Age poems
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Modern Love: XX
© George Meredith
I am not of those miserable males
Who sniff at vice and, daring not to snap,
Mechanism
© Archie Randolph Ammons
Honor a going thing, goldfinch, corporation, tree,
morality: any working order,
Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons
© Diane Wakoski
The relief of putting your fingers on the keyboard,
as if you were walking on the beach
and found a diamond
as big as a shoe;
Shroud of the Gnome
© James Tate
And what amazes me is that none of our modern inventions
surprise or interest him, even a little. I tell him
Thoughtless Cruelty
© Charles Lamb
There, Robert, you have kill'd that fly — ,
And should you thousand ages try
The life you've taken to supply,
You could not do it.
Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
The Cave Painters
© Eamon Grennan
Holding only a handful of rushlight
they pressed deeper into the dark, at a crouch
[Response to the Loyalty Oath]
© Jack Spicer
We, the Research Assistants and Teaching Assistants of the University of California, wish to register our protest against the new loyalty oath for the following reasons.
1) The testing of a University faculty by oath is a stupid and insulting procedure. If this oath is to have the effect of eliminating Communists from the faculty, we might as logically eliminate murderers from the faculty by forcing every faculty member to sign an oath saying that he has never committed murder.
Paradise Lost: Book X
© Patrick Kavanagh
So having said, he thus to Eve in few:
"Say, Woman, what is this which thou hast done?"
To whom sad Eve, with shame nigh overwhelm'd,
Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge
Bold or loquacious, thus abash'd replied,
"The Serpent me beguil'd, and I did eat."
Upon the Hill and Grove at Bilbrough
© Andrew Marvell
TO THE LORD FAIRFAX
See how the archèd earth does here
Beowulf (modern English translation)
© Pierre Reverdy
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
Chomei at Toyama
© Ted Hughes
Swirl sleeping in the waterfall!
On motionless pools scum appearing
disappearing!
To J. S.
© Alfred Tennyson
The wind, that beats the mountain, blows
More softly round the open wold,
And gently comes the world to those
That are cast in gentle mould.
Morning of Drunkenness
© Arthur Rimbaud
O my good! O my beautiful! Atrocious fanfare where I won’t stumble! enchanted rack whereon I am stretched! Hurrah for the amazing work and the marvelous body, for the first time! It began amid the laughter of children, it will end with it. This poison will remain in all our veins even when, as the trumpets turn back, we’ll be restored to the old discord. O let us now, we who are so deserving of these torments! let us fervently gather up that superhuman promise made to our created body and soul: that promise, that madness! Elegance, knowledge, violence! They promised us to bury the tree of good and evil in the shade, to banish tyrannical honesties, so that we might bring forth our very pure love. It began with a certain disgust and ended—since we weren’t able to grasp this eternity all at once—in a panicked rout of perfumes.
Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins, horror in the faces and objects of today, may you be consecrated by the memory of that wake. It began in all loutishness, now it’s ending among angels of flame and ice.
Little eve of drunkenness, holy! were it only for the mask with which you gratified us. We affirm you, method! We don’t forget that yesterday you glorified each one of our ages. We have faith in the poison. We know how to give our whole lives every day.
Behold the time of the Assassins.
The Missionary - Canto Second
© William Lisle Bowles
The night was still and clear, when, o'er the snows,
Andes! thy melancholy Spirit rose,--
A shadow stern and sad: he stood alone,
Upon the topmost mountain's burning cone;
And whilst his eyes shone dim, through surging smoke,
Thus to the spirits of the fire he spoke:--
The Columbiad: Book VIII
© Joel Barlow
On fame's high pinnacle their names shall shine,
Unending ages greet the group divine,
Whose holy hands our banners first unfurl'd,
And conquer'd freedom for the grateful world.
Paradise Regain'd: Book II (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
MEan while the new-baptiz'd, who yet remain'd
At Jordan with the Baptist, and had seen
The Fire
© Robert Laurence Binyon
With beckoning fingers bright
In heaven uplifted, from the darkness wakes,
Upon a sudden, radiant Fire,
And out of slumber shakes
A Sequence of Sonnets on the Death of Robert Browning
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought,
And moulded of unconquerable thought,
And quickened with imperishable flame,
Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought
May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame,
Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name.
