Famous Long Imagination Poems

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

See also: Long Member Poems

 Earth no longer
hymns the Creator,
the seven days of wonder,
the Garden is over —
all the stories are told,
the seven seals broken
all that begins
must have its ending,
our striving, desiring,
our living and dying,
for Time, the bringer
of abundant days
is Time the destroyer —
In the Iron Age
the Kali Yuga
To whom can we pray
at the end of an era
but the Lord Shiva,
the Liberator, the purifier?

Our forests are felled,
our mountains eroded,
the wild places
where the beautiful animals
found food and sanctuary
we have desolated,
a third of our seas,
a third of our rivers
we have polluted
and the sea-creatures dying.
Our civilization’s
blind progress
in wrong courses
through wrong choices
has brought us to nightmare
where what seems,
is, to the dreamer,
the collective mind
of the twentieth century —
this world of wonders
not divine creation
but a big bang
of blind chance,
purposeless accident,
mother earth’s children,
their living and loving,
their delight in being
not joy but chemistry,
stimulus, reflex,
valueless, meaningless,
while to our machines
we impute intelligence,
in computers and robots
we store information
and call it knowledge,
we seek guidance
by dialling numbers,
pressing buttons, 
throwing switches,
in place of family
our companions are shadows,
cast on a screen,
bodiless voices, fleshless faces,
where was the Garden
a Disney-land
of virtual reality,
in place of angels
the human imagination
is peopled with foot-ballers
film-stars, media-men,
experts, know-all
television personalities,
animated puppets
with cartoon faces —
To whom can we pray
for release from illusion,
from the world-cave,
but Time the destroyer,
the liberator, the...
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 Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
The goddess from her chamber issues,
Arrayed in lace, brocades, and tissues.
Strephon, who found the room was void
And Betty otherwise employed,
Stole in and took a strict survey
Of all the litter as it lay;
Whereof, to make the matter clear,
An inventory follows here.
And first a dirty smock appeared,
Beneath the arm-pits well besmeared.
Strephon, the rogue, displayed it wide
And turned it round on every side.
On such a point few words are best,
And Strephon bids us guess the rest;
And swears how damnably the men lie
In calling Celia sweet and cleanly.
Now listen while he next produces
The various combs for various uses,
Filled up with dirt so closely fixt,
No brush could force a way betwixt.
A paste of composition rare,
Sweat, dandruff, powder, lead and hair;
A forehead cloth with oil upon't
To smooth the wrinkles on her front.
Here alum flower to stop the steams
Exhaled from sour unsavory streams;
There night-gloves made of Tripsy's hide,
Bequeath'd by Tripsy when she died,
With puppy water, beauty's help,
Distilled from Tripsy's darling whelp;
Here gallypots and vials placed,
Some filled with washes, some with paste,
Some with pomatum, paints and slops,
And ointments good for scabby chops.
Hard by a filthy basin stands,
Fouled with the scouring of her hands;
The basin...
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 The gold-hoarder walked in his palace park and with him walked his troubles. And over his head hovered worries as a vulture hovers over a carcass, until he reached a beautiful lake surrounded by magnificent marble statuary. 

He sat there pondering the water which poured from the mouths of the statues like thoughts flowing freely from a lover's imagination, and contemplating heavily his palace which stood upon a knoll like a birth-mark upon the cheek of a maiden. His fancy revealed to him the pages of his life's drama which he read with falling tears that veiled his eyes and prevented him from viewing man's feeble additions to Nature. 

He looked back with piercing regret to the images of his early life, woven into pattern by the gods, until he could no longer control his anguish. He said aloud, "Yesterday I was grazing my sheep in the green valley, enjoying my existence, sounding my flute, and holding my head high. Today I am a prisoner of greed. Gold leads into gold, then into restlessness and finally into crushing misery. 

"Yesterday I was like a singing bird, soaring freely here and there in the fields. Today I am a slave...
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She

ONLY to be twin elements of joy
In this extravagance of Being, Love,
Were our divided natures shaped in twain;
And to this hour the whole world must consent.
Is it not very marvellous, our lives
Can only come to this out of a long
Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He

Shall life do more than God? for hath not God
Striven with himself, when into known delight
His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth,—
This mystery of a world sign of his striving?
Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind
With labouring in the wonder of it, that here
Being—the world and we—is suffered to be!—
But, lying on thy breast one notable day,
Sudden exceeding agony of love
Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge.
I was not: yet I saw the will of God
As light unfashion’d, unendurable flame,
Interminable, not to be supposed;
And there was no more creature except light,—
The dreadful burning of the lonely God’s
Unutter’d joy. And then, past telling, came
Shuddering and division in the light:
Therein, like trembling, was desire to know
Its own perfect beauty; and it became
A cloven fire, a double flaming, each
Adorable to each; against itself
Waging a burning love, which was the world;—
A moment satisfied in that love-strife
I knew the world!—And when I fell from...
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 AN ALPHABET OF FAMOUS GOOPS.
Which you 'll Regard with Yells and Whoops.
Futile Acumen! 
For you Yourselves are Doubtless Dupes
Of Failings Such as Mar these Groups --
We all are Human!

1 ABEDNEGO was Meek and Mild; he Softly Spoke, he Sweetly Smiled.
2 He never Called his Playmates Names, and he was Good in Running Games;
3 But he was Often in Disgrace because he had a Dirty Face!

4 BOHUNKUS would Take Off his Hat, and Bow and Smile, and Things like That.
5 His Face and Hair were Always Neat, and when he Played he did not Cheat;
6 But Oh! what Awful Words he Said, when it was Time to Go to Bed!

7 The Gentle CEPHAS tried his Best to Please his Friends with Merry Jest;
8 He tried to Help Them, when he Could, for CEPHAS, he was Very Good;
9 And Yet -- They Say he Used to Cry, and Once or Twice he Told a Lie!

10 DANIEL and DAGO were a Pair who Acted Kindly Everywhere;
11 They studied Hard, as Good as Gold, they Always did as They were Told;
12 They Never Put on Silly Airs, but They Took Things that were Not Theirs.

13 EZEKIEL, so his Parents said, just Simply Loved...
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 I

What shall I do with this absurdity -
O heart, O troubled heart - this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
 Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible -
No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back
And had the livelong summer day to spend.
It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,
Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend
Until imagination, ear and eye,
Can be content with argument and deal
In abstract things; or be derided by
A sort of battered kettle at the heel.

 II

I pace upon the battlements and stare
On the foundations of a house, or where
Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;
And send imagination forth
Under the day's declining beam, and call
Images and memories
From ruin or from ancient trees,
For I would ask a question of them all.

Beyond that ridge lived Mrs. French, and once
When every silver candlestick or sconce
Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine.
A serving-man, that could divine
That most respected lady's every wish,
Ran and with the garden shears
Clipped an insolent farmer's ears
And brought them in a little covered dish.

Some few remembered still when I was...
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 "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...
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 “Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see, 
So far beyond the faint edge of the world? 
D’ye look to see the lady Vivian, 
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons 
That have another king more fierce than ours?
Or think ye that if ye look far enough 
And hard enough into the feathery west 
Ye’ll have a glimmer of the Grail itself? 
And if ye look for neither Grail nor lady, 
What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?”

So Dagonet, whom Arthur made a knight 
Because he loved him as he laughed at him, 
Intoned his idle presence on a day 
To Gawaine, who had thought himself alone, 
Had there been in him thought of anything
Save what was murmured now in Camelot 
Of Merlin’s hushed and all but unconfirmed 
Appearance out of Brittany. It was heard 
At first there was a ghost in Arthur’s palace, 
But soon among the scullions and anon
Among the knights a firmer credit held 
All tongues from uttering what all glances told— 
Though not for long. Gawaine, this afternoon, 
Fearing he might say more to Lancelot 
Of Merlin’s rumor-laden resurrection
Than Lancelot would have an ear to cherish, 
Had sauntered off with his imagination 
To Merlin’s Rock,...
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 Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow;
"O thou clear god, and patron of all light,
From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow
The beauteous influence that makes him bright,
There lives a son that suck'd an earthly mother,
May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other."

This said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove,
Musing the morning is so much o'erworn,
And yet she hears no tidings of her love:
She hearkens for his hounds and for his horn:
Anon she hears them chant it lustily,
And all in haste she coasteth to the cry.

And as she runs, the bushes in the way
Some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face,
Some twine about her thigh to make her stay:
She wildly breaketh from their strict embrace,
Like a milch doe, whose swelling dugs do ache,
Hasting to feed her fawn, hid in some brake.

By this she hears the hounds are at a bay;
Whereat she starts, like one that spies an adder
Wreath'd up in fatal folds just in his way,
The...
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epilogue: 
Your thoughts, 
dreaming on a softened brain, 
like an over-fed lackey on a greasy settee, 
with my heart's bloody tatters I'll mock again; 
impudent and caustic, I'll jeer to superfluity. 

Of Grandfatherly gentleness I'm devoid, 
there's not a single grey hair in my soul! 
Thundering the world with the might of my voice, 
I go by -- handsome, 
twenty-two-year-old. 

Gentle ones! 
You lay your love on a violin. 
The crude lay their love on a drum. 
but you can't, like me, turn inside out entirely, 
and nothing but human lips become! 

Out of chintz-covered drawing-rooms, come 
and learn- 
decorous bureaucrats of angelic leagues. 

and you whose lips are calmly thumbed, 
as a cook turns over cookery-book leaves. 

If you like- 
I'll be furiously flesh elemental, 
or - changing to tones that the sunset arouses - 
if you like- 
I'll be extraordinary gentle, 
not a man, but - a cloud in trousers! 

1 


You think malaria makes me delirious? 

It happened. 
In Odessa it happened. 

¡°I¡¯ll come at four,¡± Maria promised. 

Eight. 
Nine. 
Ten. 

Then the evening 
turned its back on the windows 
and plunged into grim night, 
scowling 
Decemberish. 

At my decrepit back 
the candelabras guffawed and whinnied. 

You...
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 The vision of Christ that thou dost see 
Is my vision’s greatest enemy. 
Thine has a great hook nose like thine; 
Mine has a snub nose like to mine. 
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind; 
Mine speaks in parables to the blind. 
Thine loves the same world that mine hates; 
Thy heaven doors are my hell gates. 
Socrates taught what Meletus 
Loath’d as a nation’s bitterest curse, 
And Caiaphas was in his own mind 
A benefactor to mankind. 
Both read the Bible day and night, 
But thou read’st black where I read white. 

Was Jesus gentle, or did He 
Give any marks of gentility? 
When twelve years old He ran away, 
And left His parents in dismay. 
When after three days’ sorrow found, 
Loud as Sinai’s trumpet-sound: 
‘No earthly parents I confess— 
My Heavenly Father’s business! 
Ye understand not what I say, 
And, angry, force Me to obey. 
Obedience is a duty then, 
And favour gains with God and men.’ 
John from the wilderness loud cried; 
Satan gloried in his pride. 
‘Come,’ said Satan, ‘come away, 
I’ll soon see if you’ll obey! 
John for disobedience bled, 
But you can turn the stones to bread. 
God’s high king and...
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 ANOTHER METHOD

 OF MAKING WALNUT CATSUP





And this is a very small cookbook for Trout Fishing in America

as if Trout Fishing in America were a rich gourmet and

Trout Fishing in America had Maria Callas for a girlfriend

and they ate together on a marble table with beautiful candles.



Compote of Apples



Take a dozen of golden pippins, pare them

nicely and take the core out with a small

penknife; put them into some water, and

let them be well scalded; then take a little

of the water with some sugar, and a few

apples which may be sliced into it, and

let the whole boil till it comes to a syrup;

then pour it over your pippins, and garnish

them with dried cherries and lemon-peel

cut fine. You must take care that your

pippins are not split.





And Maria Callas sang to Trout Fishing in America as

they ate their apples together.



A Standing Crust for Great Pies



Take a peck of flour and six pounds of butter

boiled in a gallon of water: skim it off into

the flour, and as little of the liquor as you

can. Work it up well into a paste, and then

pull it into pieces till it is cold. Then make

it up into what form you please.



And Trout Fishing in America smiled at Maria...
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 a novel by Richard Brautigan


 THE COVER FOR

 TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA



The cover for Trout Fishing in America is a photograph taken

late in the afternoon, a photograph of the Benjamin Franklin

statue in San Francisco's Washington Square.

Born 1706--Died 1790, Benjamin Franklin stands on a

 pedestal that looks like a house containing stone furniture.

 He holds some papers in one hand and his hat in the other.

Then the statue speaks, saying in marble:





 PRESENTED BY

 H. D. COGSWELL

 TO OUR

 BOYS AND GIRLS

 WHO WILL SOON

 TAKE OUR PLACES

 AND PASS ON.



Around the base of the statue are four words facing the

directions of this world, to the east WELCOME, to the west

WELCOME, to the north WELCOME, to the south WELCOME.

Just behind the statue are three poplar trees, almost leafless

 except for the top branches. The statue stands in front

of the middle tree. All around the grass is wet from the

 rains of early February.



 In the background is a tall cypress tree, almost dark like

a room. Adlai Stevenson spoke under the tree in 1956, before

 a crowd of 40, 000 people.



 There is a tall church across the street from the statue

with crosses, steeples, bells and a vast door that looks...
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 FROM off a hill whose concave womb reworded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.

Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcass of beauty spent and done:
Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage,
Some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age.

Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,
Laundering the silken figures in the brine
That season'd woe had pelleted in tears,
And often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguish'd woe,
In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride,
As they did battery to the spheres intend;
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied
To the orbed earth; sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and, nowhere fix'd,
The mind and sight distractedly commix'd.

Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat,
Proclaim'd in her a careless hand of...
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 for Brenda Williams



The dawn cracked with ice, with fire grumbling in the grate,

With ire in the homes we had left, but still somehow

We made a nook in the crooked corner of Hall Ings,

A Wordsworthian dream with sheep nibbling by every crumbling

Dry-stone wall, smoke inching from the chimney pot beside the

Turning lane, the packhorse road with every stone intact that bound

The corner tight then up and off to Thurstonland, past the weathered

Walls of the abandoned quarry, beyond Ings Farm where Rover ran

His furious challenge to our call.



We had little, so little it might have been nothing at all

The few hundred books we’d brought and furniture bought

At auction in the town, left-overs knocked down to the few pounds

We had between us, dumped outside the red front door by the

Carrier’s cart; stared at by neighbours constantly grimacing

Though the grimy nets of the weavers’ cottage windows, baffled

As to who we were and how and why we’d come there.



I never gave it a thought (perhaps I should have) but with

The sense of ‘poet’ in my soul, a book to read and one

To write, night walks in the valley’s hyaline air through

Brambled woods and on down tracks we trekked along

Until the sharp sneck of dawn...
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