickey (1923 – 1997)

The Heaven of Animals

The Sheep Child

Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003)

How We Heard the Name

Love Song: I and Thou

Denise Levertov (1923 – 1997)

Consulting the Oracle

From a Plane

Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)

Imaginary Paintings

Reader

Silence and Dancing

The Story

Widow

Roberto Juarroz (1925 – 1995)

Any movement kills something

Donald Justice (1925 – 2004)

American Sketches

In Bertram’s Garden

Carolyn Kizer (b. 1925)

Bitch

The Ashes

Robert Creeley (1926 – 2005)

Heaven

I Know a Man

I’ll Win

Old Days

Place (“There’s a Way out”)

Thanksgiving’s Done

Galway Kinnell (b. 1927)

St. Francis and the Sow

James Wright (1927 – 1980)

A Blessing

Beginning

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Irving Feldman (b. 1928)

The Dream

Donald Hall (b. 1928)

My mother said

Names of Horses

The Porcelain Couple

Philip Levine (b. 1928)

Belle Isle, 1949

Sweet Will

Anne Sexton (1928 – 1974)

Her Kind

from The Death of the Fathers: 2.How We Danced

With Mercy for the Greedy

Thom Gunn (1929 – 2004)

Still Life

The Reassurance

Dan Pagis (1930 – 1986)

Conversation

Izet Sarajlic (b. 1930)

Luck in Sarajevo

Gary Snyder (b. 1930)

Axe Handles

What you should know to be a poet

Derek Walcott (b. 1930)

Love after Love

Miller Williams (b. 1930)

Listen

Etheridge Knight (1931 – 1991)

The Idea of Ancestry

The Warden Said to Me the Other Day

Tanikawa Shuntaro (b. 1931)

A Rudimentary Explanation of an Ideal Poem

from With Silence My Companion

From My Father’s Death

The Naif

Adrian Mitchell (b. 1932)

A Puppy Called Puberty

Heberto Padilla (1932 – 2000)

Landscapes

Alden Nowlan (1933 – 1983)

An Exchange of Gifts

It’s Good To Be Here

Weakness

Richard Shelton (b. 1933)

The Bus to Veracruz

The Stones

Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) (b. 1934)

“Wise I”

Rutger Kopland (b. 1934)

Natzweiler

Mark Strand (b. 1934)

Eating Poetry

Keeping Things Whole

Reading in Place

Paul Zimmer (b. 1934)

Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against the Blackboard

David R. Slavitt (b. 1935)

Titanic

C.K. Williams (b. 1936)

My Fly

The Dance

Gail Mazur (b. 1937)

In Houston

Diane Wakoski (b. 1937)

George Washington and the Loss of His Teeth

Robert Phillips (b. 1938)

Instrument of Choice

Charles Simic (b. 1938)

Country Fair

Fork

Northern Exposure

Prodigy

The Old World

Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)

Manet’s Olympia

Miss July Grows Older

Variations on the Word Sleep

You Fit Into Me

Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)

A Dream of Jealousy

Clearances

Punishment

ReQuiem for the Croppies

The Haw Lantern (Dedication)

Ted Kooser (b. 1939)

At the Office Early

Selecting a Reader

David Budbill (b. 1940)

Dilemma

The Three Goals

Thomas M. Disch (b. 1940)

The Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act

Robert Pinsky (b. 1940)

Shirt

Billy Collins (b. 1941)

Budapest

Forgetfulness

Introduction to Poetry

Nightclub

Not Touching

Passengers

Purity

Questions About Angels

Toi Derricotte (b. 1941)

Allen Ginsberg

Stephen Dobyns (b. 1941)

Tomatoes

Eamon Grennan (b. 1941)

Detail

Gerald Locklin (b. 1941)

Late Registration

Jack Myers (b. 1941)

Jake Addresses the World from the Garden

Nancy Vieira Couto (b. 1942)

Living in the La Brea Tar Pits

Stuart Dybek (b. 1942)

Brass Knuckles

Maroon

B. H. Fairchild (b. 1942)

The Dumka

Tom Hennen (b. 1942)

Soaking Up Sun

The Life of a Day

David Huddle (b. 1942)

Holes Commence Falling

Louis Jenkins (b. 1942)

A Place for Everything

William Matthews (1942 – 1997)

A Poetry Reading at West Point

Onions

Sharon Olds (b. 1942)

I Go Back to May 1937

Once

Quake Theory

Satan Says

The Pope’s Penis

The Promise

The Space Heater

Dave Smith (b. 1942)

Pulling a Pig’s Tail

Wreck in the Woods

Sharon Bryan (b. 1943)

Beyond Recall

Philip Schultz ((b. 1945)

The Answering Machine

Ronald Wallace (b. 1945)

Thirteen

Tom Wayman (b. 1945)

Did I Miss Anything?

Adam Zagajewski (b. 1945)

Electric Elegy

Moment

Andrei Codrescu (b. 1946)

Defense of the meek

Two fragments from Three Types of Loss, Part 3

Larry Levis (1946 – 1996)

The Poem You Asked For

Brian Patten (b. 1946)

Party Piece

Maura Stanton (b. 1946)

Living Apart

Lorna Goodison (b. 1947)

Birth Stone

Kaylin Haught (b. 1947)

God Says Yes to Me

Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947)

Blackberries

Camouflaging the Chimera

Facing It

Ode to the Maggot

Heather McHugh (b. 1948)

What He thought

Agha Shahid Ali (1949 – 2001)

The Dacca Gauzes

Mark Halliday (b. 1949)

Get It Again

Population

Robert Hedin (b. 1949)

The Old Liberators

Joyce Sutphen (b. 1949)

Living in the Body

Bruce Weigl (b. 1949)

What Saves Us

Claribel Alegria (b. 1950)

Documentary

Charles Bernstein (b. 1950)

Of Time and the Line

Jorie Graham (b. 1950)

Salmon

Michael Pettit (b. 1950)

Driving Lesson

Brigit Pegeen Kelly (b. 1951)

The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery

Timothy Russell (b. 1951)

In Simili Materia

Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (b. 1952)

Ceist na Teangan (The Language Issue)

Sean O’Brien (b. 1952)

Rain

Shu Ting (b. 1952)

Assembly Line

Mark Irwin (b. 1953)

Woolworth’s

Richard Jones (b. 1953)

Certain People

Leaving Town after the Funeral

The Bell

Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed

Robert Kinsley (b. 1953)

A Walk Along the Old Tracks

Mark Turpin (b. 1953)

Before Groundbreak

Don Fargo & Sons

Jobsite Wind

Pickwork

Poem

Waiting for Lumber

Kevin Hart (b. 1954)

The Room

Molly Fisk (b. 1955)

Intrigue

On the Disinclination to Scream

The Dry Tortugas

William Roetzheim (b. 1955)

Response to Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”

Fading into Background

Stretch Marks

Opera Season

Shadow Friends

Dean Young (b. 1955)

Only One of My Deaths

Mark Cox (b. 1956)

Geese

Style

Jim Daniels (b. 1956)

Wheels

Gu Gheng (1956 – 1993)

Ark

Li-Young Lee (b. 1957)

Eating Together

Persimmons

Julia Kasdorf (b. 1962)

What I Learned from My Mother

Ruth L. Schwartz (b. 1962)

The Swan at Edgewater Park

Patience Agbabi (b. 1965)

Transformatrix

Kate Clanchy (b. 1965)

War Poetry

David Berman (b. 1967)

Snow

Jackleen Holton (b. 1969)

American History

Free

Jane Flanders (b. 1984)

The House that Fear Built: Warsaw, 1943

Appendix A Notes on Meter

Index by Author

Index by Title

Index by Subject

Index to Translations

Index of First Lines

Index Pointing To Audio CD

Index Pointing From Audio CD

Acknowledgements

Introduction

This book started out as a flurry of yellow sticky notes. I was new to poetry and as I devoured hundreds of books of poetry over a four year period, I pasted yellow sticky notes on those poems I especially liked, along with jotted notes about my reaction to the poem. Eventually I decided to organize these into a single document to make it easier for me to find a particular poem I was interested in. It was a very small step from that document to this book.

A poetry book is commercially not the most practical book to write, and a broad based anthology such as this one is, perhaps, the least practical of the poetry books. So why do I think there’s a place for this book in the market? I see two primary readers for this book. I believe that for a reader relatively new to poetry (as I was a few short years ago), this is a great first book of poetry. It includes a broad cross section of poetry in terms of time written (classic versus modern versus contemporary), poetic form, and author nationality (although there is an emphasis on authors writing in English). In addition, because this book collects together many of the best loved poems of all time I view it as a good bedside companion for all poetry lovers.

I’ve included brief notes on many poems in the footnotes on each page. Each footnote includes the form of the poem, defines any unusual words, and where helpful for understanding, includes a brief note on interpretation. Poetic meter is covered in an appendix to this book, and the notes on form use terminology from that appendix.

The criteria for being included in this book are three-fold. First, I must have been exposed to the poem somewhere. I’m certainly aware that there are a large number of wonderful poems, and poets, not represented here simply because I have not yet had the pleasure of discovering their work. In those cases, I can only beg forgiveness and hold out the promise of future editions. Second, I must have liked the poem. There were no committees here, just a single editor. This means that the book will be filled with a lot of poems that are the style of poetry that I as a reader enjoy. To the extent that your taste in poetry is like mine, you will agree with my decisions. To the extent that your taste in poetry is unlike mine, you will disagree. Fortunately, my personal taste tends to be relatively broad so you are likely to find a good selection of poetic styles and subjects. Finally, the owner of the rights in the poem must have been willing to grant me the right to reprint the poem.

To better understand what I feel makes a poem good, and thereby to better understand my criteria for inclusion in this book, we need to turn to a document I wrote called “The Level Four Poetry Manifesto.”

Level Four Poetry Manifesto

Poetry can be thought of as operating at four levels.

Level One: A poem should communicate clearly to the reader at the denotative level. In other words, with even a casual reading of the poem, a non-sophisticated reader should understand this surface message. The poem should offer something to the reader at level one in payment for their time reading the poem. For example, this might be an interesting story, a memorable image, a surprise ending, or a shared emotion. Multiple readers of the poem should agree on the Level One message of the poem. Level One deals with the concrete. Level One makes the poem successful for the non-skilled reader.

Level Two: A poem should communicate subtly to the reader at the connotative level, creating a desired mood within the reader. This is accomplished through poetic techniques such as word choice with attention to connotative meaning, imagery, and music. Music may include meter, rhyme, consonance, assonance, and attention to the emotional message of various consonants, vowels, and phonemes. Level Two is focused on the skilled reader of poetry, but adds to the enjoyment for non-skilled readers as well.

Level Three: A poem may offer a separate, “hidden” message to the reader through the use of metaphor or similar techniques. In other words, all or part of the poem may represent something deeper in meaning than the surface description. The Level Three message should be recognizable to the skilled reader, and should be obvious to the non-skilled reader when it is pointed out.

Level Four: Level Four poetry uses a symbol to offer a separate, “hidden” message to the reader. Metaphors may be symbols, but symbols are not necessarily metaphors. The use of symbols in Level Four poetry has both literal and representative meanings and the representative meaning is flexible with the reader able to fill in the specific meaning that applies most closely to their personal life.

Let’s look at an example of a successful Level Four poem, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” Here’s the poem.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

On Level One, it’s a pleasant story about a walk through the woods. It’s an enjoyable poem without delving any deeper into it than this. On Level Two he uses very clear descriptions of the woods and the paths (imagery), meter (iambic tetrameter), and rhyme. On Level Three the path and woods are a metaphor for the narrator’s life. Finally, on Level Four the fork in the path is a symbol representing (quoting HowardM2 on the Poetry Free For All Bulletin Board): “a choice between two equally desirable alternatives one of which must be given up in order to have the other.” As a symbol, this would obviously apply to many readers and would be personalized to represent individual choices they have had to make during their lives.

Notice that the poem can be appreciated by a reader at any level without any awareness that it is operating at a higher level, but that the more carefully one studies the poem the more meaning is discovered. This is the mark of a successful poem within the Level Four manifesto. All of the poems in this book are successful at levels one and two, most go to level three, and many go to level four.

The heart of the Level Four Manifesto is that each level builds on the previous levels, and levels should not be skipped if a poem is to be successful. I say this fully recognizing that some very well known poets have intentionally skipped levels and that many well known poets and poetry journals gravitate toward poetry that skips Level One. For example, Gertrude Stein often skipped Level One and focused on Level Two. Many schools of poetry skipped Levels One and Two and jumped directly to Level Three. However, I would argue that this skipping of levels is exactly why the general readership of poetry shrank during most of the Twentieth Century. New readers of poetry need to begin reading and appreciating a poem at level one, then level two, then level three, and finally fully appreciating it at level four. I believe that all poems that last hundreds of years will operate on Levels One and Two, that most will also operate on Level Three, and that many will operate on Level Four. Similarly, I believe that poets should begin writing at Level One, then add level Two, then Level Three, then Level Four.

Meter is an important concept in fully enjoying poetry, whether you are reading it aloud or silently, but fully understanding and appreciating poetic meter can be somewhat intimidating to the new reader. I’ve included notes on meter in Appendix A for those readers that are ambitious.

Organization of the Poems

The poems are sorted by author date of birth, then alphabetically by author, then generally alphabetically by poem title. In some cases where poems are related somehow or have a natural order, I’ve adjusted the order of the poems for a given author. I elected to group them by author date of birth rather than grouping them by subject or author last name for the following reasons:

• It is easier to read a group of poems all written in a single writing style based on the century when written, rather than jumping back and forth between modern English and 16th or 17th century English.

• It is helpful to see the evolution of different schools of poetry over time. Just observing different poetic styles come into and go out of favor over the centuries is insightful.

A Note on Meter

In Appendix A I provide guidance on poetic meter that may be of interest to the advanced reader, however a quick note here is relevant for all readers. For many of the earlier poets writing in English, poetic meter requires that an archaic pronunciation be used for certain words ending in “ed”. For example, the work “banished” would be pronounced today in two syllables, or beats— ban-ished, however in Middle English it would be pronounced in three syllables, or beats—ban-ish-ed. Using the modern pronunciation will throw off the rhythm of these poems. To help the reader, in cases where the “ed” should be unnaturally pronounced as a separate syllable I have spelled it thus: “ëd.”

A few terms (slightly simplified here) will be especially helpful in reading the footnotes to the poems:

• Iambic: characterized by the pattern da-DUM;

• Dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter: Having lines with 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 feet (e.g., iambs) per line;

• Ballad: alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter lines;

• Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter; and

• Sonnet: Iambic pentameter, 14 lines.

A Request for Understanding and Assistance

Although I’ve worked hard on this book, it still contains errors. Any work of this size must have errors. I humbly request that you maintain a tolerant attitude toward these errors, and further request that you bring them to my attention so that I can fix them in future printings of the book. I can be reached care of Level 4 Press at 13518 Jamul Drive, Jamul, CA91935, or email at William@Level4Press.com.

I hope that you enjoy reading this book as much as I’ve enjoyed compiling it!

William H. Roetzheim

Editor

Poems

Unknown (possibly 4,000 BC)

Ishtar[1]

Translated from the Babylonian Cuneiform by Lewis Spence

The unconsecrated foe entered my courts,

placed his unwashed hands upon me,

and caused me to tremble.

Putting forth his hand

He smote me with fear.

He tore away my robe

and clothed his wife therein;

he stripped off my jewels

and placed them upon his daughter.

Like a quivering dove upon a beam

I sat.

Like a fleeing bird from my cranny

swiftly I passed

from my temple.

Like a bird

they caused me to fly.

Archilochos (circa 700 BC – 650 BC)

Will, lost in a sea of trouble[1]

translated by Kenneth Rexroth

Will, lost in a sea of trouble,

rise, save yourself from the whirlpool

of the enemies of willing.

Courage exposes ambushes.

Steadfastness destroys enemies.

Keep your victories hidden.

Do not sulk over defeat.

Accept good. Bend before evil.

Learn the rhythm which binds all men.

The Bible

Address of Ruth to Naomi[2]

Entreat me not to leave thee,

or to return from following after thee:

for whither thou goest,

I will go;

and where thou lodgest,

I will lodge.

Thy people shall be my people,

and thy god my god.

Where thou diest, will I die,

and there will I be buried.

The Lord do so to me, and more also,

if ought but death part thee and me.

Mei Sheng (Circe 140 BC)

The Beautiful Toilet[1]

Translated by Ezra Pound

Blue, blue is the grass about the river

and the willows have overfilled the close garden.

And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth,

white, white of face, hesitates, passing the door.

Slender, she puts forth a slender hand;

and she was a courtesan in the old days,

and she has married a sot,

who now goes drunkenly out

and leaves her too much alone.

Horace (65 BC – 8 BC)

The young bloods come less often now[2]

Translated from the Latin by James Michie

The young bloods come round less often now,

pelting your shutters and making a row

and robbing your beauty sleep. Now the door

clings lovingly close to the jamb—though, before,

it used to move on its hinge pretty fast.

Those were the days—and they’re almost past—

when lovers stood out all night long crying,

“Lydia, wake up! Save me! I’m dying!”

Soon your time’s coming to be turned down

and to feel the scorn of the men about town—a

cheap hag haunting alley places

O moonless nights when the wind from Thrace is

rising and raging, and so is the fire

in your raddled loins, the brute desire

that drives the mothers of horses mad.

You’ll be lonely then and complain how sad

that the gay young boys enjoy the sheen

of ivy best or the darker green

of myrtle: dry old leaves they send

as a gift to the east wind, winter’s friend.

Norse Myth (circa 50 BC)

from The Longbeards’ Saga[1]

Translated by Charles Kingsley

Out of the morning land,

over the snowdrifts,

beautiful Freya came

tripping to Scoring.

White were the moorlands,

and frozen before her;

green were the moorlands,

and blooming behind her.

Out of her gold locks

shaking the spring flowers,

out of her garments

shaking the south wind,

around in the birches

awaking the throstles,

and making chaste housewives all

long for their heroes home.

Loving and love-giving,

came she to Scoring.

Petronius Arbiter (27 AD – 66 AD)

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short[2]

Translated from the Latin by Ben Jonson

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short;

and done, we straight repent us of the sport:

let us not rush blindly on unto it,

like lustful beasts, that only know to do it:

for lust will languish, and that heat decay,

but thus, thus, keeping endless holy-day,

let us together closely lie, and kiss,

there is no labor, nor no shame in this;

this hath pleased, doth please and long will please; never can this decay,

but is beginning ever.

Tao Yuan-ming (To-Em-Mei) (365-427)

The Unmoving Cloud[1]

Translated by Ezra Pound

I.

The clouds have gathered, and gathered,

and the rain falls and falls,

the eight ply of the heavens

are all folded into one darkness,

and the wide, flat road stretches out.

I stop in my room toward the East, quiet, quiet,

I pat my new cask of wine.

My friends are estranged, or far distant,

I bow my head and stand still.

II.

Rain, rain, and the clouds have gathered,

the eight ply of the heavens are darkness,

the flat land is turned into river.

“Wine, wine, here is wine!”

I drink by my eastern window.

I think of talking and man,

and no boat, no carriage, approaches.

III.

The trees in my east-looking garden

are bursting out with new twigs,

they try to stir new affection,

and men say the sun and moon keep on moving

because they can’t find a soft seat.

IV.

The birds flutter to rest in my tree,

and I think I have heard them saying,

“It is not that there are no other men

But we like this fellow the best,

But however we long to speak

He can not know of our sorrow.”

Li Po (701 – 762)

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter[1]

Translated from the Chinese by Ezra Pound

While my hair was still cut straight

across my forehead

I played at the front gate, pulling flowers.

You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

you walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.

And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.

I never laughed, being bashful.

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

forever and forever and forever.

Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,

you went into far Ku-to-en,

by the river of swirling eddies,

and you have been gone five months.

The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out,

by the gate now, the moss is grown,

the different mosses,

too deep to clear them away!

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

over the grass in the West garden;

they hurt me. I grow older.

If you are coming down through the narrows

of the river Kiang,

please let me know beforehand,

and I will come out to meet you

as far as Cho-fu-sa.

Omar Khayam (1044-1123)

Translated by Edward Fitzgerald

XI[1]

Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,

a flask of wine, a book of verse—and thou

beside me singing in the wilderness—

and wilderness is paradise enow.

XXIII[2]

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

before we too into the dust descend;

dust into dust, and under dust, to lie,

sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and—sans end!

XXVIII[3]

With them the seed of wisdom did I sow,

and with my own hand labored it to grow:

and this was all the harvest that I reaped—

“I came like water, and like wind I go.”

LI[1]

The moving finger writes; and, having writ,

moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit

shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

Moritake (1452 – 1540)

One fallen flower[2]

Translated from the Japanese by Peter Beilenson

One fallen flower

returning to the Branch? … Oh no!

A white butterfly

Sir Philip Sidney (1554 – 1586)

A Ditty[3]

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,

by just exchange one for another given:

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,

there never was a better bargain driven:

my true-love hath my heart, and I have his.

My heart in me keeps him and me in one,

my heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:

he loves my heart, for once it was his own,

I cherish his because in me it bides:

my true-love hath my heart, and I have his.

Be Your Words Made, Good Sir of Indian Ware[1]

Be your words made, good Sir, of Indian ware,

that you allow me them by so small rate?

Or do you cutted Spartans imitate?

Or do you mean my tender ears to spare

that to my questions you so total are?

When I demand of Phoenix Stella’s state,

you say, forsooth, you left her well of late:

O God, think you that satisfies my care?

I would know whether she did sit or walk;

how clothed; how waited on; sighed she or smiled;

whereof, with whom, how often did she talk;

with what pastime time’s journey she beguiled;

if her lips deigned to sweeten my poor name:

say all; and, all well said, still say the same.

Loving in Truth[2]

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,

that She, dear She,

might take some pleasure of my pain;

pleasure might cause her read,

reading might make her know,

knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain;

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,

studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain;

oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow

some fresh and fruitful showers

upon my sunburned brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay;

invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows;

and others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.

Thus, great with child to speak,

and helpless in my throes,

biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite.

“Fool,” said my Muse to me,

“look in thy heart, and write!”

To Sleep[1]

Come, Sleep; O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,

the baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,

the poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,

th’ indifferent judge between the high and low;

with shield of proof, shield me from out the prease

of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw:

O make in me those civil wars to cease;

I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.

Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,

a chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,

a rosy garland and a weary head:

and if these things, as being thine by right,

move not thy heavy grace, though shalt in me,

livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.

Robert Greene (1560 … 1592)

Content[2]

Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content;

the Quiet mind is richer than a crown;

sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent;

the poor estate scorns Fortune’s angry frown.

Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,

beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.

The homely house that harbors Quiet rest;

the cottage that affords no pride nor care;

the mean that ’grees with country music best;

the sweet consort of mirth and music’s fare;

obscured life sets down a type of bliss:

a mind content both crown and kingdom is.

Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

Love’s Farewell[1]

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part—

nay I have done, you get no more of me;

and I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,

that thus so cleanly I myself can free;

shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,

and when we meet at any time again,

be it not seen in either of our brows

that we one jot of former love retain,

now at the last gasp of love’s latest breath,

when his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,

when faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

and innocence is closing up his eyes,

—now if though would’st when all have given him over,

from death to life though might’st him yet decover!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

All the World’s a Stage[1]

All the world’s a stage,

and all the men and women merely players:

they have their exits and their entrances;

and one man in his time plays many parts,

his acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

and shining morning face, creeping like snail

unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,

seeking the bubble reputation

even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

in fair round belly with good capon lined,

with eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

full of wise saws and modern instances;

and so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

with spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

his youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

for his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

turning again toward childish treble, pipes

and whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

that ends this strange eventful history,

is second childishness and mere oblivion,

sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Sonnet XVII[1]

Who will believe my verse in time to come,

if it were filled with your most high deserts?

Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb

which hides your life and shows not half your parts.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,

and in fresh numbers number all your graces,

the age to come would say “this poet lies;

such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.”

So should my papers, yellowed with their age,

be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,

and your true rights be termed a poet’s rage

and stretched meter of an antique song:

but were some child of yours alive that time,

you should live twice—in it, and in my rhyme.

Sonnet XVIII[2]

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

and summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

and often is his gold complexion dimmed,

and every fair from fair sometime declines,

by chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed:

but thy eternal summer shall not fade,

nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

when in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,

so long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet XXXII[1]

If thou survive my well-contented day,

when that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover

and shall by fortune once more re-survey

these poor rude lines of thy deceasëd lover,

compare them with the bett’ring of the time,

and though they be outstripped by every pen,

reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,

exceeded by the height of happier men.

O! then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:

‘Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,

a dearer birth than this his love had brought,

to march in ranks of better equipage;

but since he died and poets better prove,

theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love’.

Sonnet LV[2]

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;

but you shall shine more bright in these contents

than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

and broils root out the work of masonry,

nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn

the living record of your memory.

‘Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity

shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room

even in the eyes of all posterity

that wear this world out to the ending doom.

So, till the judgment that yourself arise,

you live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Sonnet CXXX[1]

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

coral is far more red, than her lips’ red;

if snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

if hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

but no such roses see I in her cheeks;

and in some perfumes is there more delight

than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

that music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go—

my mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground,

and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare,

as any she belied with false compare.

Sonnet CXXXVIII[2]

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her though, I know she lies,

that she might think me some untutored youth,

unlearnëd in the world’s false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

although she knows my days are past the best,

simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;

on both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.

but wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O! love’s best habit is in seeming trust,

and age in love, loves not to have years told.

therefore I lie with her and she with me,

and in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Sonnet CXLIII[1]

Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch

one of her feathered creatures broke away,

sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch

in pursuit of the thing she would have stay;

whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,

cries to catch her whose busy care is bent

to follow that which flies before her face,

not prizing her poor infant’s discontent;

so runn’st thou after that which flies from thee,

whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;

but if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,

and play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind;

so will I pray that thou mayst have thy ‘Will,’

if thou turn back and my loud crying still.

Sonnet CXLVII[1]

My love is as a fever, longing still,

for that which longer nurseth the disease;

feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

the uncertain sickly appetite to please.

My reason, the physician to my love,

angry that his prescriptions are not kept,

hath left me, and I desperate now approve

desire is death, which physic did except.

Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,

and frantic-mad with evermore unrest;

my thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,

at random from the truth vainly expressed;

for I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,

who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow[2]

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

to the last syllable of recorded time;

and all our yesterdays have lighted fools

the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

that struts and frets his hour upon the stage

and then is heard no more: it is a tale

told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

signifying nothing.

Thomas Campion (1567 – 1619)

Integer Vitae[1]

The man of life upright,

whose guiltless heart is free

from all dishonest deeds,

or thought of vanity;

the man whose silent days

in harmless joys are spent,

whom hopes cannot delude,

nor sorrow discontent;

that man needs neither towers

nor armor for defense,

nor secret vaults to fly

from thunder’s violence:

he only can behold

with unaffrighted eyes

the horrors of the deep

and terrors of the skies.

Thus, scorning all the cares

that fate or fortune brings,

he makes the heaven his book,

his wisdom heavenly things;

good thoughts his only friends,

his wealth a well-spent age,

the earth his sober inn

and Quiet pilgrimage.

Sir Henry Wotton (1568 – 1639)

Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton′s Wife[1]

He first deceased; she for a little tried

to live without him, liked it not, and died.

John Donne (1572-1631)

Community[2]

Good we must love, and must hate ill,

for ill is ill, and good good still,

but there are things indifferent,

which we may neither hate, nor love,

but one, and then another prove,

as we shall find our fancy bent.

If then at first wise Nature had

made women either good or bad,

then some we might hate, and some choose,

but since she did them so create,

that we may neither love, nor hate,

only this rests, All, all may use

if they were good it would be seen,

good is as visible as green,

and to all eyes it self betrays:

if they were bad, they could not last,

bad doth it self, and others waste,

so, they deserve nor blame, nor praise.

But they are ours as fruits are ours,

he that but tastes, he that devours,

and he that leaves all, doth as well:

changed loves are but changed sorts of meat,

and when he hath the kernel eat,

who doth not fling away the shell?

Confined Love[1]

Some man unworthy to be possessor

of old or new love, himself being false or weak,

thought his pain and shame would be lesser,

if on womankind he might his anger wreak;

and thence a law did grow,

one might but one man know;

but are other creatures so?

Are sun, moon, or stars by law forbidden

to smile where they list, or lend away their light?

Are birds divorced or are they chidden

if they leave their mate, or lie abroad a night?

Beasts do no jointures lose

though they new lovers choose;

but we are made worse than those.

Who e’er rigged fair ships to lie in harbors,

and not to seek lands, or not to deal with all?

Or built fair houses, set trees, and arbors,

only to lock up, or else to let them fall?

Good is not good, unless

a thousand it possess,

but doth waste with greediness.

Death[1]

Death be not proud, though some have callëd thee

mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,

for, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,

die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me;

from rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

and soonest our best men with thee do go,

rest of their bones, and souls delivery.

Thou’art slave to Fate, chance, kings,

and desperate men,

and dost with poison, war, and sicknesses dwell,

and poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,

and better then they stroke; why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

and death shall be no more. Death thou shalt die.

The Computation[2]

For the first twenty years, since yesterday,

I scarce believed, thou couldst be gone away;

for forty more, I fed on favors past,

and forty on hopes that thou wouldst they might last;

tears drowned one hundred, and sighs blew out two;

a thousand, I did neither think nor do,

or not divide, all being one thought of you;

or in a thousand more, forgot that too.

Yet call not this long life; but think that I

am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die?

The Curse[1]

Whoever guesses, thinks, or dreams, he knows

who is my mistress, wither by this curse;

him, only for his purse

may some dull whore to love dispose,

and then yield unto all that are his foes;

may he be scorned by one, whom all else scorn,

forswear to others, what to her he hath sworn,

with fear of missing, shame of getting, torn.

Madness his sorrow, gout his cramp, may he

make, by but thinking, who hath made him such;

and may he feel no touch

of conscience, but of fame, and be

anguished, not that ’twas sin, but that ’twas she;

In early and long scarceness may he rot

for land which had been his, if he had not

himself incestuously an heir begot.

May he dream treason, and believe that he

meant to perform it, and confesses, and die,

and no record tell why;

his sons, which none of his may be,

inherit nothing but his infamy;

or may he so long parasites have fed,

that he would fain be theirs whom he hath bred,

and at the last be circumcised for bread.

The venom of all step dames, gamesters’ gall,

what tyrants and their subjects interwish,

what plants, mine, beasts, fowl, fish,

can contribute, all ill, which all

prophets or poets spake, and all which shall

be annexed in schedules unto this by me,

fall on that man; For if it be a she

nature beforehand hath out-cursëd me.

William Drummond (1585 – 1649)

Life[1]

This Life, which seems so fair,

is like a bubble blown up in the air

by sporting children’s breath,

who chase it everywhere

and strive who can most motion it beQueath.

And though it sometimes seem of its own might

like to an eye of gold to be fixed there,

and firm to hover in that empty height,

that only is because it is so light.

But in that pomp it doth not long appear;

for when ’tis most admired, in a thought,

because it erst was nought, it turns to nought.

Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674)

To the Virgins[2]

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

old time is still a-flying:

and this same flower that smiles to-day

to-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

the higher he’s a-getting,

the sooner will his race be run,

and nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

when youth and blood are warmer;

but being spent, the worse, and worst

times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

and while ye may go marry:

for having lost but once your prime

you may for ever tarry.

Upon Julia’s Clothes[1]

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows

that liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see

that brave vibration each way free;

O how that glittering taketh me!

Thomas Carew (1595 – 1639)

Ingrateful Beauty Threatened[2]

Know, Celia, since thou art so proud,

‘twas I that gave thee thy renown;

thou had’st in the forgotten crowd

of common beauties lived unknown,

had not my verse exhaled thy name,

and with it imped the wings of Fame.

That killing power is none of thine:

I gave it to thy voice and eyes;

thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine;

thou art my star, shin’st in my skies:

then dart not from thy borrowed sphere

lightning on him that fixed thee there.

Tempt me with such affrights no more,

lest what I made I uncreate;

let fools thy mystic forms adore,

I’ll know thee in thy mortal state:

wise poets that wrappëd Truth in tales,

knew her themselves through all her veils.

John Milton (1608 – 1674)

On His Blindness[1]

When I consider how my light is spent

ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

and that one talent which is death to hide,

lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

to serve therewith my Maker, and present

my true account, lest He returning chide,

‘Doth God exact day labor, light denied?’

I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent

that murmur, soon replies, ’God doth not need

either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best

bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,

and post o’er land and ocean without rest;

they also serve who only stand and wait.’

Sir John Suckling (1609 – 1642)

Song: Why so pale and wan, fond lover?[2]

Why so pale and wan fond lover?

Prithee why so pale?

Will, when looking well can’t move her,

looking ill prevail?

Prithee why so pale?

Why so dull and mute young sinner?

Prithee why so mute?

Will, when speaking well can’t win her,

saying nothing do’t?

Prithee why so mute?

Quit, Quit for shame, this will not move,

this cannot take her;

if of herself she will not love,

nothing can make her;

the devil take her.

Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667)

Drinking[1]

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,

and drinks and gapes for drink again;

the plants suck in the earth, and are

with constant drinking fresh and fair;

the sea itself (which one would think

should have but little need of drink)

drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,

so filled that they o’erflow the cup.

The busy Sun (and one would guess

by’s drunken fiery face no less)

drinks up the sea, and when he’s done,

the Moon and Stars drink up the Sun:

they drink and dance by their own light,

they drink and revel all the night:

nothing in Nature’s sober found,

but an eternal health goes round.

Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high,

fill all the glasses there—for why

should every creature drink but I?

Why, man of morals, tell me why?

Richard Lovelace (1618 – 1658)

To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars[1]

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,

that from the nunnery

of thy chaste breast and Quiet mind

to war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,

the first foe in the field;

and with a stronger faith embrace

a sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

as thou, too, shalt adore;

I could not love thee, Dear, so much,

loved I not Honor more.

William Walsh (1663 – 1708)

Love and Jealousy[2]

How much are they deceived who vainly strive,

by jealous fears, to keep our flames alive?

Love’s like a torch, which if secured from blasts,

will faintlier burn; but then it longer lasts.

Exposed to storms of jealousy and doubt,

the blaze grows greater, but ’tis sooner out.

William Congreve (1670 – 1729)

False though she be to me and love[1]

False though she be to me and love,

I’ll ne’er pursue revenge;

for still the charmer I approve

though I deplore her change.

In hours of bliss we oft have met:

they could not always last;

and though the present I regret,

I’m grateful for the past.

Ryusui (1691 – 1758)

A lost child crying[2]

Translated from the Japanese by Peter Beilenson

A lost child crying

stumbling over the dark fields …

catching fireflies

Jokun (circa 1700)

Ah! I intended[3]

Translated from the Japanese by Peter Beilenson

Ah! I intended

never never to grow old …

Listen: New Year’s Bell!

William Blake (1757 – 1827)

The Garden of Love[1]

I laid me down upon a bank,

where Love lay sleeping;

I heard among the rushes dank

weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild,

to the thistles and thorns of the waste;

and they told me how they were beguiled,

driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

I went to the Garden of Love,

and saw what I never had seen;

a Chapel was built in the midst,

where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut

and “Thou shalt not,” writ over the door;

so I turned to the Garden of Love

that so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,

and tombstones where flowers should be;

and priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

and binding with briars my joys and desires.

The Sick Rose[1]

O Rose, thou art sick!

The Invisible worm,

that flies in the night,

in the howling storm,

has found out thy bed

of Crimson joy;

and his dark secret love

does thy life destroy.

The Tiger[2]

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright,

in the forests of the night,

what immortal hand or eye

could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,

could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

what dread hand? And what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

and watered heaven with their tears,

did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright

in the forests of the night,

what immortal hand or eye

dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

To See a World in a Grain of Sand[1]

To see a world in a grain of sand

and a heaven in a wild flower,

hold infinity in the palm of your hand

and eternity in an hour.

Robert Burns (1759 1796)

Epitaph for James Smith[2]

Lament him, Mauchline husbands a’,

he aften did assist ye;

for had ye staid hale weeks awa,

your wives they ne’er had miss’d ye.

Ye Mauchline bairns, as on ye press

to school in bands thegither,

O tread ye lightly on his grass—

perhaps he was your father!

Epitaph on a Henpecked SQuire[1]

As father Adam first was fooled,

(a case that’s still too common,)

here lies a man a woman ruled,

the devil ruled the woman.

Epitaph on William Muir[2]

An honest man here lies at rest

as e’er God with his image blest;

the friend of man, the friend of truth,

the friend of age, and guide of youth:

few hearts like his, with virtue warmed,

few heads with knowledge so informed:

if there’s another world, he lives in bliss;

if there is none, he made the best of this.

Inconstancy in love[3]

Let not Woman e’er complain

of inconstancy in love;

let not Woman e’er complain

fickle Man is apt to rove:

look abroad thro’ Nature’s range,

nature’s mighty Law is change,

ladies, would it not seem strange

man should then a monster prove!

Mark the winds, and mark the skies,

ocean’s ebb, and ocean’s flow,

sun and moon but set to rise,

round and round the seasons go.

Why then ask of silly Man

to oppose great Nature’s plan?

We’ll be constant while we can—

you can be no more, you know.

To A Louse[1] ON SEEING ONE ON A LADY’S BONNET AT CHURCH

Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie!

Your impudence protects you sairly:

I canna say but ye strunt rarely

owre gauze and lace;

tho’ faith, I fear ye dine but sparely

on sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,

detested, shunned by saunt an’ sinner,

how daur ye set your fit upon her,

sae fine a lady!

Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner,

on some poor body.

Swith, in some beggar’s haffet sQuattle;

there ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle

wi’ ither kindred, jumpin cattle,

in shoals and nations;

whare horn or bane ne’er daur unsettle

your thick plantations.

Now haud ye there, ye’re out o’ sight,

below the fatt’rels, snug an’ tight;

na faith ye yet! ye’ll no be right

till ye’ve got on it,

the vera tapmost, towering height

O’ Miss’s bonnet.

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,

as plump an’ grey as onie grozet:

O for some rank, mercurial rozet,

or fell, red smeddum,

I’d gie ye sic a hearty dose o’t,

wad dress your droddum!

I wad na been surprised to spy

you on an auld wife’s flainen toy;

or aiblins some bit duddie boy,

on’s wyliecoat;

but Miss’s fine Lunardi!—fie!

How daur ye do’t?

O Jenny, dinna toss your head,

an’ set your beauties a’ abread!

Ye little ken what cursed speed

the blastie’s makin!

Thae winks and finger-ends, I dread,

are notice takin!

O, wad some Power the giftie gie us

to see oursels as others see us!

It wad frae monie a blunder free

us an’ foolish notion:

what airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,

and ev’n Devotion!

To A Mountain Daisy[1] ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH, IN APRIL, 1786

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow’r,

thou’s met me in an evil hour;

for I maun crush amang the stoure

thy slender stem:

to spare thee now is past my pow’r,

thou bonie gem.

Alas! it’s no thy neebor sweet,

the bonie lark, companion meet,

bending thee ’mang the dewy wheat,

wi’ spreckled breast!

When upward-springing, blithe, to greet

the purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north

upon thy early, humble birth;

yet cheerfully thou glinted forth

amid the storm,

scarce reared above the parent-earth

thy tender form.

The flaunting flow’rs our gardens yield,

high shelt’ring woods and wa’s maun shield;

but thou, beneath the random bield

O’ clod or stane,

adorns the histie stibble-field,

unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,

thy snawy bosom sunward spread,

thou lifts thy unassuming head

in humble guise;

but now the share uptears thy bed,

and low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless Maid,

sweet flow’ret of the rural shade!

By love’s simplicity betrayed,

and guileless trust,

till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid

low i’ the dust.

Such is the fate of simple Bard,

on Life’s rough ocean luckless starred!

Unskillful he to note the card

of prudent lore,

till billows rage, and gales blow hard,

and whelm him o’er!

Such fate to suffering worth is giv’n,

who long with wants and woes has striv’n,

by human pride or cunning driv’n

to mis’ry’s brink,

till wrenched of ev’ry stay but Heav’n,

he, ruined, sink!

Ev’n thou who mourn’st the Daisy’s fate,

that fate is thine—no distant date;

stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives, elate,

full on thy bloom,

till crushed beneath the furrow’s weight,

shall be thy doom!

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud[1]

I wandered lonely as a cloud

that floats on high o’er vales and hills,

when all at once I saw a crowd,

a host, of golden daffodil;

beside the lake, beneath the trees,

fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

and twinkle on the milky way,

they stretched in never-ending line

along the margin of a bay:

ten thousand saw I at a glance,

tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

a poet could not but be gay,

in such a jocund company:

I gazed and gazed but little thought

what wealth the show to me had brought:

for oft, when on my couch I lie

in vacant or in pensive mood,

they flash upon that inward eye

which is the bliss of solitude;

and then my heart with pleasure fills,

and dances with the daffodils.

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room[1]

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;

and hermits are contented with their cells;

and students with their pensive citadels;

maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,

sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,

high as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,

will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:

in truth the prison, into which we doom

ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,

in sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound

within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;

pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)

who have felt the weight of too much liberty,

should find brief solace there, as I have found.

The Solitary Reaper[2]

Behold her, single in the field,

yon solitary Highland lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

and sings a melancholy strain;

O listen! for the vale profound

is overflowing with the sound.

No nightingale did ever chaunt

more welcome notes to weary bands

of travelers in some shady haunt,

among Arabian sands;

a voice so thrilling ne’er was heard

in spring-time from the cuckoo-bird,

breaking the silence of the seas

among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?—

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

for old, unhappy, far-off things,

and battles long ago;

or is it some more humble lay,

familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

that has been, and may be again?

Whate’er the theme, the maiden sang

as if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

and o’er the sickle bending;

I listened, motionless and still;

and, as I mounted up the hill,

the music in my heart I bore

long after it was heard no more.

We are Seven[1]

A simple child,

that lightly draws its breath,

and feels its life in every limb,

what should it know of death?

I met a little cottage girl:

she was eight years old she said;

her hair was thick with many a curl

that clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,

and she was wildly clad:

her eyes were fair, and very fair;

—her beauty made me glad.

“Sisters and brothers, little Maid,

how many may you be?”

“How many? Seven in all,” she said

and wondering looked at me.

“And where are they? I pray you tell.”

she answered, “Seven are we;

and two of us at Conway dwell,

and two are gone to sea.

“Two of us in the church-yard lie,

my sister and my brother;

and, in the church-yard cottage, I

dwell near them with my mother.”

“You say that two at Conway dwell,

and two are gone to sea,

yet ye are seven! I pray you tell,

sweet Maid, how this may be.”

Then did the little Maid reply,

“Seven boys and girls are we;

two of us in the church-yard lie,

beneath the church-yard tree.”

“You run about, my little Maid,

your limbs they are alive;

if two are in the church-yard laid,

then ye are only five.”

“Their graves are green,

they may be seen,”

the little Maid replied,

“twelve steps or more from my mother’s door,

and they are side by side.

My stockings there I often knit,

my kerchief there I hem;

and there upon the ground I sit,

and sing a song to them.

And often after sunset, Sir,

when it is light and fair,

I take my little porringer,

and eat my supper there.

The first that died was sister Jane;

in bed she moaning lay,

till God released her of her pain;

and then she went away.

So in the church-yard she was laid;

and, when the grass was dry,

together round her grave we played,

my brother John and I.

And when the ground was white with snow,

and I could run and slide,

my brother John was forced to go,

and he lies by her side.”

“How many are you, then,” said I,

“if they two are in heaven?”

Quick was the little Maid’s reply,

“O Master, we are seven.”

“But they are dead; those two are dead!

Their spirits are in heaven!”

‘T was throwing words away; for still

the little Maid would have her will,

and said, “Nay, we are seven!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner[1]

PART I

It is an ancient Mariner,

and he stoppeth one of three.

“By thy long beard and glittering eye,

now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,

and I am next of kin;

the guests are met, the feast is set:

may’st hear the merry din.’

He holds him with his skinny hand,

“There was a ship,’ quoth he.

“Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!’

eftsoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye—

the Wedding-Guest stood still,

and listens like a three years’ child:

the Mariner hath his will.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:

he cannot choose but hear;

and thus spake on that ancient man,

the bright-eyed Mariner.

“The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared,

merrily did we drop

below the kirk, below the hill,

below the lighthouse top.

The Sun came up upon the left,

out of the sea came he!

And he shone bright, and on the right

went down into the sea.

Higher and higher every day,

till over the mast at noon—’

the Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,

for he heard the loud bassoon.

The bride hath paced into the hall,

red as a rose is she;

nodding their heads before her goes

the merry minstrelsy.

The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,

yet he cannot choose but hear;

and thus spake on that ancient man,

the bright-eyed Mariner.

‘And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he

was tyrannous and strong:

he struck with his o’ertaking wings,

and chased us south along.

With sloping masts and dipping prow,

as who pursued with yell and blow

still treads the shadow of his foe,

and forward bends his head,

the ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,

the southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow,

and it grew wondrous cold:

and ice, mast-high, came floating by,

as green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy cliffs

did send a dismal sheen:

nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—

the ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,

the ice was all around:

it cracked and growled, and roared and howled,

like noises in a swound!

At length did cross an Albatross,

thorough the fog it came;

as if it had been a Christian soul,

we hailed it in God’s name.

It ate the food it ne’er had eat,

and round and round it flew.

The ice did split with a thunder-fit;

the helmsman steered us through!

And a good south wind sprung up behind;

the Albatross did follow,

and every day, for food or play,

came to the mariner’s hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,

it perched for vespers nine;

whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,

glimmered the white Moon-shine.’

“God save thee, ancient Mariner!

from the fiends, that plague thee thus!—

why look’st thou so?’—With my cross-bow

I shot the ALBATROSS.

PART II

The Sun now rose upon the right:

out of the sea came he,

still hid in mist, and on the left

went down into the sea.

And the good south wind still blew behind,

but no sweet bird did follow,

nor any day for food or play came

to the mariners’ hollo!

And I had done an hellish thing,

and it would work ’em woe:

for all averred, I had killed the bird

that made the breeze to blow.

Ah wretch ! said they, the bird to slay,

that made the breeze to blow!

Nor dim nor red, like God’s own head,

the glorious Sun uprist:

then all averred, I had killed the bird

that brought the fog and mist.

‘Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,

that bring the fog and mist.

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

the furrow followed free;

we were the first that ever burst

into that silent sea.

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,

‘twas sad as sad could be;

and we did speak only to break

the silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,

the bloody Sun, at noon,

right up above the mast did stand,

no bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,

we stuck, nor breath nor motion;

as idle as a painted ship

upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,

and all the boards did shrink;

water, water, every where,

nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!

That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout

the death-fires danced at night;

the water, like a witch’s oils,

burnt green, and blue and white.

And some in dreams assurëd were

of the Spirit that plagued us so;

nine fathom deep he had followed us

from the land of mist and snow.

And every tongue, through utter drought,

was withered at the root;

we could not speak, no more than if

we had been choked with soot.

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks

had I from old and young!

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

about my neck was hung.

PART III

There passed a weary time. Each throat

was parched, and glazed each eye.

A weary time! a weary time!

How glazed each weary eye,

when looking westward, I beheld

a something in the sky.

At first it seemed a little speck,

and then it seemed a mist;

it moved and moved, and took at last

a certain shape, I wist.

A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!

And still it neared and neared:

as if it dodged a water-sprite,

it plunged and tacked and veered.

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,

we could nor laugh nor wail;

through utter drought all dumb we stood!

I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,

and cried, A sail! a sail!

A flash of joy;

with throats unslaked, with black lips baked,

agape they heard me call:

gramercy! they for joy did grin,

and all at once their breath drew in,

as they were drinking all.

See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!

Hither to work us weal;

without a breeze, without a tide,

she steadies with upright keel!

The western wave was all a-flame.

The day was well nigh done!

Almost upon the western wave

rested the broad bright Sun;

when that strange shape drove suddenly

betwixt us and the Sun.

And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,

(heaven’s Mother send us grace!)

as if through a dungeon-grate he peered

with broad and burning face.

Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)

how fast she nears and nears!

Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,

like restless gossameres?

Are those her ribs through which the Sun

did peer, as through a grate?

And is that Woman all her crew?

Is that a DEATH? and are there two?

Is DEATH that woman’s mate?

Her lips were red, her looks were free,

her locks were yellow as gold:

her skin was as white as leprosy,

the Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,

who thicks man’s blood with cold.

The naked hulk alongside came,

and the twain were casting dice;

“The game is done! I’ve won! I’ve won!’

quoth she, and whistles thrice.

The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out:

at one stride comes the dark;

with far-heard whisper, o’er the sea,

off shot the spectre-bark.

We listened and looked sideways up!

Fear at my heart, as at a cup,

my life-blood seemed to sip!

The stars were dim, and thick the night,

the steerman’s face by his lamp gleamed white;

from the sails the dew did drip—

till clomb above the eastern bar

the horned Moon, with one bright star

within the nether tip.

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,

too quick for groan or sigh,

each turned his face with a ghastly pang,

and cursed me with his eye.

Four times fifty living men,

(and I heard nor sigh nor groan)

with heavy thump, a lifeless lump,

they dropped down one by one.

The souls did from their bodies fly,—

they fled to bliss or woe!

And every soul, it passed me by,

like the whizz of my cross-bow!

PART IV

’I fear thee, ancient Mariner!

I fear thy skinny hand!

And thou art long, and lank, and brown,

as is the ribbed sea-sand.

I fear thee and thy glittering eye,

and thy skinny hand, so brown.’—

Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!

this body dropt not down.

Alone, alone, all, all alone,

alone on a wide wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on

my soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie:

and a thousand slimy things

lived on; and so did I.

I looked upon the rotting sea,

and drew my eyes away;

I looked upon the rotting deck,

and there the dead men lay.

I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;

but or ever a prayer had gusht,

a wicked whisper came, and made

my heart as dry as dust.

I closed my lids, and kept them close,

and the balls like pulses beat;

for the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky

lay like a load on my weary eye,

and the dead were at my feet.

The cold sweat melted from their limbs,

nor rot nor reek did they:

the look with which they looked on me

had never passed away.

An orphan’s curse would drag to hell

a spirit from on high;

but oh! more horrible than that

is the curse in a dead man’s eye!

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,

and yet I could not die.

The moving Moon went up the sky,

and no where did abide:

softly she was going up,

and a star or two beside—

her beams bemocked the sultry main,

like April hoar-frost spread;

but where the ship’s huge shadow lay,

the charméd water burnt alway

a still and awful red.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,

I watched the water-snakes:

they moved in tracks of shining white,

and when they reared, the elfish light

fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship

I watched their rich attire:

blue, glossy green, and velvet black,

they coiled and swam; and every track

was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! no tongue

their beauty might declare:

a spring of love gushed from my heart,

and I blessed them unaware:

sure my kind saint took pity on me,

and I blessed them unaware.

The self-same moment I could pray;

and from my neck so free

the Albatross fell off, and sank

like lead into the sea.

PART V

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,

beloved from pole to pole!

To Mary Queen the praise be given!

She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,

that slid into my soul.

The silly buckets on the deck,

that had so long remained,

I dreamt that they were filled with dew;

and when I awoke, it rained.

My lips were wet, my throat was cold,

my garments all were dank;

sure I had drunken in my dreams,

and still my body drank.

I moved, and could not feel my limbs:

I was so light—almost

I thought that I had died in sleep,

and was a blesséd ghost.

And soon I heard a roaring wind:

it did not come anear;

but with its sound it shook the sails,

that were so thin and sere.

The upper air burst into life!

And a hundred fire-flags sheen,

to and fro they were hurried about!

And to and fro, and in and out,

the wan stars danced between.

And the coming wind did roar more loud,

and the sails did sigh like sedge;

and the rain poured down from one black cloud;

the Moon was at its edge.

The thick black cloud was cleft, and still

the Moon was at its side:

like waters shot from some high crag,

the lightning fell with never a jag,

a river steep and wide.

The loud wind never reached the ship,

yet now the ship moved on!

Beneath the lightning and the Moon

the dead men gave a groan.

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,

nor spake, nor moved their eyes;

it had been strange, even in a dream,

to have seen those dead men rise.

The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;

yet never a breeze up-blew;

the mariners all ’gan work the ropes,

where they were wont to do;

they raised their limbs like lifeless tools—

we were a ghastly crew.

The body of my brother’s son

stood by me, knee to knee:

the body and I pulled at one rope,

but he said nought to me.

“I fear thee, ancient Mariner!’

Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest!

‘Twas not those souls that fled in pain,

which to their corses came again,

but a troop of spirits blest:

for when it dawned—they dropped their arms,

and clustered round the mast;

sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths,

and from their bodies passed.

Around, around, flew each sweet sound,

then darted to the Sun;

slowly the sounds came back again,

now mixed, now one by one.

Sometimes a-dropping from the sky

I heard the sky-lark sing;

sometimes all little birds that are,

how they seemed to fill the sea and air

with their sweet jargoning!

And now ’twas like all instruments,

now like a lonely flute;

and now it is an angel’s song, that makes the heavens be mute.

It ceased; yet still the sails made on

a pleasant noise till noon,

a noise like of a hidden brook

in the leafy month of June,

that to the sleeping woods all night

singeth a Quiet tune.

Till noon we quietly sailed on,

yet never a breeze did breathe:

slowly and smoothly went the ship,

moved onward from beneath.

Under the keel nine fathom deep,

from the land of mist and snow,

the spirit slid: and it was he

that made the ship to go.

The sails at noon left off their tune,

and the ship stood still also.

The Sun, right up above the mast,

had fixed her to the ocean:

but in a minute she ’gan stir,

with a short uneasy motion—

backwards and forwards half her length

with a short uneasy motion.

Then like a pawing horse let go,

she made a sudden bound:

it flung the blood into my head,

and I fell down in a swound.

How long in that same fit I lay,

I have not to declare;

but ere my living life returned,

I heard and in my soul discerned

two voices in the air.

‘Is it he?’ quoth one, ‘Is this the man?

by him who died on cross,

with his cruel bow he laid full low

the harmless Albatross.

The spirit who bideth by himself

in the land of mist and snow,

he loved the bird that loved the man

who shot him with his bow.’

The other was a softer voice,

as soft as honey-dew:

quoth he, ‘The man hath penance done,

and penance more will do.’

PART VI

FIRST VOICE

‘But tell me, tell me! speak again,

thy soft response renewing—

what makes that ship drive on so fast?

What is the ocean doing?’

SECOND VOICE

‘Still as a slave before his lord,

the ocean hath no blast;

his great bright eye most silently

up to the Moon is cast—

if he may know which way to go;

for she guides him smooth or grim.

See, brother, see! how graciously

she looketh down on him.’

FIRST VOICE

‘But why drives on that ship so fast,

without or wave or wind?’

SECOND VOICE

‘The air is cut away before,

and closes from behind.

Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high!

Or we shall be belated:

for slow and slow that ship will go,

when the Mariner’s trance is abated.’

I woke, and we were sailing on

as in a gentle weather:

‘twas night, calm night, the moon was high;

the dead men stood together.

All stood together on the deck,

for a charnel-dungeon fitter:

all fixed on me their stony eyes,

that in the Moon did glitter.

The pang, the curse, with which they died,

had never passed away:

I could not draw my eyes from theirs,

nor turn them up to pray.

And now this spell was snapt: once more

I viewed the ocean green,

and looked far forth, yet little saw

of what had else been seen—

like one, that on a lonesome road

doth walk in fear and dread,

and having once turned round walks on,

and turns no more his head;

because he knows, a frightful fiend

doth close behind him tread.

But soon there breathed a wind on me,

nor sound nor motion made:

its path was not upon the sea,

in ripple or in shade.

It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek

like a meadow-gale of spring—

it mingled strangely with my fears,

yet it felt like a welcoming.

Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,

yet she sailed softly too:

sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze—

on me alone it blew.

Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed

the light-house top I see?

Is this the hill? is this the kirk?

Is this mine own country?

We drifted o’er the harbor-bar,

and I with sobs did pray—

O let me be awake, my God!

or let me sleep alway.

The harbor-bay was clear as glass,

so smoothly it was strewn!

And on the bay the moonlight lay,

and the shadow of the Moon.

The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,

that stands above the rock:

the moonlight steeped in silentness

the steady weathercock.

And the bay was white with silent light,

till rising from the same,

full many shapes, that shadows were,

in crimson colors came.

A little distance from the prow

those crimson shadows were:

I turned my eyes upon the deck—

oh, Christ! what saw I there!

Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,

and, by the holy rood!

A man all light, a seraph-man,

on every corse there stood.

This seraph-band, each waved his hand:

it was a heavenly sight!

They stood as signals to the land,

each one a lovely light;

this seraph-band, each waved his hand,

no voice did they impart—

no voice; but oh! the silence sank

like music on my heart.

But soon I heard the dash of oars,

I heard the Pilot’s cheer;

my head was turned perforce away

and I saw a boat appear.

The Pilot and the Pilot’s boy,

I heard them coming fast:

dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy

the dead men could not blast.

I saw a third—I heard his voice:

it is the Hermit good!

He singeth loud his godly hymns

that he makes in the wood.

He’ll shrieve my soul, he’ll wash away

the Albatross’s blood.

PART VII

This Hermit good lives in that wood

which slopes down to the sea.

How loudly his sweet voice he rears!

He loves to talk with mariners

that come from a far country.

He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve—

he hath a cushion plump:

it is the moss that wholly hides

the rotted old oak-stump.

The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk,

‘Why, this is strange, I trow!

where are those lights so many and fair,

that signal made but now?’

‘Strange, by my faith!’ the Hermit said—

‘and they answered not our cheer!

the planks looked warped! and see those sails,

how thin they are and sere!

I never saw aught like to them,

unless perchance it were

brown skeletons of leaves that lag

my forest-brook along;

when the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,

and the owlet whoops to the wolf below,

that eats the she-wolf’s young.’

’Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look—

(the Pilot made reply)

I am a-feared’—‘Push on,

push on!’

said the Hermit cheerily.

The boat came closer to the ship,

but I nor spake nor stirred;

the boat came close beneath the ship,

and straight a sound was heard.

Under the water it rumbled on,

still louder and more dread:

it reached the ship, it split the bay;

the ship went down like lead.

Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound,

which sky and ocean smote,

like one that hath been seven days drowned my body lay afloat;

but swift as dreams, myself I found

within the Pilot’s boat.

Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,

the boat spun round and round;

and all was still, save that the hill

was telling of the sound.

I moved my lips—the Pilot shrieked

and fell down in a fit;

the holy Hermit raised his eyes,

and prayed where he did sit.

I took the oars: the Pilot’s boy,

who now doth crazy go,

laughed loud and long, and all the while

his eyes went to and fro.

‘Ha! ha!’ quoth he, ‘full plain I see,

the Devil knows how to row.’

And now, all in my own country,

I stood on the firm land!

The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,

and scarcely he could stand.

’O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!’

The Hermit crossed his brow.

‘Say quick,’ quoth he, ‘I bid thee say—

what manner of man art thou?’

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched

with a woeful agony,

which forced me to begin my tale;

and then it left me free.

Since then, at an uncertain hour,

that agony returns:

and till my ghastly tale is told,

this heart within me burns.

I pass, like night, from land to land;

I have strange power of speech;

that moment that his face I see,

I know the man that must hear me:

to him my tale I teach.

What loud uproar bursts from that door!

The wedding-guests are there:

but in the garden-bower the bride

and bride-maids singing are:

and hark the little vesper bell,

which biddeth me to prayer!

O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been

alone on a wide wide sea:

so lonely ’twas, that God himself

scarce seemëd there to be.

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,

‘tis sweeter far to me,

to walk together to the kirk

with a goodly company!—

To walk together to the kirk,

and all together pray,

while each to his great Father bends,

old men, and babes, and loving friends

and youths and maidens gay!

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell

to thee, thou Wedding-Guest!

He prayeth well, who loveth well

both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

all things both great and small;

for the dear God who loveth us,

he made and loveth all.

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,

whose beard with age is hoar,

is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest

turned from the bridegroom’s door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,

and is of sense forlorn:

a sadder and a wiser man,

he rose the morrow morn.

Robert Southey (1774 – 1843)

After Blenheim[1]

It was a summer evening,

old Kaspar’s work was done,

and he before his cottage door

was sitting in the sun;

and by him sported on the green

his little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin

roll something large and round

which he beside the rivulet

in playing there had found;

he came to ask what he had found

that was so large and smooth and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,

who stood expectant by;

and then the old man shook his head,

and with a natural sigh,

“‘Tis some poor fellow’s skull,” said he,

“who fell in the great victory.”

“I find them in the garden,

for there’s many here about;

and often, when I go to plough,

the ploughshare turns them out;

for many thousand men,” said he,

“were slain in that great victory.”

“Now tell us what ’twas all about,”

young Peterkin he cries;

and little Wilhelmine looks up

with wonder-waiting eyes;

“Now tell us all about the war,

and what they fought each other for.”

“It was the English,” Kaspar cried,

“who put the French to rout;

but what they fought each other for

I could not well make out.

But everybody said,” quoth he,

“that ’twas a famous victory.

My father lived at Blenheim then,

yon little stream hard by;

they burnt his dwelling to the ground,

and he was forced to fly:

so with his wife and child he fled,

nor had he where to rest his head.

With fire and sword the country round

was wasted far and wide,

and many a childing mother then

and newborn baby died;

but things like that, you know, must be

at every famous victory.

They say it was a shocking sight

after the field was won;

for many thousand bodies here

lay rotting in the sun;

but things like that, you know, must be

after a famous victory.

Great praise the Duke of Marlbro’ won,

and our good Prince Eugene.

“Why, ’twas a very wicked thing!”

said little Wilhelmine.

“Nay…nay… my little girl,” Quoth he,

“it was a famous victory.

And everybody praised the Duke

who this great fight did win.”

“But what good came of it at last?”

Quoth little Peterkin.

“Why that I cannot tell,” said he,

“but ’twas a famous victory.”

The Scholar[1]

My days among the Dead are past;

around me I behold,

where’er these casual eyes are cast,

the mighty minds of old:

my never-failing friends are they,

with whom I converse day by day.

With them I take delight in weal

and seek relief in woe;

and while I understand and feel

how much to them I owe,

my cheeks have often been bedewed

with tears of thoughtful gratitude.

My thoughts are with the Dead; with them

I live in long-past years,

their virtues love, their faults condemn,

partake their hopes and fears,

and from their lessons seek and find

instruction with an humble mind.

My hopes are with the Dead; anon

my place with them will be,

and I with them shall travel on

through all Futurity;

yet leaving here a name, I trust,

that will not perish in the dust.

Walter Savage Landor (1775 – 1864)

On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday[1]

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife;

nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;

I warmed both hands before the fire of life;

it sinks, and I am ready to depart.

Well I Remember[2]

Well I remember how you smiled

to see me write your name upon

the soft sea-sand … “O! what a child!

You think you’re writing upon stone/!

I have since written what no tide

shall ever wash away, what men

unborn shall read o’er ocean wide

and find lanthe’s name again.

Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852)

An Argument[1]

I’ve oft been told by learned friars,

that wishing and the crime are one,

and Heaven punishes desires

as much as if the deed were done.

If wishing damns us, you and I

are damned to all our heart’s content;

come, then, at least we may enjoy

some pleasure for our punishment!

‘Tis the Last Rose of Summer[2]

‘Tis the last rose of Summer,

left blooming alone;

all her lovely companions

are faded and gone;

no flower of her kindred,

no rosebud is nigh,

to reflect back her blushes,

or give sigh for sigh!

I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one,

to pine on the stem;

since the lovely are sleeping,

go sleep thou with them.

Thus kindly I scatter

thy leaves o’er the bed

where thy mates of the garden

lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow,

when friendships decay,

and from Love’s shining circle

the gems drop away!

When true hearts lie withered,

and fond ones are flown,

Oh! who would inhabit

this bleak world alone?

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)

She Walks in Beauty[1]

She walks in beauty, like the night

of cloudless climes and starry skies;

and all that’s best of dark and bright

meet in her aspect and her eyes:

thus mellowed to that tender light

which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

had half impaired the nameless grace

which waves in every raven tress,

or softly lightens o’er her face;

where thoughts serenely sweet express

how pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

so soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

the smiles that win, the tints that glow,

but tell of days in goodness spent,

a mind at peace with all below,

a heart whose love is innocent!

So, we’ll go no more a-roving[1]

So we’ll go no more a-roving

so late into the night,

though the heart still be as loving,

and the moon still be as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,

and the soul outwears the breast,

and the heart must pause to breathe,

and love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,

and the day returns too soon,

yet we’ll go no more a-roving

by the light of the moon.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)

Music[2]

Music, when soft voices die,

vibrates in the memory;

odors, when sweet violets sicken,

live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

are heaped for the beloved’s bed;

and so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

love itself shall slumber on.

Mutability[1]

The flower that smiles today

tomorrow dies;

all that we wish to stay

tempts and then flies.

What is this world’s delight?

Lightning that mocks the night,

brief even as bright.

Virtue, how frail it is!

Friendship how rare!

Love, how it sells poor bliss

for proud despair!

But we, though soon they fall,

survive their joy, and all

which ours we call.

Whilst skies are blue and bright,

whilst flowers are gay,

whilst eyes that change ere night

make glad the day;

whilst yet the calm hours creep,

dream thou—and from thy sleep

then wake to weep.

Song from Charles the First[1]

A widow bird sate mourning for her love

upon a wintry bough;

the frozen wind crept on above,

the freezing stream below.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare,

no flower upon the ground,

and little motion in the air

except the mill-wheel’s sound.

Ozymandias[1]

I met a traveler from an antique land

who said: ‘Two vast and trunk-less legs of stone

stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

tell that its sculptor well those passions read

which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear—

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

the lone and level sands stretch far away.

John Clare (1793 – 1864)

Badger[2]

When midnight comes a host of dogs and men

go out and track the badger to his den,

and put a sack within the hole, and lie

till the old grunting badger passes by.

He comes an hears—they let the strongest loose.

The old fox hears the noise and drops the goose.

The poacher shoots and hurries from the cry,

and the old hare half wounded buzzes by.

They get a forkëd stick to bear him down

and clap the dogs and take him to the town,

and bait him all the day with many dogs,

and laugh and shout and fright the scampering hogs.

He runs along and bites at all he meets:

they shout and hollo down the noisy streets.

He turns about to face the loud uproar

and drives the rebels to their very door.

The frequent stone is hurled where’er they go;

when badgers fight, then everyone’s a foe.

The dogs are clapped and urged to join the fray’

the badger turns and drives them all away.

Though scarcely half as big, demure and small,

he fights with dogs for hours and beats them all.

The heavy mastiff, savage in the fray,

lies down and licks his feet and turns away.

The bulldog knows his match and waxes cold,

the badger grins and never leaves his hold.

He drives the crowd and follows at their heels

and bites them through—the drunkard swears and reels

the frighted women take the boys away,

the blackguard laughs and hurries on the fray.

He tries to reach the woods, and awkward race,

but sticks and cudgels quickly stop the chase.

He turns again and drives the noisy crowd

and beats the many dogs in noises loud.

He drives away and beats them every one,

and then they loose them all and set them on.

He falls as dead and kicked by boys and men,

then starts and grins and drives the crowd again;

till kicked and torn and beaten out he lies

and leaves his hold and crackles, groans, and dies.

William Cullen Bryant (1794 – 1878)

A Presentiment[1]

“Oh father, let us hence—for hark,

a fearful murmur shakes the air;

the clouds are coming swift and dark;—

what horrid shapes they wear!

A wingëd giant sails the sky;

oh father, father, let us fly!”—

“Hush, child; it is a grateful sound,

that beating of the summer shower;

here, where the boughs hang close around,

we’ll pass a pleasant hour,

till the fresh wind, that brings the rain,

has swept the broad heaven clear again.”—

“Nay, father, let us haste—for see,

that horrid thing with hornëd brow—

his wings o’erhang this very tree,

he scowls upon us now;

his huge black arm is lifted high;

oh father, father, let us fly!”—

“Hush, child”; but, as the father spoke,

downward the livid firebolt came,

close to his ear the thunder broke,

and, blasted by the flame,

the child lay dead; while dark and still

swept the grim cloud along the hill.

Mutation[1]

They talk of short-lived pleasure—be it so—

pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain

expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.

The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;

and after dreams of horror, comes again

the welcome morning with its rays of peace.

Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain,

makes the strong secret pangs of shame to cease.

Remorse is virtue’s root; its fair increase

are fruits of innocence and blessedness:

thus joy, o’erborne and bound, doth still release

his young limbs from the chains that round him press.

Weep not that the world changes—did it keep

a stable changeless state, ’twere cause indeed to weep.

Thanatopsis[1]

To him who in the love of nature holds

communion with her visible forms, she speaks

a various language; for his gayer hours

she has a voice of gladness, and a smile

and eloquence of beauty; and she glides

into his darker musings, with a mild

and healing sympathy that steals away

their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts

of the last bitter hour come like a blight

over thy spirit, and sad images

of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

and breathless darkness, and the narrow house,

make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—

go forth, under the open sky, and list

to Nature’s teachings, while from all around—

earth and her waters, and the depths of air—

comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee

the all-beholding sun shall see no more

in all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,

where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,

nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist

thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim

thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,

and, lost each human trace, surrendering up

thine individual being, shalt thou go

to mix forever with the elements,

to be a brother to the insensible rock

and to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain

turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak

shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place

shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish

couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down

with patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,

the powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,

fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,

all in one mighty sepulcher. The hills

rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales

stretching in pensive quietness between;

the venerable woods—rivers that move

in majesty, and the complaining brooks

that make the meadows green; and, poured round all,

old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,—

are but the solemn decorations all

of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,

the planets, all the infinite host of heaven,

are shining on the sad abodes of death

through the still lapse of ages. All that tread

the globe are but a handful to the tribes

that slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings

of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,

or lose thyself in the continuous woods

where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,

save his own dashings—yet the dead are there:

and millions in those solitudes, since first

the flight of years began, have laid them down

in their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.

So shalt thou rest—and what if thou withdraw

in silence from the living, and no friend

take note of thy departure? All that breathe

will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh

when thou art gone, the solemn brood of care

plod on, and each one as before will chase

his favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave

their mirth and their employments, and shall come

and make their bed with thee. As the long train

of ages glides away, the sons of men—

the youth in life’s fresh spring, and he who goes

in the full strength of years, matron and maid,

the speechless babe, and the gray-headed man—

shall one by one be gathered to thy side,

by those, who in their turn, shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join

the innumerable caravan, which moves

to that mysterious realm, where each shall take

his chamber in the silent halls of death,

thou go not, like the Quarry-slave at night,

scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave

like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

The Hurricane[1]

Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh,

I know thy breath in the burning sky!

And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,

for the coming of the hurricane!

And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales,

through the boundless arch of heaven he sails.

Silent and slow, and terribly strong,

the mighty shadow is borne along,

like the dark eternity to come;

while the world below, dismayed and dumb,

through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere

looks up at its gloomy folds with fear.

They darken fast; and the golden blaze

of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,

and he sends through the shade a funeral ray—

a glare that is neither night nor day,

a beam that touches, with hues of death,

the cloud above and the earth beneath.

To its covert glides the silent bird,

while the hurricane’s distant voice is heard

uplifted among the mountains round,

and the forests hear and answer the sound.

He is come! he is come! do ye not behold

his ample robes on the wind unrolled?

Giant of air! we bid thee hail!—

How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale;

how his huge and writhing arms are bent

to clasp the zone of the firmament,

and fold at length, in their dark embrace,

from mountain to mountain the visible space!

Darker,—still darker! the whirlwinds bear

the dust of the plains to the middle air;

and hark to the crashing, long and loud,

of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud!

You may trace its path by the flashes that start

from the rapid wheels where’er they dart,

as the fire-bolts leap to the world below,

and flood the skies with a lurid glow.

What roar is that?—’t is the rain that breaks

in torrents away from the airy lakes,

heavily poured on the shuddering ground,

and shedding a nameless horror round.

Ah! well-known woods, and mountains, and skies,

with the very clouds!—ye are lost to my eyes.

I seek ye vainly, and see in your place

the shadowy tempest that sweeps through space,

a whirling ocean that fills the wall

of the crystal heaven, and buries all.

And I, cut off from the world, remain

alone with the terrible hurricane.

The Murdered Traveler[1]

When spring, to woods and wastes around,

brought bloom and joy again,

the murdered traveler’s bones were found,

far down a narrow glen.

The fragrant birch, above him, hung

her tassels in the sky;

and many a vernal blossom sprung,

and nodded careless by.

The red-bird warbled, as he wrought

his hanging nest o’erhead,

and fearless, near the fatal spot,

her young the partridge led.

But there was weeping far away,

and gentle eyes, for him,

with watching many an anxious day,

were sorrowful and dim.

They little knew, who loved him so,

the fearful death he met,

when shouting o’er the desert snow,

unarmed, and hard beset;—

nor how, when round the frosty pole

the northern dawn was red,

the mountain wolf and wild-cat stole

to banquet on the dead;

nor how, when strangers found his bones,

they dressed the hasty bier,

and marked his grave with nameless stones,

unmoistened by a tear.

But long they looked, and feared, and wept,

within his distant home;

and dreamed, and started as they slept,

for joy that he was come.

So long they looked—but never spied

his welcome step again,

nor knew the fearful death he died

far down that narrow glen.

The Poet[1]

Thou, who wouldst wear the name

of poet mid thy brethren of mankind,

and clothe in words of flame

thoughts that shall live within the general mind!

Deem not the framing of a deathless lay

the pastime of a drowsy summer day.

But gather all thy powers,

and wreak them on the verse that thou dost weave,

and in thy lonely hours,

at silent morning or at wakeful eve,

while the warm current tingles through thy veins

set forth the burning words in fluent strains.

No smooth array of phrase

artfully sought and ordered though it be,

which the cold rhymer lays

upon his page with languid industry

can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed,

or fill with sudden tears the eyes that read.

The secret wouldst thou know

to touch the heart or fire the blood at will?

Let thine own eyes o’erflow;

let thy lips quiver with the passionate thrill;

seize the great thought, ere yet its power be past,

and bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast.

Then, should thy verse appear

halting and harsh, and all unaptly wrought,

touch the crude line with fear,

save in the moment of impassioned thought;

then summon back the original glow and mend

the strain with rapture that with fire was penned.

Yet let no empty gust

of passion find an utterance in thy lay,

a blast that whirls the dust

along the howling street and dies away;

but feelings of calm power and mighty sweep,

like currents journeying through the windless deep.

Seek’st thou, in living lays,

to limn the beauty of the earth and sky?

Before thine inner gaze

let all that beauty in clear vision lie,

look on it with exceeding love, and write

the words inspired by wonder and delight.

Of tempest wouldst thou sing,

or tell of battles—make thyself a part

of the great tumult; cling

to the tossed wreck with terror in thy heart;

scale, with the assault host, the rampart’s height

and strike and struggle in the thickest fight.

So shalt thou frame a lay

that haply may endure from age to age,

and they who read shall say;

what witchery hangs upon this poet’s page!

What art is this the written spells to find

that sway from mood to mood the willing mind!

The Strange Lady[1]

The summer morn is bright and fresh,

the birds are darting by,

as if they loved to breast the breeze

that sweeps the cool clear sky;

Young Albert, in the forest’s edge,

has heard a rustling sound

an arrow slightly strikes his hand

and falls upon the ground.

A lovely woman from the wood

comes suddenly in sight;

her merry eye is full and black,

her cheek is brown and bright;

she wears a tunic of the blue,

her belt with beads is strung,

and yet she speaks in gentle tones,

and in the English tongue.

“It was an idle bolt I sent,

against the villain crow;

fair sir, I fear it harmed thy hand;

beshrew my erring bow!”

“Ah! would that bolt had not been spent,

then, lady, might I wear

a lasting token on my hand

of one so passing fair!”

“Thou art a flatterer like the rest,

but wouldst thou take with me

a day of hunting in the wilds,

beneath the greenwood tree,

I know where most the pheasants feed,

and where the red-deer herd,

and thou shouldst chase the nobler game,

and I bring down the bird.”

Now Albert in her quiver lays

the arrow in its place,

and wonders as he gazes on

the beauty of her face:

‘Those hunting-grounds are far away,

and, lady, ’twere not meet

that night, amid the wilderness,

should overtake thy feet.”

“Heed not the night, a summer lodge

amid the wild is mine,

‘tis shadowed by the tulip-tree,

‘tis mantled by the vine;

the wild plum sheds its yellow fruit

from fragrant thickets nigh,

and flowery prairies from the door

stretch till they meet the sky.

“There in the boughs that hide the roof

the mock-bird sits and sings,

and there the hang-bird’s brood within

its little hammock swings;

a pebbly brook, where rustling winds

among the hopples sweep,

shall lull thee till the morning sun

looks in upon thy sleep.”

Away, into the forest depths

by pleasant paths they go,

he with his rifle on his arm,

the lady with her bow,

where cornels arch their cool dark boughs

o’er beds of wintergreen,

and never at his father’s door again was Albert seen.

That night upon the woods came down a furious hurricane,

with howl of winds and roar of streams

and beating of the rain;

the mighty thunder broke and drowned

the noises in its crash;

the old trees seemed to fight like fiends

beneath the lightning-flash.

Next day, within a mossy glen,

mid moldering trunks were found

the fragments of a human form,

upon the bloody ground;

white bones from which the flesh was torn,

and locks of glossy hair;

they laid them in the place of graves,

yet wist not whose they were.

And whether famished evening wolves

had mangled Albert so,

or that strange dame so gay and fair

were some mysterious foe,

or whether to that forest lodge,

beyond the mountains blue,

he went to dwell with her, the friends

who mourned him never knew.

To a Waterfowl[1]

Whither, ’midst falling dew,

while glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler’s eye

might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

as, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

thy figure floats along.

Seek’st thou the plashy brink

of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

or where the rocking billows rise and sink

on the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care

teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—

the desert and illimitable air,—

lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann’d

at that far height, the cold thin atmosphere:

yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end,

soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,

and scream among thy fellows; reed shall bend

soon o’er thy sheltered nest.

Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven

hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart

deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

and shall not soon depart.

He, who, from zone to zone,

guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

in the long way that I must tread alone,

will lead my steps aright.

John Keats (1795 – 1821)

Isabella[1]

Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!

Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love’s eye!

They could not in the self-same mansion dwell

without some stir of heart, some malady;

they could not sit at meals but feel how well

it soothed each to be the other by;

they could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep

but to each other dream, and nightly weep.

With every morn their love grew tenderer,

with every eve deeper and tenderer still;

he might not in house, field, or garden stir,

but her full shape would all his seeing fill;

and his continual voice was pleasanter

to her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;

her lute-string gave an echo of his name,

she spoilt her half-done broidery with the same.

He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch

before the door had given her to his eyes;

and from her chamber-window he would catch

her beauty farther than the falcon spies;

and constant as her vespers would he watch,

because her face was turned to the same skies;

and with sick longing all the night outwear,

to hear her morning-step upon the stair.

A whole long month of May in this sad plight

made their cheeks paler by the break of June:

“Tomorrow will I bow to my delight,

tomorrow will I ask my lady’s boon.”—

“O may I never see another night,

Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love’s tune.”—

so spake they to their pillows; but, alas,

honeyless days and days did he let pass;

until sweet Isabella’s untouched cheek

fell sick within the rose’s just domain,

fell thin as a young mother’s, who doth seek

by every lull to cool her infant’s pain:

“How ill she is,” said he, “I may not speak,

and yet I will, and tell my love all plain:

if looks speak love-laws, I will drink her tears,

and at the least ’twill startle off her cares.”

So said he one fair morning, and all day

his heart beat awfully against his side;

and to his heart he inwardly did pray

for power to speak; but still the ruddy tide

stifled his voice, and pulsed resolve away—

fevered his high conceit of such a bride,

yet brought him to the meekness of a child:

Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!

So once more he had waked and anguishëd

a dreary night of love and misery,

if Isabel’s quick eye had not been wed

to every symbol on his forehead high;

she saw it waxing very pale and dead,

and straight all flushed; so, lispëd tenderly,

“Lorenzo!”—here she ceased her timid quest,

but in her tone and look he read the rest.

“O Isabella, I can half perceive

that I may speak my grief into thine ear;

if thou didst ever anything believe,

believe how I love thee, believe how near

my soul is to its doom: I would not grieve

thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would not fear

thine eyes by gazing; but I cannot live

another night, and not my passion shrive.”

“Love! thou art leading me from wintry cold,

lady! thou leadest me to summer clime,

and I must taste the blossoms that unfold

in its ripe warmth this gracious morning time.”

So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold,

and poised with hers in dewy rhyme:

great bliss was with them, and great happiness

grew, like a lusty flower in June’s caress.

Parting they seemed to tread upon the air,

twin roses by the zephyr blown apart

only to meet again more close, and share

the inward fragrance of each other’s heart.

She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair

sang, of delicious love and honeyed dart;

he with light steps went up a western hill,

and bade the sun farewell, and joyed his fill.

All close they met again, before the dusk

had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,

all close they met, all eves, before the dusk

had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,

close in a bower of hyacinth and musk,

unknown of any, free from whispering tale.

Ah! better had it been for ever so,

than idle ears should pleasure in their woe.

Were they unhappy then?—It cannot be—

too many tears for lovers have been shed,

too many sighs give we to them in fee,

too much of pity after they are dead,

too many doleful stories do we see,

whose matter in bright gold were best be read;

except in such a page where Theseus’ spouse

over the pathless waves towards him bows.

But, for the general award of love,

the little sweet doth kill much bitterness;

though Dido silent is in under-grove,

and Isabella’s was a great distress,

though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove

was not embalmed, this truth is not the less—

even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers,

know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.

With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,

enrichëd from ancestral merchandize,

and for them many a weary hand did swelt

in torched mines and noisy factories,

and many once proud-quivered loins did melt

in blood from stinging whip;—with hollow eyes

many all day in dazzling river stood,

to take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,

and went all naked to the hungry shark;

for them his ears gushed blood; for them in death

the seal on the cold ice with piteous bark

lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe

a thousand men in troubles wide and dark:

half-ignorant, they turned an easy wheel,

that set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

Why were they proud? Because their marble founts

gushed with more pride than do a wretch’s tears?—

Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts

were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs?—

Why were they proud? Because red-lined accounts

were richer than the songs of Grecian years?—

Why were they proud? again we ask aloud,

why in the name of Glory were they proud?

Yet were these Florentines as self-retired

in hungry pride and gainful cowardice,

as two close Hebrews in that land inspired,

paled in and vineyarded from beggar-spies;

the hawks of ship-mast forests—the untired

and panniered mules for ducats and old lies—

quick cat’s-paws on the generous stray-away,—

great wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay.

How was it these same ledger-men could spy

fair Isabella in her downy nest?

How could they find out in Lorenzo’s eye

a straying from his toil? Hot Egypt’s pest

into their vision covetous and sly!

How could these money-bags see east and west?—

Yet so they did—and every dealer fair

must see behind, as doth the hunted hare.

O eloquent and famed Boccaccio!

Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon,

and of thy spicy myrtles as they blow,

and of thy roses amorous of the moon,

and of thy lilies, that do paler grow

now they can no more hear thy gittern’s tune,

for venturing syllables that ill beseem

the Quiet glooms of such a piteous theme.

Grant thou a pardon here, and then the tale

shall move on soberly, as it is meet;

there is no other crime, no mad assail

to make old prose in modern rhyme more sweet:

but it is done—succeed the verse or fail—

to honor thee, and thy gone spirit greet;

to stead thee as a verse in English tongue,

an echo of thee in the north-wind sung.

These brethren having found by many signs

what love Lorenzo for their sister had,

and how she loved him too, each unconfines

his bitter thoughts to other, well nigh mad

that he, the servant of their trade designs,

should in their sister’s love be blithe and glad,

when ’twas their plan to coax her by degrees

to some high noble and his olive-trees.

And many a jealous conference had they,

and many times they bit their lips alone,

before they fixed upon a surest way

to make the youngster for his crime atone;

and at the last, these men of cruel clay

cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone;

for they resolvëd in some forest dim

to kill Lorenzo, and there bury him.

So on a pleasant morning, as he leant

into the sun-rise, o’er the balustrade

of the garden-terrace, towards him they bent

their footing through the dews; and to him said,

“You seem there in the Quiet of content,

Lorenzo, and we are most loath to invade

calm speculation; but if you are wise,

bestride your steed while cold is in the skies.

to-day we purpose, aye, this hour we mount

to spur three leagues towards the Apennine;

come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count

his dewy rosary on the eglantine.”

Lorenzo, courteously as he was wont,

bowed a fair greeting to these serpents’ whine;

and went in haste, to get in readiness,

with belt, and spur, and bracing huntsman’s dress.

And as he to the court-yard passed along,

each third step did he pause, and listened oft

if he could hear his lady’s matin-song,

or the light whisper of her footstep soft;

and as he thus over his passion hung,

he heard a laugh full musical aloft;

when, looking up, he saw her features bright

smile through an in-door lattice, all delight.

“Love, Isabel!” said he, “I was in pain

lest I should miss to bid thee a good morrow:

Ah! what if I should lose thee, when so fain

I am to stifle all the heavy sorrow

of a poor three hours’ absence? but we’ll gain

out of the amorous dark what day doth borrow.

Good bye! I’ll soon be back.”—“Good bye!” said she:—

and as he went she chanted merrily.

So the two brothers and their murdered man

rode past fair Florence, to where Arno’s stream

gurgles through straitened banks, and still doth fan

itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream

keeps head against the freshets. Sick and wan

the brothers’ faces in the ford did seem,

lorenzo’s flush with love.—They passed the water

into a forest Quiet for the slaughter.

There was Lorenzo slain and buried in,

there in that forest did his great love cease;

ah! when a soul doth thus its freedom win,

it aches in loneliness—is ill at peace

as the break-covert blood-hounds of such sin:

they dipped their swords in the water, and did tease

their horses homeward, with convulsëd spur,

each richer by his being a murderer.

They told their sister how, with sudden speed,

lorenzo had ta’en ship for foreign lands,

because of some great urgency and need

in their affairs, requiring trusty hands.

Poor Girl! put on thy stifling widow’s weed,

and ‘scape at once from Hope’s accursëd bands;

to-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow,

and the next day will be a day of sorrow.

She weeps alone for pleasures not to be;

sorely she wept until the night came on,

and then, instead of love, O misery!

She brooded o’er the luxury alone:

his image in the dusk she seemed to see,

and to the silence made a gentle moan,

spreading her perfect arms upon the air,

and on her couch low murmuring “Where? O where?”

But Selfishness, Love’s cousin, held not long

its fiery vigil in her single breast;

she fretted for the golden hour, and hung

upon the time with feverish unrest—

not long—for soon into her heart a throng

of higher occupants, a richer zest,

came tragic; passion not to be subdued,

and sorrow for her love in travels rude.

In the mid days of autumn, on their eves

the breath of Winter comes from far away,

and the sick west continually bereaves

of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay

of death among the bushes and the leaves,

to make all bare before he dares to stray

from his north cavern. So sweet Isabel

by gradual decay from beauty fell,

because Lorenzo came not. Oftentimes

she asked her brothers, with an eye all pale,

striving to be itself, what dungeon climes

could keep him off so long? They spake a tale

time after time, to Quiet her. Their crimes

came on them, like a smoke from Hinnom’s vale;

and every night in dreams they groaned aloud,

to see their sister in her snowy shroud.

And she had died in drowsy ignorance,

but for a thing more deadly dark than all;

it came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance,

which saves a sick man from the feathered pall

for some few gasping moments; like a lance,

waking an Indian from his cloudy hall

with cruel pierce, and bringing him again

sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain.

It was a vision.—In the drowsy gloom,

the dull of midnight, at her couch’s foot

Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb

had marred his glossy hair which once could shoot

luster into the sun, and put cold doom

upon his lips, and taken the soft lute

from his lorn voice, and past his loamëd ears

had made a miry channel for his tears.

Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow spake;

for there was striving, in its piteous tongue,

to speak as when on earth it was awake,

and Isabella on its music hung:

languor there was in it, and tremulous shake,

as in a palsied Druid’s harp unstrung;

and through it moaned a ghostly under-song,

like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briars among.

Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright

with love, and kept all phantom fear aloof

from the poor girl by magic of their light,

the while it did unthread the horrid woof

of the late darkened time,—the murderous spite

of pride and avarice,—the dark pine roof

in the forest,—and the sodden turfëd dell,

where, without any word, from stabs he fell.

Saying moreover, “Isabel, my sweet!

red whortle-berries droop above my head,

and a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet;

around me beeches and high chestnuts shed

their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat

comes from beyond the river to my bed:

go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,

and it shall comfort me within the tomb.”

“I am a shadow now, alas! alas!

Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling

alone: I chant alone the holy mass,

while little sounds of life are round me knelling,

and glossy bees at noon do field ward pass,

and many a chapel bell the hour is telling,

paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me,

and thou art distant in Humanity.”

“I know what was, I feel full well what is,

and I should rage, if spirits could go mad;

though I forget the taste of earthly bliss,

that paleness warms my grave, as though I had

a Seraph chosen from the bright abyss

to be my spouse: thy paleness makes me glad;

thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel

a greater love through all my essence steal.”

The Spirit mourned “Adieu!”—dissolved and left

the atom darkness in a slow turmoil;

as when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,

thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,

we put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,

and see the spangly gloom froth up and boil:

it made sad Isabella’s eyelids ache,

and in the dawn she started up awake;

“Ha! ha!” said she, “I knew not this hard life,

I thought the worst was simple misery;

I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife

portioned us—happy days, or else to die;

but there is crime—a brother’s bloody knife!

Sweet Spirit, thou hast schooled my infancy:

I’ll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes,

and greet thee morn and even in the skies.”

When the full morning came, she had devised

how she might secret to the forest hie;

how she might find the clay, so dearly prized,

and sing to it one latest lullaby;

how her short absence might be unsurmised,

while she the inmost of the dream would try.

Resolved, she took with her an aged nurse,

and went into that dismal forest-hearse.

See, as they creep along the river side,

how she doth whisper to that aged Dame,

and, after looking round the champaign wide,

shows her a knife.—“What feverous hectic flame

burns in thee, child?—What good can thee betide,

that thou should’st smile again?”—The evening came,

and they had found Lorenzo’s earthy bed;

the flint was there, the berries at his head.

Who hath not loitered in a green church-yard,

and let his spirit, like a demon-mole,

work through the clayey soil and gravel hard,

to see skull, coffined bones, and funeral stole;

pitying each form that hungry Death hath marred

and filling it once more with human soul?

Ah! this is holiday to what was felt

when Isabella by Lorenzo knelt.

She gazed into the fresh-thrown mould, as though

one glance did fully all its secrets tell;

clearly she saw, as other eyes would know

pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well;

upon the murderous spot she seemed to grow,

like to a native lily of the dell:

then with her knife, all sudden, she began

to dig more fervently than misers can.

Soon she turned up a soiled glove, whereon

her silk had played in purple fantasies,

she kissed it with a lip more chill than stone,

and put it in her bosom, where it dries

and freezes utterly unto the bone

those dainties made to still an infant’s cries:

then ‘gan she work again; nor stayed her care,

but to throw back at times her veiling hair.

That old nurse stood beside her wondering,

until her heart felt pity to the core

at sight of such a dismal laboring,

and so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar,

and put her lean hands to the horrid thing:

three hours they labored at this travail sore;

at last they felt the kernel of the grave,

and Isabella did not stamp and rave.

Ah! wherefore all this wormy circumstance?

Why linger at the yawning tomb so long?

O for the gentleness of old Romance,

the simple plaining of a minstrel’s song!

Fair reader, at the old tale take a glance,

for here, in truth, it doth not well belong

to speak:—O turn thee to the very tale,

and taste the music of that vision pale.

With duller steel than the Persean sword

they cut away no formless monster’s head,

but one, whose gentleness did well accord

with death, as life. The ancient harps have said,

love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord:

if Love impersonate was ever dead,

pale Isabella kissed it, and low moaned.

‘Twas love; cold,—dead indeed, but not dethroned.

In anxious secrecy they took it home,

and then the prize was all for Isabel:

she calmed its wild hair with a golden comb,

and all around each eye’s sepulchral cell

pointed each fringed lash; the smeared loam

with tears, as chilly as a dripping well,

she drenched away:—and still she combed, and kept

sighing all day—and still she kissed, and wept.

Then in a silken scarf,—sweet with the dews

of precious flowers plucked in Araby,

and divine liquids come with odorous ooze

through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully,—

she wrapped it up; and for its tomb did choose

a garden-pot, wherein she laid it by,

and covered it with mould, and o’er it set

sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.

And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,

and she forgot the blue above the trees,

and she forgot the dells where waters run,

and she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;

she had no knowledge when the day was done,

and the new morn she saw not: but in peace

hung over her sweet Basil evermore,

and moistened it with tears unto the core.

And so she ever fed it with thin tears,

whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew,

so that it smelt more balmy than its peers

of Basil-tufts in Florence; for it drew

nurture besides, and life, from human fears,

from the fast mouldering head there shut from view:

so that the jewel, safely casketed,

came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread.

O Melancholy, linger here awhile!

O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!

O Echo, Echo, from some somber isle,

unknown, Lethean, sigh to us—O sigh!

Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile;

lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily,

and make a pale light in your cypress glooms,

tinting with silver wan your marble tombs.

Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe,

from the deep throat of sad Melpomene!

Through bronzëd lyre in tragic order go,

and touch the strings into a mystery;

sound mournfully upon the winds and low;

for simple Isabel is soon to be

among the dead: She withers, like a palm

cut by an Indian for its juicy balm.

O leave the palm to wither by itself;

let not quick Winter chill its dying hour!—

It may not be—those Baalites of pelf,

her brethren, noted the continual shower

from her dead eyes; and many a curious elf,

among her kindred, wondered that such dower

of youth and beauty should be thrown aside

by one marked out to be a Noble’s bride.

And, furthermore, her brethren wondered much

why she sat drooping by the Basil green,

and why it flourished, as by magic touch;

greatly they wondered what the thing might mean:

they could not surely give belief, that such

a very nothing would have power to wean

her from her own fair youth, and pleasures gay,

and even remembrance of her love’s delay.

Therefore they watched a time when they might sift

this hidden whim; and long they watched in vain;

for seldom did she go to chapel-shrift,

and seldom felt she any hunger-pain;

and when she left, she hurried back, as swift

as bird on wing to breast its eggs again;

and, patient as a hen-bird, sat her there

beside her Basil, weeping through her hair.

Yet they contrived to steal the Basil-pot,

and to examine it in secret place;

the thing was vile with green and livid spot,

and yet they knew it was Lorenzo’s face:

the guerdon of their murder they had got,

and so left Florence in a moment’s space,

never to turn again.—Away they went,

with blood upon their heads, to banishment.

O Melancholy, turn thine eyes away!

O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!

O Echo, Echo, on some other day,

from isles Lethean, sigh to us—O sigh!

Spirits of grief, sing not your “Well-a-way!”

For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die;

will die a death too lone and incomplete,

now they have ta’en away her Basil sweet.

Piteous she looked on dead and senseless things,

asking for her lost Basil amorously;

and with melodious chuckle in the strings

of her lorn voice, she oftentimes would cry

after the Pilgrim in his wanderings,

to ask him where her Basil was; and why

’Twas hid from her: “For cruel ’tis,” said she,

“to steal my Basil-pot away from me.”

And so she pined, and so she died forlorn,

imploring for her Basil to the last.

No heart was there in Florence but did mourn

in pity of her love, so overcast.

And a sad ditty of this story born

from mouth to mouth through all the country passed:

still is the burthen sung—“O cruelty,

to steal my Basil-pot away from me!”

La Belle Dame Sans Merci[1]

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,

alone and palely loitering;

the sedge is wither’d from the lake,

and no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,

so haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel’s granary is full,

and the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow,

with anguish moist and fever dew;

and on thy cheek a fading rose

fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads

full beautiful, a fairy’s child;

her hair was long, her foot was light,

and her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,

and nothing else saw all day long;

for sideways would she lean, and sing

a fairy’s song.

I made a garland for her head,

and bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

she look’d at me as she did love,

and made sweet moan.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

and honey wild, and manna dew;

and sure in language strange she said,

I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,

and there she gaz’d and sighed deep,

and there I shut her wild sad eyes—

so kiss’d to sleep.

And there we slumber’d on the moss,

and there I dream’d, ah woe betide,

the latest dream I ever dream’d

on the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,

pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

who cry’d—“La belle Dame sans merci

hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam

with horrid warning gaped wide,

and I awoke, and found me here

on the cold hill side.

And this is why I sojourn here

alone and palely loitering,

though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,

and no birds sing.

O Blush Not So[1]

O blush not so! O blush not so!

Or I shall think you knowing;

and if you smile the blushing while,

then maidenheads are going.

There’s a blush for want, and a blush for shan’t,

and a blush for having done it;

there’s a blush for thought, and a blush for nought,

and a blush for just begun it.

O sigh not so! O sigh not so!

for it sounds of Eve’s sweet pippin;

by these loosened lips you have tasted the pips

and fought in an amorous nipping.

Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,

for it only will last our youth out,

and we have the prime of the kissing time,

we have not one sweet tooth out.

There’s a sigh for aye, and a sigh for nay,

and a sigh for
I can’t bear it!

O what can be done, shall we stay or run?

O cut the sweet apple and share it!

This living hand, now warm and capable[1]

This living hand, now warm and capable

of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

and in the icy silence of the tomb,

so haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

that thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood

so in my veins red life might stream again,

and thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—

I hold it towards you.

Ode on a Grecian Urn[1]

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,

thou foster child of silence and slow time,

sylvan historian, who canst thus express

a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

what leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape

of deities or mortals, or of both,

in Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,

pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;

she cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss

forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

and, happy melodist, unwearied,

forever piping songs forever new;

more happy love! more happy, happy love!

Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,

forever panting, and forever young;

all breathing human passion far above,

that leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,

a burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

and all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?

What little town by river or sea shore,

or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

will silent be; and not a soul to tell

why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

of marble men and maidens overwrought,

with forest branches and the trodden weed;

thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

as doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all

ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Thomas Hood (1799 – 1845)

The Poet’s Fate[1]

What is a modern Poet’s fate?

To write his thoughts upon a slate;

the Critic spits on what is done,

gives it a wipe—and all is gone.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)

Days[2]

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,

muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,

and marching single in an endless file,

bring diadems and faggots in their hands.

To each they offer gifts after his will,

bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.

I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,

forgot my morning wishes, hastily

took a few herbs and apples, and the Day

turned and departed silent. I, too late,

under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Hamatreya[3]

Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,

possessed the land which rendered to their toil

hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.

Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,

saying, “‘Tis mine, my children’s and my name’s.

How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!

How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!

I fancy these pure waters and the flags

know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;

and, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.”

Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:

and strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.

earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys

Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;

who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet

clear of the grave.

They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,

and sighed for all that bounded their domain;

“This suits me for a pasture; that’s my park;

we must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,

and misty lowland, where to go for peat.

The land is well,—lies fairly to the south.

‘Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back,

to find the sitfast acres where you left them.”

Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds

him to his land, a lump of mould the more.

Hear what the Earth says:—

Earth-Song

“Mine and yours;

mine, not yours, Earth endures;

stars abide—

shine down in the old sea;

old are the shores;

but where are old men?

I who have seen much,

such have I never seen.

The lawyer’s deed

ran sure,

in tail,

to them, and to their heirs

who shall succeed,

without fail,

forevermore.

Here is the land,

shaggy with wood,

with its old valley,

mound and flood.

But the heritors?—

fled like the flood’s foam.

The lawyer, and the laws,

and the kingdom,

clean swept herefrom.

They called me theirs,

who so controlled me;

yet every one

wished to stay, and is gone,

how am I theirs,

if they cannot hold me,

but I hold them?”

When I heard the Earth-song,

I was no longer brave;

my avarice cooled

like lust in the chill of the grave.

The Rhodora[1]

On being asked, Whence is the flower?

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

to please the desert and the sluggish brook.

The purple petals, fallen in the pool,

made the black water with their beauty gay;

here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,

and court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

this charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,

then Beauty is its own excuse for being:

why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask, I never knew:

but, in my simple ignorance, suppose

the self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

The Snow-Storm[1]

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

seems nowhere to alight: the whitëd air

hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,

and veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet

delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

in a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind’s masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

curves his white bastions with projected roof

round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

so fanciful, so savage, naught cares he

for number or proportion. Mockingly,

on coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

a swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,

maugre the farmer’s sighs; and at the gate

a tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world

is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art

to mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,

the frolic architecture of the snow.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861)

Sonnets from the Portuguese – I[1]

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years,

who each one in a gracious hand appears

to bear a gift for mortals, old or young:

and, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

the sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,

those of my own life, who by turns had flung

a shadow across me. Straightway I was ’ware,

so weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;

and a voice said in mastery, while I strove,

“Guess now who holds thee?”—“Death,” I said.

but, there,

the silver answer rang,—“Not Death, but Love.”

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XIV[1]

If thou must love me, let it be for nought

except for love’s sake only. Do not say

“I love her for her smile—her look—her way

of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought

that falls in well with mine, and certes brought

a sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—

for these things in themselves, Beloved, may

be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,

may be unwrought so. Neither love me for

thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—

a creature might forget to weep, who bore

thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!

But love me for love’s sake, that evermore

thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XX[2]

Belovëd, my Belovëd, when I think

that thou wast in the world a year ago,

what time I sat alone here in the snow

and saw no footprint, heard the silence sink

no moment at thy voice, but, link by link,

went counting all my chains as if that so

they never could fall off at any blow

struck by thy possible hand,—why, thus I drink

of life’s great cup of wonder! Wonderful,

never to feel thee thrill the day or night

with personal act or speech,—nor ever cull

some prescience of thee with the blossoms white

thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,

who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XLIII[1]

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

for the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday’s

most Quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

with my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,

smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)

A Nameless Grave[2]

“A soldier of the Union mustered out,”

is the inscription on an unknown grave

at Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,

nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout

shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout

of battle, when the loud artillery drave

its iron wedges through the ranks of brave

and doomed battalions, storming the redoubt.

Thou unknown hero sleeping by the sea

in thy forgotten grave! With secret shame

I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn,

when I remember thou hast given for me

all that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name,

and I can give thee nothing in return.

Jugurtha[1]

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

Cried the African monarch, the splendid,

as down to his death in the hollow

dark dungeons of Rome he descended,

uncrowned, unthroned, unattended;

how cold are thy baths, Apollo!

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended,

as the vision, that lured him to follow,

with the mist and the darkness blended,

and the dream of his life was ended;

how cold are thy baths, Apollo!

Killed at the Ford[2]

He is dead, the beautiful youth,

the heart of honor, the tongue of truth,

he, the life and light of us all,

whose voice was blithe as a bugle-call,

whom all eyes followed with one consent,

the cheer of whose laugh, and whose pleasant word,

hushed all murmurs of discontent.

Only last night, as we rode along,

down in the dark of the mountain gap,

to visit the picket-guard at the ford,

little dreaming of any mishap,

he was humming the words of some old song:

“Two red roses he had on his cap

and another he bore at the point of his sword.”

Sudden and swift a whistling ball

came out of a wood, and the voice was still;

something I heard in the darkness fall,

and for a moment my blood grew chill;

I spake in a whisper, as he who speaks

in a room where some one is lying dead;

but he made no answer to what I said.

We lifted him up to his saddle again,

and through the mire and the mist and the rain

carried him back to the silent camp,

and laid him as if asleep on his bed;

and I saw by the light of the surgeon’s lamp

two white roses upon his cheeks,

and one, just over his heart, blood red!

And I saw in a vision how far and fleet

that fatal bullet went speeding forth,

till it reached a town in the distant North,

till it reached a house in a sunny street,

till it reached a heart that ceased to beat

without a murmur, without a cry;

and a bell was tolled in that far-off town,

for one who had passed from cross to crown,

and the neighbors wondered that she should die.

King Witlaf’s Drinking-Horn[1]

Witlaf, a king of the Saxons,

ere yet his last he breathed,

to the merry monks of Croyland

his drinking-horn bequeathed,—

that, whenever they sat at their revels,

and drank from the golden bowl,

they might remember the donor,

and breathe a prayer for his soul.

So sat they once at Christmas,

and bade the goblet pass;

in their beards the red wine glistened

like dew-drops in the grass.

They drank to the soul of Witlaf,

they drank to Christ the Lord,

and to each of the Twelve Apostles,

who had preached his holy word.

They drank to the Saints and Martyrs

of the dismal days of yore,

and as soon as the horn was empty

they remembered one Saint more.

And the reader droned from the pulpit

like the murmur of many bees,

the legend of good Saint Guthlac,

and Saint Basil’s homilies;

till the great bells of the convent,

from their prison in the tower,

Guthlac and Bartholomaeus,

proclaimed the midnight hour.

And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney,

and the Abbot bowed his head,

and the flamelets flapped and flickered,

but the Abbot was stark and dead.

Yet still in his pallid fingers

he clutched the golden bowl,

in which, like a pearl dissolving,

had sunk and dissolved his soul.

But not for this their revels

the jovial monks forbore,

for they cried, “Fill high the goblet!

We must drink to one Saint more!”

Nature[1]

As a fond mother, when the day is o’er,

leads by the hand her little child to bed,

half willing, half reluctant to be led,

and leave his broken playthings on the floor,

still gazing at them through the open door,

nor wholly reassured and comforted

by promises of others in their stead,

which, though more splendid, may not please him more;

so Nature deals with us, and takes away

our playthings one by one, and by the hand

leads us to rest so gently, that we go

scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,

being too full of sleep to understand

how far the unknown transcends the what we know.

The Beleaguered City[1]

I have read, in some old marvelous tale,

some legend strange and vague,

that a midnight host of specters pale

beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream

with the wan moon overhead,

there stood as in an awful dream,

the army of the dead.

White as a sea-fog, landward bound,

the spectral camp was seen,

and, with a sorrowful deep sound,

the river flowed between.

No other voice nor sound was there,

nor drum, nor sentry’s pace;

the mist like banners clasped the air,

as clouds with clouds embrace.

But, when the old cathedral bell

proclaimed the morning prayer,

the white pavilions rose and fell

on the alarmed air.

Down the broad valley fast and far

the troubled army fled;

up rose the glorious morning star,

the ghastly host was dead.

I have read, in the marvelous heart of man

that strange and mystic scroll,

that an army of phantoms vast and wan

beleaguer the human soul.

Encamped beside Life’s rushing stream,

in Fancy’s misty light,

gigantic shapes and shadows gleam,

portentous through the night.

Upon its midnight battle-ground

the spectral camp is seen,

and with sorrowful deep sound

flows the River of Life between.

No other voice, nor sound is there,

in the army of the grave;

no other challenge breaks the air,

but the rushing of Life’s wave.

And, when the solemn and deep church-bell

entreats the soul to pray,

the midnight phantoms feel the spell,

the shadows sweep away.

Down the broad Vale of Tears afar,

the spectral camp is fled;

faith shineth as a morning star,

our ghastly fears are dead.

The Fire of Drift-Wood[1]

We sat within the farm-house old,

whose windows, looking o’er the bay,

gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold,

an easy entrance, night and day.

Not far away we saw the port,—

the strange, old-fashioned, silent town,—

the lighthouse—the dismantled fort,—

the wooden houses, quaint and brown.

We sat and talked until the night,

descending, filled the little room;

our faces faded from the sight,—

our voices only broke the gloom.

We spake of many a vanished scene,

of what we once had thought and said,

of what had been, and might have been,

and who was changed, and who was dead;

and all that fills the hearts of friends,

when first they feel, with secret pain,

their lives thenceforth have separate ends,

and never can be one again

the first slight swerving of the heart,

that words are powerless to express,

and leave it still unsaid in part,

or say it in too great excess.

The very tones in which we spake

had something strange, I could but mark;

the leaves of memory seemed to make

a mournful rustling in the dark.

Oft died the words upon our lips,

as suddenly, from out the fire

built of the wreck of stranded ships,

the flames would leap and then expire.

And, as their splendor flashed and failed,

we thought of wrecks upon the main,—

of ships dismasted, that were hailed

and sent no answer back again.

The windows, rattling in their frames,—

the ocean roaring up the beach,—

the gusty blast—the bickering flames,—

all mingled vaguely in our speech;

Until they made themselves a part

of fancies floating through the brain,—

the long-lost ventures of the heart,

that send no answers back again.

O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!

they were indeed too much akin,—

the drift-wood fire without that burned,

the thoughts that burned and glowed within.

The Landlord’s Tale[1]

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

on the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

hardly a man is now alive

who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march

by land or sea from the town to-night,

hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

of the North Church tower as a signal light,—

one, if by land, and two, if by sea;

and I on the opposite shore will be,

ready to ride and spread the alarm

through every Middlesex village and farm

for the country folk to be up and to arm,”

Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar

silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

just as the moon rose over the bay,

where swinging wide at her moorings lay

the Somerset, British man-of-war;

a phantom ship, with each mast and spar

across the moon like a prison bar,

and a huge black hulk, that was magnified

by its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,

wanders and watches with eager ears,

till in the silence around him he hears

the muster of men at the barrack door,

the sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,

and the measured tread of the grenadiers,

marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,

by the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,

to the belfry-chamber overhead,

and startled the pigeons from their perch

on the somber rafters, that round him made

masses and moving shapes of shade,—

by the trembling ladder, steep and tall

to the highest window in the wall,

where he paused to listen and look down

a moment on the roofs of the town,

and the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,

in their night-encampment on the hill,

wrapped in silence so deep and still

that he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,

the watchful night-wind, as it went

creeping along from tent to tent

and seeming to whisper, “All is well!”

A moment only he feels the spell

of the place and the hour, and the secret dread

of the lonely belfry and the dead;

for suddenly all his thoughts are bent

on a shadowy something far away,

where the river widens to meet the bay,—

a line of black that bends and floats

on the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,

booted and spurred, with a heavy stride

on the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.

Now he patted his horse’s side,

now gazed at the landscape far and near,

then, impetuous, stamped the earth,

and turned and tightened his saddle-girth;

but mostly he watched with eager search

the belfry-tower of the Old North Church,

as it rose above the graves on the hill,

lonely and spectral and somber and still.

And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height

a glimmer, and then a gleam of light!

He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,

but lingers and gazes, till full on his sight

a second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,

a shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

and beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:

that was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

the fate of a nation was riding that night;

and the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,

kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,

and beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,

is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;

and under the alders, that skirt its edge,

now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,

is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock

when he crossed the bridge into Medford town.

He heard the crowing of the cock,

and the barking of the farmer’s dog,

and felt the damp of the river fog,

that rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,

when he galloped into Lexington.

He saw the gilded weathercock

swim in the moonlight as he passed,

and the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,

gaze at him with a spectral glare,

as if they already stood aghast

at the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,

when he came to the bridge in Concord town.

he heard the bleating of the flock,

and the twitter of birds among the trees,

and felt the breath of the morning breeze

blowing over the meadows brown.

And one was safe and asleep in his bed

who at the bridge would be first to fall,

who that day would be lying dead,

pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,

how the British Regulars fired and fled,—

how the farmers gave them ball for ball,

from behind each fence and farm-yard wall,

chasing the red-coats down the lane,

then crossing the fields to emerge again

under the trees at the turn of the road,

and only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;

and so through the night went his cry of alarm

to every Middlesex village and farm,—

a cry of defiance and not of fear,

a voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

and a word that shall echo forevermore!

For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,

through all our history, to the last,

in the hour of darkness and peril and need,

the people will waken and listen to hear

the hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,

and the midnight message of Paul Revere.

The Phantom Ship[1]

In Mather’s Magnalia Christi,

of the old colonial time,

may be found in prose the legend

that is here set down in rhyme.

A ship sailed from New Haven,

and the keen and frosty airs,

that filled her sails in parting

were heavy with good men’s prayers.

“O Lord! If it be thy pleasure”—

thus prayed the old divine—

“To bury our friends in the ocean,

take them, for they are thine!”

But Master Lamberton muttered,

and under his breath said he,

“This ship is so crank and walty

I fear our grave she will be!”

And the ships that came from England

when the winter months were gone,

brought no tidings of this vessel!

Nor of Master Lamberton.

This put the people to praying

that the Lord would let them hear

what in his greater wisdom

he had done to friends so dear.

And at last our prayers were answered:

it was in the month of June

an hour before sunset

of a windy afternoon.

When, steadily steering landward,

a ship was seen below,

and they knew it was Lamberton, Master,

who sailed so long ago.

On she came with a cloud of canvas,

right against the wind that blew,

until the eye could distinguish

the faces of the crew.

Then fell her straining topmasts,

hanging tangled in the shrouds,

and her sails were loosened and lifted,

and blown away like clouds.

And the masts, with all their rigging,

fell slowly, one by one,

and the hulk dilated and vanished,

as a sea-mist in the sun!

And the people who saw thus marvel

each said unto his friend,

that this was the mould of their vessel,

and thus her tragic end.

And the pastor of the village

gave thanks to God in Prayer,

that, to Quiet their troubled spirits,

he had sent this Ship of Air.

The Potter’s Wheel[1]

Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round

without a pause, without a sound:

so spins the flying world away!

This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,

follows the motion of my hand;

far some must follow, and some command,

though all are made of clay!

Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change

to something new, to something strange;

nothing that is can pause or stay;

the moon will wax, the moon will wane,

the mist and cloud will turn to rain,

the rain to mist and cloud again,

tomorrow be today.

Turn, turn, my wheel! All life is brief;

what now is bud wilt soon be leaf,

what now is leaf will soon decay;

the wind blows east, the wind blows west;

the blue eggs in the robin’s nest

will soon have wings and beak and breast,

and flutter and fly away.

Turn, turn, my wheel! This earthen jar

a touch can make, a touch can mar;

and shall it to the Potter say,

what makest thou? Thou hast no hand?

As men who think to understand

a world by their Creator planned,

who wiser is than they.

Turn, turn, my wheel! ’T is nature’s plan

the child should grow into the man,

the man grow wrinkled, old, and gray;

in youth the heart exults and sings,

the pulses leap, the feet have wings;

in age the cricket chirps, and brings

the harvest home of day.

Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race,

of every tongue, of every place,

caucasian, Coptic, or Malay,

all that inhabit this great earth,

whatever be their rank or worth,

are kindred and allied by birth,

and made of the same clay.

Turn, turn, my wheel! What is begun

at daybreak must at dark be done,

tomorrow will be another day;

tomorrow the hot furnace flame

will search the heart and try the frame,

and stamp with honor or with shame

these vessels made of clay.

Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soon

the noon will be the afternoon,

too soon today be yesterday;

behind us in our path we cast

the broken potsherds of the past,

and all are ground to dust at last,

and trodden into clay!

The Rainy Day[1]

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;

it rains, and the wind is never weary;

the vine still clings to the mouldering wall,

but at every gust the dead leaves fall,

and the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;

it rains, and the wind is never weary;

my thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,

but the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,

and the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;

behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

thy fate is the common fate of all,

into each life some rain must fall,

some days must be dark and dreary.

The Three Silences of Molinos[2]

To John Greenleaf Whittier

Three Silences there are: the first of speech,

the second of desire, the third of thought;

this is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught

with dreams and visions, was the first to teach.

These Silences, commingling each with each,

made up the perfect Silence, that he sought

and prayed for, and wherein at times he caught

mysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach.

O thou, whose daily life anticipates

the life to come, and in whose thought and word

the spiritual world preponderates.

Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heard

voices and melodies from beyond the gates,

and speakest only when thy soul is stirred!

Travels by the Fireside[1]

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,

and yonder gilded vane,

immovable for three days past,

points to the misty main,

it drives me in upon myself

and to the fireside gleams,

to pleasant books that crowd my shelf,

and still more pleasant dreams,

I read whatever bards have sung

of lands beyond the sea,

and the bright days when I was young

come thronging back to me.

In fancy I can hear again

the Alpine torrent’s roar,

the mule-bells on the hills of Spain,

the sea at Elsinore.

I see the convent’s gleaming wall

rise from its groves of pine,

and towers of old cathedrals tall,

and castles by the Rhine.

I journey on by park and spire,

beneath centennial trees,

through fields with poppies all on fire,

and gleams of distant seas.

I fear no more the dust and heat,

no more I feel fatigue,

while journeying with another’s feet

o’er many a lengthening league.

Let others traverse sea and land,

and toil through various climes,

I turn the world round with my hand

reading these poets’ rhymes.

From them I learn whatever lies

beneath each changing zone,

and see, when looking with their eyes,

better than with mine own.

Twilight[1]

The twilight is sad and cloudy,

the wind blows wild and free,

and like the wings of sea-birds

flash the white caps of the sea.

But in the fisherman’s cottage

there shines a ruddier light,

and a little face at the window

peers out into the night.

Close, close it is pressed to the window,

as if those childish eyes

were looking into the darkness,

to see some form arise.

And a woman’s waving shadow

is passing to and fro,

now rising to the ceiling,

now bowing and bending low.

What tale do the roaring ocean,

and the night-wind, bleak and wild,

as they beat at the crazy casement,

tell to that little child?

And why do the roaring ocean,

and the night-wind, wild and bleak,

as they beat at the heart of the mother,

drive the color from her cheek?

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 – 1892)

Autumn Thoughts[1]

Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers,

and gone the Summer’s pomp and show,

and Autumn, in his leafless bowers,

is waiting for the Winter’s snow.

I said to Earth, so cold and gray,

“An emblem of myself thou art.”

“Not so,” the Earth did seem to say,

“For Spring shall warm my frozen heart.

I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams

of warmer sun and softer rain,

and wait to hear the sound of streams

and songs of merry birds again.”

“But thou, from whom the Spring hath gone,

for whom the flowers no longer blow,

who standest blighted and forlorn,

like Autumn waiting for the snow;”

“no hope is thine of sunnier hours,

thy Winter shall no more depart;

no Spring revive thy wasted flowers,

nor Summer warm thy frozen heart.”

By their Works[1]

Call him not heretic whose works attest

his faith in goodness by no creed confessed.

Whatever in love’s name is truly done

to free the bound and lift the fallen one

is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word

is not against Him labors for our Lord.

When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore

for love’s sweet service, sought the sisters’ door,

one saw the heavenly, one the human guest,

but who shall say which loved the Master best?

Forgiveness[2]

My heart was heavy, for its trust had been

abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;

so, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,

one summer Sabbath day I strolled among

the green mounds of the village burial-place;

where, pondering how all human love and hate

find one sad level; and how, soon or late,

wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,

and cold hands folded over a still heart,

pass the green threshold of our common grave,

whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,

awed for myself, and pitying my race,

our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,

swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave!

Trust[1]

The same old baffling questions! O my friend,

I cannot answer them. In vain I send

my soul into the dark, where never burn

the lamps of science, nor the natural light

of Reason’s sun and stars! I cannot learn

their great and solemn meanings, nor discern

the awful secrets of the eyes which turn

evermore on us through the day and night

with silent challenge and a dumb demand,

proffering the riddles of the dread unknown,

like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone,

questioning the centuries from their veils of sand!

I have no answer for myself or thee,

save that I learned beside my mother’s knee;

“All is of God that is, and is to be;

and God is good.” Let this suffice us still,

resting in childlike trust upon His will

who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894)

Sun and Shadow[2]

As I look from the isle, o’er its billows of green,

to the billows of foam-crested blue,

yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,

half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:

now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray

as the chaff in the stroke of the flail;

now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,

the sun gleaming bright on her sail.

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,—

of breakers that whiten and roar;

how little he cares, if in shadow or sun

they see him who gaze from the shore!

He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,

to the rock that is under his lee,

as he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,

o’er the gulfs of the desolate sea.

Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves

where life and its ventures are laid,

the dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves

may see us in sunshine or shade;

yet true to our course, though the shadows grow dark,

we’ll trim our broad sail as before,

and stand by the rudder that governs the bark,

nor ask how we look from the shore!

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

Annabel Lee[1]

It was many and many a year ago,

in a kingdom by the sea,

that a maiden there lived whom you may know

by the name of Annabel Lee;

and this maiden she lived with no other thought

than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

in this kingdom by the sea:

but we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee;

with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

in this kingdom by the sea,

a wind blew out of a cloud by night

chilling my Annabel Lee;

so that her highborn kinsman came

and bore her away from me,

to shut her up in a sepulcher

in this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

went envying her and me—

yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

in this kingdom by the sea)

that the wind came out of the cloud chilling,

and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

of those who were older than we—

of many far wiser than we—

and neither the angels in heaven above,

nor the demons down under the sea,

can ever dissever my soul from the soul

of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

for the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

and the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

and so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

in her sepulcher there by the sea,

in her tomb by the side of the sea.

For Annie[1]

Thank Heaven! the crisis—

the danger is past,

and the lingering illness

is over at last—

and the fever called “Living”

is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know

I am shorn of my strength,

and no muscle I move

as I lie at full length—

but no matter!—I feel

I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,

now, in my bed,

that any beholder

might fancy me dead—

might start at beholding me,

thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,

the sighing and sobbing,

are quieted now,

with that horrible throbbing

at heart:—ah, that horrible,

horrible throbbing!

The sickness—the nausea—

the pitiless pain—

have ceased, with the fever

that maddened my brain—

with the fever called “Living”

that burned in my brain.

And oh! of all tortures

that torture the worst

has abated—the terrible

torture of thirst

for the naphthalene river

of Passion accurst:—

I have drank of a water

that quenches all thirst:—

of a water that flows,

with a lullaby sound,

from a spring but a very few

feet under ground—

from a cavern not very far

down under ground.

And ah! let it never

be foolishly said

that my room it is gloomy

and narrow my bed;

for man never slept

in a different bed—

and, to sleep, you must slumber

in just such a bed.

My tantalized spirit

here blandly reposes,

forgetting, or never

regretting its roses—

its old agitations

of myrtles and roses:

for now, while so quietly

lying, it fancies

a holier odor

about it, of pansies—

a rosemary odor,

commingled with pansies—

with rue and the beautiful

puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,

bathing in many

a dream of the truth

and the beauty of Annie—

drowned in a bath

of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,

she fondly caressed,

and then I fell gently

to sleep on her breast—

deeply to sleep

from the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,

she covered me warm,

and she prayed to the angels

to keep me from harm—

to the queen of the angels

to shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly,

now in my bed,

(knowing her love)

that you fancy me dead—

and I rest so contentedly,

now in my bed,

(with her love at my breast)

that you fancy me dead—

that you shudder to look at me,

thinking me dead:—

but my heart it is brighter

than all of the many

stars in the sky,

for it sparkles with Annie—

it glows with the light

of the love of my Annie—

with the thought of the light

of the eyes of my Annie.

The Raven[1]

Once upon a midnight dreary,

while I pondered, weak and weary,

over many a quaint and curious

volume of forgotten lore—

while I nodded, nearly napping,

suddenly there came a tapping,

as of some one gently rapping,

rapping at my chamber door.

“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered,

“tapping at my chamber door—

only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember

it was in the bleak December,

and each separate dying ember

wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;

—vainly I had sought to borrow

from my books surcease of sorrow

—sorrow for the lost Lenore—

for the rare and radiant maiden

whom the angels name Lenore—

nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain

rustling of each purple curtain

thrilled me—filled me with fantastic

terrors never felt before;

so that now, to still the beating

of my heart, I stood repeating

“Tis some visitor entreating

entrance at my chamber door—

some late visitor entreating

entrance at my chamber door;

this it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger;

hesitating then no longer,

“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly

your forgiveness I implore;

but the fact is I was napping,

and so gently you came rapping,

and so faintly you came tapping,

tapping at my chamber door,

that I scarce was sure I heard you”

—here I opened wide the door;——

darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering,

long I stood there wondering, fearing,

doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals

ever dared to dream before;

but the silence was unbroken,

and the stillness gave no token,

and the only word there spoken

was the whispered word, “Lenore!”

This I whispered, and an echo

murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—

merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning,

all my soul within me burning,

soon I heard again a tapping

somewhat louder than before.

“Surely,” said I, “surely that is

something at my window lattice;

let me see, then, what thereat is,

and this mystery explore—

let my heart be still a moment

and this mystery explore;—

“Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter,

when, with many a flirt and flutter,

in there stepped a stately Raven

of the saintly days of yore;

not the least obeisance made he;

not an instant stopped or stayed he;

but, with mien of lord or lady,

perched above my chamber door—

perched upon a bust of Pallas

just above my chamber door—

perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling

my sad fancy into smiling,

by the grave and stern decorum

of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven,

thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

ghastly grim and ancient raven

wandering from the Nightly shore—

tell me what thy lordly name is

on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Much I marveled this ungainly

fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

though its answer little meaning—

little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing

that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing

bird above his chamber door—

Bird or beast upon the sculptured

bust above his chamber door,

with such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely

on the placid bust, spoke only

that one word, as if his soul in

that one word he did outpour.

Nothing farther then he uttered—

not a feather then he fluttered—

till I scarcely more than muttered

“Other friends have flown before—

on the morrow he will leave me,

as my hopes have flown before.”

Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken

by reply so aptly spoken,

“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters

is its only stock and store

caught from some unhappy master

whom unmerciful Disaster

followed fast and followed faster

till his songs one burden bore—

till the dirges of his Hope that

melancholy burden bore

of “Never—nevermore.”

But the raven still beguiling

all my sad soul into smiling,

straight I wheeled a cushioned seat

in front of bird, and bust and door;

then, upon the velvet sinking,

I betook myself to linking

fancy unto fancy, thinking

what this ominous bird of yore—

what this grim, ungainly, ghastly,

gaunt and ominous bird of yore

meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing,

but no syllable expressing

to the fowl whose fiery eyes now

burned into my bosom’s core;

this and more I sat divining,

with my head at ease reclining

on the cushion’s velvet lining

that the lamplight gloated o’er,

but whose velvet violet lining

with the lamplight gloating o’er,

she shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, me thought, the air grew denser,

perfumed from an unseen censer

swung by Angels whose faint foot-falls

tinkled on the tufted floor.

“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—

by these angels he hath sent thee

respite—respite and nepenthe

from thy memories of Lenore;

quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe

and forget this lost Lenore!”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—

prophet still, if bird or devil!—

Whether Tempter sent, or whether

tempest tossed thee here ashore,

desolate yet all undaunted,

on this desert land enchanted—

on this home by Horror haunted—

tell me truly, I implore—

is there—is there balm in Gilead?—

tell me—tell me, I implore!”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil—

prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us—

by that God we both adore—

tell this soul with sorrow laden

if, within the distant Aidenn,

it shall clasp a sainted maiden

whom the angels name Lenore—

clasp a rare and radiant maiden

whom the angels name Lenore.”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign of parting,

bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—

“Get thee back into the tempest

and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token

of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken!—

quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart,

and take thy form from off my door!”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting,

still is sitting, still is sitting

on the pallid bust of Pallas

just above my chamber door;

and his eyes have all the seeming

of a demon’s that is dreaming,

and the lamp-light o’er him streaming

throws his shadow on the floor;

and my soul from out that shadow

that lies floating on the floor

shall be lifted—nevermore!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)

Come Not, When I am Dead[1]

Come not, when I am dead,

to drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,

to trample round my fallen head,

and vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.

There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;

but thou, go by.

Child, if it were thine error or thy crime

I care no longer, being all unblest:

wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time,

and I desire to rest.

Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie:

go by, go by.

Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead[2]

Home they brought her warrior dead:

she nor swooned, nor uttered cry:

all her maidens, watching, said,

‘She must weep or she will die.’

Then they praised him, soft and low,

called him worthy to be loved,

truest friend and noblest foe;

yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,

lightly to the warrior stepped,

took the face-cloth from the face;

yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,

set his child upon her knee—

like summer tempest came her tears—

‘Sweet my child, I live for thee.’

The Charge of the Light Brigade[1]

Half a league, half a league,

half a league onward,

all in the valley of Death

rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!’ he said:

into the valley of Death

rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’

Was there a man dismayed?

Not tho’ the soldier knew

some one had blunderëd:

their’s not to make reply,

their’s not to reason why,

their’s but to do and die:

into the valley of Death

rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,

cannon to left of them,

cannon in front of them

volleyed and thundered;

stormed at with shot and shell,

boldly they rode and well,

into the jaws of Death,

into the mouth of Hell

rode the six hundred.

Flashed all their sabers bare,

flashed as they turned in air

sabring the gunners there,

charging an army, while

all the world wondered:

plunged in the battery-smoke

right thro’ the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

reeled from the sabre-stroke

shattered and sundered.

Then they rode back, but not

not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,

cannon to left of them,

cannon behind them

volleyed and thundered;

stormed at with shot and shell,

while horse and hero fell,

they that had fought so well

came thro’ the jaws of Death,

back from the mouth of Hell,

all that was left of them,

left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honor the charge they made!

Honor the Light Brigade,

noble six hundred!

Vivien’s Song[1]

…In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours,

faith and unfaith can ne’er be equal powers:

unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.

…It is the little rift within the lute,

that by and by will make the music mute,

and ever widening slowly silence all.

…The little rift within the lover’s lute,

or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,

that rotting inward slowly molders all.

…It is not worth the keeping: let it go;

but shall it? answer, darling, answer, no.

And trust me not at all or all in all.

Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)

A Toccata of Galuppi’s[1]

Oh Galuppi Baldassare,

this is very sad to find!

I can hardly misconceive you;

it would prove me deaf and blind;

but although I take your meaning,

‘tis with such a heavy mind!

Here you come with your old music,

and here’s all the good it brings.

What, they lived once thus at Venice

where the merchants were the kings,

where Saint Mark’s is, where the Doges

used to wed the sea with rings?

Ay, because the sea’s the street there;

and ’tis arched by … what you call

… Shylock’s bridge with houses on it,

where they kept the carnival:

I was never out of England

—it’s as if I saw it all.

Did young people take their pleasure

when the sea was warm in May?

Balls and masks begun at midnight,

burning ever to mid-day,

when they made up fresh adventures

for the morrow, do you say?

Was a lady such a lady,

cheeks so round and lips so red,—

on her neck the small face buoyant,

like a bell-flower on its bed,

o’er the breast’s superb abundance

where a man might base his head?

Well, and it was graceful of them—

they’d break talk off and afford

—She, to bite her mask’s black velvet—

he, to finger on his sword,

while you sat and played Toccatas,

stately at the clavichord?

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive,

sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,

told them something? Those suspensions,

those solutions—“Must we die?”

those commiserating sevenths—

“Life might last! we can but try!”

“Were you happy?” —“Yes.” —“And are you

still as happy?” —“Yes. And you?”

“Then, more kisses!” —“Did I stop them,

when a million seemed so few?”

Hark, the dominant’s persistence

till it must be answered to!

So, an octave struck the answer.

Oh, they praised you, I dare say!

“Brave Galuppi! that was music!

Good alike at grave and gay!

I can always leave off talking

when I hear a master play!”

Then they left you for their pleasure:

till in due time, one by one,

some with lives that came to nothing,

some with deeds as well undone,

death stepped tacitly and took them

where they never see the sun.

But when I sit down to reason,

think to take my stand nor swerve,

while I triumph o’er a secret

wrung from nature’s close reserve,

in you come with your cold music

till I creep thro’ every nerve.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket,

creaking where a house was burned:

“Dust and ashes, dead and done with,

Venice spent what Venice earned.

The soul, doubtless, is immortal—

where a soul can be discerned.”

“Yours for instance: you know physics,

something of geology,

mathematics are your pastime;

souls shall rise in their degree;

Butterflies may dread extinction, —

you’ll not die, it cannot be!”

As for Venice and her people,

merely born to bloom and drop,

here on earth they bore their fruitage,

mirth and folly were the crop:

What of soul was left, I wonder,

when the kissing had to stop?

“Dust and ashes!” So you creak it,

and I want the heart to scold.

Dear dead women, with such hair, too—

what’s become of all the gold

used to hang and brush their bosoms?

I feel chilly and grown old.

Meeting at Night[1]

The grey sea and the long black land;

and the yellow half-moon large and low;

and the startled little waves that leap

in fiery ringlets from their sleep,

as I gain the cove with pushing prow,

and quench its speed in the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

three fields to cross till a farm appears;

a tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

and blue spurt of a lighted match,

and a voice less loud, thro’ its joys and fears,

than the two hearts beating each to each!

My Last Duchess[2]

That’s my last duchess painted on the wall,

looking as if she were alive. I call

that piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands

worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said

“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read

strangers like you that pictured countenance,

that depth and passion of its earnest glance,

but to myself they turned (since none puts by

the curtain drawn for you, but I)

and seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

how such a glance came there; so not the first

are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’t was not

her husband’s presence only, called that spot

of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps

fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps

over my lady’s wrist too much” or “Paint

must never hope to reproduce the faint

half-flush that dies along her throat:” such stuff

was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

for calling up that spot of joy. She had

a heart—how shall I say? —too soon made glad,

too easily impressed: she liked whate’er

she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, ’t was all one! My favor at her breast,

the dropping of the daylight in the West,

the bough of cherries some officious fool

broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

she rode with round the terrace—all and each

would draw from her alike the approving speech,

or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked

somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked

my gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

with anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame

this sort of trifling? Even had you skill

in speech— (which I have not) —to make your will

Quite clear to such a one, and say, “Just this

or that in you disgusts me; here you miss

or there exceed the mark”—and if she let

herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse

—e’en then would be some stooping; and I choose

never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

as if alive. Will ’t please you rise? We’ll meet

the company below, then. I repeat,

the Count your master’s known munificence

is ample warrant that no just pretence

of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed

at starting is my object. Nay, we’ll go

together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.

Never the Time and the Place[1]

Never the time and the place

and the loved one all together!

This path—how soft to pace!

This May—what magic weather!

Where is the loved one’s face?

In a dream that loved one’s face meets mine,

but the house is narrow, the place is bleak

where, outside, rain and wind combine

with a furtive ear, if I strive to speak,

with a hostile eye at my flushing cheek,

with a malice that marks each word, each sign!

O enemy sly and serpentine,

uncoil thee from the waking man!

Do I hold the Past

thus firm and fast

yet doubt if the Future hold I can?

This path so soft to pace shall lead

thro’ the magic of May to herself indeed!

Or narrow if needs the house must be,

outside are the storms and strangers: we

oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she,—

I and she!

Porphyria’s Lover[1]

The rain set early in tonight,

the sullen wind was soon awake,

it tore the elm-tops down for spite,

and did its worst to vex the lake:

I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria; straight

she shut the cold out and the storm,

and kneeled and made the cheerless grate

blaze up, and all the cottage warm;

which done, she rose, and from her form

withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,

and laid her soiled gloves by, untied

her hat and let the damp hair fall,

and, last, she sat down by my side

and called me. When no voice replied,

she put my arm about her waist,

and made her smooth white shoulder bare,

and all her yellow hair displaced,

and, stooping, made my cheek lie there,

and spread, o’er all, her yellow hair,

murmuring how she loved me—she

too weak, for all her heart’s endeavor,

to set its struggling passion free

from pride, and vainer ties dissever,

and give herself to me forever.

But passion sometimes would prevail,

nor could tonight’s gay feast restrain

a sudden thought of one so pale

for love of her, and all in vain:

so, she was come through wind and rain.

Be sure I looked up at her eyes

happy and proud; at last l knew

porphyria worshiped me: surprise

made my heart swell, and still it grew

while l debated what to do.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

perfectly pure and good: I found

a thing to do, and all her hair

in one long yellow string l wound

three times her little throat around,

and strangled her. No pain felt she;

I am quite sure she felt no pain.

As a shut bud that holds a bee,

I warily oped her lids: again

laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

And I untightened next the tress

about her neck; her cheek once more

blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:

I propped her head up as before,

only, this time my shoulder bore

her head, which droops upon it still:

the smiling rosy little head,

so glad it has its utmost will,

that all it scorned at once is fled,

and I, its love, am gained instead!

Porphyria’s love: she guessed not how

her darling one wish would be heard.

And thus we sit together now,

and all night long we have not stirred,

and yet God has not said a word!

The Confessional[1]

It is a lie—their Priests, their Pope,

their Saints, their…all their fear or hope

are lies, and lies—there! through my door

and ceiling, there! and walls and floor.

There, lies, they lie—shall still be hurled

till spite of them I reach the world!

You think priests just and holy men!

Before they put me in this den

I was a human creature too,

with flesh and blood like one of you,

a girl that laughed in beauty’s pride

like lilies in your world outside.

I had a lover, shame avaunt!

This poor wrenched body, grim and gaunt,

was kissed all over till it burned,

by lips the truest love e’er turned

his heart’s own tint: one night they kissed

my soul out in a burning mist

so, next day when the accustomed train

of things grew round my sense again,

“That is a sin,” I said: and slow

with downcast eyes to church I go,

and pass to the confession-chair,

and tell the old mild father there.

But when I falter Beltran’s name,

“Ha?” quoth the father; “much I blame

the sin; yet whereof idly grieve?

Despair not, strenuously retrieve!

Nay, I will turn this love of thine

to lawful love, almost divine;

for he is young, and led astray,

this Beltran, and he schemes, men say,

to change the laws of church and state;

so, thine shall be an angel’s fate

who, ere the thunder breaks, should roll

its cloud away and save his soul.”

“For, when he lies upon thy breast,

thou mayst demand and be possessed

of all his plans, and next day steal

to me, and all those plans reveal,

that I and every priest, to purge

his soul may fast and use the scourge.”

That father’s beard was long and white,

with love and truth his brow seemed bright;

I went back; all on fire with joy,

and, that same evening, bade the boy

tell me, as lovers should, heart-free,

something to prove his love of me.

He told me what he would not tell

for hope of heaven or fear of hell;

and I lay listening in such pride!

And, soon as he had left my side,

tripped to the church by morning-light

to save his soul in his despite.

I told the father all his schemes

who were his comrades, what their dreams;

“And now make haste,” I said, “to pray

the one spot from his soul away;

to-night he comes, but not the same

will look.” At night he never came.

Nor next night; on the after-morn,

I went forth with a strength new-born.

The church was empty; something drew

my steps into the street; I knew

it led me to the market-place;

where, lo, on high, the fathers face!

That horrible back scaffold dressed,

that stapled block…God sink the rest!

That head strapped back, that blinding vest,

those knotted hands and naked breast,

till near one busy hangman pressed,

and, on the neck these arms caressed…

no part in aught they hope or fear!

No heaven with them, no hell! - and here,

no earth, not so much space as pens

my body in their worst of dens

but shall bear God and man my cry,

lies—lies, again—and still, they lie!

The Pied Piper of Hamelin[1]

A Child’s Story

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick,

by famous Hanover city;

the river Weser, deep and wide,

washes its wall on the southern side;

a pleasanter spot you never spied;

but, when begins my ditty,

almost five hundred years ago,

to see the townsfolk suffer so

from vermin, was a pity.

Rats!

They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,

and bit the babies in the cradles,

and ate the cheeses out of the vats,

and licked the soup from the cook’s own ladles,

split open the kegs of salted sprats,

made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,

and even spoiled the women’s chats,

by drowning their speaking

with shrieking and squeaking

in fifty different sharps and flats.

At last the people in a body

to the Town Hall came flocking:

“Tis clear,” cried they, “our Mayor’s a noddy;

and as for our Corporation—shocking

to think we buy gowns lined with ermine

for dolts that can’t or won’t determine

what’s best to rid us of our vermin!

You hope, because you’re old and obese,

to find in the furry civic robe ease?

Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking

to find the remedy we’re lacking,

or, sure as fate, we’ll send you packing!”

At this the Mayor and Corporation

quaked with a mighty consternation.

An hour they sate in council,

at length the Mayor broke silence:

“For a guilder I’d my ermine gown sell;

I wish I were a mile hence!

It’s easy to bid one rack one’s brain—

I’m sure my poor head aches again

I’ve scratched it so, and all in vain.

Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!”

Just as he said this, what should hap

at the chamber door but a gentle tap?

“Bless us,” cried the Mayor, “what’s that?”

(with the Corporation as he sat,

looking little though wondrous fat;

nor brighter was his eye, nor moister

than a too-long-opened oyster,

save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous

for a plate of turtle green and glutinous)

“Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?

Anything like the sound of a rat

makes my heart go pit-a-pat!”

“Come in!” —the Mayor cried, looking bigger:

and in did come the strangest figure!

His queer long coat from heel to head

was half of yellow and half of red;

and he himself was tall and thin,

with sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,

and light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,

no tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,

but lips where smiles went out and in—

there was no guessing his kith and kin!

And nobody could enough admire

the tall man and his quaint attire:

quoth one: “It’s as my great-grandsire,

starting up at the Trump of Doom’s tone,

had walked this way from his painted tombstone!”

He advanced to the council-table:

and, “Please your honors,” said he, “I’m able,

by means of a secret charm, to draw

all creatures living beneath the sun,

that creep or swim or fly or run,

after me so as you never saw!

And I chiefly use my charm

on creatures that do people harm,

the mole and toad and newt and viper;

and people call me the Pied Piper.”

(And here they noticed round his neck

a scarf of red and yellow stripe,

to match with his coat of the selfsame cheque;

and at the scarf’s end hung a pipe;

and his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying

as if impatient to be playing

upon this pipe, as low it dangled

over his vesture so old-fangled.)

“Yet,” said he, “poor piper as I am,

in Tartary I freed the Cham,

last June, from his huge swarms of gnats;

I eased in Asia the Nizam

of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats;

and, as for what your brain bewilders,

if I can rid your town of rats

will you give me a thousand guilders?”

“One? fifty thousand!” —was the exclamation

of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.

Into the street the Piper stepped,

smiling first a little smile,

as if he knew what magic slept

in his Quiet pipe the while;

then, like a musical adept,

to blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,

and green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled

like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled;

and ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,

you heard as if an army muttered;

and the muttering grew to a grumbling;

and the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;

and out of the houses the rats came tumbling.

Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,

brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,

grave old plodders, gay young friskers,

fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,

cocking tails and pricking whiskers,

families by tens and dozens,

brothers, sisters, husbands, wives—

followed the Piper for their lives.

From street to street he piped advancing,

and step for step they followed dancing,

until they came to the river Weser,

wherein all plunged and perished!

—save one who, stout a Julius Caesar,

swam across and lived to carry

(as he, the manuscript he cherished)

to Rat-land home his commentary:

which was, “At the first shrill notes of the pipe

I heard a sound as of scraping tripe,

and putting apples, wondrous ripe,

into a cider-press’s gripe:

and a moving away of pickle-tub-boards,

and a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards,

and a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks,

and a breaking the hoops of butter-casks;

and it seemed as if a voice

(sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery

is breathed) called out ‘Oh, rats, rejoice!

The world is grown to one vast drysaltery!

So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,

breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!’

And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,

all ready staved, like a great sun shone

glorious scarce and inch before me,

just as me thought it said ‘Come, bore me!’

— found the Weser rolling o’er me.”

You should have heard the Hamelin people

ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple.

“Go,” cried the Mayor, “and get long poles!

Poke out the nests and block up the holes!

Consult with carpenters and builders,

and leave in our town not even a trace

of the rats!” —when suddenly, up the face

of the Piper perked in the market-place,

with a, “First, if you please, my thousand guilders!”

A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue;

so did the Corporation too.

For council dinners made rare havoc

with Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock;

and half the money would replenish

their cellar’s biggest butt with Rhenish.

To pay this sum to a wandering fellow

with a gypsy coat of red and yellow!

“Beside,” quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink,

“Our business was done at the river’s brink;

we saw with our eyes the vermin sink,

and what’s dead can’t come to life, I think.

So, friend, we’re not the folks to shrink

from the duty of giving you something for drink,

and a matter of money to put in your poke;

but, as for the guilders, what we spoke

of them, as you very well know, was in joke.

Beside, our losses have made us thrifty.

A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!”

The Piper’s face fell, and he cried

“No trifling! I can’t wait, beside!

I’ve promised to visit by dinner-time

Bagdat, and accept the prime

of the Head Cook’s pottage, all he’s rich in,

for having left, in the Caliph’s kitchen,

of a nest of scorpions no survivor—

with him I proved no bargain-driver,

with you, don’t think I’ll bate a stiver!

and folks who put me in a passion

may find me pipe to another fashion.”

“How?” cried the Mayor, “d’ye think I’ll brook

being worse treated than a Cook?

Insulted by a lazy ribald

with idle pipe and vesture piebald?

You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst,

blow your pipe there till you burst!”

Once more he stepped into the street;

and to his lips again

laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane;

and ere he blew three notes (such sweet

soft notes as yet musician’s cunning

never gave the enraptured air)

there was a rustling, that seemed like a bustling

of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,

small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,

little hands clapping and little tongues chattering,

and, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering,

out came the children running.

All the little boys and girls,

with rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,

and sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,

tripping and skipping, ran merrily after

the wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood

as if they were changed into blocks of wood,

unable to move a step, or cry

to the children merrily skipping by—

and could only follow with the eye

that joyous crowd at the Piper’s back.

But how the Mayor was on the rack,

and the wretched Council’s bosoms beat,

as the Piper turned from the High Street

to where the Weser rolled its waters

right in the way of their sons and daughters!

However he turned from South to West,

and to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed,

and after him the children pressed;

great was the joy in every breast.

“He never can cross that mighty top!

he’s forced to let the piping drop,

and we shall see our children stop!”

When, lo, as they reached the mountain’s side,

a wondrous portal opened wide,

as if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;

and the Piper advanced and the children followed,

and when all were in to the very last,

the door in the mountain-side shut fast.

Did I say, all? No! One was lame,

and could not dance the whole of the way;

and in after years, if you would blame

his sadness, he was used to say,—

“It’s dull in our town since my playmates left!

I can’t forget that I’m bereft

of all the pleasant sights they see,

which the Piper also promised me:

for he led us, he said, to a joyous land,

joining the town and just at hand,

where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,

and flowers put forth a fairer hue,

and everything was strange and new;

the sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,

and their dogs outran our fallow deer,

and honey-bees had lost their stings,

and horses were born with eagles’ wings:

and just as I became assured

my lame foot would be speedily cured,

the music stopped and I stood still,

and found myself outside the hill,

left alone against my will,

to go now limping as before,

and never hear of that country more!”

Alas, alas for Hamelin!

There came into many a burgher’s pate

a text which says, that Heaven’s Gate

opes to the Rich at as easy rate

as the needle’s eye takes a camel in!

The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South,

to offer the Piper, by word of mouth,

wherever it was men’s lot to find him,

silver and gold to his heart’s content,

if he’d only return the way he went,

and bring the children behind him.

But when they saw ’twas a lost endeavor,

and Piper and dancers were gone for ever,

they made a decree that lawyers never

should think their records dated duly

if, after the day of the month and year,

these words did not as well appear,

“And so long after what happened here

on the Twenty-second of July,

thirteen hundred and seventy-six”:

and the better in memory to fix

the place of the children’s last retreat,

they called it, the Pied Piper’s Street—

where any one playing on pipe or tabor

was sure for the future to lose his labor.

Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern

to shock with mirth a street so solemn;

but opposite the place of the cavern

they wrote the story on a column,

and on the great Church-Window painted

the same, to make the world acquainted

how their children were stolen away;

and there it stands to this very day.

And I must not omit to say

that in Transylvania there’s a tribe

of alien people that ascribe

the outlandish ways and dress

on which their neighbors lay such stress,

to their fathers and mothers having risen

out of some subterraneous prison

into which they were trepanned

long time ago in a mighty band

out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,

but how or why, they don’t understand.

So, Willy, let you and me be wipers

of scores out with all men—especially pipers:

and, whether they pipe us free, from rats or from mice,

if we’ve promised them aught, let us keep our promise.

Edward Lear (1812 – 1888)

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat[1]

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

in a beautiful pea green boat,

they took some honey, and plenty of money,

wrapped up in a five pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

and sang to a small guitar,

‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,

what a beautiful Pussy you are,

you are,

you are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

Pussy said to the Owl, ’You elegant fowl!

How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

but what shall we do for a ring?’

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

to the land where the Bong-tree grows

and there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

with a ring at the end of his nose,

his nose,

his nose,

with a ring at the end of his nose.

‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ’I will.’

So they took it away, and were married next day

by the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

which they ate with a runcible spoon;

and hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

they danced by the light of the moon,

the moon,

the moon,

they danced by the light of the moon.

Emily Bronte (1818 – 1848)

I am the Only Being Whose Doom[1]

I am the only being whose doom

no tongue would ask no eye would mourn

I never caused a thought of gloom

a smile of joy since I was born

In secret pleasure—secret tears

this changeful life has slipped away

as friendless after eighteen years

as lone as on my natal day

There have been times I cannot hide

there have been times when this was drear

when my sad soul forgot its pride

and longed for one to love me here

But those were in the early glow

of feelings since subdued by care

and they have died so long ago

I hardly now believe they were

First melted off the hope of youth

then Fancy’s rainbow fast withdrew

and then experience told me truth

in mortal bosoms never grew

‘Twas grief enough to think mankind

all hollow servile insincere

but worse to trust to my own mind

and find the same corruption there

Charles Kingsley (1819 – 1875)

Young and Old[1]

When all the world is young, lad,

and all the trees are green;

and every goose a swan, lad,

and every lass a queen;

then hey for boot and horse, lad,

and round the world away;

young blood must have its course, lad,

and every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,

and all the trees are brown;

and all the sport is stale, lad,

and all the wheels run down;

creep home, and take your place there,

the spent and maimed among:

God grant you find one face there,

you loved when all was young.

Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)

Darest Thou Now O Soul[1]

Darest thou now O soul,

walk out with me toward the unknown region,

where neither ground is for the feet

nor any path to follow?

No map there, nor guide,

nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,

nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips,

nor eyes, are in that land.

I know it not O soul,

nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,

all waits undreamed of in that region,

that inaccessible land.

Till when the ties loosen,

all but the ties eternal, Time and Space,

nor darkness, gravitation, sense,

nor any bounds bounding us.

Then we burst forth, we float,

in Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,

equal, equipped at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!)

them to fulfill O soul.

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing[2]

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,

all alone stood it

and the moss hung down from the branches,

without any companion it grew there

uttering joyous leaves of dark green,

and its look, rude, unbending, lusty,

made me think of myself,

but I wondered how it could utter joyous leaves

standing alone there

without its friend near, for I knew I could not,

and I broke off a twig

with a certain number of leaves upon it,

and twined around it a little moss,

and brought it away,

and I have placed it in sight in my room,

it is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,

(for I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)

yet it remains to me a curious token,

it makes me think of manly love;

for all that,

and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana

solitary in a wide flat space,

uttering joyous leaves all its life

without a friend or lover near,

I know very well I could not.

My Legacy[1]

The business man the acquirer vast,

after assiduous years surveying results,

preparing for departure,

devises houses and lands to his children,

bequeaths stocks, goods,

funds for a school or hospital,

leaves money to certain companions to buy tokens, souvenirs of gems

and gold.

But I, my life surveying, closing,

with nothing to show to devise from its idle years,

nor houses nor lands,

nor tokens of gems or gold for my friends,

yet certain remembrances of the war for you,

and after you,

and little souvenirs of camps and soldiers, with my love,

I bind together and bequeath in this bundle of songs.

O Captain! My Captain[2]

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

the ship has weathered every rack,

the prize we sought is won,

the port is near, the bells I hear,

the people all exulting,

while follow eyes the steady keel,

the vessel grim and daring;

but O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

where on the deck my Captain lies,

fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain!

Rise up and hear the bells;

rise up—for you the flag is flung—

for you the bugle trills,

for you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—

for you the shores a-crowding,

for you they call, the swaying mass,

their eager faces turning;

here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

you’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer,

his lips are pale and still,

my father does not feel my arm,

he has no pulse nor will,

the ship is anchored safe and sound,

its voyage closed and done,

from fearful trip the victor ship

comes in with object won;

exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

walk the deck my Captain lies,

fallen cold and dead.

Song of Prudence[1]

Manhattan’s streets I sauntered pondering,

on Time, Space, Reality—

on such as these, and abreast with them Prudence.

The last explanation always remains

to be made about prudence,

little and large alike drop quietly aside

from the prudence that suits immortality.

The soul is of itself,

all verges to it, all has reference to what ensues,

all that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence,

not a move can a man or woman make,

that affects him or her in a day, month,

any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death,

but the same affects him or her onward afterward

through the indirect lifetime.

The indirect is just as much as the direct,

the spirit receives from the body

just as much as it gives to the body,

if not more.

Not one word or deed,

not venereal sore, discoloration,

privacy of the onanist,

putridity of gluttons or rum-drinkers,

peculation, cunning,

betrayal, murder, seduction, prostitution,

but has results beyond death as really

as before death.

Charity and personal force

are the only investments worth any thing.

No specification is necessary,

all that a male or female does,

that is vigorous, benevolent, clean,

is so much profit to him or her,

in the unshakable order of the universe

and through the whole scope of it forever.

Who has been wise receives interest,

savage, felon, President, judge,

farmer, sailor, mechanic, literat,

young, old, it is the same,

the interest will come round—all will come round.

Singly, wholly, to affect now,

affected their time, will forever affect,

all of the past and all of the present

and all of the future,

all the brave actions of war and peace,

all help given to relatives, strangers,

the poor, old, sorrowful,

young children, widows, the sick,

and to shunned persons,

all self-denial that stood steady and aloof

on wrecks, and saw

others fill the seats of the boats,

all offering of substance or life for the good old cause,

or for a friend’s sake,

or opinion’s sake,

all pains of enthusiasts scoffed at by their neighbors,

all the limitless sweet love

and precious suffering of mothers,

all honest men baffled in strifes

recorded or unrecorded,

all the grandeur and good of ancient nations

whose fragments we inherit,

all the good of the dozens of ancient nations

unknown to us by name, date, location,

all that was ever manfully begun,

whether it succeeded or no,

all suggestions of the divine mind of man

or the divinity of his mouth,

or the shaping of his great hands,

all that is well thought or said this day

on any part of the globe,

or on any of the wandering stars,

or on any of the fix’d stars,

by those there as we are here,

all that is henceforth to be thought

or done

by you whoever you are,

or by any one,

these inure, have inured, shall inure,

to the identities from which

they sprang, or shall spring.

Did you guess any thing lived only its moment?

The world does not so exist,

no parts palpable or impalpable so exist,

no consummation exists

without being from some long previous consummation,

and that from some other,

without the farthest conceivable one

coming a bit nearer the beginning than any.

Whatever satisfies souls is true;

prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls,

itself only finally satisfies the soul,

the soul has that measureless pride

which revolts from every lesson

but its own.

Now I breathe the word of the prudence

that walks abreast with time,

space, reality,

that answers the pride

which refuses every lesson but its own.

What is prudence is indivisible,

declines to separate one part of life from every part,

divides not the righteous from the unrighteous

or the living from the dead,

matches every thought or act by its correlative,

knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement,

knows that the young man

who composedly periled his life and lost it

has done exceedingly well for himself without doubt,

that he who never periled his life,

but retains it to old age in riches and ease,

has probably achieved

nothing for himself worth mentioning,

knows that only that person has really learned

who has learned to prefer results,

who favors body and soul the same,

who perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct,

who in his spirit in any emergency whatever

neither hurries nor avoids death.

This Compost[1]

1

Something startles me where I thought I was safest,

I withdraw from the still woods I loved,

I will not go now on the pastures to walk,

I will not strip the clothes from my body

to meet my lover the sea,

I will not touch my flesh to the earth

as to other flesh to renew me.

O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?

How can you be alive you growths of spring?

How can you furnish health

you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?

Are they not continually putting distempered corpses

within you?

Is not every continent worked over and over

with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?

Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?

Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?

I do not see any of it upon you today,

or perhaps I am deceived,

I will run a furrow with my plough,

I will press my spade through the sod

and turn it up underneath,

I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

2

Behold this compost! behold it well!

Perhaps every mite has once formed

part of a sick person—yet behold!

The grass of spring covers the prairies,

the bean bursts noiselessly

through the mould in the garden,

the delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,

the apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,

the resurrection of the wheat appears

with pale visage out of its graves,

The tinge awakes over the willow-tree

and the mulberry-tree,

the he-birds carol mornings and evenings while

the she-birds sit on their nests,

the young of poultry break through the hatched eggs,

the new-born of animals appear,

the calf is dropt from the cow,

the colt from the mare,

out of its little hill faithfully rise

the potato’s dark green leaves,

out of its hill rises

the yellow maize-stalk,

the lilacs bloom in the dooryards,

the summer growth is innocent and disdainful

above all those strata of sour dead.

What chemistry!

That the winds are really not infectious,

that this is no cheat,

this transparent green-wash of the sea

which is so amorous after me,

that it is safe

to allow it to lick my naked body all over

with its tongues,

that it will not endanger me with the fevers

that have deposited themselves in it,

that all is clean forever and forever,

that the cool drink from the well tastes so good,

that blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,

that the fruits of the apple-orchard

and the orange-orchard,

that melons, grapes, peaches, plums,

will none of them poison me,

that when I recline on the grass

I do not catch any disease,

though probably every spear of grass

rises out of what was once catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth,

it is that calm and patient,

it grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,

it turns harmless and stainless on its axis,

with such endless successions of diseased corpses,

it distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,

it renews with such unwitting looks

its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,

it gives such divine materials to men,

and accepts such leavings from them at last.

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer[1]

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;

when the proofs, the figures,

were ranged in columns before me;

when I was shown the charts and the diagrams,

to add, divide, and measure them;

when I, sitting, heard the astronomer,

where he lectured with much applause

in the lecture-room,

how soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself,

in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

looked up in perfect silence at the stars.

Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867)

A Carrion[1]

Translated by Sir John SQuire

Rememberest thou, my sweet, that summer’s day,

how in the sun outspread

at a path’s bend a filthy carcass lay

upon a pebbly bed?

Like a lewd woman, with its legs in air,

burned, oozed the poisonous mass;

its gaping belly, calm and debonair,

was full of noisome gas.

And steadily upon this rottenness,

as though to cook it brown

and render Nature hundredfold excess,

the sun shone down.

The blue sky thought the carrion marvelous,

a flower most fair to see;

and as we gazed it almost poisoned us—

it stank so horribly.

The flies buzzed on this putrid belly, whence

black hosts of maggots came,

which streamed in thick and shining rivers thence

along that ragged frame.

Pulsating like a wave, spurting about

bright jets, it seemed to live;

as though it were by some vague wind blown out,

some breath procreative.

And all this life was strangely musical

like wind or bubbling spring,

or corn which moves with rhythmic rise and fall

in time of winnowing.

The lines became indefinite and faint

as a thin dream that dies,

a half-forgotten scene the hand can paint

only from memories …

Behind the rocks there lurked a hungry hound

with melancholy eye,

longing to nose the morsel he had found

and gnaw it greedily.

Yet thou shalt be as vile a carrion

as this infection dire,

O bright star of my eyes, my nature’s sun,

my angel, my desire!

Yea, such, O queen of the graces, shalt thou be

after the last soft breath,

beneath the grass and the lush greenery

a-moldering in death!

When they sweet flesh the worms devour with kisses,

tell them, O beauty mine,

of rotting loves I keep the bodily blisses

and essence all-divine!

from Fuses I – on Love[1]

Translated from the French by Norman Cameron

Love may arise from a generous sentiment—namely,

the liking for prostitution;

but it soon becomes corrupted

by the liking for ownership.

Love seeks to escape from itself,

to mingle itself with its victim,

as a victor nation with the vanquished—

and yet at the same time

to retain the privileges of a conqueror.

The sensual pleasures of a man who keeps a mistress

have in them something both of the angel

and of the proprietor.

Charity and ferocity.

from Fuses I — on Art[1]

Translated from the French by Norman Cameron

At a theater or ball,

each person is being pleasured by everybody else.

What is art?

Prostitution.

The pleasure of being in a crowd

is a mysterious expression of delight

in the multiplication of number.

Number is all, and in all,

number is within the individual.

Intoxication is a number.

from Fuses I — on God[2]

Translated from the French by Norman Cameron

Even if God did not exist,

religion would still be holy and divine.

God is the only being who, in order to rule,

does not need even to exist.

Creations of the mind are more alive than matter.

Heautontimoroumenos[3]

Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks

I’ll strike thee without enmity

nor wrath,—like butchers at the block!

As Moses smote the living rock,

—till from thine eyelids’ agony

the springs of suffering shall flow

to slake the desert of my thirst;

and on that flood, my lust accurst

with Hope to fill its sails, shall go

as on the waves, a pitching barge,

and in my bosom quickening,

thy sobs and tears I love shall ring

loud as a drum that beats a charge!

For am I not a clashing note

in God’s eternal symphony,

thanks to this vulture, Irony,

whose talons rend my heart and throat?

She’s in my voice, the screaming elf!

My poisoned blood came all from her!

I am the mirror sinister

wherein the vixen sees herself!

I am the wound and I the knife!

I am the blow I give, and feel!

I am the broken limbs, the wheel,

the hangman and the strangled life!

I am my heart’s own vampire, for

I walk alone, condemned, forlorn,

by laughter everlasting torn,

yet doomed to smile, —ah, nevermore!

Metamorphoses of the Vampire[1]

Translated by George Dillon

Meanwhile from her red mouth the woman,

in husky tones,

twisting her body like a serpent upon hot stones

and straining her white breasts

from their imprisonment,

let fall these words, as potent as a heavy scent:

“My lips are moist and yielding, and I know the way

to keep the antique demon of remorse at bay.

All sorrows die upon my bosom. I can make

old men laugh happily as children for my sake.

For him who sees me naked in my tresses, I

replace the sun, the moon, and all the stars of the sky!

Believe me, learned sir, I am so deeply skilled

that when I wind a lover in my soft arms, and yield

my breasts like two ripe fruits for his devouring—both

shy and voluptuous, insatiable and loath—

upon this bed that groans and sighs luxuriously

even the impotent angels would be damned for me!”

When she had drained me of my very marrow, and cold

and weak, I turned to give her one more kiss—behold,

there at my side was nothing but a hideous

putrescent thing, all faceless and exuding pus.

I closed my eyes and mercifully swooned till day:

and when I looked at morning for that beast of prey

who seemed to have replenished her arteries

from my own,

the wan, disjointed fragments of a skeleton

wagged up and down

in a lewd posture where she had lain,

rattling with each convulsion like a weathervane

or an old sign that creaks upon its bracket, right

mournfully in the wind upon a winter’s night.

Spleen[1]

Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks

November, angry at the capital,

whelms in a death-chill from her gloomy urn

the pallid dead beneath the graveyard wall,

the death-doomed who in dripping houses yearn.

Grimalkin prowls, a gaunt and scurvy ghoul,

seeking a softer spot for her sojourn;

under the eaves an ancient poet’s soul

shivers and flees and wails at each return.

The grieving church-bell and the sputtering log

repeat the rusty clock’s harsh epilogue;

while in a pack of cards, scent-filled and vile,

grim relic of a spinster dropsical,

the knave of hearts and queen of spades recall

their loves, defunct, and sinistrously smile.

The Flask[1]

Translated by James Huneker

There are some powerful odors that can pass

out of the stoppered flagon; even glass

to them is porous. Oft when some old box

brought from the East is opened and the locks

and hinges creak and cry; or in a press

in some deserted house, where the sharp stress

of odors old and dusty fills the brain;

an ancient flask is brought to light again,

and forth the ghosts of long-dead odors creep.

There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep

a thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides,

phantoms of old the folding darkness hides,

who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold,

rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold.

A memory that brings languor flutters here:

the fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear

thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit

where, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet,

arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost

of an old passion, long since loved and lost.

So I, when vanished from man’s memory

deep in some dark and somber chest I lie,

an empty flagon they have cast aside,

broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride,

will be your shroud, beloved pestilence!

The witness of your might and virulence,

sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup

of life and death my heart has drunken up!

The Ghostly Visitant[1]

Translated by Sir John SQuire

Like the mild-eyed angels sweet

I will come to thy retreat,

stealing in without a sound

when the shades of night close round.

I will give thee manifold

kisses soft and moony-cold,

gliding, sliding o’er thee like

a serpent crawling round a dike.

When the livid morn creeps on

you will wake and find me gone

till the evening come again.

As by tenderness and truth

others rule thy life and youth,

I by terror choose to reign.

The Murderer’s Wine[2]

Translated by Sir John SQuire

My wife is dead and I am free,

now I may drink to my content;

when I came back without a cent

her piteous outcries tortured me.

Now I am happy as a king,

the air is pure, the sky is clear;

just such a summer as that year,

when first I went a-sweethearting.

A horrible thirst is tearing me,

to quench it I should have to swill

just as much cool wine as would fill

her tomb—that’s no small quantity.

I threw her down and then began

to pile upon her where she fell

all the great stones around the well—

I shall forget it if I can.

By all the soft vows of our prime,

by those eternal oaths we swore,

and that our love might be once more

as ‘twas in our old passionate time,

I begged her in a lonely spot

to come and meet me at nightfall;

she came, mad creature—we are all

more or less crazy, are we not?

She was quite pretty still, my wife,

though she was very tired, and I,

I loved her too much, that is why

I said to her, ‘Come, quit this life.’

No one can grasp my thoughts aright;

did any of these sodden swine

ever conceive a shroud of wine

on his most strangely morbid night?

Dull and insensible above

iron machines, that stupid crew,

summer or winter, never knew

the agonies of real love.

So now I am without a care!

Dead-drunk this evening I shall be,

then fearlessly, remorselessly

shall lie out in the open air

And sleep there like a homeless cur;

some cart may rumble with a load

of stones or mud along the road

and crush my head—I shall not stir.

Some heavy dray incontinent

may come and cut me clean in two;

I laugh at thought o’t as I do

at Devil, God, and Sacrament.

The Pit[1]

Translated by Wilfrid Thorley

Great Pascal had his pit always in sight.

All is abysmal—deed, desire, or dream

or speech! Full often over me doth scream

the wind of Fear and blows my hair upright.

By the lone strand, thro’ silence, depth and height,

and shoreless space that doth with terrors teem …

on my black nights God’s finger like a beam

traces his swarming torments infinite.

Sleep is a monstrous hole that I do dread,

full of vague horror, leading none knows where;

all windows open on infinity,

so that my dizzy spirit in despair

longs for the torpor of the unfeeling dead.

Ah! from Time’s menace never to win free!

The Vampire[1]

Translated by George Dillon

Thou who abruptly as a knife

didst come into my heart; thou who,

a demon horde into my life,

didst enter, wildly dancing, through

the doorways of my sense unlatched

to make my spirit thy domain—

harlot to whom I am attached

as convicts to the ball and chain,

as gamblers to the wheel’s bright spell,

as drunkards to their raging thirst,

as corpses to their worms—accurst

be thou! Oh, be thou damned to hell!

I have entreated the swift sword

to strike, that I at once be freed;

the poisoned phial I have implored

to plot with me a ruthless deed.

Alas! the phial and the blade

do cry aloud and laugh at me:

“Thou art not worthy of our aid;

thou art not worthy to be free.

“Though one of us should be the tool

to save thee from thy wretched fate,

thy kisses would resuscitate

the body of thy vampire, fool!”

Coventry Patmore (1823 – 1896)

The Toys[1]

My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes

and moved and spoke in Quiet grown-up wise,

having my law the seventh time disobey’d,

I struck him, and dismiss’d

with hard words and unkiss’d,

—his Mother, who was patient, being dead.

Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,

I visited his bed,

but found him slumbering deep,

with darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yet

from his late sobbing wet.

And I, with moan,

kissing away his tears, left others of my own;

for, on a table drawn beside his head,

he had put, within his reach,

a box of counters and a red-vein’d stone,

a piece of glass abraded by the beach,

and six or seven shells,

a bottle with bluebells,

and two French copper coins,

ranged there with careful art,

to comfort his sad heart.

So when that night I pray’d

to God, I wept, and said:

ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,

not vexing Thee in death,

and Thou rememberest of what toys

we made our joys,

how weakly understood

thy great commanded good,

then, fatherly not less

than I whom Thou hast molded from the clay,

thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,

‘I will be sorry for their childishness.’

Richard Henry Stoddard (1805 – 1923)

The Jar[1]

Day and night my thoughts incline

to the blandishments of wine:

jars were made to drain, I think,

wine, I know, was made to drink.

When I die, (the day be far!)

should the potters make a jar

out of this poor clay of mine,

let the jar be filled with wine!

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

A deed knocks first at thought[2]

A deed knocks first at thought,

and then it knocks at will.

That is the manufacturing spot,

and will at home and well.

It then goes out an act,

or is entombed so still

that only to the ear of God

its doom is audible.

A narrow fellow in the grass[1]

A narrow fellow in the grass

occasionally rides;

you may have met him,—did you not,

his notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,

a spotted shaft is seen;

and then it closes at your feet

and opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,

a floor too cool for corn.

yet when a child, and barefoot,

I more than once, at morn,

have passed, I thought, a whip-lash

unbraiding in the sun,—

when, stooping to secure it,

it wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature’s people

I know, and they know me;

I feel for them a transport

of cordiality;

but never met this fellow,

attended or alone,

without a tighter breathing,

and zero at the bone.

A word is dead[1]

A word is dead

when it is said,

some say.

I say it just

begins to live

that day.

After great pain a formal feeling comes[2]

After great pain, a formal feeling comes—

the Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—

the stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,

and Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round—

of Ground, or Air, or Ought—

a Wooden way

regardless grown,

a Quartz contentment, like a stone—

This is the Hour of Lead—

remembered, if outlived,

as Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—

first—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

Apparently with no surprise[3]

Apparently with no surprise

to any happy Flower

the Frost beheads it at its play—

in accidental power—

The blonde Assassin passes on—

The Sun proceeds unmoved

to measure off another Day

for an Approving God.

Because I could not stop for death[1]

Because I could not stop for Death—

he kindly stopped for me—

The Carriage held but just Ourselves—

and Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste

and I had put away

my labor and my leisure too,

for His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children played

Their lessons scarcely done

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—

We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed us—

The Dews drew quivering and chill—

for only Gossamer, my Gown—

my Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed

a Swelling of the Ground—

The Roof was scarcely visible—

the Cornice—but a mound—

Since then—’tis Centuries—but each

feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses’ Heads

were toward Eternity—

Hope is the thing with feathers[1]

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—

that perches in the soul—

and sings the tune without the words—

and never stops—at all—

and sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—

and sore must be the storm—

that could abash the little Bird

that kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—

and on the strangest Sea—

yet, never, in Extremity,

it asked a crumb—of Me.

I felt a funeral in my brain[1]

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

and Mourners to and fro

kept treading—treading—till it seemed

that Sense was breaking through—

And when they all were seated,

a Service, like a Drum—

kept beating—beating—till I thought

my Mind was going numb—

And then I heard them lift a Box

and creak across my Soul

with those same Boots of Lead, again,

then Space—began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

and Being, but an Ear,

and I, and Silence, some strange Race

wrecked, solitary, here—

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

and I dropped down, and down—

and hit a World, at every plunge,

and Finished knowing—then—

I had been hungry all the years[2]

I had been hungry, all the Years—

my Noon had Come—to dine—

I trembling drew the Table near—

and touched the Curious Wine—

‘Twas this on Tables I had seen—

when turning, hungry, Home

I looked in Windows, for the Wealth

I could not hope—for Mine—

I did not know the ample Bread—

‘Twas so unlike the Crumb

the Birds and I, had often shared

in Nature’s—Dining Room—

The Plenty hurt me—’twas so new—

myself felt ill—and odd—

as Berry—of a Mountain Bush—

transplanted—to a Road—

Nor was I hungry—so I found

that Hunger—was a way

of Persons outside Windows—

the Entering—takes away—

I heard a fly buzz when I died[1]

I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—

the Stillness in the Room

was like the Stillness in the Air—

between the Heaves of Storm—

The Eyes around—had wrung them dry—

and Breaths were gathering firm

for that last Onset—when the King

be witnessed—in the Room—

I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away

what portions of me be

assignable—and then it was

there interposed a Fly—

with Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz—

between the light—and me—

and then the Windows failed—and then

I could not see to see—

I like to see it lap the miles[1]

I like to see it lap the miles,

and lick the valleys up,

and stop to feed itself at tank;

and then, prodigious, step

around a pile of mountains,

and, supercilious, peer

in shanties by the sides of roads;

and then a quarry pare

to fit its sides, and crawl between,

complaining all the while

in horrid, hooting stanza;

then chase itself down hill

and neigh like Boanerges;

then, punctual as a star,

stop—docile and omnipotent—

at its own stable door.

I taste a liQuor never brewed[1]

I taste a liQuor never brewed—

from Tankards scooped in Pearl—

not all the Vats upon the Rhine

yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of Air—am I—

and Debauchee of Dew—

reeling—thro endless summer days—

from inns of Molten Blue—

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee

out of the Foxglove’s door—

when Butterflies—renounce their “drams”—

I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats—

and Saints—to windows run—

to see the little Tippler

leaning against the—Sun—

I’m nobody! Who are you?[1]

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you—Nobody—too?

Then there’s a pair of us?

Don’t tell! they’d advertise—you know!

How dreary—to be—Somebody!

How public—like a Frog—

to tell one’s name—the livelong June—

to an admiring Bog!

I’ve Known a Heaven, Like a Tent[2]

I’ve known a Heaven like a tent

to wrap its shining yards,

pluck up its stakes and disappear

without the sound of boards

or rip of nail, or carpenter,

but just the miles of stare

that signalize a show’s retreat

in North America.

No trace, no figment of the thing

that dazzled yesterday,

no ring, no marvel;

men and feats

dissolved as utterly

as birds’ far navigation

discloses just a hue;

a plash of oars—a gaiety,

then swallowed up to view.

My life closed twice before its close[1]

My life closed twice before its close—

it yet remains to see

if Immortality unveil

a third event to me

so huge, so hopeless to conceive

as these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

and all we need of hell.

The Last Night[2]

The last night that she lived,

it was a common night,

except the dying; this to us

made nature different.

We noticed smallest things,—

things overlooked before,

by this great light upon our minds

italicized, as ’t were.

That others could exist

while she must finish quite,

a jealousy for her arose

so nearly infinite.

We waited while she passed;

it was a narrow time,

too jostled were our souls to speak,

at length the notice came.

She mentioned, and forgot;

then lightly as a reed

bent to the water, shivered scarce,

consented, and was dead.

And we, we placed the hair,

and drew the head erect;

and then an awful leisure was,

our faith to regulate.

The Props Assist the House[1]

The Props assist the House

until the House is built

and then the Props withdraw

and adequate, erect,

the House support itself

and cease to recollect

the Auger and the Carpenter—

Just such a retrospect

hath the perfected Life—

a past of Plank and Nail

and slowness—then the Scaffolds drop

affirming it a Soul.

The way I read a letter’s this[2]

The Way I read a Letter’s—this—

‘tis first—I lock the Door—

and push it with my fingers—next—

for transport it be sure—

and then I go the furthest off

to counteract a knock—

then draw my little Letter forth

and slowly pick the lock—

then—glancing narrow, at the Wall—

and narrow at the floor

for firm Conviction of a Mouse

not exorcised before—

Peruse how infinite I am

to no one that You—know—

and sigh for lack of Heaven—but not

the Heaven God bestow—

There came a wind like a bugle[1]

There came a Wind like a Bugle—

it quivered through the Grass

and a Green Chill upon the Heat

so ominous did pass

We barred the Windows and the Doors

as from an Emerald Ghost—

the Doom’s electric Moccasin

that very instant passed—

on a strange Mob of panting Trees

and Fences fled away

and Rivers where the Houses ran

Those looked that lived—that Day—

The Bell within the steeple wild

the flying tidings told—

how much can come

and much can go,

and yet abide the World!

There’s a certain slant of light[1]

There’s a certain Slant of light,

winter Afternoons—

that oppresses, like the Heft

of Cathedral Tunes—

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us—

we can find no scar,

but internal difference,

where the Meanings, are—

None may teach it—Any—

‘tis the Seal Despair—

an imperial affliction

sent us of the air—

When it comes, the Landscape listens—

shadows—hold their breath—

when it goes, ’tis like the Distance

on the look of Death—

To make a prairie it takes a clover[1]

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

one clover, and a bee,

and revery.

The revery alone will do,

if bees are few.

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark[2]

We grow accustomed to the Dark—

when light is put away—

as when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

to witness her Goodbye—

A Moment—We uncertain step

for newness of the night—

then—fit our Vision to the Dark—

and meet the Road—erect—

And so of larger—Darkness—

those Evenings of the Brain—

when not a Moon disclose a sign—

or Star—come out—within—

The Bravest—grope a little—

and sometimes hit a Tree

directly in the Forehead—

but as they learn to see—

Either the Darkness alters—

or something in the sight

adjusts itself to Midnight—

and Life steps almost straight.

Wild nights! Wild nights![1]

Wild Nights—Wild Nights!

Were I with thee

wild Nights should be

our luxury!

Futile—the Winds—

to a Heart in port—

done with the Compass—

done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden—

ah, the Sea!

Might I but moor—Tonight—

in Thee!

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 – 1894)

Goblin Market[2]

Morning and evening

maids heard the goblins cry:

“Come buy our orchard fruits,

come buy, come buy:

apples and quinces,

lemons and oranges,

plump unpecked cherries—

melons and raspberries,

bloom-down-cheeked peaches,

swart-headed mulberries,

wild free-born cranberries,

crab-apples, dewberries,

pine-apples, blackberries,

apricots, strawberries—

all ripe together

in summer weather—

morns that pass by,

fair eves that fly;

come buy, come buy;

our grapes fresh from the vine,

pomegranates full and fine,

dates and sharp bullaces,

rare pears and greengages,

damsons and bilberries,

taste them and try:

currants and gooseberries,

bright-fire-like barberries,

figs to fill your mouth,

citrons from the South,

sweet to tongue and sound to eye,

come buy, come buy.”

Evening by evening

among the brookside rushes,

Laura bowed her head to hear,

Lizzie veiled her blushes:

crouching close together

in the cooling weather,

with clasping arms and cautioning lips,

with tingling cheeks and finger-tips.

“Lie close,” Laura said,

pricking up her golden head:

we must not look at goblin men,

we must not buy their fruits:

who knows upon what soil they fed

their hungry thirsty roots?”

“Come buy,” call the goblins

hobbling down the glen.

“O! cried Lizzie, Laura, Laura,

you should not peep at goblin men.”

Lizzie covered up her eyes

covered close lest they should look;

Laura reared her glossy head,

and whispered like the restless brook:

“Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,

down the glen tramp little men.

One hauls a basket,

one bears a plate,

one lugs a golden dish

of many pounds’ weight.

How fair the vine must grow

whose grapes are so luscious;

how warm the wind must blow

through those fruit bushes.”

“No,” said Lizzie, “no, no, no;

their offers should not charm us,

their evil gifts would harm us.”

She thrust a dimpled finger

in each ear, shut eyes and ran:

curious Laura chose to linger

wondering at each merchant man.

One had a cat’s face,

one whisked a tail,

one tramped at a rat’s pace,

one crawled like a snail,

one like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry,

one like a rattle tumbled hurry-scurry.

Lizzie heard a voice like voice of doves

cooing all together:

they sounded kind and full of loves

in the pleasant weather.

Laura stretched her gleaming neck

like a rush-imbedded swan,

like a lily from the beck,

like a moonlit poplar branch,

like a vessel at the launch

when its last restraint is gone.

Backwards up the mossy glen

turned and trooped the goblin men,

with their shrill repeated cry,

“Come buy, come buy.”

when they reached where Laura was

they stood stock still upon the moss,

leering at each other,

brother with queer brother;

signaling each other,

brother with sly brother.

One set his basket down,

one reared his plate;

one began to weave a crown

of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown

(men sell not such in any town);

one heaved the golden weight

of dish and fruit to offer her:

“Come buy, come buy,” was still their cry.

Laura stared but did not stir,

longed but had no money:

the whisk-tailed merchant bade her taste

in tones as smooth as honey,

the cat-faced purr’d,

the rat-paced spoke a word

of welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard;

one parrot-voiced and jolly

cried “Pretty Goblin” still for “Pretty Polly”;

one whistled like a bird.

But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:

“Good folk, I have no coin;

to take were to purloin:

I have no copper in my purse,

I have no silver either,

and all my gold is on the furze

that shakes in windy weather

above the rusty heather.”

“You have much gold upon your head,”

they answered altogether:

“buy from us with a golden curl.”

She clipped a precious golden lock,

she dropped a tear more rare than pearl,

then sucked their fruit globes fair or red:

sweeter than honey from the rock,

stronger than man-rejoicing wine,

clearer than water flowed that juice;

she never tasted such before,

how should it cloy with length of use?

She sucked and sucked and sucked the more

fruits which that unknown orchard bore,

she sucked until her lips were sore;

then flung the emptied rinds away,

but gathered up one kernel stone,

and knew not was it night or day

as she turned home alone.

Lizzie met her at the gate

full of wise upbraidings:

“Dear, you should not stay so late,

twilight is not good for maidens;

should not loiter in the glen

in the haunts of goblin men.

Do you not remember Jeanie,

how she met them in the moonlight,

took their gifts both choice and many,

ate their fruits and wore their flowers

plucked from bowers

where summer ripens at all hours?

But ever in the moonlight

she pined and pined away;

sought them by night and day,

found them no more, but dwindled and grew gray;

then fell with the first snow,

while to this day no grass will grow

where she lies low:

I planted daisies there a year ago

that never blow.

You should not loiter so.”

“Nay hush,” said Laura.

“Nay hush, my sister:

I ate and ate my fill,

yet my mouth waters still;

to-morrow night I will

buy more,” and kissed her.

“Have done with sorrow;

I’ll bring you plums to-morrow

fresh on their mother twigs,

cherries worth getting;

you cannot think what figs

my teeth have met in,

what melons, icy-cold

piled on a dish of gold

too huge for me to hold,

what peaches with a velvet nap,

pellucid grapes without one seed:

odorous indeed must be the mead

whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink,

with lilies at the brink,

and sugar-sweet their sap.”

Golden head by golden head,

like two pigeons in one nest

folded in each other’s wings,

they lay down, in their curtained bed:

like two blossoms on one stem,

like two flakes of new-fallen snow,

like two wands of ivory

tipped with gold for awful kings.

Moon and stars beamed in at them,

wind sang to them lullaby,

lumbering owls forbore to fly,

not a bat flapped to and fro

round their rest:

cheek to cheek and breast to breast

locked together in one nest.

Early in the morning

when the first cock crowed his warning,

neat like bees, as sweet and busy,

Laura rose with Lizzie:

fetched in honey, milked the cows,

aired and set to rights the house,

kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,

cakes for dainty mouths to eat,

next churned butter, whipped up cream,

fed their poultry, sat and sewed;

talked as modest maidens should

Lizzie with an open heart,

Laura in an absent dream,

one content, one sick in part;

one warbling for the mere bright day’s delight,

one longing for the night.

At length slow evening came—

they went with pitchers to the reedy brook;

Lizzie most placid in her look,

Laura most like a leaping flame.

They drew the gurgling water from its deep

Lizzie plucked purple and rich golden flags,

then turning homeward said: “The sunset flushes

those furthest loftiest crags;

come, Laura, not another maiden lags,

no willful squirrel wags,

the beasts and birds are fast asleep.”

But Laura loitered still among the rushes

and said the bank was steep.

And said the hour was early still,

the dew not fallen, the wind not chill:

listening ever, but not catching

the customary cry,

“Come buy, come buy,”

with its iterated jingle

of sugar-baited words:

not for all her watching

once discerning even one goblin

racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling;

let alone the herds

that used to tramp along the glen,

in groups or single,

of brisk fruit-merchant men.

Till Lizzie urged, “O Laura, come,

I hear the fruit-call, but I dare not look:

you should not loiter longer at this brook:

come with me home.

The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,

each glow-worm winks her spark,

let us get home before the night grows dark;

for clouds may gather even

though this is summer weather,

put out the lights and drench us through;

then if we lost our way what should we do?”

Laura turned cold as stone

to find her sister heard that cry alone,

that goblin cry,

“Come buy our fruits, come buy.”

Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit?

Must she no more such succous pasture find,

gone deaf and blind?

Her tree of life drooped from the root:

she said not one word in her heart’s sore ache;

but peering thro’ the dimness, naught discerning,

trudged home, her pitcher dripping all the way;

so crept to bed, and lay

silent ’til Lizzie slept;

then sat up in a passionate yearning,

and gnashed her teeth for balked desire, and wept

as if her heart would break.

Day after day, night after night,

Laura kept watch in vain,

In sullen silence of exceeding pain.

She never caught again the goblin cry:

“Come buy, come buy,”

she never spied the goblin men

hawking their fruits along the glen:

but when the noon waxed bright

her hair grew thin and gray;

she dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn

to swift decay, and burn

her fire away.

One day remembering her kernel-stone

she set it by a wall that faced the south;

dewed it with tears, hoped for a root,

watched for a waxing shoot,

but there came none;

it never saw the sun,

it never felt the trickling moisture run:

while with sunk eyes and faded mouth

she dreamed of melons, as a traveler sees

false waves in desert drouth

with shade of leaf-crowned trees,

and burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze.

She no more swept the house,

tended the fowls or cows,

fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,

brought water from the brook:

but sat down listless in the chimney-nook

and would not eat.

Tender Lizzie could not bear

to watch her sister’s cankerous care,

yet not to share.

She night and morning

caught the goblins’ cry:

“Come buy our orchard fruits,

come buy, come buy.”

Beside the brook, along the glen

she heard the tramp of goblin men,

the voice and stir

poor Laura could not hear;

longed to buy fruit to comfort her,

but feared to pay too dear,

she thought of Jeanie in her grave,

who should have been a bride;

but who for joys brides hope to have

fell sick and died

in her gay prime,

in earliest winter-time,

with the first glazing rime,

with the first snow-fall of crisp winter-time.

Till Laura, dwindling,

seemed knocking at Death’s door:

then Lizzie weighed no more

better and worse,

but put a silver penny in her purse,

kissed Laura, crossed the heath with clumps of furze

at twilight, halted by the brook,

and for the first time in her life

began to listen and look.

Laughed every goblin

when they spied her peeping:

came towards her hobbling,

flying, running, leaping,

puffing and blowing,

chuckling, clapping, crowing,

clucking and gobbling,

mopping and mowing,

full of airs and graces,

pulling wry faces,

demure grimaces,

cat-like and rat-like,

ratel and wombat-like,

snail-paced in a hurry,

parrot-voiced and whistler,

helter-skelter, hurry-skurry,

chattering like magpies,

fluttering like pigeons,

gliding like fishes,—

hugged her and kissed her;

squeezed and caressed her;

stretched up their dishes,

panniers and plates:

“Look at our apples

russet and dun,

bob at our cherries

bite at our peaches,

citrons and dates,

grapes for the asking,

pears red with basking

out in the sun,

plums on their twigs;

pluck them and suck them,

pomegranates, figs.”

“Good folk,” said Lizzie,

mindful of Jeanie,

“Give me much and many”;—

held out her apron,

tossed them her penny.

“Nay, take a seat with us,

honor and eat with us,”

they answered grinning;

“Our feast is but beginning.

night yet is early,

warm and dew-pearly,

wakeful and starry:

such fruits as these

no man can carry;

half their bloom would fly,

half their dew would dry,

half their flavor would pass by.

Sit down and feast with us,

be welcome guest with us,

cheer you and rest with us.”

“Thank you,” said Lizzie; “but one waits

at home alone for me:

so, without further parleying,

if you will not sell me any

of your fruits though much and many,

give me back my silver penny

I tossed you for a fee.”

They began to scratch their pates,

no longer wagging, purring,

but visibly demurring,

grunting and snarling.

one called her proud,

cross-grained, uncivil;

their tones waxed loud,

their looks were evil.

Lashing their tails

they trod and hustled her,

elbowed and jostled her,

clawed with their nails,

barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,

tore her gown and soiled her stocking,

twitched her hair out by the roots,

stamped upon her tender feet,

held her hands and squeezed their fruits

against her mouth to make her eat.

White and golden Lizzie stood,

like a lily in a flood,

like a rock of blue-veined stone

lashed by tides obstreperously,—

like a beacon left alone

in a hoary roaring sea,

sending up a golden fire,—

like a fruit-crowned orange-tree

white with blossoms honey-sweet

sore beset by wasp and bee,—

like a royal virgin town

topped with gilded dome and spire

close beleaguered by a fleet

mad to tear her standard down.

One may lead a horse to water,

twenty cannot make him drink.

Though the goblins cuffed and caught her,

coaxed and fought her,

bullied and besought her,

scratched her, pinched her black as ink,

kicked and knocked her,

mauled and mocked her,

Lizzie uttered not a word;

would not open lip from lip

lest they should cram a mouthful in;

but laughed in heart to feel the drip

of juice that syruped all her face,

and lodged in dimples of her chin,

and streaked her neck which quaked like curd.

At last the evil people,

worn out by her resistance,

flung back her penny, kicked their fruit

along whichever road they took,

not leaving root or stone or shoot.

Some writhed into the ground,

some dived into the brook

with ring and ripple.

Some scudded on the gale without a sound,

some vanished in the distance.

In a smart, ache, tingle,

Lizzie went her way;

knew not was it night or day;

sprang up the bank, tore through the furze,

threaded copse and dingle,

and heard her penny jingle

bouncing in her purse,—

its bounce was music to her ear.

she ran and ran

as if she feared some goblin man

dogged her with gibe or curse

or something worse:

but not one goblin scurried after,

nor was she pricked by fear;

the kind heart made her windy-paced

that urged her home quite out of breath with haste

and inward laughter.

She cried “Laura,” up the garden,

“Did you miss me?

come and kiss me.

never mind my bruises,

hug me, kiss me, suck my juices

squeezed from goblin fruits for you,

goblin pulp and goblin dew.

Eat me, drink me, love me;

Laura, make much of me:

for your sake I have braved the glen

and had to do with goblin merchant men.”

Laura started from her chair,

flung her arms up in the air,

clutched her hair:

“Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted

for my sake the fruit forbidden?

must your light like mine be hidden,

your young life like mine be wasted,

undone in mine undoing,

and ruined in my ruin;

thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?”

She clung about her sister,

kissed and kissed and kissed her:

tears once again

refreshed her shrunken eyes,

dropping like rain

after long sultry drouth;

shaking with aguish fear, and pain,

she kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.

Her lips began to scorch,

that juice was wormwood to her tongue,

she loathed the feast:

writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,

rent all her robe, and wrung

her hands in lamentable haste,

and beat her breast.

her locks streamed like the torch

borne by a racer at full speed,

or like the mane of horses in their flight,

or like an eagle when she stems the light

straight toward the sun,

or like a caged thing freed,

or like a flying flag when armies run.

Swift fire spread through her veins,

knocked at her heart,

met the fire smouldering there

and overbore its lesser flame,

she gorged on bitterness without a name:

ah! fool, to choose such part

of soul-consuming care!

Sense failed in the mortal strife:

like the watch-tower of a town

which an earthquake shatters down,

like a lightning-stricken mast,

like a wind-uprooted tree

spun about,

like a foam-topped water-spout

cast down headlong in the sea,

she fell at last;

pleasure past and anguish past,

is it death or is it life?

Life out of death.

That night long Lizzie watched by her,

counted her pulse’s flagging stir,

felt for her breath,

held water to her lips, and cooled her face

with tears and fanning leaves:

but when the first birds chirped about their eaves,

and early reapers plodded to the place

of golden sheaves,

and dew-wet grass

bowed in the morning winds so brisk to pass,

and new buds with new day

opened of cup-like lilies on the stream,

Laura awoke as from a dream,

laughed in the innocent old way,

hugged Lizzie but not twice or thrice;

her gleaming locks showed not one thread of gray,

her breath was sweet as May,

and light danced in her eyes.

Days, weeks, months, years

afterwards, when both were wives

with children of their own;

their mother-hearts beset with fears,

their lives bound up in tender lives;

Laura would call the little ones

and tell them of her early prime,

those pleasant days long gone

of not-returning time:

would talk about the haunted glen,

the wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men,

their fruits like honey to the throat,

but poison in the blood;

(men sell not such in any town;)

would tell them how her sister stood

in deadly peril to do her good,

and win the fiery antidote:

then joining hands to little hands

would bid them cling together,

“For there is no friend like a sister,

in calm or stormy weather,

to cheer one on the tedious way,

to fetch one if one goes astray,

to lift one if one totters down,

to strengthen whilst one stands.”

Remember[1]

Remember me when I am gone away,

gone far away into the silent land;

when you can no more hold me by the hand,

nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

you tell me of our future that you planned:

only remember me; you understand

it will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

and afterwards remember, do not grieve:

for if the darkness and corruption leave

a vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

better by far you should forget and smile

than that you should remember and be sad.

Song[1]

When I am dead, my dearest,

sing no sad songs for me;

plant thou no roses at my head,

nor shady cypress tree:

be the green grass above me

with showers and dewdrops wet;

and if thou wilt, remember,

and if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,

I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale

sing on, as if in pain;

and dreaming through the twilight

that doth not rise nor set,

haply I may remember,

and haply may forget.

The First Day[1]

I wish I could remember the first day,

first hour, first moments of your meeting me;

if bright or dim the season, it might be.

Summer or Winter for aught I can say.

so unrecorded did it slip away.

So blind was I to see and to foresee,

so dull to mark the budding of my tree,

that would not blossom for many a May.

If only I could recollect it!

Such a day of days!

Let it come and go

as traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.

It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!

If only now I could recall that touch,

first touch of hand in hand!—Did one but know!

Lewis Carroll (1832 – 1898)

The Walrus and the Carpenter[2]

The sun was shining on the sea,

shining with all his might:

he did his very best to make

the billows smooth and bright—

and this was odd, because it was

the middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,

because she thought the sun

had got no business to be there

after the day was done—

“It’s very rude of him,” she said,

“to come and spoil the fun!”

The sea was wet as wet could be,

the sands were dry as dry.

You could not see a cloud, because

no cloud was in the sky:

no birds were flying overhead—

there were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the Carpenter

were walking close at hand;

they wept like anything to see

such quantities of sand:

“If this were only cleared away,”

they said, “it would be grand!”

“If seven maids with seven mops

swept it for half a year,

do you suppose,” the Walrus said,

“that they could get it clear?”

“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,

and shed a bitter tear.

“O Oysters, come and walk with us!”

The Walrus did beseech.

“A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,

along the briny beach:

we cannot do with more than four,

to give a hand to each.”

The eldest Oyster looked at him,

but never a word he said:

the eldest Oyster winked his eye,

and shook his heavy head—

meaning to say he did not choose

to leave the oyster-bed.

But four young Oysters hurried up,

all eager for the treat:

their coats were brushed, their faces washed,

their shoes were clean and neat—

and this was odd, because, you know,

they hadn’t any feet.

Four other Oysters followed them,

and yet another four;

and thick and fast they came at last,

and more, and more, and more—

all hopping through the frothy waves,

and scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter

walked on a mile or so,

and then they rested on a rock

conveniently low:

and all the little Oysters stood

and waited in a row.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,

“to talk of many things:

of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—

of cabbages—and kings—

and why the sea is boiling hot—

and whether pigs have wings.”

“But wait a bit,” the Oysters cried,

“before we have our chat;

for some of us are out of breath,

and all of us are fat!”

“No hurry!” said the Carpenter.

they thanked him much for that.

“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said,

“is what we chiefly need:

pepper and vinegar besides

are very good indeed—

now if you’re ready, Oysters dear,

we can begin to feed.”

“But not on us!” the Oysters cried,

turning a little blue.

“After such kindness, that would be

a dismal thing to do!”

“The night is fine,” the Walrus said.

“do you admire the view?

It was so kind of you to come!

and you are very nice!”

The Carpenter said nothing but

“Cut us another slice:

I wish you were not quite so deaf—

I’ve had to ask you twice!”

“It seems a shame,” the Walrus said,

“to play them such a trick,

after we’ve brought them out so far,

and made them trot so quick!”

The Carpenter said nothing but

“The butter’s spread too thick!”

“I weep for you,” the Walrus said:

“I deeply sympathize.”

With sobs and tears he sorted out

those of the largest size,

holding his pocket-handkerchief

before his streaming eyes.

“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter,

“You’ve had a pleasant run!

Shall we be trotting home again?’

But answer came there none—

and this was scarcely odd, because

they’d eaten every one.

Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928)

Channel firing[1]

That night your great guns, unawares,

shook all our coffins as we lay,

and broke the chancel window-squares,

we thought it was the Judgement-day

and sat upright. While drearisome

arose the howl of wakened hounds:

the mouse let fall the altar-crumb,

the worm drew back into the mounds,

the glebe cow drooled. Till God cried, “No;

it’s gunnery practice out at sea

just as before you went below;

the world is as it used to be:

all nations striving strong to make

red war yet redder. Mad as hatters

they do no more for Christés sake

than you who are helpless in such matters.

That this is not the judgment-hour

for some of them’s a blessed thing,

for if it were they’d have to scour

hell’s floor for so much threatening … .

Ha, ha. It will be warmer when

I blow the trumpet (if indeed

I ever do; for you are men,

and rest eternal sorely need).”

So down we lay again. “I wonder,

will the world ever saner be,”

said one, “than when He sent us under

in our indifferent century!”

And many a skeleton shook his head.

“Instead of preaching forty year,”

my neighbor Parson Thirdly said,

“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”

Again the guns disturbed the hour,

roaring their readiness to avenge,

as far inland as Stourton Tower,

and Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

I look into my glass[1]

I look into my glass,

and view my wasting skin,

and say, “Would God it came to pass

my heart had shrunk as thin!”

For then, I, undistrest

by hearts grown cold to me,

could lonely wait my endless rest

with equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve,

part steals, lets part abide;

and shakes this fragile frame at eve

with throbbings of noontide.

The oxen[2]

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

“Now they are all on their knees,”

an elder said as we sat in a flock

by the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

they dwelt in their strawy pen,

nor did it occur to one of us there

to doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

in these years! Yet, I feel,

if someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come; see the oxen kneel,

In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

our childhood used to know,”

I should go with him in the gloom,

hoping it might be so.

The Ruined Maid[1]

“O’Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!

Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?

And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?”

“O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?” said she.

“You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,

tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;

and now you’ve gay bracelets and bright feathers three!”

“Yes: that’s how we dress when we’re ruined,” said she.

“At home in the barton you said ’thee’ and ’thou,’

and ’thik oon,’ and ’theäs oon,” and ’t’other’; but now

your talking quite fits ’ee for high compa-ny!”—

“Some polish is gained with one’s ruin,” said she.

“Your hands were like paws then,

your face blue and bleak

but now I’m bewitched by your delicate cheek,

and your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!”

“We never do work when we’re ruined,” said she.

“You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,

and you’d sigh, and you’d sock; but at present you seem

to know not of megrims or melancho-ly!”

“True. One’s pretty lively when ruined,” said she.

“I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,

and a delicate face, and could strut about Town!”

“My dear - a raw country girl, such as you be,

cannot quite expect that. You ain’t ruined,” said she.

Sidney Lanier (1842 – 1881)

The Revenge of Hamish[1]

It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck

in the bracken lay;

and all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man,

awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran

down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken

and passed that way.

Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril;

she was the daintiest doe;

in the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern

she reared, and rounded her ears in turn.

Then the buck leapt up, and his head

as a king’s to a crown did go

full high in the breeze,

and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer;

and the two slim does long lazily stretching arose,

for their day-dream slowlier came to a close,

till they woke and were still,

breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear.

Then Alan the huntsman

sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by,

the does and the ten-tined buck

made a marvelous bound,

the hounds swept after with never a sound,

but Alan loud winded his horn in sign

that the quarry was nigh.

For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of Lochbuy

to the hunt had waxed wild,

and he cursed at old Alan

till Alan fared off with the hounds

for to drive him the deer to the lower glen-grounds:

“I will kill a red deer,” quoth Maclean,

“in the sight of the wife and the child.”

So gaily he paced with the wife and the child

to his chosen stand;

but he hurried tall Hamish the henchman ahead:

“Go turn,”—Cried Maclean—

“if the deer seek to cross to the burn,

do thou turn them to me:

nor fail, lest thy back be red as thy hand.”

Now hard-fortuned Hamish,

half blown of his breath with the height of the hill,

was white in the face

when the ten-tined buck and the does

drew leaping to burn-ward; huskily rose

his shouts, and his nether lip twitched,

and his legs were o’er-weak for his will.

So the deer darted lightly by Hamish

and bounded away to the burn.

But Maclean never bating

his watch tarried waiting below

still Hamish hung heavy with fear for to go

all the space of an hour; then he went,

and his face was greenish and stern,

and his eye sat back in the socket,

and shrunken the eyeballs shone,

as withdrawn from a vision

of deeds it were shame to see.

“Now, now, grim henchman, what is’t with thee?”

Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon

the wind hath upblown.

“Three does and a ten-tined buck made out,”

spoke Hamish, full mild,

“and I ran for to turn,

but my breath it was blown, and they passed;

I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast.”

Cried Maclean: “Now a ten-tined buck

in the sight of the wife and the child

I had killed if the gluttonous kern

had not wrought me a snail’s own wrong!”

Then he sounded,

and down came kinsmen and clansmen all:

“Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall,

and reckon no stroke if the blood follow not

at the bite of thong!”

So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes;

at the last he smiled.

“Now I’ll to the burn,” quoth Maclean, “for it still may be,

if a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me,

I shall kill me the ten-tined buck

for a gift to the wife and the child!”

Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that;

and over the hill

sped Maclean with an outward wrath

for an inward shame;

and that place of the lashing full Quiet became;

and the wife and the child stood sad;

and bloody-backed Hamish sat still.

But look! red Hamish has risen;

quick about and about turns he.

“There is none betwixt me and the crag-top!”

he screams under breath.

Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death,

he snatches the child from the mother,

and clambers the crag toward the sea.

Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb,

and her heart goes dead for a space,

till the motherhood, mistress of death,

shrieks, shrieks through the glen,

and that place of the lashing is live with men,

and Maclean, and the gillie that told him,

dash up in a desperate race.

Not a breath’s time for asking; an eye-glance reveals

all the tale untold.

They follow mad Hamish

afar up the crag toward the sea,

and the lady cries: “Clansmen, run for a fee!—

yon castle and lands to the two first hands

that shall hook him and hold

fast Hamish back from the brink!”—

and ever she flies up the steep,

and the clansmen pant, and they sweat,

and they jostle and strain.

But, mother, ’tis vain; but, father, ’tis vain;

stern Hamish stands bold on the brink,

and dangles the child o’er the deep.

Now a faintness falls on the men that run,

and they all stand still.

And the wife prays Hamish as if he were God,

on her knees,

crying: “Hamish! O Hamish! but please, but please

for to spare him!” and Hamish

still dangles the child, with a wavering will.

On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk scream,

and a gibe, and a song,

cries: “So; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all,

ten blows on Maclean’s bare back shall fall,

and ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not

at the bite of the thong!”

Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his lip

that his tooth was red,

breathed short for a space,

said: “Nay, but it never shall be!

Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea!”

But the wife: “Can Hamish go fish

us the child from the sea, if dead?

Say yea!—Let them lash ME, Hamish?”—“Nay!”—

“Husband, the lashing will heal;

but, oh, who will heal me

the bonny sweet bairn in his grave?

Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave?

Quick! Love! I will bare thee—so—kneel!”

Then Maclean ’gan slowly to kneel

with never a word, till presently downward

he jerked to the earth.

Then the henchman—he that smote Hamish—

would tremble and lag;

“Strike, hard!” quoth Hamish, full stern, from the crag;

then he struck him, and “One!” sang Hamish,

and danced with the child in his mirth.

And no man spake beside Hamish;

he counted each stroke with a song.

When the last stroke fell, then he moved him a pace

down the height,

and he held forth the child in the heartaching sight

of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave,

as repenting a wrong.

And there as the motherly arms stretched out

with the thanksgiving prayer—

and there as the mother crept up

with a fearful swift pace,

till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie’s face—

in a flash fierce Hamish turned round

and lifted the child in the air,

and sprang with the child in his arms

from the horrible height in the sea,

shrill screeching, “Revenge!” in the wind-rush;

and pallid Maclean,

age-feeble with anger and impotent pain,

crawled up on the crag, and lay flat,

and locked hold of dead roots of a tree—

and gazed hungrily o’er, and the blood from his back

drip-dripped in the brine,

and a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton fish as he flew,

and the mother stared white on the waste of blue,

and the wind drove a cloud to seaward,

and the sun began to shine.

The Waving of the Corn[1]

Ploughman, whose gnarly hand yet kindly wheeled

thy plough to ring this solitary tree

with clover, whose round plat, reserved a-field,

in cool green radius twice my length may be—

scanting the corn thy furrows else might yield,

to pleasure August, bees, fair thoughts, and me,

that here come oft together—daily I,

stretched prone in summer’s mortal ecstasy,

do stir with thanks to thee, as stirs this morn

with waving of the corn.

Unseen, the farmer’s boy from round the hill

whistles a snatch that seeks his soul unsought,

and fills some time with tune, howbeit shrill;

the cricket tells straight on his simple thought—

nay, ’tis the cricket’s way of being still;

the peddler bee drones in, and gossips naught;

far down the wood, a one-desiring dove

times me the beating of the heart of love:

and these be all the sounds that mix, each morn,

with waving of the corn.

From here to where the louder passions dwell,

green leagues of hilly separation roll:

trade ends where yon far clover ridges swell.

Ye terrible Towns, ne’er claim the trembling soul

that, craftless all to buy or hoard or sell,

from out your deadly complex quarrel stole

to company with large amiable trees,

suck honey summer with unjealous bees,

and take Time’s strokes as softly as this morn

takes waving of the corn.

To Nannette Falk-Auerbach[1]

Oft as I hear thee, wrapt in heavenly art,

the massive message of Beethoven tell

with thy ten fingers to the people’s heart

as if ten tongues told news of heaven and hell,—

gazing on thee, I mark that not alone,

ah, not alone, thou sittest: there, by thee,

beethoven’s self, dear living lord of tone,

doth stand and smile upon thy mastery.

Full fain and fatherly his great eyes glow:

he says, “From Heaven, my child, I heard thee call

(for, where an artist plays, the sky is low):

yea, since my lonesome life did lack love’s all,

in death, God gives me thee: thus, quit of pain,

daughter, Nannette! in thee I live again.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889)

Binsey Poplars[2]

felled 1879

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,

quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

all felled, felled, are all felled;

of a fresh and following folded rank

not spared, not one

that dandled a sandaled

shadow that swam or sank

on meadow and river and wind-wandering

weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do

when we delve or hew—

hack and rack the growing green!

Since country is so tender

to touch, her being só slender,

that, like this sleek and seeing ball

but a prick will make no eye at all,

where we, even where we mean

to mend her we end her,

when we hew or delve:

after-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

strokes of havoc únselve

the sweet especial scene,

rural scene, a rural scene,

sweet especial rural scene.

Carrion Comfort[1]

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

not untwist—slack they may be—

these last strands of man

in me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

can something, hope, wish day come,

not choose not to be.

But ah, but O thou terrible,

why wouldst thou rude on me

thy wring-world right foot rock?

lay a lion limb against me? scan

with darksome devouring eyes

my bruisèd bones? and fan,

O in turns of tempest, me heaped there;

me frantic to avoid thee

and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly;

my grain lie, sheer and clear.

Nay in all that toil, that coil,

since (seems) I kissed the rod,

hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength,

stole joy, would laugh, chéer.

Cheer whom though? The hero

whose heaven-handling flung me,

fóot tród

me? or me that fought him?

O which one? is it each one? That night,

that year

of now done darkness I wretch

lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Spring and Fall[1]

Márgarét, are you gríeving

over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Áh! ás the heart grows older

it will come to such sights colder

by & by, nor spare a sigh

though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

and yet you wíll weep & know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

what héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:

it is the blight man was born for,

it is Margaret you mourn for.

The Windhover[1]

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion,

kingdom of daylight’s dauphin,

dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

of the rolling level underneath him

steady air, and striding

high there, how he rung

upon the rein of a wimpling wing

in his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing

as a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend:

the hurl and gliding

rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

stirred for a bird,—the achieve of;

the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valor and act,

oh, air, pride, plume, here

buckle! and the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion

shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion

Edward Rowland Sill (1847 – 1881)

Five Lives[2]

Five mites of monads dwelt in a round drop

that twinkled on a leaf by a pool in the sun.

To the naked eye they lived invisible;

specks, for a world of whom the empty shell

of a mustard-seed had been a hollow sky.

One was a meditative monad, called a sage;

and, shrinking all his mind within, he thought:

“Tradition, handed down for hours and hours,

tells that our globe, this quivering crystal world,

is slowly dying. What if, seconds hence,

when I am very old, yon shimmering dome

come drawing down and down, till all things end?”

Then with a wizen smirk he proudly felt

no other mote of God had ever gained

such giant grasp of universal truth.

One was a transcendental monad; thin

and long and slim in the mind; and thus he mused:

“Oh, vast, unfathomable monad-souls!

Made in the image”—a hoarse frog croaks

from the pool—

“Hark! ’twas some god, voicing his glorious thought

in thunder music! Yea, we hear their voice,

and we may guess their minds from ours, their work.

Some taste they have like ours, some tendency

to wriggle about, and munch a trace of scum.”

He floated up on a pin-point bubble of gas

that burst, pricked by the air, and he was gone.

One was a barren-minded monad, called

a positivist; and he knew positively:

“There is no world beyond this certain drop.

prove me another! Let the dreamers dream

of their faint dreams, and noises from without,

and higher and lower; life is life enough.”

Then swaggering half a hair’s breadth, hungrily

he seized upon an atom of bug, and fed.

One was a tattered monad, called a poet;

and with shrill voice ecstatic thus he sang:

“Oh, the little female monad’s lips!

Oh, the little female monad’s eyes:

Ah, the little, little, female, female monad!”

The last was a strong-minded monadess,

who dashed amid the infusoria,

danced high and low, and wildly spun and dove

till the dizzy others held their breath to see.

But while they led their wondrous little lives

aeonian moments had gone wheeling by.

The burning drop had shrunk with fearful speed;

a glistening film—’twas gone; the leaf was dry.

The little ghost of an inaudible squeak

was lost to the frog that goggled from his stone;

who, at the huge, slow tread of a thoughtful ox

coming to drink, stirred sideways fatly, plunged,

launched backward twice, and all the pool was still.

William Ernest Henley (1849 – 1903)

Invictus[1]

Out of the night that covers me,

black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

i have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

my head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

looms but the Horror of the shade,

and yet the menace of the years

finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

how charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

Eugene Field (1850 – 1895)

Little Boy Blue[1]

The little toy dog is covered with dust,

but sturdy and stanch he stands;

and the little toy soldier is red with rust,

and his musket moulds in his hands.

Time was when the little toy dog was new,

and the soldier was passing fair;

and that was the time when our Little Boy Blue

kissed them and put them there.

“Now, don’t you go till I come,” he said,

“and don’t you make any noise!”

So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,

he dreamt of the pretty toys;

and, as he was dreaming, an angel song

awakened our Little Boy Blue—-

oh! the years are many, the years are long,

but the little toy friends are true!

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,

each in the same old place—-

awaiting the touch of a little hand,

the smile of a little face;

and they wonder, as waiting the long years through

in the dust of that little chair,

what has become of our Little Boy Blue,

since he kissed them and put them there.

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod[1]

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night

sailed off in a wooden shoe

sailed on a river of crystal light,

into a sea of dew.

“Where are you going, and what do you wish?”

the old moon asked the three.

“We have come to fish for the herring fish

that live in this beautiful sea;

nets of silver and gold have we!”

Said Wynken,

Blynken,

and Nod.

The old moon laughed and sang a song

as they rocked in the wooden shoe,

and the wind that sped them all night long

ruffled the waves of dew.

The little stars were the herring fish

that lived in the beautiful sea

“Now cast your nets wherever you wish

never afeard are we”;

so cried the stars to the fisherman three:

Wynken,

Blynken,

and Nod.

All night long their nets they threw

to the stars in the twinkling foam

then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,

bringing the fishermen home;

‘Twas all so pretty a sail it seemed

as if it could not be,

and some folks thought ’twas a dream they’d dreamed

of sailing that beautiful sea

but I shall name you the fishermen three:

Wynken,

Blynken,

and Nod.

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,

and Nod is a little head,

and the wooden shoe that sailed the skies

is a wee one’s trundle-bed.

So shut your eyes while mother sings

of wonderful sights that be,

and you shall see the beautiful things

as you rock in the misty sea,

where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:

Wynken,

Blynken,

and Nod.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894)

Requiem[1]

Under the wide and starry sky

dig the grave and let me lie:

glad did I live and gladly die,

and I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

here he lies where he longed to be;

home is the sailor, home from sea,

and the hunter home from the hill.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 – 1919)

Solitude[2]

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

weep, and you weep alone.

For the sad old earth must borrow it’s mirth,

but has trouble enough of it’s own.

Sing, and the hills will answer;

sigh, it is lost on the air.

The echoes bound to a joyful sound,

but shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;

grieve, and they turn and go.

They want full measure of all your pleasure,

but they do not need your woe.

Be glad, and your friends are many;

be sad, and you lose them all.

There are none to decline your nectared wine,

but alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;

fast, and the world goes by.

Succeed and give, and it helps you live,

but no man can help you die.

There is room in the halls of pleasure

for a long and lordly train,

but one by one we must all file on

through the narrow aisles of pain.

A.E. Housman (1859 – 1936)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now[1]

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

is hung with bloom along the bough,

and stands about the woodland ride

wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

twenty will not come again,

and take from seventy springs a score,

it only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

fifty springs are little room,

about the woodlands I will go

to see the cherry hung with snow.

Terence, This is Stupid Stuff[1]

“Terence, this is stupid stuff:

you eat your victuals fast enough;

there can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,

to see the rate you drink your beer.

But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,

it gives a chap the belly-ache.

The cow, the old cow, she is dead;

it sleeps well, the horned head:

we poor lads, ’tis our turn now

to hear such tunes as killed the cow.

Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme

your friends to death before their time

moping melancholy mad:

come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.”

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,

there’s brisker pipes than poetry.

Say, for what were hop-yards meant,

or why was Burton built on Trent?

Oh many a peer of England brews

livelier liQuor than the Muse,

and malt does more than Milton can

to justify God’s ways to man.

Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink

for fellows whom it hurts to think:

look into the pewter pot

to see the world as the world’s not.

And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:

the mischief is that ’twill not last.

Oh I have been to Ludlow fair

and left my necktie God knows where,

and carried half way home, or near,

pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:

then the world seemed none so bad,

and I myself a sterling lad;

and down in lovely muck I’ve lain,

happy till I woke again.

Then I saw the morning sky:

heigho, the tale was all a lie;

the world, it was the old world yet,

I was I, my things were wet,

and nothing now remained to do

but begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still

much good, but much less good than ill,

and while the sun and moon endure

luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,

I’d face it as a wise man would,

and train for ill and not for good.

‘Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale

is not so brisk a brew as ale:

out of a stem that scored the hand

I wrung it in a weary land.

But take it: if the snack is sour,

the better for the embittered hour;

it should do good to heart and head

when your soul is in my soul’s stead;

and I will friend you, if I may,

in the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:

there, when kings will sit to feast,

they get their fill before they think

with poisoned meat and poisoned drink.

He gathered all that springs to birth

from the many-venomed earth;

first a little, thence to more,

he sampled all her killing store;

and easy, smiling, seasoned sound,

sate the king when healths went round.

They put arsenic in his meat

and stared aghast to watch him eat;

they poured strychnine in his cup

and shook to see him drink it up:

they shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:

them it was their poison hurt.

—I tell the tale that I heard told.

Mithridates, he died old.

They say my Verse is Sad: No Wonder[1]

They say my verse is sad: no wonder.

Its narrow measure spans

rue for eternity, and sorrow

not mine, but man’s.

This is for all ill-treated fellows

unborn and unbegot,

for them to read when they’re in trouble

and I am not.

To an Athlete Dying Young[2]

The time you won your town the race

we chaired you through the market-place;

man and boy stood cheering by,

and home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,

shoulder high— we bring you home,

and set you at your threshold down,

townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

from fields where glory does not stay

and early though the laurel grows

it withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

cannot see the record cut,

and silence sounds no worse than cheers

after earth has stopped the ears:

now you will not swell the rout

of lads that wore their honors out,

runners whom renown outran

and the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,

the fleet foot on the sill of shade,

and hold to the low lintel up

the still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head

will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

and find unwithered on its curls

the garland briefer than a girl’s.

James B Naylor (1860 – 1902)

Authorship[1]

“King David and King Solomon

led merry, merry lives,

with many, many lady friends

and many, many wives;

but when old age crept over them,

with many, many qualms,

King Solomon wrote the Proverbs

and King David wrote the Psalms.”

Charles Perkins Stetson (1860 – 1935)

An Obstacle[1]

I was climbing up a mountain-path

with many things to do,

important business of my own,

and other people’s too,

when I ran against a Prejudice

that quite cut off the view.

My work was such as could not wait,

my path quite clearly showed,

my strength and time were limited,

I carried quite a load;

and there that hulking Prejudice

sat all across the road.

So I spoke to him politely,

for he was huge and high,

and begged that he would move a bit

and let me travel by.

He smiled, but as for moving!—

he didn’t even try.

And then I reasoned quietly

with that colossal mule:

my time was short—no other path—

the mountain winds were cool.

I argued like a Solomon;

he sat there like a fool.

Then I flew into a passion,

I danced and howled and swore.

I pelted and belabored him

till I was stiff and sore;

he got mad as I did—

but sat there as before.

And then I begged him on my knees;

I might be kneeling still

if so I hoped to move that mass

of obdurate ill-will—

as well invite the monument

to vacate Bunker Hill!

So I sat before him helpless,

in an ecstasy of woe—

the mountain mists were rising fast,

the sun was sinking slow—

when a sudden inspiration came,

as sudden winds do blow.

I took my hat, I took my stick,

my load I settled fair,

I approached that awful incubus

with an absent minded air—

and I walked directly through him,

as if he wasn’t there!

Black Elk (1863 – 1950)

Everything the Power of the World Does is done in a circle[1]

As spoken to John G. Neihardt

Everything the power of the world does,

is done in a circle.

The sky is round

and I have heard that the earth

is round like a ball,

and so are all the stars.

The wind in its greatest power whirls.

Birds make their nests in circles;

for theirs is the same religion as ours.

The sun comes forth and

goes down again in a circle.

The moon does the same

and both are round.

Even the seasons form a great circle

in their changing

and always come back

to where they were.

The life of a man is a circle,

from childhood to childhood.

and so it is with everything

where power moves.

Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1930)

If[1]

If you can keep your head when all about you

are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

but make allowance for their doubting too;

if you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

and yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

if you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

if you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

if you can meet with triumph and disaster

and treat those two imposters just the same;

if you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

and stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

if you can make one heap of all your winnings

and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

and lose, and start again at your beginnings

and never breath a word about your loss;

if you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

to serve your turn long after they are gone,

and so hold on when there is nothing in you

except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”;

if you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;

if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

if all men count with you, but none too much;

if you can fill the unforgiving minute

with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—

yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

and—which is more—you’ll be a Man my son!

The Way Through the Woods[1]

They shut the road through the woods

seventy years ago.

Weather and rain have undone it again,

and now you would never know

there was once a road through the woods

before they planted the trees.

It is underneath the coppice and heath

and the thin anemones.

Only the keeper sees

that, where the ring-dove broods,

and the badgers roll at ease,

there was once a road through the woods.

Yet if you enter the woods

of a summer evening late,

when the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools

where the otter whistles his mate,

(they fear not men in the woods,

because they see so few.)

You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,

and the swish of a skirt in the dew,

steadily cantering through

the misty solitudes,

as though they perfectly knew

the old lost road through the woods…

but there is no road through the woods.

We and They[1]

Father and Mother, and Me,

Sister and Auntie say

all the people like us are We,

and every one else is They.

And They live over the sea,

while We live over the way,

but-would you believe it?—They look upon We

as only a sort of They!

We eat pork and beef

with cow-horn-handled knives.

They who gobble Their rice off a leaf,

are horrified out of Their lives;

while they who live up a tree,

and feast on grubs and clay,

(isn’t it scandalous? ) look upon We

as a simply disgusting They!

We shoot birds with a gun.

They stick lions with spears.

Their full-dress is un-.

We dress up to Our ears.

They like Their friends for tea.

We like Our friends to stay;

and, after all that, They look upon We

as an utterly ignorant They!

We eat kitcheny food.

We have doors that latch.

They drink milk or blood,

under an open thatch.

We have Doctors to fee.

They have Wizards to pay.

And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We

as a quite impossible They!

All good people agree,

and all good people say,

all nice people, like Us, are We

and every one else is They:

but if you cross over the sea,

instead of over the way,

you may end by (think of it!) looking on We

as only a sort of They!

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)

A Dream of Death[1]

I dreamed that one had died in a strange place

near no accustomed hand,

and they had nailed the boards above her face,

the peasants of that land,

wondering to lay her in that solitude,

and raised above her mound

a cross they had made out of two bits of wood,

and planted cypress round;

and left her to the indifferent stars above

until I carved these words:

she was more beautiful than thy first love,

but now lies under boards.

Politics[2]

‘In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms.’ Thomas Mann

How can I, that girl standing there,

my attention fix

on Roman or on Russian

or on Spanish politics?

Yet here’s a traveled man that knows

what he talks about,

and there’s a politician

that has both read and thought,

and maybe what they say is true

of war and war’s alarms,

but O that I were young again

and held her in my arms.

The Ballad of Father Gilligan[1]

The old priest Peter Gilligan

was weary night and day;

for half his flock were in their beds,

or under green sods lay.

Once, while he nodded on a chair,

at the moth-hour of eve,

another poor man sent for him,

and he began to grieve.

‘I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,

for people die and die’;

and after cried he, ’God forgive!

my body spake, not I!’

He knelt, and leaning on the chair

he prayed and fell asleep;

and the moth-hour went from the fields,

and stars began to peep.

They slowly into millions grew,

and leaves shook in the wind;

and God covered the world with shade,

and whispered to mankind.

Upon the time of sparrow-chirp

when the moths came once more.

The old priest Peter Gilligan

stood upright on the floor.

‘Mavrone, mavrone! the man has died

while I slept on the chair’;

he roused his horse out of its sleep,

and rode with little care.

He rode now as he never rode,

by rocky lane and fen;

the sick man’s wife opened the door:

‘Father! you come again!’

‘And is the poor man dead?’ he cried.

‘He died an hour ago.’

The old priest Peter Gilligan

in grief swayed to and fro.

‘When you were gone, he turned and died

as merry as a bird.’

The old priest Peter Gilligan

he knelt him at that word.

‘He Who hath made the night of stars

for souls who tire and bleed,

sent one of His great angels down

to help me in my need.

‘He Who is wrapped in purple robes,

with planets in His care,

had pity on the least of things

asleep upon a chair.’

The Indian upon God[1]

I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees,

my spirit rocked in evening light,

the rushes round my knees,

my spirit rocked in sleep and sighs;

and saw the moor-fowl pace

all dripping on a grassy slope,

and saw them cease to chase

each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:

who holds the world between His bill

and made us strong or weak

is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.

The rains are from His dripping wing,

the moonbeams from His eye.

I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:

who made the world and ruleth it,

He hangeth on a stalk,

for I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide

is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.

A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes

brimful of starlight, and he said:

The Stamper of the Skies,

he is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He

conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?

I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:

who made the grass and made the worms

and made my feathers gay,

he is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night

his languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

The Sad Shepherd[2]

There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend,

and he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming,

went walking with slow steps along the gleaming

and humming Sands, where windy surges wend:

and he called loudly to the stars to bend

from their pale thrones and comfort him, but they

among themselves laugh on and sing alway:

and then the man whom Sorrow named his friend

cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story!

The sea Swept on and cried her old cry still,

rolling along in dreams from hill to hill.

He fled the persecution of her glory

and, in a far-off, gentle valley stopping,

cried all his story to the dewdrops glistening.

But naught they heard, for they are always listening,

the dewdrops, for the sound of their own dropping.

And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend

sought once again the shore, and found a shell,

and thought, I will my heavy story tell

till my own words, re-echoing, shall send

their sadness through a hollow, pearly heart;

and my own tale again for me shall sing,

and my own whispering words be comforting,

and lo! my ancient burden may depart.

Then he sang softly nigh the pearly rim;

but the sad dweller by the sea-ways lone

changed all he sang to inarticulate moan

among her wildering whirls, forgetting him.

Shiki (Masaoka Tseunenori) (1867 – 1902)

By that fallen house[1]

Translated from the Japanese by Peter Beilenson

By that fallen house

the pear-tree stands full-blooming …

an ancient battle-site

Edgar Lee Masters (1868 – 1950)

Alexander Throckmorton[1]

In youth my wings were strong and tireless,

but I did not know the mountains.

In age I knew the mountains

but my weary wings could not follow my vision—

genius is wisdom and youth.

Aner Clute[2]

Over and over they used to ask me,

while buying the wine or the beer,

in Peoria first, and later in Chicago,

Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived,

how I happened to lead the life,

and what was the start of it.

Well, I told them a silk dress,

and a promise of marriage from a rich man—

(it was Lucius Atherton).

But that was not really it at all.

Suppose a boy steals an apple

from the tray at the grocery store,

and they all begin to call him a thief,

the editor, minister, judge, and all the people—

“A thief,” “a thief,” “a thief,” wherever he goes.

And he can’t get work, and he can’t get bread

without stealing it, why, the boy will steal.

It’s the way the people regard the theft of the apple

that makes the boy what he is.

Conrad Siever[3]

Not in that wasted garden

where bodies are drawn into grass

that feeds no flocks, and into evergreens

that bear no fruit—

there where along the shaded walks

vain sighs are heard,

and vainer dreams are dreamed

of close communion with departed souls—

but here under the apple tree

I loved and watched and pruned

with gnarled hands

in the long, long years;

here under the roots of this northern-spy

to move in the chemic change and circle of life,

into the soil and into the flesh of the tree,

and into the living epitaphs

of redder apples!

Fiddler Jones[1]

The earth keeps some vibration going

there in your heart, and that is you.

And if the people find you can fiddle,

why, fiddle you must, for all your life.

What do you see, a harvest of clover?

Or a meadow to walk through to the river?

The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands

for beeves hereafter ready for market;

or else you hear the rustle of skirts

like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.

To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust

or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;

they looked to me like Red-Head Sammy

stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”

How could I till my forty acres

not to speak of getting more,

with a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos

stirred in my brain by crows and robins

and the creak of a wind-mill—only these?

And I never started to plow in my life

that some one did not stop in the road

and take me away to a dance or picnic.

I ended up with forty acres;

I ended up with a broken fiddle—

and a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,

and not a single regret.

Silas Dement[2]

It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled

with new-fallen frost.

It was midnight and not a soul abroad.

Out of the chimney of the court-house

a gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased

the northwest wind.

I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs

and leaned it against the frame of the trap-door

in the ceiling of the portico,

and I crawled under the roof amid the rafters

and flung among the seasoned timbers

a lighted handful of oil-soaked waste.

Then I came down and slunk away.

In a little while the fire-bell rang—

Clang! Clang! Clang!

And the Spoon River ladder company

came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water

on the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter,

higher and brighter, till the walls fell in,

and the limestone columns where Lincoln stood

crashed like trees when the woodman fells them…

when I came back from Joliet

there was a new court house with a dome.

For I was punished like all who destroy

the past for the sake of the future.

Tom Beatty[1]

I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney

or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard,

for I tried the rights of property,

although by lamp-light, for thirty years,

in that poker room in the opera house.

And I say to you that Life’s a gambler

head and shoulders above us all.

No mayor alive can close the house.

And if you lose, you can squeal as you will;

you’ll not get back your money.

He makes the percentage hard to conquer;

he stacks the cards to catch your weakness

and not to meet your strength.

And he gives you seventy years to play:

for if you cannot win in seventy

you cannot win at all.

So, if you lose, get out of the room—

get out of the room when your time is up.

It’s mean to sit and fumble the cards,

and curse your losses, leaden-eyed,

whining to try and try.

Roka (1868 – 1927)

Winter rain deepens[2]

Translated from the Japanese by Peter Beilenson

Winter rain deepens

lichened letters on the grave …

and my old sadness

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935)

Amaryllis[1]

Once, when I wandered in the woods alone,

an old man tottered up to me and said,

“Come, friend, and see the grave that I have made

for Amaryllis.” There was in the tone

of his complaint such quaver and such moan

that I took pity on him and obeyed,

and long stood looking where his hands had laid

an ancient woman, shrunk to skin and bone.

Far out beyond the forest I could hear

the calling of loud progress, and the bold

incessant scream of commerce ringing clear;

but though the trumpets of the world were glad,

it made me lonely and it made me sad

to think that Amaryllis had grown old.

An Old Story[2]

Strange that I did not know him then.

that friend of mine!

I did not even show him then

one friendly sign;

but cursed him for the ways he had

to make me see

my envy of the praise he had

for praising me.

I would have rid the earth of him

once, in my pride…

I never knew the worth of him

until he died.

Haunted House[1]

Here was a place where none would ever come

for shelter, save as we did from the rain.

We saw no ghost, yet once outside again

each wondered why the other should be so dumb;

and ruin, and to our vision it was plain

where thrift, outshivering fear, had let remain

some chairs that were like skeletons of home.

There were no trackless footsteps on the floor

above us, and there were no sounds elsewhere.

But there was more than sound; and there was more

than just an axe that once was in the air

between us and the chimney, long before

our time. So townsmen said who found her there.

John Evereldown[2]

“Where are you going to-night, to-night,—

where are you going, John Evereldown?

There’s never the sign of a star in sight,

nor a lamp that’s nearer than Tilbury Town.

Why do you stare as a dead man might?

Where are you pointing away from the light?

And where are you going to-night, to-night,—

where are you going, John Evereldown?”

“Right through the forest, where none can see,

there’s where I’m going, to Tilbury Town.

The men are asleep,— or awake, may be,—

but the women are calling John Evereldown.

Ever and ever they call for me,

and while they call can a man be free?

So right through the forest, where none can see,

there’s where I’m going, to Tilbury Town.”

“But why are you going so late, so late,—

why are you going, John Evereldown?

Though the road be smooth and the path be straight,

there are two long leagues to Tilbury Town.

Come in by the fire, old man, and wait!

Why do you chatter out there by the gate?

And why are you going so late, so late,—

why are you going, John Evereldown?”

“I follow the women wherever they call,—

that’s why I’m going to Tilbury Town.

God knows if I pray to be done with it all,

but God is no friend to John Evereldown.

So the clouds may come and the rain may fall,

the shadows may creep and the dead men crawl,—

but I follow the women wherever they call,

and that’s why I’m going to Tilbury Town.”

Karma[1]

Christmas was in the air and all was well

with him, but for a few confusing flaws

in divers of God’s images. Because

a friend of his would neither buy nor sell,

was he to answer for the axe that fell?

He pondered; and the reason for it was,

partly, a slowly freezing Santa Claus

upon the corner, with his beard and bell.

Acknowledging an improvident surprise,

he magnified a fancy that he wished

the friend whom he had wrecked were here again.

Not sure of that, he found a compromise;

and from the fullness of his heart he fished

a dime for Jesus who had died for men.

Mr. Flood’s Party[1]

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night

over the hill between the town below

and the forsaken upland hermitage

that held as much as he should ever know

on earth again of home, paused warily.

The road was his with not a native near;

and Eben, having leisure, said aloud,

for no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

“Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon

again, and we may not have many more;

the bird is on the wing, the poet says,

and you and I have said it here before.

Drink to the bird.” He raised up to the light

the jug that he had gone so far to fill,

and answered huskily: “Well, Mr. Flood,

since you propose it, I believe I will.”

Alone, as if enduring to the end

a valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,

he stood there in the middle of the road

like Roland’s ghost winding a silent horn.

Below him, in the town among the trees,

where friends of other days had honored him,

a phantom salutation of the dead

rang thinly till old Eben’s eyes were dim.

Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child

down tenderly, fearing it may awake,

he set the jug down slowly at his feet

with trembling care, knowing that most things break;

and only when assured that on firm earth

it stood, as the uncertain lives of men

assuredly did not, he paced away,

and with his hand extended paused again:

“Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this

in a long time; and many a change has come

to both of us, I fear, since last it was

we had a drop together. Welcome home!”

Convivially returning with himself,

again he raised the jug up to the light;

and with an acquiescent quaver said:

“Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

Only a very little, Mr. Flood—

for auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do.”

So, for the time, apparently it did,

and Eben evidently thought so too;

for soon amid the silver loneliness

of night he lifted up his voice and sang,

secure, with only two moons listening,

until the whole harmonious landscape rang—

“For auld lang syne.” The weary throat gave out,

the last word wavered; and the song being done,

he raised again the jug regretfully

and shook his head, and was again alone.

There was not much that was ahead of him,

and there was nothing in the town below—

where strangers would have shut the many doors

that many friends had opened long ago.

Reuben Bright[1]

Because he was a butcher and thereby

did earn an honest living (and did right),

I would not have you think that Reuben Bright

was any more a brute than you or I;

for when they told him that his wife must die,

he stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,

and cried like a great baby half that night,

and made the women cry to see him cry.

And after she was dead, and he had paid

the singers and the sexton and the rest,

he packed a lot of things that she had made

most mournfully away in an old chest

of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs

in with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.

Richard Cory[2]

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

we people on the pavement looked at him:

he was a gentleman from sole to crown,

clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

and he was always human when he talked;

but still he fluttered pulses when he said,

“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

and admirably schooled in every grace;

in fine we thought that he was everything

to make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

and went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

and Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

went home and put a bullet through his head.

Souvenir[1]

A vanished house that for an hour I knew

by some forgotten chance when I was young

had once a glimmering window overhung

with honeysuckle wet with evening dew.

Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew,

and shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung

ferociously; and over me, among

the moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew.

Somewhere within there were dim presences

of days that hovered and of years gone by.

I waited, and between their silences

there was an evanescent faded noise;

and though a child, I knew it was the voice

of one whose occupation was to die.

Supremacy[2]

There is a drear and lonely tract of hell

from all the common gloom removed afar:

a flat, sad land it is, where shadows are,

whose lorn estate my verse may never tell.

I walked among them and I knew them well:

men I had slandered on life’s little star

for churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar

upon their brows of woe ineffable.

But as I went majestic on my way,

into the dark they vanished, one by one,

till, with a shaft of God’s eternal day,

the dream of all my glory was undone,—

and, with a fool’s importunate dismay,

I heard the dead men singing in the sun.

The Dead Village[1]

Here there is death. But even here, they say,—

here where the dull sun shines this afternoon

as desolate as ever the dead moon

did glimmer on dead Sardis,—men were gay;

and there were little children here to play,

with small soft hands that once did keep in tune

the strings that stretch from heaven, till too soon

the change came, and the music passed away.

Now there is nothing but the ghosts of things,—

no life, no love, no children, and no men;

and over the forgotten place there clings

the strange and unrememberable light

that is in dreams. The music failed, and then

God frowned, and shut the village from His sight.

The Growth of “Lorraine”[2]

I.

While I stood listening, discreetly dumb,

Lorraine was having the last word with me:

“I know,” she said, “I know it, but you see

some creatures are born fortunate, and some

are born to be found out and overcome—

born to be slaves, to let the rest go free;

and if I’m one of them (and I must be)

you may as well forget me and go home.

You tell me not to say these things, I know,

but I should never try to be content:

I’ve gone too far; the life would be too slow.

Some could have done it—some girls have the stuff;

but I can’t do it—I don’t know enough.

I’m going to the devil.” And she went.

II

I did not half believe her when she said

that I should never hear from her again;

nor when I found a letter from Lorraine,

was I surprised or grieved at what I read:

“Dear friend, when you find this, I shall be dead.

you are too far away to make me stop.

They say that one drop—think of it, one drop!—

will be enough; but I’ll take five instead.

You do not frown because I call you friend;

for I would have you glad that I still keep

your memory, and even at the end—

impenitent, sick, shattered—cannot curse

the love that flings, for better or for worse,

this worn-out, cast-out flesh of mine to sleep.”

The Mill[1]

The miller’s wife had waited long,

the tea was cold, the fire was dead;

and there might yet be nothing wrong

in how he went and what he said:

“There are no millers any more,”

was all that she had heard him say;

and he had lingered at the door

so long that it seemed yesterday.

Sick with a fear that had no form

she knew that she was there at last;

and in the mill there was a warm

and mealy fragrance of the past.

What else there was would only seem

to say again what he had meant;

and what was hanging from a beam

would not have heeded where she went.

And if she thought it followed her,

she may have reasoned in the dark

that one way of the few there were

would hide her and would leave no mark:

black water, smooth above the weir

like starry velvet in the night,

though ruffled once, would soon appear

the same as ever to the sight.

The Pity of the Leaves[1]

Vengeful across the cold November moors,

loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak

sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek,

reverberant through lonely corridors.

The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,

words out of lips that were no more to speak—

words of the past that shook the old man’s cheek

like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors.

And then there were the leaves that plagued him so!

The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside

skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then

they stopped, and stayed there—just to let him know

how dead they were; but if the old man cried,

they fluttered off like withered souls of men.

The Sheaves[1]

Where long the shadows of the wind had rolled,

green wheat was yielding to the change assigned;

and as by some vast magic undivined

the world was turning slowly into gold.

Like nothing that was ever bought or sold

it waited there, the body and mind;

and with a mighty meaning of a kind

that tells the more the more it is not told.

So in a land where all days are not fair,

fair days went on till on another day

a thousand golden sheaves were lying there,

shining and still, but not for long to stay—

as if a thousand girls with golden hair

might rise from where they slept and go away.

The Tavern[2]

Whenever I go by there nowadays

and look at the rank weeds and the strange grass,

the torn blue curtains and the broken glass,

I seem to be afraid of the old place;

and something stiffens up and down my face,

for all the world as if I saw the ghost

of old Ham Amory, the murdered host,

with his dead eyes turned on me all aglaze.

The Tavern has a story, but no man

can tell us what it is. We only know

that once long after midnight, years ago,

a stranger galloped up from Tilbury Town,

who brushed, and scared, and all but overran

that skirt-crazed reprobate, John Evereldown.

Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900)

In the desert[1]

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

who, squatting upon the ground,

held his heart in his hands,

and ate of it.

I said, “Is it good, friend?”

“It is bitter—bitter.” he answered,

“but I like it

because it is bitter,

and because it is my heart.”

W.H. Davies (1871 – 1940)

Leisure[2]

What is this life if, full of care,

we have no time to stand and stare?—

No time to stand beneath the boughs,

and stare as long as sheep and cows:

no time to see, when woods we pass,

where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

no time to see, in broad daylight,

streams full of stars, like skies at night:

no time to turn at Beauty’s glance,

and watch her feet, how they can dance:

no time to wait till her mouth can

enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,

we have no time to stand and stare.

Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)

“Out, Out—”[1]

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard

and made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,

sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

And from there those that lifted eyes could count

five mountain ranges one behind the other

under the sunset far into Vermont.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,

as it ran light, or had to bear a load.

and nothing happened: day was all but done.

Call it a day, I wish they might have said

to please the boy by giving him the half hour

that a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside them in her apron

to tell them ’Supper’. At the word, the saw,

as if to prove saws knew what supper meant,

leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—

he must have given the hand. However it was,

neither refused the meeting. But the hand!

The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh.

As he swung toward them holding up the hand

half in appeal, but half as if to keep

the life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—

since he was old enough to know, big boy

doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—

he saw all spoiled. ’Don’t let him cut my hand off

the doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’

So. But the hand was gone already.

The doctor put him in the dark of ether.

He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.

And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.

No one believed. They listened at his heart.

Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.

No more to build on there. And they, since they

were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

A Brook in the City[1]

The farm house lingers, though averse to square

with the new city street it has to wear

a number in. But what about the brook

that held the house as in an elbow-crook?

I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength

and impulse, having dipped a finger length

and made it leap my knuckle, having tossed

a flower to try its currents where they crossed.

The meadow grass could be cemented down

from growing under pavements of a town;

the apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.

Is water wood to serve a brook the same?

How else dispose of an immortal force

no longer needed? Staunch it at its source

with cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown

deep in a sewer dungeon under stone

in fetid darkness still to live and run—

and all for nothing it had ever done

except forget to go in fear perhaps.

No one would know except for ancient maps

that such a brook ran water. But I wonder

if from its being kept forever under

the thoughts may not have risen that so keep

this new-built city from both work and sleep.

A Dream Pang[2]

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song

was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;

and to the forest edge you came one day

(this was my dream) and looked and pondered long,

but did not enter, though the wish was strong:

you shook your pensive head as who should say,

‘I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray—

he must seek me would he undo the wrong.

Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all

behind low boughs the trees let down outside;

and the sweet pang it cost me not to call

and tell you that I saw does still abide.

But ‘tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,

for the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey's Ears, and Some Books[1]

Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain

in Dalton that would someday make his fortune.

There’d been some Boston people out to see it:

and experts said that deep down in the mountain

the mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows.

He’d like to take me there and show it to me.

“I’ll tell you what you show me. You remember

you said you knew the place where once, on Kinsman,

the early Mormons made a settlement

and built a stone baptismal font outdoors—

but Smith, or someone, called them off the mountain

to go West to a worse fight with the desert.

You said you’d seen the stone baptismal font.

Well, take me there.”

“Someday I will.”

“Today.”

“Huh, that old bathtub, what is that to see?

Let’s talk about it.”

“Let’s go see the place.”

“To shut you up I’ll tell you what I’ll do:

I’ll find that fountain if it takes all summer,

and both of our united strengths, to do it.”

“You’ve lost it, then?”

“Not so but I can find it.

No doubt it’s grown up some to woods around it.

The mountain may have shifted since I saw it

in eighty-five.”

“As long ago as that?”

“If I remember rightly, it had sprung

a leak and emptied then. And forty years

can do a good deal to bad masonry.

You won’t see any Mormon swimming in it.

But you have said it, and we’re off to find it.

Old as I am, I’m going to let myself

be dragged by you all over everywhere——”

“I thought you were a guide.”

“I am a guide,

and that’s why I can’t decently refuse you.”

We made a day of it out of the world,

ascending to descend to reascend.

The old man seriously took his bearings,

and spoke his doubts in every open place.

We came out on a look-off where we faced

a cliff, and on the cliff a bottle painted,

or stained by vegetation from above,

a likeness to surprise the thrilly tourist.

“Well, if I haven’t brought you to the fountain,

at least I’ve brought you to the famous Bottle.”

“I won’t accept the substitute. It’s empty.”

“So’s everything.”

“I want my fountain.”

“I guess you’d find the fountain just as empty.

And anyway this tells me where I am.”

“Hadn’t you long suspected where you were?”

“You mean miles from that Mormon settlement?

Look here, you treat your guide with due respect

if you don’t want to spend the night outdoors.

I vow we must be near the place from where

the two converging slides, the avalanches,

on Marshall, look like Donkey's ears.

We may as well see that and save the day.”

“Don’t Donkey's ears suggest we shake our own?”

“For God’s sake, aren’t you fond of viewing nature?

You don’t like nature. All you like is books.

What signify a Donkey's ears and bottle,

however natural? Give you your books!

Well then, right here is where I show you books.

Come straight down off this mountain just as fast

as we can fall and keep a-bouncing on our feet.

It’s hell for knees unless done hell-for-leather.”

Be ready, I thought, for almost anything.

We struck a road I didn’t recognize,

but welcomed for the chance to lave my shoes

in dust once more. We followed this a mile,

perhaps, to where it ended at a house

I didn’t know was there. It was the kind

to bring me to for broad-board paneling.

I never saw so good a house deserted.

“Excuse me if I ask you in a window

that happens to be broken,” Davis said.

“The outside doors as yet have held against us.

I want to introduce you to the people

who used to live here. They were Robinsons.

You must have heard of Clara Robinson,

the poetess who wrote the book of verses

and had it published. It was all about

the posies on her inner windowsill,

and the birds on her outer windowsill,

and how she tended both, or had them tended:

she never tended anything herself.

She was ’shut in’ for life. She lived her whole

life long in bed, and wrote her things in bed.

I’ll show you how she had her sills extended

to entertain the birds and hold the flowers.

Our business first’s up attic with her books.”

We trod uncomfortably on crunching glass

through a house stripped of everything

except, it seemed, the poetess’s poems.

Books, I should say!—if books are what is needed.

A whole edition in a packing case

that, overflowing like a horn of plenty,

or like the poetess’s heart of love,

had spilled them near the window, toward the light

where driven rain had wet and swollen them.

Enough to stock a village library—

unfortunately all of one kind, though.

They had been brought home from some publisher

and taken thus into the family.

Boys and bad hunters had known what to do

with stone and lead to unprotected glass:

shatter it inward on the unswept floors.

How had the tender verse escaped their outrage?

By being invisible for what it was,

or else by some remoteness that defied them

to find out what to do to hurt a poem.

Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book,

to send it sailing out the attic window

till it caught wind and, opening out its covers,

tried to improve on sailing like a tile

by flying like a bird (silent in flight,

but all the burden of its body song),

only to tumble like a stricken bird,

and lie in stones and bushes unretrieved.

Books were not thrown irreverently about.

They simply lay where someone now and then,

having tried one, had dropped it at his feet

and left it lying where it fell rejected.

Here were all those the poetess’s life

had been too short to sell or give away.

“Take one,” Old Davis bade me graciously.

“Why not take two or three?”

“Take all you want.

Good-looking books like that.” He picked one fresh

in virgin wrapper from deep in the box,

and stroked it with a horny-handed kindness.

He read in one and I read in another,

both either looking for or finding something.

The attic wasps went missing by like bullets.

I was soon satisfied for the time being.

All the way home I kept remembering

the small book in my pocket. It was there.

The poetess had sighed, I knew, in heaven

at having eased her heart of one more copy—

legitimately. My demand upon her,

though slight, was a demand. She felt the tug.

In time she would be rid of all her books.

A Late Walk[1]

When I go up through the mowing field,

the headless aftermath,

smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,

half closes the garden path.

And when I come to the garden ground,

the whir of sober birds

up from the tangle of withered weeds

is sadder than any words

a tree beside the wall stands bare,

but a leaf that lingered brown,

disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,

comes softly rattling down.

I end not far from my going forth

by picking the faded blue

of the last remaining aster flower

to carry again to you.

After Apple-Picking[2]

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree

toward heaven still,

and there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill

beside it, and there may be two or three

apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

the scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

and held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

upon my way to sleep before it fell,

and I could tell

what form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

stem end and blossom end,

and every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

it keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

the rumbling sound

of load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too much

of apple-picking: I am overtired

of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,

cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

that struck the earth,

no matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

went surely to the cider-apple heap

as of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

this sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone,

the woodchuck could say whether it’s like his

long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

or just some human sleep.

An Old Man’s Winter Night[1]

All out of doors looked darkly in at him

through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,

that gathers on the pane in empty rooms.

What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze

was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.

What kept him from remembering what it was

that brought him to that creaking room was age.

He stood with barrels round him—at a loss.

And having scared the cellar under him

in clomping there, he scared it once again

in clomping off;—and scared the outer night,

which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar

of trees and crack of branches, common things,

but nothing so like beating on a box.

A light he was to no one but himself

where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,

a Quiet light, and then not even that.

He consigned to the moon, such as she was,

so late-arising, to the broken moon

as better than the sun in any case

for such a charge, his snow upon the roof,

his icicles along the wall to keep;

and slept. The log that shifted with a jolt

once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,

and eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.

One aged man—one man—can’t keep a house,

a farm, a countryside, or if he can,

it’s thus he does it of a winter night.

Birches[2]

When I see birches bend to left and right

across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

as ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

after a rain. They click upon themselves

as the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

as the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells

shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

you’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

and they seem not to break;

though once they are bowed

so low for long, they never right themselves:

you may see their trunks arching in the woods

years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

with all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

as he went out and in to fetch the cows—

some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

whose only play was what he found himself,

summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father’s trees

by riding them down over and over again

until he took the stiffness out of them,

and not one but hung limp, not one was left

for him to conquer. He learned all there was

to learn about not launching out too soon

and so not carrying the tree away

clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

to the top branches, climbing carefully

with the same pains you use to fill a cup

up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

and life is too much like a pathless wood

where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

broken across it, and one eye is weeping

from a twig’s having lashed across it open.

I’d like to get away from earth awhile

and then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

and half grant what I wish and snatch me away

not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

and climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

but dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Death of the Hired Man[1]

Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table

waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,

she ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage

to meet him in the doorway with the news

and put him on his guard. “Silas is back.”

She pushed him outward with her through the door

and shut it after her. “Be kind,” she said.

She took the market things from Warren’s arms

and set them on the porch, then drew him down

to sit beside her on the wooden steps.

“When was I ever anything but kind to him?

But I’ll not have the fellow back,” he said.

“I told him so last haying, didn’t I?

‘If he left then,’ I said, ’that ended it.’

What good is he? Who else will harbor him

at his age for the little he can do?

What help he is there’s no depending on.

Off he goes always when I need him most.

‘He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,

enough at least to buy tobacco with,

so he won’t have to beg and be beholden.’

‘All right,’ I say, ’I can’t afford to pay

any fixed wages, though I wish I could.’

‘Someone else can.’ ’Then someone else will have to.’

I shouldn’t mind his bettering himself

if that was what it was. You can be certain,

when he begins like that, there’s someone at him

trying to coax him off with pocket-money,—

in haying time, when any help is scarce.

In winter he comes back to us. I’m done.”

“Sh! not so loud: he’ll hear you,” Mary said.

“I want him to: he’ll have to soon or late.”

“He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.

When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,

huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,

a miserable sight, and frightening, too—

you needn’t smile—I didn’t recognize him—

I wasn’t looking for him—and he’s changed.

Wait till you see.”

“Where did you say he’d been?”

“He didn’t say. I dragged him to the house,

and gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.

I tried to make him talk about his travels.

Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off.”

“What did he say? Did he say anything?”

“But little.”

“Anything? Mary, confess

he said he’d come to ditch the meadow for me.”

“Warren!”

“But did he? I just want to know.”

“Of course he did. What would you have him say?

Surely you wouldn’t grudge the poor old man

some humble way to save his self-respect.

He added, if you really care to know,

he meant to clear the upper pasture, too.

That sounds like something you have heard before?

Warren, I wish you could have heard the way

he jumbled everything. I stopped to look

two or three times—he made me feel so queer—

to see if he was talking in his sleep.

He ran on Harold Wilson—you remember—

the boy you had in haying four years since.

He’s finished school, and teaching in his college.

Silas declares you’ll have to get him back.

He says they two will make a team for work:

between them they will lay this farm as smooth!

The way he mixed that in with other things.

He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft

on education—you know how they fought

all through July under the blazing sun,

Silas up on the cart to build the load,

Harold along beside to pitch it on.”

“Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.”

“Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.

You wouldn’t think they would. How some things linger!

Harold’s young college boy’s assurance piqued him.

After so many years he still keeps finding

good arguments he sees he might have used.

I sympathize. I know just how it feels

to think of the right thing to say too late.

Harold’s associated in his mind with Latin.

He asked me what I thought of Harold’s saying

he studied Latin like the violin

because he liked it—that an argument!

He said he couldn’t make the boy believe

he could find water with a hazel prong—

which showed how much good

school had ever done him.

He wanted to go over that. But most of all

he thinks if he could have another chance

to teach him how to build a load of hay—”

“I know, that’s Silas’ one accomplishment.

He bundles every forkful in its place,

and tags and numbers it for future reference,

so he can find and easily dislodge it

in the unloading. Silas does that well.

He takes it out in bunches like big birds’ nests.

You never see him standing on the hay

he’s trying to lift, straining to lift himself.”

“He thinks if he could teach him that, he’d be

some good perhaps to someone in the world.

He hates to see a boy the fool of books.

Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,

and nothing to look backward to with pride,

and nothing to look forward to with hope,

so now and never any different.”

Part of a moon was falling down the west,

dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.

Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw

and spread her apron to it. She put out her hand

among the harp-like morning-glory strings,

taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,

as if she played unheard the tenderness

that wrought on him beside her in the night.

“Warren,” she said, “he has come home to die:

you needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.”

“Home,” he mocked gently.

“Yes, what else but home?

It all depends on what you mean by home.

Of course he’s nothing to us, any more

than was the hound that came a stranger to us

out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.”

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

they have to take you in.”

“I should have called it

something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

Warren leaned out and took a step or two,

picked up a little stick, and brought it back

and broke it in his hand and tossed it by.

“Silas has better claim on us you think

than on his brother? Thirteen little miles

as the road winds would bring him to his door.

Silas has walked that far no doubt to-day.

Why didn’t he go there? His brother’s rich,

a somebody—director in the bank.”

“He never told us that.”

“We know it though.”

“I think his brother ought to help, of course.

I’ll see to that if there is need. He ought of right

to take him in, and might be willing to—

he may be better than appearances.

But have some pity on Silas. Do you think

if he’d had any pride in claiming kin

or anything he looked for from his brother,

he’d keep so still about him all this time?”

“I wonder what’s between them.”

“I can tell you.

Silas is what he is—we wouldn’t mind him—

but just the kind that kinsfolk can’t abide.

He never did a thing so very bad.

He don’t know why he isn’t quite as good

as anybody, worthless though he is.

he won’t be made ashamed to please his brother.”

“I can’t think Si ever hurt anyone.”

“No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay

and rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back.

He wouldn’t let me put him on the lounge.

You must go in and see what you can do.

I made the bed up for him there to-night.

You’ll be surprised at him—how much he’s broken.

His working days are done; I’m sure of it.”

“I’d not be in a hurry to say that.”

“I haven’t been. Go, look, see for yourself.

But, Warren, please remember how it is:

he’s come to help you ditch the meadow.

He has a plan. You mustn’t laugh at him.

He may not speak of it, and then he may.

I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloud

will hit or miss the moon.”

It hit the moon.

Then there were three there, making a dim row,

the moon, the little silver cloud, and she.

Warren returned—too soon, it seemed to her,

slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.

“Warren,” she questioned.

“Dead,” was all he answered.

Fire and Ice[1]

Some say the world will end in fire;

some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

to know that for destruction ice

is also great

and would suffice.

For Once, Then, Something[2]

Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs

always wrong to the light, so never seeing

deeper down in the well than where the water

gives me back in a shining surface picture

me myself in the summer heaven godlike

looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.

Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,

I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,

through the picture, a something white, uncertain,

something more of the depths—and then I lost it.

Water came to rebuke the too clear water.

One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple

shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,

blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?

Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

Good-by and Keep Cold[1]

This saying good-by on the edge of the dark

and the cold to an orchard so young in the bark

reminds me of all that can happen to harm

an orchard away at the end of the farm

all winter, cut off by a hill from the house.

I don’t want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,

I don’t want it dreamily nibbled for browse

by deer, and I don’t want it budded by grouse.

(If certain it wouldn’t be idle to call

I’d summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall

and warn them away with a stick for a gun.)

I don’t want it stirred by the heat of the sun.

(We made it secure against being, I hope,

by setting it out on a northerly slope.)

No orchard’s the worse for the wintriest storm;

but one thing about it, it mustn’t get warm.

‘How often already you’ve had to be told,

keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below.’

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees,

less carefully nurtured, less fruitful than these,

and such as is done to their wood with an ax—

maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night

and think of an orchard’s arboreal plight

when slowly (and nobody comes with a light)

its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to God.

Home Burial[1]

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs

before she saw him. She was starting down,

looking back over her shoulder at some fear.

She took a doubtful step and then undid it

to raise herself and look again. He spoke

advancing toward her: ’What is it you see

from up there always—for I want to know.’

She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,

and her face changed from terrified to dull.

He said to gain time: ’What is it you see,’

mounting until she cowered under him.

‘I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.’

She, in her place, refused him any help

with the least stiffening of her neck and silence.

She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,

blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see.

But at last he murmured, ’Oh,’ and again, ’Oh.’

‘What is it—what?’ she said.

‘Just that I see.’

‘You don’t,’ she challenged. ’Tell me what it is.’

‘The wonder is I didn’t see at once.

I never noticed it from here before.

I must be wonted to it—that’s the reason.

The little graveyard where my people are!

So small the window frames the whole of it.

Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?

There are three stones of slate and one of marble,

broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight

on the side hill. We haven’t to mind those.

But I understand: it is not the stones,

but the child’s mound—’

‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.

She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm

that rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;

and turned on him with such a daunting look,

he said twice over before he knew himself:

‘can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?’

‘Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!

I must get out of here. I must get air.

I don’t know rightly whether any man can.’

‘Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.

Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.’

He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.

‘There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.’

‘You don’t know how to ask it.’

‘Help me, then.’

Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

‘My words are nearly always an offense.

I don’t know how to speak of anything

so as to please you. But I might be taught

I should suppose. I can’t say I see how.

A man must partly give up being a man

with women-folk. We could have some arrangement

by which I’d bind myself to keep hands off

anything special you’re a-mind to name.

Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love.

Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.

But two that do can’t live together with them.’

She moved the latch a little. ’Don’t—don’t go.

Don’t carry it to someone else this time.

Tell me about it if it’s something human.

Let me into your grief. I’m not so much

unlike other folks as your standing there

apart would make me out. Give me my chance.

I do think, though, you overdo it a little.

What was it brought you up to think it the thing

to take your mother—loss of a first child

so inconsolably—in the face of love.

You’d think his memory might be satisfied—’

‘There you go sneering now!’

‘I’m not, I’m not!

You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.

God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,

a man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’

‘You can’t because you don’t know how to speak.

If you had any feelings, you that dug

with your own hand—how could you?—his little grave;

I saw you from that very window there,

making the gravel leap and leap in air,

leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly

and roll back down the mound beside the hole.

I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.

And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs

to look again, and still your spade kept lifting.

Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice

out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why,

but I went near to see with my own eyes.

You could sit there with the stains on your shoes

of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave

and talk about your everyday concerns.

You had stood the spade up against the wall

outside there in the entry, for I saw it.’

‘I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.

I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.’

‘I can repeat the very words you were saying.

“Three foggy mornings and one rainy day

will rot the best birch fence a man can build.”

Think of it, talk like that at such a time!

What had how long it takes a birch to rot

to do with what was in the darkened parlor.

You couldn’t care! The nearest friends can go

with anyone to death, comes so far short

they might as well not try to go at all.

No, from the time when one is sick to death,

one is alone, and he dies more alone.

Friends make pretense of following to the grave,

but before one is in it, their minds are turned

and making the best of their way back to life

and living people, and things they understand.

But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief so

if I can change it. Oh, I won’t, I won’t!’

‘There, you have said it all and you feel better.

You won’t go now. You’re crying. Close the door.

The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up.

Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!’

‘You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—

somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—’

‘if—you—do! ’She was opening the door wider.

‘Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.

I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will!—’

In a Disused Graveyard[1]

The living come with grassy tread

to read the gravestones on the hill;

the graveyard draws the living still,

but never anymore the dead.

The verses in it say and say:

“the ones who living come today

to read the stones and go away

tomorrow dead will come to stay.”

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,

yet can’t help marking all the time

how no one dead will seem to come.

What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever

and tell the stones: Men hate to die

and have stopped dying now forever.

I think they would believe the lie.

Into My Own[2]

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,

so old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,

were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,

but stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day

into their vastness I should steal away,

fearless of ever finding open land,

or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e’er turn back,

or those should not set forth upon my track

to overtake me, who should miss me here

and long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew—

only more sure of all I thought was true.

Mending Wall[1]

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

that sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

and spills the upper boulders in the sun;

and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

where they have left not one stone on a stone,

but they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

to please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

no one has seen them made or heard them made,

but at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

and on a day we meet to walk the line

and set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

we have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

one on a side. It comes to little more:

there where it is we do not need the wall:

he is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ’Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

if I could put a notion in his head:

‘why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it

where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

what I was walling in or walling out,

and to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

that wants it down. ’I could say ’Elves’ to him,

but it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

he said it for himself. I see him there

bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

in each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

and he likes having thought of it so well

he says again, ’Good fences make good neighbors.’

Misgiving[1]

All crying, ’We will go with you, O Wind!’

The foliage follow him, leaf and stem;

but a sleep oppresses them as they go,

and they end by bidding him stay with them.

Since ever they flung abroad in spring

the leaves had promised themselves this flight,

who now would fain seek sheltering wall,

or thicket, or hollow place for the night.

And now they answer his summoning blast

with an ever vaguer and vaguer stir,

or at utmost a little reluctant whirl

that drops them no further than where they were.

I only hope that when I am free

as they are free to go in quest

of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life

it may not seem better to me to rest.

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road[1]

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood

throws down in front of us is not to bar

our passage to our journey’s end for good,

but just to ask us who we think we are

Insisting always on our own way so.

She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,

and make us get down in a foot of snow

debating what to do without an ax.

And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:

we will not be put off the final goal

we have it hidden in us to attain,

not though we have to seize earth by the pole

and, tired of aimless circling in one place,

steer straight off after something into space.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening[2]

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

he will not see me stopping here

to watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

to stop without a farmhouse near

between the woods and frozen lake

the darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

to ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

but I have promises to keep,

and miles to go before I sleep,

and miles to go before I sleep.

Storm Fear[1]

When the wind works against us in the dark,

and pelts with snow

the lowest chamber window on the east,

and whispers with a sort of stifled bark,

the beast,

‘Come out! Come out!’—

it costs no inward struggle not to go,

ah, no!

I count our strength,

two and a child,

those of us not asleep subdued to mark

how the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,—

how drifts are piled,

dooryard and road ungraded,

till even the comforting barn grows far away

and my heart owns a doubt

whether ’tis in us to arise with day

and save ourselves unaided.

The Aim was Song[1]

Before man came to blow it right

the wind once blew itself untaught,

and did its loudest day and night

in any rough place where it caught.

Man came to tell it what was wrong:

it hadn’t found the place to blow;

it blew too hard—the aim was song.

And listen—how it ought to go!

He took a little in his mouth,

and held it long enough for north

to be converted into south,

and then by measure blew it forth.

By measure. It was word and note,

the wind the wind had meant to be—

a little through the lips and throat.

The aim was song—the wind could see.

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things[2]

The house had gone to bring again

to the midnight sky a sunset glow.

Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,

like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,

that would have joined the house in flame

had it been the will of the wind, was left

to bear forsaken the place’s name.

No more it opened with all one end

for teams that came by the stony road

to drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs

and brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air

at broken windows flew out and in,

their murmur more like the sigh we sigh

from too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,

and the aged elm, though touched with fire;

and the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;

and the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.

But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,

one had to be versed in country things

not to believe the phoebes wept.

The Onset[1]

Always the same, when on a fated night

at last the gathered snow lets down as white

as may be in dark woods, and with a song

it shall not make again all winter long

of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,

I almost stumble looking up and round,

as one who overtaken by the end

gives up his errand, and lets death descend

upon him where he is, with nothing done

to evil, no important triumph won,

more than if life had never been begun.

Yet all the precedent is on my side:

I know that winter death has never tried

the earth but it has failed: the snow may heap

in long storms an undrifted four feet deep

as measured against maple, birch, and oak,

it cannot check the peeper’s silver croak;

and I shall see the snow all go down hill

in water of a slender April rill

that flashes tail through last year’s withered brake

and dead weeds, like a disappearing snake.

Nothing will be left white but here a birch,

and there a clump of houses with a church.

The Road Not Taken[1]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

and sorry I could not travel both

and be one traveler, long I stood

and looked down one as far as I could

to where it bent in the undergrowth;

then took the other, as just as fair,

and having perhaps the better claim,

because it was grassy and wanted wear;

though as for that the passing there

had worn them really about the same,

and both that morning equally lay

in leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

somewhere ages and ages hence:

two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

and that has made all the difference.

The Vantage Point[1]

If tired of trees I seek again mankind,

well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,

to a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.

There amid lolling juniper reclined,

myself unseen, I see in white defined

far off the homes of men, and farther still,

the graves of men on an opposing hill,

living or dead, whichever are to mind.

And if by moon I have too much of these,

I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,

the sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,

my breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,

I smell the earth, I smell the bruised plant,

I look into the crater of the ant.

The Wood-Pile[2]

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day

I paused and said, ’I will turn back from here.

No, I will go on farther—and we shall see’.

The hard snow held me, save where now and then

one foot went through. The view was all in lines

straight up and down of tall slim trees

too much alike to mark or name a place by

so as to say for certain I was here

or somewhere else: I was just far from home.

A small bird flew before me. He was careful

to put a tree between us when he lighted,

and say no word to tell me who he was

who was so foolish as to think what he thought.

He thought that I was after him for a feather—

the white one in his tail; like one who takes

everything said as personal to himself.

One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.

And then there was a pile of wood for which

I forgot him and let his little fear

carry him off the way I might have gone,

without so much as wishing him good-night.

He went behind it to make his last stand.

It was a cord of maple, cut and split

and piled—and measured, four by four by eight.

And not another like it could I see.

No runner tracks in this year’s snow looped near it.

And it was older sure than this year’s cutting,

or even last year’s or the year’s before.

The wood was gray and the bark warping off it

and the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis

had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.

What held it though on one side was a tree

still growing, and on one a stake and prop,

these latter about to fall. I thought that only

someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks

could so forget his handiwork on which

he spent himself the labor of his axe,

and leave it there far from a useful fireplace

to warm the frozen swamp as best it could

with the slow smokeless burning of decay.

Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925)

A Decade[1]

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,

and the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.

now you are like morning bread,

smooth and pleasant.

I hardly taste you at all for I know your savor,

but I am completely nourished.

New Heavens for Old[1]

I am useless.

What I do is nothing,

what I think has no savor.

There is an almanac between the windows:

it is of the year when I was born.

My fellows call to me to join them,

they shout for me,

passing the house in a great wind of vermilion banners.

They are fresh and fulminant,

they are indecent and strut with the thought of it,

they laugh, and curse, and brawl,

and cheer a holocaust of “Who comes firsts!” at the iron fronts of the

houses at the two edges of the street.

Young men with naked hearts

jeering between iron house-fronts,

young men with naked bodies beneath their clothes

passionately conscious of them,

ready to strip off their clothes,

ready to strip off their customs, their usual routine,

clamoring for the rawness of life,

in love with appetite,

proclaiming it as a creed,

worshipping youth,

worshipping themselves.

They call for women and the women come,

they bare the whiteness of their lusts

to the dead gaze of the old house-fronts,

they roar down the street like flame,

they explode upon the dead houses like new, sharp fire.

But I—

I arrange three roses in a Chinese vase:

a pink one,

a red one,

a yellow one.

I fuss over their arrangement.

Then I sit in a South window

and sip pale wine with a touch of hemlock in it.

And think of Winter nights,

and field-mice crossing and re-crossing

the spot which will be my grave.

Patterns[1]

I walk down the garden-paths,

and all the daffodils

are blowing, and the bright blue squills.

I walk down the patterned garden-paths

in my stiff, brocaded gown.

With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,

I too am a rare

pattern. As I wander down

the garden-paths.

My dress is richly figured,

and the train

makes a pink and silver stain

on the gravel, and the thrift

of the borders.

Just a plate of current fashion,

tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.

Not a softness anywhere about me,

only whalebone and brocade.

And I sink on a seat in the shade

of a lime tree. For my passion

wars against the stiff brocade.

The daffodils and squills

flutter in the breeze

as they please.

And I weep;

for the lime-tree is in blossom

and one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the splashing of waterdrops

in the marble fountain

comes down the garden-paths.

The dripping never stops.

Underneath my stiffened gown

is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,

a basin in the midst of hedges grown

so thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,

but she guesses he is near,

and the sliding of the water

seems the stroking of a dear

hand upon her.

What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!

I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.

All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,

and he would stumble after,

bewildered by my laughter.

I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt

and the buckles on his shoes.

I would choose

to lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,

a bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.

Till he caught me in the shade,

and the buttons of his waistcoat

bruised my body as he clasped me,

aching, melting, unafraid.

With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,

and the plopping of the waterdrops,

all about us in the open afternoon—

I am very like to swoon

with the weight of this brocade,

for the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom

in my bosom,

is a letter I have hid.

It was brought to me this morning

by a rider from the Duke.

“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell

died in action Thursday se’nnight.”

As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,

the letters squirmed like snakes.

“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.

“No,” I told him.

“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.

No, no answer.”

And I walked into the garden,

up and down the patterned paths,

in my stiff, correct brocade.

The blue and yellow flowers

stood up proudly in the sun,

each one.

I stood upright too,

held rigid to the pattern

by the stiffness of my gown.

Up and down I walked,

up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.

In a month, here, underneath this lime,

we would have broke the pattern;

he for me, and I for him,

he as Colonel, I as Lady,

on this shady seat.

He had a whim

that sunlight carried blessing.

And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”

Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk

up and down

the patterned garden-paths

in my stiff, brocaded gown.

The squills and daffodils

will give place to pillared roses,

and to asters, and to snow.

I shall go

up and down

in my gown.

Gorgeously arrayed,

boned and stayed.

And the softness of my body

will be guarded from embrace

by each button, hook, and lace.

For the man who should loose me is dead,

fighting with the Duke in Flanders,

in a pattern called a war.

Christ! What are patterns for?

Robert Service (1874 – 1958)

Just Think![1]

Just think! some night the stars will gleam

upon a cold, grey stone,

and trace a name with silver beam,

and lo! ‘twill be your own.

This night is speeding on to greet

your epitaphic rhyme.

Your life is but a little beat

within the heart of Time.

A little gain, a little pain,

a laugh, lest you may moan;

a little blame, a little fame,

a star-gleam on a stone.

Lost[1]

“Black is the sky, but the land is white—

(O the wind, the snow and the storm!)—

Father, where is our boy to-night?

Pray to God he is safe and warm.”

“Mother, mother, why should you fear?

Safe is he, and the Arctic moon

over his cabin shines so clear—

rest and sleep, ‘twill be morning soon.”

“It’s getting dark awful sudden.

Say, this is mighty queer!

Where in the world have I got to?

It’s still and black as a tomb.

I reckoned the camp was yonder, I

figured the trail was here—

nothing! Just draw and valley

packed with Quiet and gloom:

snow that comes down like feather,

thick and gobby and gray;

night that looks spiteful ugly—

seems that I’ve lost my way.

The cold’s got an edge like a jackknife—

it must be forty below;

leastways that’s what it seems like—

it cuts so fierce to the bone.

The wind’s getting real ferocious;

it’s heaving and whirling the snow;

it shrieks with a howl of fury,

it dies away to a moan;

it’s arms sweep round like a banshee’s,

swift and icily white,

and buffet and blind and beat me.

Lord! it’s a hell of a night.

I’m all tangled up in a blizzard.

There’s only one thing to do—

keep on moving and moving;

it’s death, it’s death if I rest

oh, God! if I see the morning,

if only I struggle through,

I’ll say the prayers I’ve forgotten

since I lay on my mother’s breast.

I seem going round in a circle;

maybe the camp is near.

Say! did somebody holler?

Was it a light I saw?

Or was it only a notion?

I’ll shout, and maybe they’ll hear—

no! the wind only drowns me—

shout till my throat is raw.

The boys are all round the camp-fire wondering

when I’ll be back.

They’ll soon be starting to seek me;

they’ll scarcely wait for the light.

What will they find, I wonder,

when they come to the end of my track—

a hand stuck out of a snowdrift,

frozen and stiff and white.

That’s what they’ll strike, I reckon;

that’s how they’ll find their pard,

a pie-faced corpse in a snowbank—

curse you, don’t be a fool!

Play the game to the finish;

bet on your very last card;

nerve yourself for the struggle.

Oh, you coward, keep cool!

I’m going to lick this blizzard;

I’m going to live the night.

It can’t down me with its bluster—

I’m not the kind to be beat.

On hands and knees will I buck it;

with every breath will I fight;

it’s life, it’s life that I fight for—

never it seemed so sweet.

I know that my face is frozen;

my hands are numblike and dead;

but oh, my feet keep a-moving,

heavy and hard and slow;

they’re trying to kill me, kill me,

the night that’s black over-head,

the wind that cuts like a razor,

the whipcord lash of the snow.

Keep a-moving, a-moving;

don’t, don’t stumble, you fool!

Curse this snow that’s a-piling

a-purpose to block my way.

It’s heavy as gold in the rocker,

it’s white and fleecy as wool;

it’s soft as a bed of feathers,

it’s warm as a stack of hay.

Curse on my feet that slip so,

my poor tired, stumbling feet—

I guess they’re a job for the surgeon,

they feel so queerlike to lift—

I’ll rest them just for a moment—

oh, but to rest is sweet!

The awful wind cannot get me,

deep, deep down in the drift.”

“Father, a bitter cry I heard,

out of the night so dark and wild.

Why is my heart so strangely stirred?

‘Twas like the voice of our erring child.”

“Mother, mother, you only heard

a waterfowl in the locked lagoon—

out of the night a wounded bird—

rest and sleep, ’twill be morning soon.”

Who is it talks of sleeping?

I’ll swear that somebody shook

me hard by the arm for a moment,

but how on earth could it be?

See how my feet are moving—

awfully funny they look—

moving as if they belonged to

someone that wasn’t me.

The wind down the night’s long alley

bowls me down like a pin;

I stagger and fall and stagger,

crawl arm-deep in the snow,

beaten back to my corner,

how can I hope to win?

And there is the blizzard waiting

to give me the knockout blow.

Oh, I’m so warm and sleepy!

No more hunger and pain.

Just to rest for a moment;

was ever rest such a joy?

Ha! what was that? I’ll swear it,

somebody shook me again;

somebody seemed to whisper:

“Fight to the last, my boy.”

Fight! That’s right, I must struggle.

I know that to rest means death;

death, but then what does death mean?—

ease from a world of strife.

Life has been none too pleasant;

yet with my failing breath

still and still must I struggle,

fight for the gift of life.

…

Seems that I must be dreaming!

Here is the old home trail;

yonder a light is gleaming;

oh, I know it so well!

The air is scented with clover;

the cattle wait by the rail;

father is through with the milking;

there goes the supper-bell.

…

Mother, your boy is crying,

out in the night and cold;

let me in and forgive me,

I’ll never be bad any more:

I’m, oh, so sick and so sorry:

please, dear mother, don’t scold—

it’s just your boy, and he wants you. …

mother, open the door… .

“Father, father, I saw a face

pressed just now to the window-pane!

Oh, it gazed for a moment’s space,

wild and wan, and was gone again!”

“Mother, mother, you saw the snow

drifted down from the maple tree

(oh, the wind that is sobbing so!

Weary and worn and old are we)

—only the snow and a wounded loon—

rest and sleep, ’twill be morning soon.”

My Madonna[1]

I haled me a woman from the street,

shameless, but, oh, so fair!

I bade her sit in the model’s seat

and I painted her sitting there.

I hid all trace of her heart unclean;

I painted a babe at her breast;

I painted her as she might have been

if the Worst had been the Best.

She laughed at my picture and went away.

Then came, with a knowing nod,

a connoisseur, and I heard him say;

“’Tis Mary, the Mother of God.”

So I painted a halo round her hair,

and I sold her and took my fee,

and she hangs in the church of Saint Hillaire,

where you and all may see.

On the Wire[2]

O God, take the sun from the sky!

It’s burning me, scorching me up.

God, can’t You hear my cry?

Water! A poor, little cup!

It’s laughing, the cursed sun!

See how it swells and swells

fierce as a hundred hells!

God, will it never have done?

It’s searing the flesh on my bones;

it’s beating with hammers red

my eyeballs into my head;

it’s parching my very moans.

See! It’s the size of the sky,

and the sky is a torrent of fire,

foaming on me as I lie

here on the wire … the wire … .

Of the thousands that wheeze and hum

heedlessly over my head,

why can’t a bullet come,

pierce to my brain instead,

blacken forever my brain,

finish forever my pain?

Here in the hellish glare

why must I suffer so?

Is it God doesn’t care?

Is it God doesn’t know?

Oh, to be killed outright,

clean in the clash of the fight!

That is a golden death,

that is a boon; but this …

drawing an anguished breath

under a hot abyss,

under a stooping sky

of seething, sulphurous fire,

scorching me up as I lie

here on the wire … the wire … .

Hasten, O God, Thy night!

Hide from my eyes the sight

of the body I stare and see

shattered so hideously.

I can’t believe that it’s mine.

My body was white and sweet,

flawless and fair and fine,

shapely from head to feet;

oh no, I can never be

the thing of horror I see

under the rifle fire,

trussed on the wire … the wire. …

Of night and of death I dream;

night that will bring me peace,

coolness and starry gleam,

stillness and death’s release:

ages and ages have passed,—

lo! it is night at last.

Night! but the guns roar out.

Night! but the hosts attack.

Red and yellow and black

geysers of doom upspout.

Silver and green and red

star-shells hover and spread.

Yonder off to the right

fiercely kindles the fight;

roaring near and more near,

thundering now in my ear;

close to me, close … Oh, hark!

Someone moans in the dark.

I hear, but I cannot see,

I hear as the rest retire,

someone is caught like me,

caught on the wire. … the wire …

Again the shuddering dawn,

weird and wicked and wan;

again, and I’ve not yet gone.

The man whom I heard is dead.

Now I can understand:

a bullet hole in his head,

a pistol gripped in his hand.

Well, he knew what to do,—

yes, and now I know too … .

Hark the resentful guns!

Oh, how thankful am I

to think my beloved ones

will never know how I die!

I’ve suffered more than my share;

I’m shattered beyond repair;

I’ve fought like a man the fight,

and now I demand the right

(God! how his fingers cling!)

to do without shame this thing.

Good! there’s a bullet still;

now I’m ready to fire;

blame me, God, if You will,

here on the wire … the wire . .

The Ballad of Pious Pete[1]

“The North has got him.”—Yukonism.

I tried to refine that neighbor of mine,

honest to God, I did.

I grieved for his fate, and early and late

I watched over him like a kid.

I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse

in every way that I could;

I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail;

I plotted and planned for his good.

By day and by night I strove in men’s sight

to gather him into the fold,

with precept and prayer, with hope and despair,

in hunger and hardship and cold.

I followed him into Gehennas of sin,

I sat where the sirens sit;

in the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul,

I strove with the powers of the Pit.

I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town;

I dragged him from dissolute brawls;

but I killed the galoot when he started to shoot

electricity into my walls.

God knows what I did he should seek to be rid

of one who would save him from shame.

God knows what I bore that night when he swore

and bade me make tracks from his claim.

I started to tell of the horrors of hell,

when sudden his eyes lit like coals;

and “Chuck it,” says he, “don’t persecute me

with your cant and your saving of souls.”

I’ll swear I was mild as I’d be with a child,

but he called me the son of a slut;

and, grabbing his gun with a leap and a run,

he threatened my face with the butt.

So what could I do (I leave it to you)?

With curses he harried me forth;

then he was alone, and I was alone,

and over us menaced the North.

Our cabins were near; I could see, I could hear;

but between us there rippled the creek;

and all summer through, with a rancor that grew,

he would pass me and never would speak.

Then a shuddery breath like the coming of Death

crept down from the peaks far away;

the water was still; the twilight was chill;

the sky was a tatter of gray.

Swift came the Big Cold, and opal and gold

the lights of the witches arose;

the frost-tyrant clinched, and the valley was cinched

by the stark and cadaverous snows.

The trees were like lace

where the star-beams could chase,

each leaf with a jewel agleam.

The soft white hush lapped the Northland and wrapped

us round in a crystalline dream;

so still I could hear quite loud in my ear

the swish of the pinions of time;

so bright I could see, as plain as could be,

the wings of God’s angels ashine.

As I read in the Book I would oftentimes look

to that cabin just over the creek.

Ah me, it was sad and evil and bad,

two neighbors who never would speak!

I knew that full well like the devil in hell

he was hatching out, early and late,

a system to bear through the frost-spangled air

the warm, crimson waves of his hate.

I only could peer and shudder and fear—

‘twas ever so ghastly and still;

but I knew over there in his lonely despair

he was plotting me terrible ill.

I knew that he nursed a malice accurst,

like the blast of a winnowing flame;

I pleaded aloud for a shield, for a shroud—

oh, God! then calamity came.

Mad! If I’m mad then you too are mad;

but it’s all in the point of view.

If you’d looked at them things gallivantin’ on wings,

all purple and green and blue;

if you’d noticed them twist, as they mounted and hissed

like scorpions dim in the dark;

if you’d seen them rebound with a horrible sound,

and spitefully spitting a spark;

if you’d watched It with dread, as it hissed by your bed,

that thing with the feelers that crawls—

you’d have settled the brute that attempted to shoot

electricity into your walls.

Oh, some they were blue,

and they slithered right through;

they were silent and squashy and round;

and some they were green; they were wriggly and lean;

they writhed with so hateful a sound.

My blood seemed to freeze; I fell on my knees;

my face was a white splash of dread.

Oh, the Green and the Blue,

they were gruesome to view;

but the worst of them all were the Red,

they came through the door,

they came through the floor,

they came through the moss-creviced logs.

They were savage and dire;

they were whiskered with fire;

they bickered like malamute dogs.

They ravined in rings like iniquitous things;

they gulped down the Green and the Blue.

I crinkled with fear whene’er they drew near,

and nearer and nearer they drew.

And then came the crown of Horror’s grim crown,

the monster so loathsomely red.

Each eye was a pin that shot out and in,

as, squid-like, it oozed to my bed;

so softly it crept with feelers that swept

and quivered like fine copper wire;

its belly was white with a sulphurous light,

its jaws were a-drooling with fire.

It came and it came; I could breathe of its flame,

but never a wink could I look.

I thrust in its maw the Fount of the Law;

I fended it off with the Book.

I was weak—oh, so weak—but I thrilled at its shriek,

as wildly it fled in the night;

and deathlike I lay till the dawn of the day.

(Was ever so welcome the light?)

I loaded my gun at the rise of the sun;

to his cabin so softly I slunk.

My neighbor was there in the frost-freighted air,

all wrapped in a robe in his bunk.

It muffled his moans; it outlined his bones,

as feebly he twisted about;

his gums were so black, and his lips seemed to crack,

and his teeth all were loosening out.

‘Twas a death’s head that peered

through the tangle of beard;

‘twas a face I will never forget;

sunk eyes full of woe, and they troubled me so

with their pleadings and anguish, and yet

as I rested my gaze in a misty amaze

on the scurvy degenerate wreck,

I thought of the Things with the dragon-fly wings,

then laid I my gun on his neck.

He gave out a cry that was faint as a sigh,

like a perishing malamute,

and he says unto me, “I’m converted,” says he;

“for Christ’s sake, Peter, don’t shoot!”

…

They’re taking me out with an escort about,

and under a sergeant’s care;

I am humbled indeed, for I’m ’cuffed to a Swede

that thinks he’s a millionaire.

But it’s all Gospel true what I’m telling to you—

up there where the Shadow falls—

that I settled Sam Noot when he started to shoot

electricity into my walls.

The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin[1]

I

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike

living the life of shame,

when unto them in the Long, Long Night

came the man-who-had-no-name;

bearing his prize of a black fox pelt,

out of the Wild he came.

His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head foam

when the brown spring freshets flow;

deep in their dark, sin-calcined pits

were his somber eyes aglow;

they knew him far for the fitful man

who spat forth blood on the snow.

“Did ever you see such a skin?” quoth he;

“there’s nought in the world so fine—

such fullness of fur as black as the night,

such luster, such size, such shine;

it’s life to a one-lunged man like me;

it’s London, it’s women, it’s wine.

The Moose-hides called it the devil-fox,

and swore that no man could kill;

that he who hunted it, soon or late,

must surely suffer some ill;

but I laughed at them and their old squaw-tales.

Ha! Ha! I’m laughing still.

For look ye, the skin—it’s as smooth as sin,

and black as the core of the Pit.

By gun or by trap, whatever the hap,

I swore I would capture it;

by star and by star afield and afar,

I hunted and would not quit.

For the devil-fox, it was swift and sly,

and it seemed to fleer at me;

I would wake in fright by the camp-fire light,

hearing its evil glee;

into my dream its eyes would gleam,

and its shadow would I see.

It sniffed and ran from the ptarmigan

I had poisoned to excess;

unharmed it sped from my wrathful lead

(‘twas as if I shot by guess);

yet it came by night in the stark moonlight

to mock at my weariness.

I tracked it up where the mountains hunch

like the vertebrae of the world;

I tracked it down to the death-still pits

where the avalanche is hurled;

from the glooms to the sacerdotal snows,

where the carded clouds are curled.

From the vastitudes where the world protrudes

through clouds like seas up-shoaled,

I held its track till it led me back

to the land I had left of old—

the land I had looted many moons.

I was weary and sick and cold.

I was sick, soul-sick, of the futile chase,

and there and then I swore

the foul fiend fox might scathless go,

for I would hunt no more;

then I rubbed mine eyes in a vast surprise—

it stood by my cabin door.

A rifle raised in the wraith-like gloom,

and a vengeful shot that sped;

a howl that would thrill a cream-faced corpse—

and the demon fox lay dead … .

yet there was never a sign of wound,

and never a drop he bled.

So that was the end of the great black fox,

and here is the prize I’ve won;

and now for a drink to cheer me up—

I’ve mushed since the early sun;

we’ll drink a toast to the sorry ghost

of the fox whose race is run.”

II

Now Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike,

bad as the worst were they;

in their road-house down by the river-trail

they waited and watched for prey;

with wine and song they joyed night long,

and they slept like swine by day.

For things were done in the Midnight Sun

that no tongue will ever tell;

and men there be who walk earth-free,

but whose names are writ in hell—

are writ in flames with the guilty names

of Fournier and Labelle.

Put not your trust in a poke of dust

would ye sleep the sleep of sin;

for there be those who would rob your clothes

ere yet the dawn comes in;

and a prize likewise in a woman’s eyes

is a peerless black fox skin.

Put your faith in the mountain cat if you

lie within his lair;

trust the fangs of the mother-wolf,

and the claws of the lead-ripped bear;

but oh, of the wiles and the gold-tooth smiles

of a dance-hall wench beware!

Wherefore it was beyond all laws

that lusts of man restrain,

a man drank deep and sank to sleep

never to wake again;

and the Yukon swallowed through a hole

the cold corpse of the slain.

III

The black fox skin a shadow cast

from the roof nigh to the floor;

and sleek it seemed and soft it gleamed,

and the woman stroked it o’er;

and the man stood by with a brooding eye,

and gnashed his teeth and swore.

When thieves and thugs fall out and fight

there’s fell arrears to pay;

and soon or late sin meets its fate,

and so it fell one day

that Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike

fanged up like dogs at bay.

“The skin is mine, all mine,” she cried;

“I did the deed alone.”

“It’s share and share with a guilt-yoked pair,”

he hissed in a pregnant tone;

and so they snarled like malamutes

over a mildewed bone.

And so they fought, by fear untaught,

till haply it befell

one dawn of day she slipped away

to Dawson town to sell

the fruit of sin, this black fox skin

that had made their lives a hell.

She slipped away as still he lay,

she clutched the wondrous fur;

her pulses beat, her foot was fleet,

her fear was as a spur;

she laughed with glee, she did not see

him rise and follow her.

The bluffs uprear and grimly peer

far over Dawson town;

they see its lights a blaze o’ nights

and harshly they look down;

they mock the plan and plot of man

with grim, ironic frown.

The trail was steep; ‘twas at the time

when swiftly sinks the snow;

all honey-combed, the river ice

was rotting down below;

the river chafed beneath its rind

with many a mighty throe.

And up the swift and oozy drift

a woman climbed in fear,

clutching to her a black fox fur

as if she held it dear;

and hard she pressed it to her breast—

then Windy Ike drew near.

She made no moan—her heart was stone—

she read his smiling face,

and like a dream flashed all her life’s

dark horror and disgrace;

a moment only—with a snarl

he hurled her into space.

She rolled for nigh an hundred feet;

she bounded like a ball;

from crag to crag she caromed down

through snow and timber fall; …

a hole gaped in the river ice;

the spray flashed—that was all.

A bird sang for the joy of spring,

so piercing sweet and frail;

and blinding bright the land was dight

in gay and glittering mail;

and with a wondrous black fox skin

a man slid down the trail.

IV

A wedge-faced man there was who ran

along the river bank,

who stumbled through each drift and slough,

and ever slipped and sank,

and ever cursed his Maker’s name,

and ever “hooch” he drank.

He traveled like a hunted thing,

hard harried, sore distrest;

the old grandmother moon crept out

from her cloud-quilted nest;

the aged mountains mocked at him

in their primeval rest.

Grim shadows diapered the snow;

the air was strangely mild;

the valley’s girth was dumb with mirth,

the laughter of the wild;

the still, sardonic laughter of

an ogre o’er a child.

The river writhed beneath the ice;

it groaned like one in pain,

and yawning chasms opened wide,

and closed and yawned again;

and sheets of silver heaved on high

until they split in twain.

From out the road-house by the trail

they saw a man afar

make for the narrow river-reach

where the swift cross-currents are;

where, frail and worn, the ice is torn

and the angry waters jar.

But they did not see him crash and sink

into the icy flow;

they did not see him clinging there,

gripped by the undertow,

clawing with bleeding finger-nails

at the jagged ice and snow.

They found a note beside the hole

where he had stumbled in:

“Here met his fate by evil luck

a man who lived in sin,

and to the one who loves me least

I leave this black fox skin.”

And strange it is; for, though they searched

the river all around,

no trace or sign of black fox skin

was ever after found;

though one man said he saw the tread

of hoofs deep in the ground.

The Cremation of Sam McGee[1]

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

by the men who moil for gold;

the Arctic trails have their secret tales

that would make your blood run cold;

the Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

but the queerest they ever did see

was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee,

where the cotton blooms and blows.

Why he left his home in the South to roam

‘round the Pole, God only knows.

He was always cold, but the land of gold

seemed to hold him like a spell;

Though he’d often say in his homely way

that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way

over the Dawson trail.

Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold

it stabbed like a driven nail.

If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze

till sometimes we couldn’t see;

It wasn’t much fun, but the only one

to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight

in our robes beneath the snow,

and the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead

were dancing heel and toe,

he turned to me, and “Cap,” says he,

“I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;

and if I do, I’m asking that you

won’t refuse my last request.”

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no;

then he says with a sort of moan:

“it’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold

till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.

Yet ‘taint being dead—it’s my awful dread

of the icy grave that pains;

so I want you to swear that, foul or fair,

you’ll cremate my last remains.”

A pal’s last need is a thing to heed,

so I swore I would not fail;

and we started on at the streak of dawn;

but God! he looked ghastly pale.

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day

of his home in Tennessee;

and before nightfall a corpse was all

that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death,

and I hurried, horror-driven,

with a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid,

because of a promise given;

it was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:

“You may tax your brawn and brains,

but you promised true, and it’s up to you

to cremate those last remains.”

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid,

and the trail has its own stern code.

In the days to come, though my lips were dumb,

in my heart how I cursed that load.

In the long, long night, by the lone firelight,

while the huskies, round in a ring,

howled out their woes to the homeless snows—

O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that Quiet clay

seemed to heavy and heavier grow;

and on I went, though the dogs were spent

and the grub was getting low;

the trail was bad, and I felt half mad,

but I swore I would not give in;

and I’d often sing to the hateful thing,

and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge,

and a derelict there lay;

it was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice

it was called the “Alice May.”

And I looked at it, and I thought a bit,

and I looked at my frozen chum;

then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry,

“is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor,

and I lit the boiler fire;

some coal I found that was lying around,

and I heaped the fuel higher;

the flames just soared, and the furnace roared—

such a blaze you seldom see;

and I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal,

and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like

to hear him sizzle so;

and the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled,

and the wind began to blow.

It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled

down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;

and the greasy smoke in an inky cloak

went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow

I wrestled with grisly fear;

but the stars came out and they danced about

ere again I ventured near;

I was sick with dread, but I bravely said:

“I’ll just take a peep inside.

I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked;” …

then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm,

in the heart of the furnace roar;

and he wore a smile you could see a mile,

and he said: “Please close that door.

It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear

you’ll let in the cold and storm—

since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee,

it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

by the men who moil for gold;

the Arctic trails have their secret tales

that would make your blood run cold;

the Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

but the queerest they ever did see

was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

The Shooting of Dan McGrew[1]

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up

in the Malamute saloon;

the kid that handles the music-box

was hitting a jag-time tune;

back of the bar, in a solo game,

sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,

and watching his luck was his light-o’-love,

the lady that’s known as Lou.

When out of the night, which was fifty below,

and into the din and glare,

there stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks,

dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.

He looked like a man with a foot in the grave

and scarcely the strength of a louse,

yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar,

and he called for drinks for the house.

There was none could place the stranger’s face,

though we searched ourselves for a clue;

but we drank his health, and the last to drink

was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

There’s men that somehow just grip your eyes,

and hold them hard like a spell;

and such was he, and he looked to me

like a man who had lived in hell;

with a face most hair, and the dreary stare

of a dog whose day is done,

as he watered the green stuff in his glass,

and the drops fell one by one.

Then I got to figgering who he was,

and wondering what he’d do,

and I turned my head—and there watching him

was the lady that’s known as Lou.

His eyes went rubbering round the room,

and he seemed in a kind of daze,

till at last that old piano fell

in the way of his wandering gaze.

The rag-time kid was having a drink;

there was no one else on the stool,

so the stranger stumbles across the room,

and flops down there like a fool.

In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt

he sat, and I saw him sway,

then he clutched the keys with his talon hands—

my God! but that man could play.

Were you ever out in the Great Alone,

when the moon was awful clear,

and the icy mountains hemmed you in

with a silence you most could hear;

with only the howl of a timber wolf,

and you camped there in the cold,

a helf-dead thing in a stark, dead world,

clean mad for the muck called gold;

while high overhead, green, yellow, and red,

the North Lights swept in bars?—

then you’ve a hunch what the music meant…

hunger and night and the stars.

And hunger not of the belly kind,

that’s banished with bacon and beans,

but the gnawing hunger of lonely men

for a home and all that it means;

for a fireside far from the cares that are,

four walls and a roof above;

but oh! so cramful of cozy joy,

and crowded with a woman’s love—

a woman dearer than all the world,

and true as Heaven is true—

(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge,—

the lady that’s known as Lou.)

Then on a sudden the music changed,

so soft that you scarce could hear;

but you felt that your life had been looted clean

of all that it once held dear;

that someone had stolen the woman you loved;

that her love was a devil’s lie;

that your guts were gone, and the best for you

was to crawl away and die.

‘Twas the crowning cry of a heart’s despair,

and it thrilled you through and through—

“I guess I’ll make it a spread misery,”

said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

The music almost dies away…

then it burst like a pent-up flood;

and it seemed to say, “Repay, repay,”

and my eyes were blind with blood.

The thought came back of an ancient wrong,

and it stung like a frozen lash,

and the lust awoke to kill, to kill…

then the music stopped with a crash,

and the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned

in a most peculiar way.

In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt

he sat, and I saw him sway;

then his lips went in in a kind of grin,

and he spoke, and his voice was calm,

and “Boys,” says he, “you don’t know me,

and none of you care a damn;

but I want to state, and my words are straight,

and I’ll bet my poke they’re true,

that one of you is a hound of hell…

and that one is Dan McGrew.”

Then I ducked my head and the lights went out,

and two guns blazed in the dark;

and a woman screamed, and the lights went up,

and two men lay stiff and stark.

Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead,

was Dangerous Dan McGrew,

while the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast

of the lady that’s known as Lou.

These are the simple facts of the case,

and I guess I ought to know.

they say that the stranger was crazed with “hooch,”

and I’m not denying it’s so.

I’m not so wise as the lawyer guys,

but strictly between us two—

the woman that kissed him and—pinched his poke—

was the lady known as Lou.

The Smoking Frog[1]

Three men I saw beside a bar,

regarding o’er their bottle,

a frog who smoked a rank cigar

they’d jammed within its throttle.

A Pasha frog it must have been

so big it was and bloated;

and from its lips the nicotine

in graceful festoon floated.

And while the trio jeered and joked,

as if it quite enjoyed it,

impassively it smoked and smoked,

(it could not well avoid it).

A ring of fire its lips were nigh

yet it seemed all unwitting;

it could not spit, like you and I,

who’ve learned the art of spitting.

It did not wink, it did not shrink,

as there serene it squatted’

its eyes were clear, it did not fear

the fate the Gods allotted.

It squatted there with calm sublime,

amid their cruel guying;

grave as a god, and all the time

it knew that it was dying.

And somehow then it seemed to me

these men expectorating,

were infinitely less than he,

the dumb thing they were baiting.

It seemed to say, despite their jokes:

“this is my hour of glory.

It isn’t every frog that smokes:

my name will live in story.”

Before its nose the smoke arose;

the flame grew nigher, nigher;

and then I saw its bright eyes close

beside that ring of fire.

They turned it on its warty back,

from off its bloated belly;

its legs jerked out, then dangled slack;

it quivered like a jelly.

And then the fellows went away,

contented with their joking;

but even as in death it lay,

the frog continued smoking.

Life’s like a lighted fag, thought I;

we smoke it stale; then after

death turns our belly to the sky:

the Gods must have their laughter.

The Soldier of Fortune[1]

“Deny your God!” they ringed me with their spears;

blood-crazed were they, and reeking from the strife;

hell-hot their hate, and venom-fanged their sneers,

and one man spat on me and nursed a knife.

And there was I, sore wounded and alone,

I, the last living of my slaughtered band.

Oh sinister the sky, and cold as stone!

In one red laugh of horror reeled the land.

And dazed and desperate I faced their spears,

and like a flame out-leaped that naked knife,

and like a serpent stung their bitter jeers:

“Deny your God, and we will give you life.”

Deny my God! Oh life was very sweet!

And it is hard in youth and hope to die;

and there my comrades dear lay at my feet,

and in that blear of blood soon must I lie.

And yet … I almost laughed—it seemed so odd,

for long and long had I not vainly tried

to reason out and body forth my God,

and prayed for light, and doubted—and denied:

denied the Being I could not conceive,

denied a life-to-be beyond the grave … .

and now they ask me, who do not believe,

just to deny, to voice my doubt, to save

this life of mine that sings so in the sun,

the bloom of youth yet red upon my cheek,

my only life!—O fools! ’tis easy done,

I will deny … and yet I do not speak.

“Deny your God!” their spears are all agleam,

and I can see their eyes with blood-lust shine;

their snarling voices shrill into a scream,

and, mad to slay, they quiver for the sign.

Deny my God! yes, I could do it well;

yet if I did, what of my race, my name?

How they would spit on me, these dogs of hell!

Spurn me, and put on me the brand of shame.

A white man’s honor! what of that, I say?

Shall these black curs cry “Coward” in my face?

They who would perish for their gods of clay—

shall I defile my country and my race?

My country! what’s my country to me now?

Soldier of Fortune, free and far I roam;

all men are brothers in my heart, I vow;

the wide and wondrous world is all my home.

My country! reverent of her splendid Dead,

her heroes proud, her martyrs pierced with pain:

for me her puissant blood was vainly shed;

for me her drums of battle beat in vain,

and free I fare, half-heedless of her fate:

no faith, no flag I owe—then why not seek

this last loop-hole of life? Why hesitate?

I will deny … and yet I do not speak.

“Deny your God!” their spears are poised on high,

and tense and terrible they wait the word;

and dark and darker glooms the dreary sky,

and in that hush of horror no thing stirred.

Then, through the ringing terror and sheer hate

leaped there a vision to me—Oh, how far!

A face, Her face … through all my stormy fate

a joy, a strength, a glory and a star.

Beneath the pines, where lonely camp-fires gleam,

in seas forlorn, amid the deserts drear,

how I had gladdened to that face of dream!

And never, never had it seemed so dear.

O silken hair that veils the sunny brow!

O eyes of grey, so tender and so true!

O lips of smiling sweetness! must I now

for ever and for ever go from you?

Ah, yes, I must … for if I do this thing,

how can I look into your face again?

Knowing you think me more than half a king,

I with my craven heart, my honor slain.

No! no! my mind’s made up. I gaze above,

into that sky insensate as a stone;

not for my creed, my country, but my Love

will I stand up and meet my death alone.

Then though it be to utter dark I sink,

the God that dwells in me is not denied;

“Best” triumphs over “Beast,”—and so I think

humanity itself is glorified … .

“And now, my butchers, I embrace my fate.

Come! let my heart’s blood slake the thirsty sod.

Curst be the life you offer! Glut your hate!

Strike! Strike, you dogs! I’ll not deny my God.”

I saw the spears that seemed a-leap to slay,

all quiver earthward at the headman’s nod;

and in a daze of dream I heard him say:

“Go, set him free who serves so well his God!”

The Wee Shop[1]

She risked her all, they told me, bravely sinking

the pinched economies of thirty years;

and there the little shop was, meek and shrinking,

the sum of all her dreams and hopes and fears.

Ere it was opened I would see them in it,

the gray-haired dame, the daughter with her crutch;

so fond, so happy, hoarding every minute,

like artists, for the final tender touch.

The opening day! I’m sure that to their seeming

was never shop so wonderful as theirs;

with pyramids of jam-jars rubbed to gleaming;

such vivid cans of peaches, prunes and pears;

and chocolate, and biscuits in glass cases,

and bon-bon bottles, many-hued and bright;

yet nothing half so radiant as their faces,

their eyes of hope, excitement and delight.

I entered: how they waited all a-flutter!

How awkwardly they weighed my acid-drops!

And then with all the thanks a tongue could utter

they bowed me from the kindliest of shops.

I’m sure that night their customers they numbered;

discussed them all in happy, breathless speech;

and though quite worn and weary, ere they slumbered,

sent heavenward a little prayer for each.

And so I watched with interest redoubled

that little shop, spent in it all I had;

and when I saw it empty I was troubled,

and when I saw them busy I was glad.

And when I dared to ask how things were going,

they told me, with a fine and gallant smile:

“Not badly … slow at first … There’s never knowing …

‘Twill surely pick up in a little while.”

I’d often see them through the winter weather,

behind the shutters by a light’s faint speck,

poring o’er books, their faces close together,

the lame girl’s arm around her mother’s neck.

They dressed their windows not one time but twenty,

each change more pinched, more desperately neat;

alas! I wondered if behind that plenty

the two who owned it had enough to eat.

Ah, who would dare to sing of tea and coffee?

The sadness of a stock unsold and dead;

the petty tragedy of melting toffee,

the sordid pathos of stale gingerbread.

Ignoble themes! And yet—those haggard faces!

Within that little shop … . Oh, here I say

one does not need to look in lofty places

for tragic themes, they’re round us every day.

And so I saw their agony, their fighting,

their eyes of fear, their heartbreak, their despair;

and there the little shop is, black and blighting,

and all the world goes by and does not care.

They say she sought her old employer’s pity,

content to take the pittance he would give.

The lame girl? yes, she’s working in the city;

she coughs a lot—she hasn’t long to live.

Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946)

from Idem the Same, A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson,

A Very Valentine[1]

Very fine is my valentine.

Very fine and very mine.

Very mine is my valentine very mine and very fine.

Very fine is my valentine and mine,

very fine very mine and mine is my valentine.

Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967)

Last Answers[1]

I wrote a poem on the mist

and a woman asked me what I meant by it.

I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,

how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,

and change the drab shanties

with lighted lamps at evening

into points of mystery quivering with color.

I answered:

the whole world was mist once long ago and some day

it will all go back to mist,

our skulls and lungs

are more water than bone and tissue

and all poets love dust and mist because

all the last answers

go running back to dust and mist.

The Junk Man[2]

I am glad God saw Death

and gave Death a job

taking care of all who are tired of living:

when all the wheels in a clock are worn and slow

and the connections loose

and the clock goes on ticking

and telling the wrong time from hour to hour

and people around the house joke

about what a bum clock it is,

how glad the clock is when

the big Junk Man drives his wagon

up to the house

and puts his arms around the clock and says:

“You don’t belong here,

you gotta come

along with me,”

how glad the clock is then,

when it feels the arms of the Junk Man

close around it and carry it away.

To Know Silence Perfectly[1]

There is a music for lonely hearts nearly always.

If the music dies down there is a silence

almost the same as the movement of music.

To know silence perfectly is to know music.

Vachel Lindsay (1879 – 1931)

The Horrid Voice of Science[2]

“There’s machinery in the butterfly;

there’s a mainspring to the bee;

there’s hydraulics to a daisy,

and contraptions to a tree.

If we could see the birdie

that makes the chirping sound

with x-ray, scientific eyes,

we could see the wheels go round.”

And I hope all men

who think like this

will soon lie

underground.

Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)

The Snow Man[1]

One must have a mind of winter

to regard the frost and the boughs

of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

and have been cold a long time

to behold the junipers shagged with ice,

the spruces rough in the distant glitter

of the January sun; and not to think

of any misery in the sound of the wind,

in the sound of a few leaves,

which is the sound of the land

full of the same wind

that is blowing in the same bare place

for the listener, who listens in the snow,

and, nothing himself, beholds

nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird[2]

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,

the only moving thing

was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,

like a tree

in which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman

are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

the beauty of inflections

or the beauty of innuendoes,

the blackbird whistling

or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

with barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

traced in the shadow

an indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,

why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

walks around the feet

of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

and lucid, inescapable rhythms;

but I know, too,

that the blackbird is involved

in what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

it marked the edge

of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds

flying in a green light,

even the bawds of euphony

would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

in a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

in that he mistook

the shadow of his equipage

for blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

and it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

in the cedar-limbs.

Marjorie Allen Seiffert (1881 – 1968)

Cubist Portrait[1]

She is purposeless as a cyclone; she must move

either by chance or in a predestined groove,

following a whim not her own, unable to shape

her course. From chance or God even she cannot escape!

Think of a cyclone sitting far-off with its head in its hands, motionless,

drearily longing for distant lands

where every lonely hurricane may at last discover

its own transcendent, implacable, indestructible lover!

What is a cyclone? Only thin air moving fast

from here to yonder, to become silent emptiness at last.

William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

Danse Russe[2]

If when my wife is sleeping

and the baby and Kathleen

are sleeping

and the sun is a flame-white disc

in silken mists

above shining trees,—

if I in my north room

dance naked, grotesquely

before my mirror

waving my shirt round my head

and singing softly to myself:

“I am lonely, lonely,

I was born to be lonely,

I am best so!”

If I admire my arms, my face,

my shoulders, flanks, buttocks

against the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not

the happy genius of my household?

The Act[1]

There were the roses, in the rain.

Don’t cut them, I pleaded.

They won’t last, she said.

But they’re so beautiful

where they are.

Agh, we were all beautiful once, she said.

And cut them and gave them to me

in my hand.

The Last Words of My English Grandmother[1]

There were some dirty plates

and a glass of milk

beside her on a small table

near the rank, disheveled bed—

Wrinkled and nearly blind

she lay and snored

rousing with anger in her tones

to cry for food,

Gimme something to eat—

they’re starving me—

I’m all right I won’t go

to the hospital. No, no, no

Give me something to eat

Let me take you

to the hospital, I said

and after you are well

you can do as you please.

She smiled, Yes

you do what you please first

then I can do what I please—

Oh, oh, oh! she cried

as the ambulance men lifted

her to the stretcher—

Is this what you call

making me comfortable?

By now her mind was clear—

Oh you think you’re smart

you young people,

she said, but I’ll tell you

you don’t know anything.

Then we started.

On the way

we passed a long row

of elms. She looked at them

awhile out of

the ambulance window and said,

What are all those

fuzzy-looking things out there?

Trees? Well, I’m tired

of them and rolled her head away.

The Red Wheelbarrow[1]

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

The Three Graces[2]

We have the picture of you in mind,

when you were young, posturing

(for a photographer) in scarves

(if you could have done it) but now,

for none of you is immortal, ninety-three,

the three, ninety and three,

Mary, Ellen and Emily, what

beauty is it clings still about you?

Undying? Magical? For there is still

no answer, why we live or why

you will not live longer than I

or that there should be an answer why

any should live and whatever other

should die. Yet you live. You live

and all that can be said is that

you live, time cannot alter it—

and as I write this Mary has died.

To Mark Anthony in Heaven[1]

This Quiet morning light

reflected, how many times

from grass and trees and clouds

enters my north room

touching the walls with

grass and clouds and trees.

Anthony,

trees and grass and clouds.

Why did you follow

that beloved body

with your ships at Actium?

I hope it was because

you knew her inch by inch

from slanting feet upward

to the roots of her hair

and down again and that

you saw her

above the battle’s fury—

clouds and trees and grass—

For then you are

listening in heaven.

This is Just to Say[1]

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

Tract[2]

I will teach you my townspeople

how to perform a funeral—

for you have it over a troop

of artists—

unless one should scour the world—

you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.

I begin with a design for a hearse.

For Christ’s sake not black—

nor white either—and not polished!

Let it be weathered—like a farm wagon—

with gilt wheels (this could be

applied fresh at small expense)

or no wheels at all:

a rough dray to drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!

My God—glass, my townspeople!

For what purpose? Is it for the dead

to look out or for us to see

how well he is housed or to see

the flowers or the lack of them—

or what?

To keep the rain and snow from him?

He will have a heavier rain soon:

pebbles and dirt and what not.

Let there be no glass—

and no upholstery, phew!

and no little brass rollers

and small easy wheels on the bottom—

my townspeople what are you thinking of?

A rough plain hearse then

with gilt wheels and no top at all.

On this the coffin lies

by its own weight.

No wreaths please—

especially no hot house flowers.

Some common memento is better,

something he prized and is known by:

his old clothes—a few books perhaps—

God knows what! You realize

how we are about these things

my townspeople—

something will be found—anything

even flowers if he had come to that.

So much for the hearse.

For heaven’s sake though see to the driver!

Take off the silk hat! In fact

that’s no place at all for him—

up there unceremoniously

dragging our friend out to his own dignity!

Bring him down—bring him down!

Low and inconspicuous! I’d not have him ride

on the wagon at all—damn him—

the undertaker’s understrapper!

Let him hold the reins

and walk at the side

and inconspicuously too!

Then briefly as to yourselves:

walk behind—as they do in France,

seventh class, or if you ride

hell take curtains! Go with some show

of inconvenience; sit openly—

to the weather as to grief.

Or do you think you can shut grief in?

What—from us? We who have perhaps

nothing to lose? Share with us

share with us—it will be money

in your pockets.

Go now

I think you are ready.

Sara Teasdale (1884 – 1933)

There will come soft rains[1]

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

and swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

and frogs in the pools singing at night,

and wild plum trees in tremulous white;

robins will wear their feathery fire,

whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

and not one will know of the war, not one

will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

if mankind perished utterly;

and Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

would scarcely know that we were gone.

D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

From The Ship of Death[1]

I

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit

and the long journey towards oblivion.

The apples falling like great drops of dew

to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.

And it is time to go, to bid farewell

to one’s own self, and find an exit

from the fallen self.

New Year’s Eve[2]

There are only two things now,

the great black night scooped out

and this fire-glow.

This fire-glow, the core,

and we the two ripe pips

that are held in store.

Listen, the darkness rings

as it circulates round our fire.

Take off your things.

Your shoulders, your bruised throat!

Your breasts, your nakedness!

This fiery coat!

As the darkness flickers and dips,

as the firelight falls and leaps

from your feet to your lips!

Snake[1]

A snake came to my water-trough

on a hot, hot day, and I in pajamas for the heat,

to drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade

of the great dark carob-tree

I came down the steps with my pitcher

and must wait,

must stand and wait,

for there he was at the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall

in the gloom

and trailed his yellow-brown slackness

soft-bellied down,

over the edge of the stone trough

and rested his throat upon the stone bottom,

and where the water had dripped from the tap,

in a small clearness,

he sipped with his straight mouth,

softly drank through his straight gums,

into his slack long body,

silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,

and I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,

and looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,

and flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips,

and mused a moment,

and stooped and drank a little more,

being earth-brown,

earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth

on the day of Sicilian July with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me

he must be killed,

for in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent,

the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man

you would take a stick and break him now,

and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,

how glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet,

to drink at my water-trough

and depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,

into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?

Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?

Was it humility, to feel so honored?

I felt so honored.

And yet those voices:

if you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid,

I was most afraid, But even so, honored still more

that he should seek my hospitality

from out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough

and lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,

and flickered his tongue

like a forked night on the air, so black,

seeming to lick his lips,

and looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,

and slowly turned his head,

and slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,

proceeded to draw his slow length curving round

and climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,

and as he slowly drew up,

snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,

a sort of horror,

a sort of protest against his withdrawing

into that horrid black hole,

deliberately going into the blackness,

and slowly drawing himself after,

overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,

I picked up a clumsy log

and threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,

but suddenly that part of him that was left behind

convulsed in undignified haste.

Writhed like lightning, and was gone

into the black hole,

the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,

at which, in the intense still noon,

I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.

I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!

I despised myself

and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross

and I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,

like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,

now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance

with one of the lords of life.

And I have something to expiate:

a pettiness.

Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

A Pact[1]

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman—

I have detested you long enough.

I come to you as a grown child

who has had a pig-headed father;

I am old enough now to make friends.

It was you that broke the new wood

now is a time for carving.

We have one sap and one root—

let there be commerce between us.

Francesca[2]

You came in out of the night

and there were flowers in your hands,

now you will come out of a confusion of people,

out of a turmoil of speech about you.

I who have seen you amid the primal things

was angry when they spoke your name

in ordinary places.

I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,

and that the world should dry as a dead leaf,

or as a dandelion seed-pod and be swept away,

so that I might find you again,

alone.

In a Station of the Metro[3]

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

petals on a wet, black bough.

Lustra (from the Introduction)[1]

And the days are not full enough

and the nights are not full enough

and life slips by like a field mouse

Not shaking the grass.

Tame Cat[2]

It rests me to be among beautiful women

why should one always lie about such matters?

I repeat:

it rests me to converse with beautiful women

even though we talk nothing but nonsense,

the purring of the invisible antennae

is both stimulating and delightful.

Salutation[1]

O generation of the thoroughly smug

and thoroughly uncomfortable,

I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,

I have seen them with untidy families,

I have seen their smiles full of teeth

and heard ungainly laughter.

And I am happier than you are,

and they were happier than I am;

and the fish swim in the lake

and do not even own clothing.

The Eyes[2]

Rest Master, for we be a-weary weary

and would feel the fingers of the wind

upon these lids that lie over us

sodden and lead-heavy.

Rest brother, for lo! the dawn is without!

The yellow flame paleth

and the wax runs low.

Free us, for without be goodly colors,

green of the wood-moss and flower colors,

and coolness beneath the trees.

Free us, for we perish

in this ever-flowing monotony

of ugly print marks, black

upon white parchment.

Free us, for there is one

whose smile more availeth

than all the age-old knowledge of thy books:

and we would look thereon.

The Garden[1]

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall

she walks by the railing of a path

in Kensington Gardens,

and she is dying piece-meal

of a sort of emotional anemia.

And round about there is a rabble

of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.

They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.

Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.

She would like some one to speak to her,

and is almost afraid that I

will commit that indiscretion.

The Plunge[2]

I would bathe myself in strangeness:

these comforts heaped upon me, smother me!

I burn, I scald so for the new,

new friends, new faces,

places!

Oh to be out of this,

this that is all I wanted

—save the new.

And you,

love, you the much, the more desired!

do I not loathe all walls, streets, stones,

all mire, mist, all fog,

all ways of traffic?

You, I would have flow over me like water,

oh, but far out of this!

Grass, and low fields, and hills,

and sun,

oh, sun enough!

Out, and alone, among some

alien people!

The Tree[1]

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,

knowing the truth of things unseen before;

of Daphne and the laurel bow

and that god-feasting couple old

that grew elm-oak amid the wold.

’Twas not until the gods had been

kindly entreated, and been brought within

unto the hearth of their heart’s home

that they might do this wonder thing;

nathless I have been a tree amid the wood

and many a new thing understood

that was rank folly to my head before.

Louis Untermeyer (1885 – 1972)

Long Feud[2]

Where, without bloodshed, can there be

a more relentless enmity

than the long feud fought silently

between man and the growing grass.

Man’s the aggressor, for he has

weapons to humble and harass

the impudent spears that charge upon

his sacred privacy of lawn.

He mows them down, and they are gone

only to lie in wait, although

he builds above and digs below

where never a root would dare to go.

His are the triumphs till the day

there’s no more grass to cut away

and, weary of labor, weary of play,

having exhausted every whim,

he stretches out each conquering limb.

And then the small grass covers him.

Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915)

The Soldier[1]

If I should die, think only this of me:

that there’s some corner of a foreign field

that is for ever England. There shall be

in that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

a dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

a body of England’s, breathing English air,

washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

a pulse in the eternal mind, no less

gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

and laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

in hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Robinson Jeffers (1887 – 1962)

Fawn’s Foster-Mother[1]

The old woman sits on a bench before the door

and quarrels with her meager pale demoralized daughter. Once when I

passed I found her alone,

laughing in the sun and saying that when she was first married she lived

in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon. (It is empty now, the roof

has fallen but the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the redwoods

have all been cut down, the oaks are standing; the place is now more

solitary than ever before.) “When I was nursing my second baby my

husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brake and brought it; I put its

mouth to the breast rather than let it starve, I had milk enough for three

babies. Hey how it sucked, the little nuzzler,

digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach.

I had more joy from that than from the others.”

Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad road

with market-wagons, mean cares and decay.

She is thrown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry skin soon to be

shed from the earth’s old eye-brows,

I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries, the stir of

the world, the music of the mountain.

Joyce Kilmer (1887 – 1918)

Trees[2]

I think that I shall never see

a poem as lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

a tree that looks to God all day,

and lifts her leafy arms to pray;

a tree that may in summer wear

a nest of robins in her hair;

upon whose bosom snow has lain;

who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

but only God can make a tree.

Marianne Moore (1887 – 1972)

I May, I Might, I Must[1]

If you will tell me why the fen

appears impassable, I then

will tell you why I think that I

can get across it if I try.

Injudicious Gardening[2]

If yellow betokens infidelity,

I am an infidel.

I could not bear a yellow rose ill will

because books said that yellow boded ill,

white promised well.

However, your particular possession,

the sense of privacy,

indeed might deprecate

offended ears, and need not tolerate

effrontery.

Poetry[3]

I, too, dislike it.

Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it,

one discovers in it,

after all,

a place for the genuine.

To a Steam Roller[1]

The illustration

is nothing to you without the application.

You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down

into close conformity,

and then walk back and forth on them.

Sparkling chips of rock

are crushed down to the level of the parent block.

Were not ’impersonal judgment in aesthetic

matters, a metaphysical impossibility,’ you

might fairly achieve

it. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive

of one’s attending upon you, but to question

the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Rhapsody on a Windy Night[2]

Twelve o’clock.

Along the reaches of the street

held in a lunar synthesis,

whispering lunar incantations

dissolve the floors of memory

and all its clear relations,

its divisions and precisions,

every street lamp that I pass

beats like a fatalistic drum,

and through the spaces of the dark

midnight shakes the memory

as a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,

the street lamp sputtered,

the street lamp muttered,

the street lamp said, “Regard that woman

who hesitates towards you in the light of the door

which opens on her like a grin.

You see the border of her dress

is torn and stained with sand,

and you see the corner of her eye

twists like a crooked pin.”

The memory throws up high and dry

a crowd of twisted things;

a twisted branch upon the beach

eaten smooth, and polished

as if the world gave up

the secret of its skeleton,

stiff and white.

A broken spring in a factory yard,

rust that clings to the form that the strength has left

hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,

the street lamp said,

“Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,

slips out its tongue

and devours a morsel of rancid butter.”

So the hand of a child, automatic,

slipped out and pocketed a toy

that was running along the quay.

I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.

I have seen eyes in the street

trying to peer through lighted shutters,

and a crab one afternoon in a pool,

an old crab with barnacles on his back,

gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,

the lamp sputtered,

the lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed:

“Regard the moon,

la lune ne garde aucune rancune,

she winks a feeble eye,

she smiles into corners.

She smoothes the hair of the grass.

The moon has lost her memory.

A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,

her hand twists a paper rose,

that smells of dust and old Cologne,

she is alone

with all the old nocturnal smells

that cross and cross across her brain.”

The reminiscence comes

of sunless dry geraniums

and dust in crevices,

smells of chestnuts in the streets,

and female smells in shuttered rooms,

and cigarettes in corridors

and cocktail smells in bars.”

The lamp said,

“Four o’clock,

here is the number on the door.

Memory!

You have the key,

the little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,

mount.

The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,

put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.”

The last twist of the knife.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock[1]

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.

Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,

Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

when the evening is spread out against the sky

like a patient etherized upon a table;

let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

the muttering retreats

of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

streets that follow like a tedious argument

of insidious intent

to lead you to an overwhelming question …

oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back

upon the window-panes,

the yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle

on the window-panes

licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

and seeing that it was a soft October night,

curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

for the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

there will be time, there will be time

to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

there will be time to murder and create,

and time for all the works and days of hands

that lift and drop a question on your plate;

time for you and time for me,

and time yet for a hundred indecisions,

and for a hundred visions and revisions,

before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

to wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

with a bald spot in the middle of my hair—

[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

my necktie rich and modest,

but asserted by a simple pin—

[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]

Do I dare

disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—

have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

beneath the music from a farther room.

so how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

and when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

when I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

then how should I begin

to spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

arms that are braceleted and white and bare

[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]

Is it perfume from a dress

that makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

…

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

and watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

…

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

asleep … tired … or it malingers,

stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]

brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat,

and snicker,

and in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

after the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

would it have been worth while,

to have bitten off the matter with a smile,

to have squeezed the universe into a ball

to roll it toward some overwhelming question,

to say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

if one, settling a pillow by her head,

should say: “That is not what I meant at all.

That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

would it have been worth while,

after the sunsets and the dooryards

and the sprinkled streets,

after the novels, after the teacups,

after the skirts that trail along the floor—

and this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves

in patterns on a screen:

would it have been worth while

if one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

and turning toward the window, should say:

“that is not it at all,

that is not what I meant, at all.”

…

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

am an attendant lord, one that will do

to swell a progress, start a scene or two,

advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

deferential, glad to be of use,

politic, cautious, and meticulous;

full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

at times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers,

and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

combing the white hair of the waves blown back

when the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Hysteria[1]

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and

being part of it, until her teeth

were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.

I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at

each momentary recovery,

lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat,

bruised by the ripple of

unseen muscles. An elderly waiter

with trembling hands

was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth

over the rusty green iron table, saying:

“If the lady and gentleman wish to take their

tea in the garden,

if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea

in the garden…”

I decided that if

the shaking of her breasts could be stopped,

some of the fragments of the afternoon might be

collected, and I concentrated my attention

with careful subtlety to this end.

Anna Akhmatova (1889 – 1966)

ReQuiem – Instead of a Preface[2]

Translated by Lenore Mayherw

In the terrible years of Yezhovism I spent seventeen months standing in

line in front of the Leningrad prisons. One day someone thought he

recognized me. Then, a woman with bluish lips who was behind me and

to whom my name meant nothing came out of the torpor to which we

were all accustomed and said, softly (for we spoke only in whispers),

“—And that, could you describe that?”

And I said, “Yes, I can.”

And then a sort of smile slid across what had been her face.

April 1, 1957

Leningrad

Archibald MacLeish (1892 – 1982)

Ars Poetica[1]

A poem should be palpable and mute

as a globed fruit,

dumb

as old medallions to the thumb,

silent as the sleeve-worn stone

of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

a poem should be wordless

as the flight of birds.

…

A poem should be motionless in time

as the moon climbs,

leaving, as the moon releases

twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

memory by memory the mind—

a poem should be motionless in time

as the moon climbs.

…

A poem should be equal to:

not true.

For all the history of grief

an empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

a poem should not mean

but be.

Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments[1]

The praisers of women

in their proud and beautiful poems,

naming the grave mouth and the hair and the eyes,

boasted those they loved should be forever remembered:

these were lies.

The words sound

but the face in the Istrian sun is forgotten.

The poet speaks but to her dead ears no more.

The sleek throat is gone—

and the breast that was troubled to listen:

shadow from door.

Therefore I will not praise your knees

nor your fine walking

telling you men shall remember your name as long

as lips move or breath is spent or the iron of English

rings from a tongue.

I shall say you were young,

and your arms straight, and your mouth scarlet:

I shall say you will die and none will remember you:

your arms change,

and none remember the swish of your garments,

nor the click of your shoe.

Not with my hand’s strength, not with the difficult labor

springing the obstinate words

to the bones of your breast

and the stubborn line to your young stride

and the breath to your breathing

and the beat to your haste

shall I prevail on the hearts of unborn men

to remember.

(What is a dead girl but a shadowy ghost

or a dead man’s voice but a distant and vain affirmation

like dream words most)

Therefore I will not speak

of the undying glory of women.

I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair

and you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves on your

shoulders

and a leaf on your hair—

I will not speak of the famous beauty of dead women:

I will say the shape of a leaf lay once on your hair.

Till the world ends and the eyes are out

and the mouths broken.

Look! It is there!

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950)

First Fig[1]

My candle burns at both ends;

it will not last the night;

but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

it gives a lovely light!

Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918)

Dulce et Decorum Est[1]

“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

knock-kneed, coughing like hags,

we cursed through sludge,

till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

and towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

but limped on, blood shod. All went lame; all blind;

drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

of gas shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,

fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

but someone still was yelling out and stumbling,

and flound’ring like a man in fire or lime …

dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

as under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

behind the wagon that we flung him in,

and watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

his hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

if you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

my friend, you would not tell with such high zest

to children ardent for some desperate glory,

the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

pro patria mori.”

Lucian Blaga (1895 – 1961)

I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders[1]

I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders

and I will not kill

with reason

the mysteries I meet along my way

in flowers, eyes, lips, and graves.

The light of others

drowns the deep magic hidden

in the profound darkness.

I increase the world’s enigma

with my light

much as the moon with its white beams

does not diminish but increases

the shimmering mystery of night—

I enrich the darkening horizon

with chills of the great secret.

All that is hard to know

becomes a greater riddle

under my very eyes

because I love alike

flowers, lips, eyes, and graves.

Miyazawa Kenji (1896 – 1933)

Daydreaming on the Trail[2]

(Translation by Gary Snyder)

A lonely stretch, in the bind of poor fishing and drought,

following the ocean

crossing pass after pass,

fields of wild reeds,

I’ve come this far alone,

dozing in the pale sun

on the sand of a dried-up riverbed

back and shoulder chilled

something bothered me—

I think at that last quartzite pass

I left the oak gate in the fence

of the cow pasture open

probably because I was hurrying—

a white gate—

did I close it or not?

light cool sky,

mistletoe on chestnut floats in vision

manylayered clouds upriver

cool lattice of sunlight

some unknown big bird calling

faintly, crork crork

Louise Bogan (1897 – 1970)

from Beginning and End—Knowledge[1]

Now that I know

how passion warms little

of flesh in the mould,

and treasure is brittle,—

I’ll lie here and learn

how, over their ground

trees make a long shadow

and a light sound.

Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1960)

from Wanderings — Chapter Heading[1]

For we have thought the longer thoughts

and gone the shorter way.

And we have danced to devils’ tunes,

shivering home to pray;

to serve one master in the night,

another in the day.

Wen I-to (1899 – 1946)

Dead Water[2]

Translation by Ma Wentong

A pond despaired of any hope,

no breeze can stir up any ripples.

Better be the dump of disused brass and iron wares

and the cesspool of leftover dishes.

Maybe the brass will green into sapphire

and iron can will the rust into peach flowers;

let grease weave into colorful silky patterns,

and the mould steam out rainbows.

Let this dead water ferment into a pond of green wine,

floating with foams like pearls,

with smaller pearls simmering into larger ones

that pop out by the onslaught of wine thieving bugs.

A pond of such despair

has its own claims to freshness.

If frogs cannot put up with the silence

it is the dead water that invokes their songs.

This is a pond despaired of hope;

this is not where beauty dwells.

Better let the evil plough in all this

see what would come out of it.

Anonymous

The Anvil—God’s Word[1]

Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith’s door

and heard the anvil ring the vesper chime;

then, looking in, I saw upon the floor

old hammers, worn with beating years of time.

“How many anvils have you had,” said I,

“To wear and batter all these hammers so?”

“Just one,” said he, and then with twinkling eye,

“The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.”

And so, thought I, the anvil of God’s Word,

for ages skeptics blows have beat upon;

yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard,

the anvil is unharmed—the hammers gone.

Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967)

Dream Deferred: Harlem[2]

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Evil[1]

Looks like what drives me crazy

don’t have no effect on you—

but I’m gonna keep on at it

till it drives you crazy, too.

Maybe[2]

I asked you, baby,

if you understood—

you told me that you didn’t,

but you thought you would.

Suicide’s Note[3]

The calm,

cool face of the river

asked me for a kiss.

Stevie Smith (1902 – 1983)

Not Waving but Drowning[4]

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

but still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

and not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

and now he’s dead

it must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

they said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

and not waving but drowning.

Sunt Leones[1]

The lions who ate the Christians

on the sands of the arena

by indulging native appetites

played as has now been seen a

not entirely negligible part

in consolidating at the very start

the position of the Early Christian Church.

Initiatory rights are always bloody

in the lions, it appears

from contemporary art, made a study

of dyeing Coliseum sands a ruddy

liturgically sacrificial hue

and if the Christians felt a little blue—

well, people being eaten often do.

Theirs was the death, and there’s was a crown undying,

a state of things which must be satisfying.

My point which up to this has been obscured

is that it was the lions who procured

by chewing up blood gristle flesh and bone

the martyrdoms on which the church has grown.

I only write this poem because I thought it rather looked

as if the part the lions played was being overlooked.

By lions’ jaws great benefits and blessings were begotten

and so our debt to Lionhood must never be forgotten.

W.H. Auden (1907 – 1973)

Dichtung and Wahrheit[1]

XXXIII

Alas, it is as impossible that my answer to the question Who are You?

and your answer to the question “Who am I?” should be the same as that

either of them should be exactly and completely true. But if they are not

the same, and neither is quite true, then my assertion I love You cannot

be quite true either.

From Selected Shorts[2]

Whatever their personal faith,

all poets, as such,

are polytheists.

Marginalia (Extracts)[3]

When we do evil,

we and our victims

are equally bewildered.

A dead man

who never caused others to die

seldom rates a statue.

Animal femurs

ascribed to saints who never

existed, are still

more holy than portraits

of conquerors who,

unfortunately, did.

His thoughts pottered

from verses to sex to God

without punctuation.

How cheerful they looked,

the unoccupied bar-stools

in mid-afternoon,

freed for some hours from the weight

of drab defeated bottoms.

Even Hate should be precise:

very few White Folks

have fucked their mothers.

Zawgee (1907 – 1973)

The Way of the Water-Hyacinth[1]

Translated from the Burmese by Lyn Aye

Bobbing on the breeze blown waves

bowing to the tide

hyacinth rises and falls

falling but not felled

by flotsam, twigs, leaves

she ducks, bobs and weaves.

Ducks, ducks by the score

jolting, quacking and more

she spins through—

spinning, swamped, slimed, sunk

she rises, resolute

still crowned by petals.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979)

Filling Station[1]

Oh, but it is dirty!

—this little filling station,

oil-soaked, oil-permeated

to a disturbing, over-all

black translucency.

Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,

oil-soaked monkey suit

that cuts him under the arms,

and several quick and saucy

and greasy sons assist him

(it’s a family filling station),

all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?

It has a cement porch

behind the pumps, and on it

a set of crushed and grease-

impregnated wickerwork;

on the wicker sofa

a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide

the only note of color—

of certain color. They lie

upon a big dim doily

draping a taboret

(part of the set), beside

a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?

Why the taboret?

Why, oh why, the doily?

(Embroidered in daisy stitch

with marguerites, I think,

and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.

Somebody waters the plant,

or oils it, maybe. Somebody

arranges the rows of cans

so that they softly say:

ESSO—SO—SO—SO

to high-strung automobiles.

Somebody loves us all.

In the Waiting Room[1]

In Worcester, Massachusetts,

I went with Aunt Consuelo

to keep her dentist’s appointment

and sat and waited for her

in the dentist’s waiting room.

It was winter. It got dark

early. The waiting room

was full of grown-up people,

arctics and overcoats,

lamps and magazines.

My aunt was inside

what seemed like a long time

and while I waited I read

the National Geographic

(I could read) and carefully

studied the photographs:

the inside of a volcano,

black, and full of ashes;

then it was spilling over

in rivulets of fire.

Osa and Martin Johnson

dressed in riding breeches,

laced boots, and pith helmets.

A dead man slung on a pole

—“Long Pig,” the caption said.

Babies with pointed heads

wound round and round with string;

black, naked women with necks

wound round and round with wire

like the necks of light bulbs.

Their breasts were horrifying.

I read it right straight through.

I was too shy to stop.

And then I looked at the cover:

the yellow margins, the date.

Suddenly, from inside,

came an oh! of pain

—Aunt Consuelo’s voice—

not very loud or long.

I wasn’t at all surprised;

even then I knew she was

a foolish, timid woman.

I might have been embarrassed,

but wasn’t. What took me

completely by surprise

was that it was me:

my voice, in my mouth.

Without thinking at all

I was my foolish aunt,

I—we—were falling, falling,

our eyes glued to the cover

of the National Geographic,

February, 1918.

I said to myself: three days

and you’ll be seven years old.

I was saying it to stop

the sensation of falling off

the round, turning world.

into cold, blue-black space.

But I felt: you are an I,

you are an Elizabeth,

you are one of them.

Why should you be one, too?

I scarcely dared to look

to see what it was I was.

I gave a sidelong glance

—I couldn’t look any higher—

at shadowy gray knees,

trousers and skirts and boots

and different pairs of hands

lying under the lamps.

I knew that nothing stranger

had ever happened, that nothing

stranger could ever happen.

Why should I be my aunt,

or me, or anyone?

What similarities—

boots, hands, the family voice

I felt in my throat, or even

the National Geographic

and those awful hanging breasts—

held us all together

or made us all just one?

How—I didn’t know any

word for it—how “unlikely” …

How had I come to be here,

like them, and overhear

a cry of pain that could have

got loud and worse but hadn’t?

The waiting room was bright

and too hot. It was sliding

beneath a big black wave,

another, and another.

Then I was back in it.

The War was on. Outside,

in Worcester, Massachusetts,

were night and slush and cold,

and it was still the fifth

of February, 1918.

One Art[1]

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Sestina[1]

September rain falls on the house.

In the failing light, the old grandmother

sits in the kitchen with the child

beside the Little Marvel Stove,

reading the jokes from the almanac,

laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears

and the rain that beats on the roof of the house

were both foretold by the almanac,

but only known to a grandmother.

The iron kettle sings on the stove.

She cuts some bread and says to the child,

it’s time for tea now; but the child

is watching the teakettle’s small hard tears

dance like mad on the hot black stove,

the way the rain must dance on the house.

Tidying up, the old grandmother

hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac

hovers half open above the child,

hovers above the old grandmother

and her teacup full of dark brown tears.

She shivers and says she thinks the house

feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.

I know what I know, says the almanac.

With crayons the child draws a rigid house

and a winding pathway. Then the child

puts in a man with buttons like tears

and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother

busies herself about the stove,

the little moons fall down like tears

from between the pages of the almanac

into the flower bed the child

has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.

The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove

and the child draws another inscrutable house.

The Armadillo[1]

for Robert Lowell

This is the time of year

when almost every night

the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.

Climbing the mountain height,

rising toward a saint

still honored in these parts,

the paper chambers flush and fill with light

that comes and goes, like hearts.

Once up against the sky it’s hard

to tell them from the stars—

planets, that is—the tinted ones:

Venus going down, or Mars,

or the pale green one. With a wind,

they flare and falter, wobble and toss;

but if it’s still they steer between

the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,

receding, dwindling, solemnly

and steadily forsaking us,

or, in the downdraft from a peak,

suddenly turning dangerous.

Last night another big one fell.

It splattered like an egg of fire

against the cliff behind the house.

The flame ran down. We saw the pair

of owls who nest there flying up

and up, their whirling black-and-white

stained bright pink underneath, until

they shrieked up out of sight.

The ancient owls’ nest must have burned.

Hastily, all alone,

a glistening armadillo left the scene,

rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

and then a baby rabbit jumped out,

short-eared, to our surprise.

So soft!—a handful of intangible ash

with fixed, ignited eyes.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!

O falling fire and piercing cry

and panic, and a weak mailed fist

clenched ignorant against the sky!

May Swenson (1913 – 1989)

A Couple[1]

A bee rolls in the yellow rose,

does she invite his hairy rub?

He scrubs himself in her creamy folds.

A bullet soft imposes her spiral

and, spinning, burrows

to her dewy shadows.

The gold grooves almost match

the yellow bowl.

Does his touch please or scratch?

When he’s done his honey-thieving

at her matrix, whirs free, leaving,

she closes, still tall, chill

unrumpled on her stem.

David Ignatow (1914 – 1997)

The Bagel[2]

I stopped to pick up the bagel

rolling away in the wind,

annoyed with myself

for having dropped it

as if it were a portent.

Faster and faster it rolled,

with me running after it

bent low, gritting my teeth,

and I found myself doubled over

and rolling down the street

head over heels, one complete somersault

after another like a bagel

and strangely happy with myself.

Randall Jarrell (1914 – 1965)

Bats[1]

A bat is born

naked and blind and pale.

His mother makes a pocket of her tail

and catches him. He clings to her long fur

by his thumbs and toes and teeth.

And then the mother dances through the night

doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting –

Her baby hangs on underneath.

All night, in happiness, she hunts and flies.

Her high sharp cries

like shining needlepoints of sound

go out into the night and, echoing back,

tell her what they have touched.

She hears how far it is, how big it is,

which way it’s going:

she lives by hearing.

The mother eats the moths and gnats she catches

in full flight; in full flight

the mother drinks the water of the pond

she skims across. Her baby hangs on tight.

Her baby drinks the milk she makes him

in moonlight or starlight, in mid-air.

Their single shadow, printed on the moon

or fluttering across the stars, whirls on all night;

at daybreak

the tired mother flaps home to her rafter.

The others are all there.

They hang themselves up by their toes,

they wrap themselves in their brown wings.

Bunched upside down, they sleep in air.

Their sharp ears, their sharp teeth,

their quick sharp faces

are dull and slow and mild.

All the bright day, as the mother sleeps,

she folds her wings about her sleeping child.

Next Day[1]

Moving from Cheer to Joy from Joy to All,

I take a box

and add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.

The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical

food-gathering flocks

are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

is learning what to overlook. And I am wise

if that is wisdom.

Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves

and the boy takes it to my station wagon,

what I’ve become

troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and pretty

and poor, I’d wish

what all girls wish: to have a husband,

a house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish

is womanish:

that the boy putting groceries in my car

see me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.

For so many years

I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me

and its mouth watered.

How often they have undressed me,

the eyes of strangers!

And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

imaginings within my imagining,

I too have taken

the chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog

and we start home. Now I am good.

The last mistaken,

ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm

some soap and water—

it was so long ago, back in some Gay

Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know … Today I miss

my lovely daughter

away at school, my sons away at school,

my husband away at work—I wish for them.

The dog, the maid,

and I go through the sure unvarying days

at home in them. As I look at my life,

I am afraid

only that it will change, as I am changing:

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.

It looks at me

from the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,

the smile I hate. Its plain, lined look

of gray discovery

repeats to me: “You’re old. “That’s all, I’m old.

And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral

I went to yesterday.

My friend’s cold made-up face,

granite among its flowers,

Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body

were my face and body.

As I think of her and I hear her telling me

how young I seem; I am exceptional;

I think of all I have.

But really no one is exceptional,

no one has anything, I’m anybody,

I stand beside my grave

confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner[1]

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,

and I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret

with a hose.

William Stafford (1914 – 1993)

Traveling Through the Dark[1]

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.

It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:

that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car

and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;

she had stiffened already, almost cold.

I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—

her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,

alive, still, never to be born.

Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;

under the hood purred the steady engine.

I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;

around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,

then pushed her over the edge into the river.

Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953)

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night[2]

Do not go gentle into that good night,

old age should burn and rave at close of day;

rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

because their words had forked no lightning they

do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Robert Lax (1915 – 2000)

Alley Violinist[1]

If you were an alley violinist

and they threw you money

from three windows

and the first note contained

a nickel and said:

when you play, we dance and

sing, signed

a very poor family

and the second one contained

a dime and said:

I like your playing very much,

signed

a sick old lady

and the last one contained

a dollar and said:

beat it,

would you:

stand there and play?

beat it?

walk away playing your fiddle?

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 – 2000)

A Song in the Front Yard[1]

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.

A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now

and maybe down the alley,

to where the charity children play.

I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine

how they don’t have to be in at a quarter to nine.

My mother, she tells me that Johnny Mae

will grow up to be a bad woman.

That George’ll be taken to jail soon or late.

(On account of last winter he sold our back gate.)

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.

And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,

and wear the brave stockings of night-black lace

and strut down the streets with paint on my face.

The Boy Died in my Alley[2]

to Running Boy

The Boy died in my alley

without my Having Known.

Policeman said, next morning,

“Apparently died Alone.”

“You heard a shot?” Policeman said.

Shots I hear and Shots I hear.

I never see the Dead.

The Shot that killed him yes I heard

as I heard the Thousand shots before;

careening tinnily down the nights

across my years and arteries.

Policeman pounded on my door.

“Who is it?” “POLICE!” Policeman yelled.

“A Boy was dying in your alley.

A Boy is dead, and in your alley.

And have you known this Boy before?”

I have known this Boy before.

I have known this boy before, who ornaments my alley.

I never saw his face at all.

I never saw his future fall.

But I have known this Boy.

I have always heard him deal with death.

I have always heard the shout, the volley.

I have closed my heart-ears late and early.

And I have killed him ever.

I joined the Wild and killed him

with knowledgeable unknowing.

I saw where he was going.

I saw him Crossed. And seeing,

I did not take him down.

He cried not only “Father!”

but “Mother!

Sister!

Brother.”

The cry climbed up the alley.

It went up to the wind.

It hung upon the heaven

for a long

stretch-strain of Moment.

The red floor of my alley

is a special speech to me.

Robert Lowell (1917 – 1977)

Reading Myself[1]

Like thousands, I took just pride and more than just,

struck matches that brought my blood to a boil;

I memorized the tricks to set the river on fire—

somehow never wrote something to go back to.

Can I suppose I am finished with wax flowers

and have earned my grass

on the minor slopes of Parnassus. …

no honeycomb is built without a bee

adding circle to circle, cell to cell,

the wax and honey of a mausoleum—

the round dome proves its maker is alive;

the corpse of the insect lives embalmed in honey,

prays that its perishable work live long

enough for the sweet-tooth bear to desecrate—

this open book. my open coffin.

Keith Douglas (1920 – 1944)

Vergissmeinnicht[2]

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone

returning over the nightmare ground

we found the place again, and found

the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun

overshadowing. As we came on

that day, he hit my tank with one

like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil

the dishonored picture of his girl

who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht

in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,

abased, and seeming to have paid

and mocked at by his own equipment

that’s hard and good when he’s decayed.

But she would weep to see today

how on his skin the swart flies move;

the dust upon the paper eye

and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled

who had one body and one heart.

And death who had the soldier singled

has done the lover mortal hurt.

Howard Nemerov (1920 – 1991)

Gyroscope[1]

This admirable gadget, when it is wound on a string and spun with steady

force, maintains its balance on most any smooth surface, pleasantly

humming as it goes. It is whirled not on a constant course, but still

stands in unshivering integrity for quite some time, meaning nothing

perhaps but being something agreeable to watch, a silver nearly silence

gleaning a stillness out of speed, composing unity from spin, so that its

hollow spaces seem solids of light, until it wobbles and begins to whine,

and then with an odd lunge eccentric and reckless, it skids away and

drops dead into its own skeleton.

Money[1]

AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE

This morning we shall spend a few minutes

upon the study of symbolism, which is basic

to the nature of money. I show you this nickel.

Icons and cryptograms are written all over

the nickel: one side shows a hunchbacked bison

bending his head and curling his tail to accommodate

the circular nature of money. Over him arches

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and squinched in

between that and his rump, E PLURIBUS UNUM,

a Roman reminiscence that appears to mean

an indeterminately large number of things

all of which are the same. Under the bison

a straight line giving him a ground to stand on

reads FIVE CENTS. And on the other side of our nickel

there is the profile of a man with long hair

and a couple of feathers in the hair; we know

somehow that he is an American Indian, and

he wears the number nineteen-thirty-six.

Right in front of his eyes the word LIBERTY, bent

to conform with the curve of the rim, appears

to be falling out of the sky Y first; the Indian

keeps his eyes downcast and does not notice this;

to notice it, indeed, would be shortsighted of him.

So much for the iconography of one of our nickels,

which is now becoming a rarity and something of

a collectors’ item: for as a matter of fact

there is almost nothing you can buy with a nickel,

the representative American Indian was destroyed

a hundred years or so ago, and his descendants’

relations with liberty are maintained with reservations,

or primitive concentration camps; while the bison,

except for a few examples kept in cages,

is now extinct. Something like that, I think,

is what Keats must have meant in his celebrated

Ode on a Grecian Urn.

Notice, in conclusion,

a number of circumstances sometimes overlooked

even by experts:(a) Indian and bison,

confined to obverse and reverse of the coin,

can never see each other;(b) they are looking

to opposite directions, the bison past

the Indian’s feathers, the Indian past

the bison’s tail; (c) they are upside down

to one another; (d) the bison has a human face

somewhat resembling that of Jupiter Ammon.

I hope that our studies today will have shown you

something of the import of symbolism

with respect to understanding of what is symbolized.

Snowflakes[1]

Not slowly wrought, nor treasured for their form

in heaven, but by the blind self of the storm

spun off, each driven individual

perfected in the moment of its fall.

Hayden Carruth (b. 1921)

Little Citizen, Little Survivor[2]

A brown rat has taken up residence with me.

A little brown rat with pinkish ears and lovely

almond-shaped eyes. He and his wife live

in the woodpile by my back door, and they are

so equal I cannot tell which is which when they

poke their noses out of the crevices among

the sticks of firewood and then venture farther

in search of sunflower seeds spilled from the feeder.

I can’t tell you, my friend, how glad I am to see them.

I haven’t seen a fox for years, or a mink, or

a fisher cat, or an eagle, or a porcupine, I haven’t

seen any of my old company of the woods

and the fields, we who used to live in such

close affection and admiration. Well, I remember

when the coons would tap on my window, when

the ravens would speak to me from the edge of their

little precipice. Where are they now? Everyone knows.

Gone. Scattered in this terrible dispersal. But at least

the brown rat that most people so revile and fear

and castigate has brought his wife to live with me

again. Welcome, little citizen, little survivor.

Lend me your presence, and I will lend you mine.

Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

A Summer Morning[1]

Her young employers having got in late

from seeing friends in town

and scraped the right front fender on the gate,

will not, the cook expects, be coming down.

She makes a Quiet breakfast for herself.

The coffee-pot is bright,

the jelly where it should be on the shelf.

She breaks an egg into the morning light,

then, with the bread knife lifted, stands and hears

the sweet efficient sounds

of thrush and catbird and the snip of shears

where, in the terraced backward of the grounds,

a gardener works before the heat of day.

He straightens for a view

of the big house ascending stony-gray

out of his bed’s mosaic with the dew.

His young employers having got in late,

he and the cook alone

receive the morning on their old estate,

possessing what the owners can but own.

Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985)

An Arundel Tomb[1]

Side by side, their faces blurred,

the earl and countess lie in stone,

their proper habits vaguely shown

as jointed armor, stiffened pleat,

and that faint hint of the absurd—

the little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque

hardly involves the eye, until

it meets the left-hand gauntlet, still

clasped empty in the other; and

one sees, with a sharp tender shock,

his hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.

Such faithfulness in effigy

was just a detail friends would see:

a sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace

thrown off in helping to prolong

the Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in

their supine stationary voyage

the air would change to soundless damage,

turn the old tenantry away;

how soon succeeding eyes begin

to look, not read. Rigidly they

persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths

of time. Snow fell, undated. Light

each summer thronged the glass. A bright

litter of birdcalls strewed the same

bone-riddled ground. And up the paths

the endless altered people came,

washing at their identity.

Now, helpless in the hollow of

an unarmorial age, a trough

of smoke in slow suspended skeins

above the scrap of history,

only an attitude remains:

time has transfigured them into

untruth. The stone fidelity

they hardly meant has come to be

their final blazon, and to prove

our almost-instinct almost true:

what will survive of us is love.

Talking In Bed[1]

Talking in bed ought to be easiest

lying together there goes back so far

an emblem of two people being honest.

Yet more and more time passes silently.

Outside the wind’s incomplete unrest

builds and disperses clouds about the sky.

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.

None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why

at this unique distance from isolation

it becomes still more difficult to find

words at once true and kind

or not untrue and not unkind.

This Be the Verse[1]

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

and add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

by fools in old-style hats and coats,

who half the time were soppy-stern

and half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

and don’t have any kids yourself.

James Dickey (1923 – 1997)

The Heaven of Animals[1]

Here they are. The soft eyes open.

If they have lived in a wood

it is a wood.

If they have lived on plains

it is grass rolling

under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,

anyway, beyond their knowing.

Their instincts wholly bloom

and they rise.

The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,

outdoing, desperately

outdoing what is required:

the richest wood,

the deepest field.

For some of these,

it could not be the place

it is, without blood.

These hunt, as they have done,

but with claws and teeth grown perfect,

more deadly than they can believe.

They stalk more silently,

and crouch on the limbs of trees,

and their descent

upon the bright backs of their prey

may take years

in a sovereign floating of joy.

And those that are hunted

know this as their life,

their reward: to walk

under such trees in full knowledge

of what is in glory above them,

and to feel no fear,

but acceptance, compliance.

Fulfilling themselves without pain

at the cycle’s center,

they tremble, they walk

under the tree,

they fall, they are torn,

they rise, they walk again.

The Sheep Child[1]

Farm boys wild to couple

with anything with soft-wooded trees

with mounds of earth mounds

of pine straw will keep themselves off

animals by legends of their own:

in the hay-tunnel dark

and dung of barns, they will

say I have heard tell

that in a museum in Atlanta

way back in a corner somewhere

there’s this thing that’s only half

sheep like a woolly baby

pickled in alcohol because

those things can’t live his eyes

are open but you can’t stand to look

I heard from somebody who …

But this is now almost all

gone. The boys have taken

their own true wives in the city,

the sheep are safe in the west hill

pasture but we who were born there

still are not sure. Are we,

because we remember, remembered

in the terrible dust of museums?

Merely with his eyes, the sheep-child may

be saying

I am here, in my father’s house.

I who am half of your world, came deeply

to my mother in the long grass

of the west pasture, where she stood like moonlight

listening for foxes. It was something like love

from another world that seized her

from behind, and she gave, not Lifting her head

out of dew, without ever looking, her best

self to that great need.

Turned loose, she dipped her face

farther into the chill of the earth, and in a sound

of sobbing of something stumbling

away, began, as she must do,

to carry me. I woke, dying,

in the summer sun of the hillside, with my eyes

far more than human. I saw for a blazing moment

the great grassy world from both sides,

man and beast in the round of their need,

and the hill wind stirred in my wool,

my hoof and my hand clasped each other,

I ate my one meal

of milk, and died

staring. From dark grass I came straight

to my father’s house, whose dust

whirls up in the halls for no reason

when no one comes piling deep in a hellish mild corner,

and, through my immortal waters,

I meet the sun’s grains eye

to eye, and they fail at my closet of glass.

Dead, I am most surely living

in the minds of farm boys: I am he who drives

them like wolves from the hound bitch and calf

and from the chaste ewe in the wind.

They go into woods into bean fields they go

deep into their known right hands. Dreaming of me,

they groan they wait they suffer

themselves, they marry, they raise their kind.

Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003)

How We Heard the Name[1]

The river brought down

dead horses, dead men

and military debris,

indicative of war

or official acts upstream,

but it went by, it all

goes by, that is the thing

about the river. Then

a soldier on a log

went by. He seemed drunk

and we asked him Why

had he and this junk

come down to us so

from the past upstream.

“Friends,” he said, “the great

Battle of Granicus

has just been won

by all of the Greeks except

the Lacedaemonians and

myself: this is a joke

between me and a man

named Alexander, whom

all of you ba-bas

will hear of as a god.”

Love Song: I and Thou[1]

Nothing is plumb, level or square:

the studs are bowed, the joists

are shaky by nature, no piece fits

any other piece without a gap

or pinch, and bent nails

dance all over the surfacing

like maggots. By Christ

I am no carpenter. I built

the roof for myself, the walls

for myself, the floors

for myself, and got

hung up in it myself. I

danced with a purple thumb

at this house-warming, drunk

with my prime whiskey: rage.

Oh I spat rage’s nails

into the frame-up of my work:

It held. It settled plumb.

level, solid, square and true

for that one great moment. Then

it screamed and went on through,

skewing as wrong the other way.

God damned it. This is hell,

but I planned it I sawed it

I nailed it and I

will live in it until it kills me.

I can nail my left palm

to the left-hand cross-piece but

I can’t do everything myself.

I need a hand to nail the right,

a help, a love, a you, a wife.

Denise Levertov (1923 – 1997)

Consulting the Oracle[1]

I asked a blind man the way east,

because I’d not seen him,

not looked before asking.

He smiled, and walked on,

sure of his felt way,

silent.

From a Plane[2]

Green water of lagoons,

brown water of a great river

sunning its muscles along intelligent

rectangular swathes of

other brown, other green,

alluvial silvers.

Always air

looked down through, gives

a reclamation of order, re-

visioning solace: the great body

not torn apart, though raked and raked

by our claws—

Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)

Imaginary Paintings[1]

l.HOW I WOULD PAINT THE FUTURE

A strip of horizon and a figure,

seen from the back, forever approaching.

2.HOW I WOULD PAINT HAPPINESS

Something sudden, a windfall,

a meteor shower. No—

a flowering tree releasing

all its blossoms at once,

and the one standing beneath it

unexpectedly robed in bloom,

transformed into a stranger

too beautiful to touch.

3.HOW I WOULD PAINT DEATH

White on white or black on black.

No ground, no figure. An immense canvas,

which I will never finish.

4.HOW I WOULD PAINT LOVE

I would not paint love.

5.HOW I WOULD PAINT THE LEAP OF FAITH

A black cat jumping up three feet

to reach a three-inch shelf.

6.HOW I WOULD PAINT THE BIG LIE

Smooth, and deceptively small

so that it can be swallowed

like something we take for a cold.

An elongated capsule,

an elegant cylinder,

sweet and glossy,

that pleases the tongue

and goes down easy,

never mind

the poison inside.

7.HOW I WOULD PAINT NOSTALGIA

An old-fashioned painting, a genre piece.

People in bright and dark clothing.

A radiant bride in white

standing above a waterfall,

watching the water rush

away, away, away.

Reader[1]

For Mary Elsie Robertson, author of Family Life

A husband. A wife. Three children. Last year they did not exist; today the parents are middle-aged, one of the daughters grown. I live with them in their summer house by the sea. I live with them, but they can’t see me sharing their walks on the beach, their dinner preparations in the kitchen. I am in pain because I know what they don’t, that one of them has snipped the interlocking threads of their lives and now there is no end to the slow unraveling. If I am a ghost they look through, I am also a Greek chorus, hand clapped to mouth in fear, knowing their best intentions will go wrong. “Don’t,” I want to shout, but I am inaudible to them; beach towels over their shoulders, wooden spoon in hand, they keep pulling at the threads. When nothing is left they disappear. Closing the book I feel abandoned. I have lost them, my dear friends. I want to write them, wish them well, assure each one of my affection. If only they would have let me say good-bye.

Silence and Dancing[1]

“Schweigen and tanzen” are words spoken by Elektra near the end of the

opera by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

Silence and dancing

is what it comes down to

in the end for them,

as they struggle from wheelchair to bed,

knowing nothing changes,

that the poor, who are themselves,

will become even poorer

and the fatuous voices on the screen

will go on gabbling about another

war they cannot do without.

What defense against this

except silence and dancing,

the memory of dancing—

O, but they danced, did they ever;

she danced like a devil, she’ll tell you,

recalling a dress the color of sunrise,

hair fluffed to sea-foam,

some man’s some boy’s

damp hand on her back

under the music’s sweet, hot assault

and wildness erupting inside her

like a suppressed language,

insisting on speaking itself

through her eloquent body,

a far cry

from the well-groomed words on her lips.

The Story[1]

You are telling a story:

How Fire Took Water to Wife

It’s always like this, you say,

opposites attract

They want to enter each other,

be one,

so he burns her as hard as he can

and she tries to drown him

It’s called love at first

and doesn’t hurt

but after a while she weeps

and says he is killing her,

he shouts that he cannot breathe

underwater—

Make up your own

ending, you say to the children,

and they will, they will

Widow[2]

What the neighbors bring to her kitchen

is food for the living. She wants to eat

the food of the dead, their pure

narcotic of dry, black seeds.

Why, without him, should she desire

the endurance offered by meat and grain,

the sugars that glue the soul to the body?

She thanks them, but does not eat,

consumes strong coffee as if it were air

and she the vigilant candle

on a famous grave, until the familiar

sounds of the house become strange,

turn into messages in the new language

he has been forced to learn.

All night she works on the code,

almost happy, her body rising

like bread, while the food in its china caskets

dries out on the kitchen table.

Roberto Juarroz (1925 – 1995)

Any movement kills something[1]

Translated from the Spanish by Mary Crow

Any movement kills something.

It kills the place that is abandoned,

the gesture, the unrepeatable position,

some anonymous organism,

a sign, a glance,

a love that returned,

a presence or its contrary,

the life always of someone else,

one’s own life without others.

And being here is moving,

being here is killing something.

Even the dead move,

even the dead kill.

Here the air smells of crime.

But the odor comes from farther away.

And even the odor moves.

Donald Justice (1925 – 2004)

American Sketches[1]

The telephone poles

have been holding their

arms out

a long time now

to birds

that will not

settle there

but pass with

strange cawings

westward to

where dark trees

gather about a

waterhole this

is Kansas the

mountains start here

just behind

the closed eyes

of a farmer’s

sons asleep

in their workclothes

In Bertram’s Garden[2]

Jane looks down at her organdy skirt

as if it somehow were the thing disgraced,

for being there, on the floor, in the dirt,

and she catches it up about her waist,

smoothes it out along one hip,

and pulls it over the crumpled slip.

On the porch, green-shuttered, cool,

asleep is Bertram that bronze boy,

who, having wound her around a spool,

sends her spinning like a toy

out to the garden, all alone,

to sit and weep on a bench of stone.

Soon the purple dark must bruise

lily and bleeding-heart and rose,

and the little cupid lose

eyes and ears and chin and nose,

and Jane lie down with others soon,

naked to the naked moon.

Carolyn Kizer (b. 1925)

Bitch[1]

Now, when he and I meet, after all these years,

I say to the bitch inside me, don’t start growling.

He isn’t a trespasser anymore,

just an old acquaintance tipping his hat.

My voice says, “nice to see you,”

as the bitch starts to bark hysterically.

He isn’t an enemy now,

where are your manners, I say, as I say,

“How are the children? They must be growing up.”

At a kind word from him, a look like the old day,

the bitch changes her tone: she begins to whimper.

She wants to snuggle up to him, to cringe.

Down, girl! Keep your distance

or I’ll give you a taste of the choke-chain.

“Fine, I’m just fine,” I tell him.

She slobbers and grovels.

After all, I am her mistress. She is basically loyal.

It’s just that she remembers how she came running

each evening, when she heard his step;

how she lay at his feet and looked up adoringly

though he was absorbed in his paper;

or, bored with her devotion, ordered in to the kitchen

until he was ready to play.

But the small careless kindnesses

when he’d had a good day, or a couple of drinks,

come back to her now, seem more important

than the casual cruelties, the ultimate dismissal.

“It’s nice to know you are doing so well,” I say.

He couldn’t have taken you with him;

you were too demonstrative, too clumsy,

not like the well-groomed pets of his new friends.

“Give my regards to your wife,” I say. You gag

as I drag you off by the scruff,

saying, “Goodbye! Goodbye!

Nice to have seen you again.”

The Ashes[1]

This elderly poet, unpublished for five decades,

said that one day in her village a young girl

came screaming down the road,

“The Red Guards are coming! The Red Guards …

Are Coming!” At once the poet

ran into her house and stuffed the manuscript

of her poems into the stove. The only copy.

When the guards arrived they took her into the yard

for interrogation. As they spoke

the poet’s mother tried to hang herself in the kitchen.

That’s all I know about the Red Guard.

It is enough.

The elderly poet is bitter—and why not?

She earned her Ph.D. at an Ivy League school

and returned to China in 1948. Bad timing.

She is bitter with me

because I’ve chosen to translate a younger poet,

young enough to be her child or mine.

The truth is, her poems are forced,

but not flowering. The good work died in the stove.

She knows this. She wants me to recompose them

from the ashes. She wants the noose

around her mother’s neck untied by me.

She wants—oh she wants!—to have her whole life over:

not to leave America in 1948;

to know me when we are both young promising poets.

Her rusty English now is flawless,

my Mandarin, so long unused, is fluent.

No dictionaries needed. A perfect confidence

flowing between us. And the Red Guard,

except as the red sword-lilies

that invigilate the garden,

unimagined by us both:

I, who believe the Reds are agrarian reformers,

she, who believes she will be an honored poet,

her name known to everyone, safe in her fame.

Robert Creeley (1926 – 2005)

Heaven[1]

Wherever they’ve

gone they’re

not here

anymore

and all

they stood

for is empty

also.

I Know a Man[1]

As I sd to my

friend, because I am

always talking,—John, I

sd, which was not his

name, the darkness surrounds

us, what

can we do against

it, or else, shall we &

why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for

christ’s sake, look

out where yr going.

I’ll Win[2]

I’ll win the way

I always do

by being gone

when they come.

When they look, they’ll see

nothing of me

and where I am

They’ll not know.

This, I thought, is my way

and right or wrong,

it’s me. Being dead, then,

I’ll have won completely.

Old Days[1]

River’s old look

from summers ago

we’d come to swim

now yellow, yellow

rustling, flickering

leaves in sun

middle of October

water’s up, high sky’s blue,

bank’s mud’s moved,

edge is

closer,

nearer than then.

Place (“There’s a Way out”)[2]

There’s a way out

of here but it

hurts at the edges

where there’s no time left

to be one if

you were and friends

gone, days seemingly

over. No one.

Thanksgiving’s Done[1]

All leaves gone, yellow

light with low sun,

branches edged

in sharpened outline

against far-up pale sky.

Nights with their blackness

and myriad stars, colder

now as these days go by.

Galway Kinnell (b. 1927)

St. Francis and the Sow[2]

The bud

stands for all things,

even those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as St. Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops

to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats

into the fourteen mouths sucking

and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

James Wright (1927 – 1980)

A Blessing[1]

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

to welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely,

they can hardly contain their happiness

that we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in

the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

for she has walked over to me

and nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

her mane falls wild on her forehead,

and the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

that is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

that if I stepped out of my body I would break

into blossom.

Beginning[1]

The moon drops one or two feathers into the fields.

the dark wheat listens.

Be still.

Now.

There they are, the moon’s young, trying

their wings.

Between trees,

a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow

of her face, and now she steps into the air,

now she is gone

wholly, into the air.

I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe

or move.

I listen.

The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,

and I lean toward mine.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota[2]

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly

asleep on the black trunk,

blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

the cowbells follow one another

into the distances of the afternoon.

To my right,

in a field of sunlight between two pines,

the droppings of last year’s horses

blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

Irving Feldman (b. 1928)

The Dream[2]

Once, years after your death, I dreamt

you were alive and that I’d found you

living once more in the old apartment.

But I had taken a woman up there

to make love to in the empty rooms.

I was angry at you who’d borne and loved me

and because of whom I believe in heaven.

I regretted your return from the dead

and said to myself almost bitterly,

“For godsakes, what was the big rush,

couldn’t she wait one more day?”

And just so, daily somewhere Messiah

is shunned like a beggar at the door because

someone has something he wants to finish

or just something better to do, something

he prefers not to put off forever

—little pleasures so deeply wished

that Heaven’s coming has to seem bad luck

or worse, God’s intruding selfishness!

But you always turned Messiah away

with a penny and a cake for his trouble

—because wash had to be done, because

who could let dinner boil over and burn,

because everything had to be festive for

your husband, your daughters, your son.

Donald Hall (b. 1928)

My mother said[1]

My mother said, “Of course,

it may be nothing, but your father

has a spot on his lung.”

That was all that was said: My father

at fifty-one could never

speak of dreadful things without tears.

When I started home,

I kissed his cheek, which was not our habit.

In a letter, my mother

asked me not to kiss him again

because it made him sad.

In two weeks, the exploratory

revealed an inoperable

lesion.

The doctors never

told him; he never asked,

but read The Home Medical Guidebook.

Seven months later,

just after his fifty-second birthday

—his eyesight going,

his voice reduced to a whisper, three days

before he died—he said,

“If anything should happen to me … “

Names of Horses[1]

All winter your brute shoulders strained

against collars, padding

and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul

sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,

for the Glenwood stove next winter,

and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure

to spread on the fields,

dark manure of Holsteins,

and knobs of your own clustered with oats.

All summer you mowed the grass in the meadow and hayfield, the

mowing machine

clacketing beside,

while the sun walked high in the morning;

and after noon’s heat,

you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres,

gathering stacks,

and dragged the wagon from stack to stack,

and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn,

three loads of hay a day

from standing grass in the morning.

Sundays you trotted the two miles to church

with the light load

of a leather quartertop buggy,

and grazed in the sound of hymns.

Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill

of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.

When you were old and lame,

when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,

one October the man, who fed you and kept you,

and harnessed you every morning,

led you through corn stubble to sandy ground

above Eagle Pond,

and dug a hole beside you

where you stood shuddering in your skin,

and lay the shotgun’s muzzle

in the boneless hollow behind your ear,

and fired the slug into your brain,

and felled you into your grave,

shoveling sand to cover you,

setting goldenrod upright above you,

where by next summer a dent in the ground

made your monument.

For a hundred and fifty years, in the pasture of dead horses,

roots of pine trees

pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,

yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn,

and in winter

frost heaved your bones in the ground—

old toilers, soil makers:

O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.

The Porcelain Couple[1]

When Jane felt well enough for me to leave her

for a whole day, I drove south by the river

to empty my mother Lucy’s house in Connecticut.

I hurried from room to room, cellar to attic,

opening a crammed closet, then turning

to discover a chest with five full drawers.

I labeled for shipping sofas and chairs,

bedroom sets, and tables; I wrapped figurines

and fancy teacups in paper, preserving things

she cherished—and dreaded, in her last years,

might go for a nickel on the Spring Glen lawn.

Everywhere I looked I saw shelves and tabletops

covered with Lucy’s glass animals and music boxes.

Everywhere in closets, decades of dresses hung

in dead air. I carried garbage bags in one hand,

and with the other swept my mother’s leftover

possessions into sacks for the Hamden dump.

I stuffed bags full of blouses, handkerchiefs,

and the green-gold dress she wore to Bermuda.

At the last moment I discovered and saved

a cut-glass tumbler, stained red at the top,

Lucy l905 scripted on the stain. In the garage

I piled the clanking bags, then drove four hours

north with my hands tight on the Honda’s wheel,

drank a beer looking through Saturday’s mail,

pitched into bed beside Jane fitfully asleep,

and woke exhausted from rolling unendable

nightmares of traffic and fire. In my dreams

I grieved or mourned interchangeably for Lucy,

for Lucy’s things, for Jane, and for me.

When I woke, I rose as if from a drunken sleep

after looting a city and burning its temples.

All day as I ate lunch or counted out pills,

or as we lay weeping, hugging in bed together,

I counted precious things from our twenty years:

a blue vase, a candelabrum Jane carried on her lap

from the Baja, and the small porcelain box

from France I found under the tree one Christmas

where a couple in relief stretch out asleep,

like a catafalque, on the pastel double bed

of the box’s top, both wearing pretty nightcaps.

Philip Levine (b. 1928)

Belle Isle, 1949[1]

We stripped in the first warm spring night

and ran down into the Detroit River

to baptize ourselves in the brine

of car parts, dead fish, stolen bicycles,

melted snow. I remember going under

hand in hand with a Polish high-school girl

I’d never seen before, and the cries

our breath made caught at the same time

on the cold, and rising through the layers

of darkness into the final moonless atmosphere

that was this world, the girl breaking

the surface after me and swimming out

on the starless waters towards the lights

of Jefferson Ave. and the stacks

of the old stove factory unwinking.

Turning at last to see no island at all

but a perfect calm dark as far

as there was sight, and then a light

and another riding low out ahead

to bring us home, ore boats maybe, or smokers

walking alone. Back panting

to the gray coarse beach we didn’t dare

fall on, the damp piles of clothes,

and dressing side by side in silence

to go back where we came from.

Sweet Will[1]

The man who stood beside me

34 years ago this night fell

on to the concrete, oily floor

of Detroit Transmission, and we

stepped carefully over him until

he wakened and went back to this press.

It was Friday night, and the others

told me that every Friday he drank

more than he could hold and fell

and he wasn’t any dumber for it

so just let him get up at his

own sweet will or he’ll hit you.

“At his own sweet will,” was just

what the old black man said to me,

and he smiled the smile of one

who is still surprised that dawn

graying the cracked and broken windows

could start us all to singing in the cold.

Stash rose and wiped the back of his head

with a crumpled handkerchief and looked

at his own blood as though it were

dirt and puzzled as to how

it got there and then wiped the ends

of his fingers carefully one at a time

the way the mother wipes the fingers

of a sleeping child, and climbed back

on his wooden soda-pop case to

his punch press and hollered at all

of us over the oceanic roar of work,

addressing us by our names and nations—

“Nigger, Kike, Hunky, River Rat,”

but he gave it a tune, an old tune,

like “America the Beautiful.” And he danced

a little two-step and smiled showing

the four stained teeth left in the front

and took another sip of cherry brandy.

In truth it was no longer Friday,

for night had turned to day as it

often does for those who are patient,

so it was Saturday in the year of ‘48

in the very heart of the city of man

where your Cadillac cars get manufactured.

In truth all those people are dead,

they have gone up to heaven singing

“Time on my Hands” or “Begin the Beguine,”

and the Cadillacs have all gone back

to earth, and nothing that we made

that night is worth more than me.

And in truth I’m not worth a thing

what with my feet and my two bad eyes

and my one long nose and my breath

of old lies and my sad tales of men

who let the earth break them back,

each one, to dirty blood or bloody dirt.

Not worth a thing! Just like it was said

at my magic birth when the stars

collided and fire fell from great space

into great space, and people rose one

by one from cold beds to tend a world

that runs on and on at its own sweet will.

Anne Sexton (1928 – 1974)

Her Kind[1]

I have gone out, a possessed witch,

haunting the black air, braver at night;

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch

over the plain houses, light by light:

lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.

I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,

closets, silks, innumerable goods;

fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:

whining, rearranging the disaligned.

A woman like that is misunderstood.

I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,

waved my nude arms at villages going by,

learning the last bright routes, survivor

where your flames still bite my thigh

and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.

A woman like that is not ashamed to die.

I have been her kind.

from The Death of the Fathers: 2.How We Danced[2]

The night of my cousin’s wedding

I wore blue.

I was nineteen

and we danced, Father, we orbited.

We moved like angels washing themselves.

We moved like two birds on fire.

Then we moved like the sea in a jar,

slower and slower.

The orchestra played

“Oh how we danced on the night we were wed.”

And you waltzed me like a lazy Susan

and we were dear,

very dear.

Now that you are laid out,

useless as a blind dog,

now that you no longer lurk,

the song rings in my head.

Pure oxygen was the champagne we drank

and clicked our glasses, one to one.

The champagne breathed like a skin diver

and the glasses were crystal and the bride

and groom gripped each other in sleep

like nineteen-thirty marathon dancers.

Mother was a belle and danced with twenty men.

You danced with me never saying a word.

Instead the serpent spoke as you held me close.

The serpent, that mocker,

woke up and pressed against me

like a great god and we bent together

like two lonely swans.

With Mercy for the Greedy[1]

for my friend Ruth, who urges me to make an

appointment for the Sacrament of Confession

Concerning your letter in which you ask

me to call a priest and in which you ask

me to wear The Cross that you enclose;

your own cross,

your dog-bitten cross,

no larger than a thumb,

small and wooden, no thorns, this rose—

I pray to its shadow,

that gray place

where it lies on your letter … deep, deep.

I detest my sins and I try to believe

in The Cross.

I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face,

its solid neck, its brown sleep.

True. There is

a beautiful Jesus.

He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef.

How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in!

How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes!

But I can’t. Need is not quite belief.

All morning long

I have worn

your cross, hung with package string around my throat.

It tapped me lightly as a child’s heart might,

tapping secondhand, softly waiting to be born.

Ruth, I cherish the letter you wrote.

My friend, my friend, I was born

doing reference work in sin, and born

confessing it. This is what poems are:

with mercy

for the greedy,

they are the tongue’s wrangle,

the world’s pottage, the rat’s star.

Thom Gunn (1929 – 2004)

Still Life[1]

I shall not soon forget

the grayish-yellow skin

to which the face had set:

lids tight: nothing of his,

no tremor from within,

played on the surfaces.

He still found breath, and yet

it was an obscure knack.

I shall not soon forget

the angle of his head,

arrested and reared back

on the crisp field of bed,

back from what he could neither

accept, as one opposed,

nor, as a life-long breather,

consentingly let go,

the tube his mouth enclosed

in an astonished O.

The Reassurance[2]

About ten days or so

after we saw you dead

you came back in a dream.

I’m all right now you said.

And it was you, although

you were all fleshed out again:

you hugged us all round then,

and gave your welcoming beam.

How like you to be kind,

seeking to reassure.

And, yes, how like my mind

to make itself secure.

Dan Pagis (1930 – 1986)

Conversation[1]

Translated from the Hebrew by Stephen Mitchell

Four talked about the pine tree. One defined it by genus, species, and

variety. One assessed its disadvantages for the lumber industry. One

Quoted poems about pine trees in many languages. One took root,

stretched out branches, and rustled.

Izet Sarajlic (b. 1930)

Luck in Sarajevo[2]

translated from Serbo-Croat by Charles Simic

In Sarajevo

in the Spring of 1992,

everything is possible:

you go stand in a bread line

and end up in an emergency room

with your leg amputated.

Afterwards, you still maintain

that you were very lucky.

Gary Snyder (b. 1930)

Axe Handles[1]

One afternoon the last week in April

showing Kai how to throw a hatchet

one-half turn and it sticks in a stump.

He recalls the hatchet-head

without a handle, in the shop

and go gets it, and wants it for his own.

A broken-off axe handle behind the door

is long enough for a hatchet,

we cut it to length and take it

with the hatchet head

and working hatchet, to the wood block.

There I begin to shape the old handle

with the hatchet, and the phrase

first learned from Ezra Pound

rings in my ears!

“When making an axe handle

the pattern is not far off.”

And I say this to Kai

“Look: We’ll shape the handle

by checking the handle

of the axe we cut with—”

and he sees. And I hear it again:

it’s in Lu Ji’s Wen Fu, fourth century

A.D. “Essay on Literature”—in the

preface: “In making the handle Of an axe

by cutting wood with an axe

the model is indeed near at hand.”—

my teacher Shih-hsiang Chen

translated that and taught it years ago

and I see: Pound was an axe,

Chen was an axe, I am an axe

and my son a handle, soon

to be shaping again, model

and tool, craft of culture,

how we go on.

What you should know to be a poet[1]

all you can about animals as persons.

the names of trees and flowers and weeds.

names of stars, and the movements of the planets

and the moon.

your own six senses, with a watchful and elegant mind.

at least one kind of traditional magic:

divination, astrology, the book of changes, the tarot;

dreams.

the illusory demons and illusory shining gods;

kiss the ass of the devil and eat shit;

fuck his horny barbed cock,

fuck the hag,

and all the celestial angels

and maidens perfum’d and golden—

& then love the human: wives  husbands  and friends.

children’s games, comic books, bubble-gum,

the weirdness of television and advertising.

work, long dry hours of dull work swallowed and accepted

and lived with and finally lovd. exhaustion,

hunger, rest.

the wild freedom of the dance, extasy

silent solitary illumination, enstasy

real danger. gambles.  and the edge of death.

Derek Walcott (b. 1930)

Love after Love[1]

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

Miller Williams (b. 1930)

Listen[2]

I threw a snowball across the backyard.

My dog ran after it to bring it back.

It broke as it fell, scattering snow over snow.

She stood confused, seeing and smelling nothing.

She searched in widening circles until I called her.

She looked at me and said as clearly in silence

as if she had spoken,

I know it’s here, I’ll find it,

went back to the center and started the circles again.

I called her two more times before she came

slowly, stopping once to look back.

That was this morning. I’m sure that she’s forgotten.

I’ve had some trouble putting it out of my mind.

Etheridge Knight (1931 – 1991)

The Idea of Ancestry[1]

Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black

faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grandfathers

(both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,

cousins (1st and 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare

across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know

their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style,

they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me;

they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.

I have at one time or another been in love with my mother, 1

grandmother, 2 sisters, 2 aunts (1 went to the asylum), and 5 cousins.

I am now in love with a 7-yr-old niece (she sends me letters in large

block print,

and her picture is the only one that smiles at me).

I have the same name as 1 grandfather, 3 cousins, 3 nephews, and 1

uncle. The uncle disappeared when he was 15, just took off and caught a

freight (they say). He’s discussed each year when the family has a

reunion, he causes uneasiness in the clan, he is an empty space. My

father’s mother, who is 93 and who keeps the Family Bible with

everbyody’s birth dates (and death dates) in it, always mentions him.

There is no place in her Bible for “whereabouts unknown.”

The Warden Said to Me the Other Day[1]

The warden said to me the other day

(innocently, I think), “Say, Etheridge,

why come the black boys don’t run off

like the white boys do?”

I lowered my jaw and scratched my head

and said (innocently, I think), “Well, suh,

I ain’t for sure, but I reckon it’s cause

we ain’t got no wheres to run to.”

Tanikawa Shuntaro (b. 1931)

Translation by William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura

A Rudimentary Explanation of an Ideal Poem[2]

Called by people a poet,

I usually stay completely away from

what is called poetry,

and this not just when I’m eating,

reading, or chattering idly,

but even when I’m thinking about poetry.

Poetry strikes something like lightning at night.

For that split second, I see, hear and smell,

through a crack in consciousness, the world that expands beyond

Unlike consciousness, poetry shines brightly,

and unlike a dream, it admits of no interpretation.

Though written with words,

poetry is not words themselves.

Sometimes I think it shameful to turn it into words.

At such times I just quietly let it go,

and then I feel I have lost something.

In a world lighted up by poetic lightning,

where everything has its place,

I feel completely relaxed

(perhaps for a thousandth of a second).

It’s as though I have become a single silent wildflower.

But of course the moment I have written this,

I’m far removed from poetry,

though called a poet.

from With Silence My Companion[1]

I know how worthless this poem will be

under the scrutiny of daylight

and yet I cannot now disown my words.

While others fill their baskets at market

I drink water from a cup on the table,

utterly idle.

I see through the trees, by the distant pool,

a white statue,

its genitals exposed.

It is I.

I am immersed

in the past

and have become a block of dumb stone

and not the Orpheus I hoped to be.

From My Father’s Death[1]

…

Death, coming in his sleep,

swept away with its gentle, quick hands

all the details of his life.

But there was no end of subjects for our idle talk,

while we talked away the brief hours of the night,

before the flowers withered on the altar.

Death is unknowable

and, being unknowable, lacks details,

which makes it resemble poetry.

Both death and poetry tend to sum up life,

but survivors enjoy the increasingly mysterious details

more than the summing up of life.

The Naif[2]

My toe tips look unusually far away.

Five toes lie coldly together

like five people strangers to one another.

There’s a telephone beside my bed

connected to the world,

but there’s no one I want to talk to.

Since I grew self-conscious my life has been

nothing but business,

business.

Neither of my parents taught me how to make small talk.

I’ve relied on versification

as my only guide for forty years.

Strange, but I feel most comfortable saying, “A poet,”

when people ask who I am.

Was I a poet when I abandoned that woman?

Am I, eating my favorite baked sweet potato, a poet?

Am I, grown bald, a poet?

There are countless middle-aged men of such kind

who are not poets

I’m but a naïve child

that has just chased the butterflies of beautiful words.

This child’s soul, approaching one-hundred,

remains innocent,

unaware that he has hurt people.

Poetry is

ridiculous.

Adrian Mitchell (b. 1932)

A Puppy Called Puberty[1]

It was like keeping a puppy in your underpants

a secret puppy you weren’t allowed to show to anyone

not even your best friend or your worst enemy.

you wanted to pat him, stroke him, cuddle him

all the time you weren’t supposed to touch him.

He only slept for five minutes at a time

then he’d suddenly perk up his head

in the middle of school medical inspection

and always on bus rides.

So you had to climb down from the upper deck

all bent double to smuggle the puppy off the bus

without the buxom conductress spotting

your wicked and ticketless stowaway.

Jumping up, wet-nosed, eagerly wagging—

he only stopped being a nuisance

when you were alone together

pretending to be doing your homework

but really gazing at each other

through hot and lazy daydreams.

Of those beautiful schoolgirls on the bus

with kittens bouncing in their sweaters.

Heberto Padilla (1932 – 2000)

Landscapes[1]

Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid and Andrew Hurley

You can see them everywhere in Cuba.

Green or red or yellow, flaking off from the water

and the sun, true landscapes of these times

of war.

The wind tugs at the Coca-Cola signs.

The clocks courtesy of Canada Dry are stopped

at the old time.

The neon signs, broken, crackle and splutter in the rain.

Esso’s is something like this

S  O  S

and above there are some crude letters

reading  PATRIA O MUERTE.

Alden Nowlan (1933 – 1983)

An Exchange of Gifts[2]

As long as you read this poem

I will be writing it.

I am writing it here and now

before your eyes,

although you can’t see me.

Perhaps you’ll dismiss this

as a verbal trick,

the joke is you’re wrong;

the real trick

is your pretending

this is something

fixed and solid,

external to us both.

I tell you better:

I will keep on

writing this poem for you

even after I’m dead.

It’s Good To Be Here[1]

I’m in trouble, she said

to him. That was the first

time in history that anyone

had ever spoken of me.

It was 1932 when she

was just fourteen years old

and men like him

worked all day for

one stinking dollar.

There’s quinine, she said.

That’s bullshit, he told her.

Then she cried and then

for a long time neither of them

said anything at all and then

their voices kept rising until

they were screaming at each other

and then there was another long silence and then

they began to talk very quietly and at last he said

well, I guess we’ll just have to make the best of it.

While I lay curled up,

my heart beating,

in the darkness inside her.

Weakness[2]

Old mare whose eyes

are like cracked marbles,

drools blood in her mash,

shivers in her jute blanket.

My father hates weakness worse than hail;

in the morning

without haste

he will shoot her in the ear, once,

shovel her under in the north pasture.

Tonight

leaving the stables,

he stands his lantern on an over-turned water pail,

turns,

cursing her for a bad bargain,

and spreads his coat

carefully over her sick shoulders.

Richard Shelton (b. 1933)

The Bus to Veracruz[1]

The mail is slow here. If I died, I wouldn’t find out about it for a long time. Perhaps I am dead already. At any rate, I am living in the wrong tense of a foreign language and have almost no verbs and only a few nouns to prove I exist. When I need a word, I fumble among the nouns and find one, but so many are similar in size and color. I am apt to come up with caballo instead of caballero, or carne instead of casa. When that happens, I become confused and drop the words. They roll across the tile floor in all directions. Then I get down on my hands and knees and crawl through a forest of legs, reaching under tables and chairs to retrieve them. But I am no longer embarrassed about crawling around on the floor in public places. I have come to realize that I am invisible most of the time and have been since I crossed the border.

All the floors are tile. All the tiles are mottled with the same disquieting pattern in one of three muddy colors—shades of yellow, purple, or green. They make me think of dried vomit, desiccated liver, and scum on a pond. The floor of my room is dried vomit with a border of scum on a pond, and like most of the floors it has several tiles missing, which is a great blessing to me. These lacunae are oases in the desert where I can rest my eyes. The nausea from which I suffer so much of the time is not caused by the food or water, but by the floors. I know this because when I sit in the town square, which is covered with concrete of no particular color, the nausea subsides.

The town is small, although larger than it would seem to a visitor—if there were any visitor—and remote. It has no landing field for even small planes, and the nearest railroad is almost one hundred kilometers to the east. The only bus goes to Veracruz. Often I stop at the bus terminal to ask about the bus to Veracruz. The floor of the bus terminal is scum on a pond with a border of desiccated liver, but there are many tiles missing. That terminal is always deserted except for Rafael and Esteban, sometimes sitting on the bench inside, sometimes lounging just outside the door. They are young, barefoot, and incredibly handsome. I buy them Cocas from the machine, and we have learned to communicate in our fashion. When I am with them, I am glad to be invisible, glad that they never look directly at me. I could not bear the soft velvet and vulnerability of those magnificent eyes.

“When does the bus leave for Veracruz? “ I ask them. I have practiced this many times and am sure I have the right tense. But the words rise to the ceiling, burst, and fall as confetti around us. A few pieces catch in their dark hair and reflect the light like jewels. Rafael rubs his foot on the floor. Esteban stares out the filthy window. Are they sad, I wonder, because they believe there is no bus to Veracruz or because they don’t know when it leaves?

“Is there a bus to Veracruz?” Suddenly they are happy again. Their hands fly like vivacious birds. “Si, hay! Por supeusto, Senor! Es verdad!” they believe, truly, in the bus to Veracruz. Again I ask them when it leaves. Silence and sadness. Rafael studies one of the tiles on the floor as if it contains the answer. Esteban turns back to the window. I buy them Cocas from the machine and go away.

Once a week I stop at the post office to get my mail from the ancient woman in the metal cage, and each week I receive one letter. Actually, the letters are not mine, and the ancient woman has probably known this for a long time, but we never speak of it and she continues to hand me the letters, smiling and nodding in her coquettish way, eager to please me. Her hair is braided with colored ribbons, and her large silver earrings jingle when she bobs her head, which she does with great enthusiasm when I appear. I could not estimate how old she is. Perhaps even she has forgotten. But she must have been a great beauty at one time. Now she sits all day in the metal cage in the post office, a friendly apparition whose bright red lipstick is all the more startling because she has no teeth.

The first time I entered the post office, it was merely on an impulse to please her. I was expecting no mail, since no one knew where I was. But each time I passed, I had seen her through the window, seated in her metal cage with no customers to break the monotony. She always smiled and nodded at me through the window, eager for any diversion. Finally one day I went in on the pretext of calling for my mail, although I knew there would be none. To avoid the confusion which my accent always causes, I wrote my name on a slip of paper and presented it to her. Her tiny hands darted among the pigeonholes, and to my astonishment she presented me with a letter which was addressed to me in care of general delivery. She was so delighted with her success that I simply took the letter and went away, unwilling to disillusion her.

As soon as I opened the letter, the mystery was solved. My name is fairly common. The letter was intended for someone else with the same name. It was written on blue paper, in flawless Palmer Method script, and signed by a woman. It was undated and there was no return address. But it was in English, and I read it shamelessly, savoring each phrase. I rationalized by convincing myself that the mail was so slow the man to whom the letter had been written was probably already dead and could not object to my reading his mail. But I knew before I finished the letter that I would return to the post office later on the chance there might be others. She loved him. She thought he was still alive.

Since then I have received one letter each week, to the enormous delight of my ancient friend in the post office. I take the letters home and steam them open, careful to leave no marks on the delicate paper. They are always from the same woman, and I feel by now that I know her. Sometimes I dream about her, as if she were someone I knew in the past. She is blond and slender, no longer young but far from old. I can see her long, graceful fingers holding the pen as she writes, and sometimes she reaches up to brush a strand of hair away from her face. Even that slight gesture has the eloquence of a blessing.

When I have read each letter until I can remember it word for word, I reseal it. Then, after dark, I take it back to the post office by a circuitous route, avoiding anyone who might be on the street at that hour. The post office is always open, but the metal cage is closed and the ancient one is gone for the night. I drop the letter into the dead letter box and hurry away.

At first I had no curiosity about what happened to the letters after they left my hands. Then I began to wonder if they were destroyed or sent to some central office where, in an attempt to locate the sender and return them, someone might discover that they had been opened. Still later, the idea that some nameless official in a distant city might be reading them because almost unbearable to me. It was more and more difficult to remember that they were not my letters. I could not bear to think of anyone else reading her words, sensing her hesitations and tenderness. At last I decided to find out.

It took months of work, but with practice I became clever at concealing myself in shadowy doorways and watching. I have learned that once each week a nondescript man carrying a canvas bag enters the post office through the back door, just as the ancient woman is closing her metal cage for the night. She empties the contents of the dead letter box into his canvas bag, and he leaves by the door he came in. The man then begins a devious journey which continues long into the night. Many nights I have lost him and have had to begin again the following week. He doubles back through alleys and down obscure streets. Several times he enters deserted buildings by one door and emerges from another. He crosses the cemetery and goes through the Cathedral.

But finally he arrives at his destination—the bus terminal. And there, concealed behind huge doors which can be raised to the ceiling, is the bus to Veracruz. The man places his canvas bag in the luggage compartment, slams the metal cover with a great echoing clang, and goes away.

And later, at some unspecified hour, the bus to Veracruz rolls silently out of the terminal, a luxury liner leaving port with all its windows blazing. It has three yellow lights above the windshield and three gold stars along each side. The seats are red velvet and there are gold tassels between the windows. The dashboard is draped with brocade of the richest shades of yellow, purple, and green; and on this altar is a statue of the Virgin, blond and shimmering. Her slender fingers are extended to bless all those who ride the bus to Veracruz, but the only passenger is an ancient woman with silver earrings who sits by the window, nodding and smiling to the empty seats around her. There are two drivers who take turns during the long journey. They are young and incredibly handsome, with eyes as soft as the wings of certain luminous brown moths.

The bus moves through sleeping streets without making a sound. When it gets to the highway, it turns toward Veracruz and gathers speed. Then nothing can stop it: not the rain, nor the washed-out bridges, nor the sharp mountain curves, nor the people who stand by the road to flag it down.

I believe in the bus to Veracruz. And someday, when I am too tired to struggle any longer with the verbs and nouns, when the ugliness and tedium of this place overcome me, I will be on it. I will board the bus with my ticket in hand. The doors of the terminal will rise to the ceiling, and we will move out through the darkness, gathering speed, like a great island of light.

The Stones[1]

I love to go out on summer nights and watch the stones grow. I think they grow better here in the desert, where it is warm and dry, than almost anywhere. Or perhaps it is only that the young ones are more active here.

Young stones tend to move about more than their elders consider good for them. Most young stones have a secret desire which their parents had before them but have forgotten ages ago. And because this desire involves water, it is never mentioned. The older stones disapprove of water and say, “Water is a gadfly who never stays in one place long enough to learn anything.” But the young stones try to work themselves into a position, slowly and without their elders noticing it, in which a sizable stream of water during a summer storm might catch them broadside and unknowing, so to speak, push them along over a slope or down an arroyo. In spite of the danger this involves, they want to travel and see something of the world and settle in a new place, far from home, where they can raise their own dynasties, away from the domination of their parents.

And although family ties are very strong among stones, many have succeeded; and they carry scars to prove to their children that they once went on a journey, helter-skelter and high water, and traveled perhaps fifteen feet, an incredible distance. As they grow older, they cease to brag about such clandestine adventures.

It is true that old stones get to be very conservative. They consider all movement either dangerous or downright sinful. They remain comfortably where they are and often get fat. Fatness, as a matter of fact, is a mark of distinction.

And on summer nights, after the young stones are asleep, the elders turn to a serious and frightening subject—the moon. which is always spoken of in whispers. “See how it glows and whips across the sky, always changing its shape,” one says. And another says, “Feel how it pulls at us, urging us to follow.” And a third whispers, “It is a stone gone mad.”

Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) (b. 1934)

“Wise I”[1]

WHYS (Nobody Knows

The Trouble I Seen)

Traditional

If you ever find

yourself, some where

lost and surrounded

by enemies

who won’t let you

speak in your own language

who destroy your statues

& instruments, who ban

your omm bomm ba boom

then you are in trouble

deep trouble

they ban your

own boom ba boom

you in deep deep

trouble

humph!

probably take you several hundred years

to get

out!

Rutger Kopland (b. 1934)

Natzweiler[1]

Translated from the Dutch by James Brockway

1.

And there, beyond the barbed wire, the view—

very charming landscape, as peaceful

as then.

They would need for nothing, they would

be laid down in those green pastures,

be led to those peaceful waters,

there in the distance. They would.

2.

I trace the windows of the barrack huts,

watch-towers, gas-chamber.

Only the black reflection of distance

in the panes, of a peaceful landscape,

and beyond it, no one.

3.

The dead are so violently absent, as though

not only I, but they too

were standing here,

and the landscape were folding their invisible

arms around my shoulders.

We need for nothing, they are saying,

we have forgotten this world,

But these are no arms,

it is landscape.

4.

The yellowed photos in the display cases,

their faces ravaged by their skulls,

their black eyes,

what do they see, what do they see?

I look at them, but for what?

Their faces have come to belong

to the world, to the world

which remains silent.

5.

So this is it, desertion, here is

the place where they took their leave,

far away in the mountains.

The camp has just been re-painted, in that gentle

grey-green, that gentle color

of war,

it is as new, as though nothing

has happened, as though

it has yet to be.

Mark Strand (b. 1934)

Eating Poetry[1]

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.

There is no happiness like mine.

I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.

Her eyes are sad

and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.

The light is dim.

The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,

their blond legs burn like brush.

The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.

When I get on my knees and lick her hand,

she screams.

I am a new man.

I snarl at her and bark.

I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Keeping Things Whole[2]

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

Reading in Place[1]

Imagine a poem that starts with a couple

looking into a valley, seeing their house, the lawn

out back with its wooden chairs,

its shady patches of green,

its wooden fence, and beyond

the fence the rippled silver sheen

of the local pond, its far side a tangle of sumac, crimson

in the fading light.

Now imagine somebody reading the poem

and thinking, “I never guessed it would be like this,”

then slipping it into the back

of a book while the oblivious

couple, feeling nothing is lost, not even the white

streak of a flicker’s tail that catches their eye,

nor the slight

toss of leaves in the wind,

shift their gaze to the wooded dome

of a nearby hill where the violet spread of dusk begins,

but the reader,

out for a stroll in the autumn night, with all

the imprisoned sounds of nature

dying around him, forgets

not only the poem, but where he is, and thinks instead

of a bleak Venetian mirror that hangs in a hall

by a curving stair,

and how the stars in the sky’s black glass

sink down and the sea heaves them ashore like foam.

So much is adrift

in the ever-opening rooms of elsewhere,

he cannot remember whose house it was,

or when he was there.

Now imagine he sits years later under a lamp

and pulls a book from the shelf; the poem drops

to his lap. The couple are crossing a field

on their way home, still feeling that nothing is lost,

that they will continue to live harm-free, sealed

in the twilight’s amber weather.

But how will the reader know,

especially now that he puts the poem, without looking

back in the book,

the book where a poet stares at the sky

and says to a blank page,

“Where, where in Heaven am I?”

Paul Zimmer (b. 1934)

Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against the Blackboard[1]

At the blackboard I had missed

five number problems in a row,

and was about to foul a sixth,

when the old exasperated nun

began to pound my head against

my six mistakes. When I cried,

she threw me back into my seat,

where I hid my head and swore

that very day I’d be a poet,

and curse her yellow teeth with this.

David R. Slavitt (b. 1935)

Titanic[1]

Who does not love the Titanic?

If they sold passage tomorrow for that same crossing,

who would not buy?

To go down … we all go down, mostly

alone. But with crowds of people, friends, servants,

well fed, with music, with lights! Ah!

And the world, shocked, mourns, as it ought to do

and almost never does.

There will be the books and movies

to remind our grandchildren who we were

and how we died, and give’m a good cry.

Not so bad, after all. The cold

water is anesthetic and very quick.

The cries on all sides must be a comfort.

We all go: a few, first-class.

C.K. Williams (b. 1936)

My Fly[1]

for Erving Goffman, 1922-1982

One of those great, garishly emerald flies that always look freshly generated

from fresh excrement and who maneuver through our airspace with a deft

intentionality that makes them seem to think, materializes just above my

desk, then vanishes, his dense, abrasive buzz sucked in after him.

I wait, imagine him, hidden somewhere, waiting, too, then think, who

knows why, of you—don’t laugh—that he’s a messenger from you, or

that you yourself

(you’d howl at this),

ten years afterwards have let yourself be incarnated as this pestering anti-

angel.

Now he, or you, abruptly reappears,

with a weightless pounce alighting near my hand.

I lean down close, and though he has to sense

my looming presence, he patiently attends,

as though my study of him had become

an element of his own observations—maybe it is you!

Joy! To be together, even for a time!

Yes, tilt your fuselage, turn it towards the light,

aim the thousand lenses of your eyes back up at me;

how I’ve missed the layers of your attention,

how often been bereft without your gift for sniffing out pretentiousness

and moral sham.

Why would you come back, though? Was that other radiance not

intricate enough to parse?

Did you find yourself in some monotonous century

hovering down the tidy queue of creatures waiting

to experience again the eternally unlikely bliss

of being matter and extension?

You lift, you land—you’re rushed, I know;

the interval in all our terminals is much too short.

Now you hurl against the window,

skid and jitter on the pane:

I open it and step aside

and follow for one final moment of felicity

your brilliant ardent atom swerving through.

The Dance[1]

A middle-aged woman, Quite plain, to be polite about it, and somewhat

stout, to be courteous still, but when she and the rather good-looking,

much younger man she’s with get up to dance, her forearm descends with such delicate lightness, such restrained but confident ardor athwart his shoulder, drawing him to her with such a firm, compelling warmth, and moving him with effortless grace into the union she’s instantly established with the not at all rhythmically solid music in this second-rate caf,

that something in the rest of us, some doubt about ourselves, some sad conjecture, seems to be allayed, nothing that we’d ever thought of as a real lack, nothing not to be admired or be repentant for, but something to which we’ve never adequately given credence, which might have consoling implications about how we misbelieve ourselves, and so the world, that world beyond us which so often disappoints, but which sometimes shows us, lovely, what we are.

Gail Mazur (b. 1937)

In Houston[1]

I’d dislocated my life, so I went to the zoo.

It was December but it wasn’t December. Pansies

just planted were blooming in well-groomed beds.

Lovers embraced under the sky’s Sunday blue.

Children rode around and around on pastel trains.

I read the labels stuck on every cage the way

people at museums do, art being less interesting

than information. Each fenced-in plot had a map,

laminated with a stain to tell where in the world

the animals had been taken from. Rhinos waited

for rain in the rhino-colored dirt, too grief-struck

to move their wrinkles, their horns too weak

to ever be hacked off by poachers for aphrodisiacs.

Five white ducks agitated the chalky waters

of a duck pond with invisible orange feet

while a little girl in pink ruffles

tossed pork rinds at their disconsolate backs.

This wasn’t my life! I’d meant to look

with the wise tough eye of exile, I wanted

not to anthropomorphize, not to eQuate, for instance,

the lemur’s displacement with my displacement.

The arched aviary flashed with extravagance,

plumage so exuberant, so implausible, it seemed

cartoonish, and the birdsongs unintelligible,

babble, all their various languages unraveling—

no bird can get its song sung right, separated from

models of its own species.

For weeks I hadn’t written a sentence,

for two days I hadn’t spoken to an animate thing.

I couldn’t relate to a giraffe—

I couldn’t look one in the face.

I’d have said, if anyone had asked,

I’d been mugged by the Gulf climate.

In a great barren space, I watched a pair

of elephants swaying together, a rhythm

too familiar to be mistaken, too exclusive.

My eyes sweated to see the bull, his masterful trunk

swinging, enter their barn of concrete blocks,

to watch his obedient wife follow. I missed

the bitter tinny Boston smell of first snow,

the huddling in a cold bus tunnel.

At the House of Nocturnal Mammals,

I stepped into a furtive world of bats,

averted my eyes at the gloomy dioramas,

passed glassed-in booths of lurking rodents—

had I known I’d find what I came for at last?

How did we get here, dear sloth, my soul, my sister?

Clinging to a tree-limb with your three-toed feet,

your eyes closed tight, you calm my idleness,

my immigrant isolation. But a tiny tamarin monkey

who shares your ersatz rainforest runs at you,

teasing, until you move one slow, dripping,

hairy arm, then the other, the other, the other,

pulling your tear-soaked body, its too-few

vertebrae, its inferior allotment of muscles

along the dead branch, going almost nowhere

slowly as is humanly possible, nudged

by the bright orange primate taunting, nipping,

itching at you all the time, like ambition.

Diane Wakoski (b. 1937)

George Washington and the Loss of His Teeth[1]

The ultimate

in the un-Romantic:

false teeth

This room became a room where your heaviness

and my heaviness came together,

an overlay of flower petals once new and fresh

pasted together queerly, as for some lady’s hat,

and finally false and stiff, love fearing

to lose itself, locks and keys become inevitable.

The truth is

that George cut down his father’s cherry tree,

his ax making chips of wood

so sweet with sap they could be

sucked, and he stripped, the bark like old bandages

from the tree for kindling.

In this tree he defied his dead father,

the man who could not give him

an education and left him to suffer

the ranting of Adams and others,

those fat sap-cheeked men who said

George did not know enough

to be president. He chopped that tree—

it was no small one—down and the dry leaves rustled

like the feet of cows on grass.

It was then that George lost his teeth. He

fell asleep next to his pile of kindling wood and dreamed

the old father came chasing him with a large penis

swung over his shoulder.

But George filled his mouth with cherries

and swallowed the bleeding flesh

and spit out the stones in a terrible torrent at his father.

With the pits of the

cherries

came all of George’s teeth,

pointed weapons to hurl from the mouth at his father,

We all come to such battles with our own flesh,

spitting out more than we have swallowed,

thus losing part of ourselves.

You came to me thus

with weapons

and this room is strewn with dead flowers

that grew out of my breasts and dropped off

black and weak.

This room is graveled with stones I dropped

from my womb, ossified in my own body

from your rocky white quartz sperm.

This room is built from the lumber of my thigh,

and it is heavy with hate.

George had a set of false teeth

made from the cherry wood. But it was his father’s tree

His lips closed painfully over the stiff set.

There is no question,

either,

where you

got the teeth in your mouth.

Robert Phillips (b. 1938)

Instrument of Choice[1]

She was a girl

no one ever chose

for teams or clubs,

dances or dates,

`

so she chose the instrument

no one else wanted:

the tuba. Big as herself,

heavy as her heart,

its golden tubes

and coils encircled her

like a lover’s embrace.

its body pressed to hers.

Into its mouthpiece she blew

life, its deep-throated

oompahs, oompahs sounding,

almost, like mating cries.

Charles Simic (b. 1938)

Country Fair[2]

If you didn’t see the six-legged dog,

it doesn’t matter.

we did, and he mostly lay in the corner.

As for the extra legs,

one got used to them quickly

and thought of other things.

Like, what a cold, dark night

to be out at the fair.

Then the keeper threw a stick

and the dog went after it

on four legs, the other two flapping behind,

which made one girl shriek with laughter.

She was drunk and so was the man

who kept kissing her neck.

The dog got the stick and looked back at us.

And that was the whole show.

Fork[1]

This strange thing must have crept

right out of hell.

It resembles a bird’s foot

worn around the cannibal’s neck.

As you hold it in your hand,

as you stab with it into a piece of meat,

it is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:

its head which like your fist

is large, bald, beakless and blind.

Northern Exposure[2]

When old women say, it smells of snow,

in a whisper barely audible

which still rouses the sick man upstairs

so he opens his eyes wide and lets them fill

with the grayness of the remaining daylight.

When old women say, how Quiet it is,

and truly no one came to visit,

while the one they still haven’t shaved

lifts the wristwatch to his ear and listens.

In it, something small, subterranean

and awful in intent, chews rapidly.

When old women say, time to turn on the lights,

and not a single one gets up to do so,

for now there are loops

and loose knots around their feet

as if someone is scribbling over them

with a piece of charcoal found in the cold stove.

Prodigy[1]

I grew up bent over a chessboard.

I loved the word endgame.

All my cousins looked worried.

It was a small house

near a Roman graveyard.

Planes and tanks

shook its windowpanes.

A retired professor of astronomy

taught me how to play.

That must have been in 1944.

In the set we were using,

the paint had almost chipped off

the black pieces.

The white King was missing

and had to be substituted for.

I’m told but do not believe

that that summer I witnessed

men hung from telephone poles.

I remember my mother

blindfolding me a lot.

She had a way of tucking my head

suddenly under her overcoat.

In chess, too, the professor told me,

the masters play blindfolded,

the great ones on several boards

at the same time.

The Old World[1]

I believe in the soul; so far

it hasn’t made much difference.

I remember an afternoon in Sicily.

the ruins of some temple.

Columns fallen in the grass like naked lovers.

The olives and goat cheese tasted delicious

and so did the wine

with which I toasted the coming night,

the darting swallows,

the Saracen wind and moon.

It got darker. There was something

long before there were words:

the evening meal of shepherds …

a fleeting whiteness among the trees …

eternity eavesdropping on time.

The goddess going to bathe in the sea.

She must not be followed.

These rocks, these cypress trees,

may be her old lovers.

Oh to be one of them, the wine whispered to me.

Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)

Manet’s Olympia[1]

She reclines, more or less.

Try that posture, it’s hardly languor.

Her right arm sharp angles.

With her left she conceals her ambush.

Shoes but not stockings,

how sinister. The flower

behind her ear is naturally

not real, of a piece

with the sofa’s drapery.

The windows (if any) are shut.

This is indoor sin.

Above the head of the (clothed) maid

is an invisible voice balloon: Slut.

But. Consider the body,

unfragile, defiant, the pale nipples

staring you right in the bull’s-eye.

Consider also the black ribbon

around the neck. What’s under it?

A fine red threadline, where the head

was taken off and glued back on.

The body’s on offer,

but the neck’s as far as it goes.

This is no morsel.

Put clothes on her and you’d have a schoolteacher,

the kind with the brittle whiphand.

There’s someone else in this room.

You, Monsieur Voyeur.

As for that object of yours

she’s seen those before, and better.

I, the head, am the only subject

of this picture.

You, Sir, are furniture.

Get stuffed.

Miss July Grows Older[1]

How much longer can I get away

with being so fucking cute?

Not much longer.

The shoes with bows, the cunning underwear

with slogans on the crotch—Knock Here

and so forth—

will have to go, along with the cat suit.

After a while you forget

what you really look like.

You think your mouth is the size it was.

You pretend not to care.

When I was young I went with my hair

hiding one eye, thinking myself daring;

off to the movies in my jaunty pencil

skirt and elastic cinch-belt,

chewed gum, left lipstick

imprints the shape of grateful, rubbery

sighs on the cigarettes of men

I hardly knew and didn’t want to.

Men were a skill, you have to have

good hands, breathe into

their nostrils, as for horses. It was something I did well,

like playing the flute, although I don’t.

In the forest of grey stems there are standing pools,

tan-colored, choked with the brown leaves.

Through them you can see an arm, a shoulder,

when the light is right, with the sky clouded.

The train goes past silos, through meadows,

the winter wheat on the fields like scary fur.

I still get letters, although not many.

A man writes me, requesting true-life stories

about bad sex. He’s doing an anthology.

He got my name off an old calendar,

the photo that’s mostly bum and daisies,

back when my skin had the golden slick

of fresh-spread margarine.

Not rape, he says, but disappointment,

more like a defeat of expectations.

Dear Sir, I reply, I never had any.

Bad sex, that is.

It was never the sex, it was the other things,

the absence of flowers, the death threats,

the eating habits at breakfast.

I notice I’m using the past tense.

Through the vaporous cloud

of chemicals that enveloped you

like a glowing eggshell, an incense,

doesn’t disappear: it just gets larger

and takes in more. You grow out

of sex like a shrunk dress

into your common senses, those you share

with whatever’s listening. The way the sun

moves through the hours becomes important,

the smeared raindrops

on the window, buds

on the roadside weeds, the sheen

of spilled oil on a raw ditch

filling with muddy water.

Don’t get me wrong: with the lights out

I’d still take on anyone,

if I had the energy to spare.

But after a while these flesh arpeggios get boring,

like Bach over and over;

too much of one kind of glory.

When I was all body I was lazy.

I had an easy life, and was not grateful.

Now there are more of me.

Don’t confuse me with any hen-leg elbows;

what you get is no longer

what you see.

Variations on the Word Sleep[1]

I would like to watch you sleeping,

which may not happen.

I would like to watch you,

sleeping. I would like to sleep

with you, to enter

your sleep as its smooth dark wave

slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent

wavering forest of bluegreen leaves

with its watery sun & three moons

towards the cave where you must descend,

towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver

branch, the small white flower, the one

word that will protect you

from the grief at the center

of your dream, from the grief

at the center. I would like to follow

you up the long stairway

again & become

the boat that would row you back

carefully, a flame

in two cupped hands

to where your body lies

beside me, and you enter

it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air

that inhabits you for a moment

only. I would like to be that unnoticed

& that necessary.

You Fit Into Me[1]

you fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye

Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)

A Dream of Jealousy[2]

Walking with you and another lady

in wooded parkland, the whispering grass

ran its fingers through our guessing silence

and the trees opened into a shady

unexpected clearing where we sat down.

I think the candor of the light dismayed us.

We talked about desire and being jealous,

our conversation a loose single gown

or a white picnic tablecloth spread out

like a book or manners in the wilderness.

“Show me,” I said to our companion, what

I have much coveted, your breast’s mauve star.”

And she consented. O neither these verses

nor my prudence, love, can heal your wounded stare.

Clearances[1]

5

The cool that came off sheets just off the line

made me think the damp must still be in them

but when I took my corners of the linen

and pulled against her, first straight down the hem

and then diagonally, then flapped and shook

the fabric like a sail in a cross-wind,

they’d make a dried-out undulating thwack.

So we’d stretch and fold and end up hand to hand

for a split second as if nothing had happened

for nothing had that had not always happened

beforehand, day by day, just touch and go,

coming close again by holding back

in moves where I was x and she was o

inscribed in sheets she’d sewn from ripped-out flour sacks.

Punishment[2]

I can feel the tug

of the halter at the nape

of her neck, the wind

on her naked front.

It blows her nipples

to amber beads,

it shakes the frail rigging

of her ribs.

I can see her drowned

body in the bog,

the weighing stone,

the floating rods and boughs.

Under which at first

she was a barked sapling

that is dug up

oak-bone, brain-firkin:

her shaved head

like a stubble of black corn,

her blindfold a soiled bandage,

her noose a ring

to store

the memories of love.

Little adulteress,

before they punished you

you were flaxen-haired,

undernourished, and your

tar-black face was beautiful.

My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you

but would have cast, I know,

the stones of silence.

I am the artful voyeur

of your brain’s exposed

and darkening combs,

your muscles’ webbing

and all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb

when your betraying sisters,

cauled in tar,

wept by the railings,

who would connive

in civilized outrage

yet understand the exact

and tribal, intimate revenge.

ReQuiem for the Croppies[1]

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley …

no kitchens on the run, no striking camp …

we moved quick and sudden in our own country.

The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.

A people hardly marching … on the hike …

we found new tactics happening each day:

we’d cut through reins and rider with the pike

and stampede cattle into infantry,

then retreat through hedges

where cavalry must be thrown.

Until … on Vinegar Hill … the final conclave.

Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

They buried us without shroud or coffin

and in August … the barley grew up out of our grave.

The Haw Lantern (Dedication)[2]

The riverbed, dried-up, half-full of leaves.

Us, listening to a river in the trees.

Ted Kooser (b. 1939)

At the Office Early[3]

Rain has beaded the panes

of my office windows,

and in each little lens

the bank at the corner

hangs upside down.

What wonderful music

this rain must have made

in the night, a thousand banks

turned over, the change

crashing out of the drawers

and bouncing upstairs

to the roof, the soft

percussion of the ferns

dropping out of their pots,

the ballpoint pens

popping out of their sockets

in a fluffy snow

of deposit slips.

Now all day long,

as the sun dries the glass,

I’ll hear the soft piano

of banks righting themselves,

the underpaid tellers

counting their nickels and dimes.

Selecting a Reader[1]

First, I would have her be beautiful,

and walking carefully up on my poetry

at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,

her hair still damp at the neck

from washing it. She should be wearing

a raincoat, an old one, dirty

from not having money enough for the cleaners.

She will take out her glasses, and there

in the bookstore, she will thumb

over my poems, then put the book back

up on its shelf. She will say to herself,

“For that kind of money, I can get

my raincoat cleaned.” And she will.

David Budbill (b. 1940)

Dilemma[1]

I want to be famous so I can be humble about

being famous.

What good is my humility when I am stuck

in this obscurity?

The Three Goals[2]

The first goal is to see the thing itself

in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly

for what it is.

No symbolism please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing

as unified, as one, with all the other

ten thousand things.

In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,

to see the universal and the particular,

simultaneously.

Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

Thomas M. Disch (b. 1940)

The Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act[1]

We are a sinful church. We are naked. Our anger, our pain, our anguish,

our shame, are clear to the whole world.

—The Most Reverend Alphonsus L. Penney,

D. D., Archbishop of St. John’s,

Newfoundland, in his statement of

resignation July 18, 1990

The scene is a monastically bare cell in a Catholic detox center run by the Brothers of the Most Holy Blood. There is a bed, a small night table beside it, a desk and chair, and a prie-dieu. On the wall above the bed, a crucifix, flanked by pictures of the Sacred Heart and Mater Dolorosa.

The Cardinal and a Brother of the Most Holy Blood are discovered as the lights come up. The Cardinal in a state of nerves; the Brother stands by the door, attentive but inexpressive, except at rare moments when the Cardinal has said something particularly offensive to conventional piety or pious convention. After any action he has been called to perform, the Brother returns to his post of duty before the door.

THE CARDINAL:

God. For the most part I do without

him. Don’t we all. He leaves us no choice,

having left us, bereft us, at some point

in pre-history—say, at the moment Christ

particularly complained of. Was that before

or after the gall was proffered him? Say what?

Oh, yes, I know, it is your vow to say

nothing at all. The merest sponge for all

my vinegar. And speaking of vinegar … ?

The Brother nods, leaves the room a moment and returns with a bottle of white wine, and a wineglass on a tray. He places this on the night table, fills the glass half-full, and gives it to the Cardinal, who takes a sip and makes a sour face.

THE CARDINAL:

Where do you find this wine? The tears of Christ,

indeed! He would have died before he drank

this piss. But piss is sacred, too, if it

is His, and I consume it reverently.

Having—had you supposed? —whispered the words,

the abracadabra, of consecration.

What priest, what Catholic, does not imagine

every drop as somehow holy? Dregs

of the wedding feast, lees of the Last Supper: this

is my blood—

[sips]

—or soon enough will be.

It is kind of the Abbot to accommodate

my evening need to transubstantiate.

He doubtless sees it as the loosener of

my tongue. Is the recorder on? I know

I’m being bugged, but that’s all one to me.

So long as you employ corkscrews and not

thumbscrews, I will unfold my heresies

with all due pomp, a true heresiarch.

But the Abbot ought to know I’m not

the sort of heretic the Church is prone

to burn. In matters that concern the Faith

I am as orthodox as any pope.

The Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the fall

of Adam and the fault of Eve,

the fleshy Resurrection of the Dead,

whatever’s set down in the Creed, or been

decreed by any Vicar of the Church—

in all this I have faith. What I believe’s

another thing. Belief’s involuntary;

faith’s an act of will, more powerful

as it demands credence in what we can’t

believe. Were I the Pope, I’d elevate

the Shroud of Turin to an article

of Faith; I would declare the round world flat

and build basilicas on Ararat.

So much for Faith; in morals, as well, I am

ultra-montane. Priestly celibacy?

I agree. No contraception but

by abstinence. No sodomy. You look

askance? Surely we must seal the back door,

if we lock up the front. Carnality will out,

no doubt, even among our holy few,

but all in cloistered silence, stealthily.

AIDS, alas, has made it hard to keep

our sepulchers properly spotless. Even

among you Brothers of the Holy Blood,

I hear, there have been actuarial

anomalies. One abbot dead, another

ailing, or so it’s said. Well, there have been

plagues before, and there’ll be plagues again.

Please don’t suppose I’m being holier

than though and thine. Would I be serving time

in detox if I hadn’t erred as well?

He sits down on the bed and looks to the Brother for a glance of

permission, then pours another glass of wine.

THE CARDINAL:

I do repent me of the woman’s death:

mother of four and pregnant with a fifth;

a Catholic to boot. Had I had doubts

of God’s ambition as a dramatist,

they’d be resolved with this: CARDINAL FLYNN,

INTOXICATED, REAR-ENDS PREGNANT MOM—

They’re always “Moms” in newspapers—a Mom,

what’s more, who was my own parishioner.

It is deplorable, and I deplore it.

Do I, as well, blame God? Who iced the road

and sent her Chevy somersaulting? No.

I doubt that God’s as meddlesome as that.

Newton’s laws of motion did the job

without his intervention. God, if He’s

not dead, is deaf, indifferent, or asleep.

For me, for most of us, God is a sham—

an ancient Poetry: I Am That I Am,

As who is not? I’m what I am, too—a priest,

a whited sepulcher, a drunken beast—

according to the Times-Dispatch and Sun—

a criminal, though yet, with any luck,

the diocese will pay whatever price

the prosecution asks to drop the charge.

It wouldn’t do, would it, to have My Grace

be sent away, however many drinks

I may have had. Archbishops are not put

in jail. I wonder what they will have done

with me. You wouldn’t know? Or wouldn’t say.

Yours is the vow I ought to take—Silence!

But silence never was my forte. My forte

is speech, and I will use it if I must.

I trust the tape recorder is still on?

Then this is what I mean to do, the same

as any minor Mafioso caught

and facing time: I’ll sing. I’ll tell those things

we Cardinals and Archbishops say

among ourselves, the secret wisdom of

the Church, its policies and stratagems,

beginning with the obvious. Just guess.

He pours more wine, savoring the Brother’s baleful looks.

Abortion, naturally. It is the cause

to knit our ever fewer faithful few

by giving them an enemy to fight,

those murderous liberal bitches who refuse

to be a Mom. It is the wolf who herds

the sheep; the shepherd but assists, and sheep

know this. Wolfless, they’ll stray beyond the reach

of hook and crook. Just look at the mess we’re in.

No one attends Mass but the senile poor.

Detroit has simply given up the ghost

and closed its churches as the surest way

to stanch the flow of cash. Even where there

is money, Faith’s extinct—and Brotherhood,

the kind that’s formed by cotes and ghetto walls.

Consider Poland, Northern Ireland,

or my Archdiocese before this age

of wishy-washy tolerance, when we

were wops and micks and spics and krauts and built

the churches that stand empty now. The WASP

majority was our oppressor then,

but now? Who hates us? Whom have we to fear?

Jews served the purpose for a while, and still

one meets the odd parishioner who feels

a pang of loss for Father Coughlin. Glemp,

in Poland, still baits Jews—the five or six

surviving there. But after Auschwitz, how

shall Holy Mother Church pursue that course?

The Jews, in any case, are not our problem:

our problem’s women. Ah-ha! Your eyes agree.

It’s something every cleric understands.

It’s what we mean by harping on the theme

of family values and the sanctity

of life, i.e., a way of bringing up

men to be men, women to be slaves,

and priests to be their overseers. Think

of Italy. For centuries the Church

beneficently engineered the codes

of gender so each Giacomo would have

his Jill, his family fiefdom, and his fill

of sex, or if not quite his fill, his bare

sufficiency, while she, the Mom, kept dumb

or mumbled rosaries. Beyond the pale

of family, the convent and the brothel

took up the overflow of those who balked

at their Madonnament. The benefit

to all men of sufficient strength of mind

should be self-evident; the rest could join

the Church, and practice harsh austerities

expressive of a holy impotence

or else become the system’s managers.

Of course, it’s not just Italy of which

I speak: it’s you and me. It’s Fatherhood

in all the Mother Church’s Fatherlands.

And it’s women who’ve rebelled, thrown off

the yoke of meek subservience becoming

handmaids of the Lord Their Spouse, who would address

the Angel of Annunciation: “No,

I’ve better things to do just now than bear

a child. When I am ready, I’ll tell you.”

Women demand equality, and no one

has been able to gainsay them. They have

the vote, the pill, the freedom of the street.

Now they’d be priests! They do not understand

when they have won their last demand, there’ll be

no Church but just Detroit writ large. For why

should men go on pretending they believe

in all our Bulls, if somehow they don’t stand

to benefit? They will walk out the door.

Not all of them and all at once, of course.

Some unisex parents for a while will rear

mini-families of one or two,

as now the wealthier Protestants do.

What’s to be done? Redraw the line again?

Admit the ladies and admit the Church

was wrong? Declare the Fathers of the Church

this age’s Ptolemys, ruled out-of-date

by schoolmarm Galileos? Rather turn

our churches into mosques! Islam, at least

holds firm in keeping women in their place.

Within her chador, every Moslem Mom’s

a nun, while our nuns change their habits for

a warrior garb of pants and pantyhose.

What we must do, what we have long discussed,

is to relight the Inquisition’s torch

for the instruction and delight of those

who still can be relied on to attend

autos-da-fe. Burn down the clinics of

planned Parenthood. Make foetuscide a crime

punishable, like homicide, by death,

and if the civil power’s craven courts

should balk, if legislation’s voted down

or overthrown, then we must urge our flocks

to act upon their own. One simple, just

expedient would be to institute

homes where reluctant mothers might be brought

to term; initially, for Catholic girls

whose parents can coerce such penitence,

as once defiant daughters might be placed

in convents; then, that precedent secure,

encourage a clandestine brotherhood

to save those fetuses whose mothers may

reject more mild persuasion. Civil crimes

are justified—read any casuist—

when one is acting in a Higher Cause.

Not that such deeds would make states

change their laws:

we would be martyred, made pariahs, sent

to jail—but what a triumph for the rights

of fetuses, and what a way to weed

the Church’s fields of tares. You think I jest:

so did the bishops gathered in St. Louis,

though after formalities, Malone

of Boston and Passaic’s Muggerone

took me aside and asked to know if such

a league of fetal-rights revengers had

been formed, assuring me that when it was,

they could supply recruits. Then Muggerrone

bewailed the evils of the media,

who had exposed his till-then secret charity

in bailing out three youths who’d raped and stabbed

a cyclist in the park. The Bishop swears

he acted only in the interest

of inter-racial harmony, a cause

that also prompted him to champion

St. Athanasius’ Orphanage

for Children Born with AIDS, a charity

that has been universally acclaimed

except by Bishop Muggerone’s bete noire,

the Jersey Star, which claims the charges paid

to the contracting firm of Muggerone

and Sons for laying the foundation of

the orphanage would have sufficed to build

a concrete pyramid upon the site.

It seems the Bishop’s outlays for cement

exceed the county’s. He was furious.

“The media!” he roared—and you could see

his chins all in a tremble—“The media

is killing us. It’s Jews is what it is.

Jews hate Italians and control the news.

If you’re Italian then you’re in the mob.

There is no mob, the mob’s a media myth!”

And all the while he fulminates and rants,

his limousine is waiting in the lot,

his chauffeur sinister as some Ton-ton

Macoute. What is so wonderful about

the Bishop is the man’s unswerving and

unnerving righteousness, his perfect Faith

that his shit and the shit of all his kin

must smell like roses. God, what strength of mind!

Can you suppose that like aggressiveness

would not more suit the present circumstance

than to require this pusillanimity

of me, those mewling statements to the press,

my sanctuary in a drying tank:

as well embroider double A’s on alb,

dalmatic, chasuble, and pallium.

Does Rome believe such sops will satisfy

the public’s appetite for blood? I face

a statutory minimum of ten!

And what is being done? I must put by

my crozier, to preach from my own pulpit,

surrender the archdiocese accounts,

as though I were another Muggerone,

fold my hands and wait for sentencing!

I may not even speak in privacy

with my attorneys, but the legate’s spy

is crouching in the corner taking notes.

You keep me virtually a prisoner:

no telephone, no visitors, no mail

that doesn’t bear the Abbot’s imprimatur.

And then you counsel me to fast and pray!

Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll be put away

as docilely as that. I’ll bleat before

I bleed. You think my case is scandalous?

Wait till the papers get on yours, my boys!

I trust this is a live broadcast, and that

the Abbot’s at his intercom—with whom

else? Let me guess: Monsignor Mallachy;

my Deputy-Archbishop Sneed; and Rome’s

own damage control team, nameless to me.

If I’m not addressing empty air,

and if you’d like to hear the aria

through to the end, I would appreciate

a dollop of some better lubricant.

I wait Your Grace’s pleasure, and my own.

He finishes the last of the wine in the bottle on the tray, then goes to the prie-dieu, kneels, and folds his hands in prayer. The Brother regards him balefully; the Cardinal lowers his eyes. The Brother cocks his head, and presses his hand to his cowl, as though better to listen to earphones. With a look of disgruntlement, he nods and takes the tray with bottle and glass from the room.

Almost as soon as the Brother is out the door, the Cardinal gets the hiccoughs. He goes through various contortions trying to stop hiccoughing, sucking in his gut, holding his breath. He still has the hiccoughs when the Brother returns with a new bottle. The hiccoughs continue for a while even after his first careful sip of wine—each one being indicated by an asterisk within parentheses in the text he speaks: (*).

THE CARDINAL:

Hiccoughs always make me (*) think of Gene

Pacelli, Pius Twelfth, who died of them

and now is offered as a candidate

for sainthood. A saint who can’t stop (*) hiccoughing!

As well a holy arsonist, a saint

with clap, a blessed ex(*)ecutioner.

The present Abbot’s predecessor felt

a special reverence for his (*) witheredness,

I understand, and entertained the hope

of a mir(*)aculous remission. Yes?

It must be either Pius has no pull

with God, or sodomites can’t win (*) his ear.

Imagine if his prayer’d been answered and

instead of (*) what it is, a jail for drunks

in Roman collars, the Abbey here became

the (*) Lourdes of AIDS-infected clergymen.

I see them now, coming to hang ex(*)votos

at Pius’s shrine. The statue’s right hand holds

a model of a concentration camp;

the left, a water glass symbolic of

his (*) sufferings.

In the course of these blasphemies against Pius XII, the Brother has approached the Cardinal to refill his quickly emptying glass. His indignation finally is too much for him, and he slaps the Cardinal across the face, knocking off his glasses. Immediately, remorseful, he is on his knees to retrieve the glasses and return them to the Cardinal, who after his initial shock seems pleased to have made a dent in the Brother’s composure.

THE CARDINAL:

I think I touched a nerve.

And you did, too: I’ve stopped the hiccoughing.

I wonder if you might have saved the Pope,

if you’d been there in 1958?

Now don’t explode again: keep beating me,

I may seize up, or modify my tune

to something maddeningly bland, as: jazz,

and its potential for the liturgy,

or else a homily on nuclear arms

and how the bishops must speak up for peace.

Oh, I have bromides in reserve that could

sedate entire senates and have done so.

It’s one of a bishop’s most important jobs

to demonstrate to those who wield real power

the Church’s ineffectuality

in matters of much consequence. We scold

bad boys if they make noise, but otherwise

we turn our eyes away. What if the Church

were to attack the mafia, instead

of sub-contracting with it, snuggling up

on St. Columbus Day, and saying Mass

at mobsters’ funerals? You know as well

as I, the mafia would attack right back

as ruthlessly as any sovereign state.

Look at the drug lords of Columbia,

where crime and law at last officially

are one, the shotgun wedding of all time.

Do you think those drug lords don’t intend

to decorate their polity with priests?

their haciendas have not only taps

of solid gold, but chapels, too, wherein

the Virgin Mother is particularly

venerated, and with perfect piety.

For in all things relating to the heart

criminals, poets, madmen, and lovers

are more in touch with what they feel than we

whose lives are ruled by prudence. I have been

assured by Muggerone that Domenic,

his Brother, is as staunchly orthodox

as Ratzinger in Rome—the same “Fat Nick”

who holds the strings to half the rackets on

the Jersey docks. A scandal? Not at all.

Or not according to His Eminence,

who takes a high, Dantean view of sin.

As, in the Inferno, lustful lovers

are tumble-dried forever in gusts of flame,

which are the lusts that sucked them down to hell,

so Muggerone insists that every crime

is its own punishment, and prisons are

superfluous, especially for the rich,

whose very riches are more punitive,

in a Dantean sense, than time served in

the cloister of a penitentiary.

A lovely theory, is it not, because

perfectly self-contained: whatever is

is right, even if it’s wrong. Much more than I,

the Bishop’s of a sanguine temperament,

disposed to find in any seeming ill

the silvery linings of Our Savior’s will.

In AIDS he sees a triple blessing: First,

as a plague selective of those most accurst;

and then in that it affords a lingering death,

time for a true repentance to take root,

and for a good confession at the end;

and lastly, he rejoices in its horror,

betokening the horror of lust itself

which violates the temple of the flesh

and now is seen to do so visibly

for the enlightenment of all who might

be tempted to the sin of sodomy.

The bishop is no less inventive in

finding a moral advantage in the plague,

so rampant in his own community,

of drugs. Not only alcohol.

The Cardinal holds out his cup and as the Brother fills it, continues

speaking.

THE CARDINAL:

We all,

who celebrate the mass, find comfort in

the wine that is our Savior’s blood. But crack,

as well. In terms of moral theology,

drugs are a bit of a conundrum—Cheers! —

since nowhere in the older Tablets of

the Law are drugs, as such, proscribed. Indeed,

good Catholics imbibed with not a twinge

of guilt in Prohibition days, and what

is alcohol if not a drug? This bottle’s

better, by the by. My compliments

to the cellarer. So, where were we?

Oh, yes: is heroin or ecstasy

or crack essentially more wrong than, say,

a bottle of Chardonnay? Not logically:

it is the use to which it’s put. And that,

among the younger felons of our age

is to release a murderous rage, and rage

is anger heightened exponentially,

and anger is, like lust, a deadly sin,

whose deadliness the plague of AIDS reveals.

This can’t be the official view of AIDS,

of course; it wouldn’t play well in the press.

Sufficient that we interdict the use

of prophylactics; sin and nature can

be counted on to do the rest. The Church

in this is like those foresters who let

a fire sweep unchecked through timberlands,

then, when the ashes cool, move in to sow

the seedlings they have kept in readiness.

The Church’s view is long as His who formed

the rivers, canyons, reefs, and limestone cliffs,

taught bees, by trial and error, to mold their nests

in tidy hexagons, and teaches man,

as patiently, to follow Natural Law.

I’ve read somewhere there are historians

who call the new age dawning on us now

post-History, a pregnant phrase, and one

suggestive of that Thousand Years of Peace

St. John foresaw in his Apocalypse.

If this is so, the Church must reassert

its claim, based on its own long stability,

to be the stabilizer of the new

homeostatic state, the Pax vobiscum

at the end of time. Oh my, this wine

is mellower than the first. I hope I may

interpret it as tender of a more

merciful, accommodating view

toward the disposition of my case.

The laurels of authorship as little tempt

me as the palm of martyrdom, but if

I am thrown to the wolves and made to serve

that statutory minimum, I will

write such a book the Vatican will wish

I’d never sat at her consistories,

had not been privy to the audits of

the Banco Ambrosiano, nor been sent

on secret missions to the President.

Oh, I have tales to tell, and they exist

not only in my mortal memory

but in a still unpolished form in vaults

to which my legal counsel has the key—

in the event of my untimely death

they will be published in their present form,

and I assure you, there’ll be such a storm

as has not rocked the Church’s holy boat

since presses multiplied what Luther wrote

like basketfuls of poisoned loaves and fish.

Such cannot be the Hierarchy’s wish.

These are my terms: I must retain my See,

my freedom and my Cardinality.

As to the means, ask Bishop Muggerone

what judges currently are selling for.

Now, if you please, I’d like to use a phone.

The Cardinal comes to stand directly in front of the Brother, who moves away from the door. The Cardinal tries the door and finds it locked. He stands for a while, resting his forehead against the locked door, defeated—and unaware that the Brother, after receiving another message through his earphones, employs this moment of inattention to introduce poison into the opened bottle of wine.

THE CARDINAL:

I see. It is a kind of miracle

when those who have been blind are made to see.

Attorneys can be bought for half the cost

of the judiciary. Muggerone

would have known that. My aide-memoire

can’t help me now, if it is where I think.

(faces round, smiling)

Well, then, let me drown myself in drink.

The Brother pours a full glass of the poisoned, wine, which the Cardinal

accepts after a moment hesitation. As at his first taste of the earlier

bottle, he makes a sour face.

THE CARDINAL:

Between the first glass and this next, the wine

would seem to have turned sour. Would you agree?

Ah, I forget—you’re sworn to abstinence.

My tongue should have been as wise as yours. And mute.

He tosses back all the wine in the glass and holds it out to be refilled.

The last of the wine is poured in the glass.

THE CARDINAL:

A toast: to my successful autopsy

and to the holy and redeeming blood

of Christ. May it provide the evidence

to hang the lot of you! In youth I prayed

I might become a martyr for the Faith.

God has too long a memory, too cruel

a wit—which makes Him, come to think of it,

a God that I deserve, and vice versa.

He flinches with the first effect of the poison. The Brother helps him to sit on the edge of the bed. He begins, again, to hiccough, and makes a desperate effort to stop.

THE CARDINAL:

Water, damn you! Get me a glass of (*)

The Brother takes the wineglass, goes to the door, unlocks it, leaves the room, and returns with the glass full of water. The Cardinal, who is doubled with cramps, and hiccoughing, closes his eyes, holds his breath, growing red in the face and takes twenty sips of water. To no avail. The hiccoughing persists. The Cardinal smashes the glass on the floor. He pulls himself to his feet by clawing at the Brother’s habit.

THE CARDINAL:

Cure me! You did before, you (*) must again:

I will not die like that damned (*) wop!

The Brother strikes him across the face, knocking off his glasses, but the

blow has no effect against the hiccoughs.

THE CARDINAL:

Again!

The Brother uses all his force. The Cardinal falls back across the bed. His face is bloody. His hiccoughs are gone. He is dead. The Brother kneels at the foot of the bed and makes the sign of the cross.

Curtain

Robert Pinsky (b. 1940)

Shirt[1]

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,

the nearly invisible stitches along the collar

turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

gossiping over tea and noodles on their break

or talking money or politics while one fitted

this armpiece with its overseam to the band

of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,

the wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,

the treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

at the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.

One hundred and forty-six died in the flames

on the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—

the witness in a building across the street

who watched how a young man helped a girl to step

up to the windowsill, then held her out

away from the masonry wall and let her drop.

And then another. As if he were helping them up

to enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms

around his neck and kissed him. Then he held

her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

he stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared

and fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,

air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—

like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”

Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly

across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme

or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,

houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,

to control their savage Scottish workers, tamed

by a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers

to wear among the dusty clattering looms.

Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

the docker, the navy. The planter, the picker, the sorter

sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton

as slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black

Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma

and she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

and feel and its clean smell have satisfied

both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality

down to the buttons of simulated bone,

the buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters

printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,

the label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

Billy Collins (b. 1941)

Budapest[1]

My pen moves along the page

like the snout of a strange animal

shaped like a human arm

and dressed in the sleeve of a loose green sweater.

I watch it sniffing the paper ceaselessly,

intent as any forager that has nothing

on its mind but the grubs and insects

that will allow it to live another day.

It wants only to be here tomorrow,

dressed perhaps in the sleeve of a plaid shirt,

nose pressed against the page,

writing a few more dutiful lines

while I gaze out the window and imagine Budapest

or some other city where I have never been.

Forgetfulness[2]

The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot,

the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel

which suddenly becomes one you have never read,

never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere

of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names

of the nine Muses goodbye

and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,

and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,

the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,

it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,

not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river

whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,

well on your own way to oblivion

where you will join those

who have even forgotten how to swim

and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night

to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.

No wonder the moon in the window

seems to have drifted

out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Introduction to Poetry[1]

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

Nightclub[1]

You are so beautiful and I am a fool

to be in love with you

is a theme that keeps coming up

in songs and poems.

There seems to be no room for variation.

I have never heard anyone sing

I am so beautiful

and you are a fool to be in love with me,

even though this notion has surely

crossed the minds of women and men alike.

You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool

is another one you don’t hear.

Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.

That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon

I am listening to Johnny Hartman

whose dark voice can curl around

the concepts of love, beauty, and foolishness

like no one else’s can.

It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette

someone left burning on a baby grand piano

around three o’clock in the morning;

smoke that billows up into the bright lights

while out there in the darkness

some of the beautiful fools have gathered

around little tables to listen,

some with their eyes closed,

others leaning forward into the music

as if it were holding them up,

or twirling the loose ice in a glass,

slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,

borne beyond midnight,

that has no desire to go home,

especially now when everyone in the room

is watching the large man with the tenor sax

that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.

He moves forward to the edge of the stage

and hands the instrument down to me

and nods that I should play.

So I put the mouthpiece to my lips

and blow into it with all my living breath.

We are all so foolish,

my long bebop solo begins by saying,

so damn foolish

we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

Not Touching[1]

The valentine of desire is pasted over my heart

and still we are not touching, like things

in a poorly done still life

where the knife appears to be floating over the plate

which is itself hovering above the table somehow,

the entire arrangement of apple, pear, and wineglass

having forgotten the law of gravity,

refusing to be still,

as if the painter had caught them all

in a rare moment of slow flight

just before they drifted out of the room

through a window of perfectly realistic sunlight.

Passengers[1]

At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats

with the possible company of my death,

this sprawling miscellany of people—

carry-on bags and paperbacks—

that could be gathered in a flash

into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.

Not that I think

if our plane crumpled into a mountain

we would all ascend together,

holding hands like a ring of sky divers,

into a sudden gasp of brightness,

or that there would be some common spot

for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,

some spaceless, pillarless Greece

where we could, at the count of three,

toss our ashes into the sunny air.

It’s just that the way that man has his briefcase

so carefully arranged,

the way that girl is cooling her tea,

and the flow of the comb that woman

passes through her daughter’s hair…

and when you consider the altitude,

the secret parts of the engines,

and all the hard water and the deep canyons below …

well, I just think it would be good if one of us

maybe stood up and said a few words,

or, so as not to involve the police,

at least quietly wrote something down.

Purity[1]

My favorite time to write is in the late afternoon,

weekdays, particularly Wednesdays.

This is how I go about it:

I take a fresh pot of tea into my study

and close the door.

Then I remove my clothes and leave them in a pile

as if I had melted to death

and my legacy consisted of only

a white shirt, a pair of pants, and a pot of cold tea.

Then I remove my flesh and hang it over a chair.

I slide it off my bones like a silken garment.

I do this so that what I write will be pure,

completely rinsed of the carnal,

uncontaminated by the preoccupations of the body.

Finally I remove each of my organs and arrange them

on a small table near the window.

I do not want to hear their ancient rhythms

when I am trying to tap out my own drumbeat.

Now I sit down at the desk, ready to begin.

I am entirely pure: nothing but a skeleton at a typewriter.

I should mention that sometimes I leave my penis on.

I find it difficult to ignore the temptation.

Then I am a skeleton with a penis at a typewriter.

In this condition I write extraordinary love poems,

most of them exploiting the connection between sex

and death.

I am concentration itself: I exist in a universe

where there is nothing but sex, death, and typewriting.

After a spell of this I remove my penis too.

Then I am all skull and bones typing into the afternoon.

Just the absolute essentials, no flounces.

Now I write only about death, most classical of themes

in language light as the air between my ribs.

Afterward,

I reward myself by going for a drive at sunset.

I replace my organs and slip back into my flesh

and clothes. Then I back the car out of the garage

and speed through woods on winding country roads,

passing stone walls, farmhouses, and frozen ponds,

all perfectly arranged like words in a famous sonnet.

Questions About Angels[1]

Of all the questions you might want to ask

about angels, the only one you ever hear

is how many can dance on the head of a pin.

No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time

besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin

or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth

or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.

Do they fly through God’s body and come out singing?

Do they swing like children from the hinges

of the spirit world

saying their names backwards and forwards?

Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors?

What about their sleeping habits,

the fabric of their robes,

their diet of unfiltered divine light?

What goes on inside their luminous heads?

Is there a wall

these tall presences can look over and see hell?

If an angel fell off a cloud would he leave a hole

in a river and would the hole float along endlessly

filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?

If an angel delivered the mail would he arrive

in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume

the appearance of the regular mailman and

whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?

No, the medieval theologians control the court.

The only question you ever hear is about

the little dance floor on the head of a pin

where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.

It is designed to make us think in millions, billions,

to make us run out of numbers and collapse

into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:

one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,

a small jazz combo working in the background.

She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful

eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over

to glance at his watch because she has been dancing

forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.

Toi Derricotte (b. 1941)

Allen Ginsberg[1]

Once Allen Ginsberg stopped to pee

at a bookstore in New Jersey,

but he looked like a bum—

not like the miracle-laden Christ with electric atom juice, not like the one

whose brain is a river in which was plundered the stone of the world (the

one bathing fluid to wash away 25,000 year half-lives), he was dressed as

a bum.

He had wobbled on a pee-heavy bladder

in search of a gas station,

a dime store with a quarter booth,

a Chinese restaurant,

when he came to that grocery store of dreams:

chunks of Baudelaire’s skin

glittered in plastic;

his eyes in sets, innocent

as the unhoused eyes of a butchered cow.

In a dark corner, Rimbaud’s

genitals hung like jerky,

and the milk of Whitman’s breasts

drifted in a carton, dry as talcum.

He wanted to pee and lay his head

on the cool stacks;

but the clerk took one look

and thought of the buttock of clean businessmen

squatting during lunch hour,

the thin flanks of pretty girls buying poetry for school.

Behind her, faintly,

the deodorized bathroom.

She was the one at the gate

protecting civilization.

He turned, walked to the gutter,

unzipped his pants, and peed.

Do you know who that was?

A man in the back came forth.

Soon she was known as

the woman in the store on Main

who said no to Allen Ginsberg;

and she is proud—

so proud she told this story

pointing to the spot outside, as if

still flowed that holy stream.

Stephen Dobyns (b. 1941)

Tomatoes[1]

A woman travels to Brazil for plastic

surgery and a face-lift. She is sixty

and has the usual desire to stay pretty.

Once she is healed she takes her new face

out on the streets of Rio. A young man

with a gun wants her money. Bang, she’s dead.

The body is shipped back to New York,

but in the morgue there is a mix-up. The son

is sent for. He is told that his mother

is one of these ten different women.

Each has been shot. Such is modern life.

He studies them all but can’t find her.

With her new face, she has become a stranger.

Maybe it’s this one, maybe it’s that one.

He looks at their breasts. Which ones nursed him?

He presses their hands to his cheek.

Which ones consoled him? He even tries

climbing into their laps to see which

feels more familiar but the coroner stops him.

Well, says the coroner, which is your mother?

They all are, says the young man, let me

take them as a package. The coroner hesitates,

then agrees. Actually it solves a lot of problems.

The young man has the ten women shipped home,

then cremates them all together. You’ve seen

how some people have a little urn on the mantle?

This man has a huge silver garbage can.

In the spring, he drags the garbage can

out to the garden and begins working the teeth,

the ash, the bits of bone into the soil.

Then he plants tomatoes. His mother loved tomatoes.

They grow straight from seed, so fast and big

that the young man is amazed. He takes the first

ten into the kitchen. In their roundness,

he sees his mother’s breasts. In their smoothness,

he finds the consoling touch of her hands.

Mother, mother, he cries, and flings himself

on the tomatoes. Forget about the knife, the fork,

the pinch of salt. Try to imagine the filial

starvation, think of his ravenous kisses.

Eamon Grennan (b. 1941)

Detail[1]

I was watching a robin fly after a finch—the smaller bird

chirping with excitement, the bigger, its breast blazing, silent in light-winged

earnest chase—when, out of nowhere flashes a sparrowhawk

headlong, a light brown burn scorching the air from which it simply

plucks

like a ripe fruit the stopped robin, whose two or three

cheeps of terminal surprise twinkle in the silence

closing over the empty street when the birds have gone

about their own business, and I began to understand

how a poem can happen: you have your eye on a small

elusive detail, pursuing its music, when a terrible truth

strikes and your heart cries out, being carried off.

Gerald Locklin (b. 1941)

Late Registration[1]

She asks me for an admissions card

to remedial English,

and I have to tell her that

we don’t have any sections open.

“How come?” she asks.

So I explain that the governor provided

the money to identify those students

in need of remedial instruction,

but he did not budget any funds

for remedial instructors.

“Well, then,” she says,

“put me down for creative writing.”

Jack Myers (b. 1941)

Jake Addresses the World from the Garden[2]

Rocks without ch’I [spirit] are dead rocks.

—mai-mai sze, The Way of Chinese Painting

It’s spring and Jake toddles to the garden

as the sun wobbles up clean and iridescent.

He points to the stones asleep and says, “M’mba,”

I guess for the sound they make, takes another step

and says, “M’mba,” for the small red berries crying

in the holly. “M’mba,” for the first sweet sadness

of the purplish-black berries

in the drooping monkey grass,

and “M’mba,” for the little witches’ faces

bursting into blossom.

That’s what it’s like being shorter

than the primary colors,

being deafened by humming stones

while the whole world billows

behind the curtain “M’mba,”

the one word. Meanwhile I go on

troweling, slavering the world with language

as Jake squeals

like a held bird and begins lallating to me in tongues.

I follow him around

as he tries to thread the shine of a stone

through the eye of a watchful bird.

After a year of banging

his head, crying, the awful falling down, now he’s trying

to explain the vast brightening in his brain

by saying “M’mba”

to me again and again.

And though I follow with the sadness

above which a stone cannot lift itself, I wink and say

“M’mba” back to him. But I don’t mean it.

Nancy Vieira Couto (b. 1942)

Living in the La Brea Tar Pits[1]

Each morning she is wheeled into the picture

window of her son-in-law’s house,

jammed into her selected viewing space

by the table with the lamp and bowling trophy.

The drapes sweep apart like fronds.

She stretches her neck like a brontosaurus

and watches the neighbors, whose names she doesn’t

remember. Across the street

two Volkswagens line up like M&M’s,

one yellow, one orange.

At lunchtime

her daughter broils a small steak, very tender,

saying, “Ma, you must have meat.” But her taste runs

these days to Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and baby cereals.

She leans over her plate,

stretching her neck like a brontosaurus,

and mangles a small piece between her tough

gums. The dog waits his turn.

Each evening she is wheeled up close

to the TV in her son-in-law’s house.

She watches “Superman” reruns.

In the kitchen, her son-in-law

eats meat and potatoes and talks in a loud voice.

His bowling night—she will have

her daughter to herself. But the TV

picture has gone bad, and the room is dark.

Just last week she could hardly tell if there

were four lovely Lennon sisters, or three.

He returns late—almost eleven—

low scorer on his team. He wants his wife

but there’s a dinosaur in his living room, stretching

her neck. It’s past her bedtime. He waits his turn.

∼

Each morning he looks out of the picture

window of his house. Across the street

the neighbors have parked their shiny new Toyotas.

He blinks, as if at something unexpected

and obscene. He moves away,

walking upright, heavy on his bare

heels. He wears pajamas.

In the kitchen

he pours orange juice into a paper cup

and takes his medication—two shiny capsules.

His mother-in-law is extinct, and his wife, too.

There is the dog to feed, and he will think of

people to visit. He moves slow, deliberate,

but keeps on moving. The sky is full of birds,

and the Rocky Mountains all have names.

In the evening he turns on the TV

and wedges his fifty-foot frame into his favorite

chair, curling his tail over the armrest.

He watches the third rerun of the Italian

version of Zorro. When the horizontal

hold goes haywire, he watches diagonal stripes.

It’s not easy to be a tyrannosaurus.

He stands eighteen feet tall, he thuds through life,

what’s left. And when he roars, he shows his sharp

stalactites and stalagmites. His grown children

get nervous. He resents them. They wait their turn.

Stuart Dybek (b. 1942)

Brass Knuckles[1]

Kruger sets his feet

before Ventura Furniture’s plate glass window.

We’re

outlined in streetlights,

reflected across the jumbled living rooms,

bedrooms, dining rooms,

smelling fresh bread

from the flapping ventilator down the alley

behind Cross’s Bakery.

His fist keeps clenching

(Our jaws grinding on bennies)

through the four thick rings

of the knuckles he made me in shop

the day after I got stomped

outside St. Sabina’s.

“ The idea is to strike like a cobra. Don’t follow through. Focus total power at the moment of impact. “

His fist uncoils

the brass

whipped back a centimeter from

smashing out my teeth,

the force waves

snapping my head back.

“See?” he says,

sucking breath like a diver, toe to toe

with the leopard-skin sofa;

I step back

thinking how a diamond ring cuts glass;

his fist explodes.

The window cracks for half a block,

knees drop out of our reflections.

An alarm

is bouncing out of doorways,

we cut

down a gangway of warm bread,

boots echoing

through the dim-lit viaduct on Rockwell

where I see his hand

flinging orange swashes off the concrete walls,

blood behind us

like footprints.

spoor for cops;

in a red haze of switches

boxcars couple,

we jump the electric rail

knowing we’re already caught.

Maroon[1]

for Anthony Dadaro, 1946-1958

A boy is bouncing a ball off a brick wall after school. The bricks have been painted maroon a long time ago. Steady as a heartbeat the ball rebounds oblong, hums, sponges back round. A maroon Chevy goes by.

Nothing else. This street’s deserted: a block-long abandoned factory, glass from the busted windows on the sidewalk mixed with brown glass from beer bottles, whiskey pints. Sometimes the alkies drink here. Not today.

Only the ball flying between sunlit hands and shadowed bricks and sparrows brawling in the dusty gutters. The entire street turning maroon in the shadow of the wall, even the birds, even the hands.

He stands waiting under a streetlight that’s trying to flicker on. Three guys he’s never seen in the neighborhood before, coming down the street, carrying crowbars.

B. H. Fairchild (b. 1942)

The Dumka[2]

His parents would sit alone together

on the blue divan in the small living room

listening to Dvorak’s piano quintet.

They would sit there in their old age,

side by side, quite still, backs rigid, hands

in their laps, and look straight ahead

at the yellow light of the phonograph

that seemed as distant as a lamplit

window seen across the plains late at night.

They would sit quietly as something dense

and radiant swirled around them, something

like the dust storms of the thirties that began

by smearing the sky green with doom

but afterwards drenched the air with an amber

glow and then vanished, leaving profiles

of children on pillows and a pale gauze

over mantles and table tops. But it was

the memory of dust that encircled them now

and made them smile faintly and raise

or bow their heads as they spoke about

the farm in twilight with piano music

spiraling out across red roads and fields

of maize, bread lines in the city, women

and men lining main street like mannequins,

and then the war, the white frame rent house,

and the homecoming, the homecoming,

the homecoming, and afterwards, green lawns

and a new piano with its mahogany gleam

like pond ice at dawn, and now alone

in the house in the vanishing neighborhood,

the slow mornings of coffee and newspapers

and evenings of music and scattered bits

of talk like leaves suddenly fallen before

one notices the new season. And they would sit

there alone and soon he would reach across

and lift her hand as if it were the last unbroken

leaf and he would hold her hand in his hand

for a long time and they would look far off

into the music of their lives as they sat alone

together in the room in the house in Kansas.

Tom Hennen (b. 1942)

Soaking Up Sun[1]

Today there is the kind of sunshine old men love, the kind of day when my grandfather would sit on the south side of the wooden corncrib where the sunlight warmed slowly all through the day like a wood stove. One after another dry leaves fell. No painful memories came. Everything was lit by a halo of light. The cornstalks glinted bright as pieces of glass. From the fields and cottonwood grove came the damp smell of mushrooms, of things going back to earth. I sat with my grandfather then. Sheep came up to us as we sat there, their oily wool so warm to my fingers, like a strange and magic snow. My grandfather whittled sweet smelling apple sticks just to get at the scent. His thumb had a permanent groove in it where the back of the knife blade rested. He let me listen to the wind, the wild geese, the soft dialect of sheep, while his own silence taught me every secret thing he knew.

The Life of a Day[2]

Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks which can easily be seen if you look closely. But there are so few days as compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people. But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason we like to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time. We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when we are convinced, our lives will start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.

David Huddle (b. 1942)

Holes Commence Falling[1]

The lead and zinc company

owned the mineral rights

to the whole town anyway,

and after drilling holes

for 3 or 4 years,

they finally found the right

place and sunk a mine shaft.

We were proud

of all that digging,

even though nobody from

town got hired. They

were going to dig right

under New River and hook up

with the mine at Austinville.

Then people’s wells

started drying up just like

somebody’d shut off a faucet,

and holes commenced falling,

big chunks of people’s yards

would drop 5 or 6 feet,

houses would shift and crack.

Now and then the company’d

pay out a little money

in damages; they got a truck

to haul water and sell it

to the people whose wells

had dried up, but most

everybody agreed the

situation wasn’t

serious.

Louis Jenkins (b. 1942)

A Place for Everything[1]

It’s so easy to lose track of things. A screwdriver, for instance. “Where did I put that? I had it in my hand just a minute ago.” You wander vaguely from room to room, having forgotten, by now, what you were looking for, staring into the refrigerator, the bathroom mirror … “I really could use a shave. … “

Some objects seem to disappear immediately while others never want to leave. Here is a small black plastic gizmo with a serious demeanor that turns up regularly, like a politician at public functions. It seems to be an “integral part,” a kind of switch with screw holes so that it can be attached to something larger. Nobody knows what. This thing’s use has been forgotten but it looks so important that no one is willing to throw it in the trash. It survives by bluff, like certain insects that escape being eaten because of their formidable appearance.

My father owned a large, three-bladed, brass propeller that he saved for years. Its worth was obvious, it was just that it lacked an immediate application since we didn’t own a boat and lived hundreds of miles from any large body of water. The propeller survived all purges and cleanings, living, like royalty, a life of lonely privilege, mounted high on the garage wall.

William Matthews (1942 – 1997)

A Poetry Reading at West Point[2]

I read to the entire plebe class,

in two batches. Twice the hall filled

with bodies dressed alike, each toting

a copy of my book. What would my

shrink say, if I had one, about

such a dream, if it were a dream?

Question and answer time.

“Sir,” a cadet yelled from the balcony,

and gave his name and rank, and then,

closing his parentheses, yelled

“Sir” again. “Why do your poems give

me a headache when I try

to understand them?” he asked. “Do

you want that?” I have a gift for

gentle jokes to defuse tension,

but this was not the time to use it.

“I try to write as well as I can

what it feels like to be human,”

I started, picking my way care—

fully, for he and I were, after

all, pained by the same dumb longings.

“I try to say what I don’t know

how to say, but of course I can’t

get much of it down at all.”

By now I was sweating bullets.

“I don’t want my poems to be hard,

unless the truth is, if there is

a truth.” Silence hung in the hall

like a heavy fabric. My own

head ached. “Sir,” he yelled. “Thank you. Sir.”

Onions[1]

How easily happiness begins by

dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter

slithers and swirls across the floor

of the sauté pan, especially if its

errant path crosses a tiny stick

of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

This could mean soup or risotto

or chutney (from the Sanskrit

chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions

go limp and then nacreous

and then what cookbooks call clear,

though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them.

It’s true it can make you weep

to peel them, to unfurl and to tease

from the taut ball first the brittle,

caramel-colored and decrepit

papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion

wrapped around its growing body,

for there’s nothing to an onion

but skin, and it’s true you can go on

weeping as you go on in, through

the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on

in to the core, the bud-like,

acrid, fibrous skins densely

clustered there, stalky

and incomplete, and these are the most

pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animal

comfort that infant humans secrete.

This is the best domestic perfume.

You sit down to eat with a rumor

of onions still on your twice-washed

hands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usual

endurance. It’s there when you clean up

and rinse the wine glasses and make

a joke, and you leave the minutest

whiff of it on the light switch,

later, when you climb the stairs.

Sharon Olds (b. 1942)

I Go Back to May 1937[1]

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,

I see my father strolling out

under the ochre sandstone arch, the

red tiles glinting like bent

plates of blood behind his head, I

see my mother with a few light books at her hip

standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the

wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its

sword-tips back in the May air,

they are about to graduate,

they are about to get married,

they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are

innocent, they would never hurt anybody.

I want to go up to them and say Stop,

don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,

he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things

you cannot imagine you would ever do,

you are going to do bad things to children,

you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,

you are going to die. I want to go

up to them there in the May sunlight and say it,

her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,

her pitiful beautiful untouched body,

his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,

his pitiful beautiful untouched body,

but I don’t do it. I want to live. I

take them up like male and female

paper dolls and bang them together

at the hips like chips of flint as if to

strike sparks from them, I say

Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

Once[1]

I saw my father naked, once, I

opened the blue bathroom’s door

which he always locked—if it opened, it was empty—

and there, surrounded by glistening turquoise

tile, sitting on the toilet, was my father,

all of him, and all of him

was skin. In an instant, my gaze ran

in a single, swerving, unimpeded

swoop, up: toe, ankle,

knee, hip, rib, nape,

shoulder, elbow, wrist, knuckle,

my father. He looked so unprotected,

so seamless, and shy, like a girl on a toilet,

and even though I knew he was sitting

to shit, there was no shame in that

but even a human peace. He looked up,

I said Sorry, backed out, shut the door

but I’d seen him, my father a shorn lamb,

my father a cloud in the blue sky

of the blue bathroom, my eye driven

up the hairpin mountain road of the

naked male, I had turned a corner

and found his flank unguarded—gentle

bulge of the hip joint, border of the pelvic cradle.

Quake Theory[2]

When two plates of earth scrape along each other

like a mother and daughter

it is called a fault.

There are faults that slip smoothly past each other

an inch a year, just a faint rasp

like a man running his hand over his chin,

that man between us,

and there are faults

that get stuck at a bend for twenty years.

The ridge bulges up like a father’s sarcastic forehead

and the whole thing freezes in place,

the man between us.

When this happens, there will be heavy damage

to industrial areas and leisure residence

when the deep plates

finally jerk past

the terrible pressure of their contact.

The earth cracks

and innocent people slip gently in like swimmers.

Satan Says[1]

I am locked in a little cedar box

with a picture of shepherds pasted onto

the central panel between carvings.

The box stands on curved legs.

It has a gold, heart-shaped lock

and no key. I am trying to write my

way out of the closed box

redolent of cedar. Satan

comes to me in the locked box

and says, I’ll get you out. Say

My father is a shit. I say

my father is a shit and Satan

laughs and says, It’s opening.

Say your mother is a pimp.

My mother is a pimp. Something

opens and breaks when I say that.

My spine uncurls in the cedar box

like the pink back of the ballerina pin

with a ruby eye, resting besides me on

satin in the cedar box.

Say shit, say death, say fuck the father,

Satan says, down my ear.

The pain of the locked past buzzes

in the child’s box on her bureau, under

the terrible round pond eye

etched around with roses, where

self-loathing gazed at sorrow.

Shit. Death. Fuck the father.

Something opens. Satan says

Don’t you feel a lot better?

Light seems to break on the delicate

edelweiss pin, carved in two

colors of wood. I love him too,

you know, I say to Satan dark

in the locked box. I love them but

I’m trying to say what happened to us

in the lost past. Of course, he says

and smiles, of course. Now say: torture.

I see, through blackness soaked in cedar,

the edge of a large hinge open.

Say: the father’s cock, the mother’s

cunt, says Satan, I’ll get you out.

The angle of the hinge widens

until I see the outlines of

the time before I was, when they were

locked in the bed. When I say

the magic words, Cock, Cunt,

Satan softly says, Come out.

But the air around the opening

is heavy and thick as hot smoke.

Come in, he says, and I feel his voice

breathing from the opening.

The exit is through Satan’s mouth.

Come in my mouth, he says, you’re there

already, and the huge hinge

begins to close. Oh no, I loved

them, too, I brace

my body tight

in the cedar house.

Satan sucks himself out the keyhole.

I’m left locked in the box, he seals

the heart-shaped lock with the wax of his tongue.

It’s your coffin now, Satan says,

I hardly hear;

I am warming my cold

hands at the dancer’s

ruby eye—

the fire, the suddenly discovered knowledge of

love.

The Pope’s Penis[1]

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate

clapper at the center of a bell.

It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a

halo of silver seaweed, the hair

swaying in the dark and the heat—and at night

while his eyes sleep, it stands up

in praise of God.

The Promise[2]

With the second drink, at the restaurant,

holding hands on the bare table,

we are at it again, renewing our promise

to kill each other. You are drinking gin,

night-blue juniper berry

dissolving in your body, I am drinking fume,

chewing its fragrant dirt and smoke, we are

taking on earth, we are part soil already,

and wherever we are, we are also in our

bed, fitted, naked, closely

along each other, half passed out,

after love, drifting back

and forth across the border of consciousness,

our bodies buoyant, clasped. Your hand

tightens on the table. You’re a little afraid

I’ll chicken out. What you do not want

is to lie in a hospital bed for a year

after a stroke, without being able

to think or die, you do not want

to be tied to a chair like your prim grandmother,

cursing. The room is dim around us,

ivory globes, pink curtains

bound at the waist—and outside,

a weightless, luminous, lifted-up

summer twilight. I tell you you do not

know me if you think I will not

kill you. Think how we have floated together

eye to eye, nipple to nipple,

sex to sex, the halves of a creature

drifting up to the lip of matter

and over it—you know me from the bright, blood-

flecked delivery room, if a lion

had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes

binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them.

The Space Heater[1]

On the then-below-zero day, it was on,

near the patients’ chair, the old heater

kept by the analyst’s couch, at the end,

like the infant’s headstone that was added near the foot

of my father’s grave. And it was hot, with the almost

laughing satire of a fire’s heat,

the little coils like hairs in Hell.

And it was making a group of sick noises—

I wanted the doctor to turn it off

but I couldn’t seem to ask, so I just

stared, but it did not budge. The doctor

turned his heavy, soft palm

outward, toward me, inviting me to speak, I

said, “If you’re cold—are you cold? But if it’s on

for me … “ He held his palm out toward me,

I tried to ask, but I only muttered,

but he said, “Of course,” as if I had asked,

and he stood up and approached the heater, and then

stood on one foot, and threw himself

toward the wall with one hand, and with the other hand

reached down, behind the couch, to pull

the plug out. I looked away,

I had not known he would have to bend

like that. And I was so moved, that he

would act undignified, to help me,

that I cried, not trying to stop, but as if

the moans made sentences which bore

some human message.

If he would cast himself toward the

outlet for me, as if bending with me in my old

shame and horror, then I would rest

on his art—and the heater purred, like a creature

or the familiar of a creature, or the child of a familiar,

the father of a child, the spirit of a father,

the healing of a spirit, the vision of healing,

the heat of vision, the power of heat,

the pleasure of power.

Dave Smith (b. 1942)

Pulling a Pig’s Tail[1]

The feel of it was hairy and coarse

like new rope in A. W. Johnson’s

hardware store but I never touched it

or any part of a pig

until that day my father took me

where the farm was, woods

a kind of green stillness, the hanging

leaves from so much rain

I guess—it felt as if I was upside

down underwater trying to swim

for my life. The farmer, Uncle Bern,

said I could have one

if I could catch it. A little one

looked easy, about my size,

not so wary because he wasn’t unsure

of anything yet—I must have

thought, but quick and hungry

as small lives always are

so I chased him until the foul mud

hardened on me like a skin,

the big men crying with laughter.

My father said it was just

that funny like some kind of soul’s

testing to see I wanted

badly enough to catch myself, black

eyes not seeming to watch,

fixed on the horizon past the weird

way I talked to it. Finally

it listened to something and I took

a grip, held, grunting, dug

my sneakers into the shit. Why he ran

and didn’t try to bite me

I don’t know. By then I almost had

everything straight but felt

at last what wasn’t right, the uncoiled

helplessness of anything

dragged small and screaming while

the big ones watch and grin.

I let go. I didn’t say I was thinking

about school that was over

that summer, the teacher that yanked

my hair, who said she’d see

I got myself straightened out. I hid

my hands in shame. How could I

tell my father a pig’s tail burns

your hands like lost beauty?

I only knew I loved school

until that raw day when she let me loose.

Wreck in the Woods[1]

Under that embrace of wild saplings held fast,

surrounded by troops of white mushrooms, by wrens

visiting like news-burdened ministers known

only to some dim life inside, this Model

A Ford like my grandfather’s entered the earth.

What were fenders, hood, doors,

no one washed, polished,

gazed with a tip of finger, or boyhood dream.

I stood where silky blue above went wind-rent,

pines, oaks, dogwood tickling, pushing as if grief

called families to see what none understood. What

plot of words, what heart-shudder of men, women

here ended so hard the green world must hide it?

Headlights, large, round. Two pieces of shattered glass.

Sharon Bryan (b. 1943)

Beyond Recall[1]

Nothing matters

to the dead,

that’s what’s so hard

for the rest of us

to take in—

their complete indifference

to our enticements,

our attempts to get in touch—

they aren’t observing us

from a discreet distance,

they aren’t listening

to a word we say—

you know that,

but you don’t believe it,

even deep in a cave

you don’t believe

in total darkness,

you keep waiting

for your eyes to adjust

and reveal your hand

in front of your face—

so how long a silence

will it take to convince us

that we’re the ones

who no longer exist,

as far as X is concerned,

and Y, and they’ve forgotten

every little thing

they knew about us,

what we told them

and what we didn’t

have to, even our names

mean nothing to them

now—our throats ache

with all we might have said

the next time we saw them.

Philip Schultz ((b. 1945)

The Answering Machine[1]

My friends & I speak mostly to one another’s machine.

We badger, cajole, & manipulate without compunction

& often don’t even remember who it is we’re calling.

These machines don’t counterfeit enthusiasm by raising

their volume or use a disdainful static

to imply indignation.

They don’t hold grudges & aren’t judgmental.

They’re never

too busy or bored or self-absorbed.

They have no conscience

& possess a tolerance for sadness which,

admittedly, we lack.

Even cowardice is permitted,

if enunciated clearly. I broke off

with Betsey by telling her machine I couldn’t go rafting

with her in Colorado.

I meant anywhere & it understood perfectly.

They appreciate, I think,

how much intimacy we can bear

on a daily basis.

When one becomes overburdened it buries

all pertinent information by overlapping;

whatever happened,

say, to Jane’s sweet birthday song,

hidden now under so many

solicitations about my appendix operation, or Bill’s news

of his father’s death

which was so rudely preempted by Helen’s

wedding invitation? Yes, the conflict which evolves through

direct contact is softened & our privacy protected, but

perhaps the price we pay is greater isolation. Under all

these supplanted voices is a constant reminder of everything

we once promised & then forgot, or betrayed. The guilt

can be overwhelming, especially late at night when I replay

my messages to hear

the plaintive vowels & combative consonants

rub like verbal sticks into a piercing vibrato

of prayerlike

insistence. What is essential, after all,

cannot be understood

too quickly & unessential facts get equal time. I mean

Even in our silence there is evidence of what we feared

to say or mean—

that ongoing testimony of remorse & affection

which, however crippling,

we replay nightly & then, sadly, erase.

Ronald Wallace (b. 1945)

Thirteen[1]

Gent, Nugget, Swank, and Dude:

the names themselves were lusty, crude,

as I took my small detour from school,

my breath erect, my manner cool.

In Kranson’s Drugstore, furtive, alert,

stiff in my khakis I’d sneak to the back,

unrip the new issue from its thick stack,

and stick it in my quick shirt.

Oh, I was a thief for love,

accompliced by guilt and thrill,

mystery and wonder my only motive.

Oh, that old Kranson could be there still!

I’d slip in and out, liquid, unseen,

out of my mind again, thirteen.

Tom Wayman (b. 1945)

Did I Miss Anything?[1]

Question frequently asked by

students after missing a class.

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here

we sat with our hands folded on our desks

in silence, for the full two hours;

Everything. I gave an exam worth

40 per cent of the grade for this term

and assigned some reading due today

on which I’m about to hand out a quiz

worth 50 per cent;

Nothing. None of the content of this course

has value or meaning

Take as many days off as you like:

any activities we undertake as a class

I assure you will not matter either to you or me

and are without purpose;

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time

a shaft of light descended and an angel

or other heavenly being appeared

and revealed to us what each woman or man must do

to attain divine wisdom in this life and the hereafter

This is the last time the class will meet

before we disperse to bring this good news to all people

on earth;

Nothing. When you are not present

how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom

is a microcosm of human existence

assembled for you to query and examine and ponder

This is not the only place such an opportunity has been

gathered

but it was one place

And you weren’t here.

Adam Zagajewski (b. 1945)

Electric Elegy[1]

Translated from the Polish by Renata Gorczynski, Benjamin Ivry,

and C. K. Williams

Farewell, German radio with your green eye

and your bulky box,

together almost composing

a body and soul. (Your lamps glowed

with a pink, salmony light, like Bergson’s

deep self. )

Through the thick fabric

of the speaker (my ear glued to you as

to the lattice of a confessional) Mussolini once whispered,

Hitler shouted, Stalin calmly explained,

Bierut hissed, Gomulka held endlessly forth.

But no one, radio, will accuse you of treason;

no, your only sin was obedience: absolute,

tender faithfulness to the megahertz;

whoever came was welcomed, whoever was sent

was received.

Of course I know only

the songs of Schubert brought you the jade

of true joy. To Chopin’s waltzes

your electric heart throbbed delicately

and firmly and the cloth over the speaker

pulsated like the breasts of amorous girls

in old novels.

Not with the news, though,

especially not Radio Free Europe or the BBC.

Then your eye would grow nervous,

the green pupil widen and shrink

as though its atropine dose had been altered.

Mad seagulls lived inside you, and Macbeth.

At night, forlorn signals found shelter

in your rooms, sailors cried out for help,

the young comet cried, losing her head.

Your old age was announced by a cracked voice,

then rattles, coughing, and finally blindness

(your eye faded), and total silence.

Sleep peacefully, German radio,

dream Schumann and don’t waken

when the next dictator-rooster crows.

Moment[1]

translated from the Polish by Renata Gorczynski

Clear moments are so short.

There is much more darkness. More

ocean than firm land. More

shadow than form.

Andrei Codrescu (b. 1946)

Defense of the meek[1]

the meek have taken

jesus to mean

their turn will come

jesus was merely

stating a fact the meek

will inherit the earth

there are more of them

or he may have been mean

and a Buddhist and meant

the meek will return

to the earth over

and over until they get

it right sometimes

translation is on the side

of the meek but never

the commentary

Two fragments from Three Types of Loss, Part 3[2]…

literal translations lose music while

poetic translations lose the original

…

the day is a literal translation

the night is a poetic translation

…

Larry Levis (1946 – 1996)

The Poem You Asked For[1]

My poem would eat nothing.

I tried giving it water

but it said no,

worrying me.

Day after day,

I held it up to the light,

turning it over,

but it only pressed its lips

more tightly together.

It grew sullen, like a toad

through with being teased.

I offered it money,

my clothes, my car with a full tank.

But the poem stared at the floor.

Finally I cupped it in

my hands, and carried it gently

out into the soft air, into the

evening traffic, wondering how

to end things between us.

For now it had begun breathing,

putting on more and

more hard rings of flesh.

And the poem demanded the food,

it drank up all the water,

beat me and took my money,

tore the faded clothes

off my back,

said Shit,

and walked slowly away,

slicking its hair down.

Said it was going

over to your place.

Brian Patten (b. 1946)

Party Piece[1]

He said:

’Let’s stay here

now this place has emptied

and make gentle pornography with one another,

while the party goers go out

and the dawn creeps in,

like a stranger.

Let us not hesitate

over what we know

or over how cold this place has become,

but let’s unclip our minds

and let tumble free

the mad, mangled crocodile of love!

So they did,

there among the woodbines and Guinness stains,

and later he caught a bus and she a train

and all there was between them then was rain.

Maura Stanton (b. 1946)

Living Apart[1]

I leave our house, our town, familiar fields

below me at take off when I fly to you

deep in these shadowed mountains. Now at dawn

I wake to the horse-clop of passing carriages

as if I’d passed through time as well as space.

Yesterday we saw an Amish farmer

bearded and calm, stroking his horse’s mane

under a flaming maple as he watched

hang-gliders drifting down from Hyner View.

We stopped to watch them, too. I was amazed

to see men falling toward the scarlet treetops

on out-spread wings. That’s when I grabbed your hand

to tell myself we were alive and human

not lost in hell which must resemble this—

a place where souls from many centuries

stand side by side, united but unhappy,

to watch the angels fall from fiery mountains.

Lorna Goodison (b. 1947)

Birth Stone[2]

The older women wise and tell Anna

first time baby mother,

“Hold a stone upon your head and follow

a straight line go home.”

For like how Anna was working in the

field, grassweeder

right up till the appointed hour

that the baby was to come.

Right up till the appointed hour

when her clear heraldic water

broke free and washed her down.

Dry birth for you young mother;

the distance between the field and home

come in like the Gobi desert now.

But your first baby must born abed.

Put the woman stone on your head

and walk through no man’s land

go home. When you walk, the stone

and not you yet, will bear down.

Kaylin Haught (b. 1947)

God Says Yes to Me[1]

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

and she said yes

I asked her if it was okay to be short

and she said it sure is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish

or not wear nail polish

and she said honey

she calls me that sometimes

she said you can do just exactly

what you want to

Thanks God I said

And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph

my letters

Sweetcakes God said

who knows where she picked that up

what I’m telling you is

Yes Yes Yes

Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947)

Blackberries[1]

They left my hands like a printer’s

or thief’s before a police blotter

& pulled me into early morning’s

terrestrial sweetness, so thick

the damp ground was consecrated

where they fell among a garland of thorns.

Although I could smell old lime-covered

history, at ten I’d still hold out my hands

& berries fell into them. Eating from one

& filling a half gallon with the other,

I ate the mythology & dreamt

of pies & cobbler, almost

needful as forgiveness. My bird dog Spot

eyed blue jays & thrashers. The mud frogs

in rich blackness, hid from daylight.

An hour later, beside City Limits Road

I balanced a gleaming can in each hand,

limboed between worlds, repeating one dollar.

The big blue car made me sweat.

Wintertime crawled out of the windows.

When I leaned closer I saw the boy

& girl my age, in the wide back seat

smirking, & it was then I remembered my fingers

burning with thorns among berries too ripe to touch.

Camouflaging the Chimera[1]

We tied branches to our helmets.

We painted our faces & rifles

with mud from a riverbank,

blades of grass hung from the pockets

of our tiger suits. We wove

ourselves into the terrain,

content to be a hummingbird’s target.

We hugged bamboo & leaned

against a breeze off the river,

slow-dragging with ghosts

from Saigon to Bangkok,

with women left in doorways

reaching in from America.

We aimed at dark-hearted songbirds.

In our way station of shadows

rock apes tried to blow our cover

throwing stones at the sunset. Chameleons

crawled our spines, changing from day

to night: green to gold,

gold to black. But we waited

till the moon touched metal,

till something almost broke

inside us. VC struggled

with the hillside, like black silk

wrestling iron through grass.

We weren’t there. The river ran

through our bones. Small animals took refuge

against our bodies; we held our breath,

ready to spring the L-shaped

ambush, as a world revolved

under each man’s eyelid.

Facing It[1]

My black face fades,

hiding inside the black granite.

I said I wouldn’t,

dammit: No tears.

I’m stone. I’m flesh.

My clouded reflection eyes me

like a bird of prey, the profile of night

slanted against morning. I turn

this way—the stone lets me go.

I turn that way—I’m inside

the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

again, depending on the light

to make a difference.

I go down the 58,022 names,

half-expecting to find

my own in letters like smoke.

I touch the name Andrew Johnson;

I see the booby trap’s white flash.

Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse

but when she walks away

the names stay on the wall.

Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s

wings cutting across my stare.

The sky. A plane in the sky.

A white vet’s image floats

closer to me, then his pale eyes

look through mine. I’m a window.

He’s lost his right arm

inside the stone. In the black mirror

a woman’s trying to erase names:

no, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.

Ode to the Maggot[1]

Brother of the blowfly

and godhead, you work magic

over battlefields,

in slabs of bad pork

and flophouses. Yes, you

go to the root of all things.

You are sound & mathematical.

Jesus, Christ, you’re merciless

with the truth. Ontological & lustrous,

you cast spells on beggars & kings

behind the stone door of Caesar’s tomb

or split trench in a field of ragweed.

No decree or creed can outlaw you

as you take every living thing apart. Little

master of earth, no one gets to heaven

without going through you first.

Heather McHugh (b. 1948)

What He thought[2]

We were supposed to do a job in Italy

and, full of our feeling for

ourselves (our sense of being

Poets from America) we went

from Rome to Fano, met

the Mayor, mulled a couple

matters over. The Italian literati seemed

bewildered by the language of America: they asked us

what does “flat drink” mean? and the mysterious

“cheap date” (no explanation lessened

this one’s mystery). Among Italian writers we

could recognize our counterparts: the academic,

the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous,

the brazen and the glib. And there was one

administrator (The Conservative), in suit

of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide

with measured pace and uninflected tone

narrated sights and histories

the hired van hauled us past.

Of all he was most politic—

and least poetic—so

it seemed. Our last

few days in Rome

I found a book of poems this

unprepossessing one had written: it was there

in the pensione room (a room he’d recommended)

where it must have been abandoned by

the German visitor (was there a bus of them? ) to whom

he had inscribed and dated it a month before. I couldn’t

read Italian either, so I put the book

back in the wardrobe’s dark. We last Americans

were due to leave

tomorrow. For our parting evening then

our host chose something in a family restaurant,

and there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed, till,

sensible it was our last big chance to be Poetic, make

our mark, one of us asked

“What’s poetry?

Is it the fruits and vegetables

and marketplace at Campo dei Fiori

or the statue there?” Because I was

the glib one, I identified the answer

instantly, I didn’t have to think—“The truth

is both, it’s both!” I blurted out. But that

was easy. That was easiest

to say. What followed taught me something

about difficulty,

for our underestimated host spoke out

all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents

Giordano Bruno, brought

to be burned in the public square

because of his offence against authority,

which was to say

the Church. His crime was his belief

the universe does not revolve around

the human being: God is no

fixed point or central government

but rather is poured in waves, through

all things: all things

move. “If God is not the soul itself,

he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world.” Such was

his heresy. The day they brought him forth to die

they feared he might incite the crowd (the man

was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors

placed upon his face

an iron mask

in which he could not speak.

That is how they burned him.

That is how he died,

without a word,

in front of everyone. And poetry—

(we’d all put down our forks by now, to listen to

the man in gray; he went on softly)—poetry

is what he thought, but did not say.

Agha Shahid Ali (1949 – 2001)

The Dacca Gauzes[1]

… for a whole year he sought to accumulate the most exquisite Dacca

gauzes.

—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Those transparent Dacca gauzes

known as woven air, running

water, evening dew:

a dead art now, dead over

a hundred years. “No one

now knows,” my grandmother says,

“what it was to wear

or touch that cloth.” She wore

it once, an heirloom sari from

her mother’s dowry, proved

genuine when it was pulled, all

six yards, through a ring.

Years later when it tore,

many handkerchiefs embroidered

with gold-thread paisleys

were distributed among

the nieces and. daughters-in-law.

Those too now lost.

In history we learned: the hands

of weavers were amputated,

the looms of Bengal silenced,

and the cotton shipped raw

by the British to England.

History of little use to her,

my grandmother just says

how the muslins of today

seem so coarse and that only

in autumn, should one wake up

at dawn to pray, can one

feel that same texture again.

One morning, she says, the air

was dew-starched: she pulled

it absently through her ring.

Mark Halliday (b. 1949)

Get It Again[1]

In 1978 I write something about how

happiness and sorrow are intertwined

and I feel good, insightful, and it seems

this reflects some healthy growth of spirit,

some deep maturation—then

I leaf through an eleven-year-old notebook

and spot some paragraphs I wrote in 1967

on Keats’s “Ode on Melancholy” which

seem to say some of it better, or

almost better, or as well though differently—

and the waves roll out, and the waves roll in.

In 1972 I often ate rye toast with peanut butter,

the toast on a blue saucer beside my typewriter,

I took huge bites

between paragraphs about love and change;

today it’s a green saucer, cream cheese, French bread,

but the motions are the same and in a month or so

when the air is colder I’ll be back to my autumn snack,

rye toast with peanut butter, an all-star since ’72 …

I turned around on sidewalks

to stare at some woman’s asses

plenty of times in the sixties and

what do you think will be different in the eighties?

In 1970, mourning an ended love, I listened

to a sailor’s song with a timeless refrain,

and felt better—that taste of transcendence

in the night air

and

and here it is in 1978, the night air, hello.

My journalist friend explains the challenge

of his new TV job: you work for a week

to get together one 5-minute feature,

and then

it’s gone—

vanished into gray-and-white memory,

a fading choreography of electric dots—

and you’re starting it all over,

every week that awesome energy demand:

to start over

In 1973 I played hundreds of games of catch

with a five-year-old boy named Brian.

Brian had trouble counting so we practiced

by counting the times we tossed the ball

without missing. When Brian missed

he was on the verge of despair for a moment

but I taught him to say

“Back to zero!” to give him a sense of

always another chance. I tried to make it sound

exciting to go back to zero, and eventually

our tone was exultant when we shouted in unison

after a bad toss or fumble

back to zero.

In 1977 I wrote a poem called “Repetition Rider”

and last winter I revised it three times

and I thought it was finished.

“It’s not like writing,” says my journalist friend,

“where your work is permanent—

no matter how obscure,

written work is durable … That’s why

it can grow—you can move beyond

what you’ve already said.”

Somewhere I read or heard something good

about what Shakespeare meant in Lear

when he wrote: “Ripeness is all.”

I hope it comes back to me.

I see myself riding

the San Francisco subway in 1974

scrawling something in my little red notebook

about “getting nowhere fast.”

I see Brian’s big brown eyes lit

with the adventure of starting over

and oblivious, for a moment,

of the extent to which he is

doomed by his disabilities.

And the waves

roll out, and the waves roll in.

This poem

could go on a long time,

but you’ve already understood it;

you got the point some time ago,

and you’ll get it again

Population[1]

Isn’t it nice that everyone has a grocery list

except the very poor you hear about occasionally

we all have a grocery list on the refrigerator door;

at any given time there are thirty million lists in America

that say BREAD. Isn’t it nice

not to be alone in this. Sometimes

you visit someone’s house for the first time

and you spot the list taped up on a kitchen cabinet

and you think Yes, we’re all in this together.

TOILET PAPER. No getting around it.

Nice to think of us all

unwrapping the new rolls at once,

forty thousand of us at any given moment.

Orgasm, of course,

being the most vivid example: imagine

an electrified map wired to every American bed:

those little lights popping

on both sides of the Great Divide,

popping to beat the band. But

we never beat the band: within an hour or a day

we’re horny again, or hungry, or burdened with waste.

But isn’t it nice to be not noticeably responsible,

acquitted eternally in the rituals of the tribe:

it’s only human! It’s only human and that’s not much.

So, aren’t you glad

we have such advanced farm machinery,

futuristic fertilizers, half a billion chickens

almost ready to die.

Here come the loaves of bread for us

thup, thup thup thup for all of us thup thup

except maybe the very poor

thup thup

and man all the cattle we can fatten up man,

there’s no stopping our steaks. And that’s why

we can make babies galore, baby:

let’s get on with it. Climb aboard.

Let’s be affirmative here, let’s be pro-life for God’s sake

how can life be wrong?

People need people and the happiest people are

surrounded with friendly flesh.

If you have ten kids they’ll be so sweet—

ten really sweet kids! Have twelve!

What if there were 48 pro baseball teams,

you could see a damn lot more games!

And in this fashion we get away

from tragedy. Because tragedy comes when someone

gets too special. Whereas,

if forty thousand kitchen counters

on any given Sunday night

have notes on them that say

I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE

I’M GONE, DON’T TRY TO FIND ME

you can feel how your note is

no big thing in America,

so, no horrible heartbreak,

it’s more like a TV episode,

you’ve seen this whole plot lots of times

and everybody gets by—

you feel better already—

everybody gets by

and it’s nice. It’s a people thing.

You’ve got to admit it’s nice.

Robert Hedin (b. 1949)

The Old Liberators[1]

Of all the people in the mornings at the mall,

it’s the old liberators I like best,

those veterans of the Bulge, Anzio, or Monte Cassino

I see lost in Automotive or back in Home Repair,

bored among the paints and power tools.

Or the really old ones, the ones who are going fast,

who keep dozing off in the little orchards

of shade under the distant skylights.

All around, from one bright rack to another,

their wives stride big as generals,

their handbags bulging like ripe fruit.

They are almost all gone now,

and with them they are taking the flak

and fire storms, the names of the old bombing runs.

Each day a little more of their memory goes out,

darkens the way a house darkens,

its rooms quietly filling with evening,

until nothing but the wind lifts the lace curtains,

the wind bearing through the empty rooms

the rich far off scent of gardens

where just now, this morning,

light is falling on the wild philodendrons.

Joyce Sutphen (b. 1949)

Living in the Body[1]

Body is something you need in order to stay

on this planet and you only get one.

And no matter which one you get, it will not

be satisfactory. It will not be beautiful

enough, it will not be fast enough, it will

not keep on for days at a time, but will

pull you down into a sleepy swamp and

demand apples and coffee and chocolate cake.

Body is a thing you have to carry

from one day into the next. Always the

same eyebrows over the same eyes in the same

skin when you look in the mirror, and the

same creaky knee when you get up from the

floor and the same wrist under the watchband.

The changes you can make are small and

costly—better to leave it as it is.

Body is a thing that you have to leave

eventually. You know that because you have

seen others do it, others who were once like you,

living inside their pile of bones and

flesh, smiling at you, loving you,

leaning in the doorway, talking to you

for hours and then one day they

are gone. No forwarding address.

Bruce Weigl (b. 1949)

What Saves Us[1]

We are wrapped around each other in

the back of my father’s car parked

in the empty lot of the high school

of our failures, the sweat on her neck

like oil. The next morning I would leave

for the war and I thought I had something

coming for that, I thought to myself

that I would not die never having

been inside her long body. I pulled

her skirt above her waist like an umbrella

inside out by the storm. I pulled

her cotton panties up as high as

she could stand. I was on fire. Heaven

was in sight. We were drowning on our

tongues and I tried to tear my pants off

when she stopped so suddenly

we were surrounded only by my shuddering

and by the school bells grinding in the

empty halls. She reached to find something,

a silver crucifix on a silver

chain, the tiny savior’s head hanging

and stakes through his hands and his feet.

She put it around my neck and held

me so long the black wings of my heart

were calmed. We are not always right

about what we think will save us.

I thought that dragging the angel down would

save me, but instead I carried the crucifix

in my pocket and rubbed it on my

face and lips nights the rockets roared in.

People die sometimes so near you

you feel them struggling to cross over,

the deep untangling, of one body from another.

Claribel Alegria (b. 1950)

Documentary[1]

Come, be my camera.

Let’s photograph the ant heap

the queen ant

extruding sacks of coffee,

my country.

It’s the harvest.

Focus on the sleeping family

cluttering the ditch.

Now, among trees:

rapid,

dark-skinned fingers

stained with honey.

Shift to a long shot:

the file of ant men

trudging down the ravine

with sacks of coffee.

A contrast:

girls in colored skirts

laugh and chatter,

filling their baskets

with berries.

Focus down.

A close-up of the pregnant mother

dozing in the hammock.

Hard focus on the flies

spattering her face.

Cut.

The terrace of polished mosaics

protected from the sun.

Maids in white aprons

nourish the ladies

who play canasta,

celebrate invasions

and feel sorry for Cuba.

Izalco sleeps

beneath the volcano’s eye.

A subterranean growl

makes the village tremble.

Trucks and oxcarts

laden with sacks

screech down the slopes.

Besides coffee

they plant angels

in my country.

A chorus of children

and women

with the small white coffin

move politely aside

as the harvest passes by.

The riverside women,

naked to the waist,

wash clothing.

The truck drivers

exchange jocular obscenities

for insults.

In Panchimalco,

waiting for the oxcart to pass by,

a peasant

with hands bound behind him

by the thumbs

and his escort of soldiers

blinks at the airplane:

a huge bee

bulging with coffee growers

and tourists.

The truck stops in the market place.

A panorama of iguanas,

chickens,

strips of meat,

wicker baskets,

piles of nances,

nisperos,

oranges,

zunzas,

zapotes,

cheeses,

bananas,

dogs, pupusas, jocotes,

acrid odors,

taffy candies,

urine puddles, tamarinds.

The virginal coffee

dances in the mill house.

They strip her,

rape her,

lay her out on the patio

to doze in the sun.

The dark storage sheds

glimmer.

The golden coffee

sparkles with malaria,

blood,

illiteracy,

tuberculosis,

misery.

A truck roars

out of the warehouse.

It bellows uphill

drowning out the lesson:

A for alcoholism,

B for battalions,

C for corruption,

D for dictatorship,

E for exploitation,

F for the feudal power

of fourteen families

and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

My etcetera country,

my wounded country,

my child,

my tears,

my obsession.

Charles Bernstein (b. 1950)

Of Time and the Line[1]

George Burns likes to insist that he always

takes the straight lines; the cigar in his mouth

is a way of leaving space between the

lines for a laugh. He weaves lines together

by means of a picaresque narrative;

not so Hennie Youngman, whose lines are

strictly paratactic. My father pushed a

line of ladies’ dresses—not down the street

in a pushcart but upstairs in a fact’ry

office. My mother has been more concerned

with her hemline, Chairman Mao put forward

Maoist lines, but that’s been abandoned

(mostly) for the East-West line of malarkey

so popular in these parts. The prestige

of the iambic line has recently

suffered decline, since it’s no longer so

clear who “I” am, much less who you are. When

making a line, better be double sure

what you’re lining in & what you’re lining

out & which side of the line you’re on; the

world is made up so (Adam didn’t so much

name as delineate). Every poem’s got

a prosodic lining, some of which will

unzip for summer wear. The lines of an

imaginary are inscribed on the

social flesh by the knifepoint of history.

Nowadays, you can often spot a work

of poetry by whether it’s in lines

or no; if it’s in prose, there’s a good chance

it’s a poem. While there is no lesson in

the line more useful than that of the picket line,

the line that has caused the most adversity

is the bloodline. In Russia

everyone is worried about long lines;

back in the USA, it’s strictly soup-

lines. “Take a chisel to write,” but for an

actor a line’s got to be cued. Or, as

they say in math, it takes two lines to make

an angle but only one lime to make

a Margarita.

Jorie Graham (b. 1950)

Salmon[1]

I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,

in our motel room half-way through

Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past

the importance of beauty,

archaic,

not even hungry, not even endangered,

driving deeper and deeper

into less. They leapt up falls, ladders,

and rock, tearing and leaping, a gold river,

and a blue river traveling

in opposite directions.

They would not stop, resolution of will

and helplessness, as the eye

is helpless

when the image forms itself, upside-down, backward,

driving up into

the mind, and the world

unfastens itself

from the deep ocean of the given … Justice, aspen

leaves, mother attempting

suicide, the white night-flying moth

the ants dismantled bit by bit and carried in

right through the crack

in my wall …. How helpless

the still pool is,

upstream,

awaiting the gold blade

of their hurry. Once, indoors, a child,

I watched, at noon, through slatted wooden blinds,

a man and woman, naked, eyes closed,

climb onto each other,

on the terrace floor,

and ride—two gold currents

wrapping round and round each other, fastening,

unfastening. I hardly knew

what I saw. Whatever shadow there was in that world

it was the one each cast

onto the other,

the thin black seam

they seemed to be trying to work away

between them. I held my breath.

as far as I could tell, the work they did

with sweat and light

was good. I’d say

they traveled far in opposite

directions. What is the light

at the end of the day,

deep, reddish-gold, bathing the walls,

the corridors, light that is no longer light,

no longer clarifies,

illuminates, antique, freed from the body of

that air that carries it. What is it

for the space of time

where it is useless, merely

beautiful? When they were done, they made a distance

one from the other

and slept, outstretched,

on the warm tile

of the terrace floor,

smiling, faces pressed against the stone.

Michael Pettit (b. 1950)

Driving Lesson[1]

Beside him in the old Ford pickup

that smelled of rope and grease and cattle feed,

sat my sister and I, ten and eight, big

now our grandfather would teach us

that powerful secret, how to drive.

Horizon of high mountain peaks visible

above the blue hood, steering wheel huge

in our hands, pedals at our toe-tips,

we heard his sure voice urge us

Give it gas, give it gas. Over the roar

of the engine our hearts banged

like never before and banged on

furiously in the silence after

we bucked and stalled the truck.

How infinitely empty it then seemed—

windy flat rangeland of silver-green

gramma grass dotted with blooming cactus

and jagged outcrops of red rock, beginnings

of the Sangre de Cristos fifty miles off.

All Guadelupe County, New Mexico,

nothing to hit, and we could not

get the damn thing going. Nothing to hit

was no help. It was not the mechanics

of accelerator and clutch, muscle and bone,

but our sheer unruly spirits

that kept us small with the great desire

to move the world by us, earth and sky

and all the earth and sky contained.

And how hard it was when,

after our grandfather who was a god

said Let it out slow, slow time and again

until we did and were at long last rolling

over the earth, his happy little angels,

how hard it was to listen

not to our own thrilled inner voices

saying Go, go, but to his saying

the Good, good we loved but also

the Keep it in the ruts we hated to hear.

How hard to hold to it—

single red vein of a ranch road

running out straight across the mesa,

blood we were bound to follow—

when what we wanted with all our hearts

was to scatter everywhere, everywhere.

Brigit Pegeen Kelly (b. 1951)

The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery[1]

The cicadas were loud and what looked like a child’s bracelet was coiled at the base of the Pilgrim. It was a snake. Red and black. The cemetery is haunted. Perhaps by the Pilgrim. Perhaps by another. We were looking for names for the baby. My daughter liked Achsa and Luke and John Jacob. She was dragging her rope through the grass. It was hot. The insect racket was loud and there was that snake. It made me nervous. I almost picked it up because it was so pretty. Just like a bracelet. And I thought, oh the child will be a girl, but it was not. This was around the time of the dream. Dreams come from somewhere. There is this argument about nowhere, but it is not true. I dreamed that some boys knocked down all the stones in the cemetery, and then it happened. It was six months later In early December. Dead cold. Just before dawn. We live a long way off so I slept right through it. But I read about it the next day in the Johnsburg paper. There is this argument about the dead, but that is not right either. The dead keep working. If you listen you can hear them. It was hot when we walked in the cemetery. And my daughter told me the story of the White Pilgrim. She likes the story. Yes, it is a good one. A man left his home in Ohio and came East, dreaming he could be the dreamed-of rider in St. John’s Revelations. He was called The White Pilgrim because he dressed all in white like a rodeo cowboy and rode a white horse. He preached that the end was coming soon. And it was. He died a month later of the fever. The ground here is unhealthy. And the insects grind on and on. Now the pilgrim is a legend. I know your works, God said, and that is what I am afraid of. It was very hot that summer. The birds were too quiet. God’s eyes are like a flame of fire, St. John said, and the armies of heaven … but these I cannot imagine. Many dreams come true. But mostly it isn’t the good ones. That night in December The boys were bored. They were pained to the teeth with boredom. You can hardly blame them. They had been out all night breaking trashcans And mailboxes with their baseball bats. They hang from their pickups by the knees and pound the boxes as they drive by. The ground here is unhealthy, but that is not it. Their satisfaction just ends too quickly. They need something better to break. They need something holy. But there is not much left, so that night they went to the cemetery. It was cold, but they were drunk and perhaps they did not feel it. The cemetery is close to town, but no one heard them. The boys are part of a larger destruction, but this is beyond what they can imagine. War in heaven and the damage is ours. The birds come to feed on what is left. You can see them always around Old Christian. As if the bodies of the dead were lying out exposed. But of course they are not. St. John the Evangelist dreamed of birds and of the White Rider. That is the one the Ohio preacher wanted to be. He dressed all in white leather and rode a white horse. His own life in the midwest was not enough, And who can blame him? My daughter thinks that all cemeteries have a White Pilgrim. She said that her teacher told her this. I said this makes no sense but she would not listen. There was a pack of dogs loose in my dream Or it could have been dark angels. They were taking the names off the stones. St. John said an angel will be the one who invites the birds to God’s Last Supper, when he eats the flesh of all the kings and princes. Perhaps God is a bird. Sometimes I think this. The thought is as good as another. The boys shouldered over the big stones first, save for the Pilgrim. And then worked their way down to the child-sized markers. These they punted like footballs. The cemetery is close to town but no one heard them. They left the Pilgrim for last because he is a legend, although only local. My daughter thinks that all cemeteries have a White Pilgrim, ghost and stone, and that the stone is always placed dead in the center of the cemetery ground. In Old Christian this is true. The Ohio Pilgrim was a rich man and before he died he sunk his wealth into the marble obelisk called by his name. We saw the snake curled around it. Pretty as a bracelet. But the child was not a girl. The boys left the Pilgrim till last, and then took it down, too. The Preacher had a dream but it was not of a larger order so it led to little. Just a stone broken like a tooth, and a ghost story for children. God says the damage will be restored. Among other things. At least they repaired Old Christian. The Historical Society raised a collection and the town’s big men came out to hoist the stones. The boys got probation, but they won’t keep it. I don’t go to the cemetery anymore. But once I drove past and my babysitter’s family was out working. Her father and mother were cutting back the rose of Sharon, and my red-haired sitter, who is plain and good-hearted, was pushing a lawn mower. Her beautiful younger sister sat on the grass beside the Pilgrim pretending to clip some weeds. She never works. She has asthma and everybody loves her. I imagined that the stones must have fine seams where they had been broken. But otherwise everything looked the same. Maybe better … The summer we walked in the cemetery it was hot. We were looking for names for the baby and my daughter told me the story of the White Pilgrim. This was before the stones fell and before the worked-for restoration. I know your works, says God, and talks of the armies of heaven. They are not very friendly. Some dreams hold and I am afraid that this may be one of them. The White Rider may come with his secret name inscribed on his thigh, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and the child is large now … But who will be left standing?

Timothy Russell (b. 1951)

In Simili Materia[1]

When she stopped on the sidewalk,

near the yellow storm drain,

near gnats swarming above the hedge,

the little girl, perhaps three,

yelled something unintelligible

at the doll in the pink carriage.

When she slapped her baby

I remembered flocks of pigeons

erupting from beams and ledges

at the Sinter Plant,

how they would flutter and circle,

flickering in the sun, and always

return to their niches to roost.

Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (b. 1952)

Ceist na Teangan (The Language Issue)[1]

Translated from the Irish by Paul Muldoon

I place my hope on the water

in this little boat

of the language, the way a body might put

an infant

in a basket of intertwined

iris leaves,

its underside proofed

with bitumen and pitch,

then set the whole thing down amidst

the sedge

and bulrushes by the edge

of a river

only to have it borne hither and thither,

not knowing where it might end up;

in the lap, perhaps,

of some Pharaoh’s daughter.

Sean O’Brien (b. 1952)

Rain[2]

At ten pm it starts. We can hear from the bar

as if somebody humorless fills in the dots,

all the dots on the window, the gaps in between.

It is raining. It rained and has always been raining.

If there were conditionals they too would be rain.

The future tense is partly underwater. We must leave.

There’s a road where the bus stop is too far away

in the dark between streetlights. The shelter’s stove-in

and a swill of old tickets awaits us.

Transitional, that’s what we’re saying,

but we’re metaphysical animals:

we know a watery grave when we see it

and how the bald facts of brute nature

are always entailed by mere human opinion,

so this is a metaphor. Someone’s to blame

if your coat is dissolving, if rain is all round us

and feels like the threats-cum-advice of your family

who know I am up and have come and will go to

no good.

They cannot be tempted to alter their views

in the light of that sizzling bulb. There it goes.

Here we are: a black street without taxis or buses.

An ankle-high wave is advancing

to ruin your shoes and my temper. My darling,

I know you believe for the moment the rain is my doing.

Tonight we will lie in the dark with damp hair.

I too am looking for someone to blame. O send me

a metro inspector, a stony-faced barmaid.

The library is flooding and we have not read it,

the cellar is flooding and we shall be thirsty,

Trevor McDonald has drowned as the studio shorts

and the weather-girl goes floating past

like Esther Williams with her clothes on,

mouthing the obvious: raining.

Shu Ting (b. 1952)

Assembly Line[1]

Translated from the Chinese by Carolyn Kizer

In time’s assembly line

night presses against night.

We come off the factory night-shift

in line as we march towards home.

Over our heads in a row

the assembly line of stars

stretches across the sky.

Beside us, little trees

stand numb in assembly lines.

The stars must be exhausted

after thousands of years

of journeys which never change.

The little trees are all sick,

choked on smog and monotony,

stripped of their color and shape.

It’s not hard to feel for them;

we share the same tempo and rhythm.

Yes, I’m numb to my own existence

as if, like the trees and stars

—perhaps just out of habit

—perhaps just out of sorrow,

I’m unable to show concern

for my own manufactured fate.

Mark Irwin (b. 1953)

Woolworth’s[1]

Everything stands wondrously multicolored

and at attention in the always Christmas air.

What scent lingers unrecognizably

between that of popcorn, grilled cheese sandwiches,

malted milkballs, and parakeets? Maybe you came here

in winter to buy your daughter a hamster

and were detained by the bin

of Multicolored Thongs, four pair

for a dollar. Maybe you came here to buy

some envelopes, the light blue par avion ones

with airplanes, but caught yourself, lost,

daydreaming, saying it’s too late over the glassy

diorama of cakes and pies. Maybe you came here

to buy a lampshade, the fake crimped

kind, and suddenly you remember

your grandmother, dead

twenty years, floating through the old

house like a curtain. Maybe you’re retired,

on Social Security, and came here for the Roast

Turkey Dinner, or the Liver and Onions,

or just to stare into a black circle

of coffee and to get warm. Or maybe

the big church down the street is closed

now during the day, and you’re homeless and poor,

or you’re rich, or it doesn’t matter what you are

with a little loose change jangling in your pocket,

begging to be spent, because you wandered in

and somewhere between the bin of animal crackers

and the little zoo in the back of the store

you lost something, and because you came here

not to forget, but to remember to live.

Richard Jones (b. 1953)

Certain People[1]

My father lives by the ocean

and drinks his morning coffee

in the full sun on his deck,

talking to anyone

who walks by on the beach.

And in the afternoons he works

part-time at the golf course—

sailing the fairways like a sea captain

in a white golf cart.

My father must talk

to a hundred people a day,

yet we haven’t spoken in weeks.

As I get older, we hardly speak at all.

It’s as if he were a stranger

and we had never met.

I wonder, if I

were a tourist on the beach

or a golfer lost in the woods

and met him now for the very first time,

what we’d say to each other,

how his hand would feel in mine

as we introduced ourselves,

and if, as is the case

with certain people, I’d feel

when I looked him in the eye,

I’d known him all my life.

Leaving Town after the Funeral[1]

After the people and the flowers

have gone, and before the stone

has been removed from your mother’s house

and carved into a cross, I come back

on my way out of town

to visit your grave. And nothing

is there—only the ground,

roughed up a little, waiting for rain.

I sit down beside you

in my dark glasses

and put my hand on the earth

above your dead heart.

Two workmen are mowing grass

around the graves beside us.

They pretend not to see

I am crying. Quietly,

they walk over to their truck

to give me time.

They day is hot. They hold paper cups

under the water cooler on the flatbed

and drink together.

They are used to this.

The heat. The grief.

After a few minutes the younger one

walks back to work.

He gets down on his knees

and blows cut grass off a stone.

I believe he wants me to know

he will take care of you.

But hard as it is,

I know the truth:

when you drowned, your body

sank into the river forever.

Ten minutes to eight.

Darkness came down quickly.

And now it will be night

for a long, long time.

The workman gets up and goes on

with his work. I get up

and walk back to the car.

Andrew, we know the truth:

the cold child in the casket

is not the one I loved.

The Bell[1]

In the tower the bell

is alone, like a man

in his room,

thinking and thinking.

The bell is made of iron.

It takes the weight

of a man

to make the bell move.

Far below, the bell feels

hands on a rope.

It considers this.

It turns its head.

Miles away,

a man in his room

hears the clear sound,

and lifts his head to listen.

Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed[1]

Wan Chu, my adoring husband,

has returned from another trip

selling trinkets in the provinces.

He pulls off his lavender shirt

as I lie naked in our bed,

waiting for him. He tells me

I am the only woman he’ll ever love.

He may wander from one side of China

to the other, but his heart

will always stay with me.

His face glows in the lamplight

with the sincerity of a boy

when I lower the satin sheet

to let him see my breasts.

Outside, it begins to rain

on the cherry trees

he planted with our son,

and when he enters me with a sigh,

the storm begins in earnest,

shaking our little house.

Afterwards, I stroke his back

until he falls asleep.

I’d love to stay awake all night

listening to the rain,

but I should sleep, too.

Tomorrow Wan Chu will be

a hundred miles away

and I will be awake all night

in the arms of Wang Chen,

the tailor from Ming Pao,

the tiny village down the river.

Robert Kinsley (b. 1953)

A Walk Along the Old Tracks[1]

When I was young they had already been

abandoned for years

overgrown with sumac and sour apple,

the iron scrapped, the wood long

gone for other things.

In summer my father would send us along them

to fetch the cows from the back pasture,

a long walk to a far off place it seemed

for boys so young. Lost again for a moment

in that simple place,

I fling apples from a stick and look for snakes

in the gullies. There is

a music to the past, the sweet tones

of perfect octaves

even though we know it was never so.

My father had to sell the farm in that near perfect time

and once old Al Shott

killed a six foot rattler on the tracks.

“And when the trolley was running,”

he said, “you could jump

her as she went by and ride all the way to Cleveland,

and oh,” he said, “what a time you could have there.”

Mark Turpin (b. 1953)

Before Groundbreak[1]

Off work and going upslope for a look

I left the plans—to see the view

their money bought—weighted with a rock,

and trampled a path of parted weeds

past pampas, nettles,

poison oak bristling in the breeze,

a weathered two-by-four

nailed high up in a cedar’s fork,

a haggard pair of panties waving stiffly from a thorn—

I walked where they would walk.

Standing there, out of breath, where

they would soon stand, vacuuming

or reaching for a towel—how bare

and graspable it will seem,

and ever-present, our time and effort spent.

Don Fargo & Sons[2]

Helpless to throw them away

or to use them unaltered,

for years he crossed out & Sons on the tiny invoice pads

from a cardboard box too tall

to fit beneath the seat.

His blackened mechanic’s hands

turning the slip of carbon.

At seventy, he needed help up

the site’s steep slope to the hoe.

Two laborers and him up

the loose hillside, or him by himself,

hauled by a cable from the loader’s winch,

grasped with grim embarrassment.

Then, arriving, he spat and pissed

onto the bucket of the hoe

before he climbed to the seat,

as all smiled. Tall, craggy, with

a big-voiced drawl, he learned

to operate a backhoe in Korea.

There was no gentleness, only

precision in the swing of the hoe

with Don in the seat as the arm

swung from pit to pile in flowing,

boxlike movement, dripping grease.

I recall the blandness of his look in the sun

as the bucket tore the ground we

stood on and the backhoe rocked.

I never asked if he loved his work,

or if a day’s glorious vulgarity

was why he still got up at seventy.

His gift was not seeming to try.

Jobsite Wind[1]

that rips paper from the walls

and changes plywood into sails

staggering a bent laborer with his load—

that curves string lines,

bounces grass and trees in gusts

and makes the stick-framed studs

above the ledger hum.

It searches all of us moving or standing still,

holding hammer or nailgun, our faces tight with cold

and hair wild. It searches us, leaning into the day,

for nothing we have,

buffets the unprotected

figure atop the wall and one stooped above

a half-framed floor

forcing blocks between the joists. Wakened

by the wind I drove deserted,

limb-wreck streets to the job

and found the roofless walls awash in wind,

thrashing like a ship

in webs of lumber and shadows waving

above raindark floors

laid purposeful with wood and nails.

Wind that threaded the trembling sticks of the house

driving plastic buckets down stairs, testing the corners

of a plywood stack,

smearing a dropcloth to a wall like a shroud—

that rolled out of the throat

of the world huge and articulate blasts—

And shoring spreadlegged,

watching my hand hammering

in rhythm to my breath, the world hidden

beyond the nailhead’s own demands

while inside a focused stillness intact and undisturbed

also incessant asked Who am I? Why this action?

What is this place I am in?

Pickwork[1]

There is skill to it,

how you hold your back all day, the dole

of force behind the stroke, the size of bite, where

to hit, and knowing

behind each swing a thousand others wait

in an eight-hour day.

And if the head

suddenly comes rattling down the handle:

knowing to drive a nail for a wedge

between the wood and the steel.

The inexperienced

pretend to see in the dirt a face they hate,

and exhaust themselves. The best

measure themselves against an arbitrary goal,

this much

before lunch, before break, before a drink of water,

and then

do it. Some listen to the pleasant ringing

of the pick, or music, and trance-like, follow the rhythm

of the swing. Once I spent a half-hour attentive

only to my muscles triggering into motion, sweat

creeping down my chest.

Ground makes the biggest difference.

In sandstone you feel the impact to your knees,

in mud you yank the point from the muck each throw.

The hardest part is not to let the rhythm fail,

like stopping too often to remeasure the depth, stalling

in the shithouse, losing self-respect,

or beginning to doubt:

Am I cutting too wide? Is the line still straight?

Or thinking of backhoes, more help, quibbling inches

with the boss.

On my job Lorenzo works in the sun all day,

his silver radio quietly tuned to the Mexican station.

Shoveling out, he shrugs and says, “No problem, Mark,”

waist-deep in the hole.

From the spot I work,

I hear the strike of his pick all day.

Driving home together

he has told me about his two black whores,

his ex and daughter in LA,

and Susan Nero, “on-stage.” Thirteen times

he’s seen her. Almost reverent,

he says, “She is so beautiful,”

and makes immense cups with his hands.

And driving home he has told me

of his landlord who extorts him

for the green card he doesn’t have, of his “mo-ther”

dying of cancer in Mexico city, of his son-of-a-bitch

dad who beat him, and her, and ran away,

of his brother Michael,

and JoaQuim, in Chicago, the Central Valley. In the car

he asks me if I think the boss

will hold half his pay, he needs

to save something for his sister

—I hear his pick all day

and in the afternoon I go out to ask him, how’s it going?

He shrugs me off. “It’s no big problem, Mark.

No problem, I can do it, but the fucking pick is dull,”

and shows me the blunted steel point.

“I need something—

sharper, you know: I need a sharper pick.”

Poem[1]

What weakness of mind

gripped a moment’s meanness tighter

than his?—

stalling, reeling, retarding at the thought that

cupped the vision of the rope

actually smoking through his hands

—while elsewhere and peripheral,

a huge tree-limb plummeted.

The rope, as he observed it,

was not a thing, not an object,

but a slender field of havoc

twisted to a strand which, though he

opened the grasp of his hands from pain of it,

would not leave

his hands

(unless he thinks of something yet to do. )

But he did not—

not immediately, and later

he would raise his hands, and marvel,

grin, almost feel joy at recognition of that groove

the rope burned and furrowed across the flesh of each;

he could plainly see its path in blood, blisters,

and burnished skin

from finger to finger

as if it were something caught that was

rarely caught. He held his hands up as evidence of something.

Waiting for Lumber[2]

Somehow none of us knew exactly

what time it was supposed to come.

So there we were, all of us, five men

at how much an hour given to picking

at blades of grass, tossing pebbles

at the curb, with nothing in the space

between the two red cones, and no distant

downshift of a roaring truck grinding

steadily towards us uphill. Someone thought

maybe one of us should go back to town

to call, but no one did, and no one gave

the order to. It was as if each to himself

had called a kind of strike, brought a halt,

locked out any impulse back to work.

What was work in our lives anyway?

No one recalled a moment of saying yes

to hammer and saw, or anything else.

Each looked to the others for some defining

move—the way at lunch without a word

all would start to rise when the foreman

closed the lid of his lunchbox—but

none came. The senior of us leaned

against a peach tree marked for demolition,

seemed almost careful not to give a sign.

And I, as I am likely to do—and who

knows, but maybe we all were—beginning

to notice the others there, and ourselves

among them, as if we could be strangers suddenly,

like those few evenings we had chosen to meet

at some bar and appeared to each other

in our street clothes—that was the sense—

of a glass over another creature’s fate.

A hundred feet above our stillness

on the ground we could hear a breeze

that seemed to blow the moment past,

trifling with the leaves; we watched

a ranging hawk float past. It was the time

of morning when housewives return

alone from morning errands. Something

we had all witnessed a hundred times before,

but this time with new interest. And all of us

felt the slight loosening of the way things were,

as if working or not working were a matter

of choice, and who we were didn’t

matter, if not always, at least for that hour.

Kevin Hart (b. 1954)

The Room[1]

It is my house, and yet one room is locked.

The dark has taken root on all four walls.

It is a room where knots stare out from wood,

a room that turns its back on the whole house.

At night I hear the crickets list their griefs

and let an ancient peace come into me.

Sleep intercepts my prayer, and in the dark

the house turns slowly round its one closed room.

Molly Fisk (b. 1955)

Intrigue[2]

I love living in a town so small

it still has a noon whistle.

There is one stop sign,

four-way.

We have our own post office.

People here say hello

and they watch where your car is

at night,

not wanting to miss

a good story.

This makes me want

to park,

flagrantly,

outside the homes

of unsuspecting bachelors,

and lurk in the Parkside

over breakfast,

to hear news

of my own misbehavior.

I am perched

on the edge

of being familiar.

On the Disinclination to Scream[1]

If I had been a ten year old stranger

and you had tripped me in a dark alley, say,

downtown, instead of our mutual living room

I’m sure I would have screamed.

If, in the alley, you had straddled me as fast—

your knees clamping my elbows into asphalt,

not the blue Chinese dragons

of our living room rug,

I might have been Quiet there, too.

When you opened my mouth

with your heavy flat thumbs,

filled it with pain and flesh—

I would have choked in the alley,

as anyone would choke.

But if you had groaned then, and stood up,

walked away from the dark street

leaving me to vomit and shake alone,

I might have been saved.

I could describe you to policemen.

Perhaps their composite would match your photo

in the Harvard Reunion guide.

Your fingerprints, lifted from the collar of my dress,

might be found in Coast Guard files.

If they never found you and there was no trial

I could have gone home to people who loved me:

horrified, enraged, they would plot revenge

and rock me to sleep in soft arms.

I would have been frightened, maybe forever,

of alleys, strange men, and the dark—

but encouraged by the world,

who would hate you on my behalf.

I would have been as safe as a ten year old can be.

Instead, I rose quietly from the Chinese rug

and went upstairs to wash.

No sound escaped me.

I couldn’t afford to throw up,

and it wasn’t the first time.

The Dry Tortugas[1]

They were building a house in the Dry Tortugas,

less for the solitude there than the open eyes

of a swallowtailed hummingbird they had seen once

on a fishing trip—the early Fifties, he reeling in

an oversized yellowfin, Humphrey Bogart

facing the wind, one foot on the rail in To Have and Have Not,

she whistling the stuttered call

of the Amazonian kingfisher,

and singing in Spanish to flocks of Bonaparte gulls.

It comes to nothing in the end, though the land

is paced off and measured and two palms felled

to expand the view, a road graded the requisite mile,

and some of their friends fly down from New York

to surprise them, circle the islands all morning,

gleeful and chic

in their 4-seater Cessna

(he’s something exalted at Chase),

and later the bottles of Myer’s and Appleton Gold sweat

dark rings on the terrace flagstones,

and someone’s pink

lipstick makes delicate kissprints

along the rim of her glass.

No one has told me what happened—his heart

attack in Guatemala, her premonition about the wide

and empty view, or the world swinging in

with its usual brazen distractions—but they framed

the architect’s plans of the house, and this

is what I inherit, a rendering in colored pencil:

what they were dreaming before I was born.

William Roetzheim (b. 1955)

Response to Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”[1]

We sat around a fire and drank Merlot,

a California wine called “Two Buck Chuck”

by those of us that shop at “Trader Joe’s.”

When someone asked, “If I had to be stuck

in Jimmy’s mountain cabin for a night

with anyone except my wife, who would

I choose?” I thought of you, images right

and verses tight with clarity I should

achieve but never will. But more, I want

you on the night you wrote this piece, the panted

words fresh from your pen. And lest God taunt

you for your wish I’d have the light be slanted

such that I appeared to be the one

inside your mind when this piece was begun.

Fading into Background[1]

The murmurs were the first to go,

those eavesdropped conversations

moving here and there within a crowded room.

And soon I lost discussions

from across a crowded table

at loud and boisterous weddings,

gone to background noise

like waterfalls, and for my part

just nods and smiles,

nothing but nods and smiles.

And then my wife as translator,

“What did she say?”

“What did he say?”

Until I found

it didn’t really matter what they said,

when nods and smiles will say enough.

Stretch Marks[2]

You lie beside me,

snoring lightly, nude and tan,

your breasts relaxed. My eyes are drawn

to spider webs of lacy white along

your side, across your breasts.

The delicate patterns branch and weave,

swoop down the curves

and glide across the planes and slopes,

embossed and subtle decorations,

flesh on flesh.

The lines entwine, and seem to spell our love,

our family, our thirty years together.

Opera Season[1]

I couldn’t attend the opera this season.

The thought of your seat empty next to mine

was too much to bear.

I put our tickets in a kitchen drawer,

then mentally buried that drawer with you.

Like Therese RaQuin I am haunted

by your ghost in every corner.

Like Rigoletto, that which was most precious to me

was taken away from me.

Like Butterfly, I confidently wait for our reunion

in this intermission between life and death.

Shadow Friends[1]

I worship shadows like my daughter worships sun.

I don’t mean those so crisp and dark

beneath a noon-time sun,

or shadow soldier squads

before a picket fence. Those underneath

a harvest moon are more my style; the way

they hide and watch

from low bushes, then dance around

the lifted skirts of swaying trees,

like witches in a forest glen.

I’ve lured them home with low-watt bulbs

in gargoyle sconces under overhangs.

At night my friends uncoil

on walks and walls, then call me to their yard

to stroll and see my life in grays and blacks.

And in my den the shy ones come to watch

me read by candlelight. They come, pull back,

grow bold, then sly; so while I sip my scotch

and swirl the ice I’m not alone. I’m not

depressed.

Dean Young (b. 1955)

Only One of My Deaths[2]

Because it seems the only way to save the roses

is to pluck the Japanese beetles out of

their convoluted paradise

and kill them, I think for a moment,

instead of crushing them in the driveway,

of impaling them on the thorns.

Perhaps they’d prefer that.

Mark Cox (b. 1956)

Geese[1]

We were in love and his uncle had a farm

where he took me hunting

to try to be in love even more.

He wanted me to have what he had:

black coffee,

toast buttered with bad light

in a truck stop splotched with smoke,

then moonlight on the hills and snow

like a woman stepping out of her dress.

And it was good even as we killed it.

The stalks lightening,

the sun rising like a worn, yellow slicker

over us, bent over panting

because it wasn’t hit cleanly

and had run us both dizzy

before settling down.

There was a particular knife he used

to make the asshole bigger.

After that, one could just reach in

and remove anything that wasn’t necessary,

and thinking about it now, I see

the old school desk behind his uncle’s house

put there for that reason,

see my husband sadly hosing it down,

as if regretting how and what men are taught…

I’m lying…

though the diner I see belongs

in a small town where I went to school,

the desk had no drawers, was in fact a table,

and he was whistling as he washed it.

The sun didn’t rise

like something to keep the rain off us;

it hung, like a cold chandelier

in which I could see each filament

in each flame-shaped bulb

beating itself senseless against the light—

brilliant and hollow,

beautiful and inhumane…

But I wanted so badly

to forgive his hands, forgive his lovers,

and to forget how, driving home, I was fooled

by half an acre of decoys

and some camouflage netting,

how I wanted to honk but didn’t,

and how the whole scene made me realize

that mannequins mate for life too,

in department stores, wearing back-to-school clothes,

made me remember that if you press hard enough

on a bird’s dead breast, it will betray its own kind,

that when he took its neck and broke it

I said his first name.

Style[1]

Today, a coed with a black eye

and bruised cheek stopped me

in the hall to ask, anxiously,

where does one put “Jr.”

according to standard manuals

on style?

“In jail?” I said. “No, really,” she said,

“This is important.”

Jim Daniels (b. 1956)

Wheels[1]

My brother kept

in a frame on the wall

pictures of every motorcycle, car, truck:

in his rusted out Impala convertible

wearing his cap and gown

waving

in his yellow Barracuda

with a girl leaning into him

waving

on his Honda 350

waving

on his Honda 750 with the boys

holding a beer

waving

in his first rig

wearing a baseball hat backwards

waving

in his Mercury Montego

getting married

waving

in his black LTD

trying to sell real estate

waving

back to driving trucks

a shiny new rig

waving

on his Harley Sportster

with his wife on the back

waving

his son in a car seat

with his own steering wheel

my brother leaning over him

in an old Ford pickup

and they are

waving

holding a wrench a rag

a hose a shammy

waving.

My brother helmetless

rides off on his Harley

waving

my brother’s feet

rarely touch the ground—

waving waving

face pressed to the wind

no camera to save him.

Gu Gheng (1956 – 1993)

Ark[1]

Translated from the Chinese by Donald Finkel

The ship you’ve boarded

is doomed to go under—

vanish into the breathing sea.

But you still have time to stare at the flag,

or at the dark, unfolding plain,

or at the white birds twittering

over their watery grave.

You still have time to lean on the rail,

puzzled by a sound in the passageway—

though the whole ship is empty,

though every door is ajar—

till cool flames float up

from every cabin.

Li-Young Lee (b. 1957)

Eating Together[2]

In the steamer is the trout

seasoned with slivers of ginger,

two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.

We shall eat it with rice for lunch,

brothers, sister, my mother who will

taste the sweetest meat of the head,

holding it between her fingers

deftly, the way my father did

weeks ago. Then he lay down

to sleep like a snow-covered road

winding through pines older than him,

without any travelers, and lonely for no one.

Persimmons[1]

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker

slapped the back of my head

and made me stand in the corner

for not knowing the difference

between persimmon and precision.

How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.

Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.

Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one

will be fragrant. How to eat:

put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.

Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.

Chew on the skin, suck it,

and swallow. Now, eat

the meat of the fruit,

so sweet,

all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.

In the yard, dewy and shivering

with crickets, we lie naked,

face-up, face-down,

I teach her Chinese.

Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.

Naked: I’ve forgotten.

Ni, wo: you and me.

I part her legs,

remember to tell her

she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words

that got me into trouble were

fight and fright, wren and yarn.

Fight was what I did when I was frightened,

fright was what I felt when I was fighting.

Wrens are small, plain birds,

yarn is what one knits with.

Wrens are soft as yarn.

My mother made birds out of yarn.

I loved to watch her tie the stuff;

a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class

and cut it up

so everyone could taste

a Chinese apple. Knowing

it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat

but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun

inside, something golden, glowing,

warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,

forgotten and not yet ripe.

I took them and set them both on my bedroom windowsill,

where each morning a cardinal

sang, The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding

he was going blind,

my father sat up all one night

waiting for a song, a ghost.

I gave him the persimmons,

swelled, heavy as sadness,

and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting

of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking

for something I lost.

My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,

black cane between his knees,

hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He’s so happy that I’ve come home.

I ask how his eyes are, a stupid Question.

All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find a box.

Inside the box I find three scrolls.

I sit beside him and untie

three paintings by my father:

Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.

Two cats preening.

Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,

asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,

the strength, the tense

precision in the wrist.

I painted them hundreds of times

eyes closed. These I painted blind.

Some things never leave a person:

scent of the hair of one you love,

the texture of persimmons,

in your palm, the ripe weight.

Julia Kasdorf (b. 1962)

What I Learned from My Mother[1]

I learned from my mother how to love

the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

in case you have to rush to the hospital

with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars

large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

grieving household, to cube home canned pears

and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know

the deceased, to press the moist hands

of the living, to look in their eyes and offer

sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned to believe

that whatever we say means nothing,

what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease

awful pains materially like an angel.

Like a doctor I learned to create

from another’s suffering my own usefulness,

and once you know how to do this,

you can never refuse.

To every house you enter, you must offer

healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

Ruth L. Schwartz (b. 1962)

The Swan at Edgewater Park[1]

Isn’t one of your prissy rich peoples’ swans

wouldn’t be at home on some pristine pond

Chooses the whole stinking shoreline,

candy wrappers, condoms

in its tidal fringe

Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck

into the body of a Great Lake,

swilling whatever it is swans swill,

Chardonnay of algae with bouQuet of crud,

while Clevelanders walk by saying Look

at that big duck!

Beauty isn’t the point here; of course

the swan is beautiful,

but not like Lorie at 16, when

everything was possible—no

more like Lorie at 27

smoking away her days off in her dirty kitchen,

her kid with asthma watching TV,

the boyfriend who doesn’t know yet she’s gonna

leave him, washing his car out back—and

he’s a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and

it’s not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he

really does, he loves them both—

that’s the kind of swan this is.

Patience Agbabi (b. 1965)

Transformatrix[1]

I’m slim as a silver stiletto, lit

by a fat, waxing moon and a sance

of candles dipped in oil of frankincense.

Salt peppers my lips as the door clicks shut.

A pen poised over a blank page, I wait

for madam’s orders, her strict consonants

and the spaces between words, the silence.

She’s given me a safe word, a red light

but I’m breaking the law, on a death wish,

ink throbbing my temples, each vertebra

straining for her fingers. She trusses up

words, lines, as a corset disciplines flesh.

Without her, I’m nothing but without me

she’s tense, uptight, rigid as a full stop.

Kate Clanchy (b. 1965)

War Poetry[2]

The class has dropped its books. The janitor’s

disturbed some wasps, broomed the nest

straight off the roof. It lies outside, exotic

as a fallen planet, a burst city of the poor;

its newsprint halls, its ashen, tiny rooms

all open to the air. The insects’ buzz

is low-key as a smart machine. They group,

regroup, in stacks and coils, advance

and cross like pulsing points on radar screens.

And though the boys have shaven heads

and football strips, and would, they swear,

enlist at once, given half a chance,

march down Owen’s darkening lanes

to join the lads and stuff the Boche—

they don’t rush out to pike the nest,

or lap the yard with grapeshot faces.

They watch the wasps through glass,

silently, abashed, the way we all watch war.

David Berman (b. 1967)

Snow[1]

Walking through a field with my little brother Seth

I pointed to a place

where kids had made angels in the snow.

For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels

had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.

He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.

Then we were on the roof of the lake.

The ice looked like a photograph of water.

Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.

I didn’t know where I was going with this.

They were on his property, I said.

When it’s snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.

Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.

Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.

A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.

We returned to our shoveling,

working side by side in silence.

But why were they on his property, he asked.

Jackleen Holton (b. 1969)

American History[1]

First semester of my senior year,

Mr. Severin, American History teacher,

would wave his giant arthritic hands—

fingers unmoving—as he spoke of past

presidents and foreign wars.

Oftentimes he’d sketch himself

into these lectures, remembering

how a dark theatre fell silent

as the newsreel delivered the wreckage,

the death toll at Pearl Harbor.

His wife, a sweet-faced brunette,

had been a hard catch until the night

he showed up at the soda fountain

with the girl who had a reputation.

Against a backdrop of black-and-white

war footage, their courtship endured.

They had two sons, one under Eisenhower,

the other the day Kennedy was shot.

Just after Vietnam, cancer took

her far too soon.

He looked around the silent classroom.

He told us: “Every life that has breathed

has had its tragedy.” It was 1986.

Many of the cars in the student parking lot

were new. We had two more years of Reagan.

“Something will be taken from each of you.”

I could tell nobody believed him.

He raised his painful hands in the air.

His eyes searched the room, then locked

down on mine. In almost a whisper

he said—how I remember this—

“You will not be spared.”

Free[1]

Behold the next-door neighbor’s

Frigidaire, faithful servant

of fifteen years, now standing

at the foot of the driveway, facing

the street, a handwritten sign carelessly

taped to its freezer compartment

and fluttering in the breeze:

“Free!”

Then think of the thousands of couches

and loveseats left in the front yards

of their former houses, sometimes bearing

similar signs, otherwise their status

is implied. Evidence their worn fabrics,

outdated patterns and styles, the fact

that they’ve been carted outside.

They’re free.

But the dumbfounded home furnishings,

the pardoned kitchen appliances

can do nothing but stand Quiet vigil

outside like abandoned children

or aging, divorced wives, the downsized,

the suddenly homeless, the disenfranchised—

now free.

“Your services are no longer needed,”

their former masters have informed them

with these one-word Dear John letters

to the coffee table or the washing machine

“You can leave anytime you’d like.

You’re free.”

Jane Flanders (b. 1984)

The House that Fear Built: Warsaw, 1943[1]

The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just

one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors….

—Czeslaw Milosz, “Ars Poetica”

I am the boy with his hands raised over his head

in Warsaw.

I am the soldier whose rifle is trained

on the boy with his hands raised over his head

in Warsaw.

I am the woman with lowered gaze

who fears the soldier whose rifle is trained

on the boy with his hands raised over his head

in Warsaw.

I am the man in the overcoat

who loves the woman with lowered gaze

who fears the soldier whose rifle is trained

on the boy with his hands raised over his head

in Warsaw.

I am the stranger who photographs

the man in the overcoat

who loves the woman with lowered gaze

who fears the soldier whose rifle is trained

on the boy with his hands raised over his head

in Warsaw.

The crowd, of which I am each part, moves on

beneath my window, for I am the crone too

who shakes her sheets

over every street in the world

muttering

What’s this? What’s this?

Appendix A

Notes on Meter

Metered verse consists of stanzas, lines, feet, and syllables. Stanzas are optional collections of lines into the equivalent of paragraphs. Metered verse is more likely to use regular stanzas (same number of lines in each stanza) than free verse, although this is certainly not a requirement. Lines are collections of feet. In metered verse, the number of feet per line is either consistent (e.g., always 3, 4, 5, etc.) or varies in a regular pattern (e.g., 4-3-4-3). Feet are collections of syllables. Note that I haven’t mentioned words. Word boundaries are irrelevant when dealing with meter.

Feet are broken down based on the accents.

da DUM is called an iamb (emphasis on the DUM part)

DUM da is called a trochee

da da DUM is called an anapest

Here are some examples:

iambs:

the right

abate

trochees:

have a

acted

anapest:

in the snow

violin

When poets write metered verse, they write it as iambic, trochaic, or

anapestic. Each line should have more feet of the selected pattern than other types of feet. Iambic verse is the most versatile and natural. It is used for just about any subject matter. Trochaic is kind of hammering, similar to marching music. It might be used for military or forceful types of topics. Anapestic is sing-song, and works well for children’s verse and funny poems. Of course, there are always exceptions to these general rules.

Here are some examples:

iambic:

The slow are dead, however just and right.

trochaic

Slowly hitting with a baseball bat I …

anapestic

On the night before Christmas throughout the big house.

Once you’ve identified the pattern of feet in the lines, and the type of meter, then you should find that each line of the verse will have that number of feet and more of that type of foot than any other foot. For example, if the poem is written in iambic pentameter (iambic, 5 feet per line) then each line will have five feet and at least 3 of those five feet will be iambs. Using something other than iambs for the other two feet is called substitution, and it’s what keeps the verse from getting monotonous.

Now, let’s look at some exceptions to the simplified rules above:

DUM DUM is called a spondee. In iambic and trochaic verse, think of it as a wild card. In iambic verse it counts as an iamb. In trochaic verse, it counts as a trochee.

da da is called a pyrrhic, but you never have this. However, you might have a pyrrhic and a spondee, which is called a double iamb. It counts as two iambs. So da da DUM DUM is a double iamb, or two iambs.

Here are some examples:

spondee:

big gun

red-hot

double iamb

in the big top

it’s an abstract

If you have a DUM as the first thing on a line, it might be the beginning of a trochee or spondee, or it can be what’s called a headless iamb. In other words, an iamb without the initial da counts just like any other iamb. The author of the poem gets to pick if they want it used as a headless iamb or not, but then needs to make sure everything else in that line works out to the correct number of feet based on that assumption. One more rule: In iambic verse you shouldn’t find a headless iamb on the first line. In other words, the reader needs to get into the swing of iambic reading before the poet throws a headless iamb at them.

Here are some examples:

headless iamb

making currents, rivers, rapids, then

Initial trochee

needing, then not, though each approach

If you have a da DUM da at the end of a line, you can count the da DUM as an iamb and “throw away” the trailing da, which is called a feminine ending.

Here’s an example, starting with a headless iamb and ending with a feminine ending:

scream and grab that flung me sparkling skyward

Finally, the “rule of three” says that anytime you have three of something in a row (e.g., da da da or DUM DUM DUM) the middle one gets promoted or demoted. However, it’s considered bad for the poet to require that you promote (or demote) something that strongly does not want to be promoted or demoted. For example, promoting a little word like “a” with the rule of three to a stress would be a blunder.

In this example, “grandkids” could be ambiguous in its stress, but the rule of three tells us that “grand” is stressed and “kids” is weak.

Today the kids and grandkids tempt me slowly up

Whew, that’s a lot to think about. It’s probably more interesting to you if you like the metered verse and you’d like to try your hand at writing some metered verse yourself.

Index by Author

Agbabi, Patience

Transformatrix

666

Akhmatova, Anna

ReQuiem — Instead Of A Preface

426

Alegria, Claribel

Documentary

621

Ali, Agha Shahid

Dacca Gauzes, The

613

Anonymous

Anvil-God’s Word, The

434

From The Longbeards’ Saga

35

Ishtar

31

Arbiter, Petronius

Doing, A Filthy Pleasure Is, And Short

35

Archilochos,

Will, Lost In A Sea Of Trouble

32

Atwood, Margaret

Manet’s Olympia

533

Miss July Grows Older

534

Variations On The Word Sleep

536

You Fit Into Me

537

Auden, W.H.

Dichtung And Wahrheit - Part XXXIII

437

From Selected Shorts

437

Marginalia (Extracts)

437

Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Amiri

Wise I

516

Baudelaire, Charles

Carrion, A

218

Flask, The

224

From Fuses I - On Art

221

From Fuses I - On God

221

From Fuses I - On Love

220

Ghostly Visitant, The

226

Heautontimoroumenos

221

Metamorphoses Of The Vampire

222

Murderer’s Wine, The

226

Pit, The

228

Spleen

223

Vampire, The

229

Berman, David

Snow

667

Bernstein, Charles

Of Time And The Line

624

Bible, The

Address Of Ruth To Naomi

32

Bishop, Elizabeth

Armadillo, The

446

Filling Station

439

In The Waiting Room

440

One Art

443

Sestina

444

Blaga, Lucian

I Will Not Crush The World’s

Corolla Of Wonders

431

Blake, William

Garden Of Love, The

62

Sick Rose, The

63

Tiger, The

63

To See A World In A Grain Of Sand

64

Bogan, Louise

From Beginning And End - Knowledge

432

Bronte, Emily

I Am The Only Being Whose Doom

206

Brooke, Rupert

Soldier, The

415

Brooks, Gwendolyn

Boy Died In My Alley, The

456

Song In The Front Yard, A

456

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

Sonnets From The Portuguese – 1

145

Sonnets From The Portuguese – XIV

146

Sonnets From The Portuguese – XX

146

Sonnets From The Portuguese – XLIII

147

Browning, Robert

Confessional, The

193

Meeting At Night

188

My Last Duchess

188

Never The Time And The Place

190

Pied Piper Of Hamelin, The

196

Porphyria’s Lover

191

Toccata Of Galuppi’s, A

185

Bryan, Sharon

Beyond Recall

595

Bryant, William Cullen

Hurricane, The

111

Murdered Traveler, The

112

Mutation

108

Poet, The

114

Presentiment, A

107

Strange Lady, The

115

Thanatopsis

109

To A Waterfowl

118

Budbill, David

Dilemma

542

Three Goals, The

542

Burns, Robert

Epitaph For James Smith

64

Epitaph On A Henpecked SQuire

65

Epitaph On William Muir

65

Inconstancy In Love

65

To A Louse

66

To A Mountain Daisy

68

Byron, George Gordon, Lord

She Walks In Beauty

102

So, We’ll Go No More A-Roving

103

Campion, Thomas

Integer Vitae

50

Carew, Thomas

Ingrateful Beauty Threatened

56

Carroll, Lewis

Walrus And The Carpenter, The

264

Carruth, Hayden

Little Citizen, Little Survivor

462

Clanchy, Kate

War Poetry

666

Clare, John

Badger

106

Codrescu, Andrei

Defense Of The Meek

602

Codrescu, Andrei

Defense of the meek

602

From: Three Types Of Loss, Part 3

602

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, The

75

Collins, Billy

Budapest

562

Forgetfulness

562

Introduction To Poetry

563

Nightclub

564

Not Touching

565

Passengers

566

Purity

567

Questions About Angels

568

Congreve, William

False Though She Be To Me And Love

61

Couto, Nancy Vieira

Living In The La Brea Tar Pits

575

Cowley, Abraham

Drinking

59

Cox, Mark

Style

657

Geese

656

Crane, Stephen

In The Desert

319

Creeley, Robert

Heaven

481

I Know A Man

482

I’ll Win

482

Old Days

483

Place (“There’s A Way Out”)

483

Thanksgiving’s Done

484

Daniels, Jim

Wheels

658

Davies, W.H.

Leisure

319

Derricotte, Toi

Allen Ginsberg

570

Dhomhnaill, Nuala Ni

Ceist Na Teangan (The Language Issue)

632

Dickey, James

Heaven Of Animals, The

467

Sheep Child, The

468

Dickinson, Emily

After Great Pain A Formal Feeling

Comes

233

Apparently With No Surprise

233

Because I Could Not Stop For Death

234

Deed Knocks First At Thought, A

231

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

235

I Felt A Funeral In My Brain

236

I Had Been Hungry All The Years

236

I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died

237

I Like To See It Lap The Miles

238

I Taste A liQuor Never Brewed

239

I’m Nobody! Who Are You?

240

I’ve Known A Heaven, Like A Tent

240

Last Night, The

241

My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close

241

Narrow Fellow In The Grass, A

232

Props Assist The House, The

242

There Came A Wind Like A Bugle

243

There’s A Certain Slant Of Light

244

To Make A Prairie It Takes A Clover

245

Way I Read A Letter’s This, The

243

We Grow Accustomed To The Dark

245

Wild Nights! Wild Nights!

246

Word Is Dead, A

233

Disch, Thomas

Cardinal Detoxes: A Play

In One Act, The

543

Dobyns, Stephen

Tomatoes

571

Donne, John

Community

51

Computation, The

53

Confined Love

52

Curse, The

54

Death

53

Douglas, Keith

Vergissmeinnicht

458

Drayton, Michael

Love’s Farewell

43

Drummond, William

Life

55

Dugan, Alan

How We Heard The Name

470

Love Song: I And Thou

471

Dybek, Stuart

Brass Knuckles

577

Maroon

579

Eliot, T.S.

Hysteria

426

Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock, The

421

Rhapsody On A Windy Night

418

Elk, Black

Everything The Power Of The World

Does Is Done In A Circle

294

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Days

141

Hamatreya

141

Rhodora, The

143

Snow-Storm, The

144

Fairchild, B.H.

Dumka, The

579

Feldman, Irving

Dream, The

487

Field, Eugene

Little Boy Blue

284

Wynken, Blynken, And Nod

285

Fisk, Molly

Dry Tortugas, The

651

Intrigue

649

On The Disinclination To Scream

650

Flanders, Jane

House That Fear Built:

Warsaw, 1943, The

670

Frost, Robert

After Apple-Picking

327

Aim Was Song, The

347

An Old Man’s Winter Night

329

Birches

329

Brook In The City, A

321

Death Of The Hired Man

331

Dream Pang, A

321

Fire And Ice

336

For Once, Then, Something

336

Fountain, A Bottle, A Donkey's Ears,

And Some Books, A

322

Good-By And Keep Cold

337

Home Burial

338

In A Disused Graveyard

342

Into My Own

342

Late Walk, A

327

Mending Wall

343

Misgiving

344

Need Of Being Versed In Country

Things, The

347

On A Tree Fallen Across The Road

345

Onset, The

348

Out, Out -

320

Road Not Taken, The

349

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy

Evening

345

Storm Fear

346

Vantage Point, The

350

Wood-Pile, The

350

Gheng, Gu

Ark

660

Goodison, Lorna

Birth Stone

605

Graham, Jorie

Salmon

625

Greene, Robert

Content

42

Grennan, Eamon

Detail

572

Gunn, Thom

Reassurance, The

498

Still Life

498

Hall, Donald

My Mother Said

488

Names Of Horses

488

Porcelain Couple, The

491

Halliday, Mark

Get It Again

614

Population

616

Hardy, Thomas

Channel Firing

267

I Look Into My Glass

269

Oxen, The

269

Ruined Maid, The

270

Hart, Kevin

Room, The

649

Haught, Kaylin

God Says Yes To Me

606

Heaney, Seamus

Clearances (Part V)

538

Dream Of Jealousy, A

537

Haw Lantern (Dedication), The

540

Punishment

538

ReQuiem For The Croppies

540

Hedin, Robert

Old Liberators, The

618

Hemingway, Ernest

From Wanderings - Chapter Heading

433

Henley, William Ernest

Invictus

283

Hennen, Tom

Life Of A Day, The

581

Soaking Up Sun

581

Herrick, Robert

To The Virgins

55

Upon Julia’s Clothes

56

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Sun And Shadow

169

Holton, Jackleen

American History

668

Free

669

Hood, Thomas

Poet’s Fate, The

141

Hopkins, Gerard Manley

Binsey Poplars

278

Carrion Comfort

279

Spring And Fall

280

Windhover, The

281

Horace,

Young Bloods Come Less Often

Now, The

33

Housman, A.E.

Loveliest Of Trees, The Cherry Now

287

Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff

288

They Say My Verse Is Sad: No Wonder

290

To An Athlete Dying Young

290

Huddle, David

Holes Commence Falling

582

Hughes, Langston

Dream Deferred: Harlem

434

Evil

435

Maybe

435

Suicide’s Note

435

Ignatow, David

Bagel, The

448

Irwin, Mark

Woolworth’s

635

I-to, Wen

Dead Water

433

Jarrell, Randall

Bats

449

Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner, The

452

Next Day

450

Jeffers, Robinson

Fawn’s Foster-Mother

416

Jenkins, Louis

Place For Everything, A

583

Jokun,

Ah! I Intended

61

Jones, Richard

Bell, The

638

Certain People

636

Leaving Town After The Funeral

637

Wan Chu’s Wife In Bed

639

Juarroz, Roberto

Any Movement Kills Something

477

Justice, Donald

American Sketches

478

In Bertram’s Garden

478

Kasdorf, Julia

What I Learned From My Mother

664

Keats, John

Isabella

120

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

135

O Blush Not So

137

Ode On A Grecian Urn

139

This Living Hand, Now Warm And

Capable

138

Kelly, Brigit Pegeen

White Pilgrim: Old Christian

Cemetery, The

629

Kenji, Miyazawa

Daydreaming On The Trail

431

Khayam, Omar

11 (XI)

39

23 (XXIII)

39

28 (XXVIII)

39

51 (LI)

40

Kilmer, Joyce

Trees

416

Kingsley, Charles

Young And Old

207

Kinnell, Galway

St. Francis And The Sow

484

Kinsley, Robert

Walk Along The Old Tracks, A

640

Kipling, Rudyard

If

295

Way Through The Woods, The

296

We And They

297

Kizer, Carolyn

Ashes, The

480

Bitch

479

Knight, Etheridge

Idea Of Ancestry, The

503

Warden Said To Me The Other Day, The

504

Komunyakaa, Yusef

Blackberries

607

Camouflaging The Chimera

608

Facing It

609

Ode To The Maggot

610

Kooser, Ted

At The Office Early

540

Selecting A Reader

541

Kopland, Rutger

Natzweiler

517

Landor, Walter Savage

On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday

100

Well I Remember

100

Lanier, Sidney

Revenge Of Hamish

271

To Nannette Falk-Auerbach

278

Waving Of The Corn, The

277

Larkin, Philip

An Arundel Tomb

464

Talking In Bed

465

This Be The Verse

466

Lawrence, D.H.

From The Ship Of Death

405

New Year’s Eve

405

Snake

407

Lax, Robert

Alley Violinist

454

Lear, Edward

Owl And The Pussy-Cat, The

205

Lee, Li-Young

Eating Together

660

Persimmons

661

Levertov, Denise

Consulting The Oracle

472

From A Plane

472

Levine, Philip

Belle Isle, 1949

492

Sweet Will

493

Levis, Larry

Poem You Asked For, The

603

Lindsay, Vachel

Horrid Voice Of Science, The

392

Locklin, Gerald

Late Registration

573

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Beleaguered City, The

152

Fire Of Drift-Wood, The

153

Jugurtha

148

Killed At The Ford

148

King Witlaf’s Drinking-Horn

150

Landlord’s Tale, The

155

Nameless Grave, A

147

Nature

151

Phantom Ship, The

159

Potter’s Wheel, The

161

Rainy Day, The

164

Three Silences Of Molinos, The

164

Travels By The Fireside

165

Twilight

166

Lovelace, Richard

To Lucasta, On Going To The Wars

60

Lowell, Amy

Decade, A

351

New Heavens For Old

352

Patterns

353

Lowell, Robert

Reading Myself

458

MacLeish, Archibald

Ars Poetica

427

Not Marble Nor The Gilded Monuments

428

Masters, Edgar Lee

Alexander Throckmorton

303

Aner Clute

303

Conrad Siever

303

Fiddler Jones

304

Silas Dement

305

Tom Beatty

306

Matthews, William

Onions

584

Poetry Reading At West Point, A

583

Mazur, Gail

In Houston

525

McHugh, Heather

What He Thought

610

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

First Fig

429

Milton, John

On His Blindness

58

Mitchell, Adrian

Puppy Called Puberty, A

507

Moore, Marianne

I May, I Might, I Must

417

Injudicious Gardening

417

Poetry

417

To A Steam Roller

418

Moore, Thomas

An Argument

101

Tis The Last Rose Of Summer

101

Moritake,

One Fallen Flower

40

Mueller, Lisel

Imaginary Paintings

473

Reader

474

Silence And Dancing

475

Story, The

476

Widow

476

Myers, Jack

Jake Addresses The World From

The Garden

573

Naylor, James B

Authorship

291

Nemerov, Howard

Gyroscope

459

Money

460

Snowflakes

462

Nordbrandt, William Butler

Dream Of Death, A

298

Nowlan, Alden

An Exchange Of Gifts

508

It’s Good To Be Here

510

Weakness

510

O’Brien, Sean

Rain

632

Olds, Sharon

I Go Back To May 1937

586

Once

587

Pope’s Penis, The

590

Promise, The

590

Quake Theory

587

Satan Says

588

Space Heater, The

591

Owen, Wilfred

Dulce Et Decorum Est

430

Padilla, Heberto

Landscapes

508

Pagis, Dan

Conversation

499

Patmore, Coventry

Toys, The

230

Patten, Brian

Party Piece

604

Pettit, Michael

Driving Lesson

627

Phillips, Robert

Instrument Of Choice

529

Pinsky, Robert

Shirt

560

Po, Li

River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, The

38

Poe, Edgar Allan

Annabel Lee

170

For Annie

172

Raven, The

175

Pound, Ezra

Eyes, The

412

Francesca

410

Garden, The

413

In A Station Of The Metro

410

Lustra - Introduction

411

Pact, A

410

Plunge, The

413

Salutation

412

Tame Cat

411

Tree, The

414

Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Amaryllis

307

An Old Story

307

Dead Village, The

314

The Growth of “Lorraine”

314

Haunted House

308

John Evereldown

308

Karma

309

Mill, The

316

Mr. Flood’s Party

310

Pity Of The Leaves, The

317

Reuben Bright

312

Richard Cory

312

Sheaves, The

318

Souvenir

313

Supremacy

313

Tavern, The

318

Roetzheim, William

Fading Into Background

653

Opera Season

654

Response To Emily Dickinson’s

“Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”

652

Shadow Friends

655

Stretch Marks

653

Roka,

Winter Rain Deepens

306

Rossetti, Christina Georgina

First Day, The

264

Goblin Market

246

Remember

262

Song

263

Russell, Timothy

In Simili Materia

631

Ryusui,

Lost Child Crying, A

61

Sandburg, Carl

Junk Man, The

391

Last Answers

391

To Know Silence Perfectly

392

Sarajlic, Izet

Luck In Sarajevo

499

Schultz, Philip

Answering Machine, The

596

Schwartz, Ruth

Swan At Edgewater Park, The

665

Seiffert, Marjorie Allen

Cubist Portrait

396

Service, Robert

Ballad Of Pious Pete, The

365

Ballad Of The Black Fox Skin, The

370

Cremation Of Sam Mcgee, The

377

Just Think!

356

Lost

357

My Madonna

362

On The Wire

362

Shooting Of Dan Mcgrew, The

380

Smoking Frog, The

384

Soldier Of Fortune, The

385

Wee Shop, The

388

Sexton, Anne

Her Kind

495

How We Danced

495

With Mercy For The Greedy

496

Shakespeare, William

All The World’s A Stage

44

Sonnet XVII

45

Sonnet XVIII

45

Sonnet XXXII

46

Sonnet LV

46

Sonnet CXXX

47

Sonnet CXXXVIII

47

Sonnet CXLIII

48

Sonnet CXLVII

49

Tomorrow, And Tomorrow,

And Tomorrow

49

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Music

103

Mutability

104

Ozymandias

106

Song From Charles The First

105

Shelton, Richard

Bus To Veracruz, The

511

Stones, The

515

Sheng, Mei

Beautiful Toilet, The

33

Shiki, (Masaoka Tsunenori)

By That Fallen House

302

Shuntaro, Tanikawa

From With Silence My Companion

505

From: My Father’s Death

506

Naif, The

506

Rudimentary Explanation

Of An Ideal Poem, A

504

Sidney, Sir Philip

Be Your Words Made, Good Sir

Of Indian Ware

40

Ditty, A

41

Loving In Truth

41

To Sleep

42

Sill, Edward Rowland

Five Lives

281

Simic, Charles

Country Fair

529

Fork

530

Northern Exposure

530

Old World, The

532

Prodigy

531

Slavitt, David

Titanic

522

Smith, Dave

Pulling A Pig’s Tail

593

Wreck In The Woods

594

Smith, Stevie

Not Waving But Drowning

435

Sunt Leones

436

Snyder, Gary

Axe Handles

500

What You Should Know To Be A Poet

501

Southey, Robert

After Blenheim

96

Scholar, The

99

Stafford, William

Traveling Through The Dark

453

Stanton, Maura

Living Apart

605

Stein, Gertrude

From Idem The Same, A Valentine

To Sherwood Anderson, A Very Valentine

390

Stetson, Charles Perkins

An Obstacle

292

Stevens, Wallace

Snow Man, The

393

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At

A Blackbird

393

Stevenson, Robert Louis

Requiem

286

Stoddard, Richard Henry

Jar, The

231

Strand, Mark

Eating Poetry

519

Keeping Things Whole

519

Reading In Place

520

Suckling, Sir John

Song: Why So Pale And Wan,

Fond Lover?

58

Sutphen, Joyce

Living In The Body

619

Swenson, May

Couple, A

448

Teasdale, Sara

There Will Come Soft Rains

404

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord

Charge Of The Light Brigade, The

182

Come Not, When I Am Dead

181

Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead

181

Vivien’s Song

184

Thomas, Dylan

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good

Night

453

Ting, Shu

Assembly Line

634

Turpin, Mark

Before Groundbreak

641

Don Fargo & Sons

641

Jobsite Wind

643

Pickwork

644

Poem

647

Waiting For Lumber

647

Untermeyer, Louis

Long Feud

414

Wakoski, Diane

George Washington And The Loss

Of His Teeth

527

Walcott, Derek

Love After Love

502

Wallace, Ronald

Thirteen

598

Walsh, William

Love And Jealousy

60

Wayman, Tom

Did I Miss Anything?

599

Weigl, Bruce

What Saves Us

620

Whitman, Walt

Darest Thou Now O Soul

208

I Saw In Louisiana A Live Oak Growing

208

My Legacy

210

O Captain! My Captain

210

Song Of Prudence

211

This Compost

215

When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer

217

Whittier, John Greenleaf

Autumn Thoughts

167

By Their Works

168

Forgiveness

168

Trust

169

Wilbur, Richard

Summer Morning, A

463

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Solitude

286

Williams, C.K.

Dance, The

524

My Fly

523

Williams, Miller

Listen

502

Williams, William Carlos

Act, The

398

Danse Russe

396

Last Words Of My English

Grandmother, The

399

Red Wheelbarrow, The

400

This Is Just To Say

402

Three Graces, The

400

To Mark Anthony In Heaven

401

Tract

402

Wordsworth, William

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

70

Nuns Fret Not At Their Convent’s

Narrow Room

71

Solitary Reaper, The

71

We Are Seven

72

Wotton, Sir Henry

Upon The Death Of Sir Albert

Morton’s Wife

51

Wright, James

Beginning

486

Blessing, A

485

Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s

Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota

486

Yeats, William Butler

Ballad Of Father Gilligan, The

299

A Dream of Death

298

Indian Upon God, The

301

Politics

298

Sad Shepherd, The

301

Young, Dean

Only One Of My Deaths

655

Yuan-ming, Tao

Unmoving Cloud, The

36

Zabajewski, Adam

Electric Elegy

600

Moment

601

Zawgee,

Way Of The Water-Hyacinth, The

438

Zimmer, Paul

Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against

The Blackboard

521

Index by Title

Title

Page

11 (XI)

39

23 (XXIII)

39

28 (XXVIII)

39

51 (LI)

40

A Blessing

485

A Brook in the City

321

A Carrion

218

A Couple

448

A Decade

351

A deed knocks first at thought

231

A Ditty 3

40

A Dream of Death

298

A Dream of Jealousy

537

A Dream Pang

321

A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey's Ears,

and Some Books

322

A Late Walk

327

A lost child crying

61

A Nameless Grave

147

A narrow fellow in the grass

232

A Pact

410

A Place for Everything

583

A Poetry Reading at West Point

583

A Presentiment

107

A Puppy Called Puberty

507

A Rudimentary Explanation of an Ideal Poem

504

A Song in the Front Yard

456

A Summer Morning

463

A Toccata of Galuppi’s

185

A Very Valentine

390

A Walk Along the Old Tracks

640

A word is dead

233

Address of Ruth to Naomi

32

After Apple-Picking

327

After Blenheim

96

After great pain a formal feeling comes

233

Ah! I intended

61

Alexander Throckmorton

303

All the World’s a Stage

44

Allen Ginsberg

570

Alley Violinist

454

Amaryllis

307

American History

668

American Sketches

478

An Argument

101

An Arundel Tomb

464

An Exchange of Gifts

508

An Obstacle

292

An Old Man’s Winter Night

329

An Old Story

307

Aner Clute

303

Annabel Lee

170

Any movement kills something

477

Apparently with no surprise

233

Ark

660

Ars Poetica

427

Assembly Line

634

At the Office Early

540

Authorship

291

Autumn Thoughts

167

Axe Handles

500

Badger

106

Bats

449

Be Your Words Made, Good Sir of Indian Ware

41

Because I could not stop for death

234

Before Groundbreak

641

Beginning

486

Belle Isle, 1949

492

Beyond Recall

595

Binsey Poplars

278

Birches

329

Birth Stone

605

Bitch

479

Blackberries

607

Brass Knuckles

577

Budapest

562

By that fallen house

302

By their Works

168

Camouflaging the Chimera

608

Carrion Comfort

279

Ceist na Teangan (The Language Issue)

632

Certain People

636

Channel firing

267

Clearances

538

Come Not, When I am Dead

181

Community

51

Confined Love

52

Conrad Siever

303

Consulting the Oracle

472

Content

42

Conversation

499

Country Fair

529

Cubist Portrait

396

Danse Russe

396

Darest Thou Now O Soul

208

Daydreaming on the Trail

431

Days

141

Dead Water

433

Death

53

Death of the Hired Man

331

Defense of the meek

602

Detail

572

Dichtung and Wahrheit

437

Did I Miss Anything?

599

Dilemma

542

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

453

Documentary

621

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short

35

Don Fargo & Sons

641

Dream Deferred: Harlem

434

Drinking

59

Driving Lesson

627

Dulce et Decorum Est

430

Eating Poetry

519

Eating Together

660

Electric Elegy

600

Epitaph for James Smith

64

Epitaph on a Henpecked SQuire

65

Epitaph on William Muir

65

Everything the Power of the World Does is done in a circle

294

Evil

435

Facing It

609

Fading into Background

653

False though she be to me and love

61

Fawn’s Foster-Mother

416

Fiddler Jones

304

Filling Station

439

Fire and Ice

336

First Fig

429

Five Lives

281

For Annie

172

For Once, Then, Something

336

Forgetfulness

562

Forgiveness

168

Fork

530

Francesca

410

Free

669

From a Plane

472

from Beginning and End—Knowledge

432

from Fuses I – on Art

221

from Fuses I – on God

221

from Fuses I – on Love

220

from Idem the Same, A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson,

390

From My Father’s Death

506

From Selected Shorts

437

from The Death of the Fathers: 2. How We Danced

495

from The Longbeards’ Saga

35

From The Ship of Death

405

from Wanderings — Chapter Heading

433

from With Silence My Companion

505

Geese

656

George Washington and the Loss of His Teeth

527

Get It Again

614

Goblin Market

246

God Says Yes to Me

606

Good-by and Keep Cold

337

Gyroscope

459

Hamatreya

141

Haunted House

308

Heautontimoroumenos

221

Heaven

481

Her Kind

495

Holes Commence Falling

582

Home Burial

338

Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead

181

Hope is the thing with feathers

235

How We Heard the Name

470

Hysteria

426

I am the Only Being Whose Doom

206

I felt a funeral in my brain

236

I Go Back to May 1937

586

I had been hungry all the years

236

I heard a fly buzz when I died

237

I Know a Man

482

I like to see it lap the miles

238

I look into my glass

269

I May, I Might, I Must

417

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

208

I taste a liQuor never brewed

239

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

70

I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders

431

If

295

I’ll Win

482

I’m nobody! Who are you?

240

Imaginary Paintings

473

In a Disused Graveyard

342

In a Station of the Metro

410

In Bertram’s Garden

478

In Houston

525

in Pine Island, Minnesota

486

In Simili Materia

631

In the desert

319

In the Waiting Room

440

Inconstancy in love

65

Ingrateful Beauty Threatened

56

Injudicious Gardening

417

Instrument of Choice

529

Integer Vitae

50

Into My Own

342

Intrigue

649

Introduction to Poetry

563

Invictus

283

Isabella

120

Ishtar

31

It’s Good To Be Here

510

I’ve Known a Heaven, Like a Tent

240

Jake Addresses the World from the Garden

573

Jobsite Wind

643

John Evereldown

308

Jugurtha

148

Just Think!

356

Karma

309

Keeping Things Whole

519

Killed at the Ford

148

King Witlaf’s Drinking-Horn

150

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

135

Landscapes

508

Last Answers

391

Late Registration

573

Leaving Town after the Funeral

637

Leisure

319

Life

55

Listen

502

Little Boy Blue

284

Little Citizen, Little Survivor

462

Living Apart

605

Living in the Body

619

Living in the La Brea Tar Pits

575

Long Feud

414

Lost

357

Love after Love

502

Love and Jealousy

60

Love Song: I and Thou

471

Love’s Farewell

43

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

287

Loving in Truth

41

Luck in Sarajevo

499

Lustra (from the Introduction)

411

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

486

Manet’s Olympia

533

Marginalia (Extracts)

437

Maroon

579

Maybe

435

Meeting at Night

188

Mending Wall

343

Metamorphoses of the Vampire

222

Misgiving

344

Miss July Grows Older

534

Moment

601

Money

460

Mr. Flood’s Party

310

Music

103

Mutability

104

Mutation

108

My Fly

523

My Last Duchess

188

My Legacy

210

My life closed twice before its close

241

My Madonna

362

My mother said

488

Names of Horses

489

Nature

151

Natzweiler

517

Never the Time and the Place

190

New Heavens for Old

352

New Year’s Eve

405

Next Day

450

Nightclub

564

Northern Exposure

530

Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments

428

Not Touching

565

Not Waving but Drowning

435

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room

71

O Blush Not So

137

O Captain! My Captain

210

Ode on a Grecian Urn

139

Ode to the Maggot

610

Of Time and the Line

624

Old Days

483

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road

345

On His Blindness

58

On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday

100

On the Disinclination to Scream

650

On the Wire

362

Once

587

One Art

443

One fallen flower

40

Onions

584

Only One of My Deaths

655

Opera Season

654

Out, Out—

320

Ozymandias

106

Party Piece

604

Passengers

566

Patterns

353

Persimmons

661

Pickwork

644

Place (“There’s a Way out”)

483

Poem

647

Poetry

417

Politics

298

Population

616

Porphyria’s Lover

191

Prodigy

531

Pulling a Pig’s Tail

593

Punishment

538

Purity

567

Quake Theory

587

Questions About Angels

568

Rain

632

Reader

474

Reading in Place

520

Reading Myself

458

Remember

262

Requiem

286

ReQuiem – Instead of a Preface2

426

ReQuiem for the Croppies

540

Response to Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”

652

Reuben Bright

312

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

418

Richard Cory

312

Salmon

625

Salutation

412

Satan Says

588

Selecting a Reader

541

Sestina

444

Shadow Friends

655

She Walks in Beauty

102

Shirt

560

Silas Dement

305

Silence and Dancing

475

Snake

407

Snow

667

Snowflakes

462

So, we’ll go no more a-roving

103

Soaking Up Sun

581

Solitude

286

Song

263

Song from Charles the First

105

Song of Prudence

211

Song: Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

58

Sonnet CXLIII

48

Sonnet CXLVII

49

Sonnet CXXX

47

Sonnet CXXXVIII

47

Sonnet LV

46

Sonnet XVII

45

Sonnet XVIII

45

Sonnet XXXII

46

Sonnets from the Portuguese – I

145

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XIV

146

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XLIII

147

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XX

146

Souvenir

313

Spleen

223

Spring and Fall

280

St. Francis and the Sow

484

Still Life

498

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

345

Storm Fear

346

Stretch Marks

653

Style

657

Suicide’s Note

435

Sun and Shadow

169

Sunt Leones

436

Supremacy

313

Sweet Will

493

Talking In Bed

465

Tame Cat

411

Terence, This is Stupid Stuff

288

Thanatopsis

109

Thanksgiving’s Done

484

The Act

398

The Aim was Song

347

The Answering Machine

596

The Anvil—God’s Word

434

The Armadillo

446

The Ashes

480

The Bagel

448

The Ballad of Father Gilligan

299

The Ballad of Pious Pete

365

The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin

370

The Beautiful Toilet

33

The Beleaguered City

152

The Bell

638

The Bible

32

The Boy Died in my Alley

456

The Bus to Veracruz

511

The Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act

543

The Charge of the Light Brigade

182

The Computation

53

The Confessional

193

The Cremation of Sam McGee

377

The Curse

54

The Dacca Gauzes

613

The Dance

524

The Dead Village

314

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

452

The Dream

487

The Dry Tortugas

651

The Dumka

579

The Eyes

412

The Fire of Drift-Wood

153

The First Day

264

The Flask

224

The Garden

413

The Garden of Love

62

The Ghostly Visitant

226

The Growth of “Lorraine”

314

The Haw Lantern (Dedication)

540

The Heaven of Animals

467

The Horrid Voice of Science

392

The House that Fear Built: Warsaw, 1943

670

The Hurricane

111

The Idea of Ancestry

503

The Indian upon God

301

The Jar

231

The Junk Man

391

The Landlord’s Tale

155

The Last Night

241

The Last Words of My English Grandmother

399

The Life of a Day

581

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

421

The Mill

316

The Murdered Traveler

112

The Murderer’s Wine

226

The Naif

506

The Need of Being Versed in Country

Things

347

The Old Liberators

618

The Old World

532

The Onset

348

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

205

The oxen

269

The Phantom Ship

159

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

196

The Pit

228

The Pity of the Leaves

317

The Plunge

413

The Poem You Asked For

603

The Poet

114

The Poet’s Fate

141

The Pope’s Penis

590

The Porcelain Couple

491

The Potter’s Wheel

161

The Promise

590

The Props Assist the House

242

The Rainy Day

164

The Raven1

175

The Reassurance

498

The Red Wheelbarrow

400

The Revenge of Hamish

271

The Rhodora

143

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

75

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

38

The Road Not Taken

349

The Room

649

The Ruined Maid

270

The Sad Shepherd

301

The Scholar

99

The Sheaves

318

The Sheep Child

468

The Shooting of Dan McGrew

380

The Sick Rose

63

The Smoking Frog

384

The Snow Man

393

The Snow-Storm

144

The Soldier

415

The Soldier of Fortune

385

The Solitary Reaper

71

The Space Heater

591

The Stones

515

The Story

476

The Strange Lady

115

The Swan at Edgewater Park

665

The Tavern

318

The Three Goals

542

The Three Graces

400

The Three Silences of Molinos

164

The Tiger

63

The Toys

230

The Tree

414

The Unmoving Cloud

36

The Vampire

229

The Vantage Point

350

The Walrus and the Carpenter

264

The Warden Said to Me the Other Day

504

The Waving of the Corn

277

The way I read a letter’s this

242

The Way of the Water-Hyacinth

438

The Way Through the Woods

296

The Wee Shop

388

The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery

629

The Windhover

281

The Wood-Pile

350

The young bloods come less often now

33

There came a wind like a bugle

243

There will come soft rains

404

There’s a certain slant of light

244

They say my Verse is Sad: No Wonder

290

Thirteen

598

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

393

This Be the Verse

466

This Compost

215

This is Just to Say

402

This living hand, now warm and capable1

138

‘Tis the Last Rose of Summer

101

Titanic

522

To A Louse

66

To A Mountain Daisy

68

To a Steam Roller

418

To a Waterfowl

118

To an Athlete Dying Young

290

To Know Silence Perfectly

392

To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars

60

To make a prairie it takes a clover

245

To Mark Anthony in Heaven

401

To Nannette Falk-Auerbach

278

To See a World in a Grain of Sand

64

To Sleep

42

To the Virgins

55

Tom Beatty

306

Tomatoes

571

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

49

Tract

402

Transformatrix

666

Traveling Through the Dark

453

Travels by the Fireside

165

Trees

416

Trust

169

Twilight

166

Two fragments from Three Types of Loss, Part 3 …

602

Upon Julia’s Clothes

56

Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton′s Wife

51

Variations on the Word Sleep

536

Vergissmeinnicht

458

Vivien’s Song

184

Waiting for Lumber

647

Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed

639

War Poetry

666

We and They

297

We are Seven

72

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark

245

Weakness

510

Well I Remember

100

What He thought

610

What I Learned from My Mother

664

What Saves Us

620

What you should know to be a poet

501

Wheels

658

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

217

Widow

476

Wild nights! Wild nights!

246

Will, lost in a sea of trouble

32

Winter rain deepens

306

Wise I

516

With Mercy for the Greedy

496

Woolworth’s

635

Wreck in the Woods

594

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

285

You Fit Into Me

537

Young and Old

207

Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against

the Blackboard

521

Index by Subject

Title

Page

Children

Nursery

Owl and the Pussy-cat, The

205

Walrus and the Carpenter, The

264

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

285

Story

Goblin Market

246

Pied Piper of Hamelin, The

196

Strange

Fork

530

I like to see it lap the miles

238

Bagel, The

448

Stones, The

515

Choices

Anger & Forgiveness

Cubist Portrait

396

Forgiveness

168

In the Desert

319

Revenge of Hamish

271

This is Just to Say

402

Consequences

Any movement kills something

477

Keeping Things Whole

519

Richard Cory

312

River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, The

38

Difficult Decisions

Moment

601

Road Not Taken, The

349

Traveling Through the Dark

453

Faith

Content

42

I am the Only Being Whose Doom

206

I had been hungry all the years

236

Integer Vitae

50

Sunt Leones

436

Patience

Jake Addresses the World from

the Garden

573

Peer Pressure

Aner Clute

303

Injudicious Gardening

417

Snake

407

Prudence

Song of Prudence

211

Temptation

Authorship

291

Deed knocks first at thought, A

231

Drinking

59

First Fig

429

from Wanderings - Chapter Heading

433

Growth of “Lorraine”, The

314

Jar, The

231

Ruined Maid, The

270

Song in the Front Yard, A

456

Eternity

A Passageway

I felt a funeral in my brain

236

King Witlaf’s Drinking-Horn

150

Thanatopsis

109

Dust Unto Dust

23 (XXIII)

39

Carrion, A

218

Because I could not stop for death

234

Five Lives

281

from Beginning and End - Knowledge

432

I Know a Man

482

I’ll Win

482

In a Disused Graveyard

342

Just Think!

356

Long Feud

414

Ozymandias

106

Potter’s Wheel, The

161

Sad Shepherd, The

301

Smoking Frog, The

384

To A Mountain Daisy

68

Tom Beatty

306

Heaven, Hell, Purgatory

Bus to Veracruz, The

511

Heaven of Animals, The

467

Living Apart

605

Immortality

Conrad Siever

303

My Legacy

210

Ode on a Grecian Urn

139

Reading Myself

458

Sonnet 017 (XVII)

45

This living hand, now warm and capable

138

To an Athlete Dying Young

290

To Nannette Falk-Auerbach

278

Toccata of Galuppi’s, A

185

Well I Remember

100

Priorities

Fiddler Jones

304

Heaven

481

Leisure

319

Life

55

Salutation

412

Supremacy

313

Titanic

522

To A Louse

66

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

49

The End of the World

Ark

660

Fire And Ice

336

The March of Time

Apparently with no surprise

233

Autumn Thoughts

167

Days

141

Hamatreya

141

Lustra - Introduction

411

Mutability

104

Mutation

108

Fire of Drift-Wood, The

153

Need of Being Versed

in Country Things, The

347

Ghosts, Evil, Superstition

Death

Annabel Lee

170

Ballad of Pious Pete, The

365

Cremation of Sam McGee, The

377

Dream of Death, A

298

For Annie

172

Never the Time and the Place

190

Ghosts

Beleaguered City, The

152

Flask, The

224

For Once, Then, Something

336

Ghostly Visitant, The

226

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

135

Phantom Ship, The

159

Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The

75

Strange Lady, The

115

Way Through the Woods, The

296

Ghouls

Her Kind

495

Metamorphoses of the Vampire

222

Spleen

223

Haunted Buildings

Haunted House

308

Dead Village, The

314

Mill, The

316

Tavern, The

318

Murder

Isabella

120

Karma

309

Porphyria’s Lover

191

Murdered Traveler, The

112

Murderer’s Wine, The

226

Supernatural

Ballad of Father Gilligan,The

299

Ballad of the Black Fox Skin, The

370

Lost

357

Presentiment, A

107

Raven, The

175

Growing Up and Growing Old

Aging

Ah! I intended

61

All the World’s a Stage

44

Amaryllis

307

An Old Man’s Winter Night

329

Death

53

Fading into Background

653

Gyroscope

459

Miss July Grows Older

534

Northern Exposure

530

Old Days

483

Silence and Dancing

475

So, we’ll go no more a-roving

103

Song from Charles the First

105

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

345

Thanksgiving’s Done

484

Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The

421

Three Graces, The

400

Tis the last rose of summer

101

Wreck in the Woods

594

Young and Old

207

Generations

28 (XXVIII)

39

Axe Handles

500

Driving Lesson

627

In Simili Materia

631

Living in the La Brea Tar Pits

575

Idea of Ancestry, The

503

This Be the Verse

466

Looking Back

Alexander Throckmorton

303

Birches

329

Forgetfulness

562

Get It Again

614

I look into my glass

269

Dance, The

524

Persimmons

661

New Heavens for Old

352

Young bloods come less

often now, The

33

Middle-age

Act, The

398

Living in the Body

619

Next Day

450

Mortal Illness

Junk Man, The

391

Last Words of My English

Grandmother, The

399

Scholar, The

99

Puberty

Puppy Called Puberty, A

507

Thirteen

598

Waiting for Death

From The Ship of Death

405

I heard a fly buzz when I died

237

Misgiving

344

Mr. Flood’s Party

310

Nature

151

On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday

100

Place (“There’s a Way out”)

483

Souvenir

313

Still Life

498

Pity of the Leaves, The

317

Woolworth’s

635

Human Condition

Confession

From With Silence My Companion

505

George Washington and the Loss of His Teeth

527

How We Danced

495

I Go Back to May 1937

586

On the Disinclination to Scream

650

Once

587

Quake Theory

587

Satan Says

588

Space Heater, The

591

With Mercy for the Greedy

496

Friendship

Bell, The

638

Belle Isle, 1949

492

Walk Along the Old Tracks, A

640

Parents

Certain People

636

Dry Tortugas, The

651

Place for Everything, A

583

What I Learned from My Mother

664

Self

In the Waiting Room

440

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s

Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

486

Sex and Relationships

Instrument of Choice

529

Party Piece

604

Response to Emily Dickinson’s

“Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”

652

Sheep Child, The

468

Swan at Edgewater Park, The

665

Tomatoes

571

Society

Answering Machine, The

596

Country Fair

529

Defense of the Meek

602

Intrigue

649

Marginalia (Extracts)

437

Punishment

538

Suicide

Suicide’s Note

435

Unexpected or Inner Beauty

Danse Russe

396

Nightclub

564

Onions

584

Inspiration and Faith

Eastern Religion

Consulting the Oracle

472

I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders

431

Life of a Day, The

581

Lost child crying, A

61

Three Goals, The

542

To See a World in a Grain of Sand

64

Inspiration

Darest Thou Now O Soul

208

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

453

Epitaph on William Muir

65

Hope is the thing with feathers

235

I May, I Might, I Must

417

If

295

I’m nobody! Who are you?

240

Invictus

283

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road

345

Solitude

286

Sun and Shadow

169

Props Assist the House, The

242

Way of the Water-Hyacinth, The

438

Will, lost in a sea of trouble

32

Pagan

Everything the Power of the World

Does is done in a circle

294

I taste a liQuor never brewed

239

Indian upon God, The

301

Old World, The

532

Questioning Religion

Carrion Comfort

279

From Fuses I - On God

221

On His Blindness

58

Oxen, The

269

Tiger, The

63

White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery, The

629

Western Religion

By their Works

168

God Says Yes to Me

606

Questions About Angels

568

Snowflakes

462

Anvil-God’s Word, The

434

Rhodora, The

143

Three Silences of Molinos, The

164

Toys, The

230

To a Waterfowl

118

Trust

169

We are Seven

72

Loss and Sorrow

Coping

After great pain a formal feeling comes

233

Spring and Fall

280

Porcelain Couple, The

491

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark

245

Depression

Not Waving but Drowning

435

Pit, The

228

Rainy Day, The

164

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

418

Sestina

444

Shadow Friends

655

There’s a certain slant of light

244

Unmoving Cloud, The

36

Disbelief and Visits

Beyond Recall

595

My Fly

523

Dream, The

487

Reassurance, The

498

Final Instructions

Remember

262

Requiem

286

Song

263

Tract

402

Loss of a Child

Home Burial

338

Leaving Town after the Funeral

637

Little Boy Blue

284

Room, The

649

Loss of a Friend

An Old Story

307

My life closed twice before its close

241

O Captain! My Captain

210

Loss of a Parent

Eating Together

660

From My Father’s Death

506

My mother said

488

Last Night, The

241

Loss of a Spouse

One Art

443

Opera Season

654

Reuben Bright

312

Twilight

166

Upon the Death of Sir Albert

Morton’s Wife

51

Widow

476

Winter rain deepens

306

Lust, betrayal and lost love

Battle of the Sexes

Community

51

Curse, The

54

Dichtung and Wahrheit - Part XXXIII

437

Evil

435

From Fuses I - On Love

220

Geese

656

Manet’s Olympia

533

Maybe

435

You Fit Into Me

537

Betrayal

Confessional, The

193

False though she be to me and love

61

Heautontimoroumenos

221

My Last Duchess

188

Sonnet 147 (CXLVII)

49

Failed Relationships

Beautiful Toilet, The

33

Dream Pang, A

321

Epitaph on a Henpecked SQuire

65

Population

616

Rain

632

Talking In Bed

465

Shooting of Dan McGrew, The

380

Sick Rose, The

63

Story, The

476

Vampire, The

229

Lust

Garden of Love, The

62

Hysteria

426

In Bertram’s Garden

478

John Evereldown

308

O Blush Not So

137

Salmon

625

Tame Cat

411

Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed

639

Wild nights! Wild nights!

246

Moving On

Bitch

479

Free

669

Ingrateful Beauty Threatened

56

Love after Love

502

Song: Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

58

They say my Verse is Sad: No Wonder

290

Philandering

An Argument

101

Confined Love

52

Dream of Jealousy, A

537

Epitaph for James Smith

64

Garden, The

413

Inconstancy in love

65

To the Virgins

55

Vivien’s Song

184

Make a Statement

Abortion

It’s Good To Be Here

510

Change

Boy Died in my Alley, The

456

Silas Dement

305

To a Steam Roller

418

Corporate Greed

Holes Commence Falling

582

Human Rights

Ashes, The

480

Dacca Gauzes, The

613

Documentary

621

Electric Elegy

600

House that Fear Built:

Warsaw, 1943, The

670

Natzweiler

517

Prodigy

531

ReQuiem - Instead of a Preface

426

Motorcycle Helmets

Wheels

658

Oppression and Discrimination

An Obstacle

292

Blackberries

607

Dream Deferred: Harlem

434

Money

460

Pickwork

644

Warden Said to Me the Other Day, The

504

We and They

297

Wise I

516

Physical Abuse

Style

657

Poverty

Brass Knuckles

577

Landscapes

508

Maroon

579

Religion

Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act, The

543

Pope’s Penis, The

590

Nature

Animals

Bats

449

Badger

106

Blessing, A

485

Fawn’s Foster-Mother

416

Listen

502

Little Citizen, Little Survivor

462

Names of Horses

489

Narrow fellow in the grass, A

232

St. Francis and the Sow

484

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

393

Weakness

510

Windhover, The

281

Earth

Brook in the City, A

321

Horrid Voice of Science, The

392

Onset, The

348

Snow Man, The

393

This Compost

215

Insects

Couple, A

448

Ode to the Maggot

610

Only One of My Deaths

655

Landscape

Beginning

486

Daydreaming on the Trail

431

Dead Water

433

From a Plane

472

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

70

Sheaves, The

318

Solitary Reaper, The

71

To make a prairie it takes a clover

245

Vantage Point, The

350

Sky

Conversation

499

Tree, The

414

Trees

Binsey Poplars

278

Good-by and Keep Cold

337

Into My Own

342

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

287

One fallen flower

40

Trees

416

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

217

Wind and Storms

Aim was Song, The

347

Hurricane, The

111

Jobsite Wind

643

Snow-Storm, The

144

Storm Fear

346

There came a wind like a bugle

243

Nature

Landscape

I’ve Known a Heaven, Like a Tent

240

Romance

Beauty

She Walks in Beauty

102

Sonnet 130 (CXXX)

47

Upon Julia’s Clothes

56

Commitment

Address of Ruth to Naomi

32

An Arundel Tomb

464

Dumka, The

579

Late Walk, A

327

Love and Jealousy

60

Love Song: I and Thou

471

Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments

428

Sonnet 018 (XVIII)

45

Sonnet 032 (XXXII)

46

Sonnet 055 (LV)

46

Sonnets from the Portuguese – 14

146

Sonnets from the Portuguese – 43

147

Stretch Marks

653

To Mark Anthony in Heaven

401

Courting

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short

35

First Day, The

264

Love

11 (XI)

39

51 (LI)

40

Decade, A

351

Clearances (Part V)

538

Francesca

410

from Idem the Same, A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson, A Very Valentine

390

Haw Lantern (dedication), The

540

Meeting at Night

188

New Year’s Eve

405

Plunge, The

413

Promise, The

590

Sonnet 138 (CXXXVIII)

47

Variations on the Word Sleep

536

Redemption

I Saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing

208

Sonnets from the Portuguese – 1

145

Sonnets from the Portuguese – 20

146

Seperation

Be Your Words Made, Good Sir of

Indian Ware

41

Computation, The

53

Ditty, A

40

Eyes, The

412

from The Longbeards’ Saga

35

Music

103

To Sleep

42

Way I read a letter’s this, The

242

Unrequited

Come Not, When I am Dead

181

Love’s Farewell

43

Loving in Truth

41

Not Touching

565

Sonnet 143 (CXLIII)

48

War and Peace

Bystanders

Ishtar

31

Luck in Sarajevo

499

Patterns

353

War Poetry

666

Casualties

Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, The

452

Dulce et Decorum Est

430

Facing It

609

Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead

181

Killed at the Ford

148

Nameless Grave, A

147

On the Wire

362

Vergissmeinnicht

458

Futility

After Blenheim

96

By that fallen house

302

Channel firing

267

How We Heard the Name

470

Politics

298

There will come soft rains

404

Glory

Charge of the Light Brigade,The

182

Landlord’s Tale, The

155

Soldier, The

415

Soldier of Fortune, The

385

To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars

60

Soldiers

Camouflaging the Chimera

608

ReQuiem for the Croppies

540

Old Liberators, The

618

What Saves Us

620

Working

Construction

Before Groundbreak

641

Don Fargo & Sons

641

“Out, Out -”

320

Poem

647

Waiting for Lumber

647

Entrepreneur

Wee Shop, The

388

Factory

Assembly Line

634

Shirt

560

Sweet Will

493

Farm

After Apple-Picking

327

American Sketches

478

Birth Stone

605

Pulling a Pig’s Tail

593

Red Wheelbarrow, The

400

Waving of the Corn, The

277

Household

Death of the Hired Man

331

Mending Wall

343

Snow

667

Summer Morning, A

463

Wood-Pile, The

350

Retirement

Soaking Up Sun

581

Teaching

American History

668

Did I Miss Anything?

599

Transportation

Filling Station

439

In a Station of the Metro

410

Passengers

566

White Collar

At the Office Early

540

Writing

Allen Ginsberg

570

Budapest

562

In Houston

525

Writing, art, and poetry

Ars Poetica

Ars Poetica

427

Detail

572

from Selected Shorts

437

Nuns Fret Not At Their Convent’s Narrow Room

71

Of Time and the Line

624

Purity

567

Poet, The

114

What you should know to be a poet

501

Art

Alley Violinist

454

From Fuses I - On Art

221

Imaginary Paintings

473

My Madonna

362

To Know Silence Perfectly

392

Language

Ceist na Teangan (The Language Issue)

632

Word is dead, A

233

Poetry

Introduction to Poetry

563

Last Answers

391

Naif, The

506

Poem You Asked For, The

603

Poetry Reading at West Point, A

583

Poetry

417

Rudimentary Explanation of an Ideal Poem, A

504

Selecting a Reader

540

Terence, This is Stupid Stuff

288

Transformatrix

666

Reading

Eating Poetry

519

Reader

474

Reading in Place

520

Travels by the Fireside

165

Writing

An Exchange of Gifts

508

Armadillo, The

446

Dilemma

542

Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey's Ears, and Some Books, A

322

from: Three Types of Loss, part 3

602

Jugurtha

148

Late Registration

573

Pact, A

410

Poet’s Fate, The

141

What He thought

610

Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against the Blackboard

521

Index to Translations

Arabic

Fitzgerald, Edward

39

Babylonian Cuneiform

Spence, Lewis

31

Burmese

Aye, Lyn

438

Chinese

Finkel, Donald

660

Kizer, Carolyn

427, 634

Pound, Ezra

33, 36, 38

Wentong, Ma

433

Dutch

Brockway, James

517

French

Cameron, Norman

220, 221

Dillon, George

222, 229

Huneker, James

224

Piaget Shanks, Lewis

221, 223

Squire, Sir John

218, 226

Thorley, Wilfrid

228

Hebrew

Mitchell, Stephen

499

Irish

Muldoon, Paul

279

Japanese

Beilenson, Peter

40, 61, 302, 306

Elliott, William I.

504

Latin

Jonson, Ben

35

Michie, James

33

Rexroth, Kenneth

32

Norse

Kingsley, Charles

35

Polish

Gorczynski, Renata

600, 601

Russian

Mayherw, Lenore

426

Serbo-Croat

Simic, Charles

499

Spanish

Crow, Mary

477

Reid, Alastair,

508

Index of First Lines

First Line

Page

A bat is born

449

A bee rolls in the yellow rose

448

A boy is bouncing a ball off a brick wall after school

579

A brown rat has taken up residence with me

462

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up

380

A deed knocks first at thought

231

A husband. A wife. Three children. Last year they did not

474

A lonely stretch, in the bind of poor fishing and drought

431

A lost child crying

61

A middle-aged woman, quite plain, to be polite about it

524

A narrow fellow in the grass

232

A poem should be palpable and mute

427

A pond despaired of any hope

433

A simple child

72

A snake came to my water-trough

407

A soldier of the Union mustered out

147

A vanished house that for an hour I knew

313

A widow bird sate mourning for her love

105

A woman travels to Brazil for plastic

571

A word is dead

233

About ten days or so

498

After great pain, a formal feeling comes

233

After the people and the flowers

637

Ah! I intended

61

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend

39

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight

135

Alas, it is impossible that my answer to the question Who

437

All crying, “We will go with you, O Wind!”

344

All leaves gone, yellow

484

All out of doors looked darkly in at him

329

All the world’s a stage

44

All winter your brute shoulders strained

489

all you can about animals as persons

501

Always the same, when on a fated night

348

Among twenty snowy mountains

393

An honest man here lies at rest

65

And the days are not full enough

411

And there, beyond the barbed wire, the view

517

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky

144

Any movement kills something

477

Apparently with no surprise

233

As a fond mother, when the day is o’er

151

As father Adam first was fooled

65

As I look from the isle, o’er its billows of green

169

As I sd to my

482

As long as you read this poem

508

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her

426

At a theater or ball

221

At ten pm it starts. We can hear from the bar

632

At the blackboard I had missed

521

At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats

566

Be your words made, good Sir, of Indian ware

41

Because he was a butcher and thereby

312

Because I could not stop for Death

234

Because it seems the only way to save the roses

655

Before man came to blow it right

347

Behold her, single in the field

71

Behold the next-door neighbor’s

669

Belovëd, my Belovëd, when I think

146

“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks

430

Beside him in the old Ford pickup

627

Black is the sky, but the land is white

357

Blue, blue is the grass about the river

33

Bobbing on the breeze blown waves

438

Body is something you need in order to stay

619

Brother of the blowfly

610

Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint

141

By that fallen house

302

Call him not heretic whose works attest

168

Called by people a poet

504

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

269

Christmas was in the air and all was well

309

Clear moments are so short

601

Come not, when I am dead

181

Come, be my camera

621

Come, Sleep; O Sleep! the certain knot of peace

42

Concerning your letter in which you ask

496

Darest thou now O soul

208

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days

141

Day and night my thoughts incline

231

Death be not proud, though some have callëd thee

53

Death, coming in his sleep

506

“Deny your God!” They ringed me with their spears

385

Do not go gentle into that good night

453

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short

35

Each morning she is wheeled into the picture

575

Entreat me not to leave thee

32

Even if God did not exist

221

Everything stands wondrously multicolored

635

Everything the power of the world does

294

Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!

120

False though she be to me and love

61

Farewell, German radio with your green eye

600

Farm boys wild to couple

468

Father and Mother, and Me

297

First semester of my senior year

668

First, I would have her be beautiful

540

Five mites of monads dwelt in a round drop

281

… for a whole year he sought to accumulate the most

613

For the first twenty years, since yesterday

53

For we have thought the longer thoughts

433

Four talked about the pine tree. One defined it by genus

499

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State

452

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may

55

Gent, Nugget, Swank, and Dude

598

George Burns likes to insist that he always

624

Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers

167

Good we must love, and must hate ill

51

Great Pascal had his pit always in sight.

228

Green water of lagoons

472

Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie!

66

Half a league, half a league

182

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick

196

He first deceased; she for a little tried

51

He is dead, the beautiful youth

148

He said

604

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs

338

Helpless to throw them away

641

Her young employers having got in late

463

Here there is death. But even here, they say

314

Here they are. The soft eyes open

467

Here was a place where none would ever come

308

Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough

39

His parents would sit alone together

579

Home they brought her warrior dead

181

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

235

How can I, that girl standing there

298

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

148

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

147

How easily happiness begins by

584

How I would paint the future

473

How much are they deceived who vainly strive

60

How much longer can I get away

534

I am glad God saw Death

391

I am locked in a little cedar box

588

I am the boy with his hands raised over his head

670

I am the only being whose doom

206

I am useless

352

I ask them to take a poem

563

I asked a blind man the way east

472

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

606

I asked you, baby

435

I believe in the soul; so far

532

I can feel the tug

538

I caught this morning morning’s minion

281

I couldn’t attend the opera this season.

654

I dreamed that one had died in a strange place

298

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

236

I grew up bent over a chessboard

531

I had been hungry, all the Years

236

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song

321

I haled me a woman from the street

362

I have eaten

402

I have gone out, a possessed witch

495

I have read, in some old marvelous tale

152

I heard a Fly buzz—when I died

237

I know how worthless this poem will be

505

I laid me down upon a bank

62

I learned from my mother how to love

664

I leave our house, our town, familiar fields

605

I like to see it lap the miles

238

I look into my glass

269

I love living in a town so small

649

I love to go out on summer nights and watch the stones grow

515

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman

410

I met a traveler from an antique land

106

I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees

301

I place my hope on the water

632

I read to the entire plebe class

583

I saw a creature, naked, bestial

319

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing

208

I saw my father naked, once, I

587

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges

586

I shall not soon forget

498

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood

414

I stopped to pick up the bagel

448

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife

100

I taste a liQuor never brewed

239

I think that I shall never see

416

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

145

I threw a snowball across the backyard.

502

I tried to refine that neighbor of mine

365

I walk down the garden-paths

353

I wandered lonely as a cloud

70

I want to be famous so I can be humble about

542

I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney

306

I was climbing up a mountain-path

292

I was watching a robin fly after a finch—the smaller bird

572

I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run

625

I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders

431

I will teach you my townspeople

402

I wish I could remember the first day

264

I worship shadows like my daughter worships sun

655

I would bathe myself in strangeness

413

I would like to watch you sleeping

536

I wrote a poem on the mist

391

I, too, dislike it

417

I’d dislocated my life, so I went to the zoo

525

I’ll strike thee without enmity

221

I’ll win the way

482

I’m in trouble, she said

510

I’m slim as a silver stiletto, lit

666

If I had been a ten year old stranger

650

If I should die, think only this of me

415

If thou must love me, let it be for nought

146

If thou survive my well-contented day

46

If tired of trees I seek again mankind

350

If when my wife is sleeping

396

If yellow betokens infidelity

417

If you can keep your head when all about you

295

If you didn’t see the six-legged dog

529

If you ever find

516

If you were an alley violinist

454

If you will tell me why the fen

417

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

240

Imagine a poem that starts with a couple

520

In 1978 I write something about how

614

In a field

519

In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours

184

In Mather’s Magnalia Christi

159

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes

143

In Sarajevo

499

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker

661

In the steamer is the trout

660

In the terrible years of Yezhovism I spent seventeen

426

In the tower the bell

638

In time’s assembly line

634

In Worcester, Massachusetts

440

In youth my wings were strong and tireless

303

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.

519

Isn’t it nice that everyone has a grocery list

616

Isn’t one of your prissy rich peoples’ swans

665

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate

590

It is a lie—their Priests, their Pope

193

It is an ancient Mariner

75

It is my house, and yet one room is locked.

649

It rests me to be among beautiful women

411

It was a summer evening

96

It was like keeping a puppy in your underpants

507

It was many and many a year ago

170

It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled

305

It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck

271

It’s spring and Jake toddles to the garden

573

It’s so easy to lose track of things. A screwdriver, for instance

583

I’ve known a Heaven like a tent

240

I’ve oft been told by learned friars

101

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life

456

Jane looks down at her organdy skirt

478

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota

485

Just think! some night the stars will gleam

356

King David and King Solomon

291

Know, Celia, since thou art so proud

56

Kruger sets his feet

577

Lament him, Mauchline husbands a’

64

Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith’s door

434

Laugh, and the world laughs with you

286

Let not Woman e’er complain

65

Let us go then, you and I

421

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall

413

Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own

581

Like the mild-eyed angels sweet

226

Like thousands, I took just pride and more than just

458

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

155

literal translations lose music while

602

Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch

48

Looks like what drives me crazy

435

Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh

111

Love may arise from a generous sentiment—namely

220

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

287

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show

41

Manhattan’s streets I sauntered pondering

211

Márgarét, are you gríeving

280

Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table

331

Meanwhile from her red mouth the woman

222

Morning and evening

246

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All

450

Music, when soft voices die

103

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled

278

My black face fades

609

My brother kept

658

My candle burns at both ends

429

My days among the Dead are past

99

My father lives by the ocean

636

My favorite time to write is in the late afternoon

567

My friends & I speak mostly to one another’s machine

596

My heart was heavy, for its trust had been

168

My life closed twice before its close

241

My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes

230

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree

327

My love is as a fever, longing still

49

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun

47

My mother said, “Of course

488

My pen moves along the page

562

My poem would eat nothing

603

My toe tips look unusually far away

506

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his

40

My wife is dead and I am free

226

Never the time and the place

190

Nobody heard him, the dead man

435

Not in that wasted garden

303

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

46

Not slowly wrought, nor treasured for their form

462

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee

279

Nothing is plumb, level or square

471

Nothing matters

595

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here

599

November, angry at the capital

223

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit

405

Now that I know

432

Now, when he and I meet, after all these years

479

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room

71

O blush not so! O blush not so!

137

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done

210

O generation of the thoroughly smug

412

O God, take the sun from the sky!

362

O Rose, thou art sick!

63

Of all the people in the mornings at the mall

618

Of all the questions you might want to ask

568

Off work and going upslope for a look

641

Oft as I hear thee, wrapt in heavenly art

278

Oh father, let us hence—for hark

107

Oh Galuppi Baldassare

185

Oh, but it is dirty!

439

Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain

322

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night

310

Old mare whose eyes

510

“O’Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!

270

On the then-below-zero day, it was on

591

Once Allen Ginsberg stopped to pee

570

Once upon a midnight dreary

175

Once, when I wandered in the woods alone

307

Once, years after your death, I dreamt

487

One afternoon the last week in April

500

One fallen flower

40

One must have a mind of winter

393

One of my wishes is that those dark trees

342

One of those great, garishly emerald flies that always

523

Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs

336

Out of the morning land

35

Out of the night that covers me

283

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day

350

Over and over they used to ask me

303

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly

486

Ploughman, whose gnarly hand yet kindly wheeled

277

Rain has beaded the panes

540

Remember me when I am gone away

262

Rememberest thou, my sweet, that summer’s day

218

Rest Master, for we be a-weary, weary

412

River’s old look

483

“Schweigen and tanzen” are word spoken by Elektra near the

475

September rain falls on a house

444

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

45

She asks me for an admissions card

573

She is purposeless as a cyclone; she must move

396

She reclines, more or less

533

She risked her all, they told me, bravely sinking

388

She walks in beauty, like the night

102

She was a girl

529

Side by side, their faces blurred

464

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part

43

so much depends

400

So we’ll go no more a-roving

103

Some man unworthy to be possessor

52

Some say the world will end in fire

336

Somehow none of us knew exactly

647

Something startles me where I thought I was safest

215

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall

343

Strange that I did not know him then

307

Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content

42

Talking in bed ought to be easiest

465

Taped to my wall are 47 pictures: 47 black

503

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind

60

Terence, this is stupid stuff

288

Thank Heaven! the crisis

172

That night your great guns, unawares

267

that rips paper from the walls

643

That’s my last duchess painted on the wall

188

The apparition of these faces in the crowd

410

The art of losing isn’t hard to master

443

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams

543

The Boy died in my alley

456

The bud

484

The business man the acquirer vast

210

The buzz-saw snarled, and rattled in the yard

320

The calm

435

The ceaseless rain is falling fast

165

The cicadas were loud and what looked like a child’s bracelet

629

The class has dropped its books. The janitor’s

666

The clouds have gathered, and gathered

36

The cool that came off sheets just off the line

538

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary

164

The earth keeps some vibration going

304

The farm house lingers, though averse to square

321

The feel of it was hairy and coarse

593

The first goal is to see the thing itself

542

The flower that smiles today

104

The grey sea and the long black land

188

The house had gone to bring again

347

The illustration

418

The last night that she lived

241

The lead and zinc company

582

The lions who ate the Christians

436

The little toy dog is covered with dust

284

The living come with grassy tread

342

The mail is slow here. If I died, I wouldn’t find out

511

The man of life upright

50

The man who stood beside me

493

the meek have taken

602

The miller’s wife had waited long

316

The moon drops one or two feathers into the fields

486

The moving finger writes; and, having writ

40

The murmurs were the first to go

653

The name of the author is the first to go

562

The night of my cousin’s wedding

495

The old priest Peter Gilligan

299

The old woman sits on a bench before the door

416

The older women wise and tell Anna

605

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

205

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley

540

The praisers of women

428

The Props assist the House

242

The rain set early in tonight

191

The river brought down

470

The riverbed, dried-up, half full of leaves

540

The same old baffling questions! O my friend

169

The scene is a monastically bare cell in a Catholic detox center

560

The ship you’ve boarded

660

The summer morn is bright and fresh

115

The sun was shining on the sea

264

The telephone poles

478

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain

59

The time will come

502

The time you won your town the race

290

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood

345

The twilight is sad and cloudy

166

The ultimate

527

The unconsecrated foe entered my courts

31

The valentine of desire is pasted over my heart

565

The warden said to me the other day

504

The Way I read a Letter’s—this

242

The young bloods come round less often now

33

There are only two things now

405

There are some powerful odors that can pass

224

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

377

There came a Wind like a Bugle

243

There is a drear and lonely tract of hell

313

There is a music for lonely hearts nearly always

392

There is skill to it

644

There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend

301

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike

370

There were some dirty plates

399

There were the roses, in the rain

398

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground

404

There’s a way out

483

There’s a certain Slant of light

244

“There’s machinery in the butterfly

392

They fuck you up, your mum and dad

466

They left my hands like a printer’s

607

They say my verse is sad: no wonder.

290

They shut the road through the woods

296

They talk of short-lived pleasure—be it so—

108

They were building a house in the Dry Tortugas

651

This admirable gadget, when it is wound on a string

459

This elderly poet, unpublished for five decades

480

This is the time of year

446

This Life, which seems so fair

55

This living hand, now warm and capable

138

This morning we shall spend a few minutes

460

This Quiet morning light

401

This saying good-by on the edge of the dark

337

This strange thing must have crept

530

This the last rose of summer

101

Thou still unravished bride of quietness

139

Thou who abruptly as a knife

229

Thou, who wouldst wear the name

114

Three men I saw beside a bar

384

Three Silences there are: the first of speech

164

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone

458

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright

63

To him who in the love of nature holds

109

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee

245

To see a world in a grain of sand

64

Today there is the kind of sunshine old men love

581

Today, a coed with a black eye

657

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

49

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

453

Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round

161

Twelve o’clock

418

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

349

Under that embrace of wild saplings held fast

594

Under the wide and starry sky

286

Vengeful across the cold November moors

317

Very fine is my valentine.

390

Walking through a field with my little brother Seth

667

Walking with you and another lady

537

Wan Chu, my adoring husband

639

We are wrapped around each other in

620

We grow accustomed to the Dark

245

We have the picture of you in mind

400

We sat around a fire and drank Merlot

652

We sat within the farm-house old

153

We stripped in the first warm spring night

492

We tied branches to our helmets

608

We were in love and his uncle had a farm

656

We were supposed to do a job in Italy

610

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow’r

68

Well I remember how you smiled

100

What happens to a dream deferred?

434

What is a modern Poet’s fate?

141

What is this life if, full of care

319

What the neighbors bring to her kitchen

476

What weakness of mind

647

Whatever their personal faith

437

When all the world is young, lad

207

When I am dead, my dearest

263

When I consider how my light is spent

58

When I go up through the mowing field

327

When I heard the learn’d astronomer

217

When I see birches bend to left and right

329

When I was young they had already been

640

When Jane felt well enough for me to leave her

491

When midnight comes a host of dogs and men

106

When my love swears that she is made of truth

47

When old women say, it smells of snow

530

When she stopped on the sidewalk

631

When spring, to woods and wastes around

112

When the wind works against us in the dark

346

When two plates of earth scrape along each other

587

When we do evil

437

When you came, you were like red wine and honey

351

Whenas in silks my Julia goes

56

Whenever I go by there nowadays

318

Whenever Richard Cory went down town

312

“Where are you going, to-night, to-night

308

Where long the shadows of the wind had rolled

318

Where, without bloodshed, can there be

414

Wherever they’ve

481

While I stood listening, discreetly dumb

314

While my hair was still cut straight

38

Whither, “midst falling dew

118

Who does not love the Titanic?

522

Who will believe my verse in time to come

45

Whoever guesses, thinks, or dreams, he knows

54

Whose woods these are I think I know.

345

Why so pale and wan fond lover?

58

Wild Nights—Wild Nights!

246

Will, lost in a sea of trouble

32

Winter rain deepens

306

With the second drink, at the restaurant

590

With them the seed of wisdom did I sow

39

Witlaf, a king of the Saxons

150

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night

285

You are so beautiful and I am a fool

564

You are telling a story

476

You came in out of the night

410

You can see them everywhere in Cuba.

508

you fit into me

537

You lie beside me

653

Index Pointing To Audio CD

Poem

Disk

Track

11 (Xi)

Poems of Romance

14 - Love

23 (Xxiii)

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

25 - Dust Unto Dust

28 (Xxviii)

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

03 - Generations

51 (Li)

Poems of Romance

13 - Love

Act, The

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

13 - Middle-age

Address Of Ruth To Naomi

Poems of Romance

36 - Commitment

After Apple-Picking

Poems of Working

14 - Farm

After Blenheim

Poets Look at War and Peace

22 - Futility

After Great Pain A Formal Feeling Comes

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

35 - Coping

Ah! I Intended

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

22 - Aging

Aim Was Song, The

Poems of Nature

26 - Wind and Storms

Alexander Throckmorton

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

20 - Looking Back

All The World’s A Stage

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

11 - Aging

Allen Ginsberg

Poems of Working

22 - Writing

Alley Violinist

No audio version available

NA

Amaryllis

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

15 - Aging

American History

Poems of Working

25 - Teaching

American Sketches

Poems of Working

13 - Farm

An Argument

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

15 - Philandering

An Arundel Tomb

Poems of Romance

48 - Commitment

An Exchange Of Gifts

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

10 - Writing

An Obstacle

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

25 - Oppression and Discrimination

An Old Man’s Winter Night

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

02 - Aging

An Old Story

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

12 - Loss of a Friend

Aner Clute

Poets Look at Choices in Life

19 - Peer Pressure

Annabel Lee

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

14 - Death

Answering Machine, The

Poems of the Human Condition

15 - Society

Anvil-God’s Word, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

04 - Western Religion

Any Movement Kills Something

Poets Look at Choices in Life

12 - Consequences

Apparently With No Surprise

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

16 - The March of Time

Ark

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

22 - The End of the World

Armadillo, The

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

13 - Writing

Ars Poetica

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

29 - Ars Poetica

Ashes, The

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

13 - Human Rights

Assembly Line

Poems of Working

0”3 - Factory

At The Office Early

Poems of Working

20 - White Collar

Authorship

Poets Look at Choices in Life

06 - Temptation

Autumn Thoughts

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

14 - The March of Time

Axe Handles

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

02 - Generations

Badger

Poems of Nature

11 - Animals

Bagel, The

Poems for Children of all Ages

05 - Strange

Ballad Of Father Gilligan, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

03 - Supernatural

Ballad Of Pious Pete, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

15 - Death

Ballad Of The Black Fox Skin, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

04 - Supernatural

Bats

Poems of Nature

06 - Animals

Be Your Words Made, Good Sir Of Indian Ware

Poems of Romance

30 - Seperation

Beautiful Toilet, The

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

34 - Failed Relationships

Because I Could Not Stop For Death

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

21 - Dust unto Dust

Before Groundbreak

Poems of Working

05 - Construction

Beginning

Poems of Nature

34 - Landscape

Beleaguered City, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

12 - Ghosts

Bell, The

No audio version available

NA

Belle Isle, 1949

Poems of the Human Condition

08 - Friendship

Beyond Recall

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

22 - Disbelief and Visits

Binsey Poplars

Poems of Nature

39 - Trees

Birches

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

14 - Looking Back

Birth Stone

Poems of Working

15 - Farm

Bitch

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

46 - Moving On

Blackberries

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

19 - Oppression and

Discrimination Blessing, A

Poems of Nature

02 - Animals

Boy Died In My Alley, The

No audio version available

NA

Brass Knuckles

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

07 - Poverty

Brook In The City, A

Poems of Nature

19 - Earth

Budapest

Poems of Working

21 - Writing

Bus To Veracruz, The

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

11 - Heaven, Hell, Purgatory

By That Fallen House

Poets Look at War and Peace

21 - Futility

By Their Works

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

03 - Western Religion

Camouflaging The Chimera

Poets Look at War and Peace

08 - Soldiers

Cardinal Detoxes: A Play In One Act, The

Poems That Make a Statement Disk B

02 - Religion

Carrion Comfort

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

26 - Questioning Religion

Carrion, A

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

22 - Dust unto Dust

Ceist Na Teangan (The Language Issue)

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

03 - Language

Certain People

No audio version available

NA

Channel Firing

Poets Look at War and Peace

19 - Futility

Charge Of The Light Brigade, The

Poets Look at War and Peace

03 - Glory

Clearances (Part V)

Poems of Romance

18 - Love

Come Not, When I Am Dead

Poems of Romance

06 - Unrequited

Community

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

26 - Battle of the Sexes

Computation, The

Poems of Romance

26 - Seperation

Confessional, The

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

20 - Betrayal

Confined Love

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

12 - Philandering

Conrad Siever

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

18 - Immortality

Consulting The Oracle

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

19 - Eastern Religion

Content

Poets Look at Choices in Life

24 - Faith

Conversation

Poems of Nature

44 - Trees

Country Fair

Poems of the Human Condition

14 - Society

Couple, A

Poems of Nature

13 - Insects

Cremation Of Sam Mcgee, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

10 - Death

Cubist Portrait

Poets Look at Choices in Life

30 - Anger & Forgiveness

Curse, The

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

27 - Battle of the Sexes

Dacca Gauzes, The

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

18 - Human Rights

Dance, The

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

21 - Looking Back

Danse Russe

Poems of the Human Condition

03 - Unexpected or Inner Beauty

Darest Thou Now O Soul

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

28 - Inspiration

Daydreaming On The Trail

Poems of Nature

29 - Landscape

Days

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

13 - The March of Time

Dead Village, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

02 - Haunted Buildings

Dead Water

No audio version available

NA

Death

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

16 - Aging

Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner, The

Poets Look at War and Peace

11 - Casualties

Death Of The Hired Man

Poems of Working

27 - Household

Decade, A

Poems of Romance

20 - Love

Deed Knocks First At Thought, A

Poets Look at Choices in Life

05 - Temptation

Defense Of The Meek

Poems of the Human Condition

16 - Society

Detail

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

30 - Ars Poetica

Dichtung And Wahrheit - Part Xxxiii

No audio version available

NA

Did I Miss Anything?

Poems of Working

24 - Teaching

Dilemma

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

17 - Writing

Ditty, A

Poems of Romance

29 - Seperation

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

41 - Inspiration

Documentary

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

17 - Human Rights

Doing, A Filthy Pleasure Is, And Short

Poems of Romance

02 - Courting

Don Fargo & Sons

Poems of Working

06 - Construction

Dream Deferred: Harlem

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

21 - Oppression and

Discrimination Dream Of Death, A

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

12 - Death

Dream Of Jealousy, A

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

17 - Philandering

Dream Pang, A

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

33 - Failed Relationships

Dream, The

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

25 - Disbelief and Visits

Drinking

Poets Look at Choices in Life

10 - Temptation

Driving Lesson

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

04 - Generations

Dry Tortugas, The

Poems of the Human Condition

11 - Parents

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Poets Look at War and Peace

14 - Casualties

Dumka, The

Poems of Romance

40 - Commitment

Eating Poetry

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

07 - Reading

Eating Together

No audio version available

NA

Electric Elegy

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

16 - Human Rights

Epitaph For James Smith

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

10 - Philandering

Epitaph On A Henpecked SQuire

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

32 - Failed Relationships

Epitaph On William Muir

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

29 - Inspiration

Everything The Power Of The World Does Is Done In A Circle

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

14 - Pagan

Evil

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

28 - Battle of the Sexes

Eyes, The

Poems of Romance

27 - Seperation

Facing It

Poets Look at War and Peace

12 - Casualties

Fading Into Background

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

10 - Aging

False Though She Be To Me And Love

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

19 - Betrayal

Fawn’s Foster-Mother

Poems of Nature

10 - Animals

Fiddler Jones

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

08 - Priorities

Filling Station

Poems of Working

17 - Transportation

Fire And Ice

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

23 - The End of the World

Fire Of Drift-Wood, The

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

17 - The March of time

First Day, The

Poems of Romance

0”3 - Courting

First Fig

Poets Look at Choices in Life

09 - Temptation

Five Lives

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

02 - Dust unto Dust

Flask, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

06 - Ghosts

For Annie

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

13 - Death

For Once, Then, Something

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

09 - Ghosts

Forgetfulness

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

17 - Looking Back

Forgiveness

Poets Look at Choices in Life

28 - Anger & Forgiveness

Fork

Poems for Children of all Ages

07 - Strange

Fountain, A Bottle, A Donkey's Ears, And Some Books, A

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

18 - Writing

Francesca

Poems of Romance

22 - Love

Free

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

41 - Moving On

From A Plane

Poems of Nature

30 - Landscape

From Beginning And End - Knowledge

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

23 - Dust unto Dust

From Fuses I - On Art

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

35 - Art

From Fuses I - On God

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

24 - Questioning Religion

From Fuses I - On Love

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

25 - Battle of the Sexes

From Idem The Same, A Valentine To Sherwood Anderson, A Very Valentine

Poems of Romance

24 - Love

From Selected Shorts

No audio version available

NA

From The Longbeards’ Saga

Poems of Romance

25 - Seperation

From The Ship Of Death

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

23 - Waiting for Death

From Wanderings - Chapter Heading

Poets Look at Choices in Life

11 - Temptation

From With Silence My Companion

Poems of the Human Condition

24 - Confession

From: My Father’s Death

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

11 - Loss of a Parent

From: Three Types Of Loss, Part 3

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

08 - Writing

Garden Of Love, The

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

08 - Lust

Garden, The

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

14 - Philandering

Geese

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

30 - Battle of the Sexes

George Washington And The Loss Of His Teeth

Poems of the Human Condition

31 - Confession

Get It Again

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

15 - Looking Back

Ghostly Visitant, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

11 - Ghosts

Goblin Market

Poems for Children of all Ages

10 - Story

God Says Yes To Me

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

02 - Western Religion

Good-By And Keep Cold

Poems of Nature

37 - Trees

Gyroscope

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

09 - Aging

Hamatreya

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

15 - The March of Time

Haunted House

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

03 - Haunted Buildings

Haw Lantern (Dedication), The

Poems of Romance

12 - Love

Heautontimoroumenos

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

18 - Betrayal

Heaven

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

06 - Priorities

Heaven Of Animals, The

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

09 - Heaven, Hell, Purgatory

Her Kind

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

15 - Ghouls

Holes Commence Falling

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

03 - Corporate Greed

Home Burial

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

07 - Loss of a Child

Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead

Poets Look at War and Peace

17 - Casualties

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

30 - Inspiration

Horrid Voice Of Science, The

Poems of Nature

18 - Earth

House That Fear Built: Warsaw, 1943, The

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

12 - Human Rights

How We Danced

Poems of the Human Condition

28 - Confession

How We Heard The Name

Poets Look at War and Peace

20 - Futility

Hurricane, The

Poems of Nature

23 - Wind and Storms

Hysteria

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

02 - Lust

I Am The Only Being Whose Doom

Poets Look at Choices in Life

21 - Faith

I Felt A Funeral In My Brain

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

06 - A Passageway

I Go Back To May 1937

Poems of the Human Condition

27 - Confession

I Had Been Hungry All The Years

Poets Look at Choices in Life

23 - Faith

I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

17 - Waiting for Death

I Know A Man

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

05 - Dust unto Dust

I Like To See It Lap The Miles

Poems for Children of all Ages

06 - Strange

I Look Into My Glass

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

19 - Looking Back

I May, I Might, I Must

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

39 - Inspiration

I Saw In Louisiana A Live Oak Growing

Poems of Romance

35 - Redemption

I Taste A liQuor Never Brewed

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

15 - Pagan Religion

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

Poems of Nature

32 - Landscap

I Will Not Crush The World’s Corolla Of Wonders

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

20 - Eastern Religion

Idea Of Ancestry, The

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

05 - Generations

If

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

38 - Inspiration

I’ll Win

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

20 - Dust Unto Dust

I’m Nobody! Who Are You?

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

31 - Inspiration

Imaginary Paintings

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

37 - Art

In A Disused Graveyard

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

26 - Dust unto Dust

In A Station Of The Metro

Poems of Working

18 - Transportation

In Bertram’s Garden

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

05 - Lust

In Houston

Poems of Working

23 - Writing

In Simili Materia

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

06 - Generations

In The Desert

Poets Look at Choices in Life

26 - Anger & Forgiveness

In The Waiting Room

Poems of the Human Condition

05 - Self

Inconstancy In Love

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

11 - Philandering

Indian Upon God, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

13 - Pagan Religion

Ingrateful Beauty Threatened

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

42 - Moving On

Injudicious Gardening

Poets Look at Choices in Life

20 - Peer Pressure

Instrument Of Choice

Poems of the Human Condition

19 - Sex and Relationships

Integer Vitae

Poets Look at Choices in Life

22 - Faith

Into My Own

Poems of Nature

38 - Trees

Intrigue

Poems of the Human Condition

12 - Society

Introduction To Poetry

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

22 - Poetry

Invictus

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

40 - Inspiration

Isabella

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

07 - Murder

Ishtar

Poets Look at War and Peace

25 - Bystanders

It’s Good To Be Here

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

04 - Abortion

I’ve Known A Heaven, Like A Tent

Poems of Nature

35 - Trees

Jake Addresses The World From The Garden

Poets Look at Choices in Life

17 - Patience

Jar, The

Poets Look at Choices in Life

08 - Temptation

Jobsite Wind

Poems of Nature

25 - Wind and Storms

John Evereldown

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

09 - Lust

Jugurtha

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

12 - Writing

Junk Man, The

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

27 - Mortal Illness

Just Think!

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

28 - Dust unto Dust

Karma

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

05 - Murder

Keeping Things Whole

Poets Look at Choices in Life

13 - Consequences

Killed At The Ford

Poets Look at War and Peace

13 - Casualties

King Witlaf’s Drinking-Horn

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

08 - A Passageway

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

08 - Ghosts

Landlord’s Tale, The

Poets Look at War and Peace

05 - Glory

Landscapes

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

06 - Poverty

Last Answers

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

23 - Poetry

Last Night, The

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

09 - Loss of a Parent

Last Words Of My English Grandmother, The

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

29 - Mortal Illness

Late Registration

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

09 - Writing

Late Walk, A

Poems of Romance

47 - Commitment

Leaving Town After The Funeral

No audio version available

NA

Leisure

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

10 - Priorities

Life

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

07 - Priorities

Life Of A Day, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

21 - Eastern Religion

Listen

Poems of Nature

04 - Animals

Little Boy Blue

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

06 - Loss of a Child

Little Citizen, Little Survivor

No audio version available

NA

Living Apart

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

10 - Heaven, Hell, Purgatory

Living In The Body

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

12 - Middle-age

Living In The La Brea Tar Pits

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

08 - Generations

Long Feud

No audio version available

NA

Lost

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

02 - Supernatural

Lost Child Crying, A

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

18 - Eastern Religion

Love After Love

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

44 - Moving On

Love And Jealousy

Poems of Romance

44 - Commitment

Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock, The

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

26 - Aging

Love Song: I And Thou

Poems of Romance

39 - Commitment

Love’s Farewell

Poems of Romance

07 - Unrequited

Loveliest Of Trees, The Cherry Now

Poems of Nature

40 - Trees

Loving In Truth

Poems of Romance

05 - Unrequited

Luck In Sarajevo

Poets Look at War and Peace

27 - Bystanders

Lustra - Introduction

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

19 - The March of Time

Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s Condition

Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota 06 - Self

Poems of the Human

Manet’s Olympia

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

24 - Battle of the Sexes

Marginalia (Extracts)

No audio version available

NA

Maroon

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

08 - Poverty

Maybe

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

29 - Battle of the Sexes

Meeting At Night

Poems of Romance

15 - Love

Mending Wall

Poems of Working

28 - Household

Metamorphoses Of The Vampire

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

16 - Ghouls

Mill, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

05 - Haunted Buildings

Misgiving

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

21 - Waiting for Death

Miss July Grows Older

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

14 - Aging

Moment

Poets Look at Choices in Life

03 - Difficult Decisions

Money

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

23 - Oppression and Discrimination

Mr. Flood’s Party

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

25 - Waiting for Death

Murdered Traveler, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

08 - Murder

Murderer’s Wine, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

06 - Murder

Music

Poems of Romance

28 - Seperation

Mutability

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

12 - The March of Time

Mutation

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

11 - The March of Time

My Fly

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

23 - Disbelief and Visits

My Last Duchess

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

22 - Betrayal

My Legacy

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

20 - Immortality

My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

13 - Loss of a Friend

My Madonna

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

36 - Art

My Mother Said

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

10 - Loss of a Parent

Naif, The

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

24 - Poetry

Nameless Grave, A

Poets Look at War and Peace

15 - Casualties

Names Of Horses

Poems of Nature

05 - Animals

Narrow Fellow In The Grass, A

Poems of Nature

08 - Animals

Nature

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

24 - Waiting for Death

Natzweiler

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

14 - Human Rights

Need Of Being Versed In Country Things, The

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

18 - The March of Time

Never The Time And The Place

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

11 - Death

New Heavens For Old

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

18 - Looking Back

New Year’s Eve

Poems of Romance

19 - Love

Next Day

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

11 - Middle-Age

Nightclub

Poems of the Human Condition

02 - Unexpected

Northern Exposure

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

04 - Aging

Not Marble Nor The Gilded Monuments

Poems of Romance

49 - Commitment

Not Touching

Poems of Romance

08 - Unrequited

Not Waving But Drowning

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

32 - Depression

Nuns Fret Not At Their Convent’s Narrow Room

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

33 - Ars Poetica

O Blush Not So

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

06 - Lust

O Captain! My Captain

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

14 - Loss of a Friend

Ode On A Grecian Urn

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

12 - Immortality

Ode To The Maggot

Poems of Nature

15 - Insects

Of Time And The Line

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

32 - Ars Poetica

Old Days

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

25 - Aging

Old Liberators, The

Poets Look at War and Peace

07 - Soldiers

Old World, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

16 - Pagan Religion

On A Tree Fallen Across The Road

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

33 - Inspiration

On His Blindness

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

27 - Questioning Religion

On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

22 - Waiting for Death

On The Disinclination To Scream

Poems of the Human Condition

32 - Confession

On The Wire

Poets Look at War and Peace

16 - Casualties

Once

Poems of the Human Condition

26 - Confession

One Art

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

15 - Loss of a Spouse

One Fallen Flower

Poems of Nature

42 - Trees

Onions

Poems of the Human Condition

04 - Unexpected or Inner Beauty

Only One Of My Deaths

Poems of Nature

14 - Insects

Onset, The

Poems of Nature

17 - Earth

Opera Season

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

19 - Loss of a Spouse

Out, Out -

Poems of Working

08 - Construction

Owl And The Pussy-Cat, The

Poems for Children of all Ages

02 - Nursery

Oxen, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

25 - Questioning Religion

Ozymandias

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

30 - Dust Unto Dust

Pact, A

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

11 - Writing

Party Piece

Poems of the Human Condition

18 - Sex and Relationships

Passengers

Poems of Working

19 - Transportation

Patterns

Poets Look at War and Peace

26 - Bystanders

Persimmons

No audio version available

NA

Phantom Ship, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

13 - Ghosts

Pickwork

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

24 - Oppression and Discrimination

Pied Piper Of Hamelin, The

Poems for Children of all Ages

09 - Story

Pit, The

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

27 - Depression

Pity Of The Leaves, The

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

26 - Waiting for Death

Place (“There’s A Way Out”)

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

20 - Waiting for Death

Place For Everything, A

Poems of the Human Condition

10 - Parents

Plunge, The

Poems of Romance

23 - Love

Poem

Poems of Working

07 - Construction

Poem You Asked For, The

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

25 - Poetry

Poet, The

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

28 - Ars Poetica

Poetry

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

19 - Poetry

Poetry Reading At West Point, A

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

27 - Poetry

Poet’s Fate, The

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

16 - Writing

Politics

Poets Look at War and Peace

24 - Futility

Pope’s Penis, The

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

27 - Religion

Population

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

40 - Failed Relationships

Porcelain Couple, The

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

34 - Coping

Porphyria’s Lover

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

09 - Murder

Potter’s Wheel, The

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

04 - Dust unto Dust

Presentiment, A

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

18 - Supernatural

Prodigy

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

15 - Human Rights

Promise, The

Poems of Romance

21 - Love

Props Assist The House, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

32 - Inspiration

Pulling A Pig’s Tail

Poems of Working

16 - Farm

Punishment

Poems of the Human Condition

13 - Society

Puppy Called Puberty, A

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

09 - Puberty

Purity

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

31 - Ars Poetica

Quake Theory

Poems of the Human Condition

25 - Confession

Questions About Angels

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

09 - Western Religion

Rain

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

36 - Failed Relationships

Rainy Day, The

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

30 - Depression

Raven, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

19 - Supernatural

Reader

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

04 - Reading

Reading In Place

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

06 - Reading

Reading Myself

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

17 - Immortality

Reassurance, The

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

24 - Disbelief and Visits

Red Wheelbarrow, The

Poems of Working

12 - Farm

Remember

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

03 - Final Instructions

Requiem

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

05 - Final Instructions

ReQuiem - Instead Of A Preface

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

11 - Human Rights

ReQuiem For The Croppies

Poets Look at War and Peace

10 - Soldiers

Response To Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”

Poems of the Human Condition

20 - Sex and Relationships

Reuben Bright

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

18 - Loss of a Spouse

Revenge Of Hamish

Poets Look at Choices in Life

29 - Anger & Forgiveness

Rhapsody On A Windy Night

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

29 - Depression

Rhodora, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

12 - Western Religion

Richard Cory

Poets Look at Choices in Life

15 - Consequences

Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

14 - Ghosts

River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, The

Poets Look at Choices in Life

14 - Consequences

Road Not Taken, The

Poets Look at Choices in Life

02 - Difficult Decisions

Room, The

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

08 - Loss of a Child

Rudimentary Explanation Of An Ideal Poem, A

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

20 - Poetry

Ruined Maid, The

Poets Look at Choices in Life

07 - Temptation

Sad Shepherd, The

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

03 - Dust unto Dust

Salmon

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

04 - Lust

Salutation

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

04 - Priorities

Satan Says

Poems of the Human Condition

29 - Confession

Scholar, The

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

28 - Mortal Illness

Selecting A Reader

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

26 - Poetry

Sestina

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

28 - Depression

Shadow Friends

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

31 - Depression

She Walks In Beauty

Poems of Romance

10 - Beauty

Sheaves, The

Poems of Nature

31 - Landscape

Sheep Child, The

Poems of the Human Condition

23 - Sex and Relationships

Shirt

Poems of Working

02 - Factory

Shooting Of Dan Mcgrew, The

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

35 - Failed Relationships

Sick Rose, The

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

31 - Failed Relationships

Silas Dement

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

09 - Change

Silence And Dancing

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

08 - Aging

Smoking Frog, The

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

29 - Dust unto Dust

Snake

Poets Look at Choices in Life

18 - Peer Pressure

Snow

Poems of Working

26 - Household

Snow Man, The

Poems of Nature

20 - Earth

Snowflakes

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

10 - Western Religion

Snow-Storm, The

Poems of Nature

22 - Wind and Storms

So, We’ll Go No More A-Roving

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

24 - Aging

Soaking Up Sun

Poems of Working

30 - Retirement

Soldier Of Fortune, The

Poets Look at War and Peace

06 - Glory

Soldier, The

Poets Look at War and Peace

04 - Glory

Solitary Reaper, The

Poems of Nature

33 - Landscape

Solitude

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

34 - Inspiration

Song

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

04 - Final Instructions

Song From Charles The First

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

12 - Aging

Song In The Front Yard, A

No audio version available

NA

Song Of Prudence

Poets Look at Choices in Life

16 - Prudence

Song: Why So Pale And Wan, Fond Lover?

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

45 - Moving On

Sonnet 017 (Xvii)

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

19 - Immortality

Sonnet 018 (Xviii)

Poems of Romance

41 - Commitment

Sonnet 032 (Xxxii)

Poems of Romance

42 - Commitment

Sonnet 055 (Lv)

Poems of Romance

43 - Commitment

Sonnet 130 (Cxxx)

Poems of Romance

11 - Beauty

Sonnet 138 (Cxxxviii)

Poems of Romance

16 - Love

Sonnet 143 (Cxliii)

Poems of Romance

04 - Unrequited

Sonnet 147 (Cxlvii)

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

21 - Betrayal

Sonnets From The Portuguese – 1

Poems of Romance

33 - Redemption

Sonnets From The Portuguese – 14

Poems of Romance

37 - Commitment

Sonnets From The Portuguese – 20

Poems of Romance

34 - Redemption

Sonnets From The Portuguese – 43

Poems of Romance

38 - Commitment

Souvenir

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

19 - Waiting for Death

Space Heater, The

Poems of the Human Condition

33 - Confession

Spleen

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

17 - Ghouls

Spring And Fall

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

36 - Coping

St. Francis And The Sow

Poems of Nature

12 - Animals

Still Life

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

18 - Waiting for Death

Stones, The

Poems for Children of all Ages

08 - Strange

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

23 - Aging

Storm Fear

Poems of Nature

21 - Wind and Storms

Story, The

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

37 - Failed Relationships

Strange Lady, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

07 - Ghosts

Stretch Marks

Poems of Romance

46 - Commitment

Style

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

02 - Physical Abuse

Suicide’s Note

Poems of the Human Condition

17 - Suicide

Summer Morning, A

No audio version available

NA

Sun And Shadow

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

37 - Inspiration

Sunt Leones

Poets Look at Choices in Life

25 - Faith

Supremacy

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

03 - Priorities

Swan At Edgewater Park, The

Poems of the Human Condition

21 - Sex and Relationships

Sweet Will

Poems of Working

04 - Factory

Talking In Bed

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

38 - Failed Relationships

Tame Cat

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

03 - Lust

Tavern, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

04 - Haunted Buildings

Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

21 - Poetry

Thanatopsis

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

07 - A Passageway

Thanksgiving’s Done

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

07 - Aging

There Came A Wind Like A Bugle

Poems of Nature

24 - Wind and Storms

There Will Come Soft Rains

Poets Look at War and Peace

23 - Futility

There’s A Certain Slant Of Light

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

26 - Depression

They Say My Verse Is Sad: No Wonder

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

43 - Moving On

Thirteen

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

10 - Puberty

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird

Poems of Nature

09 - Animals

This Be The Verse

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

07 - Generations

This Compost

Poems of Nature

16 - Earth

This Is Just To Say

Poets Look at Choices in Life

27 - Anger & Forgiveness

This Living Hand, Now Warm And Capable

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

21 - Immortality

Three Goals, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

22 - Eastern Religion

Three Graces, The

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

13 - Aging

Three Silences Of Molinos, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

06 - Western Religion

Tiger, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

23 - Questioning Religion

Tis The Last Rose Of Summer

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

05 - Aging

Titanic

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

09 - Priorities

To A Louse

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

05 - Priorities

To A Mountain Daisy

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

24 - Dust unto Dust

To A Steam Roller

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

10 - Change

To A Waterfowl

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

11 - Western Religion

To An Athlete Dying Young

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

13 - Immortality

To Know Silence Perfectly

No audio version available

NA

To Lucasta, On Going To The Wars

Poets Look at War and Peace

02 - Glory

To Make A Prairie It Takes A Clover

Poems of Nature

28- Landscape

To Mark Anthony In Heaven

Poems of Romance

45 - Commitment

To Nannette Falk-Auerbach

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

16 - Immortality

To See A World In A Grain Of Sand

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

17 - Eastern Religion

To Sleep

Poems of Romance

31 - Seperation

To The Virgins

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

13 - Philandering

Toccata Of Galuppi’s, A

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

14 - Immortality

Tom Beatty

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

27 - Dust unto Dust

Tomatoes

Poems of the Human Condition

22 - Sex and Relationships

Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

02 - Priorities

Toys, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

08 - Western Religion

Tract

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

02 - Final Instructions

Transformatrix

No audio version available

NA

Traveling Through The Dark

Poets Look at Choices in Life

04 - Difficult Decisions

Travels By The Fireside

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

05 - Reading

Tree, The

Poems of Nature

43 - Trees

Trees

Poems of Nature

41 - Trees

Trust

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

05 - Western Religion

Twilight

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

17 - Loss of a Spouse

Unmoving Cloud, The

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

33 - Depression

Upon Julia’s Clothes

Poems of Romance

09 - Beauty

Upon The Death Of Sir Albert Morton′s Wife

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

21 - Loss of a Spouse

Vampire, The

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

39 - Failed Relationships

Vantage Point, The

Poems of Nature

27 - Landscape

Variations On The Word Sleep

Poems of Romance

17 - Love

Vergissmeinnicht

Poets Look at War and Peace

18 - Casualties

Vivien’s Song

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

16 - Philandering

Waiting For Lumber

Poems of Working

09 - Construction

Walk Along The Old Tracks, A

Poems of the Human Condition

07 - Friendship

Walrus And The Carpenter, The

Poems for Children of all Ages

04 - Nursery

Wan Chu’s Wife In Bed

No audio version available

NA

War Poetry

Poets Look at War and Peace

28 - Bystanders

Warden Said To Me The Other Day, The

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

20 - Oppression and Discrimination

Waving Of The Corn, The

Poems of Working

11 - Farm

Way I Read A Letter’s This, The

Poems of Romance

32 - Seperation

Way Of The Water-Hyacinth, The

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

36 - Inspiration

Way Through The Woods, The

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

10 - Ghosts

We And They

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

26 - Oppression and Discrimination

We Are Seven

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

07 - Western Religion

We Grow Accustomed To The Dark

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

37 - Coping

Weakness

Poems of Nature

03 - Animals

Wee Shop, The

Poems of Working

10 - Entrepreneur

Well I Remember

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

15 - Immortality

What He Thought

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

14 - Writing

What I Learned From My Mother

Poems of the Human Condition

09 - Parents

What Saves Us

Poets Look at War and Peace

09 - Soldiers

What You Should Know To Be A Poet

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

34 - Ars Poetica

Wheels

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

05 - Motorcycle Helmets

When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer

Poems of Nature

36 - Trees

White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery, The

No audio version available

NA

Widow

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

16 - Loss of a Spouse

Wild Nights! Wild Nights!

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

07 - Lust

Will, Lost In A Sea Of Trouble

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

35 - Inspiration

Windhover, The

Poems of Nature

07 - Animals

Winter Rain Deepens

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

20 - Loss of a Spouse

Wise I

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

22 - Oppression and Discrimination

With Mercy For The Greedy

Poems of the Human Condition

30 - Confession

Wood-Pile, The

Poems of Working

29 - Household

Woolworth’s

No audio version available

NA

Word Is Dead, A

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

02 - Language

Wreck In The Woods

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

06 - Aging

Wynken, Blynken, And Nod

Poems for Children of all Ages

03 - Nursery

You Fit Into Me

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

23 - Battle of the Sexes

Young And Old

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

03 - Aging

Young Bloods Come Less Often Now, The

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

16 - Looking Back

Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against The Blackboard

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

15 - Writing

Index Pointing From Audio CD

Track

Title

Page

No audio version available

NA

Alley Violinist

454

NA

Bell, The

638

NA

Boy Died in my Alley, The

456

NA

Certain People

636

NA

Dead Water

433

NA

Dichtung and Wahrheit - Part XXXIII

437

NA

Eating Together

660

NA

from Selected Shorts

437

NA

Leaving Town after the Funeral

637

NA

Little Citizen, Little Survivor

462

NA

Long Feud

414

NA

Marginalia (Extracts)

437

NA

Persimmons

661

NA

Song in the Front Yard, A

456

NA

Summer Morning, A

463

NA

To Know Silence Perfectly

392

NA

Transformatrix

666

NA

Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed

639

NA

White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery, The

629

NA

Woolworth’s

635

Poems for Children of all Ages

02 - Nursery

Owl and the Pussy-cat, The

205

03 - Nursery

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

285

04 - Nursery

Walrus and the Carpenter, The

264

05 - Strange

Bagel, The

448

06 - Strange

I like to see it lap the miles

238

07 - Strange

Fork

530

08 - Strange

Stones, The

515

09 - Story

Pied Piper of Hamelin, The

196

10 - Story

Goblin Market

246

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk A

02 - Haunted Buildings

Dead Village, The

314

03 - Haunted Buildings

Haunted House

308

04 - Haunted Buildings

Tavern, The

318

05 - Haunted Buildings

Mill, The

316

06 - Ghosts

Flask, The

224

07 - Ghosts

Strange Lady, The

115

08 - Ghosts

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

135

09 - Ghosts

For Once, Then, Something

336

10 - Ghosts

Way Through the Woods, The

296

11 - Ghosts

Ghostly Visitant, The

226

12 - Ghosts

Beleaguered City, The

152

13 - Ghosts

Phantom Ship, The

159

14 - Ghosts

Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The

75

15 - Ghouls

Her Kind

495

16 - Ghouls

Metamorphoses of the Vampire

222

17 - Ghouls

Spleen

223

18 - Supernatural

Presentiment, A

107

19 - Supernatural

Raven, The

175

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition Disk B

02 - Supernatural

Lost

357

03 - Supernatural

Ballad of Father Gilligan,The

299

04 - Supernatural

Ballad of the Black Fox Skin, The

370

05 - Murder

Karma

309

06 - Murder

Murderer’s Wine, The

226

07 - Murder

Isabella

120

08 - Murder

Murdered Traveler, The

112

09 - Murder

Porphyria’s Lover

191

10 - Death

Cremation of Sam McGee, The

377

11 - Death

Never the Time and the Place

190

12 - Death

Dream of Death, A

298

13 - Death

For Annie

172

14 - Death

Annabel Lee

170

15 - Death

Ballad of Pious Pete, The

365

Poems of Inspiration and Faith

02 - Western Religion

God Says Yes to Me

606

03 - Western Religion

By their Works

168

04 - Western Religion

Anvil-God’s Word, The

434

05 - Western Religion

Trust

169

06 - Western Religion

Three Silences of Molinos, The

164

07 - Western Religion

We are Seven

72

08 - Western Religion

Toys, The

230

09 - Western Religion

Questions About Angels

568

10 - Western Religion

Snowflakes

462

11 - Western Religion

To a Waterfowl

118

12 - Western Religion

Rhodora, The

143

13 - Pagan Religion

Indian upon God, The

301

14 - Pagan

Everything the Power of the World Does is done in a circle

294

15 - Pagan Religion

I taste a liQuor never brewed

239

16 - Pagan Religion

Old World, The

532

17 - Eastern Religion

To See a World in a Grain of Sand

64

18 - Eastern Religion

Lost child crying, A

61

19 - Eastern Religion

Consulting the Oracle

472

20 - Eastern Religion

I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders

431

21 - Eastern Religion

Life of a Day, The

581

22 - Eastern Religion

Three Goals, The

542

23 - Questioning Religion

Tiger, The

63

24 - Questioning Religion

From Fuses I - On God

221

25 - Questioning Religion

Oxen, The

269

26 - Questioning Religion

Carrion Comfort

279

27 - Questioning Religion

On His Blindness

58

28 - Inspiration

Darest Thou Now O Soul

208

30 - Inspiration

Epitaph on William Muir

65

31 - Inspiration

Hope is the thing with feathers

235

32 - Inspiration

I’m nobody! Who are you?

240

33 - Inspiration

Props Assist the House, The

242

34 - Inspiration

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road

345

35 - Inspiration

Solitude

286

36 - Inspiration

Will, lost in a sea of trouble

32

37 - Inspiration

Way of the Water-Hyacinth, The

438

38 - Inspiration

Sun and Shadow

169

39 - Inspiration

If

295

40 - Inspiration

I May, I Might, I Must

417

41 - Inspiration

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

453

42 - Inspiration

Invictus

283

Poems of Loss and Sorrow

02 - Final Instructions

Tract

402

03 - Final Instructions

Remember

262

04 - Final Instructions

Song

263

05 - Final Instructions

Requiem

286

06 - Loss of a Child

Little Boy Blue

284

07 - Loss of a Child

Home Burial

338

08 - Loss of a Child

Room, The

649

09 - Loss of a Parent

Last Night, The

241

10 - Loss of a Parent

My mother said

488

11 - Loss of a Parent

from My Father’s Death

506

12 - Loss of a Friend

An Old Story

307

13 - Loss of a Friend

My life closed twice before its close

241

14 - Loss of a Friend

O Captain! My Captain

210

15 - Loss of a Spouse

One Art

443

16 - Loss of a Spouse

Widow

476

17 - Loss of a Spouse

Twilight

166

18 - Loss of a Spouse

Reuben Bright

312

19 - Loss of a Spouse

Opera Season

654

20 - Loss of a Spouse

Winter rain deepens

306

21 - Loss of a Spouse

Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton′s Wife

51

22 - Disbelief and Visits

Beyond Recall

595

23 - Disbelief and Visits

My Fly

523

24 - Disbelief and Visits

Reassurance, The

498

25 - Disbelief and Visits

Dream, The

487

26 - Depression

There’s a certain slant of light

244

27 - Depression

Pit, The

228

28 - Depression

Sestina

444

29 - Depression

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

418

30 - Depression

Rainy Day, The

164

31 - Depression

Shadow Friends

655

32 - Depression

Not Waving but Drowning

435

33 - Depression

Unmoving Cloud, The

36

34 - Coping

Porcelain Couple, The

491

35 - Coping

After great pain a formal feeling comes

233

36 - Coping

Spring and Fall

280

37 - Coping

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark

245

Poems of lust, betrayal, and lost love

02 - Lust

Tame Cat

411

03 - Lust

Hysteria

426

04 - Lust

Salmon

625

05 - Lust

In Bertram’s Garden

478

06 - Lust

O Blush Not So

137

07 - Lust

Wild nights! Wild nights!

246

08 - Lust

Garden of Love, The

62

09 - Lust

John Evereldown

308

10 - Philandering

Epitaph for James Smith

64

11 - Philandering

Inconstancy in love

65

12 - Philandering

Confined Love

52

13 - Philandering

To the Virgins

55

14 - Philandering

An Argument

101

15 - Philandering

Garden, The

413

16 - Philandering

Vivien’s Song

184

17 - Philandering

Dream of Jealousy, A

537

18 - Betrayal

Heautontimoroumenos

221

19 - Betrayal

False though she be to me and love

61

20 - Betrayal

Sonnet 147 (CXLVII)

49

21 - Betrayal

Confessional, The

193

22 - Betrayal

My Last Duchess

188

23 - Battle of the Sexes

You Fit Into Me

537

24 - Battle of the Sexes

Manet’s Olympia

533

25 - Battle of the Sexes

From Fuses I - On Love

220

26 - Battle of the Sexes

Community

51

27 - Battle of the Sexes

Curse, The

54

28 - Battle of the Sexes

Evil

435

29 - Battle of the Sexes

Maybe

435

30 - Battle of the Sexes

Geese

656

31 - Failed Relationships

Sick Rose, The

63

32 - Failed Relationships

Epitaph on a Henpecked SQuire

65

33 - Failed Relationships

Dream Pang, A

321

34 - Failed Relationships

Beautiful Toilet, The

33

35 - Failed Relationships

Shooting of Dan McGrew, The

380

36 - Failed Relationships

Rain

632

37 - Failed Relationships

Story, The

476

38 - Failed Relationships

Talking In Bed

465

39 - Failed Relationships

Vampire, The

229

40 - Failed Relationships

Population

616

41 - Moving On

Free

669

42 - Moving On

Ingrateful Beauty Threatened

56

43 - Moving On

They say my Verse is Sad: No Wonder

290

44 - Moving On

Love after Love

502

45 - Moving On

Song: Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

58

46 - Moving On

Bitch

479

Poems of Nature

02 - Animals

Blessing, A

485

03 - Animals

Weakness

510

04 - Animals

Listen

502

05 - Animals

Names of Horses

489

06 - Animals

Bats

449

07 - Animals

Windhover, The

281

08 - Animals

Narrow fellow in the grass, A

232

09 - Animals

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

393

10 - Animals

St. Francis and the Sow

484

11 - Animals

Fawn’s Foster-Mother

416

12 - Animals

Badger

106

13 - Insects

Couple, A

448

14 - Insects

Only One of My Deaths

655

15 - Insects

Ode to the Maggot

610

16 - Earth

This Compost

215

17 - Earth

Onset, The

348

18 - Earth

Horrid Voice of Science, The

392

19 - Earth

Brook in the City, A

321

20 - Earth

Snow Man, The

393

21 - Wind and Storms

Storm Fear

346

22 - Wind and Storms

Snow-Storm, The

144

23 - Wind and Storms

Hurricane, The

111

24 - Wind and Storms

There came a wind like a bugle

243

25 - Wind and Storms

Jobsite Wind

643

26 - Wind and Storms

Aim was Song, The

347

27 - Landscape

Vantage Point, The

350

28 - Landscape

To make a prairie it takes a clover

245

29 - Landscape

Daydreaming on the Trail

431

30 - Landscape

From a Plane

472

31 - Landscape

Sheaves, The

318

32 - Landscape

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

70

33 - Landscape

Solitary Reaper, The

71

34 - Landscape

Beginning

486

35 - Trees

I’ve Known a Heaven, Like a Tent

240

36 - Trees

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

217

37 - Trees

Good-by and Keep Cold

337

38 - Trees

Into My Own

342

39 - Trees

Binsey Poplars

278

40 - Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

287

41 - Trees

Trees

416

42 - Trees

One fallen flower

40

43 - Sky

Conversation

499

44 - Sky

Tree, The

414

Poems of Romance

02 - Courting

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short

35

03 - Courting

First Day, The

264

04 - Unrequited

Sonnet 143 (CXLIII)

48

05 - Unrequited

Loving in Truth

41

06 - Unrequited

Come Not, When I am Dead

181

07 - Unrequited

Love’s Farewell

43

08 - Unrequited

Not Touching

565

09 - Beauty

Upon Julia’s Clothes

56

10 - Beauty

She Walks in Beauty

102

11 - Beauty

Sonnet 130 (CXXX)

47

12 - Love

Haw Lantern (dedication), The

540

13 - Love

51 (LI)

40

14 - Love

11 (XI)

39

15 - Love

Meeting at Night

188

16 - Love

Sonnet 138 (CXXXVIII)

47

17 - Love

Variations on the Word Sleep

536

18 - Love

Clearances (Part V)

538

19 - Love

New Year’s Eve

405

20 - Love

Decade, A

351

21 - Love

Promise, The

590

22 - Love

Francesca

410

23 - Love

Plunge, The

413

24 - Love

from Idem the Same, A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson, A Very Valentine

390

25 - Separation

from The Longbeards’ Saga

35

26 - Separation

Computation, The

53

27 - Separation

Eyes, The

412

28 - Separation

Music

103

29 - Separation

Ditty, A

40

30 - Separation

Be Your Words Made, Good Sir of Indian Ware

41

31 - Separation

To Sleep

42

32 - Separation

Way I read a letter’s this, The

242

33 - Redemption

Sonnets from the Portuguese – 1

145

34 - Redemption

Sonnets from the Portuguese – 20

146

35 - Redemption

I Saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing

208

36 - Commitment

Address of Ruth to Naomi

32

37 - Commitment

Sonnets from the Portuguese – 14

146

38 - Commitment

Sonnets from the Portuguese – 43

147

39 - Commitment

Love Song: I and Thou

471

40 - Commitment

Dumka, The

579

41 - Commitment

Sonnet 018 (XVIII)

45

42 - Commitment

Sonnet 032 (XXXII)

46

43 - Commitment

Sonnet 055 (LV)

46

44 - Commitment

Love and Jealousy

60

45 - Commitment

To Mark Anthony in Heaven

401

46 - Commitment

Stretch Marks

653

47 - Commitment

Late Walk, A

327

48 - Commitment

An Arundel Tomb

464

49 - Commitment

Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments

428

Poems of the Human Condition

02 - Unexpected or Inner Beauty

Nightclub

564

03 - Unexpected or Inner Beauty

Danse Russe

396

04 - Unexpected or Inner Beauty

Onions

584

05 - Self

In the Waiting Room

440

06 - Self

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

486

07 - Friendship

Walk Along the Old Tracks, A

640

08 - Friendship

Belle Isle, 1949

492

09 - Parents

What I Learned from My Mother

664

10 - Parents

Place for Everything, A

583

11 - Parents

Dry Tortugas, The

651

12 - Society

Intrigue

649

13 - Society

Punishment

538

14 - Society

Country Fair

529

15 - Society

Answering Machine, The

596

16 - Society

Defense of the Meek

602

17 - Suicide

Suicide’s Note

435

18 - Sex and Relationships

Party Piece

604

19 - Sex and Relationships

Instrument of Choice

529

20 - Sex and Relationships

Response to Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”

652

21 - Sex and Relationships

Swan at Edgewater Park, The

665

22 - Sex and Relationships

Tomatoes

571

23 - Sex and Relationships

Sheep Child, The

468

24 - Confession

from With Silence My Companion

505

25 - Confession

Quake Theory

587

26 - Confession

Once

587

27 - Confession

I Go Back to May 1937

586

28 - Confession

How We Danced

495

29 - Confession

Satan Says

588

30 - Confession

With Mercy for the Greedy

496

31 - Confession

George Washington and the Loss of His Teeth

527

32 - Confession

On the Disinclination to Scream

650

33 - Confession

Space Heater, The

591

Poems of Working

02 - Factory

Shirt

560

03 - Factory

Assembly Line

634

04 - Factory

Sweet Will

493

05 - Construction

Before Groundbreak

641

06 - Construction

Don Fargo & Sons

641

07 - Construction

Poem

647

08 - Construction

“Out, Out -”

320

09 - Construction

Waiting for Lumber

647

10 - Entrepreneur

Wee Shop, The

388

11 - Farm

Waving of the Corn, The

277

12 - Farm

Red Wheelbarrow, The

400

13 - Farm

American Sketches

478

14 - Farm

After Apple-Picking

327

15 - Farm

Birth Stone

605

16 - Farm

Pulling a Pig’s Tail

593

17 - Transportation

Filling Station

439

18 - Transportation

In a Station of the Metro

410

19 - Transportation

Passengers

566

20 - White Collar

At the Office Early

540

21 - Writing

Budapest

562

22 - Writing

Allen Ginsberg

570

23 - Writing

In Houston

525

24 - Teaching

Did I Miss Anything?

599

25 - Teaching

American History

668

26 - Household

Snow

667

27 - Household

Death of the Hired Man

331

28 - Household

Mending Wall

343

29 - Household

Wood-Pile, The

350

30 - Retirement

Soaking Up Sun

581

Poems That Make a Statement Disk A

02 - Physical Abuse

Style

657

03 - Corporate Greed

Holes Commence Falling

582

04 - Abortion

It’s Good To Be Here

510

05 - Motorcycle Helmets

Wheels

658

06 - Poverty

Landscapes

508

07 - Poverty

Brass Knuckles

577

08 - Poverty

Maroon

579

09 - Change

Silas Dement

305

10 - Change

To a Steam Roller

418

11 - Human Rights

ReQuiem - Instead of a Preface

426

12 - Human Rights

House that Fear Built: Warsaw, 1943, The

670

13 - Human Rights

Ashes, The

480

14 - Human Rights

Natzweiler

517

15 - Human Rights

Prodigy

531

16 - Human Rights

Electric Elegy

600

17 - Human Rights

Documentary

621

18 - Human Rights

Dacca Gauzes, The

613

19 - Oppression and Discrimination

Blackberries

607

20 - Oppression and Discrimination

Warden Said to Me the Other Day, The

504

21 - Oppression and Discrimination

Dream Deferred: Harlem

434

22 - Oppression and Discrimination

Wise I

516

23 - Oppression and Discrimination

Money

460

24 - Oppression and Discrimination

Pickwork

644

25 - Oppression and Discrimination

An Obstacle

292

26 - Oppression and Discrimination

We and They

297

27 - Religion

Pope’s Penis, The

590

Poems That Make a Statement Disk B

02 - Religion

Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act, The

543

Poets Look at Choices in Life

02 - Difficult Decisions

Road Not Taken, The

349

03 - Difficult Decisions

Moment

601

04 - Difficult Decisions

Traveling Through the Dark

453

05 - Temptation

Deed knocks first at thought, A

231

06 - Temptation

Authorship

291

07 - Temptation

Ruined Maid, The

270

08 - Temptation

Growth of “Lorraine”, The

314

09 - Temptation

Jar, The

231

10 - Temptation

First Fig

429

11 - Temptation

Drinking

59

12 - Temptation

from Wanderings - Chapter Heading

433

13 - Consequences

Any movement kills something

477

14 - Consequences

Keeping Things Whole

519

15 - Consequences

River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, The

38

16 - Consequences

Richard Cory

312

17 - Prudence

Song of Prudence

211

18 - Patience

Jake Addresses the World from the Garden

573

19 - Peer Pressure

Snake

407

20 - Peer Pressure

Aner Clute

303

21 - Peer Pressure

Injudicious Gardening

417

22 - Faith

I am the Only Being Whose Doom

206

23 - Faith

Integer Vitae

50

24 - Faith

I had been hungry all the years

236

25 - Faith

Content

42

26 - Faith

Sunt Leones

436

27 - Anger & Forgiveness

In the Desert

319

28 - Anger & Forgiveness

This is Just to Say

402

29 - Anger & Forgiveness

Forgiveness

168

30 - Anger & Forgiveness

Revenge of Hamish

271

31 - Anger & Forgiveness

Cubist Portrait

396

Poets Look at Eternity Disk A

02 - Priorities

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

49

03 - Priorities

Supremacy

313

04 - Priorities

Salutation

412

05 - Priorities

To A Louse

66

06 - Priorities

Heaven

481

07 - Priorities

Life

55

08 - Priorities

Fiddler Jones

304

09 - Priorities

Titanic

522

10 - Priorities

Leisure

319

11 - The March of Time

Mutation

108

12 - The March of Time

Mutability

104

13 - The March of Time

Days

141

14 - The March of Time

Autumn Thoughts

167

15 - The March of Time

Hamatreya

141

16 - The March of Time

Apparently with no surprise

233

17 - The March of time

Fire of Drift-Wood, The

153

18 - The March of Time

Need of Being Versed in Country Things, The

347

19 - The March of Time

Lustra - Introduction

411

20 - Dust Unto Dust

I’ll Win

482

21 - Dust unto Dust

Because I could not stop for death

234

22 - Dust unto Dust

Carrion, A

218

23 - Dust unto Dust

from Beginning and End - Knowledge

432

24 - Dust unto Dust

To A Mountain Daisy

68

25 - Dust Unto Dust

23 (XXIII)

39

26 - Dust unto Dust

In a Disused Graveyard

342

27 - Dust unto Dust

Tom Beatty

306

28 - Dust unto Dust

Just Think!

356

29 - Dust unto Dust

Smoking Frog, The

384

30 - Dust Unto Dust

Ozymandias

106

Poets Look at Eternity Disk B

31 - Dust unto Dust

Five Lives

281

32 - Dust unto Dust

Sad Shepherd, The

301

33 - Dust unto Dust

Potter’s Wheel, The

161

34 - Dust unto Dust

I Know a Man

482

35 - A Passageway

I felt a funeral in my brain

236

36 - A Passageway

Thanatopsis

109

37 - A Passageway

King Witlaf’s Drinking-Horn

150

38 - Heaven, Hell, Purgatory

Heaven of Animals, The

467

39 - Heaven, Hell, Purgatory

Living Apart

605

40 - Heaven, Hell, Purgatory

Bus to Veracruz, The

511

41 - Immortality

Ode on a Grecian Urn

139

42 - Immortality

To an Athlete Dying Young

290

43 - Immortality

Toccata of Galuppi’s, A

185

44 - Immortality

Well I Remember

100

45 - Immortality

To Nannette Falk-Auerbach

278

46 - Immortality

Reading Myself

458

47 - Immortality

Conrad Siever

303

48 - Immortality

Sonnet 017 (XVII)

45

49 - Immortality

My Legacy

210

50 - Immortality

This living hand, now warm and capable

138

51 - The End of the World

Ark

660

52 - The End of the World

Fire and Ice

336

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk A

02 - Generations

28 (XXVIII)

39

03 - Generations

Axe Handles

500

04 - Generations

Driving Lesson

627

05 - Generations

Idea of Ancestry, The

503

06 - Generations

In Simili Materia

631

07 - Generations

This Be the Verse

466

08 - Generations

Living in the La Brea Tar Pits

575

09 - Puberty

Puppy Called Puberty, A

507

10 - Puberty

Thirteen

598

11 - Middle-Age

Next Day

450

12 - Middle-age

Living in the Body

619

13 - Middle-age

Act, The

398

14 - Looking Back

Birches

329

15 - Looking Back

Get It Again

614

16 - Looking Back

Young bloods come less often now, The

33

17 - Looking Back

Forgetfulness

562

18 - Looking Back

New Heavens for Old

352

19 - Looking Back

I look into my glass

269

20 - Looking Back

Alexander Throckmorton

303

21 - Looking Back

Dance, The

524

22 - Aging

Ah! I intended

61

23 - Aging

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

345

24 - Aging

So, we’ll go no more a-roving

103

25 - Aging

Old Days

483

26 - Aging

Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The

421

Poets Look at Growing Up and Growing Old Disk B

02 - Aging

An Old Man’s Winter Night

329

03 - Aging

Young and Old

207

04 - Aging

Northern Exposure

530

05 - Aging

Tis the last rose of summer

101

06 - Aging

Wreck in the Woods

594

07 - Aging

Thanksgiving’s Done

484

08 - Aging

Silence and Dancing

475

09 - Aging

Gyroscope

459

10 - Aging

Fading into Background

653

11 - Aging

All the World’s a Stage

44

12 - Aging

Song from Charles the First

105

13 - Aging

Three Graces, The

400

14 - Aging

Miss July Grows Older

534

15 - Aging

Amaryllis

307

16 - Aging

Death

53

17 - Waiting for Death

I heard a fly buzz when I died

237

18 - Waiting for Death

Still Life

498

19 - Waiting for Death

Souvenir

313

20 - Waiting for Death

Place (“There’s a Way out”)

483

21 - Waiting for Death

Misgiving

344

22 - Waiting for Death

On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday

100

23 - Waiting for Death

From The Ship of Death

405

24 - Waiting for Death

Nature

151

25 - Waiting for Death

Mr. Flood’s Party

310

26 - Waiting for Death

Pity of the Leaves, The

317

27 - Mortal Illness

Junk Man, The

391

28 - Mortal Illness

Scholar, The

99

29 - Mortal Illness

Last Words of My English Grandmother, The

399

Poets Look at War and Peace

02 - Glory

To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars

60

03 - Glory

Charge of the Light Brigade,The

182

04 - Glory

Soldier, The

415

05 - Glory

Landlord’s Tale, The

155

06 - Glory

Soldier of Fortune, The

385

07 - Soldiers

Old Liberators, The

618

08 - Soldiers

Camouflaging the Chimera

608

09 - Soldiers

What Saves Us

620

10 - Soldiers

ReQuiem for the Croppies

540

11 - Casualties

Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, The

452

12 - Casualties

Facing It

609

13 - Casualties

Killed at the Ford

148

14 - Casualties

Dulce et Decorum Est

430

15 - Casualties

Nameless Grave, A

147

16 - Casualties

On the Wire

362

17 - Casualties

Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead

181

18 - Casualties

Vergissmeinnicht

458

19 - Futility

Channel firing

267

20 - Futility

How We Heard the Name

470

21 - Futility

By that fallen house

302

22 - Futility

After Blenheim

96

23 - Futility

There will come soft rains

404

24 - Futility

Politics

298

25 - Bystanders

Ishtar

31

26 - Bystanders

Patterns

353

27 - Bystanders

Luck in Sarajevo

499

28 - Bystanders

War Poetry

666

Poets Look at Writing, Art, and Poetry

02 - Language

Word is dead, A

233

03 - Language

Ceist na Teangan (The Language Issue)

632

04 - Reading

Reader

474

05 - Reading

Travels by the Fireside

165

06 - Reading

Reading in Place

520

07 - Reading

Eating Poetry

519

08 - Writing

from: Three Types of Loss, part 3

602

09 - Writing

Late Registration

573

10 - Writing

An Exchange of Gifts

508

11 - Writing

Pact, A

410

12 - Writing

Jugurtha

148

13 - Writing

Armadillo, The

446

14 - Writing

What He thought

610

15 - Writing

Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against the Blackboard

521

16 - Writing

Poet’s Fate, The

141

17 - Writing

Dilemma

542

18 - Writing

Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey's Ears, and Some Books, A

322

19 - Poetry

Poetry

417

20 - Poetry

Rudimentary Explanation of an Ideal Poem, A

504

21 - Poetry

Terence, This is Stupid Stuff

288

22 - Poetry

Introduction to Poetry

563

23 - Poetry

Last Answers

391

24 - Poetry

Naif, The

506

25 - Poetry

Poem You Asked For, The

603

26 - Poetry

Selecting a Reader

540

27 - Poetry

Poetry Reading at West Point, A

583

28 - Ars Poetica

Poet, The

114

29 - Ars Poetica

Ars Poetica

427

30 - Ars Poetica

Detail

572

31 - Ars Poetica

Purity

567

32 - Ars Poetica

Of Time and the Line

624

33 - Ars Poetica

Nuns Fret Not At Their Convent’s Narrow Room

71

34 - Ars Poetica

What you should know to be a poet

501

35 - Art

From Fuses I - On Art

221

36 - Art

My Madonna

362

37 - Art

Imaginary Paintings

473

Acknowledgements

All poems in this book come from copyrighted sources and the original sources retain all rights to the poems in this book. No poems from this book may be reproduced in any manner. New material created for this book is copyright 2006 by Level 4 Press. The editor and publisher wish to thank the following for permission to reprint copyright material.

“The Dumka” from THE ART OF THE LATHE. Copyright © 1998 by B.H. Fairchild. Reprinted with the permission of Alice James Books.

Amiri Baraka, “Wise I” Reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright © by Amiri Baraka

Tom Hennen, “The Life of a Day” and “Soaking Up Sun” from CRAWLING OUT THE WINDOW. Used with permission of Black Hat Press, Goodhue, MN.

Andrei Codrescu, extract from “Three Types of Loss” from ALIEN CANDOR: SELECTED POEMS 1970-1995 (Black Sparrow Press). Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Lucian Blaga, “I Will Not Crush the World’s Corolla of Wonders” used by permission of the translator.

“The Room” by Kevin Hart, from FLAME TREE: SELECTED POEMS, Bloodaxe Books, 2002. Reproduced by permission of the author.

Izet Sarajlic, “Luck in Sarajevo” from SCAR ON THE STONE: CONTEMPORARY POETRY OF BOSNIA (Bloodaxe Books). Reprinted with the permission of the translator.

Gwendolyn Brooks, “A Song in the Front Yard” from SELECTED POEMS, reprinted by permission of Brooks Permissions.

Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Boy Died in my Alley” from TO DISEMBARK, reprinted by permission of Brooks Permissions.

Patience Agbabi, “Transformatrix” from TRANSFORMATRIXi. First published in the UK by Canongate Books Ltd, 2000. Used with permission of Canongate Books.

Andrei Codrescu, “Defense of the Meek” from IT WAS TODAY, Coffeehouse Press. Used with permission of the author.

Mark Cox, “Geese” first appeared in “Smoulder,” David R. Godine, Publisher,

reprinted here by permission of the author.

Maura Stanton: “Living Apart” appeared in TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL (David R. Godine, 1988). Reprinted with permission of the author.

W.H. Davies, “Leisure” from COLLECTED POEMS OF W.H. DAVIES. Used with permission of Mrs H M Davies Will Trust.

Toi Derricotte, “Allen Ginsberg,” used by permission of the author. Copyright 1993 by Thomas M. Disch. “The Cardinal Detoxes” first appeared in The Hudson Review. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Stuart Dybek, “Maroon” and “Brass Knuckles” used by permission of the author.

Tanikawa Shuntaro, extract from “With Silence My Companion” from WITH SILENCE MY COMPANION, Prescot Street Press. Reprinted by permission of the translator.

Rutger Kopland, “Natzweiler” from A WORLD BEYOND MYSELF. Used with permission of Enitharmon Press.

Molly Fisk, “The Dry Tortugas,” “Intrigue,” “On the Disinclination to Scream” used with permission of the author.

“Vergissmeinnicht” from THE COMPLETE POEMS by Keith Douglas. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Inc., an affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 1978 by the Estate of Keith Douglas.

“Clearances: V,” “A Dream of Jealousy,” “The Haw Lantern,” “Punishment,” and “ReQuiem for the Croppies” from OPENED GROUND: SELECTED POEMS 1966-1996 by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1998 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

“Ode to the Maggot” from TALKING DIRTY TO THE GODS by Yusef Komunyakaa. Copyright © 2000 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

“Party Piece” from LITTLE JOHNNY’S CONFESSION by Brian Patten. Copyright © 1967 by Brian Patten. Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

“The Dance” from REPAIR by C.K. Williams. Copyright © 1999 by C.K. Williams. “My Fly” from THE VIGIL by C.K. Williams. Copyright © 1997 by C.K. Williams. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC: “The Armadillo,” “Filling Station,” “In the Waiting Room,” “One Art,” and “Sestina” from THE COMPLETE POEMS by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. “Knowledge” from THE BLUE ESTUARIES by Louise Bogan. Copyright (c) 1968 by Louise Bogan. Copyright renewed 1996 by Ruth Limmer. “Ark” and “Assembly Line” from A SPLINTERED MIRROR, translated by Donald Finkel. Translation copyright (c) 1991 by Donald Finkel. “The Reassurance” and “Still Life” from COLLECTED POEMS by Thom Gunn. Copyright (c) 1994 by Thom Gunn. “Bats,” “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” and “Next Day” from THE COMPLETE POEMS by Randall Jarrell. Copyright (c) 1969, renewed 1997 by Mary von S. Jarrell. “An Arundel Tomb,” “Talking in Bed,” and “This Be the Verse” from COLLECTED POEMS by Philip Larkin. Copyright (c) 1988, 2003, by the Estate of Philip Larkin. “Reading Myself” from COLLECTED POEMS by Robert Lowell. Copyright 2003 by Harriet Lowell and Sheridan Lowell. “Landscapes” from LEGACIES: SELECTED POEMS by Heberto Padilla, translated by Alastair Reid and Andrew Hurley. Translation copyright (c) 1982 by Alastair Reid and Andrew Hurley. “Love after Love” from COLLECTED POEMS: 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott. Copyright (c) 1986 by Derek Walcott. “Electric Elegy” and “Moment” from WITHOUT END by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh, Renata Gorczynski, Benjamin Ivry and C.K. Williams. Copyright (c) 2002 by Adam Zagajewski. Translation copyright (c) 2002 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Nuala Ni Dhomhnail, “Ceist na Teangan” By kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland from PHARAOH’S DAUGHTER (1990).

Charles Simic, “Fork,” “Prodigy,” “Detail” from SELECTED EARLY POEMS, George Braziller, Inc.. Used with permission of the author.

Lorna Goodison, “Birth Stone” reprinted with permission of the author.

Jorie Graham, “Salmon” used with permission of the author.

“Detail” copyright 2002 by Eamon Grennan. Reprinted from STILL LIFE WITH WATERFALL with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. ’Detail’ by Eamon Grennan, reproduced in the UK by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press, Loughcrw, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland from STILL LIFE WITH WATERFALL (2001).

“Jake Addresses the World from his Garden,, from “As Long as You’re Happy,” Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, 1986, copyright © by Jack Myers, permission granted by the author.

“Traveling through the Dark” copyright 1962, 1998 by the Estate of William Stafford. Reprinted from THE WAY IT IS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

“Alley Violinist” from LOVE HAD A COMPASS copyright © 1996 by Robert Lax, used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

“To Know Silence Perfectly” from GOOD MORNING, AMERICA, copyright 1928 and renewed 1956 by Carl Sandburg, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

“The Answering Machine” from THE HOLY WORM OF PRAISE, copyright © 2001 by Philip Schultz, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. and the author.

“Country Fair” from HOTEL INSOMNIA, copyright © 1992 by Charles Simic, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. and the author.

“The Old World” from HOTEL INSOMNIA, copyright © 1992 by Charles Simic, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. and the author.

“Long Feud” from BURNING BUSH copyright 1928 by Harcourt, Inc., and renewed 1956 by Louis Untermeyer, reprinted by permission of the publisher.

“A Summer Morning” from ADVICE TO A PROPHET AND OTHER POEMS, copyright © 1960 and renewed 1988 by Richard Wilbur, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

“The Swan at Edgewater Park,” Ruth L. Schwartz. Reprinted by permission of the author and Harper-Collins Publishers (Edgewater, 2002).

Jackleen Holton, “American History” and “Free” reprinted with permission of the author.

Robert Hedin, “The Old Liberators,” reprinted from THE OLD LIBERATORS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS, Holy Cow! Press, Ltd., reprinted by the permission of the author.

Louis Jenkins, “A Place for Everything” from JUST ABOVE WATER. Reprinted with permission of Holy Cow Press.

Joyce Sutphen, “Living in the Body” from STRAIGHT OUT OF VIEW. Reprinted with permission of Holy Cow Press and the author.

“Miss July Grows Older” and “Manet’s Olympia” from MORNING IN THE BURNED HOUSE by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1995 by Margaret Atwood. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“Variations on the Word Sleep,” from SELECTED POEMS II: Poems Selected and New, 1965-1975 by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1987 by Margaret Atwood. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“My Mother Said,” from THE OLD LIFE by Donald Hall. Copyright © 1996 by Donald Hall. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“Names of Horses” from OLD AND NEW POEMS by Donald Hall. Copyright © 1990 by Donald Hall. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“The Porcelain Couple” from WITHOUT: Poems by Donald Hall. Copyright © 1998 by Donald Hall. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“Saint Francis and the Sow” from MORTAL ACTS, MORTAL WORDS by Galway Kinnell. Copyright © 1980 by Galway Kinnell. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“Ars Poetica” and “Not Marble nor the gilded Monuments,” from COLLECTED POEMS, 1917-1982 by Archibald Macleish. Copyright © 1985 by The Estate of Archibald MacLeish. Reprinted by Permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“A Poetry Reading at West Point,” from AFTER ALL: Last Poems by William Matthews. Copyright © 1998 by the Estate of William Matthews. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“Onions” from SEARCH PARTY: Collected Poems of William Matthews, edited by Sebastian Matthews and Stanley Plumly. Copyright © 2004 by Sebastian Matthews and Stanley Plumly. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“Her Kind” from TO BEDLAM AND PART WAY BACK by Anne Sexton. Copyright © 1960 by Anne Sexton, renewed 1988 by Linda G. Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“How We Danced,” from THE BOOK OF FOLLY by Anne Sexton. Copyright © 1972 by Anne Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“With Mercy for the Greedy” from ALL MY PRETTY ONES by Anne Sexton. Copyright © 1962 by Anne Sexton, © renewed 1990 by Linda G. Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

“A Couple,” from THE COMPLETE LOVE POEMS OF MAY SWENSON. Copyright © 1991, 2003 by The Literary Estate of May Swenson. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Margaret Atwood, “You Fit Into Me,” from POWER POLITICS (Toronto: House of Anansi, 1971, 1996). Reprinted with permission.

Alden Nowlan, “An Exchange of Gifts” and “It’s Good to Be Here” in ALDEN

NOWLAN: SELECTED POEMS (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1996). Reprinted with permission.

Robert Phillips, “Instrument of Choice” from SPINACH DAYS, pp. 81, copyright © 2000 Robert Phillips, reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Robert Kinsley, “A Walk Along the Old Tracks” used with permission of the author.

“Dream Deferred: Harlem,” “Evil,” “Maybe,” and “Suicide’s Note” are from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES by Langston Hughes, copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

“Belle Isle, 1949” and “Sweet Will” from NEW SELECTED POEMS by Philip Levine, copyright © 1991 by Philip Levine. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., and the author.

“I Go Back to May 1937” and “The Pope’s Penis” from THE GOLD CELL by Sharon Olds, copyright © 1987 by Sharon Olds. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. and the author.

“Once” and “The Promise” from BLOOD, TIN, STRAW by Sharon Olds, copyright © 1999 by Sharon Olds. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., and the author.

Gerald Locklin, “Late Registration” used with permission of the author.

David Huddle, “Holes Commence Falling” from SUMMER LAKE: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, used with permission of Louisiana State University Press and the author.

Lisel Mueller, “Reader,” “Widow,” “Silence and Dancing,” “Imaginary Paintings,” and “The Story” from ALIVE TOGETHER: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS. Reprinted with permission of Louisiana University Press.

David Slavitt, “Titanic” from BIG NOSE. Reprinted by permission of Louisiana University Press and the author.

“Pulling a Pig’s Tail,” copyright Dave Smith, first appeared in THE WICK OF MEMORY: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS 1970-2000 (Louisiana State University Press, 2000). Used with permission of the author.

Dave Smith, “Wreck in the Woods” copyright Dave Smith, first appeared in FATE’S KITE: POEMS 1991-1995 (Louisiana State University Press, 1996). Used here by permission of the author.

Howard Nemerov, “Snowflakes” and “Gyroscope” from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF HOWARD NEMEROV, used with permission of Margaret Nemerov.

“Heaven” by Robert Creeley, from ECHOES, copyright © 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 by Robert Creeley. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

“I’ll Win,” “Old Days,” and “Thanksgiving’s Done,” by Robert Creeley, from MEMORY GARDENS, copyright © 1986 by Robert Creeley. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

“Place (there’s a way out)” by Robert Creeley, from WINDOWS, copyright © 1990 by Robert Creeley. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

“Daydreaming on the Trail,” translation by Gary Snyder, from THE BACK COUNTRY, copyright © 1968 by Gary Snyder. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

“Consulting the Oracle” and “From a Plane” are by Denise Levertov, from THE FREEING OF THE DUST, copyright © 1975 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

“Not Waving but Drowning” and “Sunt Leones” by Stevie Smith, from COLLECTED POEMS OF STEVIE SMITH, copyright © 1972 by Stevie Smith, reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

“What You Should Know to Be A Poet” by Gary Snyder, from REGARDING WAVE, copyright © 1970 by Gary Snyder. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. and the author.

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan thomas, from THE POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS, copyright © 1952 by Dylan Thomas. Reprinted by permission of New Directons Publishing Corp.

“The Act” and “The Three Graces” by William Carlos Williams, from COLLECTED POEMS 1939-1962, VOLUME II, copyright © 1948 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

“The Last Words of My English Grandmother,” “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “This is Just to Say,” “To Mark Anthony in Heaven” by William Carlos Williams, from COLLECTED POEMS: 1909-1939, VOLUME I, copyright © 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

“In Simili Materia” from ADVERSARIA, copyright © 1993 by Timothy Russell. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Northwestern University Press

Bruce Weigl, “What Saves Us” from WHAT SAVES US, Northwestern University Press, by permission of the author.

“Weakness” by Alden Nowland is reprinted with the permission of Mrs. Claudine Nowlan.

“Instead of a Preface” from POEM WITH A HERO AND SELECTED POEMS by Anna Akhmatova, Translated by Leonore Mayhew and William McNaughton, FIELD translation Series #14, copyright © 1989 by Oberline Collecte. Reprinted by permission of Oberlin College Press.

Sean O’Brien, “Rain” used with permission of the author.

David Berman, “Snow” from ACTUAL AIR. Used with permission of Open City Books.

Stephen Dobyns, “Tomatoes” from CEMETERY NIGHTS, Penguin Group. Used with permission of the author.

Jokun, “Ah! I Intended,” Moritake, “One Fallen Flower,” Roka, “Winter Rain Deepens,” Ryusui, “A Lost Child Crying,” Shiki, “By That Fallen House” translated by Peter Beilenson. Used with permission of Peter Pauper Press.

Adrian Mitchell, “A Puppy Called Puberty” from HEART ON THE LEFT: Poems 1953-1984. Reprinted by permission of Peters, Fraser & Dunlop.

Robert Pinsky, “Shirt” from THE WANT BONE, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Dichtung and Wahrheit,” copyright © 1960 by W.H. Auden, “Marginalia,” copyright 1966 by W.H. Auden, “Shorts,” copyright © 1974 by The Estate of W.H. Auden, from COLLECTED POEMS by W.H. Auden. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

William Roetzheim, “Opera Season,” “Shadow Friends,” “Fading into Background,” “Response to Emily Dickinson’s ’Wild Nights-Wild Nights!’,” and “Stretch Marks” used with permission of the author.

Beyond Recall is from FLYING BLIND by Sharon Bryan, published by Sarabande Books, Inc. ©1996 by Sharon Bryan. Used by permission of Sarabande Books and the author.

“Before Groundbreak,” “Don Fargo and Sons,” “Jobsite Wind,” “Pickwork,” “Poem,” and “Waiting for Lumber” are from HAMMER by Mark Turpin, published by Sarabande Books, Inc. © 2003 by Mark Turpin. Reprinted by permission of Sarabande Books and the author.

Irving Feldman, “The Dream” Schocken, used with permission of the author.

“How We Heard the Name” and “Love Song: I and Thou” copyright © 1961 by Alan Dugan. From POEMS SEVEN: NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS (Seven Stories Press, 2001). Reprinted by permission of Judith Shahn and Seven Stories Press.

from AXE HANDLES, copyright 193 by Gary Snyder. Published by Shoemaker and Hoard. Used with permission of the author.

“The Sheaves,” “Haunted House,” and “Karma” are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon and Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from COLLECTED POEMS by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Copyright © 1925 by Edwin Arlington Robinson; copyright renewed (c) 1953 by Ruth Nivison and Barbara R. Holt.

“Fawn’s Foster Mother” by Robinson Jeffers from THE COLLECTED POETRY OF ROBINSON JEFFERS, Volume 1, 1920-1928, edited by Tim Hunt. Copyright © 1938 and renewed 1966 by Donnan and Garth Jeffers, copyright © Jeffers Literary Properties. All rights reserved. Used with the permission of Stanford University Press, www.sup.org.

Mark Strand, “Eating Poetry,” “Keeping Things Whole,” and “Reading in Place” used with permission of the author.

Charles Bernstein, “Of Time and the Line,” © 1991 Charles Bernstein, reprinted from Rough Trades (Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1991) with the permission of the author.

Carolyn Kizer, “The Ashes” and “Bitch” reprinted with permission of Texas Review Press.

Sharon Olds, “The Space Heater” first appeared in The New Yorker. Used by permission of the author.

David Budbill, “Dilemma,” and “The Three Goals” from MOMENT TO MOMENT: POEMS OF A MOUNTAIN RECLUSE. Copyright © 1999 by David Budbill. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, PO Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271 and the author.

Hayden Carruth, “Little Citizen, Little Survivor” from SCRAMBLED EGGS & WHISKEY: POEMS 1991-1995. Copyright © 1996 by Hayden Carruth. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, PO Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271.

Mark Irwin, “Woolworth’s” from QUICK, NOW, ALWAYS. Copyright © 1996 by Mark Irwin. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.

Wen I-to, “Dead Water,” translated by Arthur Sze, from THE SILK DRAGON: TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHINESE. Copyright © 2001 by Arthur Sze. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, PO Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271.

Richard Jones, “Certain People,” “Leaving Town after the Funeral,” “The Bell,” and “Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed” from THE BLESSING: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS. Copyright © 2000 by Richard Jones. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, PO Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271.

Brigit Pegeen Kelly, “The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetary” from SONG. Copyright © 1995 by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.

Li-Young Lee, “Eating Together” and “Persimmons” from ROSE. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.BOAEditions.org

Kaylin Haught, “God Says Yes to Me” from THE PALM OF YOUR HAND, used with permission of the author and Tilbury House Publishers.

Miller Williams, “Listen” from SOME JAZZ A WHILE: COLLECTED POEMS. Copyright 1999 by Miller Williams. Used with Permission of the poet and the University of Illinois Press.

Reprinted with Permission of the University of Arkansas Press. Copyright 1988 by Billy Collins.

Robert Creeley, “I Know a Man” from COLLECTED POEMS OF ROBERT CREELEY, 1945-1975. Copyright © 1983 by The Regents of the University of California. Used by permission of the Regents of the University of California.

“Conversation” is reprinted from THE SELECTED POETRYOF DAN PAGIS, translated and edited by Stephen Mitchell, copyright © 1996 by The Regents of the University of California. Permission granted by the Regents of the University of California and the University of California Press.

Gail Mazur, “In Houston” from THE COMMON, University of Chicago Press. Used with permission of the author.

Howard Nemerov, “Money” from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF HOWARD NEMEROV, University of Chicago Press. Used by permission of Margaret Nemerov.

Tanikawa Shuntaro, extract from “My Father’s Death,” “A Rudimentary Explanation of an Ideal Poem,” “The Naif” from THE NAIF, University of Hawaii Press. Used with permission of the author and the translator.

Michael Pettit, “Driving Lesson” from CARDINAL POINTS, University of Iowa Press. Used with permission of the author.

Mark Halliday, “Get It Again” in LITTLE STAR (William Morrow, 1987), and “Population” in TASKER STREET (U. of Massachusetts Press, 1992). Used with permission of the author.

Archilochos, “Will, Lost in a Sea of Trouble” from POEMS FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY (copyright © 1962), used with permission of the University of Michigan Press.

“Everything the Power of the World Does is Done in a Circle” reprinted from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux by John G. Neihardt by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright © 1932, 1959, 1972 by John G. Neihardt. © by the John G. Neihardt Trust. © 2000 by the University of Nebraska Press.

“Documentary” is from WOMAN OF THE RIVER, by Claribel Alegria, © 1989 by Claribel Alegria. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“Budapest” and “Nightclub” from THE ART OF DROWNING, by Billy Collins, © 1995. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“Forgetfulness,” “Not Touching,” “Purity,” and “Questions about Angels” are from QUESTIONS ABOUT ANGELS, by Billy Collins, © 1991. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press and the author.

“Passengers” from PICNIC, LIGHTNING, by Billy Collins, © 1998. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“Living in the La Brea Tar Pits” is from THE FACE IN THE WATER, by Nancy Vieira Couto, © 1990 by Vieira Couto. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“Style” is from THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS FROM THE STONE, by Mark Cox. © 1998. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“The House that Fear Built: Warsaw, 1943” is from TIMEPIECE, by Jane Falnders, © 1988. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“What I Learned from My Mother” is from SLEEPING PREACHER, by Julia Kasdorf, © 1992. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“The Warden Said to Me the Other Day” and “The Idea of Ancestry” are from THE ESSENTIAL ETHERIDGE KNIGHT, by Etheridge Knight, © 1986. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“At the Office Early” and “Selecting a Reader” are from SURE SIGNS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, by Ted Kooser, © 1980. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“The Poem You Asked For” is from THE SELECTED LEVIS: SELECTED AND WITH AN AFTERWORD BY DAVID ST. JOHN., by Larry Levis, © 2000. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“Quake Theory” and “Satan Says” are from SATAN SAYS, by Sharon Olds, © 1980 by Sharon Olds. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“The Bus to Veracruz” and “The Stones” are from SELECTED POEMS, 1969-1981, by Richard Shelton, © 1982. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“Thirteen” is from PEOPLE AND DOG IN THE SUN by Ronald Wallace, © 1987. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press and the author.

“Only One of My Deaths” is from FIRST COURSE IN TURBULENCE by Dean Young, © 1999. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

“Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against the Blackboard” is from FAMILY REUNION: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS by Paul Zimmer, © 1983. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Jim Daniels, “Wheels” from PLACES/EVERYONE, © Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Used with permission of the University of Wisconsin Press.

Diane Wakoski, “George Washington and the Loss of His Teeth” used with permission of the author.

Tom Wayman, “Did I Miss Anything?” used with permission of the author.

“Blackberries,” by Yusef Komunyakaa, from PLEASURE DOME (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). © 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

“The Dacca Gauzes” by Agha Shahid Ali, from THE HALF-INCH HIMALAYAS (Wesleyan University Press, 1987). © 1987 by Agha Shaid Ali. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

“The Heaven of Animals” by James Dickey, from POEMS 1957-1967 (Wesleyan University Press, 1967) © 1967 by James Dickey. Reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press.

“The Sheep Child” by James Dickey, from POEMS 1957-1967 (Wesleyan University Press, 1967). © 1967 by James Dickey. Reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press.

“The Bagel” by David Ignatow, from AGAINST THE EVIDENCE: SELECTED POEMS 1934-1994 (Wesleyan University Press, 1993). © 1993 by David Ignatow. Reprinted with permission of Weslyean University Press.

“Camouflaging the Chimera,” by Yusef Komunyakaa, from PLEASURE DOME (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). © 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan Unversity Press.

“Facing It,” by Yusef Komunyakaa, from PLEASURE DOME (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). © 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

“What He Thought” by Heather McHugh, from HINGE & SIGN: Poems 1968-1993 (Wesleyan University Press, 1994) © 1994 by Heather McHugh. Reprinted with permission from Wesleyan University Press.

“A Blessing” by James Wright, from COLLECTED POEMS (Wesleyan University Press, 1971) © 1971 by James Wright. Reprinted with permission from Wesleyan University Press.

“Beginning” by James Wright, from Collected Poems (Wesleyan University, 1971). © 1971 by James Wright. Reprinted with permission from Wesleyan University Press.

“Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” by James Wright, from COLLECTED POEMS (Wesleyan University Press, 1971) © 1971 by James Wright. Reprinted with permission from Wesleyan University Press.

Roberto Juarroz, “Any Movement Kills Something”, from VERTICAL POETRY: RECENT POEMS BY ROBERTO JUARROZ, White Pine Press, used with permission of the translator.

Zawgee, “The Way of the Water-Hyacinth” used with permission of the translator.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of the poems published in this book. The editor and publisher apologize if any material has been inadvertently included without appropriate permission or without the appropriate acknowledgement, and would be pleased to correct any oversights in future editions.

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Thoughts I Left Behind:

Collected Poems of William Roetzheim

184 pages, 30 illustrations.

This book is unashamedly autobiographical and that is one it’s strong points. It comes across as very real, the characters elicit empathy because the reader can identify with the situations. Frost’s poems had that same quality, like you were sitting at his kitchen table listening to him over coffee. I got that same feeling reading this book.

Gene Auprey

I enjoyed the personal nature and the wide variety of forms and subjects in these poems. William has a knack for finding the poetry in the details of everyday family and work life without glossing over or exaggerating the disappointments.

Stephen Scaer

You have a lot of great work here. Your work comes across as strong and solid. You have a wonderful command of the language and I enjoy your insight.

Martha Shea

In Roetzheim’s poems one senses a broad intelligence in conversation with itself: sober, worldly, both tender and weary, measuring itself against a lifetime of experience and revised expectations. Whether ruminating on old love, performing a surgical character sketch, or journeying through space, time and literature, Roetzheim manages to reach under the detritus of an ordinary life to share with the reader the uneasy truce of feeling alive.

Larry Weisman

The reaction this book instills can be described by two lines in Frost’s Birches: “I’d like to get away from earth awhile, and then come back to it and begin over” It is certainly a book to read by the hearth propped up in a comfortable chair.

Christopher L. McDonald

William Roetzheim is the tour guide whose humor and imagination illuminate each journey we embark upon with him. Whether he leads us along the streets of Italy, through the works of the famous poets, or simply from room to room in his house, every door he opens takes us someplace delightful and unexpected.

Jackleen Holton

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[1] Form: Free verse

[1] Form: Free verse

[2] Form: Free verse

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: courtesan: mistress to powerful man; sot: an alcoholic.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABB end rhyme—Vocabulary: Thrace: ancient region of southeast Balkan Peninsula; raddled: worn out; loins: crotch.

[1] Form: unrhymed syllabic (count stresses only) dimeter—Vocabulary: Freya: Female Norse God of love and beauty; Scoring: A place in the Northland; throstles: a song bird. — Notes: Freya represents the coming of spring in victory over winter.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter, AABBCC … End rhymes.—Notes: The virtues of cuddling as opposed to sex.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: ply: layers; estranged: on bad terms; —Notes: Everyone, including even the birds, feels that their sorrow is unique.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: The wife gave up her dreams to be married, and now her husband is off seeing the world. In her letter she offers to travel a thousand miles to a distant village to meet him, with the subtle message that she still longs to see the world.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, AAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: sans: without.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter, AAxA end rhymes—Notes: “Them” may represent many things. For example, children or people who were given unheeded advice. Alternatively, the narrator may be God and the “them” is really “us.”

[3] Form: Iambic pentameter, AAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: piety: religious devotion— Notes: The moving finger is a central metaphor representing life.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, AAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: bough: branch of tree; enow: enough.

[2] Form: Haiku—Notes: There is a Japanese legend about fallen flowers returning to the tree branch.

[3] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABABA BCBCA end rhymes.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABBA end rhymes—Vocabulary: Indian Ware: expensive plates; cutted: wounded; Spartans: frugal Greek city state; “so total”: giving summary information; Phoenix Stella: narrator’s loved one.

[2] Form: Modified sonnet, Iambic hexameter, frequent trochee substitutions at line starts create a driving rhythm, ABAB end rhymes with closing CC couplet—Vocabulary: fain: happily; “turning others’ leaves”: reading the works of other authors; Invention: imagination; step-dame: stepmother; “great with child”: pregnant.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: baiting-place: applying bait to catch as in fishing; balm: salve; prease: press; garland: wreath of flowers—Notes: The narrator, missing Stella, seeks the escape of sleep, and offers to bribe a personified sleep by trading everything in his bedroom for the alternate world of sleep. He then considers that sleep already has the right to these things, so he sweetens the pot with the promise that after he is asleep then sleep will have the opportunity to see his love, Stella’s image.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABABCC end rhymes—Vocabulary: savor of: smell of; mean: value; ’grees: agrees.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: jot: smallest bit; decover: revive from death—Notes: He begins by exclaiming that his love for her is dead. He then says that, though it (love) is lying there dead with faith kneeling next to it and innocence closing the dead eyes, even then she could change her mind and bring dead love back to life.

[1] Form: Unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse)—Notes: underlying message of needing to trust in faith after you have done everything you can to protect or prepare something (someone) that you love.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: deserts: facts deserving reward.

[2] Form: Sonnet—Notes: Here Shakespeare asks if he should compare the object of his love to a summer day, a traditional comparison, and then makes the argument that his love is actually far better than a summer day because a summer day is transient and imperfect as described. He then argues that as long as people are reading this sonnet his love lives through the words in the sonnet, and thereby she achieves permanence far beyond that of a summer day.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: churl: rude person; bett’ring: best; vouchsafe: grant—Notes: In this sonnet, Shakespeare contemplates the situation where his love outlives him. He considers that as time goes on, poets will write better and better poems until his current attempts are not as good relatively. He then asks his love to consider that if he had continued alive his ability to write verse would have improved as well, and asks that his love look at his sonnet not from the perspective of technical skill with poetry, but because of the deep love that it embodies. He suggests reading the new verse for the technical skills, but his for the emotions.

[2] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: broils: heat; enmity: hatred—Notes: This sonnet shows a hyperbole of confidence, stating that his sonnet will outlast everything physical in proclaiming his love, and that it will not be eclipsed until his love rises up herself at the time of judgment.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: dun: brownish grey; damasked: used as decoration—Notes: Here Shakespeare makes fun of the various ways poets of the time described their loves through comparisons, concluding that even though his love does not fit the description of women in these other poems, she is actually as beautiful as any of them.

[2] Form: Sonnet—Notes: Although Shakespeare speaks of white lies of love involving his age, his words ring equally true for all of those white lies that we tell loved ones although both of us know they are false.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: feathered creatures: probably a chicken—Notes: The poet’s love chases after something (another love, her freedom, her career?) while he waits in the background for her return, wailing like an infant. Note the pun on Will Shakespeare in the first line of the turn.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: longer nurseth: prolongs; physic: medicine—Notes: His love is the illness. His reason is the physician trying unsuccessfully to cure him.

[2] Form: Unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse).

[1] Form: Iambic trimeter, xAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: unaffrighted: unfrightened—Notes: Thomas Campion echoes Robert Greene’s feelings about the happiness of a simple life, but makes his emphasis more the religious aspects of a simple life unafraid of both worldly things and the unknown afterlife because of a faith in the afterlife and a view of this life as simply a pilgrimage.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, AA end rhyme.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABCCB end rhyme—Notes: To get the most out of this, you need to picture a scene from the early 1600s: A group of men are in an ale house, sitting around rough hewn wood tables, drinking by firelight. John stands up, raises his mug, and entertains the group with this poem to laughs and cheers. He argues that women are not inherently or consistently either good or bad. He claims that if they were good, then it would be obvious, while if they were bad then they would naturally die out. He then makes the leap that women are men’s to use as their mood suits them, and that it is natural to discard them once they are used up.

[1] Form: Irregular meter for the first 3 lines of each stanza, ending with 2 lines of iambic trimeter and I line of iambic tetrameter starting each with a headless iamb.—Vocabulary: chidden: scolded; jointures: property set aside as inheritance—Notes: Another specialty of John is his poems written to seduce women through logical arguments, although I personally suspect they are either tongue-in-check or written more to the ale house crowds referenced earlier. In this poem, he argues that a weak man created monogamy to deprive women and make himself feel better. John argues that monogamy is not found in nature, that ships are not designed to sit in one harbor but to travel, and good things are meant to be enjoyed by many, not just one.

[1] Form: Sonnet with unrhymed Volta.—Vocabulary: poppy: opium—Notes: Later in his life, John became a priest and presumably gave up womanizing. His poems transition to spiritual work. In this poem, he argues that death is not as powerful as many claim. He says that sleep is a sort of “mini-death” and not so bad. He concludes by saying that physical death is just a short sleep before eternally awakening, with death itself the thing that will then die.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter, AABBCC … End rhymes—Notes: A fun way to describe the seemingless endless hours during absence from his love. The end is a bit confusing. He says that although time seems to last forever, she should not think this means he is living a long life. Rather, because he is dead (in spirit), it is as if he is an immortal ghost. But then, if he is an immortal ghost, can he die, as he feels like he is dying.

[1] Form: Mostly iambic pentameter, lines 3 and 4 of each stanza are iambic trimeter and iambic tetrameter. ABBAAACCC End rhymes—Vocabulary: dispose: commit; Forswear: renounce; gout: a disease; gamesters: one who plays games; interwish: wish mutually; annexed: added; schedules: appendices—Notes: I think this poem is a wonderful curse John casts on whoever discovers his secret mistress. In the end, he claims that if the victim of his curse is a woman nature has already cursed her more than all the ills of his curse. Again, I’m sure this was very entertaining to his buddies in that ale house.

[1] Form: Mostly iambic pentameter, irregular end rhymes—Vocabulary: bequeath: give; erst: once; nought: nothing.

[2] Form: Ballad, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: coy: flirtatiously shy; tarry: wait.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AAA BBB end rhymes—Vocabulary: liquefaction: turning to liquid.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABABCC end rhymes—Vocabulary: imped: grafted new feathers onto a falcon to increase speed or repair an injury.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: chide: scold mildly—Notes: Milton was working for many years on his greatest work, Paradise Lost, a book- length poem written as a tribute to God. While half way done his eyesight began to fail. Doctors told him to stop working on the book or go blind. Here he expresses anger at God for putting him in this situation, but then accepts that his role is to bear whatever God has in store for him. Ultimately, he did go blind but continued to write using his daughters as secretaries while he dictated.

[2] Form: Iambic but with many headless iambs at the start of lines, mixture of tetrameter and trimeter in 4-3-4-3-3 pattern except the last two lines, which are dimeter for emphasis, ABABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: wan: depressed; Prithee: expression of polite request.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABBCC… End rhymes—Vocabulary: By’s: by his.

[1] Form: Ballad.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter, AABB end rhymes.

[1] Form: Ballad.

[2] Form: Haiku.

[3] Form: Haiku.

[1] Form: Iambic, line length varies, irregular end rhymes—Vocabulary: heath: open land with low bushes; chaste: morally pure—Notes: This piece is a clever negative commentary on the Church. The Chapel has suddenly appeared in the garden of love, and the chapel gates are shut and it says “Thou shalt not.” In other words, he is excluded and the church lays down laws forbidding things. So he turns to nature (or perhaps, pagan gods), but finds that the priests have destroyed that as well.

[1] Form: Roughly equal anapests and iambs, dimeter lines, xAxA end rhymes—Notes: A classic symbolic metaphor for any evil or ill which destroys from the inside out.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter with lots of headless iambs at the start of lines, AABB end rhymes—Notes: Although not necessarily obvious at first, this is really a religious philosophy piece. Did the same God that made peaceful lambs make the fierce tiger? Broadened, we might ask if the same God that created good is also responsible for creating evil?

[1] Form: Iambic, irregular line length, ABAB end rhymes.

[2] Form: Ballad meter (alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter)—Vocabulary: Lament: grieve for; Mauchline: village in Scotland; bairns: children.

[1] Form: Ballad meter, ABAB end rhymes.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABBCC… End rhymes.

[3] Form: Iambic tetrameter with lots of headless iambs at the start of lines, ABABCCCB end rhymes.

[1] Form: iambic, 4-4-4-2-4-2 pattern, AAABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: ferlie: wonder; strunt: swagger; Swith: haste off; haffet: sideburns; sprattle: scramble; bane: poison; grozet: gooseberry; rozet: resin; smeddum: a powder; droddum: the breech; flainen: flannel; aiblins: perhaps; duddie: ragged; wyliecoat: undervest; Lunardi: bonnet; abread: abroad—Notes: Observing a louse crawling around on a fine lady’s bonnet, he comments that we would all be more humble if we could only see ourselves as others see us.

[1] Form: iambic, 4-4-4-2-4-2 pattern, AAABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: maun: must; stoure: turmoil (overturned dirt); neebor: neighbor; bonie: pretty; blithe: carefree; bield: shelter; histie: bare—Notes: The upturned mountain daisy is observed, and then compared to a woman who is soiled and lost (loses her virginity), a poet who is ruined (as by the critics), and ultimately the observation that everyone will die as the daisy before him is doomed.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABABCC end rhymes—Vocabulary: vales: valley with a stream; jocund: light-hearted.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: cells: rooms in a monastery; blithe: carefree; Furness: location in England—Notes: Most poets consider the sonnet the most restrictive of the poetic forms, yet here William writes a sonnet laughing at this attitude, and pointing out other people/things in life that enjoy the metaphorical confinement of a sonnet.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, iambic trimeter for 3rd line in each stanza, ABABCCDD end rhymes—Vocabulary: vale: small valley normally with a stream; chaunt: chant; Hebrides: a group of Islands off the coast of Scotland.

[1] Form: Mostly ballad meter—Vocabulary: kerchief: head scarf; porringer: shallow bowl with a handle.

[1] Form: Ballad, xAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: Eftsoons: soon; kirk: Scottish church; bassoon: wind instrument; minstrelsy: troop of minstrels; ken: recognized; swound: swoon; Albatross: sea bird; vespers: evening prayer time; averred: declared; fathom: six feet; wist: become aware of; water-sprite: nymph that inhabits the water; Gramercy: expression of surprise; Hither: to this place; weal: welfare of the community; gossameres: gauze like fabrics; twain: two; spectre-bark: ghost ship; clomb: climbed; bemocked: mocked; main: ocean; hoary: white with age; wan: pale; sedge: grass-like plant; corses: dead bodies; jargoning: nonsense talking; seraph: type of angel; shrieve: hear confession; trow: think; tod: bushy clump.

[1] Form: iambic, 4-3-4-3-4-4- pattern, xAxABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: Blenheim: site of battle in 1704 as part of War of Spanish Succession; childing: pregnant—Notes: Some wars seem pointless at the time, some seem pointless only in hindsight, but an argument can be made that from a long enough historic perspective all wars are pointless.

[1] Form: Iambic, 4-3-4-3-4-4 pattern; ABABCC end rhymes—Vocabulary: weal: well being—Notes: The narrator seeks companionship in books, and hopes that his writing will grant him some measure of immortal life, as the authors around him have achieved some degree of immortality.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABAB end rhymes.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes—Notes: Another example in the “eternal life through poetry” theme.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes.

[2] Form: Anapestic dimeter, xAxAxBxB end rhymes—Notes: The last, lonely rose in a flowerbed is compared to the narrator, who is similarly at the end of his life with all of his companions dead and gone.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: raven: black and shiny.

[1] Form: Iambic trimeter, ABAB end rhymes—Notes: In this case, the “we” is the narrator, now too old to spend the night in amorous adventures.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter xxAA end rhymes—Vocabulary: quicken: stimulate.

[1] Form: Iambic, 3-2-3-2-3-3-2 pattern, ABABCCC end rhymes—Notes: Most of this poem has a fairly straight-forward “carpe diem”, or “seize the day” theme, beginning with the fleeting nature of nature’s delights, then moving to the fleeting nature of human interactions and traits, and entreating the reader to seize the day. The last two lines, however, are a significant shift in tone and deepening of the message. My personal interpretation is that Shelley is telling us to enjoy the beauty that we see around us now, because like a dream, it will suddenly vanish and leave us weeping.

[1] Form: Ballad—Notes: The poem creates a mood of loneliness and approaching death, with even the bird left alone with it’s companion dead. The mill wheel both contributes to the mood and may represent the inexorable march of time.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: Ozymandias; Greek translation of Egyptian Ramesses the Great; visage: expression—Notes: The message of the poem involves both the transience of earthly power, and also the fact that what comes closest to giving lasting life is art. The actual inscription on the tomb in Egypt reads: “King of Kings am I, Ozymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.”

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter, AABBCC … End rhymes—Vocabulary: waxes: grows increasingly; blackguard: scoundrel; cudgels: club—Notes: The poem describes a popular form of entertainment in the middle-ages.

[1] Form: Mostly iambic tetrameter, ABABCC end rhymes—Vocabulary: boughs: tree limbs.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Notes: similar to the biblical reference to the phrase “This too shall pass,” applying to both good things and bad things.

[1] Form: Blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter)—Vocabulary: Thanatopsis: a meditation upon death; shroud: burial cloth; pall: coffin; swain: country lad; mold: earth of a grave; patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or any of Jacob’s 12 sons; hoary: grey or white with age; sepulcher: burial vault; vales: valley, typically with a stream—Notes: Considered by many to be the first American poem of significance, this was written when he was 17 years old. His father found the manuscript in a desk and submitted it to the North American Review on his son’s behalf.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABBCC… End rhymes—Vocabulary: lurid: pallid in color; covert: shelter.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: vernal: spring; wrought: built; bier: coffin and stand.

[1] Form: Iambic, 3-5-3-5-5-5 pattern, ABABCC end rhymes—Vocabulary: lay: ballad; languid: lacking energy; limn: describe.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: breast: rise over; beshrew: curse; meet: fitting; boughs: tree limbs; hopples: piles of stone; cornels: type of tree; wist: knew.

[1] Form: Iambic, 3-5-5-3 pattern, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: Whither: where are you going; fowler: hunter of birds; plashy: watery; marge: edge; billows: waves; illimitable: limitless—Notes: If God is able to guide a migrating goose, then he will also guide the narrator through his life.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABABABCC end rhymes—Vocabulary: palmer: pilgrim who carries a palm branch from the holy land; malady: illness; rill: small brook; broidery: needlework; vespers: evening prayers; boon: favor; shrive: confess; clime: climate; erewhile: heretofore; zephyr: gentle breeze; ditty: short song; honeyed dart: cupid’s arrow; bower: shaded recess; Theseus: king of Athens who slew the Minotaur; Dido: queen and founder of Carthage, who rescued Aeneas, then killed herself when Aeneas abandoned her; almsmen: one dependent on alms for support; swelt: faint from heat; Ceylon: Sri Lanka; racks: torture implement; lazar: leper; panniered: saddlebags or wicker baskets like saddlebags; ducats: coins; ledger-men: accountants; covetous: desirous; Boccaccio: Italian poet (1351 - 1353), wrote the Decameron, gittern: Middle-Ages guitar; blithe: carefree; balustrade: railing; Bestride: straddle; Apennine: mountain chain in Italy; eglantine: wild, pink rose; matin: morning; fain: gladly; Arno: river near Florence, flowing from the Apennines; bream: freshwater fish; freshets: sudden overflows from the stream; wan: pale; ‘scape: escape; roundelay: poem or song with recurring theme; Hinnom’s vale: valley between Mount Zion and the Hill of Evil Counsel. Idolatrous Jews burned their children alive as sacrifices to Moloch and Baal, and since that time the valley has been used to dump waste and a fire has been constantly burning, and has come to symbolize corruption and evil; lute: ancient stringed instrument; lorn: forlorn; loamed: covered with dirt; miry: muddy; Languor: exhaustion; palsied: trembling; Druid: ancient Celtic priest; sepulchral: near tombs; woof: the crosswise threads in a fabric, perpendicular to the warp; avarice: insatiable greed; heather: evergreen shrub; knelling: ring slowly; Seraph: a type of angel; spangly: sparkly; hie: hasten; Champaign: plain; betide: befall; mould: soil; hoar: white with age; travail: strenuous work; plaining: poetic complaint; Lethean: from the river of forgetfulness (Greek); Melpomene: the muse of tragedy; Baalites: worshiper of Baal; pelf: dishonestly acquired wealth; shrift: confession; guerdon: reward; burthen: burden.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, irregular line length for last line in each stanza, xAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: wight: living being; sedge: grasslike plant; meads: meadows; grot: grotto; thrall: servitude; gloam: twilight; sojourn: reside temporarily—Notes: He has experienced the beauty of the mysterious woman, but now she is gone and he is doomed to suffer perpetual misery searching for her rather than appreciating the beauty in the rest of the world.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: maidenhead: virginity; nought: nothing; pippin: a type of apple; pips: seeds; nipping: biting or pinching.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, unrhymed— Notes: Notice that the last line is incomplete, left hanging much like the poem is left hanging. The hand held toward the reader is embodied in the poem itself.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, irregular but frequent end-rhymes—Vocabulary: Sylvan: woodland; deities: Gods; Tempe: a valley in Greece near Mt. Olympus; dales: valleys; Arcady: a region of ancient Greece; timbrels: ancient instrument similar to a tambourine; ditties: simple songs; boughs: tree limb; cloyed: sick of; lowing: mooing; citadel: stronghold; pious: reverent; brede: ornamental braiding; trodden: stepped on; Pastoral: rural scene—Notes: A careful descriptions of the scenes from an ancient urn, where he is congratulating the figures on being frozen through eternity and describing the benefits of this frozen state.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABB end rhymes.

[2] Form: Blank verse—Vocabulary: dervishes: Muslim monk; diadems: crowns; faggots: bundle of sticks; pleachd: shaded by interwoven branches or vines; fillet: narrow strip of color on the heraldry of the chief—Notes: Day is personified as a line of daughters of time, each offering us gifts. The narrator realizes too late that he has wasted the gifts offered to him that day.

[3] Form: Iambic pentameter with some variations; earth song is irregular meter—Vocabulary: sitfast: stationary; mould: dust; heritors: inheritor; avarice: immoderate desire for things.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, AABBCDCD end rhymes—Vocabulary: Rhodora: plant with rose-purple flowers; wert: were—Notes: This poem notes that a higher entity is responsible for both the big things and the little things, and that beauty exists with or without observations of the beauty by people.

[1] Form: Blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter)—Vocabulary: Delated: carried; artificer: craftsman; bastions: projecting parts of a fortress; naught: nothing; coop: cage for poultry or small animals; Parian: fine white marble or porcelain; Maugre: notwithstanding.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: Theocritus: Greek poet.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: certes: certainly.

[2] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: cull: pick out; prescience: premonition—Notes: A brilliant Volta, changing and deepening the direction of the piece. We start with the wonderful, romantic message of the depressed person later realizing that throughout this dark time their true love was in the world waiting to be discovered. The message is then broadened with a parallel to atheists not realizing that God is present in the world waiting for them to discover him.

[1] Form: Sonnet.

[2] Form: Sonnet.

[1] Form: Anapestic trimeter, ABABBA end rhymes—Vocabulary: Jugurtha: Berber King of Numidia, 156-104 BC—Notes: Jugurtha was held in Rome in the prison Tullianum, also called the Mamertine Prison. It was originally created as a cistern for a spring located in the prison, and used to prepare and wash dead bodies prior to its conversion to use as a prison.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, irregular but frequent end rhymes—Vocabulary: blithe: carefree.

[1] Form: Iambic trimeter, xAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: Croyland: abbey in Lincolnshire, England; Saint Guthlac: lived in Croyland circa 700 AD; Saint Basil: lived 329 AD - 379 AD; Bartholomaeus: Monk from Touraine, France (1478-1535); Guthlac and Bartholomaeus: names of the two bells.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Notes: A sonnet helping us to see how we are all children before the unknowns of life and death. Nature takes things away from us as we get older, but promises new and better things for us.

[1] Form: Ballad, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: Beleaguered: besieged; specters: ghosts; Prague: capital of what is now the Czech Republic; Moldau: Currently called the Vltava river; wan: pale; vale: valley—Notes: The story of ghosts being dispersed by church bells is then expanded to the idea that people are haunted by their own “ghosts” in life and that religion can dispel those ghosts as well.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, irregular but frequent end rhymes.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, xAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: Mather: Cotton Mather (1663-1728); Magnalia Christi: the book “Magnalia Christi Americana”; crank: unstable; walty: liable to roll over; mould: the earth of a grave.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter except last line of each stanza iambic trimeter, AABCCCB end rhymes—Vocabulary: marl: mixture of clay and limestone; wax: increase in size; wane; decrease in size; Coptic: afro-Asian (especially Egyptian); potsherds: fragments of broken pottery—Notes: Note the circle between the pots (metaphor for people, or perhaps even societies) making a full circle from clay to pot to fragments of pots and back to clay to begin again.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABBC end rhymes—Vocabulary: mouldering: crumbling; blast: gusts of wind in this case; repining: being discontented.

[2] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: Molinos: Miguel de Molinos (1640-1696); commingling: blending; Amesbury: town in Massachusetts—Notes: The concepts here are very zen-like.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: gilded: covered with gold foil; climes: climates.

[1] Form: Iambic trimeter, xAxA end rhymes.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: bowers: shaded recess—Notes: The narrator compares his hold age with the winter of the forest, but nature replies that, unlike him, she will renew in the spring.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, AABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: creed: formal statement of religious belief—Notes: This poem refers to a biblical story in which Jesus visits two sisters (Mary and Martha). One sees only his human form and spends her efforts being a host to his earthly needs. One sees in him God and, ignoring his earthly needs, listens to his teachings.

[2] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: meekened: made meek.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, irregular but frequent end rhymes—Vocabulary: unthwarted: unstopped—Notes: He cannot answer his own or other’s questions about what lies beyond the grave, other than to rely on faith he learned as a child from his mother.

[2] Form: Anapestic, alternating tetrameter and trimeter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: billows: waves; bark: sailing ship; chaff: stems after seeds are removed; flail: manual threshing device—Notes: This poem looks at perspectives. From the perspective of the shore the boat moves between sun and shadow, while from the perspective of the boat’s pilot the boat moves between beacons (buoys) to avoid shoals and other sources of danger. Similarly, the narrator moves between goals which are internal, and the others looking from shore do not understand these goals and measure progress by different criteria. For example, the narrator’s goals may be related to writing poetry while the people on shore are critics. Another example would be the narrator’s goals being happiness in life while the people on shore are relatives measuring success by financial criteria.

[1] Form: Anapestic lines 7 feet long (split here to 4-3), AAA end rhymes—Vocabulary: seraphs: type of angel; dissever: separate—Notes: The narrator’s childhood sweetheart died (probably of a fever), and the narrator continues to mourn next to her tomb by the sea.

[1] Form: Anapestic dimeter xAxAxA end rhymes where the last two rhyming words are the same word.—Vocabulary: naphthalene: flammable product of coal tar—Notes: In this poem the narrator is dead, yet still thinks of his last moments with his love, Annie.

[1] Form: Trochaic octameter, or as formatted here, trochaic tetrameter, AAxBCCCBxBB—Vocabulary: surcease: stop; obeisance: gesture of deference; mien: bearing or manner; Pallas: Greek goddess of wisdom and useful arts, guardian of Athens; shorn: clipped; craven: cowardly; Plutonian: related to the god Pluto, god of Hades; dirges: funeral lament; censer: container burning incense for religious festivals; Respite: short interval of relief; nepenthe: drug to reduce grief (Odyssey); quaff: drink; balm in Gilead: healing sap from shrub grown only in Palestine; Aidenn: heaven—Notes: The narrator, in his depression, is creating his own form of hell. He realizes early on that the bird only says one word, and then begins to pose Questions where that one word will contribute to his haunting depression.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter with some lines using other lengths for emphasis and rhythm, ABABCC end rhymes—Vocabulary: vex: annoy; plover: large, wading bird.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes.

[1] Form: Iambic trimeter but with a large number of lines starting with a trochee or headless iamb, mostly AAxxBB end rhymes—Notes: This poem describes an actual charge duringthe Crimean war in 1854.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, AAB CCB DDB end rhymes where B is a repeated word—Vocabulary: aught: anything; rift: narrow opening or tear; lute: stringed instrument; garnered: gathered; molders: crumbles to dust.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, xAxAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: Toccata: freestyle virtuoso for keyboard instrument; Galuppi Baldassare: Venetian composer; misconceive: misunderstand; Saint Mark: cathedral in Venice holding the bones of St. Mark; Doges: chief magistrate of Venice; Shylock’s bridge: famous pedestrian bridge over the main canal in Venice; clavichord: similar to a piano; lesser thirds, sixths diminished, suspensions, solutions, sevenths, dominants: musical terms referring to chords and chord progressions.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABCCBA end rhymes.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter, AABBCC … End rhymes—Vocabulary: Fra Pandolf: fictitious painter; officious: interfering; forsooth: in truth; munificence: generosity; Claus of Innsbruck: fictitious sculptor—Notes: the Duke had his wife killed because she took pleasures in simple things and treated all people with equal kindness, which meant that her attitude toward him and his gifts was not special and unique so he was insulted. Even worse, he killed her without ever telling her what was bothering him because the act of telling her would be stooping, something he refuses to do. He’s now impressing the emissary negotiating terms for his next wife, both showing off his possessions and also making clear his expectations for his new wife’s attitude.

[1] Form: Iambic trimeter, irregular but frequent end rhymes—Notes: The story of a man who’s loved one (wife?) has died (the narrow house) and he is now being moved inexorably toward his own death in the near future so that he can be near her in the ground.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: dissever: sever; oped: opened; tress: Long lock of hair—Notes: Like reading a Dean Koontz novel, we enter the mind of a madman. Here, the main character has a moment of wonderful, illicit and forbidden love with Porphyria. Porphyria is upper class, and has too much pride to have a true relationship with the narrator—but she gives in to passion occasionally and visits in the evening. To attempt to capture and retain that moment, he kills her and uses her corpse as a prop in his fantasy of a long term relationship.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABBCC… End rhymes—Vocabulary: avaunt: away; scourge: whip—Notes: The priest betrays the confidence of confession to capture, convict, and hang heretics, including the boyfriend of the woman who initially confessed to him. She writes this from prison, where she is presumably held to prevent her from telling the world what has happened.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, irregular but frequent end rhymes—Vocabulary: Brunswick: region in north central Germany; Corporation: The financial administration of the city; ditty: simple song; sprats: small fish; noddy: fool; ermine: weasel; Rouse: arise; guilder: unit of currency; kith and kin: kindred more or less remote; newt: salamander; viper: type of poisonous snake; vesture: clothing; old-fangled: gaudy in an old fashion; Tartary: region of eastern Europe and northern Asia; Cham: a Tartar or Mogul Kahn; Nizam: ruler of Hyderabad, India; tripe: lining of stomach used as food; psaltery: an ancient stringed instrument; drysaltery: preserved foods; nuncheon: light snack; puncheon: large cask (about 100 gallons); Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock: types of wine; butt: a large cask holding about 126 gallons; Rhenish: a sweet Rhine wine; poke: sack; Bagdat: Baghdad; pottage: thick soup or stew; Caliph: leader of Arabic region; bate: reduce; stiver: a coin worth 1/20 of a guilder; ribald: vulgar, lewdly funny person; vesture: clothing; piebald: patches of bright colors; fallow: resting; burgher: citizen of a city; pate: head; tabor: small drum to accompany a pipe; hostelry: inn; trepanned: trapped.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: five pound: British pounds sterling; mince: finely chopped food; quince: a fruit; runcible: made up word, although since used by others as a kind of fork with three broad prongs or tines, one having a sharp edge, curved like a spoon, used with pickles, etc.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: natal: birth; drear: dreary—Notes: The narrator looks down on those around her, and withdraws into her own world as a recluse. Now, no longer youthful or attractive, she realizes too late that the corruption in the world she was hiding from is equally present in her own mind.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: “hey for boot and horse”: Hello to traveling by foot and horse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: The poem deals with death and the subsequent liberation of the soul.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: moss: Spanish moss.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Mostly ballad meter with substitutions for emphasis, unrhymed—Vocabulary: trills: fluttering sound—Notes: Originally written about Lincoln after he was assassinated. The ship refers to the Union after the civil war (the ship of state). However, the metaphor works for any situation where the leader is successful but does not live to see their success.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: onanist: masturbator; peculation: embezzlement; literat: literati.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: distempered: an animal disease; mould: earth of a grave; visage: face.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Alternating iambic pentameter and iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: Carrion: dead, decaying flesh; procreative: generated; winnowing: separate grain from chaff; moldering: crumbling to dust—Notes: Charles is commenting on the fact that his lovely companion’s flesh will one day be as rotted as the carcass they saw along the path.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[3] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABBA end rhymes—Vocabulary: Heautontimoroumenos: Latin—the self-tormentor—Notes: Charles died of complications from syphilis. Perhaps the reference to poison blood is related to this.

[1] Form: Iambic hexameter, AABBCC… End rhymes—Vocabulary: tresses: long locks of hair; wan: unnaturally pale.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: grimalkin: an old and female cat; dropsical: suffering from edema (swelling); sinistrously: sinisterly.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, AABBCC … End rhymes—Vocabulary: chrysalides: protected as in a cocoon; languor: listlessness; Lazarus: man raised from the dead by Jesus; shroud:burial cloth; virulence: extremely infectious, poisonous, or malignant.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABB end rhymes—Notes: A nice ghost story, but also a metaphor for many problem relationships.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: sodden: soaked; shroud: burial cloth; cur: mongrel dog; dray: cart; incontinent: uncontrolled.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: Pascal: French mathematician, philosopher and inventor; abysmal: unfathomable; torpor: lethargy—Notes: Strong imagery time centered around two perspectives of an abyss (Pascal’s pit versus sleep, described as a “monstrous hole”). Note the use of “abysmal” to contribute to the sense of the poem. The narrator longs for death as the only possible escape.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: phial: vial—Notes: We’ve all at least witnessed a love that was self-destructive, in which the victim could not escape. In this case, even if the victim tried to escape by killing his “love” his subsequent kisses would revive her.

[1] Form: Iambic, irregular line lengths, irregular end rhymes—Vocabulary: counters: tokens; bluebells: type of flower—Notes: The child clinging to worthless toys but obtaining the father’s forgiveness is compared with adults clinging to worthless worldly goods but assured of forgiveness by God.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: blandishments: flattery.

[2] Form: Iambic trimeter with tetrameter for line 3 of each stanza. xAxA slant rhyme—Notes: A deed starts as an idea, where it is manufactured and refined. It is then either acted on, or not, and if not only God knows that it ever existed.

[1] Form: Mostly iambic trimeter with a few lines of iambic tetrameter, irregular slant end rhymes—Notes: Observations about snakes.

[1] Form: Iambic, 2-2-1 pattern xxA xxA end rhyme pattern.

[2] Form: Free verse with irregular slant rhyme—Notes: A description of grief with the perceived slowing of time and movement, and then the comparison of the stages of grief with stages of freezing to death.

[3] Form: Ballad meter—Notes: The death of innocent things (flowers) through natural occurrences (frost). The last line may be read literally as God endorsing the natural death, or ironically as Questioning God’s awareness and involvement in this death.

[1] Form: Ballad meter—Vocabulary: Gossamer: soft gauzy fabric; Tippet: covering for the shoulders; Tulle: fine net of silk—Notes: The narrator is busy throughout life, so death stops for her and carries her to her final resting place in the cemetery. In route they metaphorically pass a lifetime (childhood, grain as middle-age, and setting-sun as death). Now, the narrator lives in a tomb through the centuries.

[1] Form: Mostly ballad meter.

[1] Form: Mostly ballad meter—Notes: The narrator dies, and in spite of logic (reason) finds herself falling to an afterlife. Notice how it ends with suspense, as if the narrator is telling us about the experience but a line is crossed beyond which she is unable to communicate back to the world of the living.

[2] Form: Ballad meter—Notes: This may be interpreted as the discovery of religion, not just in nature but in a more formal church setting.

[1] Form: Ballad—Notes: The narrator is dying the perfect death. Her loved ones are around her, she bequeaths her most precious objects to people, and then … everything is ruined as a fly intrudes and becomes the last thing she is aware of before dying.

[1] Form: Mostly iambic trimeter but with some tetrameter lines in ballad form.—Vocabulary: supercilious: haughty disdain; shanties: shacks; pare: shave down; Boanerges: a loud orator—Notes: This poem is an image- rich description of a steam locomotive.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: Rhine: area of Germany known for wine; Inebriate: intoxicated; Debauchee: morally unrestrained person; drams: a small amount as of alcohol; Seraphs: type of angel.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Bog: wetland area.

[2] Form: Iambic, varying line lengths—Notes: The transient nature of the beauty of a sky (perhaps with clouds) is compared to the transient nature of a traveling circus.

[1] Form: Ballad—Notes: Seeing someone die and leave us is the closest we get to seeing heaven (that is, they have just left for heaven), but also the closest we get to understanding hell.

[2] Form: Iambic, 3-3-4-3 pattern—Notes: The narrator’s life was occupied with the care of the invalid (mother?), and after her death the grief and void created a sense of time going by slowly and painfully.

[1] Form: Mostly iambic trimeter with a few lines of iambic tetrameter—Vocabulary: Auger: hand tool for boring holes—Notes: A metaphor for any situation of development with support until the support is no longer needed. This could be read as a religious awakening by Emily.

[2] Form: Ballad.

[1] Form: Irregular meter, but iambic trimeter dominates—Notes: A description of a violent storm, but concluding that the world goes on. Doom’s electric moccasin is lightning. Fences are blown (flee) before the wind. Houses are washed down rivers.

[1] Form: Irregular meter, mostly iambic trimeter and tetrameter—Vocabulary: Heft: weight.

[1] Form: Iambic, irregular line lengths—Vocabulary: revery: light-headed dreaming.

[2] Form: Iambic, irregular line lengths—Notes: This poem describes the process of dealing with grief and loss.

[1] Form: Dimeter, roughly equal number of trochees and iambs.

[2] Form: Iambic, irregular line lengths, irregular but frequent end rhymes—Vocabulary: bullaces: type of plum; greengages: variety of plum; Damsons: type of plum; bilberries:blueberry; barberries: berry from an ornamental shrub; Citrons: lemon-like fruit; wombat: similar to a small bear; beck: small brook; whisk: sweeping; purloin: steal; cloy: be too filling, rich, or sweet; stone: hard covering containing the seed; upbraidings: rapprochements; bowers: shady recess; Pellucid: translucent; mead: meadow; succous: fluid excreted by living tissue; balked: thwarted; waxed: increased in size; drouth: drought; cankerous: ulcerous; rime: thin coating of ice; heath: uncultivated open land; furze: evergreen shrub with fragrant yellow flowers; gobbling: eating greedily; Demure: modest; Ratel: similar to a badger; Panniers: saddle-bags; pates: tops of their heads; obstreperously: aggressively; hoary: white or grey with age; scudded: ran before a gale with no sail; copse: thicket of small trees; dingle: small wooded valley; gibe: jeer; wormwood: a bitter plant; flagging: weakening—Notes: The primary lesson is siblings supporting each other. The poem also includes a warning against the temptations of evil, and could be read in a modern context as a metaphorical anti-drug message. Some have found hints at lesbian ideas in the poem.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: vestige: evidence.

[1] Form: Iambic trimeter except the 3rd line of each stanza, which is tetrameter, xAxA end rhymes.

[1] Form: Mostly iambic pentameter, ABBA end rhymes.

[2] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: billows: waves; briny: salty; sealing-wax: wax used to seal letters.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: chancel: area around alter of a church; glebe: plot of land by parish for use by the priest—Notes: The dead buried in a churchyard cemetery are awakened by gunnery practice in preparation for war.

[1] Form: Iambic, 3-3-4-3 pattern, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: equanimity: calmness—Notes: His body is old, but his heart still longs for romance.

[2] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: coomb: Hollow in a hillside—Notes: This poem refers to a legend that at midnight on each Christmas Eve oxen kneel in honor of Christ. Notice that if given the chance to observe this, the author would go while hoping that it would be true, implying that he no longer really believes the story. The poem is really about not just Questioning faith, but longing for the innocent acceptance of faith.

[1] Form: Anapestic tetrameter, AABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: spudding: digging with a spade; docks: wild greens used in salads; barton: a region in England; hag: an old woman; sock: exclaim; megrims: depression.

[1] Form: Anapestic, 6-5-4-6 pattern (note that the 6-foot lines in the printed book have margin forced line breaks), ABBA end rhymes.—Vocabulary: tined: pronged; bracken: ferns; hillock: small hill; waxed: increasingly; glen: valley; henchman: loyal follower; burn: stream; nether: lower; bating: stopping; Brake: held back; gluttonous: greedy; kern: lout; crag: rocky part of a cliff; gillie: hunting guide; gibe: mocking remark—Notes: Perhaps a story written as a lesson regarding abuse of slaves or servants.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABABABCCDD end rhymes—Vocabulary: plat: plot of land—Notes: A hidden sanctuary left in the middle of the corn-field, and perhaps metaphorically, any peaceful island in a sea of trouble.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: fain: happily.

[2] Form: Iambic but irregular line lengths—Vocabulary: Binsey: location in England; dandled: bounce child on knee; delve: dig; hew: cut with ax; rack: torture; únselve: remove; especial: special—Notes: The narrator bemoans the fact that his beloved grove of aspen trees has been chopped down. This is best appreciated when sung or chanted.

[1] Form: Iambic but irregular line lengths—Vocabulary: Carrion: dead, decaying flesh; rude on: disrespect—Notes: This poem was written as Gerald was undergoing an inner conflict between his role as poet and his role as priest. Like all of his work, it is best appreciated when read aloud or sung.

[1] Form: Iambic but irregular line lengths.—Vocabulary: Goldengrove: fictitious place in England; unleaving: trees losing leaves; wanwood: Decay of woods; leafmeal: loss of leaves—Notes: Addressed to a child sad over the loss of leaves on the trees, the narrator says that this is but a small taste of the loss she will suffer and that her mourning is really for her lost innocence.

[1] Form: Iambic but irregular line lengths—Vocabulary: minion: follower or dependent; dauphin: eldest son of the king; dapple: mottled; wimpling: rippling; skate: type of ray (as in sting-ray); chevalier: knight; sillion: strip of cultivated land; gall: friction burn; vermillion: a reddish-orange color.

[2] Form: Blank verse—Vocabulary: mites: very small creatures; monads: single celled microorganism; wizen: dried up; mote: speck; infusoria: group of micro-organisms; Aeonian: relating to an eon.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes—Notes: This beautiful piece was somewhat spoiled for many when it was read by Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh immediately prior to his execution.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: trundle-bed: low bed on wheels.

[1] Form: Ballad.

[1] Form: Iambic but with initial trochees lines 1,2,3 and an initial anapest in line 4 of each stanza. Tetrameter lines for 1,2,3 and trimeter for line 4 of each stanza. AAAB CCCB end rhymes.

[2] Form: Iambic, 3-3-4-3 pattern, ABAB end rhymes.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: bough: branch; Eastertide: Easter season; threescore: sixty; score: twenty—Notes: The narrator meditates on how short life is and the need to enjoy beauty for the moment.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: victuals: food; hop-yard: a field where hops (for beer) are grown; Mithridates: an ancient king of Pontus—Notes: A friend of Terence begins by complaining that the poems Terence writes are depressing and asks for something more cheerful. Terence replies that if cheer is what is desired poems are a bad choice when compared to beer. However, beer creates a false sense of happiness. He then goes on to say that his poems reflect the sad reality of life. Finally, he claims that by reading sad poems the reader is inoculated against sad events in their life, and thus able to better survive them.

[1] Form: Iambic 4-3-4-2 pattern, xAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: unbegot: not yet in existence.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: lintel: horizontal beam—Notes: An athlete died shortly after winning the championship for his town. Housman congratulates him on, in effect, Quitting while he was ahead.

[1] Form: Ballad.

[1] Form: Alternating iambic tetrameter, iambic trimeter, xAxAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: Solomon: King Solomon (Bible); obdurate: hardened in wrongdoing; Bunker Hill: revolutionary war site; incubus: evil spirit.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: This extract is taken from a book. After looking at the power of circles (in this extract), Black Elk goes on to say that the white men have forced Indians to live in squares (square house, square cars, square offices, and so on).

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: knaves: deceitful people.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: coppice: grove of small tress; heath: uncultivated open land; anemones: type of herb; broods: nests.

[1] Form: Primarily iambic trimeter, ABAB end rhymes.

[1] Form: Modified ballad, iambic pentameter alternating with iambic trimeter, ABAB end rhymes.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: moth-hour: time when moths begin flying (twilight); mavrone: Irish expression of shock; fen: marsh.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: moor-fowl: marsh bird; lotus: a water plant; languid: lacking energy.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABBA end rhymes—Vocabulary: wend: go; wildering: wildering: bewildering—Notes: The lesson that people are not interested in hearing your tales of woe is told through a series of metaphors.

[1] Form: Haiku.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[3] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: chemic: chemical.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter—Vocabulary: beeves: steer ready for slaughter; drouth: drought; till: plow.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: portico: Porch with pillars; Joliet: prison in Joliet Illinois—Notes: Although this is the story of an arson, it’s really the story of the willingness of some to destroy the old for the new, and the frequency with which the people trying to do this are punished.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Haiku.

[1] Form: Sonnet.

[2] Form: Iambic, 4-2-4-2 pattern, ABAB end rhymes where A is exact word matches.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, irregular but frequent end rhymes.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABABAAAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: league: 3 miles.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: divers: diverse.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, xAxAxBxB end rhymes—Vocabulary: hermitage: monastery; Roland: French hero killed in 778; Convivially: festive—Notes: Although once popular, Eben has outlived his friends and is now alone. Eben recognizes in the fragile nature of his jug the fragile nature of “most things.” But Eben goes on, until even the jug itself is empty.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: sexton: functionary of a church—Notes: There is an obvious message about the tender heart beneath the rough exterior, but notice that when he was happy at home he was able to slaughter the animals, but he was not able to do so when he did not have a happy home to return to after work. Perhaps he needed the happiness at home to overcome the sadness of killing during the day in the slaughterhouse.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: sole: bottom of his foot; crown: top of his head.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: evanescent: vanishing like vapor.

[2] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: drear: dreary; lorn: forlorn; churls: rude boorish person; sluggard: lazy person; ineffable: indescribable—Notes: Those he looked down upon in life were exalted over him in heaven.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: Sardis: Important city in Asia Minor about 600 BC, destroyed by Tamerlane in 1402.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABBA end rhymes—Vocabulary: Impenitent: without remorse.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: weir: a dam to divert water for the mill—Notes: The end of mills in the town, and the double suicide of the miller and his wife.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: perforce: by necessity—Notes: The man is haunted by memories of all of those he knows who are dead, with even the sound of the leaves sounding like those long gone acquaintances.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: sheaves: bundle of stalks from grain.

[2] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: rank: growing profusely; reprobate: predestined to damnation.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABB end rhymes.

[1] Form: Blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter)—Notes: Understatement at the end is used to underscore the horror of the scene. Compare the reaction of the boy here with the reaction of the construction worker in Mark Turpin’s poem “Poem.”

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, AABBCC … End rhymes—Vocabulary: square: conform.

[2] Form: Sonnet—Notes: The narrator withdraws, metaphorically to a forest, after a fight. His wife is not able to enter after him, and he sees her as if at a distant.

[1] Form: Blank verse…Vocabulary: mica: a mineral.

[1] Form: Ballad—Notes: This can be read as a metaphorical look at a walk through the autumn of the narrator’s life.

[2] Form: Mostly iambic pentameter; irregular but frequent end rhymes—Vocabulary: hoary: white (with dew in this case); russet: reddish brown type of apple—Notes: The poem may also be read as a metaphorical description of someone at the end of a long, productive life.

[1] Form: Blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter)—Vocabulary: pane: windowpane, but perhaps a double meaning; consigned: entrusted.

[2] Form: Blank verse—Vocabulary: bracken: a weedy fern.

[1] Form: Mostly unrhymed iambic pentameter—Vocabulary: piqued: a feeling of wounded pride.

[1] Form: Mostly iambic tetrameter, irregular but frequent end rhymes.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter but with an unusually large number of trochees.

[1] Form: Anapestic tetrameter, AABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: girdled: bark eaten off in a ring; budded: new buds eaten; grouse: chicken-like bird; tamaracks: short needled tree; arboreal: relating to trees—Notes: There is an underlying message of needing to trust in faith after you have done everything you can to protect or prepare something (someone) that you love.

[1] Form: Blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter)—Vocabulary: wonted: accustomed.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, irregular but frequent end rhymes.

[2] Form: Sonnet.

[1] Form: Blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter)—Notes: This poem is complex in subtle ways. First, it’s about the annual rite of coming together with a neighbor to mend a stone fence. Then there’s the narrator’s insistence that the walls between neighbors are, at least in this case, unnecessary and in all cases counter to nature’s inclination, with the neighbor insisting that “good fences make good neighbors.” But then, in describing the neighbor it’s obvious that the narrator has his own mental fences that separate him from his “stone age” neighbor.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter but an unusually large number of anapests, irregular but frequent end rhymes—Vocabulary: fain: rather—Notes: The leaves operate as a metaphor for the human soul. They anticipate release from the tree (earthly life) to explore that which is beyond, but when the time comes they are tired and end up wanting nothing but to rest in a corner.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Notes: The tree represents obstacles, which are then personified.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABABBxB end rhymes—Notes: The rest of death is inviting, but the narrator has more to do in life before he is ready for death.

[1] Form: Mostly iambic pentameter with substitutions and some lines split across multiple physical lines.—Vocabulary: chamber: bedroom.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: hie: go quickly; bluet: flowering plant—Notes: A silent, hidden observer of things both living and dead, far and near, day and night.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, but an unusually large number of anapests, xAxAxBxB… end rhymes—Vocabulary: pistil: sex organ of a flower, normally inside the flower; phoebes: flycatcher (type of bird)—Notes: The decaying farm is viewed from three perspectives, the animals (nature) which are now reclaiming the farm; a normal human; and a human who is sufficiently versed in country things to see the decay from the nature perspective.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, AABBCC … End rhymes—Vocabulary: peeper: type of frog; rill: rivulet; brake: area overgrown with dense brush —Notes: A poem about that deals metaphorically with death and renewal.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABCCA end rhymes—Notes: The road is a symbol for any decision in life where both options are roughly equally good, but the selection of one or the other will have a big impact on the future.

[1] Form: Sonnet.

[2] Form: Blank verse—Vocabulary: clematis: vining plant.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: savor: a distinctive taste or smell.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: savor: distinctive quality; vermilion: orange red color; fulminant: exploding; hemlock: poison—Notes: The narrator in the winter of her life, slowly, elegantly committing suicide to move onto the next plane, while outside the youth are so exuberant and lustful.

[1] Form: Iambic, irregular line lengths—Vocabulary: squills: type of flower; brocaded: heavy fabric with raised design; se’nnight: a week ago.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: epitaphic: inscription on tombstone.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: banshee: female spirit who wails to warn of impending death; wan: pale; loon: type of bird.

[1] Form: Ballad.

[2] Form: Anapestic trimeter, rhyming pairs of lines in various configurations—Vocabulary: trussed: tied up tightly; wan: unnaturally pale—Notes: The wounded soldier is trapped under barbed wire between lines during WWI.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: precept: rule of personal conduct; Gehennas: hell; sirens: beautiful women who sing to lure sailors to their death on rocks; scrofulous: morally degenerate; dissolute: lacking moral restraint; galoot: uncouth person; cant: monotonous talk; cadaverous: deathlike; pinions: wings of a bird; winnowing: separate wheat from chaff; gallivanting: roaming about searching for pleasure; malamute: sled dog; iniquitous: wicked; “Fount of the Law”: Bible—Notes: They symptoms of scurvy, a common ailment in the Yukon, are accurately described.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: flume-head: head of a narrow gorge with a stream flowing through it; freshets: a sudden overflow from a stream after a thaw; calcined: heated to the point of decomposition; Moose-hides: Indian tribe; fleer: smirk or laugh in contempt; ptarmigan: an arctic game bird (grouse); sacerdotal: priestly; carded: combed out; vastitudes: immensity; up-shoaled: made shallow; scathless: unharmed; mushed: drove a dog sled; Fournier and Labelle: Two characters from other Robert Service ballads; poke of dust: bag of gold dust; wiles: tricks; malamutes: sled dogs; Dawson: mining town in Alaska; rind: outer layer of ice; caromed: bounced; dight: dressed; mail: armor; slough: depression filled with mud; hooch: inferior liquor; sardonic: mocking; twain: two—Notes: The devil is often portrayed as having hoofed feet.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: moil: toil; marge: margin; mushing: driving a dog sled; Dawson trail: hazardous trail from Whitehorse to Dawson City along the frozen Yukon river; brawn: muscles.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: Malamute: sled dog; jag-time: drinking time; louse: singular of lice; muck: sticky mud; poke: bag of gold.

[1] Form: Ballad—Vocabulary: rank: smelly; throttle: throat; festoon: garland of flowers; nigh: near; sublime: majesty; guying: mocking; expectorating: spitting; fag: cigarette.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: blear: blur; puissant: powerful; craven: cowardly; insensate: lacking sensation.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: pathos: sadness; blighting: deteriorating—Note: This poem could describe the failed dreams of many would-be small business owners.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: Gertrude focused most of her attention on the sound of words, creating a musical effect. Meaning of the words was secondary.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Mixture of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, xAxA end rhymes—Notes: New work with genetics makes this even more meaningful.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: This poem is written from the perspective of a snow man in a lonely forest glen.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: pantomime: telling a story without words; Haddam: a city; bawds: prostitutes; euphony: pleasing sound.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: transcendent: supreme.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: flanks; the side between the last rib and the hip.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Actium: site of a sea battle where Cleopatra’s ships approached to reinforce, then turned and fled, and Mark Anthony followed her in his ship, abandoning his fleet and losing the battle.—Notes: Notice how the poem alternates between the narrator’s observations of the reality around him, both outside his windows and reflected onto his walls (the trees, the clouds, the grass), versus the intruding thoughts about Mark Antony.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: The apology which is not really an apology.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: dray: work cart with low or no wheels; understrapper: underling.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABBCC … End rhymes—Vocabulary: tremulous: trembling.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, dropping off to tetrameter then trimeter much as the life is tapering off.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: pips: dots.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: carob: an evergreen tree with pods that contain a chocolate type pulp; Etna: a volcanic mountain; paltry: contemptible; albatross: an allusion to the albatross in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; expiate: make amends for.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: Ezra Pound looked down on Walt Whitman’s poetry for most of his life, but eventually recognized that his own poetry was an outgrowth of a trend away from formal verse started by Walt Whitman.

[2] Form: Free verse—Notes: The narrator resents sharing Francesca with the world, or even having them talk about her. He wishes that the world, and its problems, would just vanish and leave him and his love alone.

[3] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: apparition: act of appearing.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: availeth: is better—Notes: The eyes of weary of reading and would rather look on the lovely but unspecified woman.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: skein: thread wound in a coil; anemia: low red blood cells resulting in tiredness—Notes: The narrator is very class conscious, and looks down on what he sees as the lower class while mentally toying with a bored woman from the upper class.

[2] Form: Free verse—Notes: The narrator sought after a comfortable life, but now those trappings of life are unwanted and the narrator longs for something new, and more specifically, longs to experience something new and foreign with his love.

[1] Form: Mostly iambic tetrameter—Vocabulary: Daphne: nymph who changed into laurel tree to escape Apollo; wold: unforested plain.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AAA end rhymes—Vocabulary: enmity: deep-seated hatred.

[1] Form: Sonnet.

[1] Form: Prose poem.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABB end rhymes.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: fen: marsh.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: deprecate: belittle; effrontery: presumptuousness.

[3] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: congruence: appropriateness—Notes: Twisted, disjointed phrases make this a hard poem, but the observations about a steamroller (or metaphorically, any group, parents, company, and so on, that forces conformity) is contrasted with the image of a butterfly (individuality, freedom).

[2] Form: Mostly iambic, irregular line lengths—Vocabulary: quay: wharf.

[1] “Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: insidious: subtly harmful; malingers: feigns illness;

Lazarus: man raised from the dead by Jesus (Bible); Prince Hamlet: from ““Hamlet””

(Shakespeare); obtuse: unintelligent;

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.

Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,

Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

f I did think my answer would be spoken To one who could ever return into the world,

This flame would sleep unmoved.

But since never, if true be told me, any from this depth Has found his upward way, I

answer thee, Nor fear lest infamy record my words.

- from Dante’s Inferno, XXVII, 61-6]

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: The waiter wants to get the hysterical woman outside, but the narrator is only concerned with enjoying the moment in general and her breasts in particular.

[2] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: Yezhovism: reference to Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, head of the Soviet secret police 1936-1938 during the “great purge”; torpor: lethargy.

[1] Form: Iambic, irregular line lengths—Vocabulary: palpable: tangible; medallions: Greek coin.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Istrian: a peninsula in the Adriatic sea.

[1] Form: Iambic, 3-3-4-3 pattern, ABAB end rhymes.

[1] “Form: Mostly iambic pentameter, some trochaic lines, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: Knock-kneed: knees close together, ankles apart; lime: caustic chemical; cud: something held in the mouth and chewed, as tobacco; Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori: It is glorious to die for your country.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: corolla: the bloom of a flower.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Dimeter lines consisting of an iamb and an anapest xAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: mould: earth of a grave.

[1] Form: Ballad.

[2] Form: Free verse—Notes: Here the pond may be a literal pond, or a symbol for anything in life that is ugly beyond redemption.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: vesper: evening prayer.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Iambic trimeter, xAxA end rhymes.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[3] Form: Free verse.

[4] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: larking: carefree adventure—Notes: A metaphor, with drowning standing in for being overwhelmed in life, sinking even as those around us think we’re waving.

[1] Form: Free verse, AABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: Lions exist (Latin); Liturgically: to do with the Church.

[1] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: Dichtung and Wahrheit: Sealing and truth.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: polytheists: believers in many gods.

[3] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Marginalia: notes in the margin of a book; femurs: leg bone; pottered: to be busy with unimportant things.

[1] Form: Free verse, irregular end rhymes—Vocabulary: Hyacinth: floating, flowering plant—Notes: A metaphor for inner strength or hidden support helping to overcome problems.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: taboret: low stool; hirsute: hairy; marguerites: daisy-like flower.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: arctics: rubber boots—Notes: This poem describes the epiphany of self-awareness, and the associated relationships with family, gender, and the human race.

[1] Form: Villanelle—Notes: Notice how the refrain takes on an increasingly deep meaning as the poem progresses.

[1] Form: Sestina—Vocabulary: Marvel Stove: brand of wood-burning stove; equinoctial: at the time of the equinox.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: I read this as the fire balloons representing Robert Lowell’s poetry, shining like stars, sometimes starting a fire that illuminates and destroys. Fire balloons are tiny hot air balloons made from paper or thin plastic wrap using a candle as the heat source.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: portent: prophecy.

[1] Form: Iambic, irregular line lengths, irregular end rhymes.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: slacked or shorted: other shoppers wearing slacks or shorts.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: The “mother’s sleep” is safety at home, and here the “state” is the military.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: We are all sometimes faced with difficult decisions, in this case what to do about the still living, unborn fawn in the dead deer’s womb.

[2] Form: Villanelle.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: careening: rushing carelessly.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Parnassus: mountain in Greece sacred to the muses.

[2] Form: Iambic tetrameter, 2 lines rhymed per stanza—Vocabulary: Vergissmeinnicht: forget-me-not; abased: reduced in prestige; swart: dark skinned.

[2] Form: Prose Poem—Vocabulary: gleaning: collecting bit by bit—Notes: Perhaps a metaphor for life or for relationships?

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Icons: image; cryptograms: writing in code; obverse: facing side; Jupiter Ammon: Greek (Zeus), Roman (Jupiter), and Egyptian (Amun) god with a ram’s head.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter, AABB end rhymes—Notes: Perhaps metaphorically describing the way we are perfected through adversity?

[2] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: coons: raccoons; castigate: criticize severely.

[1] Form: Iambic, 5-3-5-5- pattern, ABAB end rhymes.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABBCAC end rhymes—Vocabulary: Arundel: region in West Sussex, England; effigy: likeness; supine: laying on their back; tenantry: tenants of an estate; skeins: a length of thread; blazon: coat of arms—Notes: Here the spouses posed for a sculpture to be used on their tomb, him in armor, while holding hands. The sculptor caught this moment, and their expression of love is what has endured.

[1] Form: Blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), but meter varies (falls apart) in last two lines, much as the relationship’s flaws are made obvious in the last two lines.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: soppy: sentimental.

[1] Form: Iambic, irregular line lengths—Vocabulary: sovereign: supreme—Notes: There is an implied acceptance of the natural order of things built into this poem.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: chaste: virtuous; ewe: female sheep.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Granicus: Battle in 334 BC where Alexander defeated the Persians.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: plumb; properly vertical; true: properly aligned; skewing: tilting—Notes: The house may be read as a metaphor for the marriage, or perhaps for some other problem area in life which becomes a cross.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: alluvial: flood plain or delta; solace: comfort.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Prose poem.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: fatuous: smugly and unconsciously foolish.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: On a literal level physical movement, or even the movement of time, resulting in death all around us, from minute mites to large organisms. The basic idea also applies to non-physical things like ideas, where intellectual movement creates new ideas and destroys old ones.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Mostly iambic tetrameter, ABABCC end rhymes—Notes: This poem tells a story, but really, only enough of the story to leave us speculating about what actually happened to Jane (was she seduced?, raped?) and what will ultimately happen to her?

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: invigilate: Monitor.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: The season metaphorically describes the narrator’s old age, and the distant bank of the river represents death. Rivers are often a passageway to death in myth.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: The poem is a metaphor for aging.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: fodder: coarse food; slops: leftovers served to animals.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: Notice the sense of a secret shared as the moon-beams are mentally turned into something living.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: hames: part of a harness; sledges: sled on low runners; cordwood: wood cut to 4 feet; Glenwood: brand of stove; Holsteins: species of cow; Quartertop: mostly open buggy.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: catafalque: platform for a coffin.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: This poem illustrates the beauty that can be found within the midst of ugliness.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: beguine: a ballroom dance.

[1] Form: Trochaic, irregular line lengths, ABABCC end rhymes—Vocabulary: disaligned: unaligned; “Twelve-fingered”: physical deformities in general, and extra fingers in particular, were taken as a sign that someone was a witch. “my ribs crack where your wheels”: a medieval form of torture, sometimes applied to people accused of witchcraft, was to break their limbs and thread them through the spokes of a wagon wheel, then hang the wheel horizontally in the air on a pole.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: The serpent: the father’s penis in this case.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: wrangle: argument; pottage: stew.

[1] Form: Iambic trimeter, irregular but frequent end rhymes—Notes: Notice the double meaning of the title, meaning both “life yet remains” and a “still life” as in a painting, which has the appearance of life but no actual life.

[2] Form: Iambic trimeter, two end rhymes per stanza in irregular positions.

[1] Form: Prose poem.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Sarajevo: capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Kai: narrator’s son.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: This list of things needed to be a poet includes all forms of fundamental human experience, both the positive and the negative.

[1] Form: Free verse—Note: The poem addresses redeveloping a relationship with yourself after breaking up as a couple.

[2] Form: Loose iambic pentameter, unrhymed.

[1] Form: Prose poem.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Orpheus: Thracian poet and musician who’s music had the power to move inanimate objects.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: versification: writing poetry.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Esso: brand of gasoline station; PATRIA O MUERTE: Fatherland or death.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: jute: a rough fiber.

[1] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: desiccated: foods preserved by drying; lacunae: missing parts; coquettish: teasing with sexual or romantic overtones; apparition: ghostly figure; circuitous: roundabout; brocade: heavy fabric with rich, raised design—Notes: The village in the story is a symbol representing any situation that is tolerable but not pleasant (for example, purgatory, a job, a location) and the bus represents the potential for escape from that place or thing. Notice how the earlier dream-like observations are pulled together in the end, with the bus including the mysterious letter writer as the Virgin Mary, the woman from the postoffice as the passenger, the color scheme of the tiles within the bus, and the two boys from the bus stop as the drivers.

[1] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: gadfly: nuisance; arroyo: dry gulch—Notes: The central metaphor is children’s desire to leave their parents and seek adventure.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Natzweiler: concentration camp in France—Notes: The contrast between the pastoral scene and the horror of the concentration camp make the camp even more horrible, and the last line offers a pessimistic view of what the world has learned from those horrors.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: In art, we talk about negative space, which is the part of the canvas not covered with images. It is always important, and sometimes more important than the images. This is about negative space in the world.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: flicker: woodpecker—Notes: Vivid imagery creates alternate realities, one inside the other similar to those Russian dolls. There is also an implied comment on the characters and stories as having a life of their own, but a life that only exists when someone is reading them.

[1] Form: Iambic tetrameter.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: parse: Break down and understand; felicity: great happiness; ardent: warmth of feeling.

[1] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: ardor: fiery intensity; athwart: from side to side—Notes: Compare the view of inner beauty in this poem with that expressed in “Nightclub” by Billy Collins.

[1] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: disconsolate: beyond consolation; anthropomorphize: give human traits to animals or objects; aviary: large bird enclosure; ersatz: imitation—Notes: The poem begins by observing the way December in Houston did not really feel like December to someone used to the snow. Then, the way various animals reminded the narrator of her separation, her isolation, and finally her feeling like the sloth, ill-equipped to go on with her writing, but forced to by ambition, observed metaphorically as the small, nagging monkey.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: ossified: change into bone—Notes: This story of child abuse told through parable can apply to a variety of physical and verbal abuses as well.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Notes: A strength of this poem is the ambiguity as to what the narrator thinks was the real show, the dog or the audience.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Saracen: Arab.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: pencil skirt: skirt that is narrow at the bottom; bum: rear end; arpeggios: chords played as individual notes.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: mauve: reddish purple.

[1] Form: Sonnet.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: nape: back of the neck; rods: stems of wood; boughs: tree limbs; firkin: a small wooden barrel; cauled: wrapped like an amniotic sac; connive: plot—Notes: This is one of several poems by Seamus describing “bog people”, bodies from early man preserved in bogs and now exhumed. This one describes a woman who was found murdered in apparent ritual punishment.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: Croppies: Irish nationalists who revolted against England in 1798. The name refers to the fact that they wore their hair shortly cropped; pike: spear; conclave: secret meeting; terraced thousands: people on the terraces of the hillside; shroud: burial cloth.

[2] Form: Iambic pentameter, AA end rhyme.

[3] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Iambic pentameter—Vocabulary: prie-dieu: prayer kneeling bench; Mater Dolorosa: Mother of Sorrow; bereft: left desolate or alone; gall: bitter poison; Dregs: sediment from the bottom; lees: sediment at the bottom of fermenting wine; transubstantiate: change bread and wine into body and blood of Christ; heresies: belief at odds with the Church; heresiarch: proponent of a heresy; Vicar: higher ranking priest; Shroud of Turin: burial shroud with image of Christ, thought by some to be his burial cloth; basilicas: Christian church with a nave in the center; Ararat: mountain in Turkey, thought by some to be the resting place of Noah’s ark; montane: related to mountains, or in this sense, like bedrock; Carnality: sexual desire; actuarial: death statistics; cotes: animal pen; wops and micks and spics and krauts: Italians, Irish, Puerto Ricans, Germans; WASP: White Anglo-Saxon Protestant; Father Coughlin: depression era priest who was an extremely popular radio personality. His message included anti-Semitic statements; Glemp: current Archbishop of Warsaw; Giacomo: Jack; gainsay: deny; Ptolemys: astronomer who believed everything revolved around the earth; chador: Garment that covers from head-to-toe; Autos-da-fe: public announcements of the inquisition; foetuscide: killing a fetus; casuist: a person whose reasoning is subtle, sounds true, but is false; tares: plant that looks like wheat but, when the ear appears, turns out be poisonous; Passaic: City in New Jersey; Malone: Bishop of Boston accused of covering up sexual misconduct of priests; Muggerone: fictitious name and person; bete noire: detested person; fulminates: loudly attack accusers or deny charges; Ton-ton Macoute: Haitian militia; pusillanimity: cowardly; alb, Dalmatic, chasuble, and pallium: robe, outer garment, vestment, and bishop vestment worn by a priest during Mass; sops: something to placate; crozier: Bishop’s crook; legate: emissary of the Pope; imprimatur: mark of official approval; aria: solo vocal song; dollop: splash; cowl: hood; Lourdes: Town in France where Virgin Mary supposedly appeared, known for miraculous cures; exvotos: church offering; bromides: platitudes; polity: nation or state; Ratzinger: now Pope Benedict; sanguine: optimistic; conundrum: paradox or riddle; proscribed: prohibited; cellarer: person in a monastery who provides the food and drink; Homeostatic: in equilibrium; Pax vobiscum: peace be with you; consistories: assembly of Cardinals; Italian bank that collapsed in 1982. The Chairman was supposedly involved with the Masonic lodge; See: authority of a Bishop.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: yoke: around the neck and shoulders; yardage: number of yards of cloth; Lapped: overlapped; overseam: Two parallel seams with the thread alternating between them; mangle: machine that presses fabric with heated rollers; treadle: foot pedal for foot powered sewing machines; bobbin: spool of thread; Bedlamite: lunatic; placket: a piece of cloth sewn under an opening; bar-tacked: type of stitch; Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras: patterns; tartans: plaid fabric; Ossian: legendary Gaelic hero of 3rd century A.D.; carders: machine to line up fibers in wool; calico: coarse, bright-patterned cloth; culled: Check for Quality and remove defective parts.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Notes: Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Johnny Hartman: contemporary jazz singer; bebop: form of jazz originating around 1940.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: jubilize: blast trumpets.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: carnal: earthly; flounces: a strip of decoration.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: filial: child to parent.

[1] Form: Prose poem.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Notes: Here the parent of a special needs child responds to the child using his word, but unlike the wonder the child means by the word, the parent is just saying the word without the same meaning.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: La Brea Tar Pits: tar pits in Los Angeles where many dinosaur bones have been exhumed—Notes: Notice the repeated references to “waiting their turn.” The son-in-law waits his turn, figuratively to be old and lonely. Later in time (after the tilde (~)) his children wait their turn. They are all trapped in a cycle, much like the animals millions of years ago trapped in the la Brea Tar Pits.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: bennies: a stimulant; spoor: track of an animal—Notes: The two are caught by the police for breaking the window but also caught in a role, a life, from which there may be no escape.

[1] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: alkies: alcoholics—Notes: This poem, centered on the color of blood, is all the more powerful because the final conclusion is not explicitly stated.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Quintet: five instruments.

[1] Form: Prose poem.

[2] Form: Prose poem—Notes: Notice the attention to the sense of smell to make the day real for the reader.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Prose poem.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: nacreous: lustrous; reticent: restrained or reserved; loam: a type of soil.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: ochre: earth-tone colored—Notes: The issues alluded to in this poem form the basis for a significant amount of Sharon’s confessional style poetry.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: nape: back of the neck; shorn lamb: lamb with fleece removed.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: redolent: smelling; edelweiss: small white alpine flower—Notes: A metaphorical look at child abuse, the inner destruction of evil, and the necessity to reach resolution—if not forgiveness. Notice how anger appears to bring her closer to resolution, but it is actually a path into Satan

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: juniper berry: berry used to give gin its distinctive flavor; fume: type of wine (fume blanc).

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: familiar: attendant spirit—The beginning of a bond with the therapist that will help the narrator deal with issues revolving around her father.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: rent: torn.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: The narrator has unresolved issues with someone who has died, and finds herself waiting expectantly for the opportunity to resolve those issues—but the time will never come.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: supplanted: usurp; vibrato: causing slight frequency variations in the voice.

[1] Form: Sonnet with constraints of meter and rhyme order relaxed—Vocabulary: Gent, Nugget, Swank, and Dude: Magazines featuring pictures of nude women.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Bergson: French philosopher; Wladyslaw Gomulka (1905–1982) Polish Communist Leader; atropine: chemical used to dilate eyes—Notes: Notice how how sound of the words fit with the descriptions of what is on the radio. The screams of the comet are whines as a comet flies by, it’s head melting. The radio represents the history of oppression that has gone through it’s speaker, but the narrator ends on a pessimistic note regarding the future.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: woodbines: a climbing vine.

[1] Form: Blank verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: heraldic: announcing something to come; Gobi: desert in Mongolia; abed: in bed.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: consecrated: set apart as sacred; garland: wreath; thrashers: type of bird; Limbo: dance involving stepping under a low stick while leaning backward—Notes: The end may be read as a metaphorical statement where it is not just literal blackberries that are too ripe to touch, but the very world of the people in that car with winter crawling out of the windows that is unreachable.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Chimera: in Greek mythology, a fire breathing monster.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: godhead: God; Ontological: metaphysical study of the nature of being; creed: system of belief.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Fano: town in Italy; literati; literary intelligentsia; pensione: inexpensive small hotel.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Dacca: the capital of Bangladesh; sari: a dress worn by women primarily in India and Pakistan; paisleys: swirled pattern of abstract curves; Bengal: part of Bangladesh.

[1] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: transcendence: surpassing others.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Bulge, Anzio, or Monte Cassino: WWII battle sites; flak: shrapnel from anti-aircraft guns; fire storms: massive city fires caused by incendiary bombs; philodendrons: type of plant often grown as a house plant.

[1] Form: Mostly Iambic pentameter.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: canasta: a card game; Izalco: a volcano in western El Salvador.

[1] Form: Prose poem—Vocabulary: picaresque: involving rogues; Hennie Youngman: (also Henny Youngman) (1906-1998), stand-up comic specializing in one-liners; paratactic: juxtaposing thoughts or clauses without connectors; Chairman Mao: (Mao Zedong, 1893-1976, Chairman of Communist party of China; malarkey: exaggerated or foolish talk; Adam: First human (Bible), who named all things; prosodic: metrical structure of verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: Notice the use of color tones throughout the poem. The poem addresses issues of sexuality, sexual differences, and overcoming obstacles.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: gramma grass: type of pasture grass; Sangre de Cristos: mountain range—Notes: The driving lesson is a metaphor for their ranch life, with the children wanting to go out into the world while the grandfather wants them to stay in the ruts worn over time.

[1] Form: Prose poem.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Sinter: chemicals from a mineral spring.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: proofed: waterproofed; bitumen and pitch: components of tar; sedge: grasses—Notes: It is the author’s hope which is sent forward in time and out via the basket of the poem.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: swill: to flood with water; Trevor McDonald: broadcaster; Esther Williams: fashion model—Notes: Here rain is a metaphor for the feeling of separation between the couple following a fight with the narrator’s in-laws.

[1] Form: Mostly iambic tetrameter.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: diorama: 3-dimensional scene with painted backdrop.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: A follow-up to “The River-Merchant’s Wife.”

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: sumac: a type of shrub—Notes: This poem explores the idealizing of things based on time and based on distance.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: pampas: tall decorative grass; nettles: type of weed.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: hoe: backhoe.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: ledger: a horizontal timber in a scaffold.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: Here the pick works as a metaphor for opportunity.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: Notice the similar initial sense of wonder and disbelief at physical injury in this poem and in Robert Frost’s “Out—Out!”

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Blank verse—Notes: Here the room is most likely the room of a dead child.

[2] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Parkside: restaurant.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Dry Tortugas: islands west of Key West in Florida; kingfisher: type of large bird; Bonaparte gulls: type of gull that nests in trees; Myer’s and Appleton Gold: types of rum.

[1] Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: Two Buck Chuck: Charles Schaw Merlot, selling for $2 per bottle.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[2] Form: Free verse—Notes: A poem that describes the slow loss of hearing with aging.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Therese Raquin: protagonist in Opera of the same name. She and her lover kill her husband, whose ghost then haunts them; Rigoletto: Main character in opera of the same name, he ends up mistakenly arranging to have his daughter Gilda killed; Butterfly: main character in Madam Butterfly. She waits for the return of her lover but to no avail, and ends up killing herself.

[1] Form: Iambic, irregular line lengths—Vocabulary: sconces: lights attached to walls.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: Impala: model of car; Barracuda: model of car; rig: truck; Mercury Montego: brand of car; LTD: brand of car; shammy: soft leather cloth—Notes: Although not explicitly stated, the brother died in a motorcycle crash.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: This poem defies simple analysis, because the ark is a symbol and it can represent many things. Examples include your own body (and thus, your life); a political party in power; or even the Earth.

[2] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: wolftail: brush.

[1] Form: Prose poem.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Sonnet with relaxed form—Vocabulary: Transformatrix: a made-up word implying transformation and relationships; stiletto: slender dagger; safe word: word used in bondage games to stop the game; trusses up: ties up—Notes: The sonnet form is considered by most poets to be the most restrictive, and here that sense of the form is compared to a bondage scene.

[2] Form: Iambic, mostly tetrameter but varying—Vocabulary: football strips: soccer uniforms; Owen: WWI British War Poet; Boche: derogatory phrase for Germans; pike: long spear; grapeshot: small iron balls used in cannons.

[1] Form: Free verse.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: What the narrator learned about history was learned more from the experiences the teacher shared than from the textbook, but perhaps the most important lesson was that no-one in life can avoid pain.

[1] Form: Free verse—Notes: Notice the changing meaning of the word free, starting with available without payment, then released, then abandoned, and finally, the forcibly cast off.

[1] Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: crone: old woman.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Table of Contents

Introduction

Level Four Poetry Manifesto

Organization of the Poems

A Note on Meter

A Request for Understanding and Assistance

Poems

Unknown (possibly 4,000 BC)

Ishtar

Archilochos (circa 700 BC – 650 BC)

Will, lost in a sea of trouble

The Bible

Address of Ruth to Naomi

Mei Sheng (Circe 140 BC)

The Beautiful Toilet

Horace (65 BC – 8 BC)

The young bloods come less often now

Norse Myth (circa 50 BC)

from The Longbeards’ Saga

Petronius Arbiter (27 AD – 66 AD)

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short

Tao Yuan-ming (To-Em-Mei) (365-427)

The Unmoving Cloud

Li Po (701 – 762)

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

Omar Khayam (1044-1123)

XI

XXIII

XXVIII

LI

Moritake (1452 – 1540)

One fallen flower

Sir Philip Sidney (1554 – 1586)

A Ditty

Be Your Words Made, Good Sir of Indian Ware

Loving in Truth

To Sleep

Robert Greene (1560 – 1592)

Content

Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

Love’s Farewell

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

All the World’s a Stage

Sonnet XVII

Sonnet XVIII

Sonnet XXXII

Sonnet LV

Sonnet CXXX

Sonnet CXXXVIII

Sonnet CXLIII

Sonnet CXLVII

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Thomas Campion (1567 – 1619)

Integer Vitae

Sir Henry Wotton (1568 – 1639)

Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton’s Wife

John Donne (1572-1631)

Community

Confined Love

Death

The Computation

The Curse

William Drummond (1585 – 1649)

Life

Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674)

To the Virgins

Upon Julia’s Clothes

Thomas Carew (1595 – 1639)

Ingrateful Beauty Threatened

John Milton (1608 – 1674)

On His Blindness

Sir John Suckling (1609 – 1642)

Song: Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667)

Drinking

Richard Lovelace (1618 – 1658)

To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars

William Walsh (1663 – 1708)

Love and Jealousy

William Congreve (1670 – 1729)

False though she be to me and love

Ryusui (1691 – 1758)

A lost child crying

Jokun (circa 1700)

Ah! I intended

William Blake (1757 - 1827)

The Garden of Love

The Sick Rose

The Tiger

To See a World in a Grain of Sand

Robert Burns (1759 1796)

Epitaph for James Smith

Epitaph on a Henpecked Squire

Epitaph on William Muir

Inconstancy in love

To A Louse

To A Mountain Daisy

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room

The Solitary Reaper

We are Seven

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Robert Southey (1774 – 1843)

After Blenheim

The Scholar

Walter Savage Landor (1775 – 1864)

On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday

Well I Remember

Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852)

An Argument

‘Tis the Last Rose of Summer

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)

She Walks in Beauty

So, we’ll go no more a-roving

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)

Music

Mutability

Song from Charles the First

Ozymandias

John Clare (1793 – 1864)

Badger

William Cullen Bryant (1794 – 1878)

A Presentiment

Mutation

Thanatopsis

The Hurricane

The Murdered Traveler

The Poet

The Strange Lady

To a Waterfowl

John Keats (1795 – 1821)

Isabella

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

O Blush Not So

This living hand, now warm and capable 1

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thomas Hood (1799 – 1845)

The Poet’s Fate

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)

Days

Hamatreya

The Rhodora

The Snow-Storm

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861)

Sonnets from the Portuguese – I

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XIV

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XX

Sonnets from the Portuguese – XLIII

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)

A Nameless Grave

Jugurtha

Killed at the Ford

King Witlaf’s Drinking-Horn

Nature

The Beleaguered City

The Fire of Drift-Wood

The Landlord’s Tale

The Phantom Ship

The Potter’s Wheel

The Rainy Day

The Three Silences of Molinos

Travels by the Fireside

Twilight

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 – 1892)

Autumn Thoughts

By their Works

Forgiveness

Trust

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894)

Sun and Shadow

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

Annabel Lee

For Annie

The Raven

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)

Come Not, When I am Dead

Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Vivien’s Song

Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)

A Toccata of Galuppi’s

Meeting at Night

My Last Duchess

Never the Time and the Place

Porphyria’s Lover

The Confessional

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Edward Lear (1812 – 1888)

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

Emily Bronte (1818 – 1848)

I am the Only Being Whose Doom

Charles Kingsley (1819 – 1875)

Young and Old

Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)

Darest Thou Now O Soul

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

My Legacy

O Captain! My Captain

Song of Prudence

This Compost

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867)

A Carrion

from Fuses I – on Love

from Fuses I – on Art

from Fuses I – on God

Heautontimoroumenos

Metamorphoses of the Vampire

Spleen

The Flask

The Ghostly Visitant

The Murderer’s Wine

The Pit

The Vampire

Coventry Patmore (1823 – 1896)

The Toys

Richard Henry Stoddard (1805 – 1923)

The Jar

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

A deed knocks first at thought

A narrow fellow in the grass

A word is dead

After great pain a formal feeling comes

Apparently with no surprise

Because I could not stop for death

Hope is the thing with feathers

I felt a funeral in my brain

I had been hungry all the years

I heard a fly buzz when I died

I like to see it lap the miles

I taste a liquor never brewed

I’m nobody! Who are you?

I’ve Known a Heaven, Like a Tent

My life closed twice before its close

The Last Night

The Props Assist the House

The way I read a letter’s this

There came a wind like a bugle

There’s a certain slant of light

To make a prairie it takes a clover

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark

Wild nights! Wild nights!

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 – 1894)

Goblin Market

Remember

Song

The First Day

Lewis Carroll (1832 – 1898)

The Walrus and the Carpenter

Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928)

Channel firing

I look into my glass

The oxen

The Ruined Maid

Sidney Lanier (1842 – 1881)

The Revenge of Hamish

The Waving of the Corn

To Nannette Falk-Auerbach

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889)

Binsey Poplars

Carrion Comfort

Spring and Fall

The Windhover

Edward Rowland Sill (1847 – 1881)

Five Lives

William Ernest Henley (1849 – 1903)

Invictus

Eugene Field (1850 – 1895)

Little Boy Blue

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894)

Requiem

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 – 1919)

Solitude

A.E. Housman (1859 – 1936)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Terence, This is Stupid Stuff

They say my Verse is Sad: No Wonder

To an Athlete Dying Young

James B Naylor (1860 – 1902)

Authorship

Charles Perkins Stetson (1860 – 1935)

An Obstacle

Black Elk (1863 – 1950)

Everything the Power of the World Does is done in a circle

Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1930)

If

The Way Through the Woods

We and They

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)

A Dream of Death

Politics

The Ballad of Father Gilligan

The Indian upon God

The Sad Shepherd

Shiki (Masaoka Tseunenori) (1867 – 1902)

By that fallen house

Edgar Lee Masters (1868 – 1950)

Alexander Throckmorton

Aner Clute

Conrad Siever

Fiddler Jones

Silas Dement

Tom Beatty

Roka (1868 – 1927)

Winter rain deepens

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935)

Amaryllis

An Old Story

Haunted House

John Evereldown

Karma

Mr. Flood’s Party

Reuben Bright

Richard Cory

Souvenir

Supremacy

The Dead Village

The Growth of “Lorraine”

The Mill

The Pity of the Leaves

The Sheaves

The Tavern

Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900)

In the desert

W.H. Davies (1871 – 1940)

Leisure

Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)

“Out, Out—”

A Brook in the City

A Dream Pang

A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey’s Ears, and Some Books

A Late Walk

After Apple-Picking

An Old Man’s Winter Night

Birches

Death of the Hired Man

Fire and Ice

For Once, Then, Something

Good-by and Keep Cold

Home Burial

In a Disused Graveyard

Into My Own

Mending Wall

Misgiving

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Storm Fear

The Aim was Song

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things

The Onset

The Road Not Taken

The Vantage Point

The Wood-Pile

Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925)

A Decade

New Heavens for Old

Patterns

Robert Service (1874 – 1958)

Just Think!

Lost

My Madonna

On the Wire

The Ballad of Pious Pete

The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin

The Cremation of Sam McGee

The Shooting of Dan McGrew

The Smoking Frog

The Soldier of Fortune

The Wee Shop

Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946)

from Idem the Same, A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson, A Very Valentine

Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967)

Last Answers

The Junk Man

To Know Silence Perfectly

Vachel Lindsay (1879 – 1931)

The Horrid Voice of Science

Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)

The Snow Man

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Marjorie Allen Seiffert (1881 – 1968)

Cubist Portrait

William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

Danse Russe

The Act

The Last Words of My English Grandmother

The Red Wheelbarrow

The Three Graces

To Mark Anthony in Heaven

This is Just to Say

Tract

Sara Teasdale (1884 – 1933)

There will come soft rains

D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

From The Ship of Death

New Year’s Eve

Snake

Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

A Pact

Francesca

In a Station of the Metro

Lustra (from the Introduction)

Tame Cat

Salutation

The Eyes

The Garden

The Plunge

The Tree

Louis Untermeyer (1885 – 1972)

Long Feud

Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915)

The Soldier

Robinson Jeffers (1887 – 1962)

Fawn’s Foster-Mother

Joyce Kilmer (1887 – 1918)

Trees

Marianne Moore (1887 – 1972)

I May, I Might, I Must

Injudicious Gardening

Poetry

To a Steam Roller

T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Hysteria

Anna Akhmatova (1889 – 1966)

Requiem – Instead of a Preface

Archibald MacLeish (1892 – 1982)

Ars Poetica

Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950)

First Fig

Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918)

Dulce et Decorum Est

Lucian Blaga (1895 – 1961)

I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders

Miyazawa Kenji (1896 – 1933)

Daydreaming on the Trail

Louise Bogan (1897 – 1970)

from Beginning and End—Knowledge

Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1960)

from Wanderings — Chapter Heading

Wen I-to (1899 – 1946)

Dead Water

Anonymous

The Anvil—God’s Word

Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967)

Dream Deferred: Harlem

Evil

Maybe

Suicide’s Note

Stevie Smith (1902 – 1983)

Not Waving but Drowning

Sunt Leones

W.H. Auden (1907 – 1973)

Dichtung and Wahrheit

From Selected Shorts

Marginalia (Extracts)

Zawgee (1907 – 1973)

The Way of the Water-Hyacinth

Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979)

Filling Station

In the Waiting Room

One Art

Sestina

The Armadillo

May Swenson (1913 – 1989)

A Couple

David Ignatow (1914 – 1997)

The Bagel

Randall Jarrell (1914 – 1965)

Bats

Next Day

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

William Stafford (1914 – 1993)

Traveling Through the Dark

Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953)

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Robert Lax (1915 – 2000)

Alley Violinist

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 – 2000)

A Song in the Front Yard

The Boy Died in my Alley

Robert Lowell (1917 – 1977)

Reading Myself

Keith Douglas (1920 – 1944)

Vergissmeinnicht

Howard Nemerov (1920 – 1991)

Gyroscope

Money

Snowflakes

Hayden Carruth (b. 1921)

Little Citizen, Little Survivor

Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

A Summer Morning

Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985)

An Arundel Tomb

Talking In Bed

This Be the Verse

James Dickey (1923 – 1997)

The Heaven of Animals

The Sheep Child

Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003)

How We Heard the Name

Love Song: I and Thou

Denise Levertov (1923 – 1997)

Consulting the Oracle

From a Plane

Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)

Imaginary Paintings

Reader

Silence and Dancing

The Story

Widow

Roberto Juarroz (1925 – 1995)

Any movement kills something

Donald Justice (1925 – 2004)

American Sketches

In Bertram’s Garden

Carolyn Kizer (b. 1925)

Bitch

The Ashes

Robert Creeley (1926 – 2005)

Heaven

I Know a Man

I’ll Win

Old Days

Place (“There’s a Way out”)

Thanksgiving’s Done

Galway Kinnell (b. 1927)

St. Francis and the Sow

James Wright (1927 – 1980)

A Blessing

Beginning

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Irving Feldman (b. 1928)

The Dream

Donald Hall (b. 1928)

My mother said

Names of Horses

The Porcelain Couple

Philip Levine (b. 1928)

Belle Isle, 1949

Sweet Will

Anne Sexton (1928 – 1974)

Her Kind

from The Death of the Fathers: 2.How We Danced

With Mercy for the Greedy

Thom Gunn (1929 – 2004)

Still Life

The Reassurance

Dan Pagis (1930 – 1986)

Conversation

Izet Sarajlic (b. 1930)

Luck in Sarajevo

Gary Snyder (b. 1930)

Axe Handles

What you should know to be a poet

Derek Walcott (b. 1930)

Love after Love

Miller Williams (b. 1930)

Listen

Etheridge Knight (1931 – 1991)

The Idea of Ancestry

The Warden Said to Me the Other Day

Tanikawa Shuntaro (b. 1931)

A Rudimentary Explanation of an Ideal Poem

from With Silence My Companion

From My Father’s Death

The Naif

Adrian Mitchell (b. 1932)

A Puppy Called Puberty

Heberto Padilla (1932 – 2000)

Landscapes

Alden Nowlan (1933 – 1983)

An Exchange of Gifts

It’s Good To Be Here

Weakness

Richard Shelton (b. 1933)

The Bus to Veracruz

The Stones

Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) (b. 1934)

“Wise I”

Rutger Kopland (b. 1934)

Natzweiler

Mark Strand (b. 1934)

Eating Poetry

Keeping Things Whole

Reading in Place

Paul Zimmer (b. 1934)

Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against the Blackboard

David R. Slavitt (b. 1935)

Titanic

C.K. Williams (b. 1936)

My Fly

The Dance

Gail Mazur (b. 1937)

In Houston

Diane Wakoski (b. 1937)

George Washington and the Loss of His Teeth

Robert Phillips (b. 1938)

Instrument of Choice

Charles Simic (b. 1938)

Country Fair

Fork

Northern Exposure

Prodigy

The Old World

Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)

Manet’s Olympia

Miss July Grows Older

Variations on the Word Sleep

You Fit Into Me

Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)

A Dream of Jealousy

Clearances

Punishment

Requiem for the Croppies

The Haw Lantern (Dedication)

Ted Kooser (b. 1939)

At the Office Early

Selecting a Reader

David Budbill (b. 1940)

Dilemma

The Three Goals

Thomas M. Disch (b. 1940)

The Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act

Robert Pinsky (b. 1940)

Shirt

Billy Collins (b. 1941)

Budapest

Forgetfulness

Introduction to Poetry

Nightclub

Not Touching

Passengers

Purity

Questions About Angels

Toi Derricotte (b. 1941)

Allen Ginsberg

Stephen Dobyns (b. 1941)

Tomatoes

Eamon Grennan (b. 1941)

Detail

Gerald Locklin (b. 1941)

Late Registration

Jack Myers (b. 1941)

Jake Addresses the World from the Garden

Nancy Vieira Couto (b. 1942)

Living in the La Brea Tar Pits

Stuart Dybek (b. 1942)

Brass Knuckles

Maroon

B. H. Fairchild (b. 1942)

The Dumka

Tom Hennen (b. 1942)

Soaking Up Sun

The Life of a Day

David Huddle (b. 1942)

Holes Commence Falling

Louis Jenkins (b. 1942)

A Place for Everything

William Matthews (1942 – 1997)

A Poetry Reading at West Point

Onions

Sharon Olds (b. 1942)

I Go Back to May 1937

Once

Quake Theory

Satan Says

The Pope’s Penis

The Promise

The Space Heater

Dave Smith (b. 1942)

Pulling a Pig’s Tail

Wreck in the Woods

Sharon Bryan (b. 1943)

Beyond Recall

Philip Schultz ((b. 1945)

The Answering Machine

Ronald Wallace (b. 1945)

Thirteen

Tom Wayman (b. 1945)

Did I Miss Anything?

Adam Zagajewski (b. 1945)

Electric Elegy

Moment

Andrei Codrescu (b. 1946)

Defense of the meek

Two fragments from Three Types of Loss, Part 3

Larry Levis (1946 – 1996)

The Poem You Asked For

Brian Patten (b. 1946)

Party Piece

Maura Stanton (b. 1946)

Living Apart

Lorna Goodison (b. 1947)

Birth Stone

Kaylin Haught (b. 1947)

God Says Yes to Me

Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947)

Blackberries

Camouflaging the Chimera

Facing It

Ode to the Maggot

Heather McHugh (b. 1948)

What He thought

Agha Shahid Ali (1949 – 2001)

The Dacca Gauzes

Mark Halliday (b. 1949)

Get It Again

Population

Robert Hedin (b. 1949)

The Old Liberators

Joyce Sutphen (b. 1949)

Living in the Body

Bruce Weigl (b. 1949)

What Saves Us

Claribel Alegria (b. 1950)

Documentary

Charles Bernstein (b. 1950)

Of Time and the Line

Jorie Graham (b. 1950)

Salmon

Michael Pettit (b. 1950)

Driving Lesson

Brigit Pegeen Kelly (b. 1951)

The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery

Timothy Russell (b. 1951)

In Simili Materia

Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (b. 1952)

Ceist na Teangan (The Language Issue)

Sean O’Brien (b. 1952)

Rain

Shu Ting (b. 1952)

Assembly Line

Mark Irwin (b. 1953)

Woolworth’s

Richard Jones (b. 1953)

Certain People

Leaving Town after the Funeral

The Bell

Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed

Robert Kinsley (b. 1953)

A Walk Along the Old Tracks

Mark Turpin (b. 1953)

Before Groundbreak

Don Fargo & Sons

Jobsite Wind

Pickwork

Poem

Waiting for Lumber

Kevin Hart (b. 1954)

The Room

Molly Fisk (b. 1955)

Intrigue

On the Disinclination to Scream

The Dry Tortugas

William Roetzheim (b. 1955)

Response to Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”

Fading into Background

Stretch Marks

Opera Season

Shadow Friends

Dean Young (b. 1955)

Only One of My Deaths

Mark Cox (b. 1956)

Geese

Style

Jim Daniels (b. 1956)

Wheels

Gu Gheng (1956 – 1993)

Ark

Li-Young Lee (b. 1957)

Eating Together

Persimmons

Julia Kasdorf (b. 1962)

What I Learned from My Mother

Ruth L. Schwartz (b. 1962)

The Swan at Edgewater Park

Patience Agbabi (b. 1965)

Transformatrix

Kate Clanchy (b. 1965)

War Poetry

David Berman (b. 1967)

Snow

Jackleen Holton (b. 1969)

American History

Free

Jane Flanders (b. 1984)

The House that Fear Built: Warsaw, 1943

Appendix A Notes on Meter

Index by Author

Index by Title

Index by Subject

Index to Translations

Index of First Lines

Index Pointing To Audio CD

Index Pointing From Audio CD

Acknowledgements

Footnotes

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Ch146

Ch146-Fn2

Ch147

Ch147-Fn1

Ch147-Fn1

Ch148

Ch148-Fn2

Ch148-Fn1

Ch148-Fn1

Ch148-Fn2

Ch149

Ch149-Fn1

Ch150

Ch150-Fn1

Ch151

Ch151-Fn2

Ch151-Fn1

Ch151-Fn2

Ch152

Ch152-Fn1

Ch152-Fn1

Ch153

Ch153-Fn1

Ch154

Ch154-Fn1

Ch155

Ch155-Fn1

Ch155-Fn2

Ch155-Fn1

Ch156

Ch156-Fn1

Ch157

Ch157-Fn1

Ch158

Ch158-Fn1

Ch158-Fn1

Ch159

Ch159-Fn1

Ch160

Ch160-Fn1

Ch161

Ch161-Fn1

Ch162

Ch162-Fn2

Ch162-Fn1

Ch162-Fn2

Ch162-Fn1

Ch162-Fn1

Ch163

Ch163-Fn1

Ch163-Fn1

Ch163-Fn1

Ch163-Fn1

Ch164

Ch164-Fn2

Ch164-Fn1

Ch164-Fn2

Ch164-Fn1

Ch165

Ch165-Fn2

Ch165-Fn3

Ch165-Fn1

Ch166

Ch166-Fn1

Ch166-Fn2

Ch167

Ch167-Fn1

Ch168

Ch168-Fn1

Ch169

Ch169-Fn1

Ch169-Fn2

Ch169-Fn1

Ch169-Fn1

Ch169-Fn1

Ch169-Fn1

Ch169-Fn1

Ch169-Fn1

Ch170

Ch170-Fn1

Ch171

Ch171-Fn1

Ch172

Ch172-Fn1

Ch173

Ch173-Fn1

Ch174

Ch174-Fn2

Ch175

Ch175-Fn1

Ch176

Ch176-Fn1

Ch176-Fn1

Ch177

Ch177-Fn2

Ch178

Ch178-Fn1

Ch178-Fn2

Ch179

Ch179-Fn1

Ch180

Ch180-Fn1

Ch181

Ch181-Fn2

Ch181-Fn1

Ch182

Ch182-Fn1

Ch182-Fn1

Ch182-Fn2

Ch182-Fn1

Ch182-Fn1

Ch182-Fn2

Ch182-Fn1

Ch183

Ch183-Fn1

Ch183-Fn1

Ch184

Ch184-Fn1

Ch185

Ch185-Fn1

Ch186

Ch186-Fn1

Ch187

Ch187-Fn1

Ch188

Ch188-Fn1

Ch188-Fn1

Ch189

Ch189-Fn1

Ch189-Fn2

Ch190

Ch190-Fn1

Ch191

Ch191-Fn1

Ch192

Ch192-Fn1

Ch193

Ch193-Fn2

Ch194

Ch194-Fn1

Ch195

Ch195-Fn1

Ch195-Fn1

Ch195-Fn1

Ch195-Fn1

Ch196

Ch196-Fn2

Ch197

Ch197-Fn1

Ch198

Ch198-Fn1

Ch198-Fn1

Ch199

Ch199-Fn1

Ch200

Ch200-Fn1

Ch201

Ch201-Fn1

Ch202

Ch202-Fn1

Ch203

Ch203-Fn1

Ch204

Ch204-Fn1

Ch205

Ch205-Fn1

Ch206

Ch206-Fn1

Ch207

Ch207-Fn1

Ch208

Ch208-Fn1

Ch209

Ch209-Fn2

Ch210

Ch210-Fn1

Ch211

Ch211-Fn1

Ch212

Ch212-Fn1

Ch212-Fn2

Ch212-Fn3

Ch212-Fn4

Ch213

Ch213-Fn1

Ch214

Ch214-Fn1

Ch214-Fn2

Ch214-Fn1

Ch214-Fn1

Ch214-Fn1

Ch214-Fn2

Ch215

Ch215-Fn1

Ch216

Ch216-Fn2

Ch216-Fn1

Ch216-Fn1

Ch217

Ch217-Fn1

Ch217-Fn1

Ch217-Fn2

Ch217-Fn1

Ch217-Fn1

Ch218

Ch218-Fn2

Ch219

Ch219-Fn1

Ch219-Fn1

Ch220

Ch220-Fn1

Ch221

Ch221-Fn1

Ch222

Ch222-Fn2

Ch222-Fn1

Ch223

Ch223-Fn1

Ch224

Ch224-Fn1

Ch225

Ch225-Fn1

Ch226

Ch226-Fn2

Ch227

Ch227-Fn1

Ch228

Ch228-Fn1

Ch228-Fn1

Ch229

Ch229-Fn1