Art poems
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Mark Twain and Joan of Arc
© Vachel Lindsay
When Yankee soldiers reach the barricade
Then Joan of Arc gives each the accolade.For she is there in armor clad, today,
All the young poets of the wide world say.Which of our freemen did she greet the first,
Seeing him come against the fires accurst?Mark Twain, our Chief, with neither smile nor jest,
The Firemen's Ball
© Vachel Lindsay
"Many's the heart that's breaking
If we could read them all
After the ball is over."
The Unpardonable Sin
© Vachel Lindsay
This is the sin against the Holy Ghost:
To speak of bloody power as right divine,
And call on God to guard each vile chief's house,
And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine:
To the True Romance
© Rudyard Kipling
Thy face is far from this our war,
Our call and counter-cry,
I shall not find Thee quick and kind,
Nor know Thee till I die,
A Song of Travel
© Rudyard Kipling
Where's the lamp that Hero lit
Once to call Leander home?
Equal Time hath shovelled it
'Neath the wrack of Greece and Rome.
Neither wait we any more
That worn sail which Argo bore.
An Ode In Time Of Inauguration
© Franklin Pierce Adams
G.W., initial prex,
Right down in Wall Street, New York City,
Took his first oath. Oh, multiplex
The whimsies quaint, the comments witty
One might evolve from that! I scorn
To mock the spot where he was sworn.
Romulus and Remus
© Rudyard Kipling
Oh, little did the Wolf-Child care--
When first he planned his home,
What City should arise and bear
The weight and state of Rome.
Puck's Song
© Rudyard Kipling
See you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
O that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.
The Post That Fitted
© Rudyard Kipling
Ere the seamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged to marry
An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called "my little Carrie."
Sleary's pay was very modest; Sleary was the other way.
Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight poor rupees a day?
An Occasional Prologue, Delivered Previous To The Performance Of 'The Wheel Of Fortune' At A Private
© George Gordon Byron
Since the refinement of this polish'd age
Has swept irnmortal raillery from the stage;
Since taste has now expunged licentious wit,
Which stamp'd disgrace on all an author writ;
The Naulahka
© Rudyard Kipling
Beware the man who's crossed in love;
For pent-up steam must find its vent.
Stand back when he is on the move,
And lend him all the Continent.
Thrasymedes And Eunoe
© Walter Savage Landor
"Ay before all the Gods,
Ay, before Pallas, before Artemis,
Ay, before Aphrodite, before Heré,
I dared; and dare again. Arise, my spouse!
Arise! and let my lips quaff purity
From thy fair open brow."
Metamorphoses: Book The Fourth
© Ovid
The End of the Fourth Book.
Translated into English verse under the direction of
Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,
William Congreve and other eminent hands
The Legend of Mirth
© Rudyard Kipling
The Four Archangels, so the legends tell,
Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Azrael,
Being first of those to whom the Power was shown
Stood first of all the Host before The Throne,
At The Executed Murderer's Grave
© James Wright
6.
Staring politely, they will not mark my face
From any murderer's, buried in this place.
Why should they? We are nothing but a man.
Distant Authors
© Mary Colborne-Veel
Dear books! and each the living soul,
Our hearts aver, of men unseen,
Whose power to strengthen, charm, control,
Surmounts all earth's green miles between.
Aerialist
© Sylvia Plath
Each night, this adroit young lady
Lies among sheets
Shredded fine as snowflakes
Until dream takes her body
From bed to strict tryouts
In tightrope acrobatics.
