Best Famous Doomed Poems

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Written by Allen Ginsberg | Plutonian Ode I What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there a new thing under the Sun? At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative, Scientific theme First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison- ous hand, named for Death's planet through the sea beyond Uranus whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell- King worshipped once with black sheep throats cut, priests's face averted from underground mysteries in single temple at Eleusis, Spring-green Persephone nuptialed to his inevitable Shade, Demeter mother of asphodel weeping dew, her daughter stored in salty caverns under white snow, black hail, grey winter rain or Polar ice, immemor- able seasons before Fish flew in Heaven, before a Ram died by the starry bush, before the Bull stamped sky and earth or Twins inscribed their memories in clay or Crab'd flood washed memory from the skull, or Lion sniffed the lilac breeze in Eden-- Before the Great Year began turning its twelve signs, ere constellations wheeled for twenty-four thousand sunny years slowly round their axis in Sagittarius, one hundred sixty-seven thousand times returning to this night Radioactive Nemesis were you there at the beginning black dumb tongueless unsmelling blast of Disil- lusion? I manifest your Baptismal Word after four billion years I guess your birthday in Earthling Night, I salute your dreadful presence last majestic as the Gods, Sabaot, Jehova, Astapheus, Adonaeus, Elohim, Iao, Ialdabaoth, Aeon from Aeon born ignorant in an Abyss of Light, Sophia's reflections glittering thoughtful galaxies, whirl- pools of starspume silver-thin as hairs of Einstein! Father Whitman I celebrate a matter that renders Self oblivion! Grand Subject that annihilates inky hands & pages' prayers, old orators' inspired Immortalities, I begin your chant, openmouthed exhaling into spacious sky over silent mills at Hanford, Savannah River, Rocky Flats, Pantex, Burlington, Albuquerque I yell thru Washington, South Carolina, Colorado, Texas, Iowa, New Mexico, Where nuclear reactors creat a new Thing under the Sun, where Rockwell war-plants fabricate this death stuff trigger in nitrogen baths, Hanger-Silas Mason assembles the terrified weapon secret by ten thousands, & where Manzano Moun- tain boasts to store its dreadful decay through two hundred forty millenia while our Galaxy spirals around its nebulous core. I enter your secret places with my mind, I speak with your presence, I roar your Lion Roar with mortal mouth. One microgram inspired to one lung, ten pounds of heavy metal dust adrift slow motion over grey Alps the breadth of the planet, how long before your radiance speeds blight and death to sentient beings? Enter my body or not I carol my spirit inside you, Unnaproachable Weight, O heavy heavy Element awakened I vocalize your con- sciousness to six worlds I chant your absolute Vanity. Yeah monster of Anger birthed in fear O most Ignorant matter ever created unnatural to Earth! Delusion of metal empires! Destroyer of lying Scientists! Devourer of covetous Generals, Incinerator of Armies & Melter of Wars! Judgement of judgements, Divine Wind over vengeful nations, Molester of Presidents, Death-Scandal of Capital politics! Ah civilizations stupidly indus- trious! Canker-Hex on multitudes learned or illiterate! Manu- factured Spectre of human reason! O solidified imago of practicioner in Black Arts I dare your reality, I challenge your very being! I publish your cause and effect! I turn the wheel of Mind on your three hundred tons! Your name enters mankind's ear! I embody your ultimate powers! My oratory advances on your vaunted Mystery! This breath dispels your braggart fears! I sing your form at last behind your concrete & iron walls inside your fortress of rubber & translucent silicon shields in filtered cabinets and baths of lathe oil, My voice resounds through robot glove boxes & ignot cans and echoes in electric vaults inert of atmo- sphere, I enter with spirit out loud into your fuel rod drums underground on soundless thrones and beds of lead O density! This weightless anthem trumpets transcendent through hidden chambers and breaks through iron doors into the Infernal Room! Over your dreadful vibration this measured harmony floats audible, these jubilant tones are honey and milk and wine-sweet water Poured on the stone black floor, these syllables are barley groats I scatter on the Reactor's core, I call your name with hollow vowels, I psalm your Fate close by, my breath near deathless ever at your side to Spell your destiny, I set this verse prophetic on your mausoleum walls to seal you up Eternally with Diamond Truth! O doomed Plutonium. II The Bar surveys Plutonian history from midnight lit with Mercury Vapor streetlamps till in dawn's early light he contemplates a tranquil politic spaced out between Nations' thought-forms proliferating bureaucratic & horrific arm'd, Satanic industries projected sudden with Five Hundred Billion Dollar Strength around the world same time this text is set in Boulder, Colorado before front range of Rocky Mountains twelve miles north of Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility in United States of North America, Western Hemi- sphere of planet Earth six months and fourteen days around our Solar System in a Spiral Galaxy the local year after Dominion of the last God nineteen hundred seventy eight Completed as yellow hazed dawn clouds brighten East, Denver city white below Blue sky transparent rising empty deep & spacious to a morning star high over the balcony above some autos sat with wheels to curb downhill from Flatiron's jagged pine ridge, sunlit mountain meadows sloped to rust-red sandstone cliffs above brick townhouse roofs as sparrows waked whistling through Marine Street's summer green leafed trees. III This ode to you O Poets and Orators to come, you father Whitman as I join your side, you Congress and American people, you present meditators, spiritual friends & teachers, you O Master of the Diamond Arts, Take this wheel of syllables in hand, these vowels and consonants to breath's end take this inhalation of black poison to your heart, breath out this blessing from your breast on our creation forests cities oceans deserts rocky flats and mountains in the Ten Directions pacify with exhalation, enrich this Plutonian Ode to explode its empty thunder through earthen thought-worlds Magnetize this howl with heartless compassion, destroy this mountain of Plutonium with ordinary mind and body speech, thus empower this Mind-guard spirit gone out, gone out, gone beyond, gone beyond me, Wake space, so Ah! July 14, 1978

Written by Thomas Campbell | Love And Madness Hark ! from the battlements of yonder tower The solemn bell has tolled the midnight hour ! Roused from drear visions of distempered sleep, Poor Broderick wakes—in solitude to weep ! "Cease, Memory; cease (the friendless mourner cried) To probe the bosom too severely tried ! Oh ! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray Through tie bright fields of Fortune's better day, When youthful Hope, the music of the mind, Tuned all its charms, and Errington was kind ! Yet, can I cease, while glows this trembling frame, In sighs to speak thy melancholy name ! I hear thy spirit wail in every storm ! In midniglit shades I view thy passing form ! Pale as in that sad hour when doomed to feel ! Deep in thy perjured heart, the bloody steel ! Demons of Vengeance ! ye, at whose command I grasped the sword with more than woman's hand Say ye, did Pity's trembling voice control, Or horror damp the purpose of my soul ? No ! my wild heart sat smiling o'er the plan, 'Till Hate fulfilled what baffled love began ! Yes ; let the clay-cold breast that never knew One tender pang to generous nature true, Half-mingling pity with the gall of scorn, Condemn this heart, that bled in love forlorn ! And ye, proud fair, whose soul no gladness warms, Save Rapture's homage to your conscious charms ! Delighted idols of a gaudy train, Ill can your blunter feelings guess the pain, When the fond, faithful heart, inspired to prove Friendship refined, the calm delight of Love, Feels all its tender strings with anguish torn, And bleeds at perjured Pride's inhuman scorn. Say, then, did pitying Heaven condemn the deed, When Vengeance bade thee, faithless lover! bleed ? Long had I watched thy dark foreboding brow, What time thy bosom scorned its dearest vow ! Sad, though I wept the friend, the lover changed, Still thy cold look was scornful and estranged, Till from thy pity, love, and shelter thrown, I wandered hopeless, friendless, and alone ! Oh ! righteous Heaven ! 't was then my tortured soul First gave to wrath unlimited control ! Adieu the silent look ! the streaming eye ! The murmured plaint ! the deep heart-heaving sigh ! Long-slumbering Vengeance wakes to better deeds ; He shrieks, he falls, the perjured lover bleeds ! Now the last laugh of agony is o'er, And pale in blood he sleeps, to wake no more ! 'T is done ! the flame of hate no longer burns : Nature relents, but, ah! too late returns! Why does my soul this gush of fondness feel ? Trembling and faint, I drop the guilty steel ! Cold on my heart the hand of terror lies, And shades of horror close my languid eyes ! Oh ! 't was a deed of Murder's deepest grain ! Could Broderick's soul so true to wrath remain ? A friend long true, a once fond lover fell ? Where Love was fostered could not Pity dwell ? Unhappy youth ! while you pale cresscent glows To watch on silent Nature's deep repose, Thy sleepless spirit, breathing from the tomb , Foretells my fate, and summons me to come ! Once more I see thy sheeted spectre stand , Roll the dim eye, and wave the paly hand ! Soon may this fluttering spark of vital flame Forsake its languid melancholy frame ! Soon may these eyes their trembling lustre close, Welcome the dreamless night of long repose ! Soon may this woe-worn spirit seek the bourne Where, lulled to slumber, Grief forgets to mourn !"

Written by Charlotte Bronte | Frances SHE will not sleep, for fear of dreams, But, rising, quits her restless bed, And walks where some beclouded beams Of moonlight through the hall are shed. Obedient to the goad of grief, Her steps, now fast, now lingering slow, In varying motion seek relief From the Eumenides of woe. Wringing her hands, at intervals­ But long as mute as phantom dim­ She glides along the dusky walls, Under the black oak rafters, grim. The close air of the grated tower Stifles a heart that scarce can beat, And, though so late and lone the hour, Forth pass her wandering, faltering feet; And on the pavement, spread before The long front of the mansion grey, Her steps imprint the night-frost hoar, Which pale on grass and granite lay. Not long she stayed where misty moon And shimmering stars could on her look, But through the garden arch-way, soon Her strange and gloomy path she took. Some firs, coeval with the tower, Their straight black boughs stretched o'er her head, Unseen, beneath this sable bower, Rustled her dress and rapid tread. There was an alcove in that shade, Screening a rustic-seat and stand; Weary she sat her down and laid Her hot brow on her burning hand. To solitude and to the night, Some words she now, in murmurs, said; And, trickling through her fingers white, Some tears of misery she shed. ' God help me, in my grievous need, God help me, in my inward pain; Which cannot ask for pity's meed, Which has no license to complain; Which must be borne, yet who can bear, Hours long, days long, a constant weight­ The yoke of absolute despair, A suffering wholly desolate ? Who can for ever crush the heart, Restrain its throbbing, curb its life ? Dissemble truth with ceaseless art, With outward calm, mask inward strife ?' She waited­as for some reply; The still and cloudy night gave none; Erelong, with deep-drawn, trembling sigh, Her heavy plaint again begun. ' Unloved­I love; unwept­I weep; Grief I restrain­hope I repress: Vain is this anguish­fixed and deep; Vainer, desires and dreams of bliss. My love awakes no love again, My tears collect, and fall unfelt; My sorrow touches none with pain, My humble hopes to nothing melt. For me the universe is dumb, Stone-deaf, and blank, and wholly blind; Life I must bound, existence sum In the strait limits of one mind; That mind my own. Oh ! narrow cell; Dark­imageless­a living tomb ! There must I sleep, there wake and dwell Content, with palsy, pain, and gloom.' Again she paused; a moan of pain, A stifled sob, alone was heard; Long silence followed­then again, Her voice the stagnant midnight stirred. ' Must it be so ? Is this my fate ? Can I nor struggle, nor contend ? And am I doomed for years to wait, Watching death's lingering axe descend ? And when it falls, and when I die, What follows ? Vacant nothingness ? The blank of lost identity ? Erasure both of pain and bliss ? I've heard of heaven­I would believe; For if this earth indeed be all, Who longest lives may deepest grieve, Most blest, whom sorrows soonest call. Oh ! leaving disappointment here, Will man find hope on yonder coast ? Hope, which, on earth, shines never clear, And oft in clouds is wholly lost. Will he hope's source of light behold, Fruition's spring, where doubts expire, And drink, in waves of living gold, Contentment, full, for long desire ? Will he find bliss, which here he dreamed ? Rest, which was weariness on earth ? Knowledge, which, if o'er life it beamed, Served but to prove it void of worth ? Will he find love without lust's leaven, Love fearless, tearless, perfect, pure, To all with equal bounty given, In all, unfeigned, unfailing, sure ? Will he, from penal sufferings free, Released from shroud and wormy clod, All calm and glorious, rise and see Creation's Sire­Existence' God ? Then, glancing back on Time's brief woes, Will he behold them, fading, fly; Swept from Eternity's repose, Like sullying cloud, from pure blue sky ? If so­endure, my weary frame; And when thy anguish strikes too deep, And when all troubled burns life's flame, Think of the quiet, final sleep; Think of the glorious waking-hour, Which will not dawn on grief and tears, But on a ransomed spirit's power, Certain, and free from mortal fears. Seek now thy couch, and lie till morn, Then from thy chamber, calm, descend, With mind nor tossed, nor anguish-torn, But tranquil, fixed, to wait the end. And when thy opening eyes shall see Mementos, on the chamber wall, Of one who has forgotten thee, Shed not the tear of acrid gall. The tear which, welling from the heart, Burns where its drop corrosive falls, And makes each nerve, in torture, start, At feelings it too well recalls: When the sweet hope of being loved, Threw Eden sunshine on life's way; When every sense and feeling proved Expectancy of brightest day. When the hand trembled to receive A thrilling clasp, which seemed so near, And the heart ventured to believe, Another heart esteemed it dear. When words, half love, all tenderness, Were hourly heard, as hourly spoken, When the long, sunny days of bliss, Only by moonlight nights were broken. Till drop by drop, the cup of joy Filled full, with purple light, was glowing, And Faith, which watched it, sparkling high, Still never dreamt the overflowing. It fell not with a sudden crashing, It poured not out like open sluice; No, sparkling still, and redly flashing, Drained, drop by drop, the generous juice. I saw it sink, and strove to taste it, My eager lips approached the brim; The movement only seemed to waste it, It sank to dregs, all harsh and dim. These I have drank, and they for ever Have poisoned life and love for me; A draught from Sodom's lake could never More fiery, salt, and bitter, be. Oh ! Love was all a thin illusion; Joy, but the desert's flying stream; And, glancing back on long delusion, My memory grasps a hollow dream. Yet, whence that wondrous change of feeling, I never knew, and cannot learn, Nor why my lover's eye, congealing, Grew cold, and clouded, proud, and stern. Nor wherefore, friendship's forms forgetting, He careless left, and cool withdrew; Nor spoke of grief, nor fond regretting, Nor even one glance of comfort threw. And neither word nor token sending, Of kindness, since the parting day, His course, for distant regions bending, Went, self-contained and calm, away. Oh, bitter, blighting, keen sensation, Which will not weaken, cannot die, Hasten thy work of desolation, And let my tortured spirit fly ! Vain as the passing gale, my crying; Though lightning-struck, I must live on; I know, at heart, there is no dying Of love, and ruined hope, alone. Still strong, and young, and warm with vigour, Though scathed, I long shall greenly grow, And many a storm of wildest rigour Shall yet break o'er my shivered bough. Rebellious now to blank inertion, My unused strength demands a task; Travel, and toil, and full exertion, Are the last, only boon I ask. Whence, then, this vain and barren dreaming Of death, and dubious life to come ? I see a nearer beacon gleaming Over dejection's sea of gloom. The very wildness of my sorrow Tells me I yet have innate force; My track of life has been too narrow, Effort shall trace a broader course. The world is not in yonder tower, Earth is not prisoned in that room, 'Mid whose dark pannels, hour by hour, I've sat, the slave and prey of gloom. One feeling­turned to utter anguish, Is not my being's only aim; When, lorn and loveless, life will languish, But courage can revive the flame. He, when he left me, went a roving To sunny climes, beyond the sea; And I, the weight of woe removing, Am free and fetterless as he. New scenes, new language, skies less clouded, May once more wake the wish to live; Strange, foreign towns, astir, and crowded, New pictures to the mind may give. New forms and faces, passing ever, May hide the one I still retain, Defined, and fixed, and fading never, Stamped deep on vision, heart, and brain. And we might meet­time may have changed him; Chance may reveal the mystery, The secret influence which estranged him; Love may restore him yet to me. False thought­false hope­in scorn be banished ! I am not loved­nor loved have been; Recall not, then, the dreams scarce vanished, Traitors ! mislead me not again ! To words like yours I bid defiance, 'Tis such my mental wreck have made; Of God alone, and self-reliance, I ask for solace­hope for aid. Morn comes­and ere meridian glory O'er these, my natal woods, shall smile, Both lonely wood and mansion hoary I'll leave behind, full many a mile.

Written by Robert Hayden | Middle Passage I Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy: Sails flashing to the wind like weapons, sharks following the moans the fever and the dying; horror the corposant and compass rose. Middle Passage: voyage through death to life upon these shores. "10 April 1800-- Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says their moaning is a prayer for death, our and their own. Some try to starve themselves. Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under." Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann: Standing to America, bringing home black gold, black ivory, black seed. Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, of his bones New England pews are made, those are altar lights that were his eyes. Jesus Saviour Pilot Me Over Life's Tempestuous Sea We pray that Thou wilt grant, O Lord, safe passage to our vessels bringing heathen souls unto Thy chastening. Jesus Saviour "8 bells. I cannot sleep, for I am sick with fear, but writing eases fear a little since still my eyes can see these words take shape upon the page & so I write, as one would turn to exorcism. 4 days scudding, but now the sea is calm again. Misfortune follows in our wake like sharks (our grinning tutelary gods). Which one of us has killed an albatross? A plague among our blacks--Ophthalmia: blindness--& we have jettisoned the blind to no avail. It spreads, the terrifying sickness spreads. Its claws have scratched sight from the Capt.'s eyes & there is blindness in the fo'c'sle & we must sail 3 weeks before we come to port." What port awaits us, Davy Jones' or home? I've heard of slavers drifting, drifting, playthings of wind and storm and chance, their crews gone blind, the jungle hatred crawling up on deck. Thou Who Walked On Galilee "Deponent further sayeth The Bella J left the Guinea Coast with cargo of five hundred blacks and odd for the barracoons of Florida: "That there was hardly room 'tween-decks for half the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there; that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh and sucked the blood: "That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins; that there was one they called The Guinea Rose and they cast lots and fought to lie with her: "That when the Bo's'n piped all hands, the flames spreading from starboard already were beyond control, the ******* howling and their chains entangled with the flames: "That the burning blacks could not be reached, that the Crew abandoned ship, leaving their shrieking negresses behind, that the Captain perished drunken with the wenches: "Further Deponent sayeth not." Pilot Oh Pilot Me II Aye, lad, and I have seen those factories, Gambia, Rio Pongo, Calabar; have watched the artful mongos baiting traps of war wherein the victor and the vanquished Were caught as prizes for our barracoons. Have seen the ****** kings whose vanity and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah, Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us. And there was one--King Anthracite we named him-- fetish face beneath French parasols of brass and orange velvet, impudent mouth whose cups were carven skulls of enemies: He'd honor us with drum and feast and conjo and palm-oil-glistening wenches deft in love, and for tin crowns that shone with paste, red calico and German-silver trinkets Would have the drums talk war and send his warriors to burn the sleeping villages and kill the sick and old and lead the young in coffles to our factories. Twenty years a trader, twenty years, for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested from those black fields, and I'd be trading still but for the fevers melting down my bones. III Shuttles in the rocking loom of history, the dark ships move, the dark ships move, their bright ironical names like jests of kindness on a murderer's mouth; plough through thrashing glister toward fata morgana's lucent melting shore, weave toward New World littorals that are mirage and myth and actual shore. Voyage through death, voyage whose chartings are unlove. A charnel stench, effluvium of living death spreads outward from the hold, where the living and the dead, the horribly dying, lie interlocked, lie foul with blood and excrement. Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, the corpse of mercy rots with him, rats eat love's rotten gelid eyes. But, oh, the living look at you with human eyes whose suffering accuses you, whose hatred reaches through the swill of dark to strike you like a leper's claw. You cannot stare that hatred down or chain the fear that stalks the watches and breathes on you its fetid scorching breath; cannot kill the deep immortal human wish, the timeless will. "But for the storm that flung up barriers of wind and wave, The Amistad, señores, would have reached the port of Príncipe in two, three days at most; but for the storm we should have been prepared for what befell. Swift as a puma's leap it came. There was that interval of moonless calm filled only with the water's and the rigging's usual sounds, then sudden movement, blows and snarling cries and they had fallen on us with machete and marlinspike. It was as though the very air, the night itself were striking us. Exhausted by the rigors of the storm, we were no match for them. Our men went down before the murderous Africans. Our loyal Celestino ran from below with gun and lantern and I saw, before the cane- knife's wounding flash, Cinquez, that surly brute who calls himself a prince, directing, urging on the ghastly work. He hacked the poor mulatto down, and then he turned on me. The decks were slippery when daylight finally came. It sickens me to think of what I saw, of how these apes threw overboard the butchered bodies of our men, true Christians all, like so much jetsam. Enough, enough. The rest is quickly told: Cinquez was forced to spare the two of us you see to steer the ship to Africa, and we like phantoms doomed to rove the sea voyaged east by day and west by night, deceiving them, hoping for rescue, prisoners on our own vessel, till at length we drifted to the shores of this your land, America, where we were freed from our unspeakable misery. Now we demand, good sirs, the extradition of Cinquez and his accomplices to La Havana. And it distresses us to know there are so many here who seem inclined to justify the mutiny of these blacks. We find it paradoxical indeed that you whose wealth, whose tree of liberty are rooted in the labor of your slaves should suffer the august John Quincey Adams to speak with so much passion of the right of chattel slaves to kill their lawful masters and with his Roman rhetoric weave a hero's garland for Cinquez. I tell you that we are determined to return to Cuba with our slaves and there see justice done. Cinquez-- or let us say 'the Prince'--Cinquez shall die." The deep immortal human wish, the timeless will: Cinquez its deathless primaveral image, life that transfigures many lives. Voyage through death to life upon these shores.

Written by Vladimir Mayakovsky | To All and Everything No. It can’t be. No! You too, beloved? Why? What for? Darling, look - I came, I brought flowers, but, but... I never took silver spoons from your drawer! Ashen-faced, I staggered down five flights of stairs. The street eddied round me. Blasts. Blares. Tires screeched. It was gusty. The wind stung my cheeks. Horn mounted horn lustfully. Above the capital’s madness I raised my face, stern as the faces of ancient icons. Sorrow-rent, on your body as on a death-bed, its days my heart ended. You did not sully your hands with brute murder. Instead, you let drop calmly: “He’s in bed. There’s fruit and wine On the bedstand’s palm.” Love! You only existed in my inflamed brain. Enough! Stop this foolish comedy and take notice: I’m ripping off my toy armour, I, the greatest of all Don Quixotes! Remember? Weighed down by the cross, Christ stopped for a moment, weary. Watching him, the mob yelled, jeering: “Get movin’, you clod!” That’s right! Be spiteful. Spit upon him who begs for a rest on his day of days, harry and curse him. To the army of zealots, doomed to do good, man shows no mercy! That does it! I swear by my pagan strength - gimme a girl, young, eye-filling, and I won’t waste my feelings on her. I'll rape her and spear her heart with a gibe willingly. An eye for an eye! A thousand times over reap of revenge the crops' Never stop! Petrify, stun, howl into every ear: “The earth is a convict, hear, his head half shaved by the sun!” An eye for an eye! Kill me, bury me - I’ll dig myself out, the knives of my teeth by stone — no wonder!- made sharper, A snarling dog, under the plank-beds of barracks I’ll crawl, sneaking out to bite feet that smell of sweat and of market stalls! You'll leap from bed in the night’s early hours. “Moo!” I’ll roar. Over my neck, a yoke-savaged sore, tornados of flies will rise. I'm a white bull over the earth towering! Into an elk I’ll turn, my horns-branches entangled in wires, my eyes red with blood. Above the world, a beast brought to bay, I'll stand tirelessly. Man can’t escape! Filthy and humble, a prayer mumbling, on cold stone he lies. What I’ll do is paint on the royal gates, over God’s own the face of Razin. Dry up, rivers, stop him from quenching his thirst! Scorn him! Don’t waste your rays, sun! Glare! Let thousands of my disciples be born to trumpet anathemas on the squares! And when at last there comes, stepping onto the peaks of the ages, chillingly, the last of their days, in the black souls of anarchists and killers I, a gory vision, will blaze! It’s dawning, The sky’s mouth stretches out more and more, it drinks up the night sip by sip, thirstily. The windows send off a glow. Through the panes heat pours. The sun, viscous, streams down onto the sleeping city. O sacred vengeance! Lead me again above the dust without and up the steps of my poetic lines. This heart of mine, full to the brim, in a confession I will pour out. Men of the future! Who are you? I must know. Please! Here am I, all bruises and aches, pain-scorched... To you of my great soul I bequeath the orchard.

Written by Gregory Corso | Destiny 1856 Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass, Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells, And martial strains, the full-voiced pæan swells. The air is starred with flags, the chanted mass Throngs all the churches, yet the broad streets swarm With glad-eyed groups who chatter, laugh, and pass, In holiday confusion, class with class. And over all the spring, the sun-floods warm! In the Imperial palace that March morn, The beautiful young mother lay and smiled; For by her side just breathed the Prince, her child, Heir to an empire, to the purple born, Crowned with the Titan's name that stirs the heart Like a blown clarion--one more Bonaparte. 1879 Born to the purple, lying stark and dead, Transfixed with poisoned spears, beneath the sun Of brazen Africa! Thy grave is one, Fore-fated youth (on whom were visited Follies and sins not thine), whereat the world, Heartless howe'er it be, will pause to sing A dirge, to breathe a sigh, a wreath to fling Of rosemary and rue with bay-leaves curled. Enmeshed in toils ambitious, not thine own, Immortal, loved boy-Prince, thou tak'st thy stand With early doomed Don Carlos, hand in hand With mild-browed Arthur, Geoffrey's murdered son. Louis the Dauphin lifts his thorn-ringed head, And welcomes thee, his brother, 'mongst the dead.

Written by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot | Macavity: The Mystery Cat Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw-- For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law. He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair: For when they reach the scene of crime--Macavity's not there! Macavity, Macavity, there's no on like Macavity, He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity. His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare, And when you reach the scene of crime--Macavity's not there! You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air-- But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there! Macavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin; You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in. His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly doomed; His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed. He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake; And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake. Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity. You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square-- But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there! He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.) And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's. And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled, Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled, Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair-- Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there! And when the Foreign Office finds a Treaty's gone astray, Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way, There may be a scap of paper in the hall or on the stair-- But it's useless of investigate--Macavity's not there! And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say: "It must have been Macavity!"--but he's a mile away. You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs, Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums. Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macacity, There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity. He always has an alibit, or one or two to spare: And whatever time the deed took place--MACAVITY WASN'T THERE! And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known (I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone) Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

Written by Jonathan Swift | Elegy Upon Tiger Her dead lady's joy and comfort, Who departed this life The last day of March, 1727: To the great joy of Bryan That his antagonist is gone. And is poor Tiger laid at last so low? O day of sorrow! -Day of dismal woe! Bloodhounds, or spaniels, lap-dogs, 'tis all one, When Death once whistles -snap! -away they're gone. See how she lies, and hangs her lifeless ears, Bathed in her mournful lady's tears! Dumb is her throat, and wagless is her tail, Doomed to the grave, to Death's eternal jail! In a few days this lovely creature must First turn to clay, and then be changed to dust. That mouth which used its lady's mouth to lick Must yield its jaw-bones to the worms to pick. That mouth which used the partridge-wing to eat Must give its palate to the worms to eat. Methinks I see her now in Charon's boat Bark at the Stygian fish which round it float; While Cerberus, alarmed to hear the sound, Makes Hell's wide concave bellow all around. She sees him not, but hears him through the dark, And valiantly returns him bark for bark. But now she trembles -though a ghost, she dreads To see a dog with three large yawning heads. Spare her, you hell-hounds, case your frightful paws, And let poor Tiger 'scape your furious jaws. Let her go safe to the Elysian plains, Where Hylax barks among the Mantuan swains; There let her frisk about her new-found love: She loved a dog when she was here above. The Epitaph Here lies beneath this marble An animal could bark, or warble: Sometimes a *****, sometimes a bird, Could eat a tart, or eat a t -.

Written by Mark Doty | A Display Of Mackeral They lie in parallel rows, on ice, head to tail, each a foot of luminosity barred with black bands, which divide the scales' radiant sections like seams of lead in a Tiffany window. Iridescent, watery prismatics: think abalone, the wildly rainbowed mirror of a soap-bubble sphere, think sun on gasoline. Splendor, and splendor, and not a one in any way distinguished from the other --nothing about them of individuality. Instead they're all exact expressions of the one soul, each a perfect fulfillment of heaven's template, mackerel essence. As if, after a lifetime arriving at this enameling, the jeweler's made uncountable examples each as intricate in its oily fabulation as the one before; a cosmos of champleve. Suppose we could iridesce, like these, and lose ourselves entirely in the universe of shimmer--would you want to be yourself only, unduplicatable, doomed to be lost? They'd prefer, plainly, to be flashing participants, multitudinous. Even on ice they seem to be bolting forward, heedless of stasis. They don't care they're dead and nearly frozen, just as, presumably, they didn't care that they were living: all, all for all, the rainbowed school and its acres of brilliant classrooms, in which no verb is singular, or every one is. How happy they seem, even on ice, to be together, selfless, which is the price of gleaming.

Written by Emily Brontë | The Prisoner Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear Year after year in gloom and desolate despair; A messenger of Hope comes every night to me, And offers for short life, eternal liberty. He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs, With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars: Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire. Desire for nothing known in my maturer years, When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears: When, if my spirit's sky was full of flashes warm, I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunderstorm. But first, a hush of peace—a soundless calm descends; The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends; Mute music soothes my breast—unuttered harmony That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me. Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals; My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels; Its wings are almost free—its home, its harbour found; Measuring the gulf, it stoops, and dares the final bound. O dreadful is the check—intense the agony— When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see; When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again, The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain. Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less; The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless; And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine, If it but herald Death, the vision is divine.