Epitaph Of A Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success

Beneath this sod lie the remains
Of one who died of growing pains.

by Amy Lowell.

My Life Has Been The Poem

My life has been the poem
I would have writ,
But I could not both live
and utter it.

by Henry David Thoreau.

Why Do Ye Call The Poet Lonely

Why do ye call the poet lonely,
Because he dreams in lonely places?
He is not desolate, but only
Sees, where ye cannot, hidden faces.

by Archibald Lampman.

Adair Welcker, Poet

The Swan of Avon died-the Swan
Of Sacramento'll soon be gone;
And when his death-song he shall coo,
Stand back, or it will kill you too.

by Ambrose Bierce.

Stanza From An Early Poem

THOUGHT is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.

by Christopher Pearse Cranch.

SHE comes like the hush and beauty of the night,
And sees too deep for laughter;
Her touch is a vibration and a light
From worlds before and after.

by Edwin Markham.

Who hath beheld the goddess face to face,
Blind with her beauty, all his days shall go
Climbing lone mountains towards her temple's place,
Weighed with song's sweet, inexorable woe.

by Madison Julius Cawein.

Poetry And Prose

What is the true difference ’twixt Prose and Rhyme,
Since both may be beautiful, both be sublime?
Nor in subject, nor treatment, nor passion it ’bides—
But breathes through a certain rich something besides.

by Charles Harpur.

Upon An Eunuch; A Poet. Fragment

Nec sterilem te crede; Licet, mulieribus exul,
Falcem virginiae nequeas immitere messi,
Et nostro peccare modo. Tibi Fama perenne
Praegnabit; rapiesque novem de monse Sorores;
Et pariet modulos Echo repetita Nepotes.

by Andrew Marvell.

The Poetry Of Southey

Keen as an eagle whose flight towards the dim empyrean
Fearless of toil or fatigue ever royally wends!
Vast in the cloud-coloured robes of the balm-breathing Orient
Lo! the grand Epic advances, unfolding the humanest truth.

by George Meredith.

The Poetry Of Shelley

See'st thou a Skylark whose glistening winglets ascending
Quiver like pulses beneath the melodious dawn?
Deep in the heart-yearning distance of heaven it flutters -
Wisdom and beauty and love are the treasures it brings down at eve.

by George Meredith.

The Poetry Of Coleridge

A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, exulting,
And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed -
Renewed thro' all changes of Heaven, unceasing in sunlight,
Unceasing in moonlight, but hushed in the beams of the holier orb.

by George Meredith.

The Poetry Of Milton

Like to some deep-chested organ whose grand inspiration,
Serenely majestic in utterance, lofty and calm,
Interprets to mortals with melody great as its burthen
The mystical harmonies chiming for ever throughout the bright
spheres.

by George Meredith.

The Poetry Of Keats

The song of a nightingale sent thro' a slumbrous valley,
Low-lidded with twilight, and tranced with the dolorous sound,
Tranced with a tender enchantment; the yearning of passion
That wins immortality even while panting delirious with death.

by George Meredith.

The Poetry Of Wordsworth

A breath of the mountains, fresh born in the regions majestic,
That look with their eye-daring summits deep into the sky.
The voice of great Nature; sublime with her lofty conceptions,
Yet earnest and simple as any sweet child of the green lowly vale.

by George Meredith.

The Poetry Of Chaucer

Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddy
As dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere.
Tender to tearfulness--childlike, and manly, and motherly;
Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet English
ground.

by George Meredith.

The Poetry Of Spenser

Lakes where the sunsheen is mystic with splendour and softness;
Vales where sweet life is all Summer with golden romance:
Forests that glimmer with twilight round revel-bright palaces;
Here in our May-blood we wander, careering 'mongst ladies and
knights.

by George Meredith.

The Poetry Of Shakespeare

Picture some Isle smiling green 'mid the white-foaming ocean; -
Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays;
Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it;
Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm'd by one great
human heart.

by George Meredith.

Stanzas In Meditation: Stanza Xiii

There may be pink with white or white with rose
Or there may be white with rose and pink with mauve
Or even there may be white with yellow and yellow with blue
Or even if even it is rose with white and blue
And so there is no yellow there but by accident.

by Gertrude Stein.

Now a stream may be a lady,
Or a gentleman serene,
Who, by sunlit ways and shady,
Graces many a sylvan scene,
But that wild, wild woodman, Snowy
Crude, uncultured, swift to rage,
He's a hill bloke, flash and showy
Roaring down in his rampage......

by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis.

Fragments Of A Lost Gnostic Poem Of The Twelfth Century

Found a family, build a state,
The pledged event is still the same:
Matter in end will never abate
His ancient brutal claim.

Indolence is heaven’s ally here,
And energy the child of hell:
The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear
But brims the poisoned well.

by Herman Melville.

How I hate those modern Poems
Vaguer, looser than a dream!
Pointless things that look like poems
Only, to some held-back theme!
Wild unequal, agitated,
As by steam ill-regulated -
Balder-dashie steam!
And if (in fine) not super-lyrical,
Then vapid, almost to a miracle.

by Charles Harpur.

A Stanza On Freedom

THEY are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.

by James Russell Lowell.

Verse On Lee’s Invasion Of The North

Gen. Lees invasion of the North written by himself—

In eighteen sixty three, with pomp,
and mighty swell,
Me and Jeff’s Confederacy, went
forth to sack Phil-del,
The Yankees the got arter us, and
giv us particular hell,
And we skedaddled back again,
And didn’t sack Phil-del.

by Abraham Lincoln.

Shall I take thee, the Poet said

Shall I take thee, the Poet said
To the propounded word?
Be stationed with the Candidates
Till I have finer tried—

The Poet searched Philology
And when about to ring
For the suspended Candidate
There came unsummoned in—

That portion of the Vision
The Word applied to fill
Not unto nomination
The Cherubim reveal—

by Emily Dickinson.

L’envoi To A Poem On Tolerance

Go! little Book, thine own disciple be,
And learn to tolerate those who turn from thee.
Or laughed to scorn, or in oblivion sunk,
Go! little Book, and learn to line a trunk.
Some rain-bound traveller, in ennui's despair,
May cast a moment's notice on thee—there.
Thy last sad hope (and pride deserves such shocks)
Like hers—of old—at bottom of a box.

by John Kenyon.

On Stephen Duck, The Thresher, And Favourite Poet. A Quibbl

The Thresher Duck, could o'er the Q prevail,
The Proverb says; No Fence against a Flayl.
From threshing Corn, he turns to thresh his Brains;
For which Her My allows him Grains.
Though 'tis confess't, that those who ever saw
His Poems, think them all not worth a Straw.
Thrice happy Duck, employ'd in threshing Stubble!
Thy Toil is lessen'd, and thy Profits double.

by Jonathan Swift.

Spenserian Stanza. Written At The Close Of Canto Ii, Book V, Of

In after-time, a sage of mickle lore
Yclep'd Typographus, the Giant took,
And did refit his limbs as heretofore,
And made him read in many a learned book,
And into many a lively legend look;
Thereby in goodly themes so training him,
That all his brutishness he quite forsook,
When, meeting Artegall and Talus grim,
The one he struck stone-blind, the other's eyes wox dim.

by John Keats.

He walks with God upon the hills!
And sees, each morn, the world arise
New-bathed in light of paradise.
He hears the laughter of her rills,
Her melodies of many voices,
And greets her while his heart rejoices.
She, to his spirit undefiled,
Makes answer as a little child;
Unveiled before his eyes she stands,
And gives her secrets to his hands.

by Ina D. Coolbrith.

I weave my verses of smiles and tears,
Gathered and shed for you,
I bind them up in the hopes of years,
Dear, will you read them through?

I write my ballads of joy and pain,
Cast at your heedless feet,
I set the words to a lost refrain,
Sing it but once, my Sweet!

I breathe my life into rhyme and song,
What shall I gain thereby?
The verse is poor, and the tune is wrong,
Kiss them and let them die.

by Radclyffe Hall.

ON the world's far edges
Faint and blue,
Where the rocky ledges
Stand in view,
Fades the rosy tender
Evening light;
Then in starry splendor
Comes the night.
So a stormy lifetime
Comes to close,
Spirit's mortal strifetime
Finds repose.
Faith and toil and vision
Crowned at last,
Failure and derision
Overpast,—
All the daylight splendor
Far above,
Calm and sure and tender
Comes thy love.

by Bliss William Carman.

'YES, Spring has come,' the grocer said,
And tied a final knot of string,
Rang up the change and becked his head,
Elated at the breath of Spring.

'Yes, Spring has come,' the poet said,
And poured his ecstasy in rhymes,
Which eager, homesick exiles read
Long winter-locked in frozen climes.

Perhaps the grocer's way was best, ­
If joy can better be, or worse:
He saved his rapture unexpressed,
The poet spent his for a verse.

by Alice Duer Miller.

Preface: Old Gosh Rhyme

Let him who is minded to meet with a Glug
Pluck three hardy hairs from a rabbit-skin rug;
Blow one to the South, and one to the West,
Then burn another and swallow the rest.
And who shall explain 'tis the talk of a fool,
He's a Glug! He's a Glug of the old Gosh school!
And he'll climb a tree, if the East wind blows,
In a casual way, just to show he knows . . .
Now, tickle his toes!
Oh, tickle his toes!
And don't blame me if you come to blows.

by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis.

I Feel (Verse Libre)

I feel
Very much
Like taking
Its unholy perpetrators
By the hair
Of their heads
(If they have any hair)
And dragging them around
A few times,
And then cutting them
Into small, irregular pieces
And burying them
In the depths of the blue sea.
They are without form
And void,/ Or at least
The stuff they/ produce
Is./ They are too lazy
To hunt up rhymes;
And that
Is all
That is the matter with them.

by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Fragment. Where's The Poet?

Where's the Poet? show him! show him,
Muses nine! that I may know him.
'Tis the man who with a man
Is an equal, be he King,
Or poorest of the beggar-clan
Or any other wonderous thing
A man may be 'twixt ape and Plato;
'Tis the man who with a bird,
Wren or Eagle, finds his way to
All its instincts; he hath heard
The Lion's roaring, and can tell
What his horny throat expresseth,
And to him the Tiger's yell
Come articulate and presseth
Or his ear like mother-tongue.

by John Keats.

Where's The Poet?

Where's the Poet? show him! show him,
Muses nine! that I may know him.
'Tis the man who with a man
Is an equal, be he King,
Or poorest of the beggar-clan
Or any other wonderous thing
A man may be 'twixt ape and Plato;
'Tis the man who with a bird,
Wren or Eagle, finds his way to
All its instincts; he hath heard
The Lion's roaring, and can tell
What his horny throat expresseth,
And to him the Tiger's yell
Come articulate and presseth
Or his ear like mother-tongue.

by John Keats.

The Peasant Poet

He loved the brook's soft sound,
The swallow swimming by.
He loved the daisy-covered ground,
The cloud-bedappled sky.
To him the dismal storm appeared
The very voice of God;
And when the evening rack was reared
Stood Moses with his rod.
And everything his eyes surveyed,
The insects in the brake,
Were creatures God Almighty made,
He loved them for His sake--
A silent man in life's affairs,
A thinker from a boy,
A peasant in his daily cares,
A poet in his joy.

by John Clare.

Stanzas In Meditation: Stanza Lxxxiii

Why am I if I am uncertain reasons may inclose.
Remain remain propose repose chose.
I call carelessly that the door is open
Which if they may refuse to open
No one can rush to close.
Let them be mine therefor.
Everybody knows that I chose.
Therefor if therefore before I close.
I will therefore offer therefore I offer this.
Which if I refuse to miss may be miss is mine.
I will be well welcome when I come.
Because I am coming.
Certainly I come having come.
These stanzas are done.

by Gertrude Stein.

A Poet’s Thought

TELL me, what is a poet’s thought?
Is it on the sudden born?
Is it from the starlight caught?
Is it by the tempest taught,
Or by whispering morn?

Was it cradled in the brain?
Chain’d awhile, or nurs’d in night?
Was it wrought with toil and pain?
Did it bloom and fade again,
Ere it burst to light?

No more question of its birth:
Rather love its better part!
’T is a thing of sky and earth,
Gathering all its golden worth
From the Poet’s heart.

by Barry Cornwall.

Jack Cornstalk As A Poet

“Not from the seas does he draw inspiration,
Not from the rivers that croon on their bars;
But a wide, a world-old desolation –
On a dead land alone with the stars.

The long hot day gone over,
And starlight come again;
And I, weary rover,
Lie camped on One Tree Plain.

My saddle for a pillow,
I lie beneath the tree,
That softens to a willow,
In the moonlight over me.

I dream that I remember
A dim and distant day,
Beyond yon misty timber,
In the Home-world far away.

by Henry Lawson.