Best Chaucer Poems

Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart...

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Chaucer and a Cup and Saucer

I just had been reading some Chaucer
When I picked up a cup from its saucer
Looked below and by chance saw...

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Rejection
a roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it's useless to complain;
For Pride now holds...

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Robin Hood, man in tights
Julius Caesar, might makes right
Alexander, called "the Great"
Sitting Bull, righteous hate
Robert the Bruce, Attila the Hun
Charlemagne, Napoleon

Hear the call of the...

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Homer, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Goethe, and Crane;
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Whitman, and Twain;
Whose imagination and toil helped to unfold
Stories, philosophies, and lessons to be told.

The...

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He didn’t care for Wilde,
And Chaucer was ‘alright,’
But quoted from The Bard
At morning, noon and night.

He loved the characters,
The funny and bizarre -
And fat old...

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Icy shards reflect what is seen  
but not what is meant to be  
I will wait not on tomorrow  
as the temples...

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Harvard, Princeton or Yale?
   I'll take some courses by mail
Engineering or Mathematics?
   I'm majoring in Acrobatics

Piano, Violin, Flute or Clarinet?
 ...

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I wrote this 50 years ago, yup, been dipping the brain in ink for a few years now.

What do you do on a rainy day...

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Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar (c. 1460-1530)
loose translation/modernization/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

after William Dunbar

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest...

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My father died prematurely while away on 
a business trip from a rogue blood clot to the heart  
I never doubted he loved me,...

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I went to Miami to find the beach
The beach was sandy and warm
It tasted like rye whiskey
Smooth and hard to forget

I went to New York...

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 Warning, this poem is dark. It is inspired by the  Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Gather around and hear of the strange day,
When three...

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Homer,Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, Eliot
Soyinka, Okigbo, Osundare
Now me, recycling human ideas...

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Morning

Impaired by his tremors
And a troublesome cough,
He turned fur into felt
Before cooling things off.

He drooled once or twice
And grew cold in his bones,
But he shaped...

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Unquotable quotes: Poets, Poetasters and Platos – XXXVI

     For James McAuley – in remembrance of a memorable week in Cardiff 1965...

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It was a grey day more or less on planet earth,
But earth’s robots hardly noticed at all
Robot logic so tuned into ones and zeros,
On and...

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A moment of your time TS Eliot
as I shall praise you with glory.
You are a genius,
an American now an English Gentleman
went to Harvard,
went to London,
Married...

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Morning

She would chat and then nod as she washed
And laugh as she dried and then curled
But behind all the smiles that were wide, fixed and...

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The Bucket List

Imagine if you will, a scene unlike any other,
Sipping Espresso daybreak, foothills of snow that smother.
Pavement Café in Zermatt, first patron of the...

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If two heads are better than one
How much better is three.
For the time has come 
When Translators cannot agree.

Nigel wrote the words in Latin script
And...

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Morning

Having sighed a great sigh
He perused all his tools
From the mainsprings and tweezers
To the wheels and the jewels.

He removed the large case latch
From the pocket...

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Morning

The Innkeeper checked his watch once again 
Hoping the chef's feelings weren't hurt.
The last time they were, he arrived two hours late
And then left, serving...

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                        ...

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Brexit Is Icumenn In, May's gone cuckoo!

No shame is poverty, if the heart by gay !
As Chaucer's Wife of Bath was wont to say;
Is this the...

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