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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.


== Elements of Poetry ==
Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss

Anglo Saxon Riddles

->

Shakespeare

The Metaphysicals

-.>

British Ballads

American Ballads

The Romantics

The Moderns

American Pop Standards

The Postmoderns: Billy Collins;

70s singer-songwriter lyricism and the underground canon;

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





Prophetic speech
Prophetic speech


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


[[Emergency Poems]]
== 1. Teaching with Dr. Seuss ==
== Canons of English Poetry ==


==== Anglo Saxons ====


==== Middle English ====


==== Tudor & Elizabethan ====


==== Baroque ====


==== Augustan ====


==== Graveyard Poets ====
- - -


==== Sensibility ====


==== Romantics ====
To a Waterfowl


==== Victorians ====
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT


==== Transcendentalists, New England & Gothic Americans ====
The Bridge: A Poem


==== Pre-Raphaelites & Arts and Crafts Poets ====
Hart Crane


==== Decadents & Fin-de-Siècle ====
A Martian Sends a Postcard Home


==== War Poets & Georgians, Imagists & Modernists ====
Craig Raine


==== British Surrealism ====
The Task


==== Postwar Poets ====
William Cowper


==== The Postmodern Academics ====
God's Grandeur
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.


==== American Pop Lyricism ====
The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord
Rock n roll, 70s singer-songwriter lyricism and the underground canon, art pop, the bohemian bourgeois


Rap
Pied Beauty


Independent Rock
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


Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400)
Tennyson - Tithonus


To Althea, From Prison - Richard Lovelace


John Gower (1330–1408)
The Widow's Lament in Springtime; Spring and All


William Carlos Williams


Thomas Hoccleve (1368–1426)
The Collar


George Herbert


John Lydgate (1370–1451)
Easter-Wings


George Herbert


Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time


BY ROBERT HERRICK


Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–1547)
La Belle Dame sans Merci, Ode to A Nightingale - Keats


The Passionate Shepherd to His Love


George Gascoigne (1534–1577)
Christopher Marlowe


The Darkling Thrush


Edmund Spenser (1552–1599)
Thomas Hardy


This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison


Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)
Frost at Midnight


Samuel Taylor Coleridge


William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Anecdote of the Jar


Wallace Stevens


Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
The White Man's Burden


Rudyard Kipling


Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)
The Blessed Damozel - Dante Gabriel Rossetti


The Deserted Village


Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
Oliver Goldsmith


For the Union Dead


Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
Robert Lowell


Ars Poetica


John Donne (1572–1631)
BY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH


When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer


George Chapman (1559–1634)
A Noiseless Patient Spider


I Hear America Singing


Thomas Campion (1567–1620)
Walt Whitman


Mac Flecknoe


Aemilia Lanyer (1569–1645)
John Dryden


To an Athlete Dying Young


Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
A. E. Housman


Thanatopsis


George Herbert (1593–1633)
William Cullen Bryant


A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal


Richard Lovelace (1617–1657)
William Wordsworth


Church Going


Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
Philip Larkin


The Sick Rose


Henry Vaughan (1621–1695)
William Blake


Miniver Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Robinson


Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)
The Canonization


John Donne


Katherine Philips (1632–1664)
The New Colossus


Emma Lazarus


John Milton (1608–1674)
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley


Ezra Pound


John Dryden (1631–1700)


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


Anne Finch (1661–1720)
I’m rushing in the darkness, in the glacial desert,


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


Matthew Prior (1664–1721)
Just the summer lightning flashed out in the distance,


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


Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
Just the heart discerns now the faint and distant echo


Of the thunder bursting, just the eyes see flickers


Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
Of the distant light, that flashed for just a moment,


Like the stars that flare up in the nighttime mist…


Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762)
And again, - in darkness, in the glacial desert...


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


James Thomson (1700–1748)
But the moon will surface – it will not deceive me.


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


Edward Young (1683–1765)
July 1898 (May 1918)


Foreseeing you, as years are passing by –


Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
Your image is unchanged in my perception.


I cannot bear the lucid, blazing sky,


Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
And so I wait – in love and in dejection.


The sky is blazing, - you will soon appear,


William Collins (1721–1759)
But how I fear: You image will be changed,


And the suspicion you’ll evoke will be austere,


Christopher Smart (1722–1771)
Your features will appear to me as strange.


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


Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)
Defeated by the fatal dream, deranged!


How lucid is the sky! The radiance is close.


William Cowper (1731–1800)
But how I fear: your image will be changed.


July 4, 1901


George Crabbe (1754–1832)
Mandelstam - S


The careful muffled sound of fruit


Robert Burns (1759–1796)
That plummets, broken from a tree,


Amid the constant melody


William Blake (1757–1827)
Of the deep silence of the wood…


1908


Mary Robinson (1757–1800)
- Jacobus Revius


No, it was not the Jews who crucified,


Charlotte Smith (1749–1806)
Nor who betrayed you in the judgment place,


Nor who, Lord Jesus, spat into your face,


Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
Nor who with buffets struck you as you died.


No, it was not the soldiers fisted bold


William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
Who lifted up the hammer and the nail,


Or raised the cursed cross on Calvary’s hill,


Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)
Or, gambling, tossed the dice to win your robe.


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


Lord Byron (1788–1824)
I am the heavy cross you had to bear,


I am the rope that bound you to the tree,


Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
The whip, the nail, the hammer, and the spear,


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


John Keats (1795–1821)
It was my sin, alas, it was for me.


- Daniil Kharms


Felicia Hemans (1793–1835)
The Red-Haired Man


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


Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838)
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.


Thomas Hood (1799–1845)
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.


Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
In fact it's better that we don't say any more about him.


- Mayakovsky


Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)
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.


Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.


I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams


Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.


And, as they say, the incident is closed.


Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.


Now you and I are quits. Why bother then


Robert Browning (1812–1889)
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.


Behold what quiet settles on the world.


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.


In hours like these, one rises to address


Emily Brontë (1818–1848)
The ages, history, and all creation.


- Edward Taylor (1600s, american)


Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
I Am The Living Bread: Meditation Eight: John 6:51


I kening through Astronomy Divine


Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
The Worlds bright Battlement, wherein I spy


A Golden Path my Pensill cannot line,


Herman Melville (1819–1891)
From that bright Throne unto my Threshold ly.


And while my puzzled thoughts about it pore


Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)
I finde the Bread of Life in’t at my doore.


When that this Bird of Paradise put in


Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)
This Wicker Cage (my Corps) to tweedle praise


Had peckt the Fruite forbad: and so did fling


Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)
Away its Food; and lost its golden dayes;


It fell into Celestiall Famine sore:


William Morris (1834–1896)
And never could attain a morsell more.


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


Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
The Creatures field no food for Souls e’re gave.


And if thou knock at Angells dores they show


Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
An Empty Barrell: they no soul bread have.


Alas! Poore Bird, the Worlds White Loafe is done


Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
And cannot yield thee here the smallest Crumb.


In this sad state, Gods Tender Bowells run


A. E. Housman (1859–1936)
Out streams of Grace: And he to end all strife


The Purest Wheate in Heaven, his deare-dear Son


Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
Grinds, and kneads up into this Bread of Life.


Which Bread of Life from Heaven down came and stands


Francis Thompson (1859–1907)
Disht on thy Table up by Angells Hands.


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


Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)
Which from his Table came, and to thine goeth?


Doth he bespeake thee thus, This Soule Bread take.


William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
Come Eate thy fill of this thy Gods White Loafe?


Its Food too fine for Angells, yet come, take


Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)
And Eate thy fill. Its Heavens Sugar Cake.


What Grace is this knead in this Loafe? This thing


Lionel Johnson (1867–1902)
Souls are but petty things it to admire.


Yee Angells, help: This fill would to the brim


John Davidson (1857–1909)
Heav’ns whelm’d-down Chrystall meele Bowle, yea and higher.


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


Laurence Binyon (1869–1943)
Eate, Eate me, Soul, and thou shalt never dy.


Edward Taylor


Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
Meditation Twenty


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


T. E. Hulme (1883–1917)
View, all ye eyes above, this sight which flings


Seraphick Phancies in Chill Raptures high:


Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939)
A Turffe of Clay, and yet bright Glories King:


From dust to Glory Angell-like to fly.


T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)
A Mortall Clod immortaliz’d behold,


Flyes through the skies swifter than Angells could.


Marianne Moore (1887–1972)
Upon the Wings he of the Winde rode in


His Bright Sedan, through all the Silver Skies,


H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886–1961)
And made the Azure Cloud, his Charriot, bring


Him to the Mountain of Celestiall joyes.


William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
The Prince o’ th’ Aire durst not an Arrow spend,


While through his Realm his Charriot did ascend.


Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931)
He did not in a Fiery Charriot’s shine,


And Whirlewinde, like Elias upward goe.


Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)
But th’golden Ladders Jasper rounds did climbe


Unto the Heavens high from Earth below.


Robert Frost (1874–1963)
Each step had on a Golden Stepping Stone


Of Deity unto his very Throne.


Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
Methinks I see Heavens sparkling Courtiers fly,


In flakes of Glory down him to attend;


John Masefield (1878–1967)
And heare Heart Cramping notes of Melody


Surround his Charriot as it did ascend:


Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)
Mixing their Musick, making e’vry strong


More to inravish, as they this tune sing.


Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)
God is Gone up with a triumphant shout:


The Lord with sounding Trumpets melodies:


Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
Sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praises out,


Unto our King sing praise seraphick-wise!


Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918)
Lift up your Heads, ye lasting Doore, they sing,


And let the King of Glory Enter in.


Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
Art thou ascended up on high, my Lord,


And must I be without thee here below?


Hart Crane (1899–1932)
Art thou the sweetest joy the Heavens afford?


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


The Metaphysicals
Should I pluck Feathers from an Angells Wing,


-.>
They could not waft me up to thee my King.


British Ballads
Lend mee thy Wings, my Lord, I’st fly apace,


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


The Romantics
My Quills then Feather with thy Saving Grace,


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


Then I shall fly up to thy glorious Throne


With my strong Wings whose Feathers are thine own.


Preface To God's Determinations Touching His Elect


Infinity, when all things it beheld


- - -
In Nothing, and of Nothing all did build,

Upon what base was fixed the lath wherein

He turned this globe and rigalled it so trim?

Who blew the bellows of His furnace vast?

Or held the mold wherein the world was cast?

Who laid its cornerstone? Or whose command?

Where stand the pillars upon which it stands?

Who laced and filleted the earth so fine,

With rivers like green ribbons smaragdine?

Who made the seas its selvedge and it locks

Like a quilt ball within a silver box?

Who spread its canopy? Or curtains spun?

Who in this bowling alley bowled the sun?

Who made it always when it rises set,

To go at once both down, and up to get?

Who the curtain rods made for this tapestry?

Who hung the twinkling lanterns in the sky?

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

It's only Might Almighty this did do.

His hand hath made this noble work which stands,

His glorious handiwork not made by hands.

Who spake all things from nothing; and with ease.

Can speak all things to nothing, if He please.

Whose little finger at His pleasure can

Out mete ten thousand worlds with half a span:

Whose Might Almighty can by half a looks

Root up the rocks and rock the hills by the roots.

Can take this mighty world up in His hand,

And shake it like a squitchen or a wand.

Whose single frown will make the heavens shake

Like as an aspen-leaf the wind makes quake.

Oh, what a might is this Whose single frown

Doth shake the world as it would shake it down?

Which All on Nothing fet, from Nothing, All:

Hath All on Nothing set, lts Nothing fall.

Gave All to nothing-man indeed, whereby

Through nothing-man all might him glorify.

In Nothing then embossed the brightest gem

More precious than all preciousness in them.

But nothing-man did throw down all by sin:

And darkened that lightsome gem in him.

That now his brightest diamond is grown

Darker by far than any coal-pit stone.

Preparatory Meditations - First Series: 29

(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.

Revision as of 05:08, 1 October 2025

[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.

Elements of Poetry

Dr. Seuss


Prophetic speech

Smash Glass for Poems

In case of emergency, break open this list:

Emergency 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

Decadents & Fin-de-Siècle

War Poets & Georgians, Imagists & Modernists

British Surrealism

Postwar Poets

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.

American Pop Lyricism

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

Rap

Independent Rock



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)


Anne Finch (1661–1720)


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)

Shakespeare

The Metaphysicals

-.>

British Ballads

American Ballads

The Romantics

The Moderns



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