On a Vulgar Error

Related poetry:

1. The Words Of Error Three errors there are, that forever are found On the lips of the good, on the lips of the best; But empty their meaning and hollow their sound And slight is the comfort they bring to the breast. The fruits of existence escape from the clasp Of the seeker who strives but those shadows to […]...
2. The Vulgar Little Lady “But, mamma, now, ” said Charlotte, “pray, don’t you believe That I’m better than Jenny, my nurse? Only see my red shoes, and the lace on my sleeve; Her clothes are a thousand times worse. “I ride in my coach, and have nothing to do, And the country folks stare at me so; And nobody […]...
3. However grown up six…six…why only yesterday It seems that fist shot out That one eye winked…and yet Now that this day’s arrived It really is as if six years Have blinked – and you’ve sprung Through a thousand instant snaps Into this boy whose tongue Can’t help but say thought not thinked Who’s no longer to be fed […]...
4. Modern Love XXXV: It Is No Vulgar Nature It is no vulgar nature I have wived. Secretive, sensitive, she takes a wound Deep to her soul, as if the sense had swooned, And not a thought of vengeance had survived. No confidences has she: but relief Must come to one whose suffering is acute. O have a care of natures that are mute! […]...
5. The Damned My days are haunted by the thought Of men in coils of Justice caught With stone and steel, in chain and cell, Of men condemned to living hell, Yet blame them not. In my sun-joy their dark I see: For what they are and had to be Blame Nature, red in tooth and claw, Blame […]...
6. The Laws of God, The Laws of Man The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can; Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me; And if my ways are not as theirs Let them mind their own affairs. Their deeds I judge and much condemn, Yet when did I make […]...
7. Yesterday is History Yesterday is History, ‘Tis so far away Yesterday is Poetry ‘Tis Philosophy Yesterday is mystery Where it is Today While we shrewdly speculate Flutter both away...
8. The Wifebeater There will be mud on the carpet tonight And blood in the gravy as well. The wifebeater is out, The childbeater is out Eating soil and drinking bullets from a cup. He strides bback and forth In front of my study window Chewing little red pieces of my heart. His eyes flash like a birthday […]...
9. For Him I Sing FOR him I sing, (As some perennial tree, out of its roots, the present on the past:) With time and space I him dilate-and fuse the immortal laws, To make himself, by them, the law unto himself....
10. Yesterday I’ve trod the links with many a man, And played him club for club; ‘Tis scarce a year since I began And I am still a dub. But this I’ve noticed as we strayed Along the bunkered way, No one with me has ever played As he did yesterday. It makes no difference what the […]...
11. Sly Dick Sharp was the frost, the wind was high And sparkling stars bedeckt the sky Sly Dick in arts of cunning skill’d, Whose rapine all his pockets fill’d, Had laid him down to take his rest And soothe with sleep his anxious breast. ‘Twas thus a dark infernal sprite A native of the blackest night, Portending […]...
12. The Flood Blood has been harder to dam back than water. Just when we think we have it impounded safe Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!), It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter. We choose to say it is let loose by the devil; But power of blood itself releases blood. It goes […]...
13. Now Art Has Lost Its Mental Charms ‘Now Art has lost its mental charms France shall subdue the world in arms.’ So spoke an Angel at my birth; Then said ‘Descend thou upon earth, Renew the Arts on Britain’s shore, And France shall fall down and adore. With works of art their armies meet And War shall sink beneath thy feet. But […]...
14. Hymn 4 part 2 The inward witness to Christianity. 1 Jn. 5:10. Questions and doubts be heard no more, Let Christ and joy be all our theme; His Spirit seals his gospel sure, To every soul that trusts in him. Jesus, thy witness speaks within; The mercy which thy words reveal Refines the heart from sense and sin, And […]...
15. Rebirth If any God should say, “I will restore The world her yesterday Whole as before My Judgment blasted it” who would not lift Heart, eye, and hand in passion o’er the gift? If any God should will To wipe from mind The memory of this ill Which is Mankind In soul and substance now who […]...
16. The Clean Plater Some singers sing of ladies’ eyes, And some of ladies lips, Refined ones praise their ladylike ways, And course ones hymn their hips. The Oxford Book of English Verse Is lush with lyrics tender; A poet, I guess, is more or less Preoccupied with gender. Yet I, though custom call me crude, Prefer to sing […]...
17. I was Looking a Long While I WAS looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants-and now I have found it; It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject;) It is no more in the legends than in all else; It is […]...
18. St. Roach For that I never knew you, I only learned to dread you, For that I never touched you, they told me you are filth, They showed me by every action to despise your kind; For that I saw my people making war on you, I could not tell you apart, one from another, For that […]...
19. BEAUTY I AM as lovely as a dream in stone, And this my heart where each finds death in turn, Inspires the poet with a love as lone As clay eternal and as taciturn. Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows, My throne is in the heaven’s azure deep; I hate all movements that disturb […]...
20. Sonnet 01 Sidney, in whom the heyday of romance Came to its precious and most perfect flower, Whether you tourneyed with victorious lance Or brought sweet roundelays to Stella’s bower, I give myself some credit for the way I have kept clean of what enslaves and lowers, Shunned the ideals of our present day And studied those […]...
21. With Antecedents 1 WITH antecedents; With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages; With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am: With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome; With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon; With antique maritime ventures,-with laws, artizanship, wars and […]...
22. Not What Was Meant When the Academy of Arts demanded freedom Of artistic expression from narrow-minded bureaucrats There was a howl and a clamour in its immediate vicinity But roaring above everything Came a deafening thunder of applause From beyond the Sector boundary. Freedom! it roared. Freedom for the artists! Freedom all round! Freedom for all! Freedom for the […]...
23. Cambridge in the Long Where drowsy sound of college-chimes Across the air is blown, And drowsy fragrance of the limes, I lie and dream alone. A dazzling radiance reigns o’er all O’er gardens densely green, O’er old grey bridges and the small, Slow flood which slides between. This is the place; it is not strange, But known of old […]...
24. No Master Indeed this is the sweet life! my hand Is under no proud man’s command; There is no voice to break my rest Before a bird has left its nest; There is no man to change my mood, When I go nutting in the wood; No man to pluck my sleeve and say I want thy […]...
25. I'd Love To Be A Fairy's Child Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock, Never want for food or fire, Always get their hearts desire: Jingle pockets full of gold, Marry when they’re seven years old. Every fairy child may keep Two ponies and ten sheep; All have houses, each his own, Built of brick or granite stone; […]...
26. January 1939 Because the pleasure-bird whistles after the hot wires, Shall the blind horse sing sweeter? Convenient bird and beast lie lodged to suffer The supper and knives of a mood. In the sniffed and poured snow on the tip of the tongue of the year That clouts the spittle like bubbles with broken rooms, An enamoured […]...
27. Against Idleness and Mischief How doth the little busy Bee Improve each shining Hour, And gather Honey all the day From every opening Flower! How skilfully she builds her Cell! How neat she spreads the Wax! And labours hard to store it well With the sweet Food she makes. In Works of Labour or of Skill I would be […]...
28. Tic Douloureux The trigger is sensation. The violin’s a dirty animal. I want you to take away the suddenness. Pain up the side of my head. I’ll have my teeth extracted one by one. See if it makes any difference. Rehearse for the real. Be either present or absent. I’ll let my fingers drum ebony. Thinking makes […]...
29. Black Morning Lovesong In love’s dances, in love’s dances One retreats and one advances, One grows warmer and one colder, One more hesitant, one bolder. One gives what the other needed Once, or will need, now unheeded. One is clenched, compact, ingrowing While the other’s melting, flowing. One is smiling and concealing While the other’s asking kneeling. One […]...
30. Hymn 33 Absurdity of infidelity. 1 Cor. 1:26-31. Shall atheists dare insult the cross Of our Redeemer, God? Shall infidels reproach his laws, Or trample on his blood? What if he choose mysterious ways To cleanse us from our faults? May not the works of sovereign grace Transcend our feeble thoughts? What if his gospel bids us […]...
31. Bokardo Well, Bokardo, here we are; Make yourself at home. Look around-you haven’t far To look-and why be dumb? Not the place that used to be, Not so many things to see; But there’s room for you and me. And you-you’ve come. Talk a little; or, if not, Show me with a sign Why it was […]...
32. Ode To William H. Channing Though loth to grieve The evil time’s sole patriot, I cannot leave My buried thought For the priest’s cant, Or statesman’s rant. If I refuse My study for their politique, Which at the best is trick, The angry muse Puts confusion in my brain. But who is he that prates Of the culture of mankind, […]...
33. Mutability We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly! – yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever: Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings […]...
34. THE SWISS ALPS YESTERDAY brown was still thy head, as the locks Of my loved one, Whose sweet image so dear silently beckons afar. Silver-grey is the early snow to-day on thy summit, Through the tempestuous night streaming fast over Thy brow. Youth, alas, throughout life as closely to age is united As, in some changeable dream, yesterday […]...
35. Reproach Had I but known yesterday, Helen, you could discharge the ache Out of the cloud; Had I known yesterday you could take The turgid electric ache away, Drink it up with your proud White body, as lovely white lightning Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth, I might have hated you, Helen. But […]...
36. Scenic Route For Lucy, who called them “ghost houses.” Someone was always leaving And never coming back. The wooden houses wait like old wives Along this road; they are everywhere, Abandoned, leaning, turning gray. Someone always traded The lonely beauty Of hemlock and stony lakeshore For survival, packed up his life And drove off to the city. […]...
37. That Day This is the desk I sit at And this is the desk where I love you too much And this is the typewriter that sits before me Where yesterday only your body sat before me With its shoulders gathered in like a Greek chorus, With its tongue like a king making up rules as he […]...
38. Dulcis Memoria Long, long ago I heard a little song, (Ah, was it long ago, or yesterday?) So lowly, slowly wound the tune along, That far into my heart it found the way: A melody consoling and endearing; And still, in silent hours, I’m often hearing The small, sweet song that does not die away. Long, long […]...
39. Equanimity october stops the pretence That somehow summer Should still be loitering around It walks through the garden Hanging the spiders up Between fences and flowers It throws rather more dew On the ground than is Good for the shoes and then Has the nerve to let on Frost is sniffing its way Southwards – some […]...
40. A Letter I have been wondering What you are thinking about, and by now suppose It is certainly not me. But the crocus is up, and the lark, and the blundering Blood knows what it knows. It talks to itself all night, like a sliding moonlit sea. Of course, it is talking of you. At dawn, where […]...