The Most Beautiful Poems in the English Language
The Most Beautiful Poems in the English Language
Which poets wrote the most beautiful poems
of all time in the English
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
it will never
pass into nothingness ...
―John Keats
Which is the most beautiful poem of all? Only
you, the reader, can ultimately decide, but I hope to present some very worthy candidates for
your consideration.
I have selected the poems on this page strictly for the beauty of their words
there may be other poems that are more philosophical, more
innovative, etc., but there is something utterly captivating―something
transcendent―about beauty. Also, I think it can be refreshing to put aside all
other criteria and simply contemplate those poems most likely to be &a joy
forever.& The most beautiful poems in the English language,
in my opinion,
include: &Go, Lovely Rose& by
Edmund Waller, &Sweet Rose of Virtue& by William Dunbar, &A Red, Red Rose& by
Robert Burns, &The Darkling Thrush& by Thomas Hardy, &Dover Beach& by Matthew
Arnold, &Song for the Last Act& by Louise Bogan, &To Earthward& by Robert Frost,
&Voyages& by Hart Crane, &Piano& by D. H. Lawrence, &Cradle Song& by William
Blake, &Lullaby& by W. H. Auden, &Bread and Music& by Conrad Aiken, &Sunday
Morning& by Wallace Stevens, &Those Winter Sundays& by Robert Hayden,
&Requiescat& by Oscar Wilde, and &The Wild Swans at Coole& by W. B. Yeats.
Here you will also find magnificent poems by William Shakespeare, Edmund
Spenser, Emily
Dickinson, Walt Whitman, e. e. cummings, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Dylan Thomas, Sir
Thomas Wyatt, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ernest Dowson,
T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick,
Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Donne, Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson and William Wordsworth. There are also
translations of poems by Sappho of Lesbos, the Bible's King Solomon and the
French poet Pierre Ronsard.&And
because most popular songs are lyric poems set to music, I have also included lyrics
by songwriters like Joan Baez, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, Eminem, Michael Jackson,
John Lennon, Carole King, Prince, Smokey Robinson, Paul Simon and Bruce
Springsteen.
Gleyre Le Coucher de Sappho
by Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre
Sappho of Lesbos is perhaps the first great female poet still known to us today,
and she remains one of the very best poets of all time, regardless of gender.
She is so revered for her erotic love poetry that we get our terms &sapphic& and
&lesbian& from her name and island of residence. Furthermore, as you can see from the two utterly stellar epigrams
below, she remains a timeless treasure:
Sappho, fragment 42
loose translation by
Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains
uprooting oaks.
Sappho, fragment 155
loose translation by&
A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!
Oscar Wilde may be the most notorious &bad boy& in the annals of poetry and
literature. He was flamboyantly gay at a time when polite society was prim,
proper and violently homophobic. As a result, he was sentenced to hard labor at
Reading Gaol and died soon after his release. Wilde is justly famous for his
disdain for dull and dulling conformity, as his witty epigrams attest. But the
lovely, wonderfully moving poem below proves that he was also a true poet
capable of
creating timeless art.
Requiescat
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
William Butler Yeats was the most famous Irish poet of all time, and his
poems of unrequited love for the beautiful and dangerous revolutionary Maud Gonne
have left her almost as famous. The first poem below is
loose translation of a Ronsard poem, in which Yeats imagines the love of his
life in her later years, tending a fire. The second poem, &The Wild Swans
at Coole,& is surely one of the most beautiful poems ever written, in any
When You Are Oldby William Butler Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and o
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows o
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
The Wild Swans at Coole
by William Butler Yeats
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.
The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable stre
Their heart
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious,
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an early advocate of women's rights, and a
staunch opponent of slavery. When she married Robert Browning, theirs became the
most famous coupling in the annals of English poetry.
How Do I Love Thee?
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for R
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love&I&seemed to lose
With&my&lost&saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Dylan Thomas's elegy to his dying father is one of the best villanelles in the English
language, and it remains one of the most powerful, haunting poems ever
written in any language.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
by Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
In My Craft Or Sullen Art
by Dylan Thomas
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.
Mary Elizabeth Frye is, perhaps, the most mysterious poet who appears on this
page, and perhaps in the annals of poetry. Rather than spoiling the mystery, I
will present her poem first, then provide the details ...
Do not stand at my grave and weep
by Mary Elizabeth Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep:
I I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starshine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry:
I I did not die.
This consoling elegy had a
very mysterious genesis, as it was written by a
Baltimore housewife who lacked a formal education, having been orphaned at age
three. As far as we know, she had never written poetry before. Frye wrote the poem on a ripped-off piece of a brown grocery bag,
in a burst of compassion for a Jewish girl who had fled the Holocaust
only to receive news that her mother had died in Germany. The girl was
weeping inconsolably because she couldn't visit her mother's grave. When the poem was named Britain's
most popular poem in a 1996 Bookworm poll, with more than 30,000
call-in votes despite not having been one of the critics'
nominations, an unlettered orphan girl had seemingly surpassed all England's
many cultured and degreed ivory towerists in the public's estimation. Although the poem's
origin was disputed for some time (it had been attributed to Native American and other sources),
Frye's authorship was confirmed in 1998 after investigative research by Abigail
Van Buren, the newspaper columnist better known as &Dear Abby.& The poem has
also been called &I Am& due to its rather biblical repetitions of the phrase.
Frye never formally published or copyrighted the poem, so we believe it is in
the public domain and can be shared, although we recommend that it not be used
for commercial purposes, since Frye never tried to profit from it herself.
Here is a printable version of
which is not
copyrighted and is thus in the public domain.
Edward Thomas is not as well-known as some of the other poets on this page, but
&Adlestrop& was among the top ten most requested poems at Poetry Please,
so he continues to have fans. &Adlestrop& is a somewhat mysterious poem, because
nothing really happens and yet it seems extraordinarily sad.
by&Edward Thomas
Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley may have been the most
notorious married couple of their era. He was a dashing romantic poet and
heretic who wrote a tract, &The Necessity of Atheism,& that got him expelled
from Oxford. She was the daughter of one of the earliest feminist
writers of note, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the liberal philosopher William
Godwin.& The spent the summer of 1816 with Lord
Byron. It was at this time that Mary conceived the story that became her famous
gothic novel Frankenstein. Six years later, Percy drowned at sea at age thirty. Who knows what he would
have accomplished if he had lived longer, but he is still considered to be one
of the greatest English poets. Here is one especially lovely example of his
wonderful touch with rhythm and rhyme:
Music When Soft Voices Die (To
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd'
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English romantic poet, painter, illustrator
and translator. He was also one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood. His art was characterized by sensuality and medieval revivalism. In
1850 he met Elizabeth Siddal (pictured above), who became his model, his
passion, and eventually in 1860, his wife.
Sudden Light
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sister Christina was also a poet, and perhaps the
better of the two.
by Christina Rossetti
When I am dead, my dearest,
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
Sir Thomas Wyatt has been credited with introducing the
Petrarchan sonnet into the English language. Wyatt's father had been one of Henry
VII's Privy Councilors and remained a trusted adviser when Henry VIII came to
the throne in 1509. Wyatt followed his father to court, but it seems the
young poet may have fallen in love with the king’s mistress,
Anne Boleyn. Their acquaintance is certain, although whether or not the two
actually shared a romantic relationship remains unknown. But in his poetry, Wyatt called
his mistress Anna and there do seem to be correspondences. For instance, this poem might well have been written
about the King’s claim on Anne Boleyn:
Whoso List to Hunt
by Sir Thomas Wyatt
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
Noli me tangere means &Touch me not.& According to the Bible, this is
what Jesus said to Mary Magdalene when she tried to embrace him after the
resurrection. So perhaps after her betrothal to Henry, religious vows
entered into the picture, and left Wyatt out.
Elinor Wylie &was famous during her life almost as much for her ethereal beauty
and personality as for her melodious, sensuous poetry.&
Cold-Blooded Creatures
by Elinor Wylie
Man, the egregious egoist
(In mystery the twig is bent)
Imagines, by some mental twist,
That he alone is sentient
Of the intolerable load
That on all living creatures lies,
Nor stoops to pity in the toad
The speechless sorrow of his eyes.
He asks no questions of the snake,
Nor plumbs the phosphorescent gloom
Where lidless fishes, broad awake,
Swim staring at a nightmare doom.
William Dunbar was one of the first great Scottish poets, and is also known for
his poem &Lament for the Makiris& (Lament for the Makers, or Poets).
Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar []
loose translation by
Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that is held most dear―
except only that you are merciless.
Into your garden, today, I
there I saw flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently―
yet everywhere, no odor but bitter rue.
I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair rose of pallid and gentle cast,
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that, if I could, I would compose her roots again―
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.
Conrad Aiken was one of the sweetest singers among American poets.
Bread and Music
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you
Now that I am without you,
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belovèd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hand
And in my heart they will remember always,—
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.
D. H. Lawrence is better known today for his novels, which include the
then-infamous Lady Chatterley's Lover, but he was one of the better
early modernist poets.
by D. H. Lawrence
Softly, in the dusk, a wo
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor
With the great black piano appassionato.
The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
Sylvia Plath was one of the first and best of the modern confessional poets. She
won a Pulitzer Prize posthumously for her Collected Poems after
committing suicide at the age of 31, something she seemed to have been
predicting in her writing and practicing for in real life.
Winter landscape, with rocks
by Sylvia Plath
Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
plunges headlong into that black pond
where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
which hungers to haul the white reflection down.
The austere sun descends above the fen,
an orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look
longer on this
feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook,
brooding as the winter night comes on.
Last summer's reeds are all engraved in ice
glazes t what solace
can be struck from rock to make heart's waste
grow green again? Who'd walk in this bleak place?
Anne Sexton was a model who became a confessional
poet, writing about intimate aspects of her life, after her doctor suggested
that she take up poetry as a form of therapy. She studied under Robert Lowell at
Boston University, where Sylvia Plath was one of her classmates. Sexton won the
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1967, but later committed suicide via carbon
monoxide poisoning. Topics she covered in her poems included adultery,
masturbation, menstruation, abortion, despair and suicide.
The Truth the Dead Know
by Anne Sexton
For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959
Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.
We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.
My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.
And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in the stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
She was openly bisexual and had affairs with other women and married men. When
she finally married, hers was an open marriage. Her 1920 poetry collection&A
Few Figs From Thistles&drew controversy for its novel exploration of female
sexuality. She was one of the earliest and strongest voices for what became
known as feminism. One of the recurring themes of her poetry was that men might
use her body, but not possess her or have any claim over her. (And perhaps that
their desire for her body gave her the upper hand in relationships.)
I, Being Born a Woman, and Distressedby Edna St. Vincent
I, being born a woman, and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, this poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity — let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
Emily Dickinson was the first great female American poet.
Come Slowly, Eden
by Emily Dickinson
Come slowly—Eden
Lips unused to thee—
Bashful—sip thy jasmines—
As the fainting bee—
Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums—
Counts his nectars—alights—
And is lost in balms!
Go, Lovely Rose
by Edmund Waller
&&& Go, lovely Rose,—
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
&&& That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
&&& Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
&&& That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
&&& Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retir'd:
&&& Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desir'd,
And not blush so to be admir'd.
&&& Then die, that she
The common fate of all things rare
How small a part of time they share,
That are so wondrous sweet and fair.
VIII&— from &Sunday Morning&
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, &The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.&
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old despondency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us the
Sweet berries rip
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
Song for the Last Act
Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.
Beyond, a garden.
There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.
Now that I have your face by heart, I look.
Now that I have your voice by heart, I read
In the black chords upon a dulling page
Music that is not meant for music's cage,
Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.
The staves are shuttled over with a stark
Unprinted silence.
In a double dream
I must spell out the storm, the running stream.
The beat's too swift.
The notes shift in the dark.
Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.
Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great s
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bale the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.
Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.
Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae
&I am not as I was under the reign of the good Cynara&—Horace
Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in lo
Surely the kisses of her bought
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:
I have been faithful to you, Cynara! in my fashion.
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, los
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, becaus
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara!
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
La Figlia Che Piange (The Weeping Girl)
by T. S. Eliot
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair —
Lean on a garden urn —
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair —
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise —
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and a shake of the hand.
She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight, and the noon's repose.
The Garden
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&of a sort of emotional anemia.
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
&&&&&&&&&&&&&will commit that indiscretion.
by W. H. Auden
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm:
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstacy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost.
All the dreaded cards foretell.
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought.
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.
For Her Surgery
Over the city the moon rides in mist,
scrim scarred with faint rainbow.
Two days till Easter.&The thin clouds run slow, slow,
the wind bells bleed the quietest
of possible musics to the dark lawn.
All possibility we will have children is gone.
I raise a glass half water, half alcohol,
to that light come full again.
Inside, you sleep, somewhere below the pain.
Down at the river, there is a tall
ghost tossing flowers to dark water—
jessamine, rose, and daisy, salvia lyrata . . .
Oh goodbye, goodbye to bloom in the white blaze
of moon on the river, goodbye
to creek joining the creek joining the river, the axil, the Y,
goodbye to the Yes of two Ifs in one phrase . . .
Children bear children. We are grown,
and time has thrown us free under the timeless moon.
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-tre
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the J and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Come Lord and Lift
Come Lord, and lift the fallen bird
The soul bereft and longing so
& To have the lost be found.
The heart that cries—let it but hear
& Its sweet love answering,
Or out of ether one faint note
& Of living comfort wring.
The Death of a Toad
by Richard Wilbur
&&&&& A toad the power mower caught,
Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
& To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him
& Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
&&&& Of the ashen and heartshaped leaves, in a dim,
&&&&&&&& Low, and a final glade.
&&&&& The rare original heartsblood goes,
Spends in the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows
&& In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies
&& As still as if he would return to stone,
&&&&&& And soundlessly attending, dies
&&&&&&&&& Toward some deep monotone,
&&&&& Toward misted and ebullient seas
And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia's emperies.
&& Day dwindles, drowning and at length is gone
&& In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear
&&&&&& To watch, across the castrate lawn,
&&&&&&&&&& The haggard daylight steer.
To Earthward
Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I
I lived on air
That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of – was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Downhill at dusk?
I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they’re gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.
I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young:
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.
Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain
I crave the stain
Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.
When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass or sand,
The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.
Once more home is a strange place: by the ocean a
big house now, and the small houses are memories,
& once live images, vacant
&&&&&& thoughts here, sinking and vanishing.
Rough sea now on the shore thundering brokenly
draws back stones with a roar out into quiet and
&& far depths, darkly to lie there
&&&&&&& years, years—there not a sound from them.
New waves out of the night's mist and obscurity
lunge up high on the beach, spending their energy,
&& each wave angrily dying,
&&&&&& all shapes endlessly altering,
yet out there in the depths nothing is modified.
Earthquakes won't even move—no, nor the hurricane—
&& one stone there, nor a glance of
&&&&&&& sun's light stir its identity.
Those Winter Sundaysby Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze.
No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
A Noiseless Patient Spider
by Walt Whitman
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
by Ben Jonson
Drink to me, only, with thine eyes,
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise,
Doth ask a drink divine:
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent thee, late, a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope, that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent'st back to me:
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.
To Daffodils
by Robert Herrick
Fair daffodils, we weep to see
&& You haste away so soon.
As yet the early-rising sun
&& Hath not attained his noon.
&&&&&& Stay, stay,
&& Until the hasting day
&&&&&& Has run
&& But to the even-
And, having prayed together, we
&& Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay,
As quick a growth to meet decay,
&& As you, or any thing.
&&&&&& We die.
&& As your hours do, and dry
&&&&&& Away
&& Like to the summer'
Or as the pearls of morning's dew
&& Ne'er to be found again.
Cradle Song
by William Blake
Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,
Sleep, in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep.
Sweet babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.
As thy softest limbs I feel
Smiles as of the morning steal
O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast
Where thy little heart doth rest.
O the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep!
When thy little heart doth wake,
Then the dreadful night shall break.
Tears, Idle Tears
by Lord Alfred Tennyson
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips deep as love,
Deep as first love, and
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.
Acquainted With The Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
The Windhoverby Gerard Manley Hopkins
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,— the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
by John Donne
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till Age snow
Thou, when thou return'st wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
Lives a woman true and fair.
If thou find'
Such a pilgrimage were sweet.
Y I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet.
Though she were true when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
False, ere I come, to two or three.
The Convergence Of The Twainby Thomas Hardy
Lines on the loss of the &Titanic&
&&&&&&&&&&&In a solitude of the sea
&&&&&&&&&&&Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
& &&&&&&&&Steel chambers, late the pyres
&&&&&&&&&&&Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
&&&&&&&&&&&Over the mirrors meant
&&&&&&&&&&&To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
&&&&&&&&&&&Jewels in joy designed
&&&&&&&&& To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
&&&&&&&&&&&Dim moon-eyed fishes near
&&&&&&&&& Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: &What does this vaingloriousness down here?&...
&&&&&&&&&&&Well: while was fashioning
&&&&&&&&& This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
&&&&&&&&& Prepared a sinister mate
&&&&&&&&& For her—so gaily great—
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
&&&&&&&&& And as the smart ship grew
&&&&&&&&& In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
&&&&&&&&& Ali
&&&&&&&&& No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,
&&&&&&&&& Or sign that they were bent
&&&&&&&&& By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
&&&&&&&&&& Till the Spinner of the Years
&&&&&&&&& Said &Now!& And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
Luke Havergal
by Edward Arlington Robinson
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal,
There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,
And in the twilight wait for what will come.
The leaves will whisper there of her, and some,
Like flying words, will str
But go, and if you listen, she will call.
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal—
Luke Havergal.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies
To rift the fiery night that'
But there, where western glooms are gathering
The dark will end the dark, if anything:
God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell is more than half of paradise.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies—
In eastern skies.
Out of a grave I come to tell you this,
Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss
That flames upon your forehead with a glow
That blinds you to the way that you must go.
Yes, there is yet one way to where she is,
Bitter, but one that faith may never miss.
Out of a grave I come to tell you this—
To tell you this.
There is the western gate, Luke Havergal,
There are the crimson leaves upon the wall,
Go, for the winds are tearing them away,—
Nor think to riddle the dead words they say,
Nor any more to fe
But go, and if you trust her she will call.
There is the western gate, Luke Havergal—
Luke Havergal.
Full Fathom Five
by William Shakespeare
Full fathom
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
&& Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
&&&&&& Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — ding-dong, bell.
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802by
William Wordsworth
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The b silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock,
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the ver
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Song of Solomon
attributed to King Solomon
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.
I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.
I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes,
and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor wake my love, till he please.
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.
Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, an
And on the pedestal these words appear:
&My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!&
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
A Red, Red Rose
by Robert Burns
Oh my luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
Oh my luve is like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi'
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!
Upon Julia's Clothes
by Robert Herrick
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free,
Oh, how that glittering taketh me!
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Paradise Lost by John Milton
Lycidas by John Milton
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Mac Flecknoe by John Dryden
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The Lamb by William Blake
London by William Blake
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