Emergency Poems
To a Waterfowl
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
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
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
Anecdote of the Jar
Wallace Stevens
The White Man's Burden
Rudyard Kipling
The Blessed Damozel - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Deserted Village
Oliver Goldsmith
For the Union Dead
Robert Lowell
Ars Poetica
BY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
A Noiseless Patient Spider
I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman
Mac Flecknoe
John Dryden
To an Athlete Dying Young
A. E. Housman
Thanatopsis
William Cullen Bryant
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
William Wordsworth
Church Going
Philip Larkin
The Sick Rose
William Blake
Miniver Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Canonization
John Donne
The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Ezra Pound
Poems to Perform rather than analyze
Alexander Blok
I’m rushing in the darkness, in the glacial desert,
A moon is shining somewhere? Somewhere, there’s a sun?
Just the summer lightning flashed out in the distance,
Flashed – and quickly faded, died down in the dark,
Just the heart discerns now the faint and distant echo
Of the thunder bursting, just the eyes see flickers
Of the distant light, that flashed for just a moment,
Like the stars that flare up in the nighttime mist…
And again, - in darkness, in the glacial desert...
A moon is shining somewhere? Somewhere, there’s a sun?
But the moon will surface – it will not deceive me.
But the sun will rise soon – greeted by the heart.
July 1898 (May 1918)
Foreseeing you, as years are passing by –
Your image is unchanged in my perception.
I cannot bear the lucid, blazing sky,
And so I wait – in love and in dejection.
The sky is blazing, - you will soon appear,
But how I fear: You image will be changed,
And the suspicion you’ll evoke will be austere,
Your features will appear to me as strange.
How I’ll collapse – so low and so morose,
Defeated by the fatal dream, deranged!
How lucid is the sky! The radiance is close.
But how I fear: your image will be changed.
July 4, 1901
Mandelstam - S
The careful muffled sound of fruit
That plummets, broken from a tree,
Amid the constant melody
Of the deep silence of the wood…
1908
- Jacobus Revius
No, it was not the Jews who crucified,
Nor who betrayed you in the judgment place,
Nor who, Lord Jesus, spat into your face,
Nor who with buffets struck you as you died.
No, it was not the soldiers fisted bold
Who lifted up the hammer and the nail,
Or raised the cursed cross on Calvary’s hill,
Or, gambling, tossed the dice to win your robe.
I am the one, O Lord, who brought you there,
I am the heavy cross you had to bear,
I am the rope that bound you to the tree,
The whip, the nail, the hammer, and the spear,
The blood-stained crown of thorns you had to wear:
It was my sin, alas, it was for me.
- Daniil Kharms
The Red-Haired Man
There was a red-haired man who had no eyes or ears.
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.
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.
In fact it's better that we don't say any more about him.
- 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.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.
- Edward Taylor (1600s, american)
I Am The Living Bread: Meditation Eight: John 6:51
I kening through Astronomy Divine
The Worlds bright Battlement, wherein I spy
A Golden Path my Pensill cannot line,
From that bright Throne unto my Threshold ly.
And while my puzzled thoughts about it pore
I finde the Bread of Life in’t at my doore.
When that this Bird of Paradise put in
This Wicker Cage (my Corps) to tweedle praise
Had peckt the Fruite forbad: and so did fling
Away its Food; and lost its golden dayes;
It fell into Celestiall Famine sore:
And never could attain a morsell more.
Alas! alas! Poore Bird, what wilt thou doe?
The Creatures field no food for Souls e’re gave.
And if thou knock at Angells dores they show
An Empty Barrell: they no soul bread have.
Alas! Poore Bird, the Worlds White Loafe is done
And cannot yield thee here the smallest Crumb.
In this sad state, Gods Tender Bowells run
Out streams of Grace: And he to end all strife
The Purest Wheate in Heaven, his deare-dear Son
Grinds, and kneads up into this Bread of Life.
Which Bread of Life from Heaven down came and stands
Disht on thy Table up by Angells Hands.
Did God mould up this Bread in Heaven, and bake,
Which from his Table came, and to thine goeth?
Doth he bespeake thee thus, This Soule Bread take.
Come Eate thy fill of this thy Gods White Loafe?
Its Food too fine for Angells, yet come, take
And Eate thy fill. Its Heavens Sugar Cake.
What Grace is this knead in this Loafe? This thing
Souls are but petty things it to admire.
Yee Angells, help: This fill would to the brim
Heav’ns whelm’d-down Chrystall meele Bowle, yea and higher.
This Bread of Life dropt in thy mouth, doth Cry.
Eate, Eate me, Soul, and thou shalt never dy.
Edward Taylor
Meditation Twenty
Philippians II: 9: Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him.
View, all ye eyes above, this sight which flings
Seraphick Phancies in Chill Raptures high:
A Turffe of Clay, and yet bright Glories King:
From dust to Glory Angell-like to fly.
A Mortall Clod immortaliz’d behold,
Flyes through the skies swifter than Angells could.
Upon the Wings he of the Winde rode in
His Bright Sedan, through all the Silver Skies,
And made the Azure Cloud, his Charriot, bring
Him to the Mountain of Celestiall joyes.
The Prince o’ th’ Aire durst not an Arrow spend,
While through his Realm his Charriot did ascend.
He did not in a Fiery Charriot’s shine,
And Whirlewinde, like Elias upward goe.
But th’golden Ladders Jasper rounds did climbe
Unto the Heavens high from Earth below.
Each step had on a Golden Stepping Stone
Of Deity unto his very Throne.
Methinks I see Heavens sparkling Courtiers fly,
In flakes of Glory down him to attend;
And heare Heart Cramping notes of Melody
Surround his Charriot as it did ascend:
Mixing their Musick, making e’vry strong
More to inravish, as they this tune sing.
God is Gone up with a triumphant shout:
The Lord with sounding Trumpets melodies:
Sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praises out,
Unto our King sing praise seraphick-wise!
Lift up your Heads, ye lasting Doore, they sing,
And let the King of Glory Enter in.
Art thou ascended up on high, my Lord,
And must I be without thee here below?
Art thou the sweetest joy the Heavens afford?
Oh! that I with thee was! What shall I do?
Should I pluck Feathers from an Angells Wing,
They could not waft me up to thee my King.
Lend mee thy Wings, my Lord, I’st fly apace,
My Soules Arms stud with thy strong Quills, true Faith;
My Quills then Feather with thy Saving Grace,
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.