Epic

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1. The Epic Stars The heroic stars spending themselves, Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle, They must burn out at length like used candles; And Mother Night will weep in her triumph, taking home her heroes. There is the stuff for an epic poem This magnificent raid at the heart of darkness, this lost battle […]...
2. Light Is More Important Than The Lantern Light is more important than the lantern, The poem more important than the notebook, And the kiss more important than the lips. My letters to you Are greater and more important than both of us. The are the only documents Where people will discover Your beauty And my madness....
3. Conceit It is conceit that kills us And makes us cowards instead of gods. Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that thou art mortal! We have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-important, fatally entangled in the Laocoцn coils of our conceit. Now we have to admit we can’t know ourselves, we can only know about […]...
4. To lose one's faith surpass To lose one’s faith surpass The loss of an Estate Because Estates can be Replenished faith cannot Inherited with Life Belief but once can be Annihilate a single clause And Being’s Beggary...
5. What Then? His chosen comrades thought at school He must grow a famous man; He thought the same and lived by rule, All his twenties crammed with toil; ‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘What then?’ Everything he wrote was read, After certain years he won Sufficient money for his need, Friends that have been friends indeed; ‘What […]...
6. Pragmatic When young I was an Atheist, Yea, pompous as a pigeon No opportunity I missed To satirize religion. I sneered at Scripture, scoffed at Faith, I blasphemed at believers: Said I: “There’s nothing after Death, Your priests are just deceivers.” In middle age I was not so Contemptuous and caustic. Thought I: “There’s much I […]...
7. By A Swimming Pool Outside Syracusa All afternoon I have been struggling To communicate in Italian With Roberto and Giuseppe, who have begun To resemble the two male characters In my Italian for Beginners, The ones who are always shopping Or inquiring about the times of trains, And now I can hardly speak or write English. I have made important pronouncements […]...
8. In Memory of Anyone Unknown to Me At this particular time I have no one Particular person to grieve for, though there must Be many, many unknown ones going to dust Slowly, not remembered for what they have done Or left undone. For these, then, I will grieve Being impartial, unable to deceive. How they lived, or died, is quite unknown, And, […]...
9. On the desert On the desert A silence from the moon’s deepest valley. Fire rays fall athwart the robes Of hooded men, squat and dumb. Before them, a woman Moves to the blowing of shrill whistles And distant thunder of drums, While mystic things, sinuous, dull with terrible colour, Sleepily fondle her body Or move at her will, […]...
10. I Go Back To The House For A Book I turn around on the gravel And go back to the house for a book, Something to read at the doctor’s office, And while I am inside, running the finger Of inquisition along a shelf, Another me that did not bother To go back to the house for a book Heads out on his own, […]...
11. EPITAPH As a boy, reserved and naughty; As a youth, a coxcomb and haughty; As a man, for action inclined; As a greybeard, fickle in mind. Upon thy grave will people read: This was a very man, indeed! 1815.*...
12. POPPIES ON LUDLOW CASTLE THROUGH halls of vanished pleasure, And hold of vanished power, And crypt of faith forgotten, A came to Ludlow tower. A-top of arch and stairway, Of crypt and donjan cell, Of council hall, and chamber, Of wall, and ditch, and well, High over grated turrets Where clinging ivies run, A thousand scarlet poppies Enticed the […]...
13. Soliloquy in Circles Being a father Is quite a bother. You are as free as air With time to spare, You’re a fiscal rocket With change in your pocket, And then one morn A child is born. Your life has been runcible, Irresponsible, Like an arrow or javelin You’ve been constantly travelin’. But mostly, I daresay, Without a […]...
14. Slumber Song Some day, if I should ever lose you, Will you be able then to go to sleep Without me softly whispering above you Like night air stirring in the linden tree? Without my waking here and watching And saying words as tender as eyelids That come to rest weightlessly upon your breast, Upon your sleeping […]...
15. Telegram I SAW a telegram handed a two hundred pound man at a desk. And the little scrap of paper charged the air like a set of crystals in a chemist’s tube to a whispering pinch of salt. Cross my heart, the two hundred pound man had just cracked a joke about a new hat he […]...
16. Albert and the 'Eadsman On young Albert Ramsbottom’s birthday His parents asked what he’d like most; He said to see t’ Tower of London And gaze upon Anne Boleyn’s ghost. They thowt this request were unusual And at first to refuse were inclined, ‘Til Pa said a trip t’ metrollopse Might broaden the little lad’s mind. They took charrybank […]...
17. A Ritual To Read To Each Other If you don’t know the kind of person I am And I don’t know the kind of person you are A pattern that others made may prevail in the world And following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, A shrug that lets […]...
18. What the Bee Is To the Floweret What the bee is to the floweret, When he looks for honey-dew, Through the leaves that close embower it, That, my love, I’ll be to you. She. What the bank, with verdure glowing, Is to waves that wander near, Whispering kisses, while they’re going, That I’ll be to you, my dear. She. But they say, […]...
19. Crazy Jane And Jack The Journeyman I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone, For love is but a skein unwound Between the dark and dawn. A lonely ghost the ghost is That to God shall come; I – love’s skein upon the ground, My body […]...
20. Manufactured Gods THEY put up big wooden gods. Then they burned the big wooden gods And put up brass gods and Changing their minds suddenly Knocked down the brass gods and put up A doughface god with gold earrings. The poor mutts, the pathetic slant heads, They didn’t know a little tin god Is as good as […]...
21. Man in a Window I don’t know man trust is a precious thing A kind of humility Offer it to a snake and get repaid with humiliation Luckily friends rally to my spiritual defense I think they’re reminding me I mean it’s important to me it’s Important to me so I leave my fate to fate and come back […]...
22. Four-Feet “THE WOMAN IN HIS LIFE” I have done mostly what most men do, And pushed it out of my mind; But I can’t forget, if I wanted to, Four-Feet trotting behind. Day after day, the whole day through Wherever my road inclined Four-feet said, “I am coming with you!” And trotted along behind. Now I […]...
23. Poem (Faithful to your commands, o consciousness) Poem Faithful to your commands, o consciousness, o Beating wings, I studied The roses and the muses of reality, The deceptions and the deceptive elation of the redness of the growing morning, And all the greened and thomed variety of the vines of error, which begin by promising Everything and more than everything, and then […]...
24. These Things these things that we support most well Have nothing to do with up, And we do with them Out of boredom or fear or money Or cracked intelligence; Our circle and our candle of light Being small, So small we cannot bear it, We heave out with Idea And lose the Center: All wax without […]...
25. My Vineyard To me at night the stars are vocal. They say: ‘Your planet’s oh so local! A speck of dust in heaven’s ceiling; Your faith divine a foolish feeling. What odds if you are chaos hurled, Yours is a silly little world.’ For their derision, haply true, I hate the stars, as wouldn’t you? But whether […]...
26. Poetry I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine. Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things are important not because […]...
27. 298. Prologue spoken at the Theatre of Dumfries NO song nor dance I bring from yon great city, That queens it o’er our taste-the more’s the pity: Tho’ by the bye, abroad why will you roam? Good sense and taste are natives here at home: But not for panegyric I appear, I come to wish you all a good New Year! Old Father […]...
28. Punctilio O LET me be in loving nice, Dainty, fine, and o’er precise, That I may charm my charmàd dear As tho’ I felt a secret fear To lose what never can be lost,- Her faith who still delights me most! So shall I be more than true, Ever in my ageing new. So dull habit […]...
29. TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER This is one spring you will not see. The fifty roses of your spray Smelt soft across that February day Where trees, heavy as only crematoria Can bear, sloped down the fallen banks To where we waited in the chapel, me Clutching Father Kevin’s hand, remembering My given grace and faith renewed In answer to […]...
30. Cuba My eldest sister arrived home that morning In her white muslin evening dress. ‘Who the hell do you think you are Running out to dances in next to nothing? As though we hadn’t enough bother With the world at war, if not at an end.’ My father was pounding the breakfast-table. ‘Those Yankees were touch […]...
31. The Gods of the Copybook Headings 1919 As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place. ‘eering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all. Ne were living in trees when they met us. They showed […]...
32. When Your Pants Begin to Go When you wear a cloudy collar and a shirt that isn’t white, And you cannot sleep for thinking how you’ll reach to-morrow night, You may be a man of sorrows, and on speaking terms with Care, And as yet be unacquainted with the Demon of Despair; For I rather think that nothing heaps the trouble […]...
33. Escape Tell me, Tramp, where I may go To be free from human woe; Say where I may hope to find Ease of heart and peace of mind; Is thee not some isle you know Where I may leave Care behind? So spoke one is sore distress, And I answered softly: “Yes, There’s an isle so […]...
34. From the Hymn of Empedocles IS it so small a thing To have enjoy’d the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done; To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes; That we must feign a bliss Of doubtful future date, And while we dream on this Lose all […]...
35. Public Waste By the Laws of the Family Circle ’tis written in letters of brass That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways of State, Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects wherein he must pass; Because in all matters that deal not with Railways his knowledge is great. Now Exeter Battleby […]...
36. Sonnet Not with vain tears, when we’re beyond the sun, We’ll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run Down some close-covered by-way of the air, Some low sweet alley between wind and wind, Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find […]...
37. If Death be Good (Sappho LXXIV) If death be good, Why do the gods not die? If life be ill, Why do the gods still live? If love be naught, Why do the gods still love? If love be all, What should men do but love?...
38. Wimborne minster though there’s not much faith left And very little snow This scene of wimborne minster Still makes its christmas show The building’s warm proportions Its sense of move-me-not Catches this winter pagan On a most forgiving spot Christmas itself unwinds Back to that moment when Mind first let a light in And darkness cried amen […]...
39. Me Imperturbe ME imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, Master of all, or mistress of all-aplomb in the midst of irrational things, Imbued as they-passive, receptive, silent as they, Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought; Me private, or public, or menial, or solitary-all these subordinate, (I am eternally equal with the […]...
40. Out of Sight They held a polo meeting at a little country town, And all the local sportsmen came to win themselves renown. There came two strangers with a horse, and I am much afraid They both belonged to what is called “the take-you-down brigade”. They said their horse could jump like fun, and asked an amateur To […]...