Positive poems

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The Evenlode

© Hilaire Belloc

Torture will give a dozen pence or more
To keep a drab from bawling at his door.
The public taste is quite a different thing-
Torture is positively paid to sing.

The Yak

© Hilaire Belloc

As a friend to the children
Commend me the Yak.
You will find it exactly the thing:
It will carry and fetch, you can ride on its back,
Or lead it about with a string.

To Jeoffry His Cat

© Christopher Smart

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.

For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily

from Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, lines 695-768

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.

Jubilate Agno: Fragment B, Part 4

© Christopher Smart

Tho' toad I am the object of man's hate.
Yet better am I than a reprobate. who has the worst of prospects.
For there are stones, whose constituent particles are little toads.

For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry (excerpt, Jubilate Agno)

© Christopher Smart

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.

January 2

© David Lehman

The old war is over the new one has begun
between drivers and pedestrians on a Friday
in New York light is the variable and structure
the content according to Rodrigo Moynihan's

Marriage

© Marianne Clarke Moore

This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind

A Song Of Winter Weather

© Robert William Service

It isn't the foe that we fear;
It isn't the bullets that whine;
It isn't the business career
Of a shell, or the bust of a mine;

Blake's Sunflower

© Elizabeth Smart

1Why did Blake say
'Sunflower weary of time'?
Every time I see them
they seem to say

Bishop Blougram's Apology

© Robert Browning

So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs.
No deprecation,--nay, I beg you, sir!
Beside 't is our engagement: don't you know,
I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out,
We'd see truth dawn together?--truth that peeps
Over the glasses' edge when dinner's done,

The Hammers

© Amy Lowell

I
Frindsbury, Kent, 1786
Bang!
Bang!

The Monks Of Catalonia

© Jean de La Fontaine

TO you, my friends, allow me to detail,
The feats of monks in Catalonia's vale,
Where oft the holy fathers pow'rs displayed,
And showed such charity to wife and maid,
That o'er their minds sweet fascination reigned,
And made them think, they Paradise had gained.

Aurora Leigh (excerpts)

© Elizabeth Barrett Browning

[Book 1]
I am like,
They tell me, my dear father. Broader brows
Howbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowth

God's Funeral

© Thomas Hardy

I
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

An Essay On Criticism

But you who seek to give and merit Fame,
And justly bear a Critick's noble Name,
Be sure your self and your own Reach to know.
How far your Genius, Taste, and Learning go;
Launch not beyond your Depth, but be discreet,
And mark that Point where Sense and Dulness meet.