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Eclogue 4: Pollio
© Publius Vergilius Maro
Muses of Sicily, essay we now
A somewhat loftier task! Not all men love
Coppice or lowly tamarisk: sing we woods,
Woods worthy of a Consul let them be.
Fame
© Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
HAVE I played fellowship with night, to see
The allied armies break our gates at dawn
The Isles Of Sleep.
© Robert Crawford
The opiate isles upon time's sea
In the dream-dark
Rise with their harbours silently
Before each day-abandoned bark,
To Sir George Howland Beaumont, Bart From the South-West Coast Or Cumberland 1811
© William Wordsworth
FAR from our home by Grasmere's quiet Lake,
From the Vale's peace which all her fields partake,
Here on the bleakest point of Cumbria's shore
We sojourn stunned by Ocean's ceaseless roar;
The Pet-Lamb
© William Wordsworth
THE dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink;
I heard a voice; it said, "Drink, pretty creature, drink!"
And, looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied
A snow-white mountain-lamb with a Maiden at its side.
Birth Story -- English Translation
© Rabindranath Tagore
The kid asks his mum,
From where did I come,
Monte Cassino. Terra Di Lavoro. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Fourth)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Beautiful valley! through whose verdant meads
Unheard the Garigliano glides along;--
The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,
The river taciturn of classic song.
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,
from The Shepheardes Calender: April
© Edmund Spenser
THENOT & HOBBINOLL
Tell me good Hobbinoll, what garres thee greete?
What? hath some Wolfe thy tender Lambes ytorne?
Or is thy Bagpype broke, that soundes so sweete?
Or art thou of thy loved lasse forlorne?
What Light Destroys
© Andrew Hudgins
Today I’m thinking of St. Paul—St. Paul,
who orders us, Be perfect. He could have said,
A Supermarket in California
© Allen Ginsberg
What thoughts I have of you tonight Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
Creole
© Robert Pinsky
I’m tired of the gods, I’m pious about the ancestors: afloat
In the wake widening behind me in time, the restive devisers.
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!
Hotel Lautréamont
© John Ashbery
1.
Research has shown that ballads were produced by all of society
working as a team. They didn’t just happen. There was no guesswork.
The people, then, knew what they wanted and how to get it.
We see the results in works as diverse as “Windsor Forest” and “The Wife of Usher’s Well.”
Killing Him: A Radio Play
© John Wesley
LISTEN TO THE RADIO PLAY
JOE, a doctoral candidate in literature
RACHEL, his fiancée
POET/CRITIC
The Child Of The Islands - Autumn
© Caroline Norton
I.
BROWN Autumn cometh, with her liberal hand
Binding the Harvest in a thousand sheaves:
A yellow glory brightens o'er the land,
The Newspaper Man
© Edgar Albert Guest
Bit of a priest and a bit of sailor,
Bit of a doctor and bit of a tailor,
Duke
© Richard Jones
He was hit back of the head for a haul of $15,
a Diner’s Club Card and picture of his daughter in a helmet
on a horse tethered to a pole that centered
its revolving universe. Pacing the halls, he’d ask
