Drama's Vitallest Expression is the Common Day

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1. Lines in Defence of the Stage Good people of high and low degree, I pray ye all be advised by me, And don’t believe what the clergy doth say, That by going to the theatre you will be led astray. No, in the theatre we see vice punished and virtue rewarded, The villain either hanged or shot, and his career retarded; […]...
2. They All Want to Play Hamlet THEY all want to play Hamlet. They have not exactly seen their fathers killed Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill, Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart, Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders, Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers-O flowers, flowers […]...
3. The Soul's Expression WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right That music of my nature, day and night With dream and thought and feeling interwound And inly answering all the senses round With octaves of a mystic depth and height Which step out grandly to the infinite From the dark edges of […]...
4. No man saw awe, nor to his house No man saw awe, nor to his house Admitted he a man Though by his awful residence Has human nature been. Not deeming of his dread abode Till laboring to flee A grasp on comprehension laid Detained vitality. Returning is a different route The Spirit could not show For breathing is the only work To […]...
5. The Romantic Age This one is entering her teens, Ripe for sentimental scenes, Has picked a gangling unripe male, Sees herself in bridal veil, Presses lips and tosses head, Declares she’s not too young to wed, Informs you pertly you forget Romeo and Juliet. Do not argue, do not shout; Remind her how that one turned out....
6. An Address to Shakespeare Immortal! William Shakespeare, there’s none can you excel, You have drawn out your characters remarkably well, Which is delightful for to see enacted upon the stage For instance, the love-sick Romeo, or Othello, in a rage; His writings are a treasure, which the world cannot repay, He was the greatest poet of the past or […]...
7. Weather Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see, And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth, With a record of unreason seldome paralleled on earth. While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent […]...
8. Common Cold Go hang yourself, you old M. D.! You shall not sneer at me. Pick up your hat and stethoscope, Go wash your mouth with laundry soap; I contemplate a joy exquisite I’m not paying you for your visit. I did not call you to be told My malady is a common cold. By pounding brow […]...
9. Juliet How did the party go in Portman Square? I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there. And how did Lady Gaster’s party go? Juliet was next me and I do not know....
10. The Summer Rain My books I’d fain cast off, I cannot read, ‘Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, And will not mind to hit their proper targe. Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too, Our Shakespeare’s life were rich to live again, What Plutarch read, that […]...
11. Alix THE MARE Alix breaks the world’s trotting record one day. I see her heels flash down the dust of an Illinois race track on a summer afternoon. I see the timekeepers put their heads together over stopwatches, and call to the grand stand a split second is clipped off the old world’s record and a […]...
12. It would never be Common more I said It would never be Common more I said Difference had begun Many a bitterness had been But that old sort was done Or if it sometime showed as ’twill Upon the Downiest Morn Such bliss had I for all the years ‘Twould give an Easier pain I’d so much joy I told it Red Upon […]...
13. As if I asked a common Alms As if I asked a common Alms, And in my wondering hand A Stranger pressed a Kingdom, And I, bewildered, stand As if I asked the Orient Had it for me a Morn And it should lift its purple Dikes, And shatter me with Dawn!...
14. Queen Elizabeth Speaks My hands were stained with blood, my heart was Proud and cold, My soul is black with shame. . . but I gave Shakespeare gold. So after aeons of flame, I may, by grace of God, Rise up to kiss the dust that Shakespeare’s feet have trod....
15. The Bustle in a House The Bustle in a House The Morning after Death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon Earth The Sweeping up the Heart And putting Love away We shall not want to use again Until Eternity....
16. Ballade of Dead Actors Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed For laughing worlds to see and know? Othello’s wrath and Juliet’s woe? Sir Peter’s whims and Timon’s gall? And Millamant and Romeo? Into the night go one and all. Where are the braveries, fresh or […]...
17. The Argument Said Jock McBrown to Tam McSmith, “A little bet I’m game to take on, That I can scotch this Shakespeare myth And prove Will just a stoodge for Bacon.” Said Tam McSmith to Jock McBrown, “Ye gyke, I canna let ye rave on. See here, I put a shilling down: My betting’s on the Bard […]...
18. The God Of Common-Sense My Daddy used to wallop me for every small offense: “Its takes a hair-brush back,” said he, “to teach kids common-sense.” And still to-day I scarce can look a hair-brush in the face. Without I want in sympathy to pat a tender place. For Dad declared with unction: “Spare the brush and spoil the brat.” […]...
19. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
20. Common Things I like to hear of wealth and gold, And El Doradoes in their glory; I like for silks and satins bold To sweep and rustle through a story. The nightingale is sweet of song; The rare exotic smells divinely; And knightly men who stride along, The role heroic carry finely. But then, upon the other […]...
21. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
22. To a Common Prostitute BE composed-be at ease with me-I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature; Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you; Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you. My girl, I appoint with […]...
23. The Wild Common The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping, Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame; Above them, exultant, the peewits are sweeping: They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim. Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick. Are they asleep? […]...
24. An Almost Made Up Poem I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny Blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny They are small, and the fountain is in France Where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. You used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper […]...
25. Uncommon common sense The other day I listened to a man on the radio Who made uncommon common sense, ‘specially since It was an interview on ABC’s noon talk-back show. He was a Professor, of what I hadn’t heard, But for once the words were plain and clear – the host, Bless the dear, didn’t interfere or ask […]...
26. The shakes now pay attention (said the teacher) And look up here The children looked up This is william shakespeare Four centuries up On a pedestal Was shakespeare’s head He was what we call A great man The children got sore necks Looking up And some began to look down No no You mustn’t look down (said […]...
27. My Cross I wrote a poem to the moon But no one noticed it; Although I hoped that late or soon Someone would praise a bit Its purity and grace forlone, Its beauty tulip-cool… But as my poem died still-born, I felt a fool. I wrote a verse of vulgar trend Spiced with an oath or two; […]...
28. Fabien Dei Franchi (To my Friend Henry Irving) The silent room, the heavy creeping shade, The dead that travel fast, the opening door, The murdered brother rising through the floor, The ghost’s white fingers on thy shoulders laid, And then the lonely duel in the glade, The broken swords, the stifled scream, the gore, Thy grand revengeful eyes […]...
29. Hannah Armstrong I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake To discharge my sick boy from the army; But maybe he couldn’t read it. Then I went to town and had James Garber, Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter. But maybe that was lost in the mails. So I traveled all the way […]...
30. On The Sea-Shore, Smell Of Iodine On the sea-shore, smell of iodine, And square as in Sicily, and dancing. An intellectual that came from the common people, Preparing himself to be Rosencrantz. He decides to serve Claudius and therefore Spy on Prince Hamlet from the fountain. All over the world – the prison. At the world’s End a certain John plays […]...
31. Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote Her Name One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. “Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay, A mortal thing so to immortalize; For I myself shall like […]...
32. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
33. A Holiday The Wife The house is like a garden, The children are the flowers, The gardener should come methinks And walk among his bowers, Oh! lock the door on worry And shut your cares away, Not time of year, but love and cheer, Will make a holiday. The Husband Impossible! You women do not know The […]...
34. The Craftsman Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid, He to the overbearing Boanerges Jonson, uttered (if half of it were liquor, Blessed be the vintage!) Saying how, at an alehouse under Cotswold, He had made sure of his very Cleopatra, Drunk with enormous, salvation-con temning Love for a tinker. How, while he hid from Sir Thomas’s […]...
35. Golden Days Another day of toil and strife, Another page so white, Within that fateful Log of Life That I and all must write; Another page without a stain To make of as I may, That done, I shall not see again Until the Judgment Day. Ah, could I, could I backward turn The pages of that […]...
36. Shakespeare Would that in body and spirit Shakespeare came Visible emperor of the deeds of Time, With Justice still the genius of his rhyme, Giving each man his due, each passion grace, Impartial as the rain from Heaven’s face Or sunshine from the heaven-enthroned sun. Sweet Swan of Avon, come to us again. Teach us to […]...
37. My Masterpiece It’s slim and trim and bound in blue; Its leaves are crisp and edged with gold; Its words are simple, stalwart too; Its thoughts are tender, wise and bold. Its pages scintillate with wit; Its pathos clutches at my throat: Oh, how I love each line of it! That Little Book I Never Wrote. In […]...
38. Memorial To D. C (Vassar College, 1918) O, loveliest throat of all sweet throats, Where now no more the music is, With hands that wrote you little notes I write you little elegies!...
39. Before This Little Gift Was Come BEFORE this little gift was come The little owner had made haste for home; And from the door of where the eternal dwell, Looked back on human things and smiled farewell. O may this grief remain the only one! O may our house be still a garrison Of smiling children, and for evermore The tune […]...
40. 'Tis easier to pity those when dead ‘Tis easier to pity those when dead That which pity previous Would have saved A Tragedy enacted Secures Applause That Tragedy enacting Too seldom does....