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Before we can get to poetry's fundamental role in reshaping not just human society but man's relationship to God and the cosmos, it's good to appreciate play with sound and symbol for their own sake.
Before we can get to poetry's fundamental role in reshaping not just human society but man's relationship to God and the cosmos, it's good to appreciate play with sound and symbol for their own sake.


== Lessons in Elemental Poetry ==
Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss


Anglo Saxon Riddles
Riddles


Reading Meters
->


Metaphors, Conceits & Allegories
Shakespeare


Alliteration
The Metaphysicals


Consonance & Assonance
-.>


Synecdoche & Metonymy
British Ballads


Hyperbole & Subtlety
American Ballads


Personification
The Romantics


Voice
The Moderns


Imagery
American Pop Standards


Utterance
The Postmoderns: Billy Collins;


Haiku
70s singer-songwriter lyricism and the underground canon;


Ballad
And yes, Rap, the only major living form of popular social poetry


Lyric


Elegies & Odes


Pastorals
Prophetic speech


Sonnets


Couplets & Epigrams
== 1. Teaching with Dr. Seuss ==


Translation


Epic


Prophecy


For young men: how to talk to women in riddles and poems and tell them that they're beautiful in the proper way


== Lessons in Reading ==
Anglo Saxons


Chaucer
- - -


Shakespeare


John Donne
To a Waterfowl


Edmund Spenser
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT


John Milton
The Bridge: A Poem

Hart Crane

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

Craig Raine

The Task

William Cowper

God's Grandeur

The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord

Pied Beauty

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Homes of England, by Felicia Hemans

Upon Appleton House - Marvell

Among Schoolchildren; Easter, 1916; Sailing to Byzantium; The Wild Swans at Coole- Yeats

Tennyson - Tithonus

To Althea, From Prison - Richard Lovelace

The Widow's Lament in Springtime; Spring and All

William Carlos Williams

The Collar


George Herbert
George Herbert


William Blake
Easter-Wings

George Herbert

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

BY ROBERT HERRICK

La Belle Dame sans Merci, Ode to A Nightingale - Keats

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Christopher Marlowe

The Darkling Thrush

Thomas Hardy

This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison

Frost at Midnight


Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge


John Keats
Anecdote of the Jar


William Butler Yeats
Wallace Stevens


T.S. Eliot
The White Man's Burden


== Smash Glass for Poems ==
Rudyard Kipling
In case of emergency, break open this list:


[[Emergency Poems]]
The Blessed Damozel - Dante Gabriel Rossetti


[[Silly Poems]]
The Deserted Village


[[Aesthetic Poems]]
Oliver Goldsmith
== Canons of English Poetry ==


==== Anglo Saxons ====
For the Union Dead


==== Middle English ====
Robert Lowell


==== Tudor & Elizabethan ====
Ars Poetica


==== Baroque ====
BY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH


==== Augustan ====
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer


==== Graveyard Poets ====
A Noiseless Patient Spider


==== Sensibility ====
I Hear America Singing


==== Romantics ====
Walt Whitman


==== Victorians ====
Mac Flecknoe


==== Transcendentalists, New England & Gothic Americans ====
John Dryden


==== Pre-Raphaelites & Arts and Crafts Poets ====
To an Athlete Dying Young


==== Child Ballads ====
A. E. Housman


==== Decadents & Fin-de-Siècle ====
Thanatopsis


==== War Poets & Georgians, Imagists & Modernists ====
William Cullen Bryant


==== British Surrealism ====
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal


==== Postwar Poets ====
William Wordsworth
'''American Folk Songs'''


==== The Postmodern Academics ====
Church Going
After World War II, poetry became regulated through the university credential apparatus. As such, it rapidly lost almost all social relevance and vanished from public life except for those who participate in the carefully sterilized environment of the academy.


[[William Logan]]
Philip Larkin


[[Bill Knott]]
The Sick Rose


William Blake
William Stafford


Robert Bly
Miniver Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Robinson


James Tate - Worshipful Company of Fletchers (book), Thomas Lux, David Shapiro, Robert Pinksy
The Canonization


John Donne


The New Colossus


Soft suburban: Billy Collins, Charles Harper Webb, Stephen Dunn, C.K. Williams, John Koethe, David St. John, Ron Padgett, Robert Wrigley, Jim Daniels, Dean Young
Emma Lazarus
==== Anglo-American Pop Lyricism ====
Rock n roll, 70s singer-songwriter lyricism and the underground canon, art pop, the bohemian bourgeois


Rap
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley


Independent Rock
Ezra Pound




== Poems to Perform rather than analyze ==
Alexander Blok


== Basic List of English Poets ==
I’m rushing in the darkness, in the glacial desert,


A moon is shining somewhere? Somewhere, there’s a sun?


Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400)
Just the summer lightning flashed out in the distance,


Flashed – and quickly faded, died down in the dark,


John Gower (1330–1408)
Just the heart discerns now the faint and distant echo


Of the thunder bursting, just the eyes see flickers


Thomas Hoccleve (1368–1426)
Of the distant light, that flashed for just a moment,


Like the stars that flare up in the nighttime mist…


John Lydgate (1370–1451)
And again, - in darkness, in the glacial desert...


A moon is shining somewhere? Somewhere, there’s a sun?


Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)
But the moon will surface – it will not deceive me.


But the sun will rise soon – greeted by the heart.


Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–1547)
July 1898 (May 1918)


Foreseeing you, as years are passing by –


George Gascoigne (1534–1577)
Your image is unchanged in my perception.


I cannot bear the lucid, blazing sky,


Edmund Spenser (1552–1599)
And so I wait – in love and in dejection.


The sky is blazing, - you will soon appear,


Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)
But how I fear: You image will be changed,


And the suspicion you’ll evoke will be austere,


William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Your features will appear to me as strange.


How I’ll collapse – so low and so morose,


Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
Defeated by the fatal dream, deranged!


How lucid is the sky! The radiance is close.


Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)
But how I fear: your image will be changed.


July 4, 1901


Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
Mandelstam - S


The careful muffled sound of fruit


Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
That plummets, broken from a tree,


Amid the constant melody


John Donne (1572–1631)
Of the deep silence of the wood…


1908


George Chapman (1559–1634)
- Jacobus Revius


No, it was not the Jews who crucified,


Thomas Campion (1567–1620)
Nor who betrayed you in the judgment place,


Nor who, Lord Jesus, spat into your face,


Aemilia Lanyer (1569–1645)
Nor who with buffets struck you as you died.


No, it was not the soldiers fisted bold


Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
Who lifted up the hammer and the nail,


Or raised the cursed cross on Calvary’s hill,


George Herbert (1593–1633)
Or, gambling, tossed the dice to win your robe.


I am the one, O Lord, who brought you there,


Richard Lovelace (1617–1657)
I am the heavy cross you had to bear,


I am the rope that bound you to the tree,


Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
The whip, the nail, the hammer, and the spear,


The blood-stained crown of thorns you had to wear:


Henry Vaughan (1621–1695)
It was my sin, alas, it was for me.


- Daniil Kharms


Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)
The Red-Haired Man


There was a red-haired man who had no eyes or ears.


Katherine Philips (1632–1664)
Neither did he have any hair, so he was called red-haired theoretically.


He couldn't speak, since he didn't have a mouth. Neither did he have a nose.


John Milton (1608–1674)
He didn't even have any arms or legs. He had no stomach and he had no back and he had no spine and he had no innards whatsoever. He had nothing at all!


Therefore there's no knowing whom we are even talking about.


John Dryden (1631–1700)
In fact it's better that we don't say any more about him.


Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)
- Mayakovsky


This poem was found among Mayakovsky’s papers after his suicide on April 14, 1930. He had used the middle section, with slight changes, as an epilogue to his suicide note.


Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.


Matthew Prior (1664–1721)
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.


I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams


Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.


And, as they say, the incident is closed.


Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.


Now you and I are quits. Why bother then


Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762)
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.


Behold what quiet settles on the world.


James Thomson (1700–1748)
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.


In hours like these, one rises to address


Edward Young (1683–1765)
The ages, history, and all creation.


- Edward Taylor (1600s, american)


Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
I Am The Living Bread: Meditation Eight: John 6:51


I kening through Astronomy Divine


Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
The Worlds bright Battlement, wherein I spy


A Golden Path my Pensill cannot line,


William Collins (1721–1759)
From that bright Throne unto my Threshold ly.


And while my puzzled thoughts about it pore


Christopher Smart (1722–1771)
I finde the Bread of Life in’t at my doore.


When that this Bird of Paradise put in


Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)
This Wicker Cage (my Corps) to tweedle praise


Had peckt the Fruite forbad: and so did fling


William Cowper (1731–1800)
Away its Food; and lost its golden dayes;


It fell into Celestiall Famine sore:


George Crabbe (1754–1832)
And never could attain a morsell more.


Alas! alas! Poore Bird, what wilt thou doe?


Robert Burns (1759–1796)
The Creatures field no food for Souls e’re gave.


And if thou knock at Angells dores they show


William Blake (1757–1827)
An Empty Barrell: they no soul bread have.


Alas! Poore Bird, the Worlds White Loafe is done


Mary Robinson (1757–1800)
And cannot yield thee here the smallest Crumb.


In this sad state, Gods Tender Bowells run


Charlotte Smith (1749–1806)
Out streams of Grace: And he to end all strife


The Purest Wheate in Heaven, his deare-dear Son


Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
Grinds, and kneads up into this Bread of Life.


Which Bread of Life from Heaven down came and stands


William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
Disht on thy Table up by Angells Hands.


Did God mould up this Bread in Heaven, and bake,


Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)
Which from his Table came, and to thine goeth?


Doth he bespeake thee thus, This Soule Bread take.


Lord Byron (1788–1824)
Come Eate thy fill of this thy Gods White Loafe?


Its Food too fine for Angells, yet come, take


Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
And Eate thy fill. Its Heavens Sugar Cake.


What Grace is this knead in this Loafe? This thing


John Keats (1795–1821)
Souls are but petty things it to admire.


Yee Angells, help: This fill would to the brim


Felicia Hemans (1793–1835)
Heav’ns whelm’d-down Chrystall meele Bowle, yea and higher.


This Bread of Life dropt in thy mouth, doth Cry.


Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838)
Eate, Eate me, Soul, and thou shalt never dy.


Edward Taylor


Thomas Hood (1799–1845)
Meditation Twenty


Philippians II: 9: Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him.


Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
View, all ye eyes above, this sight which flings


Seraphick Phancies in Chill Raptures high:


Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)
A Turffe of Clay, and yet bright Glories King:


From dust to Glory Angell-like to fly.


Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
A Mortall Clod immortaliz’d behold,


Flyes through the skies swifter than Angells could.


Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
Upon the Wings he of the Winde rode in


His Bright Sedan, through all the Silver Skies,


Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
And made the Azure Cloud, his Charriot, bring


Him to the Mountain of Celestiall joyes.


Robert Browning (1812–1889)
The Prince o’ th’ Aire durst not an Arrow spend,


While through his Realm his Charriot did ascend.


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
He did not in a Fiery Charriot’s shine,


And Whirlewinde, like Elias upward goe.


Emily Brontë (1818–1848)
But th’golden Ladders Jasper rounds did climbe


Unto the Heavens high from Earth below.


Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
Each step had on a Golden Stepping Stone


Of Deity unto his very Throne.


Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
Methinks I see Heavens sparkling Courtiers fly,


In flakes of Glory down him to attend;


Herman Melville (1819–1891)
And heare Heart Cramping notes of Melody


Surround his Charriot as it did ascend:


Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)
Mixing their Musick, making e’vry strong


More to inravish, as they this tune sing.


Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)
God is Gone up with a triumphant shout:


The Lord with sounding Trumpets melodies:


Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)
Sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praises out,


Unto our King sing praise seraphick-wise!


William Morris (1834–1896)
Lift up your Heads, ye lasting Doore, they sing,


And let the King of Glory Enter in.


Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
Art thou ascended up on high, my Lord,


And must I be without thee here below?


Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
Art thou the sweetest joy the Heavens afford?


Oh! that I with thee was! What shall I do?


Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
Should I pluck Feathers from an Angells Wing,


They could not waft me up to thee my King.


A. E. Housman (1859–1936)
Lend mee thy Wings, my Lord, I’st fly apace,


My Soules Arms stud with thy strong Quills, true Faith;


Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
My Quills then Feather with thy Saving Grace,


My Wings will take the Winde thy Word displai’th.


Francis Thompson (1859–1907)
Then I shall fly up to thy glorious Throne


With my strong Wings whose Feathers are thine own.


Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)
Preface To God's Determinations Touching His Elect


Infinity, when all things it beheld


William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
In Nothing, and of Nothing all did build,


Upon what base was fixed the lath wherein


Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)
He turned this globe and rigalled it so trim?


Who blew the bellows of His furnace vast?


Lionel Johnson (1867–1902)
Or held the mold wherein the world was cast?


Who laid its cornerstone? Or whose command?


John Davidson (1857–1909)
Where stand the pillars upon which it stands?


Who laced and filleted the earth so fine,


Laurence Binyon (1869–1943)
With rivers like green ribbons smaragdine?


Who made the seas its selvedge and it locks


Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
Like a quilt ball within a silver box?


Who spread its canopy? Or curtains spun?


T. E. Hulme (1883–1917)
Who in this bowling alley bowled the sun?


Who made it always when it rises set,


Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939)
To go at once both down, and up to get?


Who the curtain rods made for this tapestry?


T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)
Who hung the twinkling lanterns in the sky?


Who? Who did this? Or who is He? Why, know


Marianne Moore (1887–1972)
It's only Might Almighty this did do.


His hand hath made this noble work which stands,


H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886–1961)
His glorious handiwork not made by hands.


Who spake all things from nothing; and with ease.


William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
Can speak all things to nothing, if He please.


Whose little finger at His pleasure can


Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931)
Out mete ten thousand worlds with half a span:


Whose Might Almighty can by half a looks


Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)
Root up the rocks and rock the hills by the roots.


Can take this mighty world up in His hand,


Robert Frost (1874–1963)
And shake it like a squitchen or a wand.


Whose single frown will make the heavens shake


Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
Like as an aspen-leaf the wind makes quake.


Oh, what a might is this Whose single frown


John Masefield (1878–1967)
Doth shake the world as it would shake it down?


Which All on Nothing fet, from Nothing, All:


Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)
Hath All on Nothing set, lts Nothing fall.


Gave All to nothing-man indeed, whereby


Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)
Through nothing-man all might him glorify.


In Nothing then embossed the brightest gem


Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
More precious than all preciousness in them.


But nothing-man did throw down all by sin:


Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918)
And darkened that lightsome gem in him.


That now his brightest diamond is grown


Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
Darker by far than any coal-pit stone.


Preparatory Meditations - First Series: 29


Hart Crane (1899–1932)
(John. 20:17. My Father, and your Father, to my God, and your God)


My shattered fancy stole away from me


(Wits run a-wooling over Eden's park)


And in God's garden saw a golden tree,


- - -
Whose heart was all divine, and gold its bark.

Whose glorious limbs and fruitful branches strong

With saints and angels bright are richly hung.

Thou! Thou! my dear dear Lord, art this rich tree,

The tree of life within God's Paradise.

I am a withered twig, dried fit to be

A chat cast in Thy fire, writh off by vice.

Yet if Thy milk-white gracious hand will take me

And graft me in this golden stock, Thou'lt make me.

Thou'lt make me then its fruit, and branch to spring,

And though a nipping east wind blow, and all

Hell's nymphs with spite their dog's sticks therat ding

To dash the graft off, and its fruits to fall,

Yet I shall stand Thy graft, and fruits that are

Fruits of the tree of life Thy graft shall bear.

I being graft in Thee, there up do stand

In us relations all that mutual are.

I am Thy patient, pupil, servant, and

Thy sister, mother, dove, spouse, son, and heir.

Thou art my priest, physician, prophet, king,

Lord, brother, bridegroom, father, everything.

I being graft in Thee I am grafted here

Into Thy family, and kindred claim

To all in heaven, God, saints, and angels there.

I Thy relations my relations name.

Thy father's mine, Thy God my God, and I

With saints and angels draw affinity.

My Lord, what is it that Thou dost bestow?

The praise on this account fills up, and throngs

Eternity brimful, doth overflow

The heavens vast with rich angelic songs.

How should I blush? How tremble at this thing,

Not having yet my gam-ut learned to sing.

But, Lord, as burnished sunbeams forth out fly,

Let angel-shine forth in my life outflame,

That I may grace Thy graceful family

And not to Thy relations be a shame.

Make me Thy graft, be Thou my golden stock.

Thy glory then I'll make my fruits and crop.

Upon a Spider Catching a Fly

BY EDWARD TAYLOR

Thou sorrow, venom Elfe:

      Is this thy play,

To spin a web out of thyselfe

      To Catch a Fly?

            For Why?

I saw a pettish wasp

      Fall foule therein:

Whom yet thy Whorle pins did not clasp

      Lest he should fling

            His sting.

But as affraid, remote

      Didst stand hereat,

And with thy little fingers stroke

      And gently tap

            His back.

Thus gently him didst treate

      Lest he should pet,

And in a froppish, aspish heate

      Should greatly fret

            Thy net.

Whereas the silly Fly,

      Caught by its leg

Thou by the throate tookst hastily

      And 'hinde the head

            Bite Dead.

This goes to pot, that not

      Nature doth call.

Strive not above what strength hath got,

      Lest in the brawle

            Thou fall.

This Frey seems thus to us.

      Hells Spider gets

His intrails spun to whip Cords thus

      And wove to nets

            And sets.

To tangle Adams race

      In's stratigems

To their Destructions, spoil'd, made base

      By venom things,

            Damn'd Sins.

But mighty, Gracious Lord

      Communicate

Thy Grace to breake the Cord, afford

      Us Glorys Gate

            And State.

We'l Nightingaile sing like

      When pearcht on high

In Glories Cage, thy glory, bright,

      And thankfully,

            For joy.

Tennyson:

excerpt from A Princess Canto VII:

     'Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:

   What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)

   In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?

   But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease

   To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,

   To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;

   And come, for love is of the valley, come,

   For love is of the valley, come thou down

   And find him; by the happy threshold, he,

   Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,

   Or red with spirted purple of the vats,

   Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk

   With Death and Morning on the silver horns,

   Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,

   Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,

   That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls

   To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:

   But follow; let the torrent dance thee down

   To find him in the valley; let the wild

   Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave

   The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill

   Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,

   That like a broken purpose waste in air:

   So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales

   Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth

   Arise to thee; the children call, and I

   Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,

   Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;

   Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,

   The moan of doves in immemorial elms,

   And murmuring of innumerable bees.'

Ulysses

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

         This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

         There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Dino Campana (translated by A.Z. Foreman)

Unto the ghostly garden unto the laurels mute

Of the green garlands

Unto the autumn land

One last salute!

Out to the dried hillsides

Reddened hard in the terminal sun

Confounded into grumbles

Gruff life afar is crying:

Crying to the dying sun that sheds

A blood that dyes the flowerbeds.

A brass band plays

Ear-piercingly away: the river fades

Out amidst the gilded sands: in the quiet

The great white statues stand at the bridgehead

Turned: and what was once is now no more.

And from the depths of quiet as it were a chorus

Soft and splendorous

Yearns its way to the heights of my terrace:

And in an air of laurel,

In an air of laurel languorous and blade-bare,

Among the statues immortal under sundown

She appears to me, is there.

-

To Althea, from Prison (1642)

When love with unconfined wings

Hovers within my gates,

And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at the grates;

When I lie tangled in her hair

And fettered to her eye,

The birds that wanton in the air

Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round,

With no allaying Thames,

Our careless heads with roses bound,

Our hearts with loyal flames;

When thirsty grief in wine we steep,

When healths and draughts go free,

Fishes that tipple in the deep

Know no such liberty.

When like committed linnets I

With shriller throat shall sing

The sweetness, mercy, majesty,

And glories of my King:

When I shall voice aloud how good

He is, how great should be,

Enlarged winds, that curl the flood,

Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage:

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage.

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone, that soar above,

Enjoy such liberty.

-

The City of Dreadful Night

BY JAMES THOMSON (BYSSHE VANOLIS)

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: All was black,

In heaven no single star, on earth no track;

A brooding hush without a stir or note,

The air so thick it clotted in my throat;

And thus for hours; then some enormous things

Swooped past with savage cries and clanking wings:

      But I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire

Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire;

The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath

Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death;

Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold

Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold:

      But I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Lo you, there,

That hillock burning with a brazen glare;

Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow

Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro;

A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell

For Devil's roll-call and some fête of Hell:

      Yet I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Meteors ran

And crossed their javelins on the black sky-span;

The zenith opened to a gulf of flame,

The dreadful thunderbolts jarred earth's fixed frame:

The ground all heaved in waves of fire that surged

And weltered round me sole there unsubmerged:

      Yet I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Air once more,

And I was close upon a wild sea-shore;

Enormous cliffs arose on either hand,

The deep tide thundered up a league-broad strand;

White foambelts seethed there, wan spray swept and flew;

The sky broke, moon and stars and clouds and blue:

      And I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: On the left

The sun arose and crowned a broad crag-cleft;

There stopped and burned out black, except a rim,

A bleeding eyeless socket, red and dim;

Whereon the moon fell suddenly south-west,

And stood above the right-hand cliffs at rest:

      Still I strode on austere;

      No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: From the right

A shape came slowly with a ruddy light;

A woman with a red lamp in her hand,

Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand;

O desolation moving with such grace!

O anguish with such beauty in thy face.

      I fell as on my bier,

      Hope travailed with such fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: I was twain,

Two selves distinct that cannot join again;

One stood apart and knew but could not stir,

And watched the other stark in swoon and her;

And she came on, and never turned aside,

Between such sun and moon and roaring tide:

      And as she came more near

      My soul grew mad with fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Hell is mild

And piteous matched with that accursèd wild;

A large black sign was on her breast that bowed,

A broad black band ran down her snow-white shroud;

That lamp she held was her own burning heart,

Whose blood-drops trickled step by step apart;

      The mystery was clear;

      Mad rage had swallowed fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: By the sea

She knelt and bent above that senseless me;

Those lamp-drops fell upon my white brow there,

She tried to cleanse them with her tears and hair;

She murmured words of pity, love, and woe,

She heeded not the level rushing flow:

      And mad with rage and fear,

      I stood stonebound so near.

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: When the tide

Swept up to her there kneeling by my side,

She clasped that corpse-like me, and they were borne

Away, and this vile me was left forlorn;

I know the whole sea cannot quench that heart,

Or cleanse that brow, or wash those two apart:

      They love; their doom is drear,

      Yet they nor hope nor fear;

But I, what do I here?

-

In Spite of Wrath

Corroded helmets, dead horseshoes!

But through the fire and the horseshoe

as from a wellspring illuminated

by murky blood,

along with the metal thrust home in the holocaust

a light fell over the earth:

number, name, line and structure

Pages of water, clear power

of murmuring tongues, sweet drops

worked like clusters,

platinum syllables in the tenderness

of dew-streaked breasts,

and a classic diamond mouth

gave its snowy brilliance to the land

In the distance the statue asserted

its dead marble,

and in the spring

of the world, machinery dawned.

Technique erected its dominion

and time became speed and a flash

on the banner of the merchants.

Moon of geography

that discovered plant and planet

extending geometric beauty

in its unfolding movement.

Asia handed up its virginal scent.

Intelligence, with a frozen thread,

followed behind blood, spinning out the day.

The paper called for the distribution of the naked honey

kept in the darkness.

A pigeon-house

flight was flushed from the painting

in sunset-cloud-red and ultramarine blue.

And the tongues of men were joined

in the first wrath, before song.

Thus; with the sanguinary

titan of stone,

infuriated falcon,

came not blood but wheat.

Light came despite the daggers.

Taken from "Selected Poems" by Pablo Neruda

-

THE LAND OF STORY BOOKS

Robert Louis Stevenson

At evening when the lamp is lit,

Around the fire my parents sit;

They sit at home and talk and sing,

And do not play at anything.

Now, with my little gun, I crawl

All in the dark along the wall,

And follow round the forest track

Away behind the sofa back.

There, in the night, where none can spy,

All in my hunter’s camp I lie,

And play at books that I have read

Till it is time to go to bed.

These are the hills, these are the woods,

These are my starry solitudes;

And there the river by whose brink

The roaring lions come to drink.

I see the others far away

As if in firelit camp they lay,

And I, like to an Indian scout,

Around their party prowled about.

So, when my nurse comes in for me,

Home I return across the sea,

And go to bed with backward looks

At my dear Land of Story Books.

Latest revision as of 01:28, 3 June 2026

[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]


Poetry is currently separate from the rest of the literature curriculum because it is undeniably insular. Most poems are not about worldview or history or narrative or society. Poetry is about itself and perpetual things: God, life and death, sex, aging, the seasons. (Poems that do directly speak to history and society are included in the history curriculum.)

This curriculum is intended to initiate students into that rarest of traits: genuine appreciation of poetry.

I hated poetry in middle school and the lights did not flash on until I was in college. Thank you, Dr. Grieser. I began to read poetry voraciously, and compose on occasion.

Because of this, I don't expect young students to have aesthetic appreciation for fine letters. This curriculum might be better suited for someone in upper secondary or college who somehow has been struck by words and wants to understand what has just happened to them.

Before we can get to poetry's fundamental role in reshaping not just human society but man's relationship to God and the cosmos, it's good to appreciate play with sound and symbol for their own sake.

Lessons in Elemental Poetry

Dr. Seuss

Riddles

Reading Meters

Metaphors, Conceits & Allegories

Alliteration

Consonance & Assonance

Synecdoche & Metonymy

Hyperbole & Subtlety

Personification

Voice

Imagery

Utterance

Haiku

Ballad

Lyric

Elegies & Odes

Pastorals

Sonnets

Couplets & Epigrams

Translation

Epic

Prophecy

For young men: how to talk to women in riddles and poems and tell them that they're beautiful in the proper way

Lessons in Reading

Anglo Saxons

Chaucer

Shakespeare

John Donne

Edmund Spenser

John Milton

George Herbert

William Blake

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

John Keats

William Butler Yeats

T.S. Eliot

Smash Glass for Poems

In case of emergency, break open this list:

Emergency Poems

Silly Poems

Aesthetic Poems

Canons of English Poetry

Anglo Saxons

Middle English

Tudor & Elizabethan

Baroque

Augustan

Graveyard Poets

Sensibility

Romantics

Victorians

Transcendentalists, New England & Gothic Americans

Pre-Raphaelites & Arts and Crafts Poets

Child Ballads

Decadents & Fin-de-Siècle

War Poets & Georgians, Imagists & Modernists

British Surrealism

Postwar Poets

American Folk Songs

The Postmodern Academics

After World War II, poetry became regulated through the university credential apparatus. As such, it rapidly lost almost all social relevance and vanished from public life except for those who participate in the carefully sterilized environment of the academy.

William Logan

Bill Knott

William Stafford

Robert Bly

James Tate - Worshipful Company of Fletchers (book), Thomas Lux, David Shapiro, Robert Pinksy


Soft suburban: Billy Collins, Charles Harper Webb, Stephen Dunn, C.K. Williams, John Koethe, David St. John, Ron Padgett, Robert Wrigley, Jim Daniels, Dean Young

Anglo-American Pop Lyricism

Rock n roll, 70s singer-songwriter lyricism and the underground canon, art pop, the bohemian bourgeois

Rap

Independent Rock


Basic List of English Poets

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400)


John Gower (1330–1408)


Thomas Hoccleve (1368–1426)


John Lydgate (1370–1451)


Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)


Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–1547)


George Gascoigne (1534–1577)


Edmund Spenser (1552–1599)


Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)


William Shakespeare (1564–1616)


Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)


Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)


Michael Drayton (1563–1631)


Ben Jonson (1572–1637)


John Donne (1572–1631)


George Chapman (1559–1634)


Thomas Campion (1567–1620)


Aemilia Lanyer (1569–1645)


Robert Herrick (1591–1674)


George Herbert (1593–1633)


Richard Lovelace (1617–1657)


Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)


Henry Vaughan (1621–1695)


Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)


Katherine Philips (1632–1664)


John Milton (1608–1674)


John Dryden (1631–1700)

Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)


Matthew Prior (1664–1721)


Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)


Alexander Pope (1688–1744)


Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762)


James Thomson (1700–1748)


Edward Young (1683–1765)


Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)


Thomas Gray (1716–1771)


William Collins (1721–1759)


Christopher Smart (1722–1771)


Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)


William Cowper (1731–1800)


George Crabbe (1754–1832)


Robert Burns (1759–1796)


William Blake (1757–1827)


Mary Robinson (1757–1800)


Charlotte Smith (1749–1806)


Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)


William Wordsworth (1770–1850)


Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)


Lord Byron (1788–1824)


Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)


John Keats (1795–1821)


Felicia Hemans (1793–1835)


Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838)


Thomas Hood (1799–1845)


Thomas Moore (1779–1852)


Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)


Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)


Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)


Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)


Robert Browning (1812–1889)


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)


Emily Brontë (1818–1848)


Walt Whitman (1819–1892)


Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)


Herman Melville (1819–1891)


Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)


Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)


Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)


William Morris (1834–1896)


Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)


Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)


Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)


A. E. Housman (1859–1936)


Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)


Francis Thompson (1859–1907)


Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)


William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)


Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)


Lionel Johnson (1867–1902)


John Davidson (1857–1909)


Laurence Binyon (1869–1943)


Ezra Pound (1885–1972)


T. E. Hulme (1883–1917)


Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939)


T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)


Marianne Moore (1887–1972)


H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886–1961)


William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)


Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931)


Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)


Robert Frost (1874–1963)


Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)


John Masefield (1878–1967)


Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)


Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)


Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)


Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918)


Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)


Hart Crane (1899–1932)



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