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Best Famous Settle Poems

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Written by Edgar Allan Poe | Create an image from this poem

The City In the Sea

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West 
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around by lifting winds forgot Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy heaven come down On the long night-time of that town; But light from out the lurid sea Streams up the turrets silently- Gleams up the pinnacles far and free- Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls- Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls- Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers- Up many and many a marvellous shrine Whose wreathed friezes intertwine The viol the violet and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves Yawn level with the luminous waves; But not the riches there that lie In each idol's diamond eye- Not the gaily-jewelled dead Tempt the waters from their bed; For no ripples curl alas! Along that wilderness of glass- No swellings tell that winds may be Upon some far-off happier sea- No heavings hint that winds have been On seas less hideously serene.
But lo a stir is in the air! The wave- there is a movement there! As if the towers had thrust aside In slightly sinking the dull tide- As if their tops had feebly given A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow- The hours are breathing faint and low- And when amid no earthly moans Down down that town shall settle hence Hell rising from a thousand thrones Shall do it reverence.


Written by Marianne Moore | Create an image from this poem

Marriage

 This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation:
I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
this firegilt steel
alive with goldenness;
how bright it shows --
"of circular traditions and impostures,
committing many spoils,"
requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
to avoid!
Psychology which explains everything
explains nothing
and we are still in doubt.
Eve: beautiful woman -- I have seen her when she was so handsome she gave me a start, able to write simultaneously in three languages -- English, German and French and talk in the meantime; equally positive in demanding a commotion and in stipulating quiet: "I should like to be alone;" to which the visitor replies, "I should like to be alone; why not be alone together?" Below the incandescent stars below the incandescent fruit, the strange experience of beauty; its existence is too much; it tears one to pieces and each fresh wave of consciousness is poison.
"See her, see her in this common world," the central flaw in that first crystal-fine experiment, this amalgamation which can never be more than an interesting possibility, describing it as "that strange paradise unlike flesh, gold, or stately buildings, the choicest piece of my life: the heart rising in its estate of peace as a boat rises with the rising of the water;" constrained in speaking of the serpent -- that shed snakeskin in the history of politeness not to be returned to again -- that invaluable accident exonerating Adam.
And he has beauty also; it's distressing -- the O thou to whom, from whom, without whom nothing -- Adam; "something feline, something colubrine" -- how true! a crouching mythological monster in that Persian miniature of emerald mines, raw silk -- ivory white, snow white, oyster white and six others -- that paddock full of leopards and giraffes -- long lemonyellow bodies sown with trapezoids of blue.
Alive with words, vibrating like a cymbal touched before it has been struck, he has prophesied correctly -- the industrious waterfall, "the speedy stream which violently bears all before it, at one time silent as the air and now as powerful as the wind.
" "Treading chasms on the uncertain footing of a spear," forgetting that there is in woman a quality of mind which is an instinctive manifestation is unsafe, he goes on speaking in a formal, customary strain of "past states," the present state, seals, promises, the evil one suffered, the good one enjoys, hell, heaven, everything convenient to promote one's joy.
" There is in him a state of mind by force of which, perceiving what it was not intended that he should, "he experiences a solemn joy in seeing that he has become an idol.
" Plagued by the nightingale in the new leaves, with its silence -- not its silence but its silences, he says of it: "It clothes me with a shirt of fire.
" "He dares not clap his hands to make it go on lest it should fly off; if he does nothing, it will sleep; if he cries out, it will not understand.
" Unnerved by the nightingale and dazzled by the apple, impelled by "the illusion of a fire effectual to extinguish fire," compared with which the shining of the earth is but deformity -- a fire "as high as deep as bright as broad as long as life itself," he stumbles over marriage, "a very trivial object indeed" to have destroyed the attitude in which he stood -- the ease of the philosopher unfathered by a woman.
Unhelpful Hymen! "a kind of overgrown cupid" reduced to insignificance by the mechanical advertising parading as involuntary comment, by that experiment of Adam's with ways out but no way in -- the ritual of marriage, augmenting all its lavishness; its fiddle-head ferns, lotus flowers, opuntias, white dromedaries, its hippopotamus -- nose and mouth combined in one magnificent hopper, "the crested screamer -- that huge bird almost a lizard," its snake and the potent apple.
He tells us that "for love that will gaze an eagle blind, that is like a Hercules climbing the trees in the garden of the Hesperides, from forty-five to seventy is the best age," commending it as a fine art, as an experiment, a duty or as merely recreation.
One must not call him ruffian nor friction a calamity -- the fight to be affectionate: "no truth can be fully known until it has been tried by the tooth of disputation.
" The blue panther with black eyes, the basalt panther with blue eyes, entirely graceful -- one must give them the path -- the black obsidian Diana who "darkeneth her countenance as a bear doth, causing her husband to sigh," the spiked hand that has an affection for one and proves it to the bone, impatient to assure you that impatience is the mark of independence not of bondage.
"Married people often look that way" -- "seldom and cold, up and down, mixed and malarial with a good day and bad.
" "When do we feed?" We occidentals are so unemotional, we quarrel as we feed; one's self is quite lost, the irony preserved in "the Ahasuerus t?te ? t?te banquet" with its "good monster, lead the way," with little laughter and munificence of humor in that quixotic atmosphere of frankness in which "Four o'clock does not exist but at five o'clock the ladies in their imperious humility are ready to receive you"; in which experience attests that men have power and sometimes one is made to feel it.
He says, "what monarch would not blush to have a wife with hair like a shaving-brush? The fact of woman is not `the sound of the flute but every poison.
'" She says, "`Men are monopolists of stars, garters, buttons and other shining baubles' -- unfit to be the guardians of another person's happiness.
" He says, "These mummies must be handled carefully -- `the crumbs from a lion's meal, a couple of shins and the bit of an ear'; turn to the letter M and you will find that `a wife is a coffin,' that severe object with the pleasing geometry stipulating space and not people, refusing to be buried and uniquely disappointing, revengefully wrought in the attitude of an adoring child to a distinguished parent.
" She says, "This butterfly, this waterfly, this nomad that has `proposed to settle on my hand for life.
' -- What can one do with it? There must have been more time in Shakespeare's day to sit and watch a play.
You know so many artists are fools.
" He says, "You know so many fools who are not artists.
" The fact forgot that "some have merely rights while some have obligations," he loves himself so much, he can permit himself no rival in that love.
She loves herself so much, she cannot see herself enough -- a statuette of ivory on ivory, the logical last touch to an expansive splendor earned as wages for work done: one is not rich but poor when one can always seem so right.
What can one do for them -- these savages condemned to disaffect all those who are not visionaries alert to undertake the silly task of making people noble? This model of petrine fidelity who "leaves her peaceful husband only because she has seen enough of him" -- that orator reminding you, "I am yours to command.
" "Everything to do with love is mystery; it is more than a day's work to investigate this science.
" One sees that it is rare -- that striking grasp of opposites opposed each to the other, not to unity, which in cycloid inclusiveness has dwarfed the demonstration of Columbus with the egg -- a triumph of simplicity -- that charitive Euroclydon of frightening disinterestedness which the world hates, admitting: "I am such a cow, if I had a sorrow, I should feel it a long time; I am not one of those who have a great sorrow in the morning and a great joy at noon;" which says: "I have encountered it among those unpretentious proteg?s of wisdom, where seeming to parade as the debater and the Roman, the statesmanship of an archaic Daniel Webster persists to their simplicity of temper as the essence of the matter: `Liberty and union now and forever;' the book on the writing-table; the hand in the breast-pocket.
"
Written by Allen Ginsberg | Create an image from this poem

America

 America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war? Go **** yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? America why are your libraries full of tears? America when will you send your eggs to India? I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility.
Business- men are serious.
Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they're all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com- munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sin- cere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain.
Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive.
The Russia's power mad.
She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago.
Her needs a Red Readers' Digest.
Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta- tions.
That no good.
Ugh.
Him make Indians learn read.
Him need big black niggers.
Hah.
Her make us all work sixteen hours a day.
Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct? I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my ***** shoulder to the wheel.
Berkeley, January 17, 1956
Written by Tupac Shakur | Create an image from this poem

Untitled 2

With all this extra stressing the question I wonder is after death
After my last breath
When will I finally get to rest from this oppression?
They punish the people that's asking questions
And those that possess steal from the ones without possessions
The message I stress
To make you stop study your lessons
Don't settle for less
Even the genius asks his questions
Be grateful for blessings
Don't ever change, keep your essense
The power is in the people and politics we address
Always do your best
Don't let the pressure make you panic
And when you get stranded and things don't go the way you planned it
Dreaming of riches in the position of making a difference
Politicians is hypocrites
They don't want to listen
If I'm insane it's the fame
I ain't about to change
It ain't nothing like the game
It's just me against the world 
Written by Elizabeth Bishop | Create an image from this poem

The Moose

 From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

where if the river
enters or retreats 
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats'
lavender, rich mud
in burning rivulets;

on red, gravelly roads,
down rows of sugar maples,
past clapboard farmhouses
and neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,

through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;

down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.
Goodbye to the elms, to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts.
The light grows richer; the fog, shifting, salty, thin, comes closing in.
Its cold, round crystals form and slide and settle in the white hens' feathers, in gray glazed cabbages, on the cabbage roses and lupins like apostles; the sweet peas cling to their wet white string on the whitewashed fences; bumblebees creep inside the foxgloves, and evening commences.
One stop at Bass River.
Then the Economies Lower, Middle, Upper; Five Islands, Five Houses, where a woman shakes a tablecloth out after supper.
A pale flickering.
Gone.
The Tantramar marshes and the smell of salt hay.
An iron bridge trembles and a loose plank rattles but doesn't give way.
On the left, a red light swims through the dark: a ship's port lantern.
Two rubber boots show, illuminated, solemn.
A dog gives one bark.
A woman climbs in with two market bags, brisk, freckled, elderly.
"A grand night.
Yes, sir, all the way to Boston.
" She regards us amicably.
Moonlight as we enter the New Brunswick woods, hairy, scratchy, splintery; moonlight and mist caught in them like lamb's wool on bushes in a pasture.
The passengers lie back.
Snores.
Some long sighs.
A dreamy divagation begins in the night, a gentle, auditory, slow hallucination.
.
.
.
In the creakings and noises, an old conversation --not concerning us, but recognizable, somewhere, back in the bus: Grandparents' voices uninterruptedly talking, in Eternity: names being mentioned, things cleared up finally; what he said, what she said, who got pensioned; deaths, deaths and sicknesses; the year he remarried; the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost when the schooner foundered.
He took to drink.
Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray even in the store and finally the family had to put him away.
"Yes .
.
.
" that peculiar affirmative.
"Yes .
.
.
" A sharp, indrawn breath, half groan, half acceptance, that means "Life's like that.
We know it (also death).
" Talking the way they talked in the old featherbed, peacefully, on and on, dim lamplight in the hall, down in the kitchen, the dog tucked in her shawl.
Now, it's all right now even to fall asleep just as on all those nights.
--Suddenly the bus driver stops with a jolt, turns off his lights.
A moose has come out of the impenetrable wood and stands there, looms, rather, in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at the bus's hot hood.
Towering, antlerless, high as a church, homely as a house (or, safe as houses).
A man's voice assures us "Perfectly harmless.
.
.
.
" Some of the passengers exclaim in whispers, childishly, softly, "Sure are big creatures.
" "It's awful plain.
" "Look! It's a she!" Taking her time, she looks the bus over, grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel (we all feel) this sweet sensation of joy? "Curious creatures," says our quiet driver, rolling his r's.
"Look at that, would you.
" Then he shifts gears.
For a moment longer, by craning backward, the moose can be seen on the moonlit macadam; then there's a dim smell of moose, an acrid smell of gasoline.


Written by John Dryden | Create an image from this poem

Mac Flecknoe

 All human things are subject to decay,
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:
In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute
Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute.
This aged prince now flourishing in peace, And blest with issue of a large increase, Worn out with business, did at length debate To settle the succession of the State: And pond'ring which of all his sons was fit To reign, and wage immortal war with wit; Cry'd, 'tis resolv'd; for nature pleads that he Should only rule, who most resembles me: Shadwell alone my perfect image bears, Mature in dullness from his tender years.
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day: Besides his goodly fabric fills the eye, And seems design'd for thoughtless majesty: Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain, And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.
Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee, Thou last great prophet of tautology: Even I, a dunce of more renown than they, Was sent before but to prepare thy way; And coarsely clad in Norwich drugget came To teach the nations in thy greater name.
My warbling lute, the lute I whilom strung When to King John of Portugal I sung, Was but the prelude to that glorious day, When thou on silver Thames did'st cut thy way, With well tim'd oars before the royal barge, Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge; And big with hymn, commander of an host, The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets toss'd.
Methinks I see the new Arion sail, The lute still trembling underneath thy nail.
At thy well sharpen'd thumb from shore to shore The treble squeaks for fear, the basses roar: Echoes from Pissing-Alley, Shadwell call, And Shadwell they resound from Aston Hall.
About thy boat the little fishes throng, As at the morning toast, that floats along.
Sometimes as prince of thy harmonious band Thou wield'st thy papers in thy threshing hand.
St.
Andre's feet ne'er kept more equal time, Not ev'n the feet of thy own Psyche's rhyme: Though they in number as in sense excel; So just, so like tautology they fell, That, pale with envy, Singleton forswore The lute and sword which he in triumph bore And vow'd he ne'er would act Villerius more.
Here stopt the good old sire; and wept for joy In silent raptures of the hopeful boy.
All arguments, but most his plays, persuade, That for anointed dullness he was made.
Close to the walls which fair Augusta bind, (The fair Augusta much to fears inclin'd) An ancient fabric, rais'd t'inform the sight, There stood of yore, and Barbican it hight: A watch tower once; but now, so fate ordains, Of all the pile an empty name remains.
From its old ruins brothel-houses rise, Scenes of lewd loves, and of polluted joys.
Where their vast courts, the mother-strumpets keep, And, undisturb'd by watch, in silence sleep.
Near these a nursery erects its head, Where queens are form'd, and future heroes bred; Where unfledg'd actors learn to laugh and cry, Where infant punks their tender voices try, And little Maximins the gods defy.
Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here, Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear; But gentle Simkin just reception finds Amidst this monument of vanish'd minds: Pure clinches, the suburbian muse affords; And Panton waging harmless war with words.
Here Flecknoe, as a place to fame well known, Ambitiously design'd his Shadwell's throne.
For ancient Decker prophesi'd long since, That in this pile should reign a mighty prince, Born for a scourge of wit, and flail of sense: To whom true dullness should some Psyches owe, But worlds of Misers from his pen should flow; Humorists and hypocrites it should produce, Whole Raymond families, and tribes of Bruce.
Now Empress Fame had publisht the renown, Of Shadwell's coronation through the town.
Rous'd by report of fame, the nations meet, From near Bun-Hill, and distant Watling-street.
No Persian carpets spread th'imperial way, But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay: From dusty shops neglected authors come, Martyrs of pies, and reliques of the bum.
Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby there lay, But loads of Shadwell almost chok'd the way.
Bilk'd stationers for yeoman stood prepar'd, And Herringman was Captain of the Guard.
The hoary prince in majesty appear'd, High on a throne of his own labours rear'd.
At his right hand our young Ascanius sat Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state.
His brows thick fogs, instead of glories, grace, And lambent dullness play'd around his face.
As Hannibal did to the altars come, Sworn by his sire a mortal foe to Rome; So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain, That he till death true dullness would maintain; And in his father's right, and realm's defence, Ne'er to have peace with wit, nor truce with sense.
The king himself the sacred unction made, As king by office, and as priest by trade: In his sinister hand, instead of ball, He plac'd a mighty mug of potent ale; Love's kingdom to his right he did convey, At once his sceptre and his rule of sway; Whose righteous lore the prince had practis'd young, And from whose loins recorded Psyche sprung, His temples last with poppies were o'er spread, That nodding seem'd to consecrate his head: Just at that point of time, if fame not lie, On his left hand twelve reverend owls did fly.
So Romulus, 'tis sung, by Tiber's brook, Presage of sway from twice six vultures took.
Th'admiring throng loud acclamations make, And omens of his future empire take.
The sire then shook the honours of his head, And from his brows damps of oblivion shed Full on the filial dullness: long he stood, Repelling from his breast the raging god; At length burst out in this prophetic mood: Heavens bless my son, from Ireland let him reign To far Barbadoes on the Western main; Of his dominion may no end be known, And greater than his father's be his throne.
Beyond love's kingdom let him stretch his pen; He paus'd, and all the people cry'd Amen.
Then thus, continu'd he, my son advance Still in new impudence, new ignorance.
Success let other teach, learn thou from me Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry.
Let Virtuosos in five years be writ; Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit.
Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage, Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage; Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit, And in their folly show the writer's wit.
Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence, And justify their author's want of sense.
Let 'em be all by thy own model made Of dullness, and desire no foreign aid: That they to future ages may be known, Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own.
Nay let thy men of wit too be the same, All full of thee, and differing but in name; But let no alien Sedley interpose To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose.
And when false flowers of rhetoric thou would'st cull, Trust Nature, do not labour to be dull; But write thy best, and top; and in each line, Sir Formal's oratory will be thine.
Sir Formal, though unsought, attends thy quill, And does thy Northern Dedications fill.
Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame, By arrogating Jonson's hostile name.
Let Father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise, And Uncle Ogleby thy envy raise.
Thou art my blood, where Jonson has no part; What share have we in Nature or in Art? Where did his wit on learning fix a brand, And rail at arts he did not understand? Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein, Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain? Where sold he bargains, whip-stitch, kiss my ****, Promis'd a play and dwindled to a farce? When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin, As thou whole Eth'ridge dost transfuse to thine? But so transfus'd as oil on waters flow, His always floats above, thine sinks below.
This is thy province, this thy wondrous way, New humours to invent for each new play: This is that boasted bias of thy mind, By which one way, to dullness, 'tis inclin'd, Which makes thy writings lean on one side still, And in all changes that way bends thy will.
Nor let thy mountain belly make pretence Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense.
A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ, But sure thou 'rt but a kilderkin of wit.
Like mine thy gentle numbers feebly creep, Thy Tragic Muse gives smiles, thy Comic sleep.
With whate'er gall thou sett'st thy self to write, Thy inoffensive satires never bite.
In thy felonious heart, though venom lies, It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies.
Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame In keen iambics, but mild anagram: Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command Some peaceful province in acrostic land.
There thou may'st wings display and altars raise, And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.
Or if thou would'st thy diff'rent talents suit, Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.
He said, but his last words were scarcely heard, For Bruce and Longvil had a trap prepar'd, And down they sent the yet declaiming bard.
Sinking he left his drugget robe behind, Born upwards by a subterranean wind.
The mantle fell to the young prophet's part, With double portion of his father's art.
Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Division Of Parts

 1.
Mother, my Mary Gray, once resident of Gloucester and Essex County, a photostat of your will arrived in the mail today.
This is the division of money.
I am one third of your daughters counting my bounty or I am a queen alone in the parlor still, eating the bread and honey.
It is Good Friday.
Black birds pick at my window sill.
Your coat in my closet, your bright stones on my hand, the gaudy fur animals I do not know how to use, settle on me like a debt.
A week ago, while the hard March gales beat on your house, we sorted your things: obstacles of letters, family silver, eyeglasses and shoes.
Like some unseasoned Christmas, its scales rigged and reset, I bundled out gifts I did not choose.
Now the houts of The Cross rewind.
In Boston, the devout work their cold knees toward that sweet martyrdom that Christ planned.
My timely loss is too customary to note; and yet I planned to suffer and I cannot.
It does not please my yankee bones to watch where the dying is done in its usly hours.
Black birds peck at my window glass and Easter will take its ragged son.
The clutter of worship that you taught me, Mary Gray, is old.
I imitate a memory of belief that I do not own.
I trip on your death and jesus, my stranger floats up over my Christian home, wearing his straight thorn tree.
I have cast my lot and am one third thief of you.
Time, that rearranger of estates, equips me with your garments, but not with grief.
2.
This winter when cancer began its ugliness I grieved with you each day for three months and found you in your private nook of the medicinal palace for New England Women and never once forgot how long it took.
I read to you from The New Yorker, ate suppers you wouldn't eat, fussed with your flowers, joked with your nurses, as if I were the balm among lepers, as if I could undo a life in hours if I never said goodbye.
But you turned old, all your fifty-eight years sliding like masks from your skull; and at the end I packed your nightgowns in suitcases, paid the nurses, came riding home as if I'd been told I could pretend people live in places.
3.
Since then I have pretended ease, loved with the trickeries of need, but not enough to shed my daughterhood or sweeten him as a man.
I drink the five o' clock martinis and poke at this dry page like a rough goat.
Fool! I fumble my lost childhood for a mother and lounge in sad stuff with love to catch and catch as catch can.
And Christ still waits.
I have tried to exorcise the memory of each event and remain still, a mixed child, heavy with cloths of you.
Sweet witch, you are my worried guide.
Such dangerous angels walk through Lent.
Their walls creak Anne! Convert! Convert! My desk moves.
Its cavr murmurs Boo and I am taken and beguiled.
Or wrong.
For all the way I've come I'll have to go again.
Instead, I must convert to love as reasonable as Latin, as sold as earthenware: an equilibrium I never knew.
And Lent will keep its hurt for someone else.
Christ knows enough staunch guys have hitched him in trouble.
thinking his sticks were badges to wear.
4.
Spring rusts on its skinny branch and last summer's lawn is soggy and brown.
Yesterday is just a number.
All of its winters avalanche out of sight.
What was, is gone.
Mother, last night I slept in your Bonwit Teller nightgown.
Divided, you climbed into my head.
There in my jabbering dream I heard my own angry cries and I cursed you, Dame keep out of my slumber.
My good Dame, you are dead.
And Mother, three stones slipped from your glittering eyes.
Now it's Friday's noon and I would still curse you with my rhyming words and bring you flapping back, old love, old circus knitting, god-in-her-moon, all fairest in my lang syne verse, the gauzy bride among the children, the fancy amid the absurd and awkward, that horn for hounds that skipper homeward, that museum keeper of stiff starfish, that blaze within the pilgrim woman, a clown mender, a dove's cheek among the stones, my Lady of first words, this is the division of ways.
And now, while Christ stays fastened to his Crucifix so that love may praise his sacrifice and not the grotesque metaphor, you come, a brave ghost, to fix in my mind without praise or paradise to make me your inheritor.
Written by Alice Walker | Create an image from this poem

When Golda Meir was in Africa

When Golda Meir
Was in Africa
She shook out her hair
And combed it
Everywhere she went.
According to her autobiography Africans loved this.
In Russia, Minneapolis, London, Washington, D.
C.
, Germany, Palestine, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem She never combed at all.
There was no point.
In those Places people said, "She looks like Any other aging grandmother.
She looks Like a troll.
Let's sell her cookery And guns.
" "Kreplach your cookery," said Golda.
Only in Africa could she finally Settle down and comb her hair.
The children crept up and stroked it, And she felt beautiful.
Such wonderful people, Africans Childish, arrogant, self-indulgent, pompous, Cowardly and treacherous-a great disappointment To Israel, of course, and really rather Ridiculous in international affairs But, withal, opined Golda, a people of charm And good taste.
Written by Marriott Edgar | Create an image from this poem

Albert and the Lion

 There's a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That's noted for fresh air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son.
A grand little lad was young Albert, All dressed in his best; quite a swell With a stick with an 'orse's 'ead 'andle, The finest that Woolworth's could sell.
They didn't think much of the Ocean: The waves, they were fiddlin' and small, There was no wrecks and nobody drownded, Fact, nothing to laugh at at all.
So, seeking for further amusement, They paid and went into the Zoo, Where they'd Lions and Tigers and Camels, And old ale and sandwiches too.
There were one great big Lion called Wallace; His nose were all covered with scars - He lay in a somnolent posture, With the side of his face on the bars.
Now Albert had heard about Lions, How they was ferocious and wild - To see Wallace lying so peaceful, Well, it didn't seem right to the child.
So straightway the brave little feller, Not showing a morsel of fear, Took his stick with its 'orse's 'ead 'andle And pushed it in Wallace's ear.
You could see that the Lion didn't like it, For giving a kind of a roll, He pulled Albert inside the cage with 'im, And swallowed the little lad 'ole.
Then Pa, who had seen the occurrence, And didn't know what to do next, Said 'Mother! Yon Lion's 'et Albert', And Mother said 'Well, I am vexed!' Then Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom - Quite rightly, when all's said and done - Complained to the Animal Keeper, That the Lion had eaten their son.
The keeper was quite nice about it; He said 'What a nasty mishap.
Are you sure that it's your boy he's eaten?' Pa said "Am I sure? There's his cap!' The manager had to be sent for.
He came and he said 'What's to do?' Pa said 'Yon Lion's 'et Albert, 'And 'im in his Sunday clothes, too.
' Then Mother said, 'Right's right, young feller; I think it's a shame and a sin, For a lion to go and eat Albert, And after we've paid to come in.
' The manager wanted no trouble, He took out his purse right away, Saying 'How much to settle the matter?' And Pa said "What do you usually pay?' But Mother had turned a bit awkward When she thought where her Albert had gone.
She said 'No! someone's got to be summonsed' - So that was decided upon.
Then off they went to the P'lice Station, In front of the Magistrate chap; They told 'im what happened to Albert, And proved it by showing his cap.
The Magistrate gave his opinion That no one was really to blame And he said that he hoped the Ramsbottoms Would have further sons to their name.
At that Mother got proper blazing, 'And thank you, sir, kindly,' said she.
'What waste all our lives raising children To feed ruddy Lions? Not me!'
Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Face Lift

 You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask.
The nauseous vault Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.
They've changed all that.
Traveling Nude as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift, Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous, I roll to an anteroom where a kind man Fists my fingers for me.
He makes me feel something precious Is leaking from the finger-vents.
At the count of two, Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard.
.
.
I don't know a thing.
For five days I lie in secret, Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.
Even my best friend thinks I'm in the country.
Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.
When I grin, the stitches tauten.
I grow backward.
I'm twenty, Broody and in long skirts on my first husband's sofa, my fingers Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle; I hadn't a cat yet.
Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady I watched settle, line by line, in my mirror— Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.
They've trapped her in some laboratory jar.
Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years, Nodding and rocking and fingering her thin hair.
Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze, Pink and smooth as a baby.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things