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Best Famous The English Poems

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Written by Ezra Pound | Create an image from this poem

The Seafarer

 (From the early Anglo-Saxon text) 

May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days
Hardship endured oft.
Bitter breast-cares have I abided, Known on my keel many a care's hold, And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head While she tossed close to cliffs.
Coldly afflicted, My feet were by frost benumbed.
Chill its chains are; chafing sighs Hew my heart round and hunger begot Mere-weary mood.
Lest man know not That he on dry land loveliest liveth, List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea, Weathered the winter, wretched outcast Deprived of my kinsmen; Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hail-scur flew, There I heard naught save the harsh sea And ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries, Did for my games the gannet's clamour, Sea-fowls, loudness was for me laughter, The mews' singing all my mead-drink.
Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern In icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamed With spray on his pinion.
Not any protector May make merry man faring needy.
This he little believes, who aye in winsome life Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business, Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary oft Must bide above brine.
Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north, Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth then Corn of the coldest.
Nathless there knocketh now The heart's thought that I on high streams The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone.
Moaneth alway my mind's lust That I fare forth, that I afar hence Seek out a foreign fastness.
For this there's no mood-lofty man over earth's midst, Not though he be given his good, but will have in his youth greed; Nor his deed to the daring, nor his king to the faithful But shall have his sorrow for sea-fare Whatever his lord will.
He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring-having Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's delight Nor any whit else save the wave's slash, Yet longing comes upon him to fare forth on the water.
Bosque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries, Fields to fairness, land fares brisker, All this admonisheth man eager of mood, The heart turns to travel so that he then thinks On flood-ways to be far departing.
Cuckoo calleth with gloomy crying, He singeth summerward, bodeth sorrow, The bitter heart's blood.
Burgher knows not -- He the prosperous man -- what some perform Where wandering them widest draweth.
So that but now my heart burst from my breast-lock, My mood 'mid the mere-flood, Over the whale's acre, would wander wide.
On earth's shelter cometh oft to me, Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer, Whets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly, O'er tracks of ocean; seeing that anyhow My lord deems to me this dead life On loan and on land, I believe not That any earth-weal eternal standeth Save there be somewhat calamitous That, ere a man's tide go, turn it to twain.
Disease or oldness or sword-hate Beats out the breath from doom-gripped body.
And for this, every earl whatever, for those speaking after -- Laud of the living, boasteth some last word, That he will work ere he pass onward, Frame on the fair earth 'gainst foes his malice, Daring ado, .
.
.
So that all men shall honour him after And his laud beyond them remain 'mid the English, Aye, for ever, a lasting life's-blast, Delight mid the doughty.
Days little durable, And all arrogance of earthen riches, There come now no kings nor Cæsars Nor gold-giving lords like those gone.
Howe'er in mirth most magnified, Whoe'er lived in life most lordliest, Drear all this excellence, delights undurable! Waneth the watch, but the world holdeth.
Tomb hideth trouble.
The blade is layed low.
Earthly glory ageth and seareth.
No man at all going the earth's gait, But age fares against him, his face paleth, Grey-haired he groaneth, knows gone companions, Lordly men are to earth o'ergiven, Nor may he then the flesh-cover, whose life ceaseth, Nor eat the sweet nor feel the sorry, Nor stir hand nor think in mid heart, And though he strew the grave with gold, His born brothers, their buried bodies Be an unlikely treasure hoard.


Written by Derek Walcott | Create an image from this poem

A Far Cry From Africa

 A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries: "Waste no compassion on these separate dead!" Statistics justify and scholars seize The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed? To savages, expendable as Jews? Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break In a white dust of ibises whose cries Have wheeled since civilizations dawn >From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read As natural law, but upright man Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum, While he calls courage still that native dread Of the white peace contracted by the dead.
Again brutish necessity wipes its hands Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again A waste of our compassion, as with Spain, The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both, Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who have cursed The drunken officer of British rule, how choose Between this Africa and the English tongue I love? Betray them both, or give back what they give? How can I face such slaughter and be cool? How can I turn from Africa and live?
Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

Great are the Myths

 1
GREAT are the myths—I too delight in them; 
Great are Adam and Eve—I too look back and accept them; 
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers,
 warriors,
 and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower; Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail, I weather it out with you, or sink with you.
Great is Youth—equally great is Old Age—great are the Day and Night; Great is Wealth—great is Poverty—great is Expression—great is Silence.
Youth, large, lusty, loving—Youth, full of grace, force, fascination! Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination? Day, full-blown and splendid—Day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep, and restoring darkness.
Wealth, with the flush hand, fine clothes, hospitality; But then the Soul’s wealth, which is candor, knowledge, pride, enfolding love; (Who goes for men and women showing Poverty richer than wealth?) Expression of speech! in what is written or said, forget not that Silence is also expressive, That anguish as hot as the hottest, and contempt as cold as the coldest, may be without words.
2 Great is the Earth, and the way it became what it is; Do you imagine it has stopt at this? the increase abandon’d? Understand then that it goes as far onward from this, as this is from the times when it lay in covering waters and gases, before man had appear’d.
Great is the quality of Truth in man; The quality of truth in man supports itself through all changes, It is inevitably in the man—he and it are in love, and never leave each other.
The truth in man is no dictum, it is vital as eyesight; If there be any Soul, there is truth—if there be man or woman there is truth—if there be physical or moral, there is truth; If there be equilibrium or volition, there is truth—if there be things at all upon the earth, there is truth.
O truth of the earth! I am determin’d to press my way toward you; Sound your voice! I scale mountains, or dive in the sea after you.
3 Great is Language—it is the mightiest of the sciences, It is the fulness, color, form, diversity of the earth, and of men and women, and of all qualities and processes; It is greater than wealth—it is greater than buildings, ships, religions, paintings, music.
Great is the English speech—what speech is so great as the English? Great is the English brood—what brood has so vast a destiny as the English? It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the new rule; The new rule shall rule as the Soul rules, and as the love, justice, equality in the Soul rule.
Great is Law—great are the few old land-marks of the law, They are the same in all times, and shall not be disturb’d.
4 Great is Justice! Justice is not settled by legislators and laws—it is in the Soul; It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love, pride, the attraction of gravity, can; It is immutable—it does not depend on majorities—majorities or what not, come at last before the same passionless and exact tribunal.
For justice are the grand natural lawyers, and perfect judges—is it in their Souls; It is well assorted—they have not studied for nothing—the great includes the less; They rule on the highest grounds—they oversee all eras, states, administrations.
The perfect judge fears nothing—he could go front to front before God; Before the perfect judge all shall stand back—life and death shall stand back—heaven and hell shall stand back.
5 Great is Life, real and mystical, wherever and whoever; Great is Death—sure as life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together.
Has Life much purport?—Ah, Death has the greatest purport.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

The Rhyme of the Three Captains

 This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of the notorious
Paul Jones, the American pirate.
It is founded on fact.
.
.
.
At the close of a winter day, Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay; And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye, And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby, And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall, And he was Captain of the Fleet -- the bravest of them all.
Their good guns guarded their great gray sides that were thirty foot in the sheer, When there came a certain trading-brig with news of a privateer.
Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a Northern breeze, Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that spawns in the Eastern seas.
Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled, And the skipper sat on the scuttle-butt and stared at an empty hold.
"I ha' paid Port dues for your Law," quoth he, "and where is the Law ye boast If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian coast? Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk, We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk; I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre.
There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore, And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore.
He would not fly the Rovers' flag -- the bloody or the black, But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack.
He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew -- he swore it was only a loan; But when I would ask for my own again, he swore it was none of my own.
He has taken my little parrakeets that nest beneath the Line, He has stripped my rails of the shaddock-frails and the green unripened pine; He has taken my bale of dammer and spice I won beyond the seas, He has taken my grinning heathen gods -- and what should he want o' these? My foremast would not mend his boom, my deckhouse patch his boats; He has whittled the two, this Yank Yahoo, to peddle for shoe-peg oats.
I could not fight for the failing light and a rough beam-sea beside, But I hulled him once for a clumsy crimp and twice because he lied.
Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm, I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm; I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw, And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw; I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark, I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark; I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil, And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil; I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the mesh, And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh; I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws, Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws! He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow, For he carries the taint of a musky ship -- the reek of the slaver's dhow!" The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and cold, And the Captains Three full courteously peered down at the gutted hold, And the Captains Three called courteously from deck to scuttle-butt: -- "Good Sir, we ha' dealt with that merchantman or ever your teeth were cut.
Your words be words of a lawless race, and the Law it standeth thus: He comes of a race that have never a Law, and he never has boarded us.
We ha' sold him canvas and rope and spar -- we know that his price is fair, And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he rides off Finisterre.
And since he is damned for a gallows-thief by you and better than you, We hold it meet that the English fleet should know that we hold him true.
" The skipper called to the tall taffrail: -- "And what is that to me? Did ever you hear of a Yankee brig that rifled a Seventy-three? Do I loom so large from your quarter-deck that I lift like a ship o' the Line? He has learned to run from a shotted gun and harry such craft as mine.
There is never a Law on the Cocos Keys to hold a white man in, But we do not steal the niggers' meal, for that is a ******'s sin.
Must he have his Law as a quid to chaw, or laid in brass on his wheel? Does he steal with tears when he buccaneers? 'Fore Gad, then, why does he steal?" The skipper bit on a deep-sea word, and the word it was not sweet, For he could see the Captains Three had signalled to the Fleet.
But three and two, in white and blue, the whimpering flags began: -- "We have heard a tale of a -- foreign sail, but he is a merchantman.
" The skipper peered beneath his palm and swore by the Great Horn Spoon: -- "'Fore Gad, the Chaplain of the Fleet would bless my picaroon!" By two and three the flags blew free to lash the laughing air: -- "We have sold our spars to the merchantman -- we know that his price is fair.
" The skipper winked his Western eye, and swore by a China storm: -- "They ha' rigged him a Joseph's jury-coat to keep his honour warm.
" The halliards twanged against the tops, the bunting bellied broad, The skipper spat in the empty hold and mourned for a wasted cord.
Masthead -- masthead, the signal sped by the line o' the British craft; The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and laughed: -- "It's mainsail haul, my bully boys all -- we'll out to the seas again -- Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, or scrub at his grapnel-chain.
It's fore-sheet free, with her head to the sea, and the swing of the unbought brine -- We'll make no sport in an English court till we come as a ship o' the Line: Till we come as a ship o' the Line, my lads, of thirty foot in the sheer, Lifting again from the outer main with news of a privateer; Flying his pluck at our mizzen-truck for weft of Admiralty, Heaving his head for our dipsey-lead in sign that we keep the sea.
Then fore-sheet home as she lifts to the foam -- we stand on the outward tack, We are paid in the coin of the white man's trade -- the bezant is hard, ay, and black.
The frigate-bird shall carry my word to the Kling and the Orang-Laut How a man may sail from a heathen coast to be robbed in a Christian port; How a man may be robbed in Christian port while Three Great Captains there Shall dip their flag to a slaver's rag -- to show that his trade is fair!"
Written by Federico García Lorca | Create an image from this poem

The Gypsy and the Wind

 Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing from her rhythmic tambourine, falls where the sea whips and sings, his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks the sentinels are weeping; they guard the tall white towers of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water for their pleasure erect little castles of conch shells and arbors of greening pine.
Playing her parchment moon Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises, the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells, watching the girl as he plays with tongues of celestial bells on an invisible bagpipe.
Gypsy, let me lift your skirt and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers the blue rose of your womb.
Precosia throws the tambourine and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her with his breathing and burning sword.
The sea darkens and roars, while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound, and a muted gong of the snow.
Precosia, run, Precosia! Or the green wind will catch you! Precosia, run, Precosia! And look how fast he comes! A satyr of low-born stars with their long and glistening tongues.
Precosia, filled with fear, now makes her way to that house beyond the tall green pines where the English consul lives.
Alarmed by the anguished cries, three riflemen come running, their black capes tightly drawn, and berets down over their brow.
The Englishman gives the gypsy a glass of tepid milk and a shot of Holland gin which Precosia does not drink.
And while she tells them, weeping, of her strange adventure, the wind furiously gnashes against the slate roof tiles.


Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

The English Flag

 Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack,
remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately
when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts,
and seemed to see significance in the incident.
-- DAILY PAPERS.
Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro -- And what should they know of England who only England know? -- The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag! Must we borrow a clout from the Boer -- to plaster anew with dirt? An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt? We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share.
What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare! The North Wind blew: -- "From Bergen my steel-shod vanguards go; I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe; By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God, And the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod.
"I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame, Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came; I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast, And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed.
"The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night, The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light: What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare, Ye have but my drifts to conquer.
Go forth, for it is there!" The South Wind sighed: -- "From the Virgins my mid-sea course was ta'en Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main, Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.
"Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys, I waked the palms to laughter -- I tossed the scud in the breeze -- Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.
"I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard -- ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.
"My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross, Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.
What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare, Ye have but my seas to furrow.
Go forth, for it is there!" The East Wind roared: -- "From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come, And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.
Look -- look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon! "The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead -- I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.
"Never the lotus closes, never the wild-fowl wake, But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake -- Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid -- Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.
"The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows, The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.
What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare, Ye have but my sands to travel.
Go forth, for it is there!" The West Wind called: -- "In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die.
They make my might their porter, they make my house their path, Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my wrath.
"I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole, They bellow one to the other, the frighted ship-bells toll, For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath, And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death.
"But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day, I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away, First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky, Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.
"The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it -- the frozen dews have kissed -- The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.
What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare, Ye have but my waves to conquer.
Go forth, for it is there!"
Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

NEW YEAR POEM

 For Jeremy Reed



Rejection doesn’t lead me to dejection

But to inspiration via irritation

Or at least to a bit of naughty new year wit-

Oh isn’t it a shame my poetry’s not tame

Like Rupert’s or Jay’s - I never could

Get into their STRIDE just to much pride

To lick the arses of the poetry-of-earthers

Or the sad lady who runs KATABASIS from the back

Of a bike, gets shouted at by rude parkies

And writing huffy poems to prove it.
.
.
Oh to be acceptable and IN THE POETRY REVIEW Like Lavinia or Jo With double spreads And a glossy colour photo Instead I’m stuck in a bus queue at Morden London’s meridian point of zero imagination Actually it’s a bit like ACUMEN with the Oxleys Boasting about their 150,000 annual submissions- If what they print’s the best God help the rest.
.
.
) At least my Christmas post had - instead of a card From Jeremy Reed - his ELEGY FOR DAVID GASCOYNE - The best poem I’ve had by post in forty years And Jeremy’s best to date in my estimate - The English APOLLINAIRE - your ZONE, your SONG OF THE BADLY LOVED - sitting in a cafe in South End Green I send you this poem, Jeremy, sight unseen, A new year’s gift to you, pushing through To star galaxies still unmapped and to you, BW, Sonneteer of silence, huddled in the fourth month Of your outdoor vigil, measuring in blood, tears and rain Your syllable count in hour-glass of pain.
Written by Maxine Kumin | Create an image from this poem

In the Park

 You have forty-nine days between
death and rebirth if you're a Buddhist.
Even the smallest soul could swim the English Channel in that time or climb, like a ten-month-old child, every step of the Washington Monument to travel across, up, down, over or through --you won't know till you get there which to do.
He laid on me for a few seconds said Roscoe Black, who lived to tell about his skirmish with a grizzly bear in Glacier Park.
He laid on me not doing anything.
I could feel his heart beating against my heart.
Never mind lie and lay, the whole world confuses them.
For Roscoe Black you might say all forty-nine days flew by.
I was raised on the Old Testament.
In it God talks to Moses, Noah, Samuel, and they answer.
People confer with angels.
Certain animals converse with humans.
It's a simple world, full of crossovers.
Heaven's an airy Somewhere, and God has a nasty temper when provoked, but if there's a Hell, little is made of it.
No longtailed Devil, no eternal fire, and no choosing what to come back as.
When the grizzly bear appears, he lies/lays down on atheist and zealot.
In the pitch-dark each of us waits for him in Glacier Park.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

Song of the Wise Children

 1902

When the darkened Fifties dip to the North,
 And frost and the fog divide the air,
And the day is dead at his breaking-forth,
 Sirs, it is bitter beneath the Bear!

Far to Southward they wheel and glance,
 The million molten spears of morn --
The spears of our deliverance
 That shine on the house where we were born.
Flying-fish about our bows, Flying sea-fires in our wake: This is the road to our Father's House, Whither we go for our souls' sake! We have forfeited our birthright, We have forsaken all things meet; We have forgotten the look of light, We have forgotten the scent of heart.
They that walk with shaded brows, Year by year in a shining land, They be men of our Father's House, They shall receive us and understand.
We shall go back by the boltless doors, To the life unaltered our childhood knew -- To the naked feet on the cool, dark floors, And the high-ceiled rooms that the Trade blows through: To the trumpet-flowers and the moon beyond, And the tree-toad's chorus drowning all -- And the lisp of the split banana-frond That talked us to sleep when we were small.
The wayside magic, the threshold spells, Shall soon undo what the North has done -- Because of the sights and the sounds and the smells That ran with our youth in the eye of the sun.
And Earth accepting shall ask no vows, Nor the Sea our love, nor our lover the Sky.
When we return to our Father's House Only the English shall wonder why!
Written by Ezra Pound | Create an image from this poem

Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I)

 "Vocat aestus in umbram" 
Nemesianus Es.
IV.
E.
P.
Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre For three years, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime" In the old sense.
Wrong from the start -- No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born In a half savage country, out of date; Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn; Capaneus; trout for factitious bait: "Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie Caught in the unstopped ear; Giving the rocks small lee-way The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.
His true Penelope was Flaubert, He fished by obstinate isles; Observed the elegance of Circe's hair Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.
Unaffected by "the march of events", He passed from men's memory in l'an trentiesme De son eage; the case presents No adjunct to the Muses' diadem.
II.
The age demanded an image Of its accelerated grimace, Something for the modern stage, Not, at any rate, an Attic grace; Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries Of the inward gaze; Better mendacities Than the classics in paraphrase! The "age demanded" chiefly a mould in plaster, Made with no loss of time, A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster Or the "sculpture" of rhyme.
III.
The tea-rose, tea-gown, etc.
Supplants the mousseline of Cos, The pianola "replaces" Sappho's barbitos.
Christ follows Dionysus, Phallic and ambrosial Made way for macerations; Caliban casts out Ariel.
All things are a flowing, Sage Heracleitus says; But a tawdry cheapness Shall reign throughout our days.
Even the Christian beauty Defects -- after Samothrace; We see to kalon Decreed in the market place.
Faun's flesh is not to us, Nor the saint's vision.
We have the press for wafer; Franchise for circumcision.
All men, in law, are equals.
Free of Peisistratus, We choose a knave or an eunuch To rule over us.
A bright Apollo, tin andra, tin eroa, tina theon, What god, man, or hero Shall I place a tin wreath upon? IV.
These fought, in any case, and some believing, pro domo, in any case .
.
Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later .
.
.
some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor" .
.
walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy; usury age-old and age-thick and liars in public places.
Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood, Fair cheeks, and fine bodies; fortitude as never before frankness as never before, disillusions as never told in the old days, hysterias, trench confessions, laughter out of dead bellies.
V.
There died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old ***** gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization.
Charm, smiling at the good mouth, Quick eyes gone under earth's lid, For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books.
Yeux Glauques Gladstone was still respected, When John Ruskin produced "Kings Treasuries"; Swinburne And Rossetti still abused.
Fœtid Buchanan lifted up his voice When that faun's head of hers Became a pastime for Painters and adulterers.
The Burne-Jones cartons Have preserved her eyes; Still, at the Tate, they teach Cophetua to rhapsodize; Thin like brook-water, With a vacant gaze.
The English Rubaiyat was still-born In those days.
The thin, clear gaze, the same Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin'd face, Questing and passive .
.
.
.
"Ah, poor Jenny's case" .
.
.
Bewildered that a world Shows no surprise At her last maquero's Adulteries.
"Siena Mi Fe', Disfecemi Maremma" Among the pickled fœtuses and bottled bones, Engaged in perfecting the catalogue, I found the last scion of the Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.
For two hours he talked of Gallifet; Of Dowson; of the Rhymers' Club; Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died By falling from a high stool in a pub .
.
.
But showed no trace of alcohol At the autopsy, privately performed -- Tissue preserved -- the pure mind Arose toward Newman as the whiskey warmed.
Dowson found harlots cheaper than hotels; Headlam for uplift; Image impartially imbued With raptures for Bacchus, Terpsichore and the Church.
So spoke the author of "The Dorian Mood", M.
Verog, out of step with the decade, Detached from his contemporaries, Neglected by the young, Because of these reveries.
Brennbaum.
The sky-like limpid eyes, The circular infant's face, The stiffness from spats to collar Never relaxing into grace; The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years, Showed only when the daylight fell Level across the face Of Brennbaum "The Impeccable".
Mr.
Nixon In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht Mr.
Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer Dangers of delay.
"Consider Carefully the reviewer.
"I was as poor as you are; "When I began I got, of course, "Advance on royalties, fifty at first", said Mr.
Nixon, "Follow me, and take a column, "Even if you have to work free.
"Butter reviewers.
From fifty to three hundred "I rose in eighteen months; "The hardest nut I had to crack "Was Dr.
Dundas.
"I never mentioned a man but with the view "Of selling my own works.
"The tip's a good one, as for literature "It gives no man a sinecure.
" And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece.
And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it.
" * * * Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me: Don't kick against the pricks, Accept opinion.
The "Nineties" tried your game And died, there's nothing in it.
X.
Beneath the sagging roof The stylist has taken shelter, Unpaid, uncelebrated, At last from the world's welter Nature receives him, With a placid and uneducated mistress He exercises his talents And the soil meets his distress.
The haven from sophistications and contentions Leaks through its thatch; He offers succulent cooking; The door has a creaking latch.
XI.
"Conservatrix of Milésien" Habits of mind and feeling, Possibly.
But in Ealing With the most bank-clerkly of Englishmen? No, "Milésian" is an exaggeration.
No instinct has survived in her Older than those her grandmother Told her would fit her station.
XII.
"Daphne with her thighs in bark Stretches toward me her leafy hands", -- Subjectively.
In the stuffed-satin drawing-room I await The Lady Valentine's commands, Knowing my coat has never been Of precisely the fashion To stimulate, in her, A durable passion; Doubtful, somewhat, of the value Of well-gowned approbation Of literary effort, But never of The Lady Valentine's vocation: Poetry, her border of ideas, The edge, uncertain, but a means of blending With other strata Where the lower and higher have ending; A hook to catch the Lady Jane's attention, A modulation toward the theatre, Also, in the case of revolution, A possible friend and comforter.
* * * Conduct, on the other hand, the soul "Which the highest cultures have nourished" To Fleet St.
where Dr.
Johnson flourished; Beside this thoroughfare The sale of half-hose has Long since superseded the cultivation Of Pierian roses.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things