Work poems
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The Sorcerer: Act II
© William Schwenck Gilbert
Scene-Exterior of Sir Marmaduke's mansion by moonlight. All the
peasantry are discovered asleep on the ground, as at the end
of Act I.
Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur
© Alfred Tennyson
That story which the bold Sir Bedivere,
First made and latest left of all the knights,
Told, when the man was no more than a voice
In the white winter of his age, to those
With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.
Well, You Needn’t
© William Matthews
Rather than hold his hands properly
arched off the keys, like cats
with their backs up,
Monk, playing block chords,
hit the keys with his fingertips well
above his wrists,
The Raggedy Man
© James Whitcomb Riley
O the Raggedy Man! He works fer Pa;
An' he's the goodest man ever you saw!
Bricks and Straw
© Edwin Morgan
My desk is cleared of the litter of ages;
Before me glitter the fair white pages;
The Pleasures of Imagination: Book The Second
© Mark Akenside
Till all its orbs and all its worlds of fire
Be loosen'd from their seats; yet still serene,
The unconquer'd mind looks down upon the wreck;
And ever stronger as the storms advance,
Firm through the closing ruin holds his way,
Where nature calls him to the destin'd goal.
The Ghost in the Martini
© Anthony Evan Hecht
Over the rim of the glass
Containing a good martini with a twist
I eye her bosom and consider a pass,
Certain we’d not be missed
The Ivy Green
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth oer ruins old!
A Terror is More Certain . . .
© Bob Kaufman
A terror is more certain than all the rare desirable popular songs I
know, than even now when all of my myths have become . . . , & walk
around in black shiny galoshes & carry dirty laundry to & fro, & read
great books & don’t know criminals intimately, & publish fat books of
Australia To England
© John Farrell
What of the years of Englishmen?
What have they brought of growth and grace
An Essay on Criticism: Part 1
© Alexander Pope
But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a critic'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.
The Windy City [sections 1 and 6]
© Carl Sandburg
Early the red men gave a name to the river,
the place of the skunk,
the river of the wild onion smell,
Shee-caw-go.
Nymphidia, The Court Of Fairy
© Michael Drayton
Old Chaucer doth of Thopas tell,
Mad Rabelais of Pantagruel,
Lines In Memory Of Edmund Morris
© Duncan Campbell Scott
How shall we transmit in tendril-like images,
The tenuous tremor in the tissues of ether,
Before the round of colour buds like the dome of a shrine,
The preconscious moment when love has fluttered in the bosom,
Before it begins to ache?
Paradise Regain'd: Book III (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
SO spake the Son of God, and Satan stood
A while as mute confounded what to say,
Paradise Lost: Book IX (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
To whom the Virgin Majestie of Eve,
As one who loves, and some unkindness meets,
With sweet austeer composure thus reply'd,
The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar’s House
© Howard Nemerov
The painter’s eye follows relation out.
His work is not to paint the visible,
He says, it is to render visible.
Faded pictures
© William Vaughn Moody
NLY two patient eyes to stare
Out of the canvas. All the rest-
