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Best Famous Ferret Poems

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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 Vachel Lindsay | Create an image from this poem

The Raft

 The whole world on a raft! A King is here,
The record of his grandeur but a smear.
Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate
That makes the band upon his whims to wait?
Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled.
Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild
Until they shower their pennies like spring rain
That he may preach upon the Spanish main.
What landlord, lawyer, voodoo-man has yet
A better native right to make men sweat?

The whole world on a raft! A Duke is here
At sight of whose lank jaw the muses leer.
Journeyman-printer, lamb with ferret eyes,
In life's skullduggery he takes the prize —
Yet stands at twilight wrapped in Hamlet dreams.
Into his eyes the Mississippi gleams.
The sandbar sings in moonlit veils of foam.
A candle shines from one lone cabin home.
The waves reflect it like a drunken star.

A banjo and a hymn are heard afar.
No solace on the lazy shore excels
The Duke's blue castle with its steamer-bells.
The floor is running water, and the roof
The stars' brocade with cloudy warp and woof.

And on past sorghum fields the current swings.
To Christian Jim the Mississippi sings.
This prankish wave-swept barque has won its place,
A ship of jesting for the human race.
But do you laugh when Jim bows down forlorn
His babe, his deaf Elizabeth to mourn?
And do you laugh, when Jim, from Huck apart
Gropes through the rain and night with breaking heart?

But now that imp is here and we can smile,
Jim's child and guardian this long-drawn while.
With knife and heavy gun, a hunter keen,
He stops for squirrel-meat in islands green.
The eternal gamin, sleeping half the day,
Then stripped and sleek, a river-fish at play.
And then well-dressed, ashore, he sees life spilt.
The river-bank is one bright crazy-quilt
Of patch-work dream, of wrath more red than lust,
Where long-haired feudist Hotspurs bite the dust...

This Huckleberry Finn is but the race,
America, still lovely in disgrace,
New childhood of the world, that blunders on
And wonders at the darkness and the dawn,
The poor damned human race, still unimpressed
With its damnation, all its gamin breast
Chorteling at dukes and kings with ****** Jim,
Then plotting for their fall, with jestings grim.

Behold a Republic
Where a river speaks to men
And cries to those that love its ways,
Answering again
When in the heart's extravagance
The rascals bend to say
"O singing Mississippi
Shine, sing for us today."

But who is this in sweeping Oxford gown
Who steers the raft, or ambles up and down,
Or throws his gown aside, and there in white
Stands gleaming like a pillar of the night?
The lion of high courts, with hoary mane,
Fierce jester that this boyish court will gain —
Mark Twain!
The bad world's idol:
Old Mark Twain!

He takes his turn as watchman with the rest,
With secret transports to the stars addressed,
With nightlong broodings upon cosmic law,
With daylong laughter at this world so raw.

All praise to Emerson and Whitman, yet
The best they have to say, their sons forget.
But who can dodge this genius of the stream,
The Mississippi Valley's laughing dream?
He is the artery that finds the sea
In this the land of slaves, and boys still free.
He is the river, and they one and all
Sail on his breast, and to each other call.

Come let us disgrace ourselves,
Knock the stuffed gods from their shelves,
And cinders at the schoolhouse fling.
Come let us disgrace ourselves,
And live on a raft with gray Mark Twain
And Huck and Jim
And the Duke and the King.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

Clavering

 I say no more for Clavering 
Than I should say of him who fails 
To bring his wounded vessel home 
When reft of rudder and of sails; 

I say no more than I should say
Of any other one who sees 
Too far for guidance of to-day, 
Too near for the eternities. 

I think of him as I should think 
Of one who for scant wages played,
And faintly, a flawed instrument 
That fell while it was being made; 

I think of him as one who fared, 
Unfaltering and undeceived, 
Amid mirages of renown
And urgings of the unachieved; 

I think of him as one who gave 
To Lingard leave to be amused, 
And listened with a patient grace 
That we, the wise ones, had refused;

I think of metres that he wrote 
For Cubit, the ophidian guest: 
“What Lilith, or Dark Lady”… Well, 
Time swallows Cubit with the rest. 

I think of last words that he said
One midnight over Calverly: 
“Good-by—good man.” He was not good; 
So Clavering was wrong, you see. 

I wonder what had come to pass 
Could he have borrowed for a spell
The fiery-frantic indolence 
That made a ghost of Leffingwell; 

I wonder if he pitied us 
Who cautioned him till he was gray 
To build his house with ours on earth
And have an end of yesterday; 

I wonder what it was we saw 
To make us think that we were strong; 
I wonder if he saw too much, 
Or if he looked one way too long.

But when were thoughts or wonderings 
To ferret out the man within? 
Why prate of what he seemed to be, 
And all that he might not have been? 

He clung to phantoms and to friends,
And never came to anything. 
He left a wreath on Cubit’s grave. 
I say no more for Clavering.
Written by Stephen Vincent Benet | Create an image from this poem

Road and Hills

 I shall go away 
To the brown hills, the quiet ones, 
The vast, the mountainous, the rolling, 
Sun-fired and drowsy! 

My horse snuffs delicately 
At the strange wind; 
He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs tramp the dust. 
The road winds, straightens, 
Slashes a marsh, 
Shoulders out a bridge, 
Then -- 
Again the hills. 
Unchanged, innumerable, 
Bowing huge, round backs; 
Holding secret, immense converse: 
In gusty voices, 
Fruitful, fecund, toiling 
Like yoked black oxen. 

The clouds pass like great, slow thoughts 
And vanish 
In the intense blue. 

My horse lopes; the saddle creaks and sways. 
A thousand glittering spears of sun slant from on high. 
The immensity, the spaces, 
Are like the spaces 
Between star and star. 

The hills sleep. 
If I put my hand on one, 
I would feel the vast heave of its breath. 
I would start away before it awakened 
And shook the world from its shoulders. 
A cicada's cry deepens the hot silence. 
The hills open 
To show a slope of poppies, 
Ardent, noble, heroic, 
A flare, a great flame of orange; 
Giving sleepy, brittle scent 
That stings the lungs. 
A creeping wind slips through them like a ferret; they bow and dance, 
answering Beauty's voice . . . 

The horse whinnies. I dismount 
And tie him to the grey worn fence. 
I set myself against the javelins of grass and sun; 
And climb the rounded breast, 
That flows like a sea-wave. 
The summit crackles with heat, there is no shelter, no hollow from 
the flagellating glare. 

I lie down and look at the sky, shading my eyes. 
My body becomes strange, the sun takes it and changes it, it does not feel, 
it is like the body of another. 
The air blazes. The air is diamond. 
Small noises move among the grass . . . 

Blackly, 
A hawk mounts, mounts in the inane 
Seeking the star-road, 
Seeking the end . . . 
But there is no end. 

Here, in this light, there is no end. . .
Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

The Color of the Grave is Green

 The Color of the Grave is Green --
The Outer Grave -- I mean --
You would not know it from the Field --
Except it own a Stone --

To help the fond -- to find it --
Too infinite asleep
To stop and tell them where it is --
But just a Daisy -- deep --

The Color of the Grave is white --
The outer Grave -- I mean --
You would not know it from the Drifts --
In Winter -- till the Sun --

Has furrowed out the Aisles --
Then -- higher than the Land
The little Dwelling Houses rise
Where each -- has left a friend --

The Color of the Grave within --
The Duplicate -- I mean --
Not all the Snows could make it white --
Not all the Summers -- Green --

You've seen the Color -- maybe --
Upon a Bonnet bound --
When that you met it with before --
The Ferret -- cannot find --



Book: Reflection on the Important Things