Food poems
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Medea in Athens
© Augusta Davies Webster
Dimly I recall
some prophecy a god breathed by my mouth.
It could not err. What was it? For I think;-
it told his death¹.
Dinner In A Quick Lunch Room
© Stephen Vincent Benet
Over the salad let the woodwinds moan;
Then the green silence of many watercresses;
Dessert, a balalaika, strummed alone;
Coffee, a slow, low singing no passion stresses;
Such are my thoughts as - clang! crash! bang! - I brood
And gorge the sticky mess these fools call food!
To a Young Lady, With Some Lampreys
© John Gay
With lovers, twas of old the fashion
By presents to convey their passion;
Passion for Solitude
© Cesare Pavese
The night doesn’t matter. The square patch of sky
whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star
struggles in emptiness, far from all foods,
from all houses, alien. It isn’t enough for itself,
it needs too many companions. Here in the dark, alone,
my body is calm, it feels it’s in charge.
Everyday Characters V - Portrait Of A Lady
© Winthrop Mackworth Praed
IN THE EXHIBITION OP THE ROYAL
ACADEMY
The Enemies
© Elizabeth Jennings
Last night they came across the river and
Entered the city. Women were awake
With lights and food. They entertained the band,
Not asking what the men had come to take
Or what strange tongue they spoke
Or why they came so suddenly through the land.
Under the Greenwood Tree
© William Shakespeare
Vnder the greene wood tree,
who loues to lye with mee,
The Bee's Song
© Julia Ward Howe
Can you read the song
Of the suppliant bee?
'Tis a poet's soul,
Asking liberty.
The Song of a Prison
© Henry Lawson
Tis a song of the weary warders, whom prisoners call the screws
A class of men who I fancy would cleave to the Evening News.
They look after their treasures sadly. By the screw of their keys they are known,
And they screw them many times daily before they draw their own.
Parkinson’s Disease
© Washington Allston
While spoon-feeding him with one hand
she holds his hand with her other hand,
My Beloved Is Mine, And I Am His
© Francis Quarles
EV'N like two little bank-dividing brooks,
That wash the pebbles with their wanton streams,
And having rang'd and search'd a thousand nooks,
Meet both at length in silver-breasted Thames,
Where in a greater current they conjoyn:
So I my best-beloved's am; so he is mine.
I am the Living Bread: Meditation Eight: John 6:51
© Edward Taylor
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.
The Affliction (I)
© George Herbert
When first thou didst entice to thee my heart,
I thought the service brave;
So many joys I writ down for my part,
Besides what I might have
Out of my stock of natural delights,
Augmented with thy gracious benefits.
The Weather-Prophet
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
A Fable.
"WHAT can the matter be with the thermometer?
Is it the sun or the moon or the comet, or
Something broke loose in the old earth's pedometer?"
The Mariner's Cave
© Jean Ingelow
Once on a time there walked a mariner,
That had been shipwrecked;-on a lonely shore,
And the green water made a restless stir,
And a great flock of mews sped on before.
He had nor food nor shelter, for the tide
Rose on the one, and cliffs on the other side.
An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, Considered as the Subject of Poetry
© William Taylor Collins
Home, thou return'st from Thames, whose Naiads long
Have seen thee ling'ring, with a fond delay,
Two Songs Of A Fool
© William Butler Yeats
A speckled cat and a tame hare
Eat at my hearthstone
And seep there;
And both look up to me alone
For learning and defence
As I look up to Providence.
The Demoniac of Gadara
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A GADARENE.
He hath escaped, hath plucked his chains asunder,
And broken his fetters; always night and day
Is in the mountains here, and in the tombs,
Crying aloud, and cutting himself with stones,
Exceeding fierce, so that no man can tame him!
Killing Him: A Radio Play
© John Wesley
LISTEN TO THE RADIO PLAY
JOE, a doctoral candidate in literature
RACHEL, his fiancée
POET/CRITIC
