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Best Famous Puzzled Poems

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Written by Gwendolyn Brooks | Create an image from this poem

The Lovers of the Poor

 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fair.
Whose mothers taught: You'd better not be cruel!
You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!
Herein they kiss and coddle and assault
Anew and dearly in the innocence
With which they baffle nature. Who are full,
Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all
Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,
Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt
Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.
To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.
To be a random hitching post or plush.
To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.
Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor--passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is--something less than derelict or dull.
Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!
God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!
The noxious needy ones whose battle's bald
Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down.
But it's all so bad! and entirely too much for them.
The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans,
Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains,
The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they're told,
Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn
Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs.
The soil that looks the soil of centuries.
And for that matter the general oldness. Old
Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old.
Note homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe.
Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic,
There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, no
Unkillable infirmity of such
A tasteful turn as lately they have left,
Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their cars
Must presently restore them. When they're done
With dullards and distortions of this fistic
Patience of the poor and put-upon.
They've never seen such a make-do-ness as
Newspaper rugs before! In this, this "flat,"
Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the rich
Rugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered . . . ),
Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon.
Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look,
In horror, behind a substantial citizeness
Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart.
Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door.
All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor
And tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft-
Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt.
Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost.
But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put
Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers
Tipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems . . . 
They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra,
Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks,
Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin "hangings,"
Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They Winter
In Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend,
When suitable, the nice Art Institute;
Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunter
On Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind.
Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fibre
With fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringings
Of loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungers
So old old, what shall flatter the desolate?
Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling
And swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage
Of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames
And, again, the porridges of the underslung
And children children children. Heavens! That
Was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long
And long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies'
Betterment League agree it will be better
To achieve the outer air that rights and steadies,
To hie to a house that does not holler, to ring
Bells elsetime, better presently to cater
To no more Possibilities, to get
Away. Perhaps the money can be posted.
Perhaps they two may choose another Slum!
Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!--
Where loathe-lover likelier may be invested.
Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what they manage of a canter,
And, resuming all the clues of what they were,
Try to avoid inhaling the laden air.


Written by Alexander Pushkin | Create an image from this poem

The Water-Nymph

 In lakeside leafy groves, a friar
Escaped all worries; there he passed
His summer days in constant prayer,
Deep studies and eternal fast.
Already with a humble shovel
The elder dug himself a grave -
As, calling saints to bless his hovel,
Death - nothing other - did he crave.

So once, upon a falling night, he
Was bowing by his wilted shack
With meekest prayer to the Almighty.
The grove was turning slowly black;
Above the lake a mist was lifting;
Through milky clouds across the sky
The ruddy moon was softly drifting,
When water drew the friar's eye...

He's looking puzzled, full of trouble,
Of fear he cannot quite explain,
He sees the waves begin to bubble
And suddenly grow calm again.
Then -- white as first snow in the highlands,
Light-footed as nocturnal shade,
There comes ashore, and sits in silence
Upon the bank, a naked maid.

She eyes the monk and brushes gently
Her hair, and water off her arms.
He shakes with fear and looks intently
At her, and at her lovely charms.
With eager hand she waves and beckons,
Nods quickly, smiles as from afar
And shoots, within two flashing seconds,
Into still water like a star.

The glum old man slept not an instant;
All day, not even once he prayed:
Before his eyes still hung and glistened
The wondrous, the relentless shade...
The grove puts on its gown of nightfall;
The moon walks on the cloudy floor;
And there's the maiden - pale, delightful,
Reclining on the spellbound shore.

She looks at him, her hair she brushes,
Blows airy kisses, gestures wild,
Plays with the waves - caresses, splashes -
Now laughs, now whimpers like a child,
Moans tenderly, calls louder, louder...
"Come, monk, come, monk! To me, to me!.."
Then - disappears in limpid water,
And all is silent instantly...

On the third day the zealous hermit
Was sitting by the shore, in love,
Awaiting the delightful mermaid,
As shade was covering the grove...
Dark ceded to the sun's emergence;
Our monk had wholly disappeared -
Before a crowd of local urchins,
While fishing, found his hoary beard.

Translated by: Genia Gurarie, summer of 1995
Copyright retained by Genia Gurarie.
email: egurarie@princeton.edu
http://www.princeton.edu/~egurarie/
For permission to reproduce, write personally to the translator.
Written by Thomas Hardy | Create an image from this poem

A Christmas Ghost Story

 South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
Nightly to clear Canopus: "I would know
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law
Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?

And what of logic or of truth appears
In tacking 'Anno Domini' to the years?
Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,
But tarries yet the Cause for which He died."
Written by David Lehman | Create an image from this poem

Wittgensteins Ladder

 "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: 
 anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as 
 nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb 
 up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder 
 after he has climbed up it.)" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus 

1. 

The first time I met Wittgenstein, I was 
late. "The traffic was murder," I explained. 
He spent the next forty-five minutes 
analyzing this sentence. Then he was silent. 
I wondered why he had chosen a water tower
for our meeting. I also wondered how
I would leave, since the ladder I had used 
to climb up here had fallen to the ground. 

2. 

Wittgenstein served as a machine-gunner 
in the Austrian Army in World War I. 
Before the war he studied logic in Cambridge 
with Bertrand Russell. Having inherited 
his father's fortune (iron and steel), he 
gave away his money, not to the poor, whom 
it would corrupt, but to relations so rich 
it would not thus affect them. 

3. 

On leave in Vienna in August 1918 
he assembled his notebook entries 
into the Tractatus, Since it provided 
the definitive solution to all the problems 
of philosophy, he decided to broaden 
his interests. He became a schoolteacher, 
then a gardener's assistant at a monastery 
near Vienna. He dabbled in architecture. 

4. 

He returned to Cambridge in 1929, 
receiving his doctorate for the Tractatus, 
"a work of genius," in G. E. Moore's opinion. 
Starting in 1930 he gave a weekly lecture 
and led a weekly discussion group. He spoke 
without notes amid long periods of silence. 
Afterwards, exhausted, he went to the movies 
and sat in the front row. He liked Carmen Miranda. 

5. 

He would visit Russell's rooms at midnight 
and pace back and forth "like a caged tiger. 
On arrival, he would announce that when
he left he would commit suicide. So, in spite 
of getting sleepy, I did not like to turn him out." On 
such a night, after hours of dead silence, Russell said, 
"Wittgenstein, are you thinking about logic or about 
yours sins?" "Both," he said, and resumed his silence.

6. 

Philosophy was an activity, not a doctrine. 
"Solipsism, when its implications are followed out 
strictly, coincides with pure realism," he wrote. 
Dozens of dons wondered what he meant. Asked 
how he knew that "this color is red," he smiled
and said, "because I have learnt English." There 
were no other questions. Wittgenstein let the 
silence gather. Then he said, "this itself is the answer." 

7. 

Religion went beyond the boundaries of language, 
yet the impulse to run against "the walls of our cage," 
though "perfectly, absolutely useless," was not to be 
dismissed. A. J. Ayer, one of Oxford's ablest minds, 
was puzzled. If logic cannot prove a nonsensical 
conclusion, why didn't Wittgenstein abandon it, 
"along with the rest of metaphysics, as not worth 
serious attention, except perhaps for sociologists"? 

8. 

Because God does not reveal himself in this world, and 
"the value of this work," Wittgenstein wrote, "is that 
it shows how little is achieved when these problems 
are solved." When I quoted Gertrude Stein's line 
about Oakland, "there's no there there," he nodded. 
Was there a there, I persisted. His answer: Yes and No.
It was as impossible to feel another's person's pain 
as to suffer another person's toothache.

9. 

At Cambridge the dons quoted him reverently. 
I asked them what they thought was his biggest
contribution to philosophy. "Whereof one cannot 
speak, thereof one must be silent," one said.
Others spoke of his conception of important 
nonsense. But I liked best the answer John 
Wisdom gave: "His asking of the question 
`Can one play chess without the queen?'" 

10. 

Wittgenstein preferred American detective 
stories to British philosophy. He liked lunch 
and didn't care what it was, "so long as it was 
always the same," noted Professor Malcolm 
of Cornell, a former student, in whose house 
in Ithaca Wittgenstein spent hours doing 
handyman chores. He was happy then. 
There was no need to say a word.
Written by Edgar Bowers | Create an image from this poem

Mary

 The angel of self-discipline, her guardian
Since she first knew and had to go away
From home that spring to have her child with strangers,
Sustained her, till the vanished boy next door
And her ordeal seemed fiction, and the true
Her mother’s firm insistence she was the mother
And the neighbors’ acquiescence. So she taught school,
Walking a mile each way to ride the street car—
First books of the Aeneid known by heart,
French, and the French Club Wednesday afternoon;
Then summer replacement typist in an office,
Her sister’s family moving in with them,
Depression years and she the only earner.
Saturday, football game and opera broadcasts,
Sunday, staying at home to wash her hair,
The Business Women’s Circle Monday night,
And, for a treat, birthdays and holidays,
Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald.
The young blond sister long since gone to college,
Nephew and nieces gone, her mother dead,
Instead of Caesar, having to teach First Aid,
The students rowdy, she retired. The rent
For the empty rooms she gave to Thornwell Orphanage,
Unwed Mothers, Temperance, and Foster Parents
And never bought the car she meant to buy;
Too blind at last to do much more than sit
All day in the antique glider on the porch
Listening to cars pass up and down the street.
Each summer, on the grass behind the house—
Cape jasmine, with its scent of August nights
Humid and warm, the soft magnolia bloom
Marked lightly by a slow brown stain—she spread,
For airing, the same small intense collection,
Concert programs, worn trophies, years of yearbooks,
Letters from schoolgirl chums, bracelets of hair
And the same picture: black hair in a bun,
Puzzled eyes in an oval face as young
Or old as innocence, skirt to the ground,
And, seated on the high school steps, the class,
The ones to whom she would have said, “Seigneur,
Donnez-nous la force de supporter
La peine,” as an example easy to remember,
Formal imperative, object first person plural.


Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

Aunt Imogen

 Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore 
The children—Jane, Sylvester, and Young George— 
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one 
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world, 
And she was in it only for four weeks
In fifty-two. But those great bites of time 
Made all September a Queen’s Festival; 
And they would strive, informally, to make 
The most of them.—The mother understood, 
And wisely stepped away. Aunt Imogen
Was there for only one month in the year, 
While she, the mother,—she was always there; 
And that was what made all the difference. 
She knew it must be so, for Jane had once 
Expounded it to her so learnedly
That she had looked away from the child’s eyes 
And thought; and she had thought of many things. 

There was a demonstration every time 
Aunt Imogen appeared, and there was more 
Than one this time. And she was at a loss
Just how to name the meaning of it all: 
It puzzled her to think that she could be 
So much to any crazy thing alive— 
Even to her sister’s little savages 
Who knew no better than to be themselves;
But in the midst of her glad wonderment 
She found herself besieged and overcome 
By two tight arms and one tumultuous head, 
And therewith half bewildered and half pained 
By the joy she felt and by the sudden love
That proved itself in childhood’s honest noise. 
Jane, by the wings of sex, had reached her first; 
And while she strangled her, approvingly, 
Sylvester thumped his drum and Young George howled. 
But finally, when all was rectified,
And she had stilled the clamor of Young George 
By giving him a long ride on her shoulders, 
They went together into the old room 
That looked across the fields; and Imogen 
Gazed out with a girl’s gladness in her eyes,
Happy to know that she was back once more 
Where there were those who knew her, and at last 
Had gloriously got away again 
From cabs and clattered asphalt for a while; 
And there she sat and talked and looked and laughed
And made the mother and the children laugh. 
Aunt Imogen made everybody laugh. 

There was the feminine paradox—that she 
Who had so little sunshine for herself 
Should have so much for others. How it was
That she could make, and feel for making it, 
So much of joy for them, and all along 
Be covering, like a scar, and while she smiled, 
That hungering incompleteness and regret— 
That passionate ache for something of her own,
For something of herself—she never knew. 
She knew that she could seem to make them all 
Believe there was no other part of her 
Than her persistent happiness; but the why 
And how she did not know. Still none of them
Could have a thought that she was living down— 
Almost as if regret were criminal, 
So proud it was and yet so profitless— 
The penance of a dream, and that was good. 
Her sister Jane—the mother of little Jane,
Sylvester, and Young George—might make herself 
Believe she knew, for she—well, she was Jane. 

Young George, however, did not yield himself 
To nourish the false hunger of a ghost 
That made no good return. He saw too much:
The accumulated wisdom of his years 
Had so conclusively made plain to him 
The permanent profusion of a world 
Where everybody might have everything 
To do, and almost everything to eat,
That he was jubilantly satisfied 
And all unthwarted by adversity. 
Young George knew things. The world, he had found out, 
Was a good place, and life was a good game— 
Particularly when Aunt Imogen
Was in it. And one day it came to pass— 
One rainy day when she was holding him 
And rocking him—that he, in his own right, 
Took it upon himself to tell her so; 
And something in his way of telling it—
The language, or the tone, or something else— 
Gripped like insidious fingers on her throat, 
And then went foraging as if to make 
A plaything of her heart. Such undeserved 
And unsophisticated confidence
Went mercilessly home; and had she sat 
Before a looking glass, the deeps of it 
Could not have shown more clearly to her then 
Than one thought-mirrored little glimpse had shown, 
The pang that wrenched her face and filled her eyes
With anguish and intolerable mist. 
The blow that she had vaguely thrust aside 
Like fright so many times had found her now: 
Clean-thrust and final it had come to her 
From a child’s lips at last, as it had come
Never before, and as it might be felt 
Never again. Some grief, like some delight, 
Stings hard but once: to custom after that 
The rapture or the pain submits itself, 
And we are wiser than we were before.
And Imogen was wiser; though at first 
Her dream-defeating wisdom was indeed 
A thankless heritage: there was no sweet, 
No bitter now; nor was there anything 
To make a daily meaning for her life—
Till truth, like Harlequin, leapt out somehow 
From ambush and threw sudden savor to it— 
But the blank taste of time. There were no dreams, 
No phantoms in her future any more: 
One clinching revelation of what was
One by-flash of irrevocable chance, 
Had acridly but honestly foretold 
The mystical fulfilment of a life 
That might have once … But that was all gone by: 
There was no need of reaching back for that:
The triumph was not hers: there was no love 
Save borrowed love: there was no might have been. 

But there was yet Young George—and he had gone 
Conveniently to sleep, like a good boy; 
And there was yet Sylvester with his drum,
And there was frowzle-headed little Jane; 
And there was Jane the sister, and the mother,— 
Her sister, and the mother of them all. 
They were not hers, not even one of them: 
She was not born to be so much as that,
For she was born to be Aunt Imogen. 
Now she could see the truth and look at it; 
Now she could make stars out where once had palled 
A future’s emptiness; now she could share 
With others—ah, the others!—to the end
The largess of a woman who could smile; 
Now it was hers to dance the folly down, 
And all the murmuring; now it was hers 
To be Aunt Imogen.—So, when Young George 
Woke up and blinked at her with his big eyes,
And smiled to see the way she blinked at him, 
’T was only in old concord with the stars 
That she took hold of him and held him close, 
Close to herself, and crushed him till he laughed.
Written by Kahlil Gibran | Create an image from this poem

The Criminal V

 A young man of strong body, weakened by hunger, sat on the walker's portion of the street stretching his hand toward all who passed, begging and repeating his hand toward all who passed, begging and repeating the sad song of his defeat in life, while suffering from hunger and from humiliation. 

When night came, his lips and tongue were parched, while his hand was still as empty as his stomach. 

He gathered himself and went out from the city, where he sat under a tree and wept bitterly. Then he lifted his puzzled eyes to heaven while hunger was eating his inside, and he said, "Oh Lord, I went to the rich man and asked for employment, but he turned me away because of my shabbiness; I knocked at the school door, but was forbidden solace because I was empty- handed; I sought any occupation that would give me bread, but all to no avail. In desperation I asked alms, but They worshippers saw me and said "He is strong and lazy, and he should not beg." 

"Oh Lord, it is Thy will that my mother gave birth unto me, and now the earth offers me back to You before the Ending." 

His expression then changed. He arose and his eyes now glittered in determination. He fashioned a thick and heavy stick from the branch of the tree, and pointed it toward the city, shouting, "I asked for bread with all the strength of my voice, and was refused. Not I shall obtain it by the strength of my muscles! I asked for bread in the name of mercy and love, but humanity did not heed. I shall take it now in the name of evil!" 

The passing years rendered the youth a robber, killer and destroyer of souls; he crushed all who opposed him; he amassed fabulous wealth with which he won himself over to those in power. He was admired by colleagues, envied by other thieves, and feared by the multitudes. 

His riches and false position prevailed upon the Emir to appoint him deputy in that city - the sad process pursued by unwise governors. Thefts were then legalized; oppression was supported by authority; crushing of the weak became commonplace; the throngs curried and praised. 

Thus does the first touch of humanity's selfishness make criminals of the humble, and make killers of the sons of peace; thus does the early greed of humanity grow and strike back at humanity a thousand fold!
Written by Henry Lawson | Create an image from this poem

The Iron Wedding Rings

 In these days of peace and money, free to all the Commonweal, 
There are ancient dames in Buckland wearing wedding rings of steel; 
Wedding rings of steel and iron, worn on wrinkled hands and old, 
And the wearers would not give them, not for youth nor wealth untold. 

In the days of black oppression, when the best abandoned hope, 
And all Buckland crouched in terror of the prison and the rope, 
Many fair young wives in Buckland prayed beside their lonely beds 
For the absent ones who knew not where to lay their outlawed heads. 

But a whisper went through Buckland, to the rebels only known, 
That the man across the border had a chance to hold his own. 
There were men that came in darkness, quiet, grim and travel-worn, 
And, by twos, and threes, the young men stole away to join Kinghorn. 

Slipping powder-horns and muskets from beneath the floors and thatch, 
There were boys who kissed their mothers ere they softly dropped the latch; 
There were hunters' wives in backwoods who sat strangely still and white 
Till the dawn, because their men-folk went a-hunting in the night. 

But the rebels needed money, and so, through the Buckland hills, 
Came again, by night, the gloomy men of monosyllables; 
And the ladies gave their jewels to be smuggled out and sold, 
And the homely wives of Buckland gave their wedding rings of gold. 

And a Buckland smith in secret, and in danger, in his shed 
Made them rings of baser metals (from the best he had, to lead), 
To be gilt and worn to market, or to meetings where they.prayed, 
Lest the spies should get an inkling, and the husbands be betrayed. 

Then a silence fell on Buckland; there was peace throughout the land, 
And a loyalty that puzzled all the captains in command; 
There was too much Law and Order for the men who weren't blind, 
And the greatest of the king's men wasn't easy in his mind. 

They were hunting rebels, certes, and the troops were understood 
To be searching for a stronghold like a needle in a wood; 
But whene'er the king was prayed for in the meeting-houses, then 
It was strange with how much unction ancient sinners cried "Ah-men!" 

Till at last, when all was quiet, through the gloomy Buckland hills 
Once again there came those furtive men of monosyllables; 
And their message was – "Take warning what the morrow may reveal, 
Death and Freedom may be married with a wedding ring of steel." 

In the morning, from the marshes, rose the night-mist, cold and damp, 
From the shipping in the harbour and the sleeping royal camp; 
From the lanes and from the by-streets and the high streets of the town, 
And above the hills of Buckland, where the rebel guns looked down. 

And the first one sent a message to the camp to fight or yield, 
And the wintry sun looked redly on a bloody battlefield; 
Till the man from 'cross the border marched through Buckland once again, 
With a charter for the people and ten thousand fighting men. 

There are ancient dames in Buckland with old secrets to reveal, 
Wearing wedding rings of iron, wearing wedding rings of steel; 
And their tears drop on the metal when their thoughts are far away 
In the past where their young husbands died on Buckland field that day.
Written by Thomas Hardy | Create an image from this poem

Gods Funeral

 I 
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

II 
And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III 
The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,
At first seemed man-like, and anon to change
To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,
At times endowed with wings of glorious range.

IV 
And this phantasmal variousness
Ever possessed it as they drew along:
Yet throughout all it symboled none the less
Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.

V 
Almost before I knew I bent
Towards the moving columns without a word;
They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,
Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard: --

VI 
'O man-projected Figure, of late
Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?
Whence came it we were tempted to create
One whom we can no longer keep alive?

VII 
'Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,
We gave him justice as the ages rolled,
Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,
And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.

VIII 
'And, tricked by our own early dream
And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,
Our making soon our maker did we deem,
And what we had imagined we believed,

IX 
'Till, in Time's stayless stealthy swing,
Uncompromising rude reality
Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,
Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.

X 
'So, toward our myth's oblivion,
Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope
Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,
Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.

XI 
'How sweet it was in years far hied
To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,
To lie down liegely at the eventide
And feel a blest assurance he was there!

XII 
'And who or what shall fill his place?
Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes
For some fixed star to stimulate their pace
Towards the goal of their enterprise?'...

XIII 
Some in the background then I saw,
Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,
Who chimed as one: 'This is figure is of straw,
This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!'

XIV 
I could not prop their faith: and yet
Many I had known: with all I sympathized;
And though struck speechless, I did not forget
That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.

XV 
Still, how to bear such loss I deemed
The insistent question for each animate mind,
And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed
A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,

XVI 
Whereof, to lift the general night,
A certain few who stood aloof had said,
'See you upon the horizon that small light --
Swelling somewhat?' Each mourner shook his head.

XVII 
And they composed a crowd of whom
Some were right good, and many nigh the best....
Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and gloom
Mechanically I followed with the rest.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

Politeness

 The English and the French were met
Upon the field of future battle;
The foes were formidably set
And waiting for the guns to rattle;
When from the serried ranks of France
The English saw with woeful presage
Under a flaming flag advance
A trumpeter who bore a message.

'Twas from their Marshal, quite polite,
Yet made the English leader shiver.
"We're perched," said he, "upon the height,
While you're exposed beside the river.
We have the vantage, you'll agree,
And your look-out is melancholy;
But being famed for courtesy
We'll let you fire the starting volley."

The English General was moved,
In fact his eyes were almost tearful;
Then he too his politeness proved
By writing back: "We are not fearful.
Our England is too proud to take
The privilege you thrust upon her;
So let your guns in thunder break:
To you, M'sieu, shall be the houour."

Again a note the Marshall sent
By envoy for his battle station:
"Your spirit wins my compliment,
Your courage my appreciation.
Yet you are weak and we are strong,
And though your faith is most inspiring,
Don't let us linger all day long -
Mon General, begin the firing."

"How chivalrous the soul of France."
The English General reflected.
"I hate to take this happy chance,
But I suppose it's what's expected.
Politeness is a platitude
In this fair land of gallant foemen."
So with a heart of gratitude
He primed his guns and cried: "Let's go men!"

The General was puzzled when
No answer came, said he: "What is it?
Why don't they give us hell?" And then
The herald paid another visit.
The Marshall wrote: "to your salute
Please pardon us for not replying;
To shatter you we cannot shoot . . .
My men are dead and I am dying."

Book: Reflection on the Important Things