10 Best Famous Johns Poems

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

• All Famous Johns Poems

 I never said I loved you, John:
Why will you tease me day by day,
And wax a weariness to think upon
With always "do" and "pray"?

You Know I never loved you, John;
No fault of mine made me your toast:
Why will you haunt me with a face as wan
As shows an hour-old ghost?

I dare say Meg or Moll would take
Pity upon you, if you'd ask:
And pray don't remain single for my sake
Who can't perform the task.

I have no heart?-Perhaps I have not;
But then you're mad to take offence
That don't give you what I have not got:
Use your common sense.

Let bygones be bygones:
Don't call me false, who owed not to be true:
I'd rather answer "No" to fifty Johns
Than answer "Yes" to you.

Let's mar our plesant days no more,
Song-birds of passage, days of youth:
Catch at today, forget the days before:
I'll wink at your untruth.

Let us strike hands as hearty friends;
No more, no less; and friendship's good:
Only don't keep in veiw ulterior ends, And points not understood

In open treaty. Rise above
Quibbles and shuffling off and on:
Here's friendship for you if you like; but love,-
No, thank you, John.

 White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, 
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; 
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, 
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard; 
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips; 
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships. 
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy, 
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea, 
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss, 
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross. 
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass; 
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass; 
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun, 
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun. 

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard, 
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred, 
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall, 
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall, 
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung, 
That once went singing southward when all the world was young. 
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, 
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade. 
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far, 
Don John of Austria is going to the war, 
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold 
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold, 
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums, 
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes. 
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled, 
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world, 
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free. 
Love-light of Spain--hurrah! 
Death-light of Africa! 
Don John of Austria 
Is riding to the sea. 

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star, 
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.) 
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees, 
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas. 
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease, 
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees; 
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring 
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing. 
Giants and the Genii, 
Multiplex of wing and eye, 
Whose strong obedience broke the sky 
When Solomon was king. 

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn, 
From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn; 
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea 
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be, 
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl, 
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl; 
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,-- 
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound. 
And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide, 
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide, 
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest, 
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west. 
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun, 
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done. 
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know 
The voice that shook our palaces--four hundred years ago: 
It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate; 
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate! 
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth, 
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth." 
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar, 
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.) 
Sudden and still--hurrah! 
Bolt from Iberia! 
Don John of Austria 
Is gone by Alcalar. 

St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north 
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.) 
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift 
And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift. 
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone; 
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone; 
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes, 
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise, 
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room, 
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom, 
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,-- 
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea. 
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse 
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips, 
Trumpet that sayeth ha! 
Domino gloria! 
Don John of Austria 
Is shouting to the ships. 

King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck 
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.) 
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin, 
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in. 
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon, 
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon, 
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey 
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day, 
And death is in the phial and the end of noble work, 
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk. 
Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed-- 
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid. 
Gun upon gun, ha! ha! 
Gun upon gun, hurrah! 
Don John of Austria 
Has loosed the cannonade. 

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke, 
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.) 
The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year, 
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear. 
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea 
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery; 
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark, 
They veil the plum?d lions on the galleys of St. Mark; 
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs, 
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs, 
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines 
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines. 
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung 
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young. 
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on 
Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon. 
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell 
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell, 
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign-- 
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!) 
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop, 
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop, 
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds, 
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds, 
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea 
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty. 

Vivat Hispania! 
Domino Gloria! 
Don John of Austria 
Has set his people free! 

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath 
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.) 
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain, 
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain, 
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade.... 
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

 We who travel between worlds 
lose our muscle and bone. 
I was wheeling a barrow of earth 
when agony bayoneted me. 

I could not sit, or lie down, 
or stand, in Casualty. 
Stomach-calming clay caked my lips, 
I turned yellow as the moon 

and slid inside a CAT-scan wheel 
in a hospital where I met no one 
so much was my liver now my dire 
preoccupation. I was sped down a road. 

of treetops and fishing-rod lightpoles 
towards the three persons of God 
and the three persons of John Hunter 
Hospital. Who said We might lose this one. 

Twenty days or to the heat-death 
of the Universe have the same duration: 
vaguely half a hour. I awoke 
giggling over a joke 

about Paul Kruger in Johannesburg 
and missed the white court stockings 
I half remembered from my prone 
still voyage beyond flesh and bone. 

I asked my friend who got new lungs 
How long were you crazy, coming back? 
Five days, he said. Violent and mad. 
Fictive Afrikaner police were at him, 

not unworldly Oom Paul Kruger. 
Valerie, who had sat the twenty days 
beside me, now gently told me tales 
of my time-warp. The operative canyon 

stretched, stapled, with dry roseate walls 
down my belly. Seaweed gel 
plugged views of my pluck and offal. 
The only poet whose liver 

damage hadn't been self-inflicted, 
grinned my agent. A momentarily 
holed bowel had released flora 
who live in us and will eat us 

when we stop feeding them the earth. 
I had, it did seem, rehearsed 
the private office of the grave, 
ceased excreting, made corpse gases 

all while liana'd in tubes 
and overseen by cockpit instruments 
that beeped or struck up Beethoven's 
Fifth at behests of fluid. 

I also hear when I lay lipless 
and far away I was anointed 
first by a mild metaphoric church 
then by the Church of no metaphors. 

Now I said, signing a Dutch contract 
in a hand I couldn't recognise, 
let's go and eat Chinese soup 
and drive to Lake Macquarie. Was I 

not renewed as we are in Heaven? 
In fact I could hardly endure 
Earth gravity, and stayed weak and cranky 
till the soup came, squid and vegetables, 

pure Yang. And was sane thereafter. 
It seemed I'd also travelled 
in a Spring-in-Winter love-barque of cards, 
of flowers and phone calls and letters, 

concern I'd never dreamed was there 
when black kelp boiled in my head. 
I'd awoken amid my State funeral, 
nevermore to eat my liver 

or feed it to the Black Dog, depression 
which the three Johns Hunter seem 
to have killed with their scalpels: 
it hasn't found its way home, 

where I now dodder and mend 
in thanks for devotion, for the ambulance 
this time, for the hospital fork lift, 
for pethidine, and this face of deity: 

not the foreknowledge of death 
but the project of seeing conscious life 
rescued from death defines and will 
atone for the human.

 EXPECT na, sir, in this narration,
A fleechin, fleth’rin Dedication,
To roose you up, an’ ca’ you guid,
An’ sprung o’ great an’ noble bluid,
Because ye’re surnam’d like His Grace—
Perhaps related to the race:
Then, when I’m tir’d-and sae are ye,
Wi’ mony a fulsome, sinfu’ lie,
Set up a face how I stop short,
For fear your modesty be hurt.


 This may do—maun do, sir, wi’ them wha
Maun please the great folk for a wamefou;
For me! sae laigh I need na bow,
For, Lord be thankit, I can plough;
And when I downa yoke a naig,
Then, Lord be thankit, I can beg;
Sae I shall say—an’ that’s nae flatt’rin—
It’s just sic Poet an’ sic Patron.


 The Poet, some guid angel help him,
Or else, I fear, some ill ane skelp him!
He may do weel for a’ he’s done yet,
But only—he’s no just begun yet.


 The Patron (sir, ye maun forgie me;
I winna lie, come what will o’ me),
On ev’ry hand it will allow’d be,
He’s just—nae better than he should be.


 I readily and freely grant,
He downa see a poor man want;
What’s no his ain, he winna tak it;
What ance he says, he winna break it;
Ought he can lend he’ll no refus’t,
Till aft his guidness is abus’d;
And rascals whiles that do him wrang,
Ev’n that, he does na mind it lang;
As master, landlord, husband, father,
He does na fail his part in either.


 But then, nae thanks to him for a’that;
Nae godly symptom ye can ca’ that;
It’s naething but a milder feature
Of our poor, sinfu’ corrupt nature:
Ye’ll get the best o’ moral works,
’Mang black Gentoos, and pagan Turks,
Or hunters wild on Ponotaxi,
Wha never heard of orthodoxy.
That he’s the poor man’s friend in need,
The gentleman in word and deed,
It’s no thro’ terror of damnation;
It’s just a carnal inclination.


 Morality, thou deadly bane,
Thy tens o’ thousands thou hast slain!
Vain is his hope, whase stay an’ trust is
In moral mercy, truth, and justice!


 No—stretch a point to catch a plack:
Abuse a brother to his back;
Steal through the winnock frae a whore,
But point the rake that taks the door;
Be to the poor like ony whunstane,
And haud their noses to the grunstane;
Ply ev’ry art o’ legal thieving;
No matter—stick to sound believing.


 Learn three-mile pray’rs, an’ half-mile graces,
Wi’ weel-spread looves, an’ lang, wry faces;
Grunt up a solemn, lengthen’d groan,
And damn a’ parties but your own;
I’ll warrant they ye’re nae deceiver,
A steady, sturdy, staunch believer.


 O ye wha leave the springs o’ Calvin,
For gumlie dubs of your ain delvin!
Ye sons of Heresy and Error,
Ye’ll some day squeel in quaking terror,
When Vengeance draws the sword in wrath.
And in the fire throws the sheath;
When Ruin, with his sweeping besom,
Just frets till Heav’n commission gies him;
While o’er the harp pale Misery moans,
And strikes the ever-deep’ning tones,
Still louder shrieks, and heavier groans!


 Your pardon, sir, for this digression:
I maist forgat my Dedication;
But when divinity comes ’cross me,
My readers still are sure to lose me.


 So, sir, you see ’twas nae daft vapour;
But I maturely thought it proper,
When a’ my works I did review,
To dedicate them, sir, to you:
Because (ye need na tak it ill),
I thought them something like yoursel’.


 Then patronize them wi’ your favor,
And your petitioner shall ever——
I had amaist said, ever pray,
But that’s a word I need na say;
For prayin, I hae little skill o’t,
I’m baith dead-sweer, an’ wretched ill o’t;
But I’se repeat each poor man’s pray’r,
That kens or hears about you, sir.——


 “May ne’er Misfortune’s gowling bark,
Howl thro’ the dwelling o’ the clerk!
May ne’er his genrous, honest heart,
For that same gen’rous spirit smart!
May Kennedy’s far-honour’d name
Lang beet his hymeneal flame,
Till Hamiltons, at least a dizzen,
Are frae their nuptial labours risen:
Five bonie lasses round their table,
And sev’n braw fellows, stout an’ able,
To serve their king an’ country weel,
By word, or pen, or pointed steel!
May health and peace, with mutual rays,
Shine on the ev’ning o’ his days;
Till his wee, curlie John’s ier-oe,
When ebbing life nae mair shall flow,
The last, sad, mournful rites bestow!”


 I will not wind a lang conclusion,
With complimentary effusion;
But, whilst your wishes and endeavours
Are blest with Fortune’s smiles and favours,
I am, dear sir, with zeal most fervent,
Your much indebted, humble servant.


 But if (which Pow’rs above prevent)
That iron-hearted carl, Want,
Attended, in his grim advances,
By sad mistakes, and black mischances,
While hopes, and joys, and pleasures fly him,
Make you as poor a dog as I am,
Your humble servant then no more;
For who would humbly serve the poor?
But, by a poor man’s hopes in Heav’n!
While recollection’s pow’r is giv’n—
If, in the vale of humble life,
The victim sad of fortune’s strife,
I, thro’ the tender-gushing tear,
Should recognise my master dear;
If friendless, low, we meet together,
Then, sir, your hand—my Friend and Brother!

 Shiny record albums scattered over
the living room floor, reflecting light
from the lamp, sharp reflections that hurt
my eyes as I watch you, squatting among the platters, 
the beer foam making mustaches on your lips.

And, too,
the shadows on your cheeks from your long lashes
fascinate me--almost as much as the dimples
in your cheeks, your arms and your legs.

You 
hum along with Mathis--how you love Mathis!
with his burnished hair and quicksilver voice that dances
among the stars and whirls through canyons
like windblown snow, sometimes I think that Mathis
could take you from me if you could be complete
without me. I glance at my watch. It is now time.

You rise,
silently, and to the bedroom and the paint;
on the lips red, on the eyes black,
and I lean in the doorway and smoke, and see you
grow old before my eyes, and smoke, why do you
chatter while you dress? and smile when you grab
your large leather purse? don't you know that when you leave me 
I walk to the window and watch you? and light
a reefer as I watch you? and I die as I watch you
disappear in the dark streets
to whistle and smile at the johns

 I HOLD it, sir, my bounden duty
To warn you how that Master Tootie,
 Alias, Laird M’Gaun,
Was here to hire yon lad away
’Bout whom ye spak the tither day,
 An’ wad hae don’t aff han’;
But lest he learn the callan tricks—
 An’ faith I muckle doubt him—
Like scrapin out auld Crummie’s nicks,
 An’ tellin lies about them;
 As lieve then, I’d have then
 Your clerkship he should sair,
 If sae be ye may be
 Not fitted otherwhere.


Altho’ I say’t, he’s gleg enough,
An’ ’bout a house that’s rude an’ rough,
 The boy might learn to swear;
But then, wi’ you, he’ll be sae taught,
An’ get sic fair example straught,
 I hae na ony fear.
Ye’ll catechise him, every quirk,
 An’ shore him weel wi’ hell;
An’ gar him follow to the kirk—
 Aye when ye gang yoursel.
 If ye then maun be then
 Frae hame this comin’ Friday,
 Then please, sir, to lea’e, sir,
 The orders wi’ your lady.


My word of honour I hae gi’en,
In Paisley John’s, that night at e’en,
 To meet the warld’s worm;
To try to get the twa to gree,
An’ name the airles an’ the fee,
 In legal mode an’ form:
I ken he weel a snick can draw,
 When simple bodies let him:
An’ if a Devil be at a’,
 In faith he’s sure to get him.
 To phrase you and praise you,.
 Ye ken your Laureat scorns:
 The pray’r still you share still
 Of grateful MINSTREL BURNS.

 A MIDDLE-AGE INTERLUDE.

ROSA MUNDI; SEU, FULCITE ME FLORIBUS.
A CONCEIT OF MASTER GYSBRECHT,
CANON-REGULAR OF SAID JODOCUS-BY-THE-BAR,
YPRES CITY. CANTUQUE, _Virgilius._ 
AND HATH OFTEN BEEN SUNG 
AT HOCK-TIDE AND FESTIVALES. GAVISUS
ERAM, _Jessides._

(It would seem to be a glimpse from the
burning of Jacques du Bourg-Mulay, at Paris,
A. D. 1314; as distorted by the refraction from
Flemish brain to brain, during the course of
a couple of centuries.)

[Molay was Grand Master of the Templars
when that order was suppressed in 1312.]

I.

PREADMONISHETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.

The Lord, we look to once for all,
Is the Lord we should look at, all at once:
He knows not to vary, saith Saint Paul,
Nor the shadow of turning, for the nonce.
See him no other than as he is!
Give both the infinitudes their due---
Infinite mercy, but, I wis,
As infinite a justice too.
[_Organ: plagal-cadence._
As infinite a justice too.

II.

ONE SINGETH.

John, Master of the Temple of God,
Falling to sin the Unknown Sin,
What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod,
He sold it to Sultan Saladin:
Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there,
Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive,
And clipt of his wings in Paris square,
They bring him now to be burned alive.
[_And wanteth there grace of lute or
clavicithern, ye shall say to confirm
him who singeth---_
We bring John now to be burned alive.

III.

In the midst is a goodly gallows built;
'Twixt fork and fork, a stake is stuck;
But first they set divers tumbrils a-tilt,
Make a trench all round with the city muck;
Inside they pile log upon log, good store;
Faggots no few, blocks great and small,
Reach a man's mid-thigh, no less, no more,---
For they mean he should roast in the sight of all.

CHORUS.

We mean he should roast in the sight of all.


IV.

Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith;
Billets that blaze substantial and slow;
Pine-stump split deftly, dry as pith;
Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow:
Then up they hoist me John in a chafe,
Sling him fast like a hog to scorch,
Spit in his face, then leap back safe,
Sing ``Laudes'' and bid clap-to the torch.

CHORUS.

_Laus Deo_---who bids clap-to the torch.


V.

John of the Temple, whose fame so bragged,
Is burning alive in Paris square!
How can he curse, if his mouth is gagged?
Or wriggle his neck, with a collar there?
Or heave his chest, which a band goes round?
Or threat with his fist, since his arms are spliced?
Or kick with his feet, now his legs are bound?
---Thinks John, I will call upon Jesus Christ.
[_Here one crosseth himself_


VI.

Jesus Christ---John had bought and sold,
Jesus Christ---John had eaten and drunk;
To him, the Flesh meant silver and gold.
(_Salv reverenti._)
Now it was, ``Saviour, bountiful lamb,
``I have roasted thee Turks, though men roast me!
``See thy servant, the plight wherein I am!
``Art thou a saviour? Save thou me!''

CHORUS.

'Tis John the mocker cries, ``Save thou me!''


VII.

Who maketh God's menace an idle word?
---Saith, it no more means what it proclaims,
Than a damsel's threat to her wanton bird?---
For she too prattles of ugly names.
---Saith, he knoweth but one thing,---what he knows?
That God is good and the rest is breath;
Why else is the same styled Sharon's rose?
Once a rose, ever a rose, he saith.

CHORUS.

O, John shall yet find a rose, he saith!


VIII.

Alack, there be roses and roses, John!
Some, honied of taste like your leman's tongue:
Some, bitter; for why? (roast gaily on!)
Their tree struck root in devil's-dung.
When Paul once reasoned of righteousness
And of temperance and of judgment to come,
Good Felix trembled, he could no less:
John, snickering, crook'd his wicked thumb.

CHORUS.

What cometh to John of the wicked thumb?


IX.

Ha ha, John plucketh now at his rose
To rid himself of a sorrow at heart!
Lo,---petal on petal, fierce rays unclose;
Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart;
And with blood for dew, the bosom boils;
And a gust of sulphur is all its smell;
And lo, he is horribly in the toils
Of a coal-black giant flower of hell!

CHORUS.

What maketh heaven, That maketh hell.


X.

So, as John called now, through the fire amain.
On the Name, he had cursed with, all his life---
To the Person, he bought and sold again---
For the Face, with his daily buffets rife---
Feature by feature It took its place:
And his voice, like a mad dog's choking bark,
At the steady whole of the Judge's face---
Died. Forth John's soul flared into the dark.

SUBJOINETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.

God help all poor souls lost in the dark!


*1: Fagots.

 How tall among her sisters, and how fair, --
How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair
As dawn, 'mid wrinkled Matres of old lands
Our youngest Alma Mater modest stands!
In four brief cycles round the punctual sun
Has she, old Learning's latest daughter, won
This grace, this stature, and this fruitful fame.
Howbeit she was born
Unnoised as any stealing summer morn.
From far the sages saw, from far they came
And ministered to her,
Led by the soaring-genius'd Sylvester
That, earlier, loosed the knot great Newton tied,
And flung the door of Fame's locked temple wide.
As favorable fairies thronged of old and blessed
The cradled princess with their several best,
So, gifts and dowers meet
To lay at Wisdom's feet,
These liberal masters largely brought --
Dear diamonds of their long-compressed thought,
Rich stones from out the labyrinthine cave
Of research, pearls from Time's profoundest wave
And many a jewel brave, of brilliant ray,
Dug in the far obscure Cathay
Of meditation deep --
With flowers, of such as keep
Their fragrant tissues and their heavenly hues
Fresh-bathed forever in eternal dews --
The violet with her low-drooped eye,
For learned modesty, --
The student snow-drop, that doth hang and pore
Upon the earth, like Science, evermore,
And underneath the clod doth grope and grope, --
The astronomer heliotrope,
That watches heaven with a constant eye, --
The daring crocus, unafraid to try
(When Nature calls) the February snows, --
And patience' perfect rose.
Thus sped with helps of love and toil and thought,
Thus forwarded of faith, with hope thus fraught,
In four brief cycles round the stringent sun
This youngest sister hath her stature won.

Nay, why regard
The passing of the years? Nor made, nor marr'd,
By help or hindrance of slow Time was she:
O'er this fair growth Time had no mastery:
So quick she bloomed, she seemed to bloom at birth,
As Eve from Adam, or as he from earth.
Superb o'er slow increase of day on day,
Complete as Pallas she began her way;
Yet not from Jove's unwrinkled forehead sprung,
But long-time dreamed, and out of trouble wrung,
Fore-seen, wise-plann'd, pure child of thought and pain,
Leapt our Minerva from a mortal brain.

And here, O finer Pallas, long remain, --
Sit on these Maryland hills, and fix thy reign,
And frame a fairer Athens than of yore
In these blest bounds of Baltimore, --
Here, where the climates meet
That each may make the other's lack complete, --
Where Florida's soft Favonian airs beguile
The nipping North, -- where nature's powers smile, --
Where Chesapeake holds frankly forth her hands
Spread wide with invitation to all lands, --
Where now the eager people yearn to find
The organizing hand that fast may bind
Loose straws of aimless aspiration fain
In sheaves of serviceable grain, --
Here, old and new in one,
Through nobler cycles round a richer sun
O'er-rule our modern ways,
O blest Minerva of these larger days!
Call here thy congress of the great, the wise,
The hearing ears, the seeing eyes, --
Enrich us out of every farthest clime, --
Yea, make all ages native to our time,
Till thou the freedom of the city grant
To each most antique habitant
Of Fame, --
Bring Shakespeare back, a man and not a name, --
Let every player that shall mimic us
In audience see old godlike Aeschylus, --
Bring Homer, Dante, Plato, Socrates, --
Bring Virgil from the visionary seas
Of old romance, -- bring Milton, no more blind, --
Bring large Lucretius, with unmaniac mind, --
Bring all gold hearts and high resolved wills
To be with us about these happy hills, --
Bring old Renown
To walk familiar citizen of the town, --
Bring Tolerance, that can kiss and disagree, --
Bring Virtue, Honor, Truth, and Loyalty, --
Bring Faith that sees with undissembling eyes, --
Bring all large Loves and heavenly Charities, --
Till man seem less a riddle unto man
And fair Utopia less Utopian,
And many peoples call from shore to shore,
`The world has bloomed again, at Baltimore!'

 It brings to mind Swift leaving a fortune to Dublin

‘For the founding of a lunatic asylum - no place needs it more’.

The breathing beauty of the moors and cheap accommodation

Drew me but the total barbarity of the town stopped me from

Writing a single line: from the hideous facade of its railway

Station - Betjeman must have been drunk or mad to praise it -

To that lump of stone on Castle Hill - her savage spirit broods.

I remember trying to teach there, at Bradley, where the head

Was some kind of ex-P.T. teacher, who thought poetry something

You did to children and his workaholic jackass deputy, obsessed

With practical science and lesson preparation and team teaching

And everything on, above and beneath the earth except ‘The Education

Of the Poetic Spirit’ and without that and as an example of what

Pound meant about how a country treats its poets "is a measure

Of its civilisation". I once had a holiday job in a mill and the

Nightwatchman’s killer alsatian had more civilisation than

Huddersfield’s Deputy Direction of Education.

For a while I was granted temporary asylum at Royds Hall -

At least some of the staff there had socialism if not art -

But soon it was spoilt for everyone when Jenks came to head

English, sweating for his OU degree and making us all suffer,

The kids hating his sarcasm and the staff his vaulting ambition

And I was the only one not afraid of him. His Achilles’ heel was

Culture - he was a yob through and through - and the Head said to me

"I’ve had enough of him throwing his weight around, if it comes

To a showdown I’ll back you against him any day" but he got

The degree and the job and the dollars - my old T.C. took him

But that was typical, after Roy Rich went came a fat appointee

Who had written nothing and knew nothing but knew everyone on

The appointing committee.

Everyday I was in Huddersfield I thought I was in hell and

Sartre was right and so was Jonson - "Hell’s a grammar school

To this" - too (Peter Porter I salute you!) and always I dreamed

Of Leeds and my beautiful gifted ten-year olds and Sheila, my

Genius-child-poet and a head who left me alone to teach poetry

And painting day in, day out and Dave Clark and Diane and I,

In the staffroom discussing phenomenology and daseinanalysis

Applied to Dewey’s theory of education and the essence of the

Forms in Plato and Plotinus and plaiting a rose in Sheila’s

Hair and Johns, the civilised HMI, asking for a copy of my poems

And Horovitz putting me in ‘Children of Albion’ and ‘The

Statesman’ giving me good reviews.



Decades later, in Byram Arcade, I am staring at the facade of

‘The Poetry Business’ and its proprietors sitting on the steps

Outside, trying to look civilised and their letter, "Your poetry

Is good but its not our kind" and I wondered what their kind was

And besides they’re not my kind of editor and I’m back in Leeds

With a letter from Seamus Heaney - thank you, Nobel Laureate, for

Liking ‘My Perfect Rose’ and yes, you’re right about my wanting

To get those New Generation Poets into my classroom at Wyther

Park and show them a thing or two and a phone call from

Horovitz who is my kind of editor still, after thirty years,

His mellifluous voice with its blend of an Oxford accent and

American High Camp, so warm and full of knowledge and above all

PASSIONATE ABOUT POETRY and I remember someone saying,

"If Oxford is the soul of England, Huddersfield is its arsehole".

 WILLIAM Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!

"Gone," I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and
heads;
Yet at mothy curfew-tide,
And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and
leads,

They've a way of whispering to me--fellow-wight who yet abide--
In the muted, measured note
Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave's stillicide:

"We have triumphed: this achievement turns the bane to antidote,
Unsuccesses to success,
Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of thought.

"No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial stress;
Chill detraction stirs no sigh;
Fear of death has even bygone us: death gave all that we possess."

W. D.--"Ye mid burn the wold bass-viol that I set such vallie by."
Squire.--"You may hold the manse in fee,
You may wed my spouse, my children's memory of me may decry."

Lady.--"You may have my rich brocades, my laces; take each household
key;
Ransack coffer, desk, bureau;
Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, con the letters kept by me."

Far.--"Ye mid zell my favorite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow,
Foul the grinterns, give up thrift."
Wife.--"If ye break my best blue china, children, I sha'n't care or
ho."

All--"We've no wish to hear the tidings, how the people's fortunes
shift;
What your daily doings are;
Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift.

"Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or mar,
If you quire to our old tune,
If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar afar."

Thus, with very gods' composure, freed those crosses late and soon
Which, in life, the Trine allow
(Why, none witteth), and ignoring all that haps beneath the moon,

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now.