Written by
Robert Graves |
Christ of His gentleness
Thirsting and hungering,
Walked in the wilderness;
Soft words of grace He spoke
Unto lost desert-folk
That listened wondering.
He heard the bitterns call
From ruined palace-wall,
Answered them brotherly.
He held communion
With the she-pelican
Of lonely piety.
Basilisk, cockatrice,
Flocked to his homilies,
With mail of dread device,
With monstrous barb?d slings,
With eager dragon-eyes;
Great rats on leather wings
And poor blind broken things,
Foul in their miseries.
And ever with Him went,
Of all His wanderings
Comrade, with ragged coat,
Gaunt ribs—poor innocent—
Bleeding foot, burning throat,
The guileless old scapegoat;
For forty nights and days
Followed in Jesus’ ways,
Sure guard behind Him kept,
Tears like a lover wept.
|
Written by
Sylvia Plath |
Mayday: two came to field in such wise :
`A daisied mead', each said to each,
So were they one; so sought they couch,
Across barbed stile, through flocked brown cows.
`No pitchforked farmer, please,' she said;
`May cockcrow guard us safe,' said he;
By blackthorn thicket, flower spray
They pitched their coats, come to green bed.
Below: a fen where water stood;
Aslant: their hill of stinging nettle;
Then, honor-bound, mute grazing cattle;
Above: leaf-wraithed white air, white cloud.
All afternoon these lovers lay
Until the sun turned pale from warm,
Until sweet wind changed tune, blew harm :
Cruel nettles stung her angles raw.
Rueful, most vexed, that tender skin
Should accept so fell a wound,
He stamped and cracked stalks to the ground
Which had caused his dear girl pain.
Now he goes from his rightful road
And, under honor, will depart;
While she stands burning, venom-girt,
In wait for sharper smart to fade.
|
Written by
Marriott Edgar |
Henry the Seventh of England
Wasn't out of the Royal top drawer,
The only connection of which he could boast,
He were King's nephew's brother-in-law.
It were after the Wars of the Roses
That he came to the front, as it were,
When on strength of his having slain Richard the Third
He put himself up as his heir.
T'were a bit of a blow to the Barons
When Henry aspired to the Throne,
And some who'd been nursing imperial hopes
Started pushing out claims of their own.
But they didn't get far with their scheming,
For the moment the matter were pressed
A stroke of the pen took them off to the Tower,
Where a stroke of the axe did the rest.
A feller they called Perkin Warbeck
Was the one who led Henry a dance,
To make sure that nowt awkward should happen to him
He worked from an office in France.
He claimed to be one of the Princes
As were smothered to death in the Tower.
His tale was that only his brother was killed
And that he had escaped the seas ower.
Henry knew the appeal of the Princes
Was a strong one for Perkin to make,
And he reckoned he'd best have a chat with the lad
And find out the least he would take.
In reply to his kind invitation
Perkin said he'd he happy to call,
But he'd bring his own escort of ten thousand men
And a hundred pipers an' all.
This reply put the King in a passion
He swore as he'd stop Perkin's fun,
Then he offered a fortune per annum to him
As could tell him how his could be done.
Then up spoke the bold Lambert Simne
The King's private scullion he were,
He said: "Just one word in thy ear 'ole, O King,
I've a plan as will stop all this 'ere."
Then he took the King up in a corner,
Where no one could hear what they said,
He hadn't got far when King started to laff
And he laffed till he had to he bled.
T 'were a plan to anticipate Perkin,
By getting in first with these tales,
Start another rebellion before he arrived
And take the wind out of his sails.
And so Lambert Simnel's rebellion
Made its fateful debut in the North
Experts disagree who he made out to be,
John the Second or Richard the Fourth.
T 'was surprising how many believed him
They flocked to his flag like one man,
For in them days the folk would do owt for a change,
And their motto was, " San fairy ann."
It were quite a success this rebellion
Till t'were routed by Henry at Stoke,
And Lambert were taken and made to confess
That his parents was working class folk.
The public forgave this deception,
The thing that made them proper mad
Was a twopenny increase on every one's rates
To pay for the fun they had had.
And so when Peter Warbeck came over
Expecting his praise to be sung,
He was greeted, defeated, escheated, unseated,
Maltreated and finally hung.
And the Baron went back to his castle,
The Peasant went back to his herd,
Lambert Simnel went back to his scullion's job
Because Henry went back on his word.
|
Written by
Stephen Vincent Benet |
(A Pharaoh Speaks.)
I said, "Why should a pyramid
Stand always dully on its base?
I'll change it! Let the top be hid,
The bottom take the apex-place!"
And as I bade they did.
The people flocked in, scores on scores,
To see it balance on its tip.
They praised me with the praise that bores,
My godlike mind on every lip.
-- Until it fell, of course.
And then they took my body out
From my crushed palace, mad with rage,
-- Well, half the town WAS wrecked, no doubt --
Their crazy anger to assuage
By dragging it about.
The end? Foul birds defile my skull.
The new king's praises fill the land.
He clings to precept, simple, dull;
HIS pyramids on bases stand.
But -- Lord, how usual!
|
Written by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
Vogelweid the Minnesinger,
When he left this world of ours,
Laid his body in the cloister,
Under Wurtzburg's minster towers.
And he gave the monks his treasures,
Gave them all with this behest:
They should feed the birds at noontide
Daily on his place of rest;
Saying, "From these wandering minstrels
I have learned the art of song;
Let me now repay the lessons
They have taught so well and long."
Thus the bard of love departed;
And, fulfilling his desire,
On his tomb the birds were feasted
By the children of the choir.
Day by day, o'er tower and turret,
In foul weather and in fair,
Day by day, in vaster numbers,
Flocked the poets of the air.
On the tree whose heavy branches
Overshadowed all the place,
On the pavement, on the tombstone,
On the poet's sculptured face,
On the cross-bars of each window,
On the lintel of each door,
They renewed the War of Wartburg,
Which the bard had fought before.
There they sang their merry carols,
Sang their lauds on every side;
And the name their voices uttered
Was the name of Vogelweid.
Till at length the portly abbot
Murmured, "Why this waste of food?
Be it changed to loaves henceforward
For our tasting brotherhood."
Then in vain o'er tower and turret,
From the walls and woodland nests,
When the minster bells rang noontide,
Gathered the unwelcome guests.
Then in vain, with cries discordant,
Clamorous round the Gothic spire,
Screamed the feathered Minnesingers
For the children of the choir.
Time has long effaced the inscriptions
On the cloister's funeral stones,
And tradition only tells us
Where repose the poet's bones.
But around the vast cathedral,
By sweet echoes multiplied,
Still the birds repeat the legend,
And the name of Vogelweid.
|
Written by
William Topaz McGonagall |
About a hundred and fifty years ago,
History relates it happened so,
A big ship sailed from the shores of Britain
Bound for India across the raging main.
And many of the passengers did cry and moan
As they took the last look of their old home,
Which they were fast leaving far behind,
And which some of them would long bear in mind.
Among the passengers was a youth about seventeen years old,
Who had been a wild boy at home and very bold,
And by his conduct had filled his parent's hearts with woe,
Because to school he often refused to go.
And now that he was going so far away from home,
The thought thereof made him sigh and groan,
For he felt very sad and dejected were his looks,
And he often wished he had spent more time at his books.
And when he arrived in India he searched for work there,
And got to be a clerk in a merchant's office, but for it he didn't care;
The only pleasure he found was in reading books,
And while doing so, sad and forlorn were his looks.
One day while feeling unhappy he fired a pistol at his own head,
Expecting that he would kill himself dead;
But the pistol wouldn't go off although he tried every plan,
And he felt sorry, and resolved to become a better man.
So Clive left his desk and became a soldier brave,
And soon rose to be a captain and manfully did behave;
For he beat the French in every battle,
After all their foolish talk and prattle.
Then he thought he would take a voyage home to his friends,
And for his bad behaviour towards them he would make some amends;
For he hadn't seen them for many years,
And when he thought of them he shed briny tears.
And when he arrived in London
The people after him in crowds did run;
And they flocked to see him every minute,
Because they thought him the most famous man in it.
And all the greatest people in the land
Were proud to shake him by the hand;
And they gave him a beautiful sword because he had fought so well
And of his bravery the people to each other did tell.
And when his own friends saw him they to him ran,
And they hardly knew him, he looked so noble a man;
And his parents felt o'erjoyed when they saw him home again,
And when he left his parents again for India it caused them great pain.
But it was a good thing Clive returned to India again,
Because a wicked prince in his territory wouldn't allow the british to remain,
And he resolved to drive them off his land,
And marched upon them boldly with thousands of his band.
But the bad prince trembled when he heard that Clice had come,
Because the British at the charge of the bayonet made his army run;
And the bad prince was killed by one of his own band,
And the British fortunately got all his land.
And nearly all India now belongs to this country,
Which has been captured by land and by sea,
By some of the greatest men that ever did live,
But the greatest of them all was Robert Clive.
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square,
And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair --
A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away,
Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way:
Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and drone and cease,
And they came to the Gate within the Wall where Peter holds the keys.
"Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high
The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die --
The good that ye did for the sake of men in little earth so lone!"
And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as a rain-washed bone.
"O I have a friend on earth," he said, "that was my priest and guide,
And well would he answer all for me if he were by my side."
-- "For that ye strove in neighbour-love it shall be written fair,
But now ye wait at Heaven's Gate and not in Berkeley Square:
Though we called your friend from his bed this night, he could not speak for you,
For the race is run by one and one and never by two and two."
Then Tomlinson looked up and down, and little gain was there,
For the naked stars grinned overhead, and he saw that his soul was bare:
The Wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife,
And Tomlinson took up his tale and spoke of his good in life.
"This I have read in a book," he said, "and that was told to me,
And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy."
The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the path,
And Peter twirled the jangling keys in weariness and wrath.
"Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought," he said, "and the tale is yet to run:
By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer -- what ha' ye done?"
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and little good it bore,
For the Darkness stayed at his shoulder-blade and Heaven's Gate before: --
"O this I have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I have heard men say,
And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway."
-- "Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! Ye have hampered Heaven's Gate;
There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate!
O none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin
Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within;
Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for doom has yet to run,
And. . .the faith that ye share with Berkeley Square uphold you, Tomlinson!"
. . . . .
The Spirit gripped him by the hair, and sun by sun they fell
Till they came to the belt of Naughty Stars that rim the mouth of Hell:
The first are red with pride and wrath, the next are white with pain,
But the third are black with clinkered sin that cannot burn again:
They may hold their path, they may leave their path, with never a soul to mark,
They may burn or freeze, but they must not cease in the Scorn of the Outer Dark.
The Wind that blows between the worlds, it nipped him to the bone,
And he yearned to the flare of Hell-Gate there as the light of his own hearth-stone.
The Devil he sat behind the bars, where the desperate legions drew,
But he caught the hasting Tomlinson and would not let him through.
"Wot ye the price of good pit-coal that I must pay?" said he,
"That ye rank yoursel' so fit for Hell and ask no leave of me?
I am all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that ye should give me scorn,
For I strove with God for your First Father the day that he was born.
Sit down, sit down upon the slag, and answer loud and high
The harm that ye did to the Sons of Men or ever you came to die."
And Tomlinson looked up and up, and saw against the night
The belly of a tortured star blood-red in Hell-Mouth light;
And Tomlinson looked down and down, and saw beneath his feet
The frontlet of a tortured star milk-white in Hell-Mouth heat.
"O I had a love on earth," said he, "that kissed me to my fall,
And if ye would call my love to me I know she would answer all."
-- "All that ye did in love forbid it shall be written fair,
But now ye wait at Hell-Mouth Gate and not in Berkeley Square:
Though we whistled your love from her bed to-night, I trow she would not run,
For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!"
The Wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife,
And Tomlinson took up the tale and spoke of his sin in life: --
"Once I ha' laughed at the power of Love and twice at the grip of the Grave,
And thrice I ha' patted my God on the head that men might call me brave."
The Devil he blew on a brandered soul and set it aside to cool: --
"Do ye think I would waste my good pit-coal on the hide of a brain-sick fool?
I see no worth in the hobnailed mirth or the jolthead jest ye did
That I should waken my gentlemen that are sleeping three on a grid."
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and there was little grace,
For Hell-Gate filled the houseless Soul with the Fear of Naked Space.
"Nay, this I ha' heard," quo' Tomlinson, "and this was noised abroad,
And this I ha' got from a Belgian book on the word of a dead French lord."
-- "Ye ha' heard, ye ha' read, ye ha' got, good lack! and the tale begins afresh --
Have ye sinned one sin for the pride o' the eye or the sinful lust of the flesh?"
Then Tomlinson he gripped the bars and yammered, "Let me in --
For I mind that I borrowed my neighbour's wife to sin the deadly sin."
The Devil he grinned behind the bars, and banked the fires high:
"Did ye read of that sin in a book?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay!"
The Devil he blew upon his nails, and the little devils ran,
And he said: "Go husk this whimpering thief that comes in the guise of a man:
Winnow him out 'twixt star and star, and sieve his proper worth:
There's sore decline in Adam's line if this be spawn of earth."
Empusa's crew, so naked-new they may not face the fire,
But weep that they bin too small to sin to the height of their desire,
Over the coal they chased the Soul, and racked it all abroad,
As children rifle a caddis-case or the raven's foolish hoard.
And back they came with the tattered Thing, as children after play,
And they said: "The soul that he got from God he has bartered clean away.
We have threshed a stook of print and book, and winnowed a chattering wind
And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find:
We have handled him, we have dandled him, we have seared him to the bone,
And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul of his own."
The Devil he bowed his head on his breast and rumbled deep and low: --
"I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should bid him go.
Yet close we lie, and deep we lie, and if I gave him place,
My gentlemen that are so proud would flout me to my face;
They'd call my house a common stews and me a careless host,
And -- I would not anger my gentlemen for the sake of a shiftless ghost."
The Devil he looked at the mangled Soul that prayed to feel the flame,
And he thought of Holy Charity, but he thought of his own good name: --
"Now ye could haste my coal to waste, and sit ye down to fry:
Did ye think of that theft for yourself?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay!"
The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care: --
"Ye have scarce the soul of a louse," he said, "but the roots of sin are there,
And for that sin should ye come in were I the lord alone.
But sinful pride has rule inside -- and mightier than my own.
Honour and Wit, fore-damned they sit, to each his priest and whore:
Nay, scarce I dare myself go there, and you they'd torture sore.
Ye are neither spirit nor spirk," he said; "ye are neither book nor brute --
Go, get ye back to the flesh again for the sake of Man's repute.
I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should mock your pain,
But look that ye win to worthier sin ere ye come back again.
Get hence, the hearse is at your door -- the grim black stallions wait --
They bear your clay to place to-day. Speed, lest ye come too late!
Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed -- go back with an open eye,
And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die:
That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one --
And. . .the God that you took from a printed book be with you, Tomlinson!"
|
Written by
Rg Gregory |
now pay attention
(said the teacher)
and look up here
the children looked up
this is william shakespeare
four centuries up
on a pedestal
was shakespeare's head
he was what we call
a great man
the children got sore necks
looking up
and some began to look down
no no
you mustn't look down
(said the teacher)
apart from winston churchill
shakespeare was the greatest
englishman who ever lived
the children's eyes
drained to their feet
and their minds
played around with
their private parts
shakespeare was once
a schoolteacher who
had a second best bed
and he happened to write
thirty six plays
and sonnets and things
he has a noble brow
as you can see
the children stared
from a dusty old head
and a mothridden beard
two sour eyes
glared down
from being a bit bored
then very bored
the children began to have
explosions going off
in many parts of their
bodies
mutters came
out of their mouths
and then anger
followed by flames
shakespeare is a chauvinist
pig
(they screamed)
why don't you piss off
(they shrieked at the teacher)
and take him with you
now now children
(said the teacher)
shakespeare's language
was always as noble
as his brow
he will be shocked
to hear such words
some of the class jumped
on the teacher
(as the young are inclined
to nowadays)
and
the rest began to rock
shakespeare's pedestal
no
please no children
(cried the teacher)
you know not what you do
do you want to destroy
all that is good
in the world
the rocking went on
like an earthquake
and slowly
up four
centuries of stone
shakespeare's head
began to wobble
and all of a sudden
it seemed to
jump from its pedestal
and drop
shaking itself
free of dust and
a beardful of moths
vandals desecrators
(raged the teacher)
wetting himself
no doubt
watch out
(laughed the children)
catch
and the head
fell safely into
their outstretched hands
the teacher shrank away
(wet wet)
terrified to be so close
to the greatest but one
of the greats
the children flocked round
curious to find
what greatness was
shakespeare blew his nose
cleared his throat
(the last of the dust)
and said
hello kids
i'm famished
what's to eat
tell me about yourselves
(and things like that)
he had a real face
and he spoke english
with a kind of
birmingham accent
and he didn't seem to know
much more than they did
he was always pissing around
(he told them)
when he was their age
the teacher gradually
came back
very surprised
and (when he dared to look
at himself) obviously
very relieved
he went away and began
reading the plays
and (discovering
where he'd gone wrong)
got out of teaching
|
Written by
James Wright |
Nightfall, that saw the morning-glories float
Tendril and string against the crumbling wall,
Nurses him now, his skeleton for grief,
His locks for comfort curled among the leaf.
Shuttles of moonlight weave his shadow tall,
Milkweed and dew flow upward to his throat.
Now catbird feathers plume the apple mound,
And starlings drowse to winter up the ground.
thickened away from speech by fear, I move
Around the body. Over his forepaws, steep
Declivities darken down the moonlight now,
And the long throat that bayed a year ago
Declines from summer. Flies would love to leap
Between his eyes and hum away the space
Between the ears, the hollow where a hare
Could hide; another jealous dog would tumble
The bones apart, angry, the shining crumble
Of a great body gleaming in the air;
Quivering pigeons foul his broken face.
I can imagine men who search the earth
For handy resurrections, overturn
The body of a beetle in its grave;
Whispering men digging for gods might delve
A pocket for these bones, then slowly burn
Twigs in the leaves, pray for another birth.
But I will turn my face away from this
Ruin of summer, collapse of fur and bone.
For once a white hare huddled up the grass,
The sparrows flocked away to see the race.
I stood on darkness, clinging to a stone,
I saw the two leaping alive on ice,
On earth, on leaf, humus and withered vine:
The rabbit splendid in a shroud of shade,
The dog carved on the sunlight, on the air,
Fierce and magnificent his rippled hair,
The cockleburs shaking around his head.
Then, suddenly, the hare leaped beyond pain
Out of the open meadow, and the hound
Followed the voiceless dancer to the moon,
To dark, to death, to other meadows where
Singing young women dance around a fire,
Where love reveres the living.
I alone
Scatter this hulk about the dampened ground;
And while the moon rises beyond me, throw
The ribs and spine out of their perfect shape.
For a last charm to the dead, I lift the skull
And toss it over the maples like a ball.
Strewn to the woods, now may that spirit sleep
That flamed over the ground a year ago.
I know the mole will heave a shinbone over,
The earthworm snuggle for a nap on paws,
The honest bees build honey in the head;
The earth knows how to handle the great dead
Who lived the body out, and broke its laws,
Knocked down a fence, tore up a field of clover.
|
Written by
Heather McHugh |
The literate are ill-prepared for this
snap in the line of life:
the day turns a trick
of twisted tongues and is
untiable, the month by no mere root
moon-ridden, and the yearly eloquences yielding more
than summer's part of speech times four. We better learn
the buried meaning in the grave: here
all we see of its alphabet is tracks
of predators, all we know of its tense
the slow seconds and quick centuries
of sex. Unletter the past and then
the future comes to terms. One late fall day
I stumbled from the study and I found
the easy symbols of the living room revised:
my shocked senses flocked to the window's reference
where now all backyard attitudes were deep
in memory: the landscapes I had known too well-
the picnic table and the hoe, the tricycle, the stubborn
shrub-the homegrown syllables
of shapely living-all
lay sanded and camelled by foreign snow...
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