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Best Famous Baited Poems

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Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Break Away

 Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us—
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up as we did yearly
under the crayoned-in sun.
The courtroom keeps squashing our lives as they break
into two cans ready for recycling,
flattened tin humans
and a tin law,
even for my twenty-five years of hanging on
by my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers.
The gray room:
Judge, lawyer, witness
and me and invisible Skeezix,
and all the other torn
enduring the bewilderments
of their division.

Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce.
They arrive like round yellow fish,
sucking with love at the coral of our love.
Yet they wait,
in their short time,
like little utero half-borns,
half killed, thin and bone soft.
They breathe the air that stands
for twenty-five illicit days,
the sun crawling inside the sheets,
the moon spinning like a tornado
in the washbowl,
and we orchestrated them both,
calling ourselves TWO CAMP DIRECTORS.
There was a song, our song on your cassette,
that played over and over
and baptised the prodigals.
It spoke the unspeakable,
as the rain will on an attic roof,
letting the animal join its soul
as we kneeled before a miracle--
forgetting its knife.

The daisies confer
in the old-married kitchen
papered with blue and green chefs
who call out pies, cookies, yummy,
at the charcoal and cigarette smoke
they wear like a yellowy salve.
The daisies absorb it all--
the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love
(If one could call such handfuls of fists
and immobile arms that!)
and on this day my world rips itself up
while the country unfastens along
with its perjuring king and his court.
It unfastens into an abortion of belief,
as in me--
the legal rift--
as on might do with the daisies
but does not
for they stand for a love
undergoihng open heart surgery
that might take
if one prayed tough enough.
And yet I demand,
even in prayer,
that I am not a thief,
a mugger of need,
and that your heart survive
on its own,
belonging only to itself,
whole, entirely whole,
and workable
in its dark cavern under your ribs.

I pray it will know truth,
if truth catches in its cup
and yet I pray, as a child would,
that the surgery take.

I dream it is taking.
Next I dream the love is swallowing itself.
Next I dream the love is made of glass,
glass coming through the telephone
that is breaking slowly,
day by day, into my ear.
Next I dream that I put on the love
like a lifejacket and we float,
jacket and I,
we bounce on that priest-blue.
We are as light as a cat's ear
and it is safe,
safe far too long!
And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite window
and peer down at the moon in the pond
and know that beauty has walked over my head,
into this bedroom and out,
flowing out through the window screen,
dropping deep into the water
to hide.

I will observe the daisies
fade and dry up
wuntil they become flour,
snowing themselves onto the table
beside the drone of the refrigerator,
beside the radio playing Frankie
(as often as FM will allow)
snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceiling--
as twenty-five years split from my side
like a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma.

It is six P.M. as I water these tiny weeds
and their little half-life,
their numbered days
that raged like a secret radio,
recalling love that I picked up innocently,
yet guiltily,
as my five-year-old daughter
picked gum off the sidewalk
and it became suddenly an elastic miracle.

For me it was love found
like a diamond
where carrots grow--
the glint of diamond on a plane wing,
meaning: DANGER! THICK ICE!
but the good crunch of that orange,
the diamond, the carrot,
both with four million years of resurrecting dirt,
and the love,
although Adam did not know the word,
the love of Adam
obeying his sudden gift.

You, who sought me for nine years,
in stories made up in front of your naked mirror
or walking through rooms of fog women,
you trying to forget the mother
who built guilt with the lumber of a locked door
as she sobbed her soured mild and fed you loss
through the keyhole,
you who wrote out your own birth
and built it with your own poems,
your own lumber, your own keyhole,
into the trunk and leaves of your manhood,
you, who fell into my words, years
before you fell into me (the other,
both the Camp Director and the camper),
you who baited your hook with wide-awake dreams,
and calls and letters and once a luncheon,
and twice a reading by me for you.
But I wouldn't!

Yet this year,
yanking off all past years,
I took the bait
and was pulled upward, upward,
into the sky and was held by the sun--
the quick wonder of its yellow lap--
and became a woman who learned her own shin
and dug into her soul and found it full,
and you became a man who learned his won skin
and dug into his manhood, his humanhood
and found you were as real as a baker
or a seer
and we became a home,
up into the elbows of each other's soul,
without knowing--
an invisible purchase--
that inhabits our house forever.

We were
blessed by the House-Die
by the altar of the color T.V.
and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage,
a tiny marriage
called belief,
as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy,
so close to absolute,
so daft within a year or two.
The daisies have come
for the last time.
And I who have,
each year of my life,
spoken to the tooth fairy,
believing in her,
even when I was her,
am helpless to stop your daisies from dying,
although your voice cries into the telephone:
Marry me! Marry me!
and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight:
The love is in dark trouble!
The love is starting to die,
right now--
we are in the process of it.
The empty process of it.

I see two deaths,
and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart,
and though I willed one away in court today
and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other,
they both die like waves breaking over me
and I am drowning a little,
but always swimming
among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death,
I wade through the smell of their cancer
and recognize the prognosis,
its cartful of loss--

I say now,
you gave what you could.
It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on!
and the dead city of my marriage
seems less important
than the fact that the daisies came weekly,
over and over,
likes kisses that can't stop themselves.

There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973.
Let one be forgotten--
Bury it! Wall it up!
But let me not forget the man
of my child-like flowers
though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior,
he remains, his fingers the marvel
of fourth of July sparklers,
his furious ice cream cones of licking,
remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth
when I sweat into the bathtub of his being.

For the rest that is left:
name it gentle,
as gentle as radishes inhabiting
their short life in the earth,
name it gentle,
gentle as old friends waving so long at the window,
or in the drive,
name it gentle as maple wings singing
themselves upon the pond outside,
as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond,
that night that it was ours,
when our bodies floated and bumped
in moon water and the cicadas
called out like tongues.

Let such as this
be resurrected in all men
whenever they mold their days and nights
as when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mine
and planted the seed that dives into my God
and will do so forever
no matter how often I sweep the floor.


Written by Countee Cullen | Create an image from this poem

Heritage

 What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive jungle herds,
Juggernauts of flesh that pass
Trampling tall defiant grass
Where young forest lovers lie,
Plighting troth beneath the sky.
So I lie, who always hear,
Though I cram against my ear
Both my thumbs, and keep them there,
Great drums throbbing through the air.
So I lie, whose fount of pride,
Dear distress, and joy allied,
Is my somber flesh and skin,
With the dark blood dammed within
Like great pulsing tides of wine
That, I fear, must burst the fine
Channels of the chafing net
Where they surge and foam and fret.

Africa?A book one thumbs
Listlessly, till slumber comes.
Unremembered are her bats
Circling through the night, her cats
Crouching in the river reeds,
Stalking gentle flesh that feeds
By the river brink; no more
Does the bugle-throated roar
Cry that monarch claws have leapt
From the scabbards where they slept.
Silver snakes that once a year
Doff the lovely coats you wear,
Seek no covert in your fear
Lest a mortal eye should see;
What's your nakedness to me?
Here no leprous flowers rear
Fierce corollas in the air;
Here no bodies sleek and wet,
Dripping mingled rain and sweat,
Tread the savage measures of 
Jungle boys and girls in love.
What is last year's snow to me,
Last year's anything?The tree
Budding yearly must forget
How its past arose or set­­
Bough and blossom, flower, fruit,
Even what shy bird with mute
Wonder at her travail there,
Meekly labored in its hair.
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

So I lie, who find no peace
Night or day, no slight release
From the unremittent beat
Made by cruel padded feet
Walking through my body's street.
Up and down they go, and back,
Treading out a jungle track.
So I lie, who never quite
Safely sleep from rain at night--
I can never rest at all
When the rain begins to fall;
Like a soul gone mad with pain
I must match its weird refrain;
Ever must I twist and squirm,
Writhing like a baited worm,
While its primal measures drip
Through my body, crying, "Strip!
Doff this new exuberance.
Come and dance the Lover's Dance!"
In an old remembered way
Rain works on me night and day.

Quaint, outlandish heathen gods
Black men fashion out of rods,
Clay, and brittle bits of stone,
In a likeness like their own,
My conversion came high-priced;
I belong to Jesus Christ,
Preacher of humility;
Heathen gods are naught to me.

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
So I make an idle boast;
Jesus of the twice-turned cheek,
Lamb of God, although I speak
With my mouth thus, in my heart
Do I play a double part.
Ever at Thy glowing altar
Must my heart grow sick and falter,
Wishing He I served were black,
Thinking then it would not lack
Precedent of pain to guide it,
Let who would or might deride it;
Surely then this flesh would know
Yours had borne a kindred woe.
Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,
Daring even to give You
Dark despairing features where,
Crowned with dark rebellious hair,
Patience wavers just so much as
Mortal grief compels, while touches
Quick and hot, of anger, rise
To smitten cheek and weary eyes.
Lord, forgive me if my need
Sometimes shapes a human creed.

All day long and all night through,
One thing only must I do:
Quench my pride and cool my blood,
Lest I perish in the flood.
Lest a hidden ember set
Timber that I thought was wet
Burning like the dryest flax,
Melting like the merest wax,
Lest the grave restore its dead.
Not yet has my heart or head
In the least way realized
They and I are civilized.
Written by Countee Cullen | Create an image from this poem

Yet Do I Marvel

 I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
Written by Raymond Carver | Create an image from this poem

Bobber

 On the Columbia River near Vantage, 
Washington, we fished for whitefish 
in the winter months; my dad, Swede- 
Mr. Lindgren-and me. They used belly-reels, 
pencil-length sinkers, red, yellow, or brown 
flies baited with maggots. 
They wanted distance and went clear out there 
to the edge of the riffle. 
I fished near shore with a quill bobber and a cane pole. 

My dad kept his maggots alive and warm 
under his lower lip. Mr. Lindgren didn't drink. 
I liked him better than my dad for a time. 
He lets me steer his car, teased me 
about my name "Junior," and said 
one day I'd grow into a fine man, remember 
all this, and fish with my own son. 
But my dad was right. I mean 
he kept silent and looked into the river, 
worked his tongue, like a thought, behind the bait.
Written by Dame Edith Sitwell | Create an image from this poem

Still Falls the Rain

 Still falls the Rain---
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss---
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain

In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us---
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain---
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man's wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds,---those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear---
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh... the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain---
Then--- O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune---
See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree

Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world,---dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar's laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain---
"Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee."


Written by Duncan Campbell Scott | Create an image from this poem

The Forsaken

 I 
Once in the winter
Out on a lake
In the heart of the north-land,
Far from the Fort
And far from the hunters,
A Chippewa woman
With her sick baby,
Crouched in the last hours
Of a great storm.
Frozen and hungry,
She fished through the ice
With a line of the twisted
Bark of the cedar,
And a rabbit-bone hook
Polished and barbed;
Fished with the bare hook
All through the wild day,
Fished and caught nothing;
While the young chieftain
Tugged at her breasts,
Or slept in the lacings
Of the warm tikanagan.
All the lake-surface
Streamed with the hissing
Of millions of iceflakes
Hurled by the wind;
Behind her the round
Of a lonely island
Roared like a fire
With the voice of the storm
In the deeps of the cedars.
Valiant, unshaken,
She took of her own flesh,
Baited the fish-hook,
Drew in a gray-trout,
Drew in his fellows,
Heaped them beside her,
Dead in the snow.
Valiant, unshaken,
She faced the long distance,
Wolf-haunted and lonely,
Sure of her goal
And the life of her dear one:
Tramped for two days,
On the third in the morning,
Saw the strong bulk
Of the Fort by the river,
Saw the wood-smoke
Hand soft in the spruces,
Heard the keen yelp
Of the ravenous huskies
Fighting for whitefish:
Then she had rest.

II

Years and years after,
When she was old and withered,
When her son was an old man
And his children filled with vigour,
They came in their northern tour on the verge of winter,
To an island in a lonely lake.
There one night they camped, and on the morrow
Gathered their kettles and birch-bark
Their rabbit-skin robes and their mink-traps,
Launched their canoes and slunk away through the islands,
Left her alone forever,
Without a word of farewell,
Because she was old and useless,
Like a paddle broken and warped,
Or a pole that was splintered.
Then, without a sigh,
Valiant, unshaken,
She smoothed her dark locks under her kerchief,
Composed her shawl in state,
Then folded her hands ridged with sinews and corded with veins,
Folded them across her breasts spent with the nourishment of children,
Gazed at the sky past the tops of the cedars,
Saw two spangled nights arise out of the twilight,
Saw two days go by filled with the tranquil sunshine,
Saw, without pain, or dread, or even a moment of longing:
Then on the third great night there came thronging and thronging
Millions of snowflakes out of a windless cloud;
They covered her close with a beautiful crystal shroud,
Covered her deep and silent.
But in the frost of the dawn,
Up from the life below,
Rose a column of breath
Through a tiny cleft in the snow,
Fragile, delicately drawn,
Wavering with its own weakness,
In the wilderness a sign of the spirit,
Persisting still in the sight of the sun
Till day was done.
Then all light was gathered up by the hand of God and hid in His breast,
Then there was born a silence deeper than silence,
Then she had rest.
Written by Sarojini Naidu | Create an image from this poem

Corn Grinders

 O little mouse, why dost thou cry 
While merry stars laugh in the sky? 


Alas! alas! my lord is dead! 
Ah, who will ease my bitter pain? 
He went to seek a millet-grain 
In the rich farmer's granary shed; 
They caught him in a baited snare, 
And slew my lover unaware: 
Alas! alas! my lord is dead.


O little deer, why dost thou moan, 
Hid in thy forest-bower alone?


Alas! alas! my lord is dead! 
Ah! who will quiet my lament?


At fall of eventide he went 
To drink beside the river-head; 
A waiting hunter threw his dart, 
And struck my lover through the heart. 
Alas! alas! my lord is dead.


O little bride, why dost thou weep 
With all the happy world asleep? 


Alas! alas! my lord is dead! 
Ah, who will stay these hungry tears, 
Or still the want of famished years, 
And crown with love my marriage-bed? 
My soul burns with the quenchless fire 
That lit my lover's funeral pyre: 
Alas! alas! my lord is dead.
Written by James Dickey | Create an image from this poem

The Sharks Parlor

 Memory: I can take my head and strike it on a wall on Cumberland Island 
Where the night tide came crawling under the stairs came up the first 
Two or three steps and the cottage stood on poles all night 
With the sea sprawled under it as we dreamed of the great fin circling 
Under the bedroom floor. In daylight there was my first brassy taste of beer 
And Payton Ford and I came back from the Glynn County slaughterhouse 
With a bucket of entrails and blood. We tied one end of a hawser 
To a spindling porch-pillar and rowed straight out of the house 
Three hundred yards into the vast front yard of windless blue water 
The rope out slithering its coil the two-gallon jug stoppered and sealed 
With wax and a ten-foot chain leader a drop-forged shark-hook nestling. 
We cast our blood on the waters the land blood easily passing 
For sea blood and we sat in it for a moment with the stain spreading 
Out from the boat sat in a new radiance in the pond of blood in the sea 
Waiting for fins waiting to spill our guts also in the glowing water. 
We dumped the bucket, and baited the hook with a run-over collie pup. The jug 
Bobbed, trying to shake off the sun as a dog would shake off the sea. 
We rowed to the house feeling the same water lift the boat a new way, 
All the time seeing where we lived rise and dip with the oars. 
We tied up and sat down in rocking chairs, one eye on the other responding 
To the blue-eye wink of the jug. Payton got us a beer and we sat 

All morning sat there with blood on our minds the red mark out 
In the harbor slowly failing us then the house groaned the rope 
Sprang out of the water splinters flew we leapt from our chairs 
And grabbed the rope hauled did nothing the house coming subtly 
Apart all around us underfoot boards beginning to sparkle like sand 
Pulling out the tarred poles we slept propped-up on leaning to sea 
As in land-wind crabs scuttling from under the floor as we took runs about 
Two more porch-pillars and looked out and saw something a fish-flash 
An almighty fin in trouble a moiling of secret forces a false start 
Of water a round wave growing in the whole of Cumberland Sound the one ripple. 
Payton took off without a word I could not hold him either 

But clung to the rope anyway it was the whole house bending 
Its nails that held whatever it was coming in a little and like a fool 
I took up the slack on my wrist. The rope drew gently jerked I lifted 
Clean off the porch and hit the water the same water it was in 
I felt in blue blazing terror at the bottom of the stairs and scrambled 
Back up looking desperately into the human house as deeply as I could 
Stopping my gaze before it went out the wire screen of the back door 
Stopped it on the thistled rattan the rugs I lay on and read 
On my mother's sewing basket with next winter's socks spilling from it 
The flimsy vacation furniture a bucktoothed picture of myself. 
Payton came back with three men from a filling station and glanced at me 
Dripping water inexplicable then we all grabbed hold like a tug-of-war. 

We were gaining a little from us a cry went up from everywhere 
People came running. Behind us the house filled with men and boys.
On the third step from the sea I took my place looking down the rope 
Going into the ocean, humming and shaking off drops. A houseful 
Of people put their backs into it going up the steps from me 
Into the living room through the kitchen down the back stairs 
Up and over a hill of sand across a dust road and onto a raised field 
Of dunes we were gaining the rope in my hands began to be wet 
With deeper water all other haulers retreated through the house 
But Payton and I on the stairs drawing hand over hand on our blood 
Drawing into existence by the nose a huge body becoming 
A hammerhead rolling in beery shallows and I began to let up 
But the rope strained behind me the town had gone 
Pulling-mad in our house far away in a field of sand they struggled 
They had turned their backs on the sea bent double some on their knees 
The rope over their shoulders like a bag of gold they strove for the ideal 
Esso station across the scorched meadow with the distant fish coming up 
The front stairs the sagging boards still coming in up taking 
Another step toward the empty house where the rope stood straining 
By itself through the rooms in the middle of the air. "Pass the word," 
Payton said, and I screamed it "Let up, good God, let up!" to no one there. 
The shark flopped on the porch, grating with salt-sand driving back in 
The nails he had pulled out coughing chunks of his formless blood. 
The screen door banged and tore off he scrambled on his tail slid 
Curved did a thing from another world and was out of his element and in 
Our vacation paradise cutting all four legs from under the dinner table 
With one deep-water move he unwove the rugs in a moment throwing pints 
Of blood over everything we owned knocked the buckteeth out of my picture 
His odd head full of crashed jelly-glass splinters and radio tubes thrashing 
Among the pages of fan magazines all the movie stars drenched in sea-blood 
Each time we thought he was dead he struggled back and smashed 
One more thing in all coming back to die three or four more times after death. 
At last we got him out logrolling him greasing his sandpaper skin 
With lard to slide him pulling on his chained lips as the tide came, 
Tumbled him down the steps as the first night wave went under the floor. 
He drifted off head back belly white as the moon. What could I do but buy 
That house for the one black mark still there against death a forehead- 
 toucher in the room he circles beneath and has been invited to wreck? 
Blood hard as iron on the wall black with time still bloodlike 
Can be touched whenever the brow is drunk enough. All changes. Memory: 
Something like three-dimensional dancing in the limbs with age 
Feeling more in two worlds than one in all worlds the growing encounters. 

Copyright © James Dickey 1965
Online Source - http://www.oceanstar.com/shark/dickey.htm
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

Fighting Mac

 A Life Tragedy

A pistol shot rings round and round the world;
 In pitiful defeat a warrior lies.
A last defiance to dark Death is hurled,
 A last wild challenge shocks the sunlit skies.
 Alone he falls, with wide, wan, woeful eyes:
Eyes that could smile at death -- could not face shame.

Alone, alone he paced his narrow room,
 In the bright sunshine of that Paris day;
Saw in his thought the awful hand of doom;
 Saw in his dream his glory pass away;
 Tried in his heart, his weary heart, to pray:
"O God! who made me, give me strength to face
The spectre of this bitter, black disgrace."

* * * * *

The burn brawls darkly down the shaggy glen;
 The bee-kissed heather blooms around the door;
He sees himself a barefoot boy again,
 Bending o'er page of legendary lore.
 He hears the pibroch, grips the red claymore,
Runs with the Fiery Cross, a clansman true,
Sworn kinsman of Rob Roy and Roderick Dhu.

Eating his heart out with a wild desire,
 One day, behind his counter trim and neat,
He hears a sound that sets his brain afire --
 The Highlanders are marching down the street.
 Oh, how the pipes shrill out, the mad drums beat!
"On to the gates of Hell, my Gordons gay!"
He flings his hated yardstick away.

He sees the sullen pass, high-crowned with snow,
 Where Afghans cower with eyes of gleaming hate.
He hurls himself against the hidden foe.
 They try to rally -- ah, too late, too late!
 Again, defenseless, with fierce eyes that wait
For death, he stands, like baited bull at bay,
And flouts the Boers, that mad Majuba day.

He sees again the murderous Soudan,
 Blood-slaked and rapine-swept. He seems to stand
Upon the gory plain of Omdurman.
 Then Magersfontein, and supreme command
 Over his Highlanders. To shake his hand
A King is proud, and princes call him friend.
And glory crowns his life -- and now the end,

The awful end. His eyes are dark with doom;
 He hears the shrapnel shrieking overhead;
He sees the ravaged ranks, the flame-stabbed gloom.
 Oh, to have fallen! -- the battle-field his bed,
 With Wauchope and his glorious brother-dead.
Why was he saved for this, for this? And now
He raises the revolver to his brow.

* * * * *

In many a Highland home, framed with rude art,
 You'll find his portrait, rough-hewn, stern and square;
It's graven in the Fuyam fellah's heart;
 The Ghurka reads it at his evening prayer;
 The raw lands know it, where the fierce suns glare;
The Dervish fears it. Honor to his name
Who holds aloft the shield of England's fame.

Mourn for our hero, men of Northern race!
 We do not know his sin; we only know
His sword was keen. He laughed death in the face,
 And struck, for Empire's sake, a giant blow.
 His arm was strong. Ah! well they learnt, the foe
The echo of his deeds is ringing yet --
Will ring for aye. All else . . . let us forget.
Written by Sir Thomas Wyatt | Create an image from this poem

Farewell Love and All Thy Laws Forever

 Farewell love and all thy laws forever;
Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more.
Senec and Plato call me from thy lore
To perfect wealth, my wit for to endeavour.
In blind error when I did persever,
Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh aye so sore,
Hath taught me to set in trifles no store
And scape forth, since liberty is lever.
Therefore farewell; go trouble younger hearts
And in me claim no more authority.
With idle youth go use thy property
And thereon spend thy many brittle darts,
For hitherto though I have lost all my time,
Me lusteth no lenger rotten boughs to climb.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things