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Best Famous Familiars Poems

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Written by Edgar Bowers | Create an image from this poem

Elegy: Walking the Line

 Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line,
The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum
Superb above the cabin, along the wall—
Stones gathered from the level field nearby
When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees
Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.)
And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous
Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down,
In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha
In solstice bloom, all white, most graciously.
On the sunnier slope, the wild plums that my mother
Later would make preserves of, to give to friends
Or sell, in autumn, with the foxgrape, quince,
Elderberry, and muscadine. Around
The granite overhang, moist den of foxes;
Gradually up a long hill, high in pine,
Park-like, years of dry needles on the ground,
And dogwood, slopes the settlers terraced; pine
We cut at Christmas, berries, hollies, anise,
And cones for sale in Mister Haymore’s yard
In town, below the Courthouse Square. James Haymore,
One of the two good teachers at Boys’ High,
Ironic and demanding, chemistry;
Mary Lou Culver taught us English: essays,
Plot summaries, outlines, meters, kinds of clauses
(Noun, adjective, and adverb, five at a time),
Written each day and then revised, and she
Up half the night to read them once again
Through her pince-nez, under a single lamp.
Across the road, on a steeper hill, the settlers
Set a house, unpainted, the porch fallen in,
The road a red clay strip without a bridge,
A shallow stream that liked to overflow.
Oliver Brand’s mules pulled our station wagon
Out of the gluey mire, earth’s rust. Then, here
And there, back from the road, the specimen
Shrubs and small trees my father planted, some
Taller than we were, some in bloom, some berried,
And some we still brought water to. We always
Paused at the weed-filled hole beside the beech
That, one year, brought forth beech nuts by the thousands,
A hole still reminiscent of the man
Chewing tobacco in among his whiskers
My father happened on, who, discovered, told
Of dreaming he should dig there for the gold
And promised to give half of what he found. 

During the wars with Germany and Japan,
Descendents of the settlers, of Oliver Brand
And of that man built Flying Fortresses
For Lockheed, in Atlanta; now they build
Brick mansions in the woods they left, with lawns
To paved and lighted streets, azaleas, camellias
Blooming among the pines and tulip trees—
Mercedes Benz and Cadillac Republicans.
There was another stream further along 
Divided through a marsh, lined by the fence
We stretched to posts with Mister Garner’s help
The time he needed cash for his son’s bail
And offered all his place. A noble spring
Under the oak root cooled his milk and butter.
He called me “honey,” working with us there
(My father bought three acres as a gift),
His wife pale, hair a country orange, voice
Uncanny, like a ghost’s, through the open door
Behind her, chickens scratching on the floor.
Barred Rocks, our chickens; one, a rooster, splendid
Sliver and grey, red comb and long sharp spurs,
Once chased Aunt Jennie as far as the daphne bed
The two big king snakes were familiars of.
My father’s dog would challenge him sometimes
To laughter and applause. Once, in Stone Mountain,
Travelers, stopped for gas, drove off with Smokey;
Angrily, grievingly, leaving his work, my father
Traced the car and found them way far south,
Had them arrested and, bringing Smokey home,
Was proud as Sherlock Holmes, and happier.
Above the spring, my sister’s cats, black Amy,
Grey Junior, down to meet us. The rose trees,
Domestic, Asiatic, my father’s favorites.
The bridge, marauding dragonflies, the bullfrog,
Camellias cracked and blackened by the freeze,
Bay tree, mimosa, mountain laurel, apple, 
Monkey pine twenty feet high, banana shrub,
The owls’ tall pine curved like a flattened S.
The pump house Mort and I built block by block,
Smooth concrete floor, roof pale aluminum
Half-covered by a clematis, the pump 
Thirty feet down the mountain’s granite foot. 

Mort was the hired man sent to us by Fortune,
Childlike enough to lead us. He brought home,
Although he could not even drive a tractor,
Cheated, a worthless car, which we returned.
When, at the trial to garnishee his wages,
Frank Guess, the judge, Grandmother’s longtime neighbor,
Whose children my mother taught in Cradle Roll,
Heard Mort’s examination, he broke in
As if in disbelief on the bank’s attorneys:
“Gentlemen, must we continue this charade?”
Finally, past the compost heap, the garden,
Tomatoes and sweet corn for succotash,
Okra for frying, Kentucky Wonders, limas,
Cucumbers, squashes, leeks heaped round with soil,
Lavender, dill, parsley, and rosemary,
Tithonia and zinnias between the rows;
The greenhouse by the rock wall, used for cuttings
In late spring, frames to grow them strong for planting
Through winter into summer. Early one morning
Mort called out, lying helpless by the bridge.
His ashes we let drift where the magnolia
We planted as a stem divides the path
The others lie, too young, at Silver Hill,
Except my mother. Ninety-five, she lives
Three thousand miles away, beside the bare
Pacific, in rooms that overlook the Mission,
The Riviera, and the silver range 
La Cumbre east. Magnolia grandiflora
And one druidic live oak guard the view. 
Proudly around the walls, she shows her paintings
Of twenty years ago: the great oak’s arm
Extended, Zeuslike, straight and strong, wisteria
Tangled among the branches, amaryllis
Around the base; her cat, UC, at ease
In marigolds; the weeping cherry, pink
And white arms like a blessing to the blue
Bird feeder Mort made; cabin, scarlet sweet gum
Superb when tribes migrated north and south.
Alert, still quick of speech, a little blind,
Active, ready for laughter, open to fear,
Pity, and wonder that such things may be,
Some Sundays, I think, she must walk the line,
Aunt Jennie, too, if she were still alive,
And Eleanor, whose story is untold,
Their presences like muses, prompting me
In my small study, all listening to the sea,
All of one mind, the true posterity.


Written by Robert Lowell | Create an image from this poem

The Withdrawal

 1
Only today and just for this minute,
when the sunslant finds its true angle,
you can see yellow and pinkish leaves spangle
our gentle, fluffy tree—
suddenly the green summer is momentary...
Autumn is my favorite season—
why does it change clothes and withdraw?

This week the house went on the market—
suddenly I woke up among strangers;
when I go into a room, it moves
with embarrassment, and joins another room.

I don't need conversation, but you to laugh with—
you and a room and a fire,
cold starlight blowing through an open window—
whither?

 2
After sunfall, heaven is melodramatic,
a temporary, puckering, burning green.
The patched-up oak
and blacker, indelible pines
have the indigestible meagerness of spines.

One wishes heaven had less solemnity:
a sensual table
with five half-filled bottles of red wine
set round the hectic carved roast—
Bohemia for ourselves
and the familiars of a lifetime
charmed to communion by resurrection—
running together in the rain to mail a single letter,
not the chafe and cling
of this despondent chaff.

 3
Yet for a moment, the children
could play truant from their tuition.

 4
When I look back, I see a collapsing
accordion of my receding houses,
and myself receding
to a boy of twenty-five or thirty,
too shopworn for less, too impressionable for more—
blackmaned, illmade
in a washed blue workshirt and coalblack trousers,
moving from house to house,
still seeking a boy's license
to see the countryside without arrival.

Hell?

Darling,
terror in happiness may not cure the hungry future,
the time when any illness is chronic,
and the years of discretion are spent on complaint—

until the wristwatch is taken from the wrist.
Written by Edith Wharton | Create an image from this poem

Chartres

 I

Immense, august, like some Titanic bloom,
 The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core,
Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or,
 Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom,
And stamened with keen flamelets that illume
 The pale high-alter. On the prayer-worn floor,
By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore,
 A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb,
The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea--
 For these alone the finials fret the skies,
The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free,
 While from the triple portals, with grave eyes,
Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity,
 The cloud of witnesses still testifies.

II

The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatise
 The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold.
A rigid fetich in her robe of gold,
 The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes,
Enthroned beneath her votive canopies,
 Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold.
The rest is solitude; the church, grown old,
 Stands stark and grey beneath the burning skies.
Well-nigh again its mighty framework grows
 To be a part of nature's self, withdrawn
From hot humanity's impatient woes;
 The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn,
And in the east one giant window shows
 The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

Merlin

 “Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see, 
So far beyond the faint edge of the world? 
D’ye look to see the lady Vivian, 
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons 
That have another king more fierce than ours?
Or think ye that if ye look far enough 
And hard enough into the feathery west 
Ye’ll have a glimmer of the Grail itself? 
And if ye look for neither Grail nor lady, 
What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?”

So Dagonet, whom Arthur made a knight 
Because he loved him as he laughed at him, 
Intoned his idle presence on a day 
To Gawaine, who had thought himself alone, 
Had there been in him thought of anything
Save what was murmured now in Camelot 
Of Merlin’s hushed and all but unconfirmed 
Appearance out of Brittany. It was heard 
At first there was a ghost in Arthur’s palace, 
But soon among the scullions and anon
Among the knights a firmer credit held 
All tongues from uttering what all glances told— 
Though not for long. Gawaine, this afternoon, 
Fearing he might say more to Lancelot 
Of Merlin’s rumor-laden resurrection
Than Lancelot would have an ear to cherish, 
Had sauntered off with his imagination 
To Merlin’s Rock, where now there was no Merlin 
To meditate upon a whispering town 
Below him in the silence.—Once he said
To Gawaine: “You are young; and that being so, 
Behold the shining city of our dreams 
And of our King.”—“Long live the King,” said Gawaine.— 
“Long live the King,” said Merlin after him; 
“Better for me that I shall not be King;
Wherefore I say again, Long live the King, 
And add, God save him, also, and all kings— 
All kings and queens. I speak in general. 
Kings have I known that were but weary men 
With no stout appetite for more than peace
That was not made for them.”—“Nor were they made 
For kings,” Gawaine said, laughing.—“You are young, 
Gawaine, and you may one day hold the world 
Between your fingers, knowing not what it is 
That you are holding. Better for you and me,
I think, that we shall not be kings.” 

Gawaine, 
Remembering Merlin’s words of long ago, 
Frowned as he thought, and having frowned again, 
He smiled and threw an acorn at a lizard:
“There’s more afoot and in the air to-day 
Than what is good for Camelot. Merlin 
May or may not know all, but he said well 
To say to me that he would not be King. 
Nor more would I be King.” Far down he gazed
On Camelot, until he made of it 
A phantom town of many stillnesses, 
Not reared for men to dwell in, or for kings 
To reign in, without omens and obscure 
Familiars to bring terror to their days;
For though a knight, and one as hard at arms 
As any, save the fate-begotten few 
That all acknowledged or in envy loathed, 
He felt a foreign sort of creeping up 
And down him, as of moist things in the dark,—
When Dagonet, coming on him unawares, 
Presuming on his title of Sir Fool, 
Addressed him and crooned on till he was done: 
“What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?” 

“Sir Dagonet, you best and wariest
Of all dishonest men, I look through Time, 
For sight of what it is that is to be. 
I look to see it, though I see it not. 
I see a town down there that holds a king, 
And over it I see a few small clouds—
Like feathers in the west, as you observe; 
And I shall see no more this afternoon 
Than what there is around us every day, 
Unless you have a skill that I have not 
To ferret the invisible for rats.”

“If you see what’s around us every day, 
You need no other showing to go mad. 
Remember that and take it home with you; 
And say tonight, ‘I had it of a fool— 
With no immediate obliquity
For this one or for that one, or for me.’” 
Gawaine, having risen, eyed the fool curiously: 
“I’ll not forget I had it of a knight, 
Whose only folly is to fool himself; 
And as for making other men to laugh,
And so forget their sins and selves a little, 
There’s no great folly there. So keep it up, 
As long as you’ve a legend or a song, 
And have whatever sport of us you like 
Till havoc is the word and we fall howling.
For I’ve a guess there may not be so loud 
A sound of laughing here in Camelot 
When Merlin goes again to his gay grave 
In Brittany. To mention lesser terrors, 
Men say his beard is gone.”

“Do men say that?” 
A twitch of an impatient weariness 
Played for a moment over the lean face 
Of Dagonet, who reasoned inwardly: 
“The friendly zeal of this inquiring knight
Will overtake his tact and leave it squealing, 
One of these days.”—Gawaine looked hard at him: 
“If I be too familiar with a fool, 
I’m on the way to be another fool,” 
He mused, and owned a rueful qualm within him:
“Yes, Dagonet,” he ventured, with a laugh, 
“Men tell me that his beard has vanished wholly, 
And that he shines now as the Lord’s anointed, 
And wears the valiance of an ageless youth 
Crowned with a glory of eternal peace.”

Dagonet, smiling strangely, shook his head: 
“I grant your valiance of a kind of youth 
To Merlin, but your crown of peace I question; 
For, though I know no more than any churl 
Who pinches any chambermaid soever
In the King’s palace, I look not to Merlin 
For peace, when out of his peculiar tomb 
He comes again to Camelot. Time swings 
A mighty scythe, and some day all your peace 
Goes down before its edge like so much clover.
No, it is not for peace that Merlin comes, 
Without a trumpet—and without a beard, 
If what you say men say of him be true— 
Nor yet for sudden war.” 

Gawaine, for a moment,
Met then the ambiguous gaze of Dagonet, 
And, making nothing of it, looked abroad 
As if at something cheerful on all sides, 
And back again to the fool’s unasking eyes: 
“Well, Dagonet, if Merlin would have peace,
Let Merlin stay away from Brittany,” 
Said he, with admiration for the man 
Whom Folly called a fool: “And we have known him; 
We knew him once when he knew everything.” 

“He knew as much as God would let him know
Until he met the lady Vivian. 
I tell you that, for the world knows all that; 
Also it knows he told the King one day 
That he was to be buried, and alive, 
In Brittany; and that the King should see
The face of him no more. Then Merlin sailed 
Away to Vivian in Broceliande, 
Where now she crowns him and herself with flowers 
And feeds him fruits and wines and many foods 
Of many savors, and sweet ortolans.
Wise books of every lore of every land 
Are there to fill his days, if he require them, 
And there are players of all instruments— 
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols; and she sings 
To Merlin, till he trembles in her arms
And there forgets that any town alive 
Had ever such a name as Camelot. 
So Vivian holds him with her love, they say, 
And he, who has no age, has not grown old. 
I swear to nothing, but that’s what they say.
That’s being buried in Broceliande 
For too much wisdom and clairvoyancy. 
But you and all who live, Gawaine, have heard 
This tale, or many like it, more than once; 
And you must know that Love, when Love invites
Philosophy to play, plays high and wins, 
Or low and loses. And you say to me, 
‘If Merlin would have peace, let Merlin stay 
Away from Brittany.’ Gawaine, you are young, 
And Merlin’s in his grave.”

“Merlin said once 
That I was young, and it’s a joy for me 
That I am here to listen while you say it. 
Young or not young, if that be burial, 
May I be buried long before I die.
I might be worse than young; I might be old.”— 
Dagonet answered, and without a smile: 
“Somehow I fancy Merlin saying that; 
A fancy—a mere fancy.” Then he smiled: 
“And such a doom as his may be for you,
Gawaine, should your untiring divination 
Delve in the veiled eternal mysteries 
Too far to be a pleasure for the Lord. 
And when you stake your wisdom for a woman, 
Compute the woman to be worth a grave,
As Merlin did, and say no more about it. 
But Vivian, she played high. Oh, very high! 
Flutes, hautboys, drums, and viols,—and her love. 
Gawaine, farewell.” 

“Farewell, Sir Dagonet,
And may the devil take you presently.” 
He followed with a vexed and envious eye, 
And with an arid laugh, Sir Dagonet’s 
Departure, till his gaunt obscurity 
Was cloaked and lost amid the glimmering trees.
“Poor fool!” he murmured. “Or am I the fool? 
With all my fast ascendency in arms, 
That ominous clown is nearer to the King 
Than I am—yet; and God knows what he knows, 
And what his wits infer from what he sees
And feels and hears. I wonder what he knows 
Of Lancelot, or what I might know now, 
Could I have sunk myself to sound a fool 
To springe a friend.… No, I like not this day. 
There’s a cloud coming over Camelot
Larger than any that is in the sky,— 
Or Merlin would be still in Brittany, 
With Vivian and the viols. It’s all too strange.” 

And later, when descending to the city, 
Through unavailing casements he could hear
The roaring of a mighty voice within, 
Confirming fervidly his own conviction: 
“It’s all too strange, and half the world’s half crazy!”— 
He scowled: “Well, I agree with Lamorak.” 
He frowned, and passed: “And I like not this day.”
Written by William Strode | Create an image from this poem

An Epitaph On Sr John Walter Lord Cheife Baron

 Farewell Example, Living Rule farewell;
Whose practise shew'd goodness was possible,
Who reach'd the full outstretch'd perfection
Of Man, of Lawyer, and of Christian.


Suppose a Man more streight than Reason is,
Whose grounded Habit could not tread amisse
Though Reason slepd; a Man who still esteem'd
His wife his Bone; who still his children deem'd
His Limbes and future Selfe; Servants trayn'd friends;
Lov'd his Familiars for Themselves not ends:
Soe wise and Provident that dayes orepast
He ne're wish'd backe again; by whose forecast
Time's Locke, Time's Baldness, Future Time were one,
Since nought could mende nor marre one Action,
That man was He.


Suppose an Advocate
In whose all-conquering tong true right was Fate;
That could not pleade among the grounded throng
Wrong Causes right nor rightfull causes wrong,
But made the burnish'd Truth to shine more bright
Than could the witnesses or Act in sight.
Who did soe breifely, soe perspicuously
Untie the knots of darke perplexity
That words appear'd like thoughts, and might derive
To dull Eares Knowledge most Intuitive.


A Judge soe weigh'd that Freinde and one of Us
Were heard like Titius and Sempronius.
All Eare, no Eie, noe Hande; oft being par'd
The Eies Affections and the Hands Reward.
Whose Barre and Conscience were but two in Name,
Sentence and Closet-Censure still the Same:
That Advocate, that judge was He.


Suppose
A sound and setled Christian, not like those
That stande by fitts, but of that Sanctity
As by Repentence might scarce better'd be:
Whose Life was like his latest Houre, whose way
Outwent the Journey's Ende where others stay:
Who slighted not the Gospel for his Lawe,
But lov'd the Church more than the Bench, and sawe
That all his Righteousnes had yet neede fee
One Advocate beyond himselfe. 'Twas He.


To this Good Man, Judge, Christian, now is given
Faire Memory, noe Judgment, and blest Heaven.


Written by Lewis Carroll | Create an image from this poem

Phantasmagoria CANTO VII ( Sad Souvenaunce )

 "WHAT'S this?" I pondered. "Have I slept? 
Or can I have been drinking?" 
But soon a gentler feeling crept 
Upon me, and I sat and wept 
An hour or so, like winking. 

"No need for Bones to hurry so!" 
I sobbed. "In fact, I doubt 
If it was worth his while to go - 
And who is Tibbs, I'd like to know, 
To make such work about? 

"If Tibbs is anything like me, 
It's POSSIBLE," I said, 
"He won't be over-pleased to be 
Dropped in upon at half-past three, 
After he's snug in bed. 

"And if Bones plagues him anyhow - 
Squeaking and all the rest of it, 
As he was doing here just now - 
I prophesy there'll be a row, 
And Tibbs will have the best of it!" 

Then, as my tears could never bring 
The friendly Phantom back, 
It seemed to me the proper thing 
To mix another glass, and sing 
The following Coronach. 

'AND ART THOU GONE, BELOVED GHOST? 
BEST OF FAMILIARS! 
NAY THEN, FAREWELL, MY DUCKLING ROAST, 
FAREWELL, FAREWELL, MY TEA AND TOAST, 
MY MEERSCHAUM AND CIGARS! 

THE HUES OF LIFE ARE DULL AND GRAY, 
THE SWEETS OF LIFE INSIPID, 
WHEN thou, MY CHARMER, ART AWAY - 
OLD BRICK, OR RATHER, LET ME SAY, 
OLD PARALLELEPIPED!' 

Instead of singing Verse the Third, 
I ceased - abruptly, rather: 
But, after such a splendid word 
I felt that it would be absurd 
To try it any farther. 

So with a yawn I went my way 
To seek the welcome downy, 
And slept, and dreamed till break of day 
Of Poltergeist and Fetch and Fay 
And Leprechaun and Brownie! 

For year I've not been visited 
By any kind of Sprite; 
Yet still they echo in my head, 
Those parting words, so kindly said, 
"Old Turnip-top, good-night!"
Written by Thomas Hardy | Create an image from this poem

The Pity Of It

 I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like "Thu bist," "Er war,"
"Ich woll," "Er sholl," and by-talk similar,
Nigh as they speak who in this month's moon gird
At England's very loins, thereunto spurred
By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are. 

Then seemed a Heart crying: "Whosoever they be
At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame
Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we,
Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;
May their familiars grow to shun their name,
And their brood perish everlastingly."

Book: Reflection on the Important Things