Great poems
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Morte d'Arthur
© Alfred Tennyson
To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere:
"It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus,
Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm.
A little thing may harm a wounded man.
Yet I thy hest will all perform at full,
Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word."
The Ghost
© Richard Harris Barham
There stands a City,- neither large nor small,
Its air and situation sweet and pretty;
The Sea-Change
© Ernest Christopher Dowson
Where river and ocean meet in a great tempestuous frown,
Beyond the bar, where on the dunes the white-capped rollers break;
Above, one windmill stands forlorn on the arid, grassy down:
I will set my sail on a stormy day and cross the bar and seek
That I have sought and never found, the exquisite one crown,
Which crowns one day with all its calm the passionate and the weak.
The Gardener 38
© Anselm Hollo
My love, once upon a time your poet launched a great epic in his mind.
Living Among the Dead
© William Matthews
To love the dead is easy.
They are final, perfect.
But to love a child
is sometimes to fail at love
while the dead look on
with their abstract sorrow.
Caliban upon Setebos
© Robert Browning
'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.
brothers
© Paul Celan
(being a conversation in eight poems between an aged Lucifer and God, though only Lucifer is heard. The time is long after.)
1
invitation
Chant d'automne (Song Of Autumn)
© Charles Baudelaire
Bientôt nous plongerons dans les froides ténèbres;
Adieu, vive clarté de nos étés trop courts!
J'entends déjà tomber avec des chocs funèbres
Le bois retentissant sur le pavé des cours.
The Book Of The World
© William Henry Drummond
Of this fair volume which we World do name,
If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care,
Essay on Psychiatrists
© Robert Pinsky
It's crazy to think one could describe them—
Calling on reason, fantasy, memory, eyes and ears—
As though they were all alike any more
Song: If you refuse me once, and think again
© Sir John Suckling
If you refuse me once, and think again,
I will complain.
You are deceiv’d, love is no work of art,
It must be got and born,
Not made and worn,
By every one that hath a heart.
Since the Cities are the Cities
© Henry Lawson
FOOLS can parrot-cry the prophet when the proof is close at hand,
And the blind can see the danger when the foe is in the land!
Truth was never cynicism, death or ruins not a joke,
Told-you-so is not a warningPatriotism not a croak.
The Harp, And Despair, Of Cowper
© William Lisle Bowles
Sweet bard, whose tones great Milton might approve,
And Shakspeare, from high Fancy's sphere,
My Grave
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
If, when I die, I must be buried, let
No cemetery engulph me — no lone grot,
The Fight in the Meadow
© Russell Edson
The curtains part: it is a summer’s day. There a cow on a grassy slope watches as a bull charges an old aeroplane in a meadow. The bull is punching holes with its horns in the aeroplane’s fabric...
Suddenly the aeroplane’s engine ignites; the meadow is dark blue smoke...
The aeroplane shifts round and faces the charging bull.
As the bull comes in the propeller takes off the end of its muzzle. The bloody nostrils, a ring through them, are flung to the grass with a shattered blossom of teeth.
Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
© Patrick Kavanagh
Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
Brought to me like Alcestus from the grave,
For love I, too, could die (she said) nor fear it,
© Robert Crawford
Such love as some of the dead queens have had
Whose sorrow matched their beauty. I could bear it,
And I think die too, to have been so glad.
With the sweet wonder in a great light lying
The Princess (part 4)
© Alfred Tennyson
But when we planted level feet, and dipt
Beneath the satin dome and entered in,
There leaning deep in broidered down we sank
Our elbows: on a tripod in the midst
A fragrant flame rose, and before us glowed
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold.
The Suicide
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Last was the wealth I carried in life's pack-
Youth, health, ambition, hope and trust but Time
