The Poets

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1. The Poets Of The Tomb The world has had enough of bards who wish that they were dead, ‘Tis time the people passed a law to knock ’em on the head, For ‘twould be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave Those bards of ‘tears’ and ‘vanished hopes’, those poets of the grave. They say that life’s […]...
2. Old Poets (For Robert Cortez Holliday) If I should live in a forest And sleep underneath a tree, No grove of impudent saplings Would make a home for me. I’d go where the old oaks gather, Serene and good and strong, And they would not sigh and tremble And vex me with a song. The pleasantest sort […]...
3. The Poets light but Lamps The Poets light but Lamps Themselves go out The Wicks they stimulate If vital Light Inhere as do the Suns Each Age a Lens Disseminating their Circumference...
4. The Martyr Poets did not tell The Martyr Poets did not tell But wrought their Pang in syllable That when their mortal name be numb Their mortal fate encourage Some The Martyr Painters never spoke Bequeathing rather to their Work That when their conscious fingers cease Some seek in Art the Art of Peace...
5. Lately our poets Lately our poets loiter’d in green lanes, Content to catch the ballads of the plains; I fancied I had strength enough to climb A loftier station at no distant time, And might securely from intrusion doze Upon the flowers thro’ which Ilissus flows. In those pale olive grounds all voices cease, And from afar dust […]...
6. Poets to Come POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for; But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! Arouse-for you must justify me-you must answer. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance […]...
7. Besides the Autumn poets sing Besides the Autumn poets sing A few prosaic days A little this side of the snow And that side of the Haze A few incisive Mornings A few Ascetic Eves Gone Mr. Bryant’s “Golden Rod” And Mr. Thomson’s “sheaves.” Still, is the bustle in the Brook Sealed are the spicy valves Mesmeric fingers softly touch […]...
8. To Certain Poets Now is the rhymer’s honest trade A thing for scornful laughter made. The merchant’s sneer, the clerk’s disdain, These are the burden of our pain. Because of you did this befall, You brought this shame upon us all. You little poets mincing there With women’s hearts and women’s hair! How sick Dan Chaucer’s ghost must […]...
9. The Song Of The Pacifist What do they matter, our headlong hates, when we take the toll of our Dead? Think ye our glory and gain will pay for the torrent of blood we have shed? By the cheers of our Victory will the heart of the mother be comforted? If by the Victory all we mean is a broken […]...
10. Croquis The beach was crowded. Pausing now and then, He groped and fiddled doggedly along, His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throng The stony peevishness of sightless men. He seemed scarce older than his clothes. Again, Grotesquing thinly many an old sweet song, So cracked his fiddle, his hand so frail and wrong, You hardly […]...
11. Virginity My mother she had children five and four are dead and gone; While I, least worthy to survive, persist in living on. She looks at me, I must confess, sometimes with spite and bitterness. My mother is three-score and ten, while I am forty-three, You don’t know how it hurts me when we go somewhere […]...
12. Lover's Gifts LVIII: Things Throng and Laugh Things throng and laugh loud in the sky; the sands and dust dance And whirl like children. Man’s mind is aroused by their shouts; his Thoughts long to be the playmates of things. Our dreams, drifting in the stream of the vague, stretch their Arms to clutch the earth, – their efforts stiffen into bricks […]...
13. The Line-Gang Here come the line-gang pioneering by, They throw a forest down less cut than broken. They plant dead trees for living, and the dead They string together with a living thread. They string an instrument against the sky Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken Will run as hushed as when they were a thought […]...
14. In Memoriam: Four Poets 1 Searock his tower above the sea, Searock he built, not ivory. Searock as well his haunted art Who gave to plunging hawks his hearts. 2 He loved to stand upon his head To demonstrate he was not dead. Ah, if his poems misbehave ‘Tis only to defy the grave. 3 This exquisite patrician bird […]...
15. Two Sonnets I SAINTS have adored the lofty soul of you. Poets have whitened at your high renown. We stand among the many millions who Do hourly wait to pass your pathway down. You, so familiar, once were strange: we tried To live as of your presence unaware. But now in every road on every side We […]...
16. London Poets (In Memoriam.) They trod the streets and squares where now I tread, With weary hearts, a little while ago; When, thin and grey, the melancholy snow Clung to the leafless branches overhead; Or when the smoke-veiled sky grew stormy-red In autumn; with a re-arisen woe Wrestled, what time the passionate spring winds blow; And paced […]...
17. In the Mile End Road How like her! But ’tis she herself, Comes up the crowded street, How little did I think, the morn, My only love to meet! Whose else that motion and that mien? Whose else that airy tread? For one strange moment I forgot My only love was dead....
18. Such, Such Is Death Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat: Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean, A merciful putting away of what has been. And this we know: Death is not Life, effete, Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen So marvellous things know well the end not yet. Victor and vanquished are […]...
19. Straw in the Street Straw in the street where I pass to-day Dulls the sound of the wheels and feet. ‘Tis for a failing life they lay Straw in the street. Here, where the pulses of London beat, Someone strives with the Presence grey; Ah, is it victory or defeat? The hurrying people go their way, Pause and jostle […]...
20. The Apartment House Severe against the pleasant arc of sky The great stone box is cruelly displayed. The street becomes more dreary from its shade, And vagrant breezes touch its walls and die. Here sullen convicts in their chains might lie, Or slaves toil dumbly at some dreary trade. How worse than folly is their labor made Who […]...
21. Cities Can we believe by an effort Comfort our hearts: It is not waste all this, Not placed here in disgust, Street after street, Each patterned alike, No grace to lighten A single house of the hundred Crowded into one garden-space. Crowded can we believe, Not in utter disgust, In ironical play But the maker of […]...
22. Fata Morgana O sweet illusions of song That tempt me everywhere, In the lonely fields, and the throng Of the crowded thoroughfare! I approach and ye vanish away, I grasp you, and ye are gone; But ever by night and by day, The melody soundeth on. As the weary traveller sees In desert or prairie vast, Blue […]...
23. Awakening THE LIGHTS shone down the street In the long blue close of day: A boy’s heart beat sweet, sweet, As it flowered in its dreamy clay. Beyond the dazzling throng And above the towers of men The stars made him long, long, To return to their light again. They lit the wondrous years And his […]...
24. Madrigal (To Miss May Forshall.) HE shouts amain, he shouts again, (Her brother, fierce, as bluff King Hal), “I tell you flat, I shall do that!” She softly whispers ” ‘May’ for ‘shall’!” He wistful sighed one eventide (Her friend, that made this Madrigal), “And shall I kiss you, pretty Miss!” Smiling she answered ” ‘May’ […]...
25. ANOTHER Go! obedient to my call, Turn to profit thy young days, Wiser make betimes thy breast In Fate’s balance as it sways, Seldom is the cock at rest; Thou must either mount, or fall, Thou must either rule and win, Or submissively give in, Triumph, or else yield to clamour: Be the anvil or the […]...
26. Memorial Day For The War Dead Memorial day for the war dead. Add now The grief of all your losses to their grief, Even of a woman that has left you. Mix Sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history, Which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning On one day for easy, convenient memory. Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread, In sweet milk […]...
27. May and the Poets There is May in books forever; May will part from Spenser never; May’s in Milton, May’s in Prior, May’s in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer; May’s in all the Italian books: She has old and modern nooks, Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves, In happy places they call shelves, And will rise and dress your rooms […]...
28. Poets Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells That the wind sways above a ruined shrine. Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine. Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod. They shall not live who have […]...
29. Ah, Necromancy Sweet! Ah, Necromancy Sweet! Ah, Wizard erudite! Teach me the skill, That I instil the pain Surgeons assuage in vain, Nor Herb of all the plain Can Heal!...
30. The March Of The Dead The cruel war was over oh, the triumph was so sweet! We watched the troops returning, through our tears; There was triumph, triumph, triumph down the scarlet glittering street, And you scarce could hear the music for the cheers. And you scarce could see the house-tops for the flags that flew between; The bells were […]...
31. To the Etruscan Poets Dream fluently, still brothers, who when young Took with your mother’s milk the mother tongue, In which pure matrix, joining world and mind, You strove to leave some line of verse behind Like still fresh tracks across a field of snow, Not reckoning that all could melt and go....
32. Finis Now it’s over, and now it’s done; Why does everything look the same? Just as bright, the unheeding sun, Can’t it see that the parting came? People hurry and work and swear, Laugh and grumble and die and wed, Ponder what they will eat and wear, Don’t they know that our love is dead? Just […]...
33. Lines On Reading Too Many Poets Roses, rooted warm in earth, Bud in rhyme, another age; Lilies know a ghostly birth Strewn along a patterned page; Golden lad and chimbley sweep Die; and so their song shall keep. Wind that in Arcadia starts In and out a couplet plays; And the drums of bitter hearts Beat the measure of a phrase. […]...
34. My Favoured Fare Some poets sing of scenery; Some to fair maids make sonnets sweet. A fig for love and greenery, Be mine a song of things to eat. Let brother bards divinely dream, I’m just plain human, as you see; And choose to carol such a theme As ham and eggs and tea. Just two fried eggs […]...
35. In a Disused Graveyard The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still, But never anymore the dead. The verses in it say and say: “The ones who living come today To read the stones and go away Tomorrow dead will come to stay.” So sure of death the […]...
36. To A Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators Of His And Mine You say, as I have often given tongue In praise of what another’s said or sung, ‘Twere politic to do the like by these; But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?...
37. The Heroes BY many a dream of God and man my thoughts in shining flocks were led: But as I went through Patrick Street the hopes and prophecies were dead. The hopes and prophecies were dead: they could not blossom where the feet Walked amid rottenness, or where the brawling shouters stamped the street. Where was the […]...
38. Too scanty 'twas to die for you Too scanty ’twas to die for you, The merest Greek could that. The living, Sweet, is costlier I offer even that The Dying, is a trifle, past, But living, this include The dying multifold without The Respite to be dead....
39. 'Tis so much joy! 'Tis so much joy! ‘Tis so much joy! ‘Tis so much joy! If I should fail, what poverty! And yet, as poor as I, Have ventured all upon a throw! Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so This side the Victory! Life is but Life! And Death, but Death! Bliss is, but Bliss, and Breath but Breath! And if indeed I […]...
40. Someone's Mother Someone’s Mother trails the street Wrapt in rotted rags; Broken slippers on her feet Drearily she drags; Drifting in the bitter night, Gnawing gutter bread, With a face of tallow white, Listless as the dead. Someone’s Mother in the dim Of the grey church wall Hears within a Christmas hymn, One she can recall From […]...