10 Best Famous Dragons Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Dragons poems. This is a select list of the best famous Dragons poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Dragons poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of dragons poems.

• All Famous Dragons Poems

 It's good the great green earth to roam,
Where sights of awe the soul inspire;
But oh, it's best, the coming home,
The crackle of one's own hearth-fire!
You've hob-nobbed with the solemn Past;
You've seen the pageantry of kings;
Yet oh, how sweet to gain at last
The peace and rest of Little Things!

Perhaps you're counted with the Great;
You strain and strive with mighty men;
Your hand is on the helm of State;
Colossus-like you stride . . . and then
There comes a pause, a shining hour,
A dog that leaps, a hand that clings:
O Titan, turn from pomp and power;
Give all your heart to Little Things.

Go couch you childwise in the grass,
Believing it's some jungle strange,
Where mighty monsters peer and pass,
Where beetles roam and spiders range.
'Mid gloom and gleam of leaf and blade,
What dragons rasp their painted wings!
O magic world of shine and shade!
O beauty land of Little Things!

I sometimes wonder, after all,
Amid this tangled web of fate,
If what is great may not be small,
And what is small may not be great.
So wondering I go my way,
Yet in my heart contentment sings . . .
O may I ever see, I pray,
God's grace and love in Little Things.

So give to me, I only beg,
A little roof to call my own,
A little cider in the keg,
A little meat upon the bone;
A little garden by the sea,
A little boat that dips and swings . . .
Take wealth, take fame, but leave to me,
O Lord of Life, just Little Things.

Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn't frighten me at all
 
Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn't frighten me at all
 
Mean old Mother Goose
Lions on the loose
They don't frighten me at all
 
Dragons breathing flame
On my counterpane
That doesn't frighten me at all.
 
I go boo
Make them shoo
I make fun
Way they run
I won't cry
So they fly
I just smile
They go wild
 
Life doesn't frighten me at all.
 
Tough guys fight
All alone at night
Life doesn't frighten me at all.
 
Panthers in the park
Strangers in the dark
No, they don't frighten me at all.
 
That new classroom where
Boys all pull my hair
(Kissy little girls
With their hair in curls)
They don't frighten me at all.
 
Don't show me frogs and snakes
And listen for my scream,
If I'm afraid at all
It's only in my dreams.
 
I've got a magic charm
That I keep up my sleeve
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe.
 
Life doesn't frighten me at all
Not at all
Not at all.
 
Life doesn't frighten me at all.

 Deep in th' abyss where frantic horror bides, 
In thickest mists of vapours fell,
Where wily Serpents hissing glare
And the dark Demon of Revenge resides,
At midnight's murky hour
Thy origin began: 
Rapacious MALICE was thy sire;
Thy Dam the sullen witch, Despair;
Thy Nurse, insatiate Ire. 
The FATES conspir'd their ills to twine,
About thy heart's infected shrine;
They gave thee each disastrous spell,
Each desolating pow'r,
To blast the fairest hopes of man. 

Soon as thy fatal birth was known, 
From her unhallow'd throne
With ghastly smile pale Hecate sprung; 
Thy hideous form the Sorc'ress press'd
With kindred fondness to her breast; 
Her haggard eye
Short forth a ray of transient joy, 
Whilst thro' th' infernal shades exulting clamours rung. 

Above thy fellow fiends thy tyrant hand
Grasp'd with resistless force supreme command: 
The dread terrific crowd
Before thy iron sceptre bow'd. 
Now, seated in thy ebon cave, 
Around thy throne relentless furies rave: 
A wreath of ever-wounding thorn
Thy scowling brows encompass round, 
Thy heart by knawing Vultures torn, 
Thy meagre limbs with deathless scorpions bound. 
Thy black associates, torpid IGNORANCE, 
And pining JEALOUSY­with eye askance,
With savage rapture execute thy will, 
And strew the paths of life with every torturing ill 

Nor can the sainted dead escape thy rage; 
Thy vengeance haunts the silent grave, 
Thy taunts insult the ashes of the brave; 
While proud AMBITION weeps thy rancour to assuage. 
The laurels round the POET's bust, 
Twin'd by the liberal hand of Taste, 
By thy malignant grasp defac'd, 
Fade to their native dust: 
Thy ever-watchful eye no labour tires, 
Beneath thy venom'd touch the angel TRUTH expires. 

When in thy petrifying car
Thy scaly dragons waft thy form, 
Then, swifter, deadlier far 
Than the keen lightning's lance, 
That wings its way across the yelling storm, 
Thy barbed shafts fly whizzing round, 
While every with'ring glance
Inflicts a cureless wound. 

Thy giant arm with pond'rous blow
Hurls genius from her glorious height, 
Bends the fair front of Virtue low, 
And meanly pilfers every pure delight. 
Thy hollow voice the sense appalls, 
Thy vigilance the mind enthralls; 
Rest hast thou none,­by night, by day, 
Thy jealous ardour seeks for prey­
Nought can restrain thy swift career; 
Thy smile derides the suff'rer's wrongs; 
Thy tongue the sland'rers tale prolongs; 
Thy thirst imbibes the victim's tear; 
Thy breast recoils from friendship's flame; 
Sick'ning thou hear'st the trump of Fame; 
Worth gives to thee, the direst pang; 
The Lover's rapture wounds thy heart, 
The proudest efforts of prolific art 
Shrink from thy poisonous fang. 

In vain the Sculptor's lab'ring hand 
Calls fine proportion from the Parian stone; 
In vain the Minstrel's chords command
The soft vibrations of seraphic tone; 
For swift thy violating arm 
Tears from perfection ev'ry charm; 
Nor rosy YOUTH, nor BEAUTY's smiles
Thy unrelenting rage beguiles, 
Thy breath contaminates the fairest name, 
And binds the guiltless brow with ever-blist'ring shame.

 Earth no longer
hymns the Creator,
the seven days of wonder,
the Garden is over —
all the stories are told,
the seven seals broken
all that begins
must have its ending,
our striving, desiring,
our living and dying,
for Time, the bringer
of abundant days
is Time the destroyer —
In the Iron Age
the Kali Yuga
To whom can we pray
at the end of an era
but the Lord Shiva,
the Liberator, the purifier?

Our forests are felled,
our mountains eroded,
the wild places
where the beautiful animals
found food and sanctuary
we have desolated,
a third of our seas,
a third of our rivers
we have polluted
and the sea-creatures dying.
Our civilization’s
blind progress
in wrong courses
through wrong choices
has brought us to nightmare
where what seems,
is, to the dreamer,
the collective mind
of the twentieth century —
this world of wonders
not divine creation
but a big bang
of blind chance,
purposeless accident,
mother earth’s children,
their living and loving,
their delight in being
not joy but chemistry,
stimulus, reflex,
valueless, meaningless,
while to our machines
we impute intelligence,
in computers and robots
we store information
and call it knowledge,
we seek guidance
by dialling numbers,
pressing buttons, 
throwing switches,
in place of family
our companions are shadows,
cast on a screen,
bodiless voices, fleshless faces,
where was the Garden
a Disney-land
of virtual reality,
in place of angels
the human imagination
is peopled with foot-ballers
film-stars, media-men,
experts, know-all
television personalities,
animated puppets
with cartoon faces —
To whom can we pray
for release from illusion,
from the world-cave,
but Time the destroyer,
the liberator, the purifier?

The curse of Midas
has changed at a touch,
a golden handshake
earthly paradise
to lifeless matter,
where once was seed-time,
summer and winter,
food-chain, factory farming,
monocrops for supermarkets,
pesticides, weed-killers
birdless springs, 
endangered species,
battery-hens, hormone injections,
artificial insemination,
implants, transplants, sterilization,
surrogate births, contraception,
cloning, genetic engineering, abortion,
and our days shall be short
in the land we have sown
with the Dragon’s teeth
where our armies arise
fully armed on our killing-fields
with land-mines and missiles,
tanks and artillery,
gas-masks and body-bags,
our air-craft rain down
fire and destruction,
our space-craft broadcast
lies and corruption,
our elected parliaments
parrot their rhetoric
of peace and democracy
while the truth we deny
returns in our dreams
of Armageddon,
the death-wish, the arms-trade,
hatred and slaughter
profitable employment
of our thriving cities,
the arms-race
to the end of the world
of our postmodern, 
post-Christian,
post-human nations,
progress to the nihil
of our spent civilization.
But cause and effect,
just and inexorable
law of the universe
no fix of science,
nor amenable god
can save from ourselves
the selves we have become —
At the end of history
to whom can we pray
but to the destroyer,
the liberator, the purifier?

In the beginning
the stars sang together
the cosmic harmony,
but Time, imperceptible
taker-away
of all that has been,
all that will be,
our heart-beat your drum,
our dance of life
your dance of death
in the crematorium,
our high-rise dreams,
Valhalla, Utopia,
Xanadu, Shangri-la, world revolution
Time has taken, and soon will be gone
Cambridge, Princeton and M.I.T.,
Nalanda, Athens and Alexandria
all for the holocaust
of civilization —
To whom shall we pray
when our vision has faded
but the world-destroyer,
the liberator, the purifier?

But great is the realm
of the world-creator,
the world-sustainer
from whom we come,
in whom we move
and have our being,
about us, within us
the wonders of wisdom,
the trees and the fountains,
the stars and the mountains,
all the children of joy,
the loved and the known,
the unknowable mystery
to whom we return
through the world-destroyer, —
Holy, holy
at the end of the world
the purging fire
of the purifier, the liberator!

 In my childhood rumors ran
 Of a world beyond our door—
Terrors to the life of man
 That the highroad held in store.

Of mermaids' doleful game
 In deep water I heard tell,
Of lofty dragons belching flame,
 Of the hornèd fiend of Hell.

Tales like these were too absurd
 For my laughter-loving ear:
Soon I mocked at all I heard,
 Though with cause indeed for fear.

Now I know the mermaid kin
 I find them bound by natural laws:
They have neither tail nor fin,
 But are deadlier for that cause.

Dragons have no darting tongues,
 Teeth saw-edged, nor rattling scales;
No fire issues from their lungs,
 No black poison from their tails:

For they are creatures of dark air,
 Unsubstantial tossing forms,
Thunderclaps of man's despair
 In mid-whirl of mental storms.

And there's a true and only fiend
 Worse than prophets prophesy,
Whose full powers to hurt are screened
 Lest the race of man should die.

Ever in vain will courage plot
 The dragon's death, in coat of proof;
Or love abjure the mermaid grot;
 Or faith denounce the cloven hoof.

Mermaids will not be denied
 The last bubbles of our shame,
The Dragon flaunts an unpierced hide,
 The true fiend governs in God's name.

 I didn't make you know how glad I was 
To have you come and camp here on our land. 
I promised myself to get down some day 
And see the way you lived, but I don't know! 
With a houseful of hungry men to feed 
I guess you'd find.... It seems to me 
I can't express my feelings any more 
Than I can raise my voice or want to lift 
My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to). 
Did ever you feel so? I hope you never. 
It's got so I don't even know for sure 
Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything. 
There's nothing but a voice-like left inside 
That seems to tell me how I ought to feel, 
And would feel if I wasn't all gone wrong. 
You take the lake. I look and look at it. 
I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water. 
I stand and make myself repeat out loud 
The advantages it has, so long and narrow, 
Like a deep piece of some old running river 
Cut short off at both ends. It lies five miles 
Straight away through the mountain notch 
From the sink window where I wash the plates, 
And all our storms come up toward the house, 
Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter and whiter. 
It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuit 
To step outdoors and take the water dazzle 
A sunny morning, or take the rising wind 
About my face and body and through my wrapper, 
When a storm threatened from the Dragon's Den, 
And a cold chill shivered across the lake. 
I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water, 
Our Willoughby! How did you hear of it? 
I expect, though, everyone's heard of it. 
In a book about ferns? Listen to that! 
You let things more like feathers regulate 
Your going and coming. And you like it here? 
I can see how you might. But I don't know! 
It would be different if more people came, 
For then there would be business. As it is, 
The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them, 
Sometimes we don't. We've a good piece of shore 
That ought to be worth something, and may yet. 
But I don't count on it as much as Len. 
He looks on the bright side of everything, 
Including me. He thinks I'll be all right 
With doctoring. But it's not medicine-- 
Lowe is the only doctor's dared to say so-- 
It's rest I want--there, I have said it out-- 
From cooking meals for hungry hired men 
And washing dishes after them--from doing 
Things over and over that just won't stay done. 
By good rights I ought not to have so much 
Put on me, but there seems no other way. 
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it. 
He says the best way out is always through. 
And I agree to that, or in so far 
As that I can see no way out but through-- 
Leastways for me--and then they'll be convinced. 
It's not that Len don't want the best for me. 
It was his plan our moving over in 
Beside the lake from where that day I showed you 
We used to live--ten miles from anywhere. 
We didn't change without some sacrifice, 
But Len went at it to make up the loss. 
His work's a man's, of course, from sun to sun, 
But he works when he works as hard as I do-- 
Though there's small profit in comparisons. 
(Women and men will make them all the same.) 
But work ain't all. Len undertakes too much. 
He's into everything in town. This year 
It's highways, and he's got too many men 
Around him to look after that make waste. 
They take advantage of him shamefully, 
And proud, too, of themselves for doing so. 
We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings, 
Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk 
While I fry their bacon. Much they care! 
No more put out in what they do or say 
Than if I wasn't in the room at all. 
Coming and going all the time, they are: 
I don't learn what their names are, let alone 
Their characters, or whether they are safe 
To have inside the house with doors unlocked. 
I'm not afraid of them, though, if they're not 
Afraid of me. There's two can play at that. 
I have my fancies: it runs in the family. 
My father's brother wasn't right. They kept him 
Locked up for years back there at the old farm. 
I've been away once--yes, I've been away. 
The State Asylum. I was prejudiced; 
I wouldn't have sent anyone of mine there; 
You know the old idea--the only asylum 
Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford, 
Rather than send their folks to such a place, 
Kept them at home; and it does seem more human. 
But it's not so: the place is the asylum. 
There they have every means proper to do with, 
And you aren't darkening other people's lives-- 
Worse than no good to them, and they no good 
To you in your condition; you can't know 
Affection or the want of it in that state. 
I've heard too much of the old-fashioned way. 
My father's brother, he went mad quite young. 
Some thought he had been bitten by a dog, 
Because his violence took on the form 
Of carrying his pillow in his teeth; 
But it's more likely he was crossed in love, 
Or so the story goes. It was some girl. 
Anyway all he talked about was love. 
They soon saw he would do someone a mischief 
If he wa'n't kept strict watch of, and it ended 
In father's building him a sort of cage, 
Or room within a room, of hickory poles, 
Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling,-- 
A narrow passage all the way around. 
Anything they put in for furniture 
He'd tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on. 
So they made the place comfortable with straw, 
Like a beast's stall, to ease their consciences. 
Of course they had to feed him without dishes. 
They tried to keep him clothed, but he paraded 
With his clothes on his arm--all of his clothes. 
Cruel--it sounds. I 'spose they did the best 
They knew. And just when he was at the height, 
Father and mother married, and mother came, 
A bride, to help take care of such a creature, 
And accommodate her young life to his. 
That was what marrying father meant to her. 
She had to lie and hear love things made dreadful 
By his shouts in the night. He'd shout and shout 
Until the strength was shouted out of him, 
And his voice died down slowly from exhaustion. 
He'd pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string, 
And let them go and make them twang until 
His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow. 
And then he'd crow as if he thought that child's play-- 
The only fun he had. I've heard them say, though, 
They found a way to put a stop to it. 
He was before my time--I never saw him; 
But the pen stayed exactly as it was 
There in the upper chamber in the ell, 
A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter. 
I often think of the smooth hickory bars. 
It got so I would say--you know, half fooling-- 
"It's time I took my turn upstairs in jail"-- 
Just as you will till it becomes a habit. 
No wonder I was glad to get away. 
Mind you, I waited till Len said the word. 
I didn't want the blame if things went wrong. 
I was glad though, no end, when we moved out, 
And I looked to be happy, and I was, 
As I said, for a while--but I don't know! 
Somehow the change wore out like a prescription. 
And there's more to it than just window-views 
And living by a lake. I'm past such help-- 
Unless Len took the notion, which he won't, 
And I won't ask him--it's not sure enough. 
I 'spose I've got to go the road I'm going: 
Other folks have to, and why shouldn't I? 
I almost think if I could do like you, 
Drop everything and live out on the ground-- 
But it might be, come night, I shouldn't like it, 
Or a long rain. I should soon get enough, 
And be glad of a good roof overhead. 
I've lain awake thinking of you, I'll warrant, 
More than you have yourself, some of these nights. 
The wonder was the tents weren't snatched away 
From over you as you lay in your beds. 
I haven't courage for a risk like that. 
Bless you, of course, you're keeping me from work, 
But the thing of it is, I need to be kept. 
There's work enough to do--there's always that; 
But behind's behind. The worst that you can do 
Is set me back a little more behind. 
I sha'n't catch up in this world, anyway.
I'd rather you'd not go unless you must.

 In the dour ages
Of drafty cells and draftier castles,
Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables,
Saint and king unfisted obstruction's knuckles
By no miracle or majestic means,

But by such abuses
As smack of spite and the overscrupulous
Twisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews,
One white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles
Of God's city and Babylon's

Must wait, while here Suso's
Hand hones his tack and needles,
Scouraging to sores his own red sluices
For the relish of heaven, relentless, dousing with prickles
Of horsehair and lice his horny loins;
While there irate Cyrus
Squanders a summer and the brawn of his heroes
To rebuke the horse-swallowing River Gyndes:
He split it into three hundred and sixty trickles
A girl could wade without wetting her shins.

Still, latter-day sages,
Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains.

 A Song in Chinese Tapestries


"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said,
"San Francisco sleeps as the dead—
Ended license, lust and play:
Why do you iron the night away?
Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,
With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.
While the monster shadows glower and creep,
What can be better for man than sleep?"

"I will tell you a secret," Chang replied;
"My breast with vision is satisfied,
And I see green trees and fluttering wings,
And my deathless bird from Shanghai sings."
Then he lit five fire-crackers in a pan.
"Pop, pop," said the fire-crackers, "cra-cra-crack."
He lit a joss stick long and black.
Then the proud gray joss in the corner stirred;
On his wrist appeared a gray small bird,
And this was the song of the gray small bird:
"Where is the princess, loved forever,
Who made Chang first of the kings of men?"

And the joss in the corner stirred again;
And the carved dog, curled in his arms, awoke,
Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled and broke.
It piled in a maze round the ironing-place,
And there on the snowy table wide
Stood a Chinese lady of high degree,
With a scornful, witching, tea-rose face....
Yet she put away all form and pride,
And laid her glimmering veil aside
With a childlike smile for Chang and for me.

The walls fell back, night was aflower,
The table gleamed in a moonlit bower,
While Chang, with a countenance carved of stone,
Ironed and ironed, all alone.
And thus she sang to the busy man Chang:
"Have you forgotten....
Deep in the ages, long, long ago,
I was your sweetheart, there on the sand—
Storm-worn beach of the Chinese land?
We sold our grain in the peacock town
Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown—
Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown....

"When all the world was drinking blood
From the skulls of men and bulls
And all the world had swords and clubs of stone,
We drank our tea in China beneath the sacred spice-trees,
And heard the curled waves of the harbor moan.
And this gray bird, in Love's first spring,
With a bright-bronze breast and a bronze-brown wing,
Captured the world with his carolling.
Do you remember, ages after,
At last the world we were born to own?
You were the heir of the yellow throne—
The world was the field of the Chinese man
And we were the pride of the Sons of Han?
We copied deep books and we carved in jade,
And wove blue silks in the mulberry shade...."

"I remember, I remember
That Spring came on forever,
That Spring came on forever,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.

My heart was filled with marvel and dream,
Though I saw the western street-lamps gleam,
Though dawn was bringing the western day,
Though Chang was a laundryman ironing away....
Mingled there with the streets and alleys,
The railroad-yard and the clock-tower bright,
Demon clouds crossed ancient valleys;
Across wide lotus-ponds of light
I marked a giant firefly's flight.

And the lady, rosy-red,
Flourished her fan, her shimmering fan,
Stretched her hand toward Chang, and said:
"Do you remember,
Ages after,
Our palace of heart-red stone?
Do you remember
The little doll-faced children
With their lanterns full of moon-fire,
That came from all the empire
Honoring the throne?—
The loveliest fête and carnival
Our world had ever known?
The sages sat about us
With their heads bowed in their beards,
With proper meditation on the sight.
Confucius was not born;
We lived in those great days
Confucius later said were lived aright....

And this gray bird, on that day of spring,
With a bright bronze breast, and a bronze-brown wing,
Captured the world with his carolling.
Late at night his tune was spent.
Peasants,
Sages,
Children,
Homeward went,
And then the bronze bird sang for you and me.
We walked alone. Our hearts were high and free.
I had a silvery name, I had a silvery name,
I had a silvery name — do you remember
The name you cried beside the tumbling sea?"

Chang turned not to the lady slim—
He bent to his work, ironing away;
But she was arch, and knowing and glowing,
And the bird on his shoulder spoke for him.

"Darling . . . darling . . . darling . . . darling . . ."
Said the Chinese nightingale.

The great gray joss on a rustic shelf,
Rakish and shrewd, with his collar awry,
Sang impolitely, as though by himself,
Drowning with his bellowing the nightingale's cry:
"Back through a hundred, hundred years
Hear the waves as they climb the piers,
Hear the howl of the silver seas,
Hear the thunder.
Hear the gongs of holy China
How the waves and tunes combine
In a rhythmic clashing wonder,
Incantation old and fine:
`Dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons,
Red fire-crackers, and green fire-crackers,
And dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons.'"

Then the lady, rosy-red,
Turned to her lover Chang and said:
"Dare you forget that turquoise dawn
When we stood in our mist-hung velvet lawn,
And worked a spell this great joss taught
Till a God of the Dragons was charmed and caught?
From the flag high over our palace home
He flew to our feet in rainbow-foam —
A king of beauty and tempest and thunder
Panting to tear our sorrows asunder.
A dragon of fair adventure and wonder.
We mounted the back of that royal slave
With thoughts of desire that were noble and grave.
We swam down the shore to the dragon-mountains,
We whirled to the peaks and the fiery fountains.
To our secret ivory house we were bourne.
We looked down the wonderful wing-filled regions
Where the dragons darted in glimmering legions.
Right by my breast the nightingale sang;
The old rhymes rang in the sunlit mist
That we this hour regain —
Song-fire for the brain.
When my hands and my hair and my feet you kissed,
When you cried for your heart's new pain,
What was my name in the dragon-mist,
In the rings of rainbowed rain?"

"Sorrow and love, glory and love,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.
"Sorrow and love, glory and love,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.

And now the joss broke in with his song:
"Dying ember, bird of Chang,
Soul of Chang, do you remember? —
Ere you returned to the shining harbor
There were pirates by ten thousand
Descended on the town
In vessels mountain-high and red and brown,
Moon-ships that climbed the storms and cut the skies.
On their prows were painted terrible bright eyes.
But I was then a wizard and a scholar and a priest;
I stood upon the sand;
With lifted hand I looked upon them
And sunk their vessels with my wizard eyes,
And the stately lacquer-gate made safe again.
Deep, deep below the bay, the sea-weed and the spray,
Embalmed in amber every pirate lies,
Embalmed in amber every pirate lies."

Then this did the noble lady say:
"Bird, do you dream of our home-coming day
When you flew like a courier on before
From the dragon-peak to our palace-door,
And we drove the steed in your singing path—
The ramping dragon of laughter and wrath:
And found our city all aglow,
And knighted this joss that decked it so?
There were golden fishes in the purple river
And silver fishes and rainbow fishes.
There were golden junks in the laughing river,
And silver junks and rainbow junks:
There were golden lilies by the bay and river,
And silver lilies and tiger-lilies,
And tinkling wind-bells in the gardens of the town
By the black-lacquer gate
Where walked in state
The kind king Chang
And his sweet-heart mate....
With his flag-born dragon
And his crown of pearl...and...jade,
And his nightingale reigning in the mulberry shade,
And sailors and soldiers on the sea-sands brown,
And priests who bowed them down to your song—
By the city called Han, the peacock town,
By the city called Han, the nightingale town,
The nightingale town."

Then sang the bird, so strangely gay,
Fluttering, fluttering, ghostly and gray,
A vague, unravelling, final tune,
Like a long unwinding silk cocoon;
Sang as though for the soul of him
Who ironed away in that bower dim: —
"I have forgotten
Your dragons great,
Merry and mad and friendly and bold.

Dim is your proud lost palace-gate.
I vaguely know
There were heroes of old,
Troubles more than the heart could hold,
There were wolves in the woods
Yet lambs in the fold,
Nests in the top of the almond tree....
The evergreen tree... and the mulberry tree...
Life and hurry and joy forgotten,
Years on years I but half-remember...
Man is a torch, then ashes soon,
May and June, then dead December,
Dead December, then again June.
Who shall end my dream's confusion?
Life is a loom, weaving illusion...
I remember, I remember
There were ghostly veils and laces...
In the shadowy bowery places...
With lovers' ardent faces
Bending to one another,
Speaking each his part.
They infinitely echo
In the red cave of my heart.
`Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart.'
They said to one another.

They spoke, I think, of perils past.
They spoke, I think, of peace at last.
One thing I remember:
Spring came on forever,
Spring came on forever,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.

 There was a hope for poetry in the sixties

And for education and society, teachers free

To do as they wanted: I could and did teach

Poetry and art all day and little else -

That was my way.



I threw rainbows against the classroom walls,

Gold and silver dragons in the corridors and

Halls; the children’s eyes were full of stars;

I taught the alphabet in Greek and spoke of

Peace and war in Vietnam, of birth and sex and

Death and immortality - the essences of lyric poetry;

Richards and Ogden on ‘The Meaning of Meaning’,

Schopenhauer on sadness, Nietzsche and Lawrence on

Civilisation and Plato on the Theory of Forms;

I read aloud ‘The Rainbow’ and the children drew

The waterfall with Gudrun bathing, I showed

Them Gauguin and Fra Angelico in gold and a film

On painting from life, and the nude girls

Bothered no-one.



It was the Sixties -

Art was life and life was art and in the

Staff-room we talked of poetry and politics

And passionately I argued with John. a clinical

Psychologist, on Freud and Jung; Anne, at forty

One, wanted to be sterilised and amazingly asked

My advice but that was how it was then: Dianne

Went off to join weekly rep at Brighton, Dave

Clark had given up law to teach a ‘D’ stream in the

Inner city. I was more lucky and had the brightest

Children - Sheila Pritchard my genius child-poet with

Her roguish eye and high bright voice, drawing skulls

In Avernus and burning white chrysanthemums, teasing me

With her long legs and gold salmon-flecked eyes.



It was a surprise when I made it into Penguin Books;

Michael Horovitz busy then as now and madly idealistic

As me; getting ready for the Albert Hall jamboree,

The rainbow bomb of peace and poetry.

 INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER

Come, old friend! sit down and listen!
From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!

Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,
Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.

Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,
And possessing youth eternal.

Round about him, fair Bacchantes,
Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses,
Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's
Vineyards, sing delirious verses.

Thus he won, through all the nations,
Bloodless victories, and the farmer
Bore, as trophies and oblations,
Vines for banners, ploughs for armor.

Judged by no o'erzealous rigor,
Much this mystic throng expresses:
Bacchus was the type of vigor,
And Silenus of excesses.

These are ancient ethnic revels,
Of a faith long since forsaken;
Now the Satyrs, changed to devils,
Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken.

Now to rivulets from the mountains
Point the rods of fortune-tellers;
Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,--
Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.

Claudius, though he sang of flagons
And huge tankards filled with Rhenish,
From that fiery blood of dragons
Never would his own replenish.

Even Redi, though he chaunted
Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys,
Never drank the wine he vaunted
In his dithyrambic sallies.

Then with water fill the pitcher
Wreathed about with classic fables;
Ne'er Falernian threw a richer
Light upon Lucullus' tables.

Come, old friend, sit down and listen
As it passes thus between us,
How its wavelets laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!