Notes About The Poem

(As stated in the subtitle, this poem is a "cento" (comprised of lines from sundry classic poems). The lines are derived from poems by Thoreau, Chaucer, Milton, Anne Bradstreet, Shakespeare, Homer, Wordsworth, Dickinson, Whitman, Poe, Emily Dickinson, Ferlinghetti, Longfellow, Lewis Carroll, William Topaz McGonagall, T.S.Eliot, Sir Walter Raleigh, G.Stein )

Dead Poets Choir--A Cento

O ye dead Poets, who are living still
Within the circuit of this plodding life
For truly this game is well begun
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings
HARK! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings
May Jove restore you when your toils are o'er
I wandered lonely as a cloud 
SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me! 
Is the end of my song
Then give them all the lie
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
How dreary to be somebody!
Constantly risking absurdity and death
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.
Life, what is it but a dream? 
We like a fog
Copyright © | Year Posted 2022

Poem

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