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Best Famous Iris Poems

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

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Written by Marilyn Hacker | Create an image from this poem

Scars on Paper

 An unwrapped icon, too potent to touch,
she freed my breasts from the camp Empire dress.
Now one of them's the shadow of a breast with a lost object's half-life, with as much life as an anecdotal photograph: me, Kim and Iva, all stripped to the waist, hiking near Russian River on June first '79: Iva's five-and-a-half.
While she was almost twenty, wearing black T-shirts in D.
C.
, where we hadn't met.
You lay your palm, my love, on my flat chest.
In lines alive with what is not regret, she takes her own path past, doesn't turn back.
Persistently, on paper, we exist.
Persistently, on paper, we exist.
You'd touch me if you could, but you're, in fact, three thousand miles away.
And my intact body is eighteen months paper: the past a fragile eighteen months regime of trust in slash-and-burn, in vitamin pills, backed by no statistics.
Each day I enact survivor's rituals, blessing the crust I tear from the warm loaf, blessing the hours in which I didn't or in which I did consider my own death.
I am not yet statistically a survivor (that is sixty months).
On paper, someone flowers and flares alive.
I knew her.
But she's dead.
She flares alive.
I knew her.
But she's dead.
I flirted with her, might have been her friend, but transatlantic schedules intervened.
She wrote a book about her Freedom Ride, the wary elders whom she taught to read, — herself half-British, twenty-six, white-blonde, with thirty years to live.
And I happened to open up The Nation to that bad news which I otherwise might not have known (not breast cancer: cancer of the brain).
Words take the absent friend away again.
Alone, I think, she called, alone, upon her courage, tried in ways she'd not have wished by pain and fear: her courage, extinguished.
The pain and fear some courage extinguished at disaster's denouement come back daily, banal: is that brownish-black mole the next chapter? Was the ache enmeshed between my chest and armpit when I washed rogue cells' new claw, or just a muscle ache? I'm not yet desperate enough to take comfort in being predeceased: the anguish when the Harlem doctor, the Jewish dancer, die of AIDS, the Boston seminary's dean succumbs "after brief illness" to cancer.
I like mossed slabs in country cemeteries with wide-paced dates, candles in jars, whose tallow glows on summer evenings, desk-lamp yellow.
Aglow in summer evening, a desk-lamp's yellow moonlight peruses notebooks, houseplants, texts, while an aging woman thinks of sex in the present tense.
Desire may follow, urgent or elegant, cut raw or mellow with wine and ripe black figs: a proof, the next course, a simple question, the complex response, a burning sweetness she will swallow.
The opening mind is sexual and ready to embrace, incarnate in its prime.
Rippling concentrically from summer's gold disc, desire's iris expands, steady with blood beat.
Each time implies the next time.
The aging woman hopes she will grow old.
The aging woman hopes she will grow old.
A younger woman has a dazzling vision of bleeding wrists, her own, the clean incisions suddenly there, two open mouths.
They told their speechless secrets, witnesses not called to what occurred with as little volition of hers as these phantom wounds.
Intense precision of scars, in flesh, in spirit.
I'm enrolled by mine in ranks where now I'm "being brave" if I take off my shirt in a hot crowd sunbathing, or demonstrating for Dyke Pride.
Her bravery counters the kitchen knives' insinuation that the scars be made.
With, or despite our scars, we stay alive.
"With, or despite our scars, we stayed alive until the Contras or the Government or rebel troops came, until we were sent to 'relocation camps' until the archives burned, until we dug the ditch, the grave beside the aspen grove where adolescent boys used to cut class, until we went to the precinct house, eager to behave like citizens.
.
.
" I count my hours and days, finger for luck the word-scarred table which is not my witness, shares all innocent objects' silence: a tin plate, a basement door, a spade, barbed wire, a ring of keys, an unwrapped icon, too potent to touch.


Written by Robert Lowell | Create an image from this poem

Water

 It was a Maine lobster town—
each morning boatloads of hands
pushed off for granite
quarries on the islands,

and left dozens of bleak 
white frame houses stuck
like oyster shells
on a hill of rock,

and below us, the sea lapped
the raw little match-stick 
mazes of a weir,
where the fish for bait were trapped.
Remember? We sat on a slab of rock.
>From this distance in time it seems the color of iris, rotting and turning purpler, but it was only the usual gray rock turning the usual green when drenched by the sea.
The sea drenched the rock at our feet all day, and kept tearing away flake after flake.
One night you dreamed you were a mermaid clinging to a wharf-pile, and trying to pull off the barnacles with your hands.
We wished our two souls might return like gulls to the rock.
In the end, the water was too cold for us.
Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Berck-Plage

(1)

This is the sea, then, this great abeyance.
How the sun's poultice draws on my inflammation.
Electrifyingly-colored sherbets, scooped from the freeze By pale girls, travel the air in scorched hands.
Why is it so quiet, what are they hiding? I have two legs, and I move smilingly.
.
A sandy damper kills the vibrations; It stretches for miles, the shrunk voices Waving and crutchless, half their old size.
The lines of the eye, scalded by these bald surfaces, Boomerang like anchored elastics, hurting the owner.
Is it any wonder he puts on dark glasses? Is it any wonder he affects a black cassock? Here he comes now, among the mackerel gatherers Who wall up their backs against him.
They are handling the black and green lozenges like the parts of a body.
The sea, that crystallized these, Creeps away, many-snaked, with a long hiss of distress.
(2) This black boot has no mercy for anybody.
Why should it, it is the hearse of a dad foot, The high, dead, toeless foot of this priest Who plumbs the well of his book, The bent print bulging before him like scenery.
Obscene bikinis hid in the dunes, Breasts and hips a confectioner's sugar Of little crystals, titillating the light, While a green pool opens its eye, Sick with what it has swallowed---- Limbs, images, shrieks.
Behind the concrete bunkers Two lovers unstick themselves.
O white sea-crockery, What cupped sighs, what salt in the throat.
.
.
.
And the onlooker, trembling, Drawn like a long material Through a still virulence, And a weed, hairy as privates.
(3) On the balconies of the hotel, things are glittering.
Things, things---- Tubular steel wheelchairs, aluminum crutches.
Such salt-sweetness.
Why should I walk Beyond the breakwater, spotty with barnacles? I am not a nurse, white and attendant, I am not a smile.
These children are after something, with hooks and cries, And my heart too small to bandage their terrible faults.
This is the side of a man: his red ribs, The nerves bursting like trees, and this is the surgeon: One mirrory eye---- A facet of knowledge.
On a striped mattress in one room An old man is vanishing.
There is no help in his weeping wife.
Where are the eye-stones, yellow and vvaluable, And the tongue, sapphire of ash.
(4) A wedding-cake face in a paper frill.
How superior he is now.
It is like possessing a saint.
The nurses in their wing-caps are no longer so beautiful; They are browning, like touched gardenias.
The bed is rolled from the wall.
This is what it is to be complete.
It is horrible.
Is he wearing pajamas or an evening suit Under the glued sheet from which his powdery beak Rises so whitely unbuffeted? They propped his jaw with a book until it stiffened And folded his hands, that were shaking: goodbye, goodbye.
Now the washed sheets fly in the sun, The pillow cases are sweetening.
It is a blessing, it is a blessing: The long coffin of soap-colored oak, The curious bearers and the raw date Engraving itself in silver with marvelous calm.
(5) The gray sky lowers, the hills like a green sea Run fold upon fold far off, concealing their hollows, The hollows in which rock the thoughts of the wife---- Blunt, practical boats Full of dresses and hats and china and married daughters.
In the parlor of the stone house One curtain is flickering from the open window, Flickering and pouring, a pitiful candle.
This is the tongue of the dead man: remember, remember.
How far he is now, his actions Around him like livingroom furniture, like a décor.
As the pallors gather---- The pallors of hands and neighborly faces, The elate pallors of flying iris.
They are flying off into nothing: remember us.
The empty benches of memory look over stones, Marble facades with blue veins, and jelly-glassfuls of daffodils.
It is so beautiful up here: it is a stopping place.
(6) The natural fatness of these lime leaves!---- Pollarded green balls, the trees march to church.
The voice of the priest, in thin air, Meets the corpse at the gate, Addressing it, while the hills roll the notes of the dead bell; A glittler of wheat and crude earth.
What is the name of that color?---- Old blood of caked walls the sun heals, Old blood of limb stumps, burnt hearts.
The widow with her black pocketbook and three daughters, Necessary among the flowers, Enfolds her lace like fine linen, Not to be spread again.
While a sky, wormy with put-by smiles, Passes cloud after cloud.
And the bride flowers expend a fershness, And the soul is a bride In a still place, and the groom is red and forgetful, he is featureless.
(7) Behind the glass of this car The world purrs, shut-off and gentle.
And I am dark-suited and stil, a member of the party, Gliding up in low gear behind the cart.
And the priest is a vessel, A tarred fabric,sorry and dull, Following the coffin on its flowery cart like a beautiful woman, A crest of breasts, eyelids and lips Storming the hilltop.
Then, from the barred yard, the children Smell the melt of shoe-blacking, Their faces turning, wordless and slow, Their eyes opening On a wonderful thing---- Six round black hats in the grass and a lozenge of wood, And a naked mouth, red and awkward.
For a minute the sky pours into the hole like plasma.
There is no hope, it is given up.
Written by Jonathan Swift | Create an image from this poem

To Stella Who Collected and Transcribed His Poems

 As, when a lofty pile is raised,
We never hear the workmen praised,
Who bring the lime, or place the stones;
But all admire Inigo Jones:
So, if this pile of scattered rhymes
Should be approved in aftertimes;
If it both pleases and endures,
The merit and the praise are yours.
Thou, Stella, wert no longer young, When first for thee my harp was strung, Without one word of Cupid's darts, Of killing eyes, or bleeding hearts; With friendship and esteem possest, I ne'er admitted Love a guest.
In all the habitudes of life, The friend, the mistress, and the wife, Variety we still pursue, In pleasure seek for something new; Or else, comparing with the rest, Take comfort that our own is best; The best we value by the worst, As tradesmen show their trash at first; But his pursuits are at an end, Whom Stella chooses for a friend.
A poet starving in a garret, Invokes his mistress and his Muse, And stays at home for want of shoes: Should but his Muse descending drop A slice of bread and mutton-chop; Or kindly, when his credit's out, Surprise him with a pint of stout; Or patch his broken stocking soles; Or send him in a peck of coals; Exalted in his mighty mind, He flies and leaves the stars behind; Counts all his labours amply paid, Adores her for the timely aid.
Or, should a porter make inquiries For Chloe, Sylvia, Phillis, Iris; Be told the lodging, lane, and sign, The bowers that hold those nymphs divine; Fair Chloe would perhaps be found With footmen tippling under ground; The charming Sylvia beating flax, Her shoulders marked with bloody tracks; Bright Phyllis mending ragged smocks: And radiant Iris in the pox.
These are the goddesses enrolled In Curll's collection, new and old, Whose scoundrel fathers would not know 'em, If they should meet them in a poem.
True poets can depress and raise, Are lords of infamy and praise; They are not scurrilous in satire, Nor will in panegyric flatter.
Unjustly poets we asperse; Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
Now, should my praises owe their truth To beauty, dress, or paint, or youth, What stoics call without our power, They could not be ensured an hour; 'Twere grafting on an annual stock, That must our expectation mock, And, making one luxuriant shoot, Die the next year for want of root: Before I could my verses bring, Perhaps you're quite another thing.
So Maevius, when he drained his skull To celebrate some suburb trull, His similes in order set, And every crambo he could get; Had gone through all the common-places Worn out by wits, who rhyme on faces; Before he could his poem close, The lovely nymph had lost her nose.
Your virtues safely I commend; They on no accidents depend: Let malice look with all her eyes, She dare not say the poet lies.
Stella, when you these lines transcribe, Lest you should take them for a bribe, Resolved to mortify your pride, I'll here expose your weaker side.
Your spirits kindle to a flame, Moved by the lightest touch of blame; And when a friend in kindness tries To show you where your error lies, Conviction does but more incense; Perverseness is your whole defence; Truth, judgment, wit, give place to spite, Regardless both of wrong and right; Your virtues all suspended wait, Till time has opened reason's gate; And, what is worse, your passion bends Its force against your nearest friends, Which manners, decency, and pride, Have taught from you the world to hide; In vain; for see, your friend has brought To public light your only fault; And yet a fault we often find Mixed in a noble, generous mind: And may compare to Etna's fire, Which, though with trembling, all admire; The heat that makes the summit glow, Enriching all the vales below.
Those who, in warmer climes, complain From Phoebus' rays they suffer pain, Must own that pain is largely paid By generous wines beneath a shade.
Yet, when I find your passions rise, And anger sparkling in your eyes, I grieve those spirits should be spent, For nobler ends by nature meant.
One passion, with a different turn, Makes wit inflame, or anger burn: So the sun's heat, with different powers, Ripens the grape, the liquor sours: Thus Ajax, when with rage possest, By Pallas breathed into his breast, His valour would no more employ, Which might alone have conquered Troy; But, blinded be resentment, seeks For vengeance on his friends the Greeks.
You think this turbulence of blood From stagnating preserves the flood, Which, thus fermenting by degrees, Exalts the spirits, sinks the lees.
Stella, for once your reason wrong; For, should this ferment last too long, By time subsiding, you may find Nothing but acid left behind; From passion you may then be freed, When peevishness and spleen succeed.
Say, Stella, when you copy next, Will you keep strictly to the text? Dare you let these reproaches stand, And to your failing set your hand? Or, if these lines your anger fire, Shall they in baser flames expire? Whene'er they burn, if burn they must, They'll prove my accusation just.
Written by Andre Breton | Create an image from this poem

Freedom of Love

 (Translated from the French by Edouard Rodti)

My wife with the hair of a wood fire
With the thoughts of heat lightning
With the waist of an hourglass
With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger
My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude
With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth
With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass
My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host
With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes
With the tongue of an unbelievable stone
My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writing
With brows of the edge of a swallow's nest
My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof
And of steam on the panes
My wife with shoulders of champagne
And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice
My wife with wrists of matches
My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts
With fingers of mown hay
My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut
And of Midsummer Night
Of privet and of an angelfish nest
With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks
And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill
My wife with legs of flares
With the movements of clockwork and despair
My wife with calves of eldertree pith
My wife with feet of initials
With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking
My wife with a neck of unpearled barley
My wife with a throat of the valley of gold
Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent
With breasts of night
My wife with breasts of a marine molehill
My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible
With breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dew
My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days
With the belly of a gigantic claw
My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically
With a back of quicksilver
With a back of light
With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk
And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking
My wife with hips of a skiff
With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers
And of shafts of white peacock plumes
Of an insensible pendulum
My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos
My wife with buttocks of swans' backs
My wife with buttocks of spring
With the sex of an iris
My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus
My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat
My wife with a sex of mirror
My wife with eyes full of tears
With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle
My wife with savanna eyes
My wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prison
My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe
My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire


Written by Erica Jong | Create an image from this poem

Climbing You

 I want to understand the steep thing
that climbs ladders in your throat.
I can't make sense of you.
Everywhere I look you're there-- a vast landmark, a volcano poking its head through the clouds, Gulliver sprawled across Lilliput.
I climb into your eyes, looking.
The pupils are black painted stage flats.
They can be pulled down like window shades.
I switch on a light in your iris.
Your brain ticks like a bomb.
In your offhand, mocking way you've invited me into your chest.
Inside: the blur that poses as your heart.
I'm supposed to go in with a torch or maybe hot water bottles & defrost it by hand as one defrosts an old refrigerator.
It will shudder & sigh (the icebox to the insomniac).
Oh there's nothing like love between us.
You're the mountain, I am climbing you.
If I fall, you won't be all to blame, but you'll wait years maybe for the next doomed expedition.
Written by James Tate | Create an image from this poem

The Definition of Gardening

 Jim just loves to garden, yes he does.
He likes nothing better than to put on his little overalls and his straw hat.
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim.
" But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?" And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve.
He stands in the driveway a long time.
"Horticulture is a groping in the dark into the obscure and unfamiliar, kneeling before a disinterested secret, slapping it, punching it like a Chinese puzzle, birdbrained babbling gibberish, dig and destroy, pull out and apply salt, hoe and spray, before it spreads, burn roots, where not desired, with gloved hands, poisonous, the self-sacrifice of it, the self-love, into the interior, thunderclap, excruciating, through the nose, the earsplitting necrology of it, the withering, shrivelling, the handy hose holder and Persian insect powder and smut fungi, the enemies of the iris, wireworms are worse than their parents, there is no way out, flowers as big as heads, pock-marked, disfigured, blinking insolently at me, the me who so loves to garden because it prevents the heaving of the ground and the untimely death of porch furniture, and dark, murky days in a large city and the dream home under a permanent storm is also a factor to keep in mind.
"
Written by Matthew Arnold | Create an image from this poem

The Strayed Reveller

 1 Faster, faster, 
2 O Circe, Goddess,
3 Let the wild, thronging train 
4 The bright procession 
5 Of eddying forms, 
6 Sweep through my soul! 

7 Thou standest, smiling
8 Down on me! thy right arm,
9 Lean'd up against the column there,
10 Props thy soft cheek;
11 Thy left holds, hanging loosely,
12 The deep cup, ivy-cinctured,
13 I held but now.
14 Is it, then, evening 15 So soon? I see, the night-dews, 16 Cluster'd in thick beads, dim 17 The agate brooch-stones 18 On thy white shoulder; 19 The cool night-wind, too, 20 Blows through the portico, 21 Stirs thy hair, Goddess, 22 Waves thy white robe! Circe.
23 Whence art thou, sleeper? The Youth.
24 When the white dawn first 25 Through the rough fir-planks 26 Of my hut, by the chestnuts, 27 Up at the valley-head, 28 Came breaking, Goddess! 29 I sprang up, I threw round me 30 My dappled fawn-skin; 31 Passing out, from the wet turf, 32 Where they lay, by the hut door, 33 I snatch'd up my vine-crown, my fir-staff, 34 All drench'd in dew- 35 Came swift down to join 36 The rout early gather'd 37 In the town, round the temple, 38 Iacchus' white fane 39 On yonder hill.
40 Quick I pass'd, following 41 The wood-cutters' cart-track 42 Down the dark valley;-I saw 43 On my left, through the beeches, 44 Thy palace, Goddess, 45 Smokeless, empty! 46 Trembling, I enter'd; beheld 47 The court all silent, 48 The lions sleeping, 49 On the altar this bowl.
50 I drank, Goddess! 51 And sank down here, sleeping, 52 On the steps of thy portico.
Circe.
53 Foolish boy! Why tremblest thou? 54 Thou lovest it, then, my wine? 55 Wouldst more of it? See, how glows, 56 Through the delicate, flush'd marble, 57 The red, creaming liquor, 58 Strown with dark seeds! 59 Drink, thee! I chide thee not, 60 Deny thee not my bowl.
61 Come, stretch forth thy hand, thee-so! 62 Drink-drink again! The Youth.
63 Thanks, gracious one! 64 Ah, the sweet fumes again! 65 More soft, ah me, 66 More subtle-winding 67 Than Pan's flute-music! 68 Faint-faint! Ah me, 69 Again the sweet sleep! Circe.
70 Hist! Thou-within there! 71 Come forth, Ulysses! 72 Art tired with hunting? 73 While we range the woodland, 74 See what the day brings.
Ulysses.
75 Ever new magic! 76 Hast thou then lured hither, 77 Wonderful Goddess, by thy art, 78 The young, languid-eyed Ampelus, 79 Iacchus' darling- 80 Or some youth beloved of Pan, 81 Of Pan and the Nymphs? 82 That he sits, bending downward 83 His white, delicate neck 84 To the ivy-wreathed marge 85 Of thy cup; the bright, glancing vine-leaves 86 That crown his hair, 87 Falling forward, mingling 88 With the dark ivy-plants-- 89 His fawn-skin, half untied, 90 Smear'd with red wine-stains? Who is he, 91 That he sits, overweigh'd 92 By fumes of wine and sleep, 93 So late, in thy portico? 94 What youth, Goddess,-what guest 95 Of Gods or mortals? Circe.
96 Hist! he wakes! 97 I lured him not hither, Ulysses.
98 Nay, ask him! The Youth.
99 Who speaks' Ah, who comes forth 100 To thy side, Goddess, from within? 101 How shall I name him? 102 This spare, dark-featured, 103 Quick-eyed stranger? 104 Ah, and I see too 105 His sailor's bonnet, 106 His short coat, travel-tarnish'd, 107 With one arm bare!-- 108 Art thou not he, whom fame 109 This long time rumours 110 The favour'd guest of Circe, brought by the waves? 111 Art thou he, stranger? 112 The wise Ulysses, 113 Laertes' son? Ulysses.
114 I am Ulysses.
115 And thou, too, sleeper? 116 Thy voice is sweet.
117 It may be thou hast follow'd 118 Through the islands some divine bard, 119 By age taught many things, 120 Age and the Muses; 121 And heard him delighting 122 The chiefs and people 123 In the banquet, and learn'd his songs.
124 Of Gods and Heroes, 125 Of war and arts, 126 And peopled cities, 127 Inland, or built 128 By the gray sea.
-If so, then hail! 129 I honour and welcome thee.
The Youth.
130 The Gods are happy.
131 They turn on all sides 132 Their shining eyes, 133 And see below them 134 The earth and men.
135 They see Tiresias 136 Sitting, staff in hand, 137 On the warm, grassy 138 Asopus bank, 139 His robe drawn over 140 His old sightless head, 141 Revolving inly 142 The doom of Thebes.
143 They see the Centaurs 144 In the upper glens 145 Of Pelion, in the streams, 146 Where red-berried ashes fringe 147 The clear-brown shallow pools, 148 With streaming flanks, and heads 149 Rear'd proudly, snuffing 150 The mountain wind.
151 They see the Indian 152 Drifting, knife in hand, 153 His frail boat moor'd to 154 A floating isle thick-matted 155 With large-leaved, low-creeping melon-plants 156 And the dark cucumber.
157 He reaps, and stows them, 158 Drifting--drifting;--round him, 159 Round his green harvest-plot, 160 Flow the cool lake-waves, 161 The mountains ring them.
162 They see the Scythian 163 On the wide stepp, unharnessing 164 His wheel'd house at noon.
165 He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal-- 166 Mares' milk, and bread 167 Baked on the embers;--all around 168 The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, thick-starr'd 169 With saffron and the yellow hollyhock 170 And flag-leaved iris-flowers.
171 Sitting in his cart 172 He makes his meal; before him, for long miles, 173 Alive with bright green lizards, 174 And the springing bustard-fowl, 175 The track, a straight black line, 176 Furrows the rich soil; here and there 177 Cluster of lonely mounds 178 Topp'd with rough-hewn, 179 Gray, rain-blear'd statues, overpeer 180 The sunny waste.
181 They see the ferry 182 On the broad, clay-laden 183 Lone Chorasmian stream;--thereon, 184 With snort and strain, 185 Two horses, strongly swimming, tow 186 The ferry-boat, with woven ropes 187 To either bow 188 Firm harness'd by the mane; a chief 189 With shout and shaken spear, 190 Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern 191 The cowering merchants, in long robes, 192 Sit pale beside their wealth 193 Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops, 194 Of gold and ivory, 195 Of turquoise-earth and amethyst, 196 Jasper and chalcedony, 197 And milk-barred onyx-stones.
198 The loaded boat swings groaning 199 In the yellow eddies; 200 The Gods behold him.
201 They see the Heroes 202 Sitting in the dark ship 203 On the foamless, long-heaving 204 Violet sea.
205 At sunset nearing 206 The Happy Islands.
207 These things, Ulysses, 208 The wise bards, also 209 Behold and sing.
210 But oh, what labour! 211 O prince, what pain! 212 They too can see 213 Tiresias;--but the Gods, 214 Who give them vision, 215 Added this law: 216 That they should bear too 217 His groping blindness, 218 His dark foreboding, 219 His scorn'd white hairs; 220 Bear Hera's anger 221 Through a life lengthen'd 222 To seven ages.
223 They see the Centaurs 224 On Pelion:--then they feel, 225 They too, the maddening wine 226 Swell their large veins to bursting; in wild pain 227 They feel the biting spears 228 Of the grim Lapith?, and Theseus, drive, 229 Drive crashing through their bones; they feel 230 High on a jutting rock in the red stream 231 Alcmena's dreadful son 232 Ply his bow;--such a price 233 The Gods exact for song: 234 To become what we sing.
235 They see the Indian 236 On his mountain lake; but squalls 237 Make their skiff reel, and worms 238 In the unkind spring have gnawn 239 Their melon-harvest to the heart.
--They see 240 The Scythian: but long frosts 241 Parch them in winter-time on the bare stepp, 242 Till they too fade like grass; they crawl 243 Like shadows forth in spring.
244 They see the merchants 245 On the Oxus stream;--but care 246 Must visit first them too, and make them pale.
247 Whether, through whirling sand, 248 A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst 249 Upon their caravan; or greedy kings, 250 In the wall'd cities the way passes through, 251 Crush'd them with tolls; or fever-airs, 252 On some great river's marge, 253 Mown them down, far from home.
254 They see the Heroes 255 Near harbour;--but they share 256 Their lives, and former violent toil in Thebes, 257 Seven-gated Thebes, or Troy; 258 Or where the echoing oars 259 Of Argo first 260 Startled the unknown sea.
261 The old Silenus 262 Came, lolling in the sunshine, 263 From the dewy forest-coverts, 264 This way at noon.
265 Sitting by me, while his Fauns 266 Down at the water-side 267 Sprinkled and smoothed 268 His drooping garland, 269 He told me these things.
270 But I, Ulysses, 271 Sitting on the warm steps, 272 Looking over the valley, 273 All day long, have seen, 274 Without pain, without labour, 275 Sometimes a wild-hair'd M?nad-- 276 Sometimes a Faun with torches-- 277 And sometimes, for a moment, 278 Passing through the dark stems 279 Flowing-robed, the beloved, 280 The desired, the divine, 281 Beloved Iacchus.
282 Ah, cool night-wind, tremulous stars! 283 Ah, glimmering water, 284 Fitful earth-murmur, 285 Dreaming woods! 286 Ah, golden-haired, strangely smiling Goddess, 287 And thou, proved, much enduring, 288 Wave-toss'd Wanderer! 289 Who can stand still? 290 Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me-- 291 The cup again! 292 Faster, faster, 293 O Circe, Goddess.
294 Let the wild, thronging train, 295 The bright procession 296 Of eddying forms, 297 Sweep through my soul!
Written by Charles Baudelaire | Create an image from this poem

The Sadness Of The Moon

 THE Moon more indolently dreams to-night 
Than a fair woman on her couch at rest, 
Caressing, with a hand distraught and light, 
Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast.
Upon her silken avalanche of down, Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh; And watches the white visions past her flown, Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky.
And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep, Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow, Some pious poet, enemy of sleep, Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow Whence gleams of iris and of opal start, And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart.
Written by Edmund Spenser | Create an image from this poem

A Ditty

In praise of Eliza Queen of the Shepherds


SEE where she sits upon the grassie greene, 
(O seemely sight!) 
Yclad in Scarlot, like a mayden Queene, 
And ermines white: 
Upon her head a Cremosin coronet 5 
With Damaske roses and Daffadillies set: 
Bay leaves betweene, 
And primroses greene, 
Embellish the sweete Violet.
Tell me, have ye seene her angelick face 10 Like Phoebe fayre? Her heavenly haveour, her princely grace, Can you well compare? The Redde rose medled with the White yfere, In either cheeke depeincten lively chere: 15 Her modest eye, Her Majestie, Where have you seene the like but there? I see Calliope speede her to the place, Where my Goddesse shines; 20 And after her the other Muses trace With their Violines.
Bene they not Bay braunches which they do beare, All for Elisa in her hand to weare? So sweetely they play, 25 And sing all the way, That it a heaven is to heare.
Lo, how finely the Graces can it foote To the Instrument: They dauncen deffly, and singen soote, 30 In their meriment.
Wants not a fourth Grace to make the daunce even? Let that rowme to my Lady be yeven.
She shal be a Grace, To fyll the fourth place, 35 And reigne with the rest in heaven.
Bring hether the Pincke and purple Cullambine, With Gelliflowres; Bring Coronations, and Sops-in-wine Worne of Paramoures: 40 Strowe me the ground with Daffadowndillies, And Cowslips, and Kingcups, and lov¨¨d Lillies: The pretie Pawnce, And the Chevisaunce, Shall match with the fayre flowre Delice.
45 Now ryse up, Elisa, deck¨¨d as thou art In royall aray; And now ye daintie Damsells may depart Eche one her way.
I feare I have troubled your troupes to longe: 50 Let dame Elisa thanke you for her song: And if you come hether When Damsines I gether, I will part them all you among.
GLOSS: medled] mixed.
yfere] together.
soote] sweet.
coronations] carnations.
sops-in-wine] striped pinks.
pawnce] pansy.
chevisaunce] wallflower.
flowre delice] iris.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things