Art poems
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The Painter
© John Ashbery
Sitting between the sea and the buildings
He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.
Men Say They Know Many Things
© Henry David Thoreau
Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings, —
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.
Sunflower Sutra
© Allen Ginsberg
I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.
The Shipwreck Of Idomeneus
© George Meredith
Amid the din of elemental strife,
No voice may pierce but Deity supreme:
And Deity supreme alone can hear,
Above the hurricane's discordant shrieks,
The cry of agonized humanity.
Things
© Louis Simpson
A man stood in the laurel tree
Adjusting his hands and feet to the boughs.
He said, “Today I was breaking stones
On a mountain road in Asia,
Eight Variations
© Weldon Kees
1.
Prurient tapirs gamboled on our lawns,
But that was quite some time ago.
Now one is accosted by asthmatic bulldogs,
Sluggish in the hedges, ruminant.
from The Testament of Love
© John Hall Wheelock
from Book I, Introduction
Man’s Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense,
Guinevere
© Alfred Tennyson
`Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
Bel Canto
© Kenneth Koch
The sun is high, the seaside air is sharp,
And salty light reveals the Mayan School.
Written For My Son, And Spoken By Him, At A public Examination For Victors.
© Mary Barber
Boys of a brutal, cruel Disposition,
Should go to Spain, to serve the Inquisition.
O what a Change in Landlords would appear!
Next Age, not one would rack his Tenants here.
An Essay on Criticism: Part 2
© Alexander Pope
Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts
(As most in manners) by a love to parts.
The Pleasures of Imagination: Book The Fourth
© Mark Akenside
One effort more, one cheerful sally more,
Our destin'd course will finish. and in peace
Hymn To Energy
© Arthur Symons
God is; and because life omnipotent
Gives birth to life, or of itself must die,
The Choosing Of Valentines
© Thomas Nashe
It was the merie moneth of Februarie,
When yong men, in their iollie roguerie,
Rose earelie in the morne fore breake of daie,
To seeke them valentines soe trimme and gaie;
The Pleasures of Hope: Part 1
© Thomas Campbell
At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering bills below,
Paradise Lost: Book XI (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
He added not, for Adam at the newes
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.
Paradise Lost: Book IX
© Patrick Kavanagh
So gloz'd the Tempter, and his proem tun'd.
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamaz'd, she thus in answer spake:
