10 Best Famous Lunatic Poems

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

• All Famous Lunatic Poems

 Epilogue to "A Vision'

MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

I need some mind that, if the cannon sound
From every quarter of the world, can stay
Wound in mind's pondering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;
Because I have a marvellous thing to say,
A certain marvellous thing
None but the living mock,
Though not for sober ear;
It may be all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

Horton's the first I call. He loved strange thought
And knew that sweet extremity of pride
That's called platonic love,
And that to such a pitch of passion wrought
Nothing could bring him, when his lady died,
Anodyne for his love.
Words were but wasted breath;
One dear hope had he:
The inclemency
Of that or the next winter would be death.

Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell
Whether of her or God he thought the most,
But think that his mind's eye,
When upward turned, on one sole image fell;
And that a slight companionable ghost,
Wild with divinity,
Had so lit up the whole
Immense miraculous house
The Bible promised us,
It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.

On Florence Emery I call the next,
Who finding the first wrinkles on a face
Admired and beautiful,
And knowing that the future would be vexed
With 'minished beauty, multiplied commonplace,
preferred to teach a school
Away from neighbour or friend,
Among dark skins, and there
permit foul years to wear
Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.

Before that end much had she ravelled out
From a discourse in figurative speech
By some learned Indian
On the soul's journey. How it is whirled about,
Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,
Until it plunge into the sun;
And there, free and yet fast,
Being both Chance and Choice,
Forget its broken toys
And sink into its own delight at last.

And I call up MacGregor from the grave,
For in my first hard springtime we were friends.
Although of late estranged.
I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,
And told him so, but friendship never ends;
And what if mind seem changed,
And it seem changed with the mind,
When thoughts rise up unbid
On generous things that he did
And I grow half contented to be blind!

He had much industry at setting out,
Much boisterous courage, before loneliness
Had driven him crazed;
For meditations upon unknown thought
Make human intercourse grow less and less;
They are neither paid nor praised.
but he d object to the host,
The glass because my glass;
A ghost-lover he was
And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.

But names are nothing. What matter who it be,
So that his elements have grown so fine
The fume of muscatel
Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy
No living man can drink from the whole wine.
I have mummy truths to tell
Whereat the living mock,
Though not for sober ear,
For maybe all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

Such thought -- such thought have I that hold it tight
Till meditation master all its parts,
Nothing can stay my glance
Until that glance run in the world's despite
To where the damned have howled away their hearts,
And where the blessed dance;
Such thought, that in it bound
I need no other thing,
Wound in mind's wandering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.

 Oxford, Autumn 1920

 We're foot--slog--slog--slog--sloggin' over Africa --
Foot--foot--foot--foot--sloggin' over Africa --
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again!)
  There's no discharge in the war!

Seven--six--eleven--five--nine-an'-twenty mile to-day --
Four--eleven--seventeen--thirty-two the day before --
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again!)
  There's no discharge in the war!

Don't--don't--don't--don't--look at what's in front of you.
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again);
Men--men--men--men--men go mad with watchin' em,
  An' there's no discharge in the war!

Try--try--try--try--to think o' something different --
Oh--my--God--keep--me from goin' lunatic!
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again!)
  There's no discharge in the war!

Count--count--count--count--the bullets in the bandoliers.
If--your--eyes--drop--they will get atop o' you!
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again) --
  There's no discharge in the war!

We--can--stick--out--'unger, thirst, an' weariness,
But--not--not--not--not the chronic sight of 'em --
Boot--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again,
  An' there's no discharge in the war!

'Taint--so--bad--by--day because o' company,
But night--brings--long--strings--o' forty thousand million
Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again.
  There's no discharge in the war!

I--'ave--marched--six--weeks in 'Ell an' certify
It--is--not--fire--devils, dark, or anything,
But boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again,
  An' there's no discharge in the war!

 The directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing,
more likely they were the random associations
and confused ramblings of a lunatic.
We arrived three hours late for lunch
and the lunatics were stacked up on their shelves,
quite neatly, I might add, giving credit where credit is due.
The orderlies were clearly very orderly, and they
should receive all the credit that is their due.
When I asked one of the doctors for a corkscrew
he produced one without a moment's hesitation.
And it was a corkscrew of the finest craftsmanship,
very shiny and bright not unlike the doctor himself.
"We'll be conducting our picnic under the great oak
beginning in just a few minutes, and if you'd care
to join us we'd be most honored. However, I understand
you have your obligations and responsibilities,
and if you would prefer to simply visit with us
from time to time, between patients, our invitation
is nothing if not flexible. And, we shan't be the least slighted
or offended in any way if, due to your heavy load,
we are altogether deprived of the pleasure
of exchanging a few anecdotes, regarding the mentally ill,
depraved, diseased, the purely knavish, you in your bughouse,
if you'll pardon my vernacular, O yes, and we in our crackbrain
daily rounds, there are so many gone potty everywhere we roam,
not to mention in one's own home, dead moonstruck.
Well, well, indeed we would have many notes to compare
if you could find the time to join us after your injections."
My invitation was spoken in the evenest tones,
but midway though it I began to suspect I was addressing
an imposter. I returned the corkscrew in a nonthreatening manner.
What, for instance, I asked myself, would a doctor, a doctor of the mind,
be doing with a cordscrew in his pocket?
This was a very sick man, one might even say dangerous.
I began moving away cautiously, never taking my eyes off of him.
His right eyelid was twitching guiltily, or at least anxiously,
and his smock flapping slightly in the wind.
Several members of our party were mingling with the nurses
down by the duck pond, and my grip on the situation
was loosening, the planks in my picnic platform were rotting.
I was thinking about the potato salad in an unstable environment.
A weeping spell was about to overtake me.
I was very close to howling and gnashing the gladiola.
I noticed the great calm of the clouds overhead.
And below, several nurses appeared to me in need of nursing.
The psychopaths were stirring from their naps,
I should say, their postprandial slumbers.
They were lumbering through the pines like inordinately sad moose.
Who could eat liverwurst at a time like this?
But, then again, what's a picnic without pathos?
Lacking a way home, I adjusted the flap in my head and duck-walked
down to the pond and into the pond and began gliding
around in circles, quacking, quacking like a scarf.
Inside the belly of that image I began
recycling like a sorry whim, sincerest regrets
are always best.

 Though nurtured like the sailing moon
In beauty's murderous brood,
She walked awhile and blushed awhile
And on my pathway stood
Until I thought her body bore
A heart of flesh and blood.

But since I laid a hand thereon
And found a heart of stone
I have attempted many things
And not a thing is done,
For every hand is lunatic
That travels on the moon.

She smiled and that transfigured me
And left me but a lout,
Maundering here, and maundering there,
Emptier of thought
Than the heavenly circuit of its stars
When the moon sails out.

 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".

 The directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing,
more likely they were the random associations
and confused ramblings of a lunatic.
We arrived three hours late for lunch
and the lunatics were stacked up on their shelves,
quite neatly, I might add, giving credit where credit is due.
The orderlies were clearly very orderly, and they
should receive all the credit that is their due.
When I asked one of the doctors for a corkscrew
he produced one without a moment's hesitation.
And it was a corkscrew of the finest craftsmanship,
very shiny and bright not unlike the doctor himself.
"We'll be conducting our picnic under the great oak
beginning in just a few minutes, and if you'd care
to join us we'd be most honored. However, I understand
you have your obligations and responsibilities,
and if you would prefer to simply visit with us
from time to time, between patients, our invitation
is nothing if not flexible. And, we shan't be the least slighted
or offended in any way if, due to your heavy load,
we are altogether deprived of the pleasure
of exchanging a few anecdotes, regarding the mentally ill,
depraved, diseased, the purely knavish, you in your bughouse,
if you'll pardon my vernacular, O yes, and we in our crackbrain
daily rounds, there are so many gone potty everywhere we roam,
not to mention in one's own home, dead moonstruck.
Well, well, indeed we would have many notes to compare
if you could find the time to join us after your injections."
My invitation was spoken in the evenest tones,
but midway though it I began to suspect I was addressing
an imposter. I returned the corkscrew in a nonthreatening manner.
What, for instance, I asked myself, would a doctor, a doctor of the mind,
be doing with a cordscrew in his pocket?
This was a very sick man, one might even say dangerous.
I began moving away cautiously, never taking my eyes off of him.
His right eyelid was twitching guiltily, or at least anxiously,
and his smock flapping slightly in the wind.
Several members of our party were mingling with the nurses
down by the duck pond, and my grip on the situation
was loosening, the planks in my picnic platform were rotting.
I was thinking about the potato salad in an unstable environment.
A weeping spell was about to overtake me.
I was very close to howling and gnashing the gladiola.
I noticed the great calm of the clouds overhead.
And below, several nurses appeared to me in need of nursing.
The psychopaths were stirring from their naps,
I should say, their postprandial slumbers.
They were lumbering through the pines like inordinately sad moose.
Who could eat liverwurst at a time like this?
But, then again, what's a picnic without pathos?
Lacking a way home, I adjusted the flap in my head and duck-walked
down to the pond and into the pond and began gliding
around in circles, quacking, quacking like a scarf.
Inside the belly of that image I began
recycling like a sorry whim, sincerest regrets
are always best.

 My age, my beast, is there anyone
Who can peer into your eyes
And with his own blood fuse
Two centuries' worth of vertebrae?
The creating blood gushes
From the throat of earthly things,
And the parasite just trembles
On the threshold of new days.

While the creature still has life,
The spine must be delivered,
While with the unseen backbone
A wave distracts itself.
Again they've brought the peak of life
Like a sacrificial lamb,
Like a child's supple cartilage—
The age of infant earth.

To free the age from its confinement,
To instigate a brand new world,
The discordant, tangled days
Must be linked, as with a flute.
It's the age that rocks the swells
With humanity's despair,
And in the undergrowth a serpent breathes
The golden measure of the age.

Still the shoots will swell
And the green buds sprout
But your spinal cord is crushed,
My fantastic, wretched age!
And in lunatic beatitude
You look back, cruel and weak,
Like a beast that once was agile,
At the tracks left by your feet.

The creating blood gushes
From the throat of earthly things,
The lukewarm cartilage of oceans
Splashes like a seething fish ashore.
And from the bird net spread on high
From the humid azure stones,
Streams a flood of helpless apathy
On your single, fatal wound.

 The fear was on the cattle, for the gale was on the sea,
An' the pens broke up on the lower deck an' let the creatures free --
An' the lights went out on the lower deck, an' no one near but me.

I had been singin' to them to keep 'em quiet there,
For the lower deck is the dangerousest, requirin' constant care,
An' give to me as the strongest man, though used to drink and swear.

I see my chance was certain of bein' horned or trod,
For the lower deck was packed with steers thicker'n peas in a pod,
An' more pens broke at every roll -- so I made a Contract with God.

An' by the terms of the Contract, as I have read the same,
If He got me to port alive I would exalt His Name,
An' praise His Holy Majesty till further orders came.

He saved me from the cattle an' He saved me from the sea,
For they found me 'tween two drownded ones where the roll had landed me --
An' a four-inch crack on top of my head, as crazy as could be.

But that were done by a stanchion, an' not by a bullock at all,
An' I lay still for seven weeks convalessing of the fall,
An' readin' the shiny Scripture texts in the Seaman's Hospital.

An' I spoke to God of our Contract, an' He says to my prayer:
"I never puts on My ministers no more than they can bear.
So back you go to the cattle-boats an' preach My Gospel there.

"For human life is chancy at any kind of trade,
But most of all, as well you know, when the steers are mad-afraid;
So you go back to the cattle-boats an' preach 'em as I've said.

"They must quit drinkin' an' swearin', they mustn't knife on a blow,
They must quit gamblin' their wages, and you must preach it so;
For now those boats are more like Hell than anything else I know."

I didn't want to do it, for I knew what I should get,
An' I wanted to preach Religion, handsome an' out of the wet,
But the Word of the Lord were lain on me, an' I done what I was set.

I have been smit an' bruis]ed, as warned would be the case,
An' turned my cheek to the smiter exactly as Scripture says;
But following that, I knocked him down an' led him up to Grace.

An' we have preaching on Sundays whenever the sea is calm,
An' I use no knife or pistol an' I never take no harm,
For the Lord abideth back of me to guide my fighting arm.

An' I sign for four-pound-ten a month and save the money clear,
An' I am in charge of the lower deck, an' I never lose a steer;
An' I believe in Almighty God an' preach His Gospel here.

The skippers say I'm crazy, but I can prove 'em wrong,
For I am in charge of the lower deck with all that doth belong --
Which they would not give to a lunatic, and the competition so strong!

 As other men, so I myself do muse 
Why in this sort I wrest invention so, 
And why these giddy metaphors I use, 
Leaving the path the greater part do go. 
I will resolve you: I am lunatic, 
And ever this in madmen you shall find, 
What they last thought of when the brain grew sick 
In most distraction they keep that in mind. 
Thus talking idly in this bedlam fit, 
Reason and I, you must conceive, are twain; 
"Tis nine years now since first I lost my wit; 
Bear with me then, though troubled be my brain. 
With diet and correction men distraught 
(Not too far past) may to their wits be brought.

 So you're writing for a paper? Well, it's nothing very new 
To be writing yards of drivel for a tidy little screw; 
You are young and educated, and a clever chap you are, 
But you'll never run a paper like the CAMBAROORA STAR. 
Though in point of education I am nothing but a dunce, 
I myself -- you mayn't believe it -- helped to run a paper once 
With a chap on Cambaroora, by the name of Charlie Brown, 
And I'll tell you all about it if you'll take the story down. 

On a golden day in summer, when the sunrays were aslant, 
Brown arrived in Cambaroora with a little printing plant 
And his worldly goods and chattels -- rather damaged on the way -- 
And a weary-looking woman who was following the dray. 
He had bought an empty humpy, and, instead of getting tight, 
Why, the diggers heard him working like a lunatic all night: 
And next day a sign of canvas, writ in characters of tar, 
Claimed the humpy as the office of the CAMBAROORA STAR. 

Well, I cannot read, that's honest, but I had a digger friend 
Who would read the paper to me from the title to the end; 
And the STAR contained a leader running thieves and spielers down, 
With a slap against claim-jumping, and a poem made by Brown. 
Once I showed it to a critic, and he said 'twas very fine, 
Though he wasn't long in finding glaring faults in every line; 
But it was a song of Freedom -- all the clever critic said 
Couldn't stop that song from ringing, ringing, ringing in my head. 

So I went where Brown was working in his little hut hard by: 
`My old mate has been a-reading of your writings, Brown,' said I -- 
`I have studied on your leader, I agree with what you say, 
You have struck the bed-rock certain, and there ain't no get-away; 
Your paper's just the thumper for a young and growing land, 
And your principles is honest, Brown; I want to shake your hand, 
And if there's any lumping in connection with the STAR, 
Well, I'll find the time to do it, and I'll help you -- there you are!' 

Brown was every inch a digger (bronzed and bearded in the South), 
But there seemed a kind of weakness round the corners of his mouth 
When he took the hand I gave him; and he gripped it like a vice, 
While he tried his best to thank me, and he stuttered once or twice. 
But there wasn't need for talking -- we'd the same old loves and hates, 
And we understood each other -- Charlie Brown and I were mates. 
So we worked a little `paddock' on a place they called the `Bar', 
And we sank a shaft together, and at night we worked the STAR. 

Charlie thought and did his writing when his work was done at night, 
And the missus used to `set' it near as quick as he could write. 
Well, I didn't shirk my promise, and I helped the thing, I guess, 
For at night I worked the lever of the crazy printing-press; 
Brown himself would do the feeding, and the missus used to `fly' -- 
She is flying with the angels, if there's justice up on high, 
For she died on Cambaroora when the STAR began to go, 
And was buried like the diggers buried diggers long ago. 

. . . . . 

Lord, that press! It was a jumper -- we could seldom get it right, 
And were lucky if we averaged a hundred in the night. 
Many nights we'd sit together in the windy hut and fold, 
And I helped the thing a little when I struck a patch of gold; 
And we battled for the diggers as the papers seldom do, 
Though when the diggers errored, why, we touched the diggers too. 
Yet the paper took the fancy of that roaring mining town, 
And the diggers sent a nugget with their sympathy to Brown. 

Oft I sat and smoked beside him in the listening hours of night, 
When the shadows from the corners seemed to gather round the light -- 
When his weary, aching fingers, closing stiffly round the pen, 
Wrote defiant truth in language that could touch the hearts of men -- 
Wrote until his eyelids shuddered -- wrote until the East was grey: 
Wrote the stern and awful lessons that were taught him in his day; 
And they knew that he was honest, and they read his smallest par, 
For I think the diggers' Bible was the CAMBAROORA STAR. 

Diggers then had little mercy for the loafer and the scamp -- 
If there wasn't law and order, there was justice in the camp; 
And the manly independence that is found where diggers are 
Had a sentinel to guard it in the CAMBAROORA STAR. 
There was strife about the Chinamen, who came in days of old 
Like a swarm of thieves and loafers when the diggers found the gold -- 
Like the sneaking fortune-hunters who are always found behind, 
And who only shepherd diggers till they track them to the `find'. 

Charlie wrote a slinging leader, calling on his digger mates, 
And he said: `We think that Chinkies are as bad as syndicates. 
What's the good of holding meetings where you only talk and swear? 
Get a move upon the Chinkies when you've got an hour to spare.' 
It was nine o'clock next morning when the Chows began to swarm, 
But they weren't so long in going, for the diggers' blood was warm. 
Then the diggers held a meeting, and they shouted: `Hip hoorar! 
Give three ringing cheers, my hearties, for the CAMBAROORA STAR.' 

But the Cambaroora petered, and the diggers' sun went down, 
And another sort of people came and settled in the town; 
The reefing was conducted by a syndicate or two, 
And they changed the name to `Queensville', for their blood was very blue. 
They wanted Brown to help them put the feathers in their nests, 
But his leaders went like thunder for their vested interests, 
And he fought for right and justice and he raved about the dawn 
Of the reign of Man and Reason till his ads. were all withdrawn. 

He was offered shares for nothing in the richest of the mines, 
And he could have made a fortune had he run on other lines; 
They abused him for his leaders, and they parodied his rhymes, 
And they told him that his paper was a mile behind the times. 
`Let the times alone,' said Charlie, `they're all right, you needn't fret; 
For I started long before them, and they haven't caught me yet. 
But,' says he to me, `they're coming, and they're not so very far -- 
Though I left the times behind me they are following the STAR. 

`Let them do their worst,' said Charlie, `but I'll never drop the reins 
While a single scrap of paper or an ounce of ink remains: 
I've another truth to tell them, though they tread me in the dirt, 
And I'll print another issue if I print it on my shirt.' 
So we fought the battle bravely, and we did our very best 
Just to make the final issue quite as lively as the rest. 
And the swells in Cambaroora talked of feathers and of tar 
When they read the final issue of the CAMBAROORA STAR. 

Gold is stronger than the tongue is -- gold is stronger than the pen: 
They'd have squirmed in Cambaroora had I found a nugget then; 
But in vain we scraped together every penny we could get, 
For they fixed us with their boycott, and the plant was seized for debt. 
'Twas a storekeeper who did it, and he sealed the paper's doom, 
Though we gave him ads. for nothing when the STAR began to boom: 
'Twas a paltry bill for tucker, and the crawling, sneaking clown 
Sold the debt for twice its value to the men who hated Brown. 

I was digging up the river, and I swam the flooded bend 
With a little cash and comfort for my literary friend. 
Brown was sitting sad and lonely with his head bowed in despair, 
While a single tallow candle threw a flicker on his hair, 
And the gusty wind that whistled through the crannies of the door 
Stirred the scattered files of paper that were lying on the floor. 
Charlie took my hand in silence -- and by-and-by he said: 
`Tom, old mate, we did our damnedest, but the brave old STAR is dead.' 

. . . . . 

Then he stood up on a sudden, with a face as pale as death, 
And he gripped my hand a moment, while he seemed to fight for breath: 
`Tom, old friend,' he said, `I'm going, and I'm ready to -- to start, 
For I know that there is something -- something crooked with my heart. 
Tom, my first child died. I loved her even better than the pen -- 
Tom -- and while the STAR was dying, why, I felt like I did THEN. 

. . . . . 

Listen! Like the distant thunder of the rollers on the bar -- 
Listen, Tom! I hear the -- diggers -- shouting: `Bully for the STAR!''