Famous Long Evil Poems

Famous Long Evil Poems. Long Evil Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Evil long poems

See also: Long Member Poems

 Under what withering leprous light
The very grass as hair is grey,
Grass in the cracks of the paven courts
Of gods we graved but yesterday.
Senate, republic, empire, all
We leaned our backs on like a wall
And blessed as stron as strong and blamed as stolid--
Can it be these that waver and fall?
And what is this like a ghost returning,
A dream grown strong in the strong daylight?
The all-forsaken, the unforgotten,
The ever-behind and out of sight.
We turned our backs and our blind flesh felt it
Growing and growing, a tower in height.

Ah, not alone the evil splendour
And not the insolent arms alone
Break with the ramrod, stiff and brittle,
The sceptre of the nordic throne;
But things of manlier renown
Reel in the wreck of throne and crown,
With tyrannous tyranny, tyrannous loyalty
Tyrannous liberty, all gone down.

(There is never a crack in the ivory tower
Or a hinge to groan in the house of gold
Or a leaf of the rose in the wind to wither
And she grows young as the world grows old.
A Woman clothed with the sun returning
to clothe the sun when the sun is cold.)

Ah, who had guessed that in a moment
Great Liberty that loosed the tribes,
the Republic of the young men's battles
Grew stale and stank of old men's...
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 By that he ended had his ghostly sermon,
The fox was well induc'd to be a parson,
And of the priest eftsoons gan to inquire,
How to a benefice he might aspire.
"Marry, there" (said the priest) "is art indeed:
Much good deep learning one thereout may read;
For that the ground-work is, and end of all,
How to obtain a beneficial.
First, therefore, when ye have in handsome wise
Yourself attired, as you can devise,
Then to some nobleman yourself apply,
Or other great one in the world{"e}s eye,
That hath a zealous disposition
To God, and so to his religion.
There must thou fashion eke a godly zeal,
Such as no carpers may contrare reveal;
For each thing feigned ought more wary be.
There thou must walk in sober gravity,
And seem as saint-like as Saint Radegund:
Fast much, pray oft, look lowly on the ground,
And unto every one do courtesy meek:
These looks (nought saying) do a benefice seek,
But be thou sure one not to lack or long.
And if thee list unto the court to throng,
And there to hunt after the hoped prey,
Then must thou thee dispose another way:
For there thou needs must learn to laugh, to lie,
To face, to forge, to scoff, to company,
To crouch, to please, to be a beetle-stock
Of thy great master's will,...
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 1.1 "What is the price of Experience? do men buy it for a song? 
1.2 Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
1.3 Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
1.4 Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
1.5 And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain. 

1.6 It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
1.7 And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn.
1.8 It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,
1.9 To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,
1.10 To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
1.11 When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs. 

1.12 It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements,
1.13 To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;
1.14 To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast;
1.15 To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies' house;
1.16 To rejoice in the blight that covers...
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 Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, "Speak to us of Crime and Punishment." 

And he answered saying: 

It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind, 

That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself. 

And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed. 

Like the ocean is your god-self; 

It remains for ever undefiled. 

And like the ether it lifts but the winged. 

Even like the sun is your god-self; 

It knows not the ways of the mole nor seeks it the holes of the serpent. 

But your god-self does not dwell alone in your being. 

Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man, 

But a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening. 

And of the man in you would I now speak. 

For it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime. 

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of...
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 Where hast thou been since round the walls of Troy
The sons of God fought in that great emprise?
Why dost thou walk our common earth again?
Hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy,
His purple galley and his Tyrian men
And treacherous Aphrodite's mocking eyes?
For surely it was thou, who, like a star
Hung in the silver silence of the night,
Didst lure the Old World's chivalry and might
Into the clamorous crimson waves of war!

Or didst thou rule the fire-laden moon?
In amorous Sidon was thy temple built
Over the light and laughter of the sea
Where, behind lattice scarlet-wrought and gilt,
Some brown-limbed girl did weave thee tapestry,
All through the waste and wearied hours of noon;
Till her wan cheek with flame of passion burned,
And she rose up the sea-washed lips to kiss
Of some glad Cyprian sailor, safe returned
From Calpe and the cliffs of Herakles!

No! thou art Helen, and none other one!
It was for thee that young Sarpedon died,
And Memnon's manhood was untimely spent;
It was for thee gold-crested Hector tried
With Thetis' child that evil race to run,
In the last year of thy beleaguerment;
Ay! even now the glory of thy fame
Burns in those fields of trampled asphodel,
Where the high lords whom Ilion knew so well
Clash ghostly shields, and call upon thy...
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 I couldn't touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth -- I hope, like you --
On the handle of a skeleton gold key;
I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week:
I'm a clerk at thirty bob as you can see.

But I don't allow it's luck and all a toss;
There's no such thing as being starred and crossed;
It's just the power of some to be a boss,
And the bally power of others to be bossed:
I face the music, sir; you bet I ain't a cur;
Strike me lucky if I don't believe I'm lost!

For like a mole I journey in the dark,
A-travelling along the underground
From my Pillar'd Halls and broad Suburbean Park,
To come the daily dull official round;
And home again at night with my pipe all alight,
A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.

And it's often very cold and very wet,
And my missus stitches towels for a hunks;
And the Pillar'd Halls is half of it to let--
Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks.
And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh,
When the noisy little kids are in their bunks.

But you never hear her do...
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(Español)
Hombres necios que acusáis
a la mujer sin razón,
sin ver que sois la ocasión
de lo mismo que culpáis:

si con ansia sin igual
solicitáis su desdén,
¿por qué quereis que obren bien
si las incitáis al mal?

Combatís su resistencia
y luego, con gravedad,
decís que fue liviandad
lo que hizo la diligencia.

Parecer quiere el denuedo
de vuestro parecer loco,
al niño que pone el coco
y luego le tiene miedo.

Queréis, con presunción necia,
hallar a la que buscáis,
para pretendida, Thais,
y en la posesión, Lucrecia

¿Qué humor puede ser más raro
que el que, falto de consejo,
el mismo empaña el espejo
y siente que no esté claro?

Con el favor y el desdén
tenéis condición igual,
quejándoos, si os tratan mal,
burlándoos, si os quieren bien.

Opinión, ninguna gana:
pues la que más se recata,
si no os admite, es ingrata,
y si os admite, es liviana

Siempre tan necios andáis
que, con desigual nivel,
a una culpáis por crüel
y a otra por fácil culpáis.

¿Pues cómo ha de estar templada
la que vuestro amor pretende,
si la que es ingrata, ofende,
y la que es fácil, enfada?

Mas, entre el enfado y pena
que vuestro gusto refiere,
bien haya la que no os quiere
y quejaos en hora buena.

Dan vuestras amantes penas
a sus libertades alas,
y después de hacerlas malas
las queréis hallar muy buenas.

¿Cuál mayor culpa ha tenido
en una pasión errada:
la que cae de rogada
o...
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 (WASHINGTON SQUARE)


I met him, as one meets a ghost or two, 
Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel. 
“King Solomon was right, there’s nothing new,” 
Said he. “Behold a ruin who meant well.” 

He led me down familiar steps again, 
Appealingly, and set me in a chair. 
“My dreams have all come true to other men,” 
Said he; “God lives, however, and why care? 

“An hour among the ghosts will do no harm.” 
He laughed, and something glad within me sank. 
I may have eyed him with a faint alarm, 
For now his laugh was lost in what he drank. 

“They chill things here with ice from hell,” he said; 
“I might have known it.” And he made a face 
That showed again how much of him was dead,
And how much was alive and out of place. 

And out of reach. He knew as well as I 
That all the words of wise men who are skilled 
In using them are not much to defy 
What comes when memory meets the unfulfilled.

What evil and infirm perversity 
Had been at work with him to bring him back? 
Never among the ghosts, assuredly, 
Would he originate a new attack; 

Never...
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 1
We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day.
Who in May admire trees flowering
Are better than those who perished.

We, who taste of exotic dishes,
And enjoy fully the delights of love,
Are better than those who were buried.

We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires
On which the winds of endless autumns howled,
We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared in
paroxysms of pain.
We, saved by our own cunning and knowledge.

By sending others to the more exposed positions
Urging them loudly to fight on
Ourselves withdrawing in certainty of the cause lost.

Having the choice of our own death and that of a friend
We chose his, coldly thinking: Let it be done quickly.

We sealed gas chamber doors, stole bread
Knowing the next day would be harder to bear than the day before.

As befits human beings, we explored good and evil.
Our malignant wisdom has no like on this planet.

Accept it as proven that we are better than they,
The gullible, hot-blooded weaklings, careless with their lives.

2
Treasure your legacy of skills, child of Europe.
Inheritor of Gothic cathedrals, of baroque churches.
Of synagogues filled with the wailing of a wronged people.
Successor of Descartes, Spinoza, inheritor of the word 'honor',
Posthumous child of Leonidas
Treasure the skills acquired in the hour of terror.

You...
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 There was a strife 'twixt man and maid--
Oh, that was at the birth of time!
But what befell 'twixt man and maid,
Oh, that's beyond the grip of rhyme.
'Twas "Sweet, I must not bide with you,"
And, "Love, I cannot bide alone";
For both were young and both were true.
And both were hard as the nether stone.

Beware the man who's crossed in love;
 For pent-up steam must find its vent.
Stand back when he is on the move,
 And lend him all the Continent.

Your patience, Sirs. The Devil took me up
To the burned mountain over Sicily
(Fit place for me) and thence I saw my Earth--
(Not all Earth's splendour, 'twas beyond my need--)
And that one spot I love--all Earth to me,
And her I love, my Heaven. What said I?
My love was safe from all the powers of Hell-
For you--e'en you--acquit her of my guilt--
But Sula, nestling by our sail--specked sea,
My city, child of mine, my heart, my home--
Mine and my pride--evil might visit there!
It was for Sula and her naked port,
Prey to the galleys of the Algerine,
Our city Sula, that I drove my price--
For love of Sula and for love of her.
The twain were woven--gold on sackcloth--twined
Past any sundering till God shall judge
The evil and...
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 Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues.
She is stuck in the time machine,
suddenly two years old sucking her thumb,
as inward as a snail,
learning to talk again.
She's on a voyage.
She is swimming further and further back,
up like a salmon,
struggling into her mother's pocketbook.
Little doll child,
come here to Papa.
Sit on my knee.
I have kisses for the back of your neck.
A penny for your thoughts, Princess.
I will hunt them like an emerald.

Come be my snooky
and I will give you a root.
That kind of voyage,
rank as a honeysuckle.
Once
a king had a christening
for his daughter Briar Rose
and because he had only twelve gold plates
he asked only twelve fairies
to the grand event.
The thirteenth fairy,
her fingers as long and thing as straws,
her eyes burnt by cigarettes,
her uterus an empty teacup,
arrived with an evil gift.
She made this prophecy:
The princess shall prick herself
on a spinning wheel in her fifteenth year
and then fall down dead.
Kaputt!
The court fell silent.
The king looked like Munch's Scream
Fairies' prophecies,
in times like those,
held water.
However the twelfth fairy
had a certain kind of eraser
and thus she mitigated the curse
changing that death
into a hundred-year sleep.

The king ordered every spinning wheel
exterminated and exorcised.
Briar Rose grew...
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 Inside many of us
is a small old man
who wants to get out.
No bigger than a two-year-old
whom you'd call lamb chop
yet this one is old and malformed.
His head is okay
but the rest of him wasn't Sanforized?
He is a monster of despair.
He is all decay.
He speaks up as tiny as an earphone
with Truman's asexual voice:
I am your dwarf.
I am the enemy within.
I am the boss of your dreams.
No. I am not the law in your mind,
the grandfather of watchfulness.
I am the law of your members,
the kindred of blackness and impulse.
See. Your hand shakes.
It is not palsy or booze.
It is your Doppelganger
trying to get out.
Beware . . . Beware . . .

There once was a miller
with a daughter as lovely as a grape.
He told the king that she could
spin gold out of common straw.
The king summoned the girl
and locked her in a room full of straw
and told her to spin it into gold
or she would die like a criminal.
Poor grape with no one to pick.
Luscious and round and sleek.
Poor thing.
To die and never see Brooklyn.

She wept,
of course, huge aquamarine tears.
The door opened and in popped a dwarf.
He was as ugly as a wart.
Little thing, what are you? she cried.
With his tiny no-sex...
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 Part of an entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of
Darby at Harefield, by som Noble persons of her Family, who
appear on the Scene in pastoral habit, moving toward the seat
of State with this Song.

I. SONG.

Look Nymphs, and Shepherds look,
What sudden blaze of majesty
Is that which we from hence descry
Too divine to be mistook:
This this is she
To whom our vows and wishes bend,
Heer our solemn search hath end.

Fame that her high worth to raise,
Seem'd erst so lavish and profuse,
We may justly now accuse 
Of detraction from her praise,
Less then half we find exprest,
Envy bid conceal the rest.

Mark what radiant state she spreds,
In circle round her shining throne,
Shooting her beams like silver threds,
This this is she alone,
Sitting like a Goddes bright,
In the center of her light.
Might she the wise Latona be, 
Or the towred Cybele,
Mother of a hunderd gods;
Juno dare's not give her odds;
Who had thought this clime had held
A deity so unparalel'd?

As they com forward, the genius of the Wood appears, and
turning toward them, speaks.

GEN. Stay gentle Swains, for though in this disguise,
I see bright honour sparkle through your eyes,
Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung
Of that renowned flood, so often sung,
Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluse, 
Stole under Seas...
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 Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks
Can't withstand it. The sky shudders from one horizon
To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness.
Then Apollo quietly told him: "Leave it all on earth.
Your lute, what point? Why pick at a dull pavan few care to 
Follow, except a few birds of dusty feather,
Not vivid performances of the past." But why not?
All other things must change too.
The seasons are no longer what they once were,
But it is the nature of things to be seen only once,
As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting along
Somehow. That's where Orpheus made his mistake.
Of course Eurydice vanished into the shade;
She would have even if he hadn't turned around.
No use standing there like a gray stone toga as the whole wheel
Of recorded history flashes past, struck dumb, unable to 
utter an intelligent
Comment on the most thought-provoking element in its train.
Only love stays on the brain, and something these people,
These other ones, call life. Singing accurately
So that the notes mount straight up out of the well of
Dim noon and rival the tiny,...
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 I've known ere now an interfering branch
Of alder catch my lifted ax behind me.
But that was in the woods, to hold my hand
From striking at another alder's roots,
And that was, as I say, an alder branch.
This was a man, Baptiste, who stole one day
Behind me on the snow in my own yard
Where I was working at the chopping block,
And cutting nothing not cut down already.
He caught my ax expertly on the rise,
When all my strength put forth was in his favor,
Held it a moment where it was, to calm me,
Then took it from me — and I let him take it.
I didn't know him well enough to know
What it was all about. There might be something
He had in mind to say to a bad neighbor
He might prefer to say to him disarmed.
But all he had to tell me in French-English
Was what he thought of— not me, but my ax;
Me only as I took my ax to heart.
It was the bad ax-helve some one had sold me —
“Made on machine,' he said, plowing the grain
With a thick thumbnail to show how it ran
Across the handle's long-drawn serpentine,
Like the two strokes across a dollar sign.
“You give her 'one good crack, she's...
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