A New Book of Verse
Begun by Donald E. Stanford (1913–1998) and John Fraser (1928– )
Developed and enlarged for the Web by John Fraser.
For background and editorial principles, see Critical Preface.
Table of Contents
Links to on-line texts of the poems are denoted by numerals within square brackets, as in [1]. A number of the texts are in Voices. With a few links it may be necessary to search and scroll. The quest for texts and permissions continues.
The word NEW indicates additions after 2008.
Geoffrey Chaucer (ca 1343–1400)
Your eyen two will slee me sodenly [1]
To Rosemounde (“Madame, ye been of alle beautee shrine”) [1]
Hyd, Absalon, thy gilte tresses clere (Balade) [1]
Truth (“Flee fro the prees and dwelle with soothfastnesse”) [1]
Gentilesse (“The firste fader and findere of gentilesse,”) [1]
Robert Henryson (1424?–1506?) - Note
The Complaint of Cresseid (“O! sop of sorrow, sonkin into cair.”) [1]
François Villon (1431–?)
Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis/ Ballad of Ladies of Times Past (“Dictes-moy où, n'en quel pays”/ “Tell me where, in what land”) [French and English] [English]
Freres humains, qui après nous vivez (“O brother men, who live on after us”) [French] [English]
Rondeau: Mort, j’appelle de ta rigueur (“Death, I appeal against your harshness”) [French] [English]
Les Regrets de la Belle Héaulmiere/ The Lament of the Once Beautiful Armouress (“Advis m’est que j’oy regreter”/ “Now I think I hear the regrets”) [French and English]
Ballade: les contradits de Franc Gontier/ Ballade: the Reply to Franc Gontier (“Sur mol duvet assis, un gras chanoine,”/ “A plump cannon lounging on an eiderdown.”) [French] [English]
William Dunbar (ca 1460–ca 1525)
Lament for the Makaris (“I that in heill was and gladness”) [1]
Done is a Battle (“Done is a battle on the dragon black”) [1]
Sweit rois of vertew and of gentilnes [1]
William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy (c.1455–1518?
The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy (“Schir Johine the Ros, ane thing thair is compiled”) NEW
Thomas More (1478–1535)—Note NEW
A Lamentation of Queen Elizabeth (“O ye that put your trust and confidence”) [1]
Anonymous - Note
Westron wynd, when wyll thou blow [1]
Whanne mine eyen misten [1]
I sing of a maiden [1]
Of all wemen that ever were borne [1]
In a valey of this restles mynde [1]
Thomas Wyatt (ca. 1503–1542)
They flee from me, that sometime did me seek [1]
Tagus, farewell, that westward with thy streams [1]
Is it possible? [1]
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind [1]
Madam withouten many words [1]
My lute, awake, perform the last [1]
Once, as me thought, Fortune me kissed [1]
You that in love find luck and habundance
What means this? When I lie alone [ 1]
Alexander Scott (1520–158?) - Note
Lament of the Maister of Erskyn [1]
Ann Askew (1521–1546) - Note
The Ballad Which Anne Askew Made and Sung When She Was in Newgate (“Like as the armed knight”) [1]
William Forrest (dates?) NEW
A New Ballade of the Marigolde (“The God above, for man’s delight”) [1]
Joachim du Bellay (1522–1560)
D’un Vanneur de Blé aux Vents/ From a Winnower to the Winds (“A vous troupe légère”/ “To you, airy flock,”) [French and English]
Pierre de Ronsard (1524–1585) - Note
Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, par la chandelle (“When you are old, in the evening, by candle-light”) [French and English]
Marie, levez-vous, ma jeune paresseuse (“Marie, get up, my lazy little one”) [French and English]
Chanson/Song (“Douce Maistresse touche”/ “Sweet Mistress, touch”) [French] [English]
Ces longues nuits d’hiver, où la Lune ocieuse (“On these long winter nights when the lazy moon”) [French and English]
D’une Courtizanne à Venus (“Si je puis ma jeunesse folle”) [French] [English]
Ah longues nuits d’hiver, de ma vie bourrelles/ O long winter nights, torment of my existence [French] [English]
George Gascoigne (ca. 1528–1577
The Lullaby of a Lover (“Sing lullaby, as women do”) [1]
Gascoigne’s Woodmanship (“My worthy Lord, I pray you wonder not”) [1]
Elizabeth Tudor (1533–1603)
On Monsieur’s Departure (“I grieve; and dare not show my discontent!”) [1]
Barnabe Googe (1540–1594)
Give money me, take friendship whoso list [1]
O raging seas and mighty Neptune’s reign
Alexander Montgomerie (b. ca 1543–1558; d. 1598) NEW
The Night is Neir Gone (“Hay! Now the day dawis”) [1]
The Secreit Prais of Love(“As everie object to the outward ee”) [1]
A Godly Prayer (“Peccavi Pater, Miserere mei.”) [1]
John Stewart (ca.1545–ca. 1605) NEW
To the Honour of the Ladyis, and the Fortification of their Fame (“Just to declair the hie Magnificence”) [1]
Walter Raleigh (ca. 1552–1618) - Note
The Lie (“Go, soul, the body’s guest”) [1]
What is our life? A play of passion [1]
Even such is time, that takes in trust [1]
The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage (“Give me my scallop shell of quiet”) [1]
Three things there be that prosper up apace [1] [2]
Edmund Spenser (1552–1599)
Epithalamion (“Ye learned sisters, which have oftentimes”) [1]
Philip Sidney (1554–1586)
Leave me, O Love, which reaches but to dust [1]
Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread [1]
Only joy, now here you are [1]
Who hath his fancy pleased [1]
Who is it that this dark night [1]
Fulke Greville (1554–1628)
All my senses, like beacons flame [1]
I with whose colors Myra dressed her head [1]
Down in the depth of mine iniquity [1]
Sion lies waste [1]
The Earth with thunder torn, with fire blasted [1]
In night when colours all to black are cast [1]
Anonymous NEW
Ay Me, Ay Me, I Sigh the Scythe Afield (“Ay me, ay me, I sigh to see the scythe a-field.”) [1] NEW
Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lullaby (“Balow, my Boy, ly still and sleep”) [1] Note
George Peele (ca. 1558–1597)
His golden locks time hath to silver turned [1]
Chidiock Tichborne (ca. 1558–1586) NEW
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares [1]
F.B.P.
Hierusalem, my happie home [1]
Mary Herbert (1561–1621) NEW
Domine probasti: Psalm 139 (“O Lord in me there lieth nought”) [1]
Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)
Care-charmer sleep, son of the sable night [1]
Let others sing of knights and paladins [1]
Mark Boyd (1563–1601)
Fra bank to bank, fra wood to wood I rin [1]
Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
How many paltry, foolish, painted things [1]
Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part [1]
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) NEW
In Summer’s Heat (“In summer’s heat and mid-time of the day”) [1]
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry [1]
That time of year thou may’st in me behold [1]
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear [1]
Let me not to the marriage of true minds [1]
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame [1]
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea [1]
Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth [1]
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun [1]
Roses, their sharp spines being gone [1]
O mistress mine, where are you roaming? [1]
Thomas Nashe (ca. 1567–1601)
Adieu, farewell earth’s bliss [1]
Autumn hath all the summer’s fruitful treasure [1]
Thomas Campion (ca.1567–1619)
Now winter nights enlarge [1]
Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet [1]
When thou must home to shades of underground [1]
Whether men do laugh or weep [1]
Robert Ayton (1570–1638)
I loved thee once, I’ll love no more
Ben Jonson (ca. 1572–1637)
On My First Son (“Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy”) [1]
To Heaven (“Good and great God! Can I not think of thee”) [1]
Let it not your wonder move [1]
Though beauty be the mark of praise [1]
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair [1]
An Ode to Himself (“Where dost thou careless lie”) [1]
My Picture Left in Scotland (“I now think Love is rather deaf than blind”) [1]
“To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name” [1]
A Nymph’s Passion (“I love, and he loves me again,”) [1]
Inviting a Friend to Supper (“Tonight, grave sir, both my poor house, and I”) NEW
Anonymous
An Old Souldier of the Queens (“Of an old Souldier of the Queens”) NEW [1]
Mathurin Regnier (1573–1613)
Abrégé de Confession/ Abridged Confession (“Puisque sept péchés de nos yeux”/ “Since seven sins, from our eyes,”) [French] [English]
Madrigals
Thomas Morley (ca 1557–1602)
No, no, Nigella!
John Mundy (ca 1560–1602)
In midst of woods or pleasant grove
John Dowland (1563–1625)
Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new [1]
Weep ye no more, sad fountains
Come away, come, sweet love [1]
John Danyel (1564–1626)
If I could shut the gate against my thoughts [1]
Thomas Bateson (ca 1570–1630)
I heard a voice and wished for a sigh
Martin Peerson (ca 1571–1650)
The spring of joy is dry [1]
Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625)
The silver swan, who living had no note [1]
John Donne (ca. 1572–1631)
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? [1]
At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow [1]
What if this present were the world’s last night? [1]
Batter my heart, three personed God [1]
A Valediction: of My Name, in the Window (“My name engraved herein”) [1]
The Sun Rising (“Busy old fool, unruly Sun”) [1]
Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward (“Let man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this,”) [1]
Going to Bed (“Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,”)
John Webster (ca.1580–ca.1630)
Hark! Now everything is still [1]
Call for the Robin-redbreast and the Wren [1]
Broadsides
Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song NEW [1]
Whipping Cheare (“Come you fatal Sisters three”) [1] NEW
An Excellent New Medley (“When Philomel begins to sing”) [1] NEW Note
Broadsides
The Maid would give ten Shillings for a Kiss (“You young men all take pitty on me”) NEW [1]
The Souldiers Farewell to his Love ( “Margaret my sweetest, Margaret I must go”) NEW [1]
The Lamentation of a New Married Man (“You Batchelors that brave it”) [1] NEW
Phillida Flouts Me (“Oh! what a plague is Love! How shall I bear it?”) [1] NEW
The Wooing Rogue (“Come live with me and be my Whore”) [1] NEW
Edward Herbert (1583–1640)
Elegy over a Tomb (“Must I then see, alas! Eternal night”) [1]
Théophile de Viau (1590–1626)
Stances/ Stanzas (“Quand tu me vois baiser tes bras,”/ “When you see me kiss your arms,”) [French] [French and English]
Anonymous
Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lamentation [1] NEW
Robert Herrick (1591–1674) - Note
The Vine (“I dreamed this mortal part of mine”) [1]
Corinna’s Going A-Maying (“Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morn”) [1]
Now is the time for mirth [1]
To Anthea, who may command him anything (“Bid me to live, and I will live”) [1]
To Meadows (“Ye have been fresh and green”) [1]
To Daffodils (“Fair Daffodils, we weep to see”) [1]
An Ode for Ben Jonson (“Ah Ben!”) [1]
A Psalme or Hymn to the Graces (“Glory be to the Graces!”) [1]
His Litany to the Holy Spirit (“In the hour of my distress”) [1]
The White Island: or Place of the Blest (“In this world (the Isle of Dreams)”) NEW [1]
Henry King (1592–1669)
The Exequy (“Accept thou Shrine of my dead Saint”) [1]
George Herbert (1591–1674)
Affliction (“When first thou didst entice to thee my heart”) [1]
The Temper (“How should I praise thee, Lord? how should my rhymes”) [1] NEW
Jordan (“Who says that fictions only and false hair”) [1] NEW
Church Monuments (“While that my soul repairs to her devotion”) [1]
Virtue (“Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright”) [1]
Mortification (“How soon doth man decay!”) [1] NEW
The Quip (The merry world did on a day”) [1] NEW
The Flower (“How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean”) [1] NEW
The Forerunners (“The harbingers are come. See, see their mark”) [1] NEW
Discipline (“Throw away thy rod”) [1]
Francis Quarles (1592–1644)
Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? [1]
Are Not My Days Few? (“My glass is half unspent: Forbear to arrest”)
Thomas Carew (1595–1640) NEW
Song: When June is past, the fading rose (“Ask me no more where Jove bestows”) [1]
To a Lady that Desired I Would Love Her (“Now you have freely given me leave to love”) [1]
An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of St. Paul’s, Dr. John Donne (“Can we not force from widow’d poetry”) [1]
Robert Sempill (1595?–1665?) NEW - Note
The Life and Death of the Piper of Kilbarchan (“Kilbarchan now may say, alas!”) [1]
Edmund Waller (1606–1687
Go, Lovely Rose [1]
Thomas Ford (ca. 1607–1648) NEW
There is a Lady sweet and kind [1]
John Milton (1608–1674)
When I consider how my light is spent [1]
To the Lady Margaret Ley (“Daughter to that good Earl, once President”) [1]
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont (“Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter’d saints, whose bones”) [1]
John Suckling (1609–1642) NEW
Why so pale and wan, fond lover? [1]
A Ballad Upon a Wedding (“I tell thee Dick where I have been”) [1]
Anonymous - Note
A Prognostication on Will Laud, Late Archbishop of Canterbury (“My little lord, methinks ’tis strange”) NEW [1]
Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612–1672)
To My Dear and Loving Husband (“If ever two were one, then surely we.”) [1]
Before the Birth of One of Her Children (“All things within this fading world hath end,”) [1]
The Prologue (“To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings”) [1]
Francis Sempill (1616?–1686) NEW - Note
The Blythsome Wedding (“Fy let us all to the Briddel”) [1]
Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) NEW
On the Death of Mr. William Harvey (“It was a dismal, and a fearful night”) [1]
Richard Lovelace ((1618–1658)
To Lucasta, Going to the Wars (“Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind”) [1]
To Althea, from Prison (When Love with unconfined wings”) [1]
La Bella Bona-Roba (“I cannot tell who loves the skeleton”) [1]
Andrew Marvell (ca.1621–1678)
The Garden (“How vainly men themselves amaze”) [1]
To His Coy Mistress (“Had we but world enough, and time”) [1]
The Mower to the Glow-Worms (“Ye living lamps, by whose dear light”) [1]
Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)
The Lamp (“‘Tis dead night round about: Horror doth creep”) [1]
Friends Departed (“They are all gone into the world of light!”) [1]
The Retreat (“Happy those early days, when I”) [1]
To His Books (“Bright books! The perspectives to our weak sights”)
Anonymous
A Satyre entitled the Witch (“Shee with whom troopes of Bustuary slaves”) [1]— Note NEW
Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) - Note
Upon the Theme of Love (“O Love, how thou art tired out with Rhyme!”) [1]
John Bunyan (1628–1688) NEW
My Little Bird (“My little Bird, how canst thou sit”) [1]
Walter Pope (1628–1714) NEW
The Old Man’s Wish (“If I live to be old”) [1]
John Dryden (1631–1700)
Mac Flecknoe (‘All human things are subject to decay’) [1]
To the Memory of Mr. Oldham (“Farewell, too little and too lately known”) [1]
I Feed a Flame Within (“I feed a flame within, which so torments me”)
Song: Can Life Be a Blessing? (“Can life be a blessing”) [1]
A Song to a Fair Young Lady going out of Town in the Spring (“Ask not the cause why sullen Spring”) NEW [1]
Song (“Farewell ungrateful traitor”) NEW
Katherine Philips (1631–1664)
To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship (“I did not live, until this time”) [1]
A Prayer (“Eternal reason, glorious majesty”) [1]
To Mrs. Mary Awbrey (“Soul of my soul, my joy, my crown, my friend,”) [1]
Wiston Vault (“And why this vault and tomb? Alike we must”) [1]
Orinda to Lucasia (“Observe the weary birds, e’er night be done”) [1]
Thomas Traherne (1637–1674)
On News (“News from a foreign country came”) [1]
The Salutation (“These little limbs”) [1]
Andrew Symson (ca. 1638–1712) NEW - Note
The Poor Client’s Complaint (“Colin, by Promise, being oblig’d to pay”) [1]
Edward Taylor (ca.1642–1679)
View all ye eyes above, this night which flings [1]
Oh! thou, my Lord, thou king of Saints, here mak’st [1]
Oh! Good, Good, Good, my Lord. What more Love yet [1]
John Wilmot (1647–1680)
A Song (“Absent from thee I languish still”) [1]
The Maimed Debauchee (“As some brave Admiral, in former war”)
Upon Drinking in a Bowl (“Vulcan, contrive me such a Cup”) [1]
A Song of a Young Lady: To Her Ancient Lover (“Ancient Person, for whom I”) [1]
The Imperfect Enjoyment (“Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,”) [1]
Love and Life (“All my past life is mine no more”) [1]
The Platonic Lady (“I could love thee till I die”) NEW [1]
Song (“Love a woman! You’re an ass”) NEW [1]
Anonymous
A History of Insipids (“Chaste, pious, prudent Charles the Second”) [1]— Note NEW
Thomas d’Urfey? (1653–1723) NEW
The Green-Gowne (“Pan leave Piping, the Gods have done Feasting”) [1]—Note
Anne Finch (1661–1720)
To Death (“O King of terrors, whose unbounded sway”) [1]
A Song on the South Sea (“Ombre and basset laid aside”) [1] NEW
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
A Satirical Elegy (“His Grace! impossible! what, dead?”) [1] NEW
Stella’s Birthday, 1725 (“Ah, when a beauteous nymph decays”) [1]
To Stella, March 13, 1724 (“Tormented with incessant pains,”) [1]
The Progress of Marriage (“Aetatis suae fifty-two”) NEW [1]
The Lady’s Dressing Room (“Five Hours (and who can do it in less?) [1]
Lady Acheson Weary of the Dean (“The Dean would visit Market-hill”) NEW [1]
My Lady’s Lamentation and Complaint against the Dean (“Sure never did man see”) NEW [1]
Broadsides
The Extravagant Drunkard’s Wish (“Had I my wish, I would distend my guts”) [1] NEW
An Epistle from a Half-Pay Officer (“Curse on the star, dear Harry, that betrayed”) [1] NEW
Ambrose Philips (1674–1749) NEW
To Signora Cuzzoni (“Little syren of the stage”)
Elizabeth Thomas (1675–1731)
The Forsaken Wife (“Methinks, ‘tis strange you can’t afford”) [1]
The True Effigies of a Certain Squire [1]
Anonymous
Ignotum per Ignotius, or a Furious Hodge-Podge of Nonsense. A Pindaric (“Or yield or die’s the word, what could he mean”) [1] NEW
John Winstanley (1678?–1750) NEW
Miss Betty’s Singing Bird (“A pretty song, this coming spring”) [1]
John Gay (1685–1732)
The Birth of the Squire (“Ye sylvan Muses, loftier strains recite”) [1]
To a Young Lady with Some Lampreys (“With lovers ’twas of old the fashion”) [1] NEW
Allan Ramsay (1686–1758) NEW - Note
Lucky Spence’s Last Advice (“Three Times the Carline grain’d and rifted”) [1]
Elegy on Maggy Johnston (“Auld Reeky mourn in Sable Hue”) [1]
Ballads
The Bonny Earl of Murray NEW [1]
Bonny Barbara Allan (“It was in and about the Martinmas time”) NEW [1]
O Waly Waly up yon Bank NEW [1]
Johnny Faa, the Gypsie Laddie (“The gypsies came to our good lord’s gate”) [1] NEW
Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
The Rape of the Lock (“What dire offence from amorous causes springs”) [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (“Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued, I said”) [1]
Epistle to Miss Blount, on Her Leaving the Town, after the Coronation (“As some fond virgin, whom her mother’s care”) [1]
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (“What beck’ning ghost, along the moonlight shade”) [1] NEW
Mary Montagu (1689–1762)
A Receipt to Cure the Vapours (“Why will Delia thus retire”) [1]
The Reasons That Induced Dr Swift to Write a Poem Called “The Lady’s Dressing Room” (“The Doctor in a clean, starched band” [1]
Epistle from Mrs. Y[onge] to her Husband (“Think not this Paper comes with vain pretence”) [1]
Saturday: The Small-Pox (“The wretched Flavia on her couch reclined”) [1] NEW
The Lover: a Ballad (“At length, by so much importunity pressed”) [1] NEW
Medley - Note NEW
Do not ask me, charming Phillis, [1] etc.
I’ll sail upon the dog-star
Here are people and sports
Ye beaux of pleasure
What tho’ they call me country lass
The Nurse’s Song
A sour reformation
He who for ever
Northerlies:
Ane Litle Interlude of the Droichs (“Hirry, hary, hobbilschow”) [1] NEW Note
A Brash of Wooing (“In secret Place this hinder Nicht”) [1] NEW Note
Mary Barber (c.1690–1757)
To Mrs. Frances-Arabella Kelly (“Today, as at my glass I stood,”) [1]
Martha Sansom (1690–1736)
Song (“Foolish eyes, thy streams give over,”) [1]
Arabella Moreton (after 1690–before 1741)
The Humble Wish (“I ask not wit, nor beauty do I crave,”) [1]
Elizabeth Tollet (1694–1754)
On a Death’s Head (“On this resemblance, where we find”) [1]
Ballads
Sir Patrick Spence (“The king sits in Dumferling toun”) [1]
Edward (“Why dois your brand sae drap wi’ bluid”) [1]
François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) (1694–1778)
A Madame de Châtelet/To Madame de Châtelet “Si vous voulez que j’aime encore,”/ “If you want me to still love,”) [French and English]
Henrietta Knight (1699–1756) - Note
Written to a Near Neighbour in a Tempestuous Night (“You bid my muse not cease to sing,”) [1]
Mary Jones (d.1778)
An Epistle to Lady Bowyer (“How much of paper’s soiled! What floods of ink!”) [1]
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
A New Prologue; spoken at the Representation of ‘Comus’ (“Ye patriot Crowds, who burn for England’s fame”) [1]
Prologue to ‘A Word to the Wise’ (“This night presents a play, which public rage”) [1]
A Short Song of Congratulation (“Long expected one and twenty”) [1]
An Epitaph on Claudy Phillips, a Musician (“Phillips, whose touch harmonious could remove”) [1]
George Stevens (1710–1784) NEW
Bartleme Fair (“While gentlefolk strut in their silver and satins”) [1]
Thomas Gray (1716–1771) - Note
On Lord Holland’s Seat Near Margate, Kent (“Old, and abandoned by each venal friend,”) [1] [2]
Jean Elliot (1727–1805) NEW
A Lament for Flodden (“I’ve heard them lilting at our ewe-milking”) [1]
Charles Churchill (1731–1764) - Note
The Dedication (“Health to great Gloster—from a man unknown”) [1]
William Cowper (1731–1800) NEW
Sweet Meat has Sour Sauce; or, The Slave-Trader in the Dumps [1]
Epitaph on Dr. Samuel Johnson (“Here Johnson lies—a sage by all allow’d”) [1]
To My Dearest Cousin on her Removal of us from Silver End to Weston (“Who gave me grassy Lawns for miry ways”) [1]
Anna Seward (1742–1805) NEW
An Old Cat’s Dying Soliloquy (“Years saw me still Acasto’s mansion grace”) [1] NEW
Charles Dibdin (1745–1814)
The Lady’s Diary [1]
Charles Morris (1745–1838) NEW
A Town and Country Life Contrasted (“In London I never know what I’d be at”) [1]
Robert Fergusson (1750–1774) NEW
To the Principal and Professors of the University of St Andrews, on their Superb Treat to Dr Samuel Johnson (“St Andrews town may look right gawsy”) [1]
Anonymous,
Hob upon a Holiday (“Hob yawned three times and rubbed his eyes”) [1] NEW
William Blake (1757–1827)
The Tyger (“Tyger, tyger, burning bright”) [1]
London (“I wander through each chartered street”) [1]
Ah, Sunflower (“Ah, Sunflower, weary of time”) [1]
The Sick Rose (“O Rose, thou art sick”)† [1]
William Bond (“I wonder whether the Girls are mad”) NEW [1]
Mary Robinson (1758–1800)
The Camp {“Tents, marquees, and baggage-waggons;”) [1]
Male Fashions for 1799 (“Crops like hedgehogs, high-crown’d hats”) NEW [1]
Robert Burns (1759–1796) - Note
To a Louse (“Ha! Whaur ye gaun, ye crawlin ferlie!”) [1]
Holy Willie’s Prayer (“O Thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell”) [1]
Address to the Devil (“O Thou, whatever title suit thee”) NEW [1]
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose [1]
A Poet’s Welcome to his Love-begotten Daughter (“Thou’s welcome, wean! Mischanter fa’ me”) NEW [1]
McPherson’s Farewell (“Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong”) NEW [1]
Claude de Lisle (1760–1836) NEW
La Marseillaise (“Allons enfants de la patrie”) [French and English]
Richard Milliken (1767–1815) NEW
The Groves of Blarney (“The groves of Blarney they look so charming”) [1]
James Hogg (1770–1835) NEW - Note
Birniebouzle (“Will ye gang wi’ me, lassie”) [1]
Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843)
Mein Eigentum/ My Possession (“In seiner Füller ruhet der Herbsttag nun”/In its fullness the Autumn day rests now) [German] [English]
Dem Sonnengott/ To the Sungod (“Wo bist du? Trunken dämmert die Selle mir”/ “Where are you? Drunken, my soul darkens”) [German] [English]
Der Mensch/ Man (“Kaum sprossten aus den Wassern, o Erde dir”/ “Scarcely, O Earth [had the young peaks] sprouted from the waters”) [German]
Hyperions Schicksalslied/ Hyperion’s Song of Fate (“Ihr wandelt droben im Licht”/ “You walk up there in the light”) [German] [English]
An die Parzen/ To the Fates (“Nur einen sommer gönnt, ihr Gewaltigen!”/ “Grant me a single summer, you mighty ones!”) [German] [English]
Hälfte des Lebens/ Half of Life (“Mit gelben Birnen hanget”/ With yellow pears hangs) [German and English]
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey (“Five years have past; five summers, with the length”) [1]
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal [1]
The Solitary Reaper (“Behold her, single in the field”) NEW [1]
Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg (“When first, descending from the moorlands”) NEW [1]
The Green Linnet (“Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed”) NEW [1]
Anonymous
The Demon Lover (“O where have ye been, my long, long love”) [1]
Lord Randall (“O where hae ye been, Lord Randall, my son?) [1]
The Twa Corbies (“As I was walking all alane,”) [1]
Lamkin (“It’s Lamkin was a mason good”) [1] NEW
Walter Scott (1771–1832)
Proud Maisie (“Proud Maisie is in the wood,”) [1]
Lullaby of an Infant Chief NEW [1]
Samuel Coleridge (1772–1834)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (“It is an ancient Mariner”) [1]
Robert Southey (1774–1843) NEW
The Inchcape Rock (“No stir in the air, no stir in the sea”) [1]
Anonymous - Note
Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye (“While going the road to sweet Athy”) [1]
Walter Landor (1775–1864)
On Seeing a Hair of Lucretia Borgia (“Borgia, thou once were almost too august”) [1]
Past Ruin’d Ilion (“Past ruin’d Ilion Helen lives”) [1]
Everything tells me you are near [1]
Ireland Never Was Contented (“Ireland never was contented.”)
Dirce (“Stand close around, ye Stygian set,”) [1]
Ann Taylor (1782–1866) NEW
The Maniac’s Song (“Bring Me a Garland, Bring Me a Wreath”) [1]
Jane Taylor (1783–1824) NEW
Recreation (“We took our work, and went, you see”) [1]
The Squire’s Pew (“A slanting ray of evening light”) [1]
Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786–1859) - Note
La Jeune Châtelaine/ The Young Chatelaine (“Je vous défend, châtelaine,”/ “I forbid you, Châtelaine,”) [French] [English ]
Les Séparés/ Apart (“N’écris pas. Je suis triste, et je voudrais m’éteindre.”/ Do not write. I am sad, and want my light put out.) [French] [English and French]
Ma Chambre/ My Room (“Ma demeure est haute”/ “My lodging is high up,”) [French] [English and French]
Cantique des Mères/ Canticle of the Mothers (“Reine pieuse au flancs de mère”/ “Pious Queen, with a mother’s breasts”) [English and French]
Un Arc de Triomphe/ A Triumphal Arch (“Tout ce qu’on dit les hirondelles”/ “All that the swallows have said”) [French] [French and English]
Les roses de Saadi/ The Roses of Saadi (“J’ai voulu ce matin te rapporter des roses;”/ This morning I wanted to bring you roses) [French] [English]
George Gordon (1788–1824) NEW
Dear Doctor, I have Read your Play (“Dear Doctor, I have read your play”) [1]
Lines to Mr. Hodgson Written on Board the Lisbon Packet (“Huzza! Hodgson, we are going”) [1]
Don Juan, Canto XI (“When Bishop Berkeley said ‘there was no matter’”) [1]
George Colman (1788–1824) NEW
Don Leon (“Thou ermined judge, pull off that sable cap!”) [1]
Percy Shelley (1792–1822)
Ozymandias (“I met a traveler from an antique land”) [1]
Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819 (“As from an ancestral oak”) [1]
England in 1819 (“An old, mad, blind, despis’d and dying king”) NEW [1]
Ode to the West Wind (“O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being”) NEW [1]
To Jane (“The keen stars were twinkling”) NEW [1]
John Clare (1793–1864) - Note
The Skylark (“The rolls and harrow lie at rest beside”) [1]
The Badger (“When midnight comes a host of dogs and men”) [1]
Song (“I hid my love when young while I”) [1]
How Can I Forget (“The farewell voice of love is never heard again”) [1] NEW
Decay: a Ballad (“O poesy is on the wane”) [1]
I Am (“I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,”) [1]
A Vision (“I lost the love of heaven above;”) [1]
Don Juan: a Poem (“Poets are born”—and so are whores—the trade is”) [1] NEW
William Bryant (1794–1878)
Thanatopsis (“To him who in the love of Nature holds”) [1]
To a Waterfowl (“Whither, midst falling dew”) [1]
John Keats (1795–1821)
To Autumn (“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”) [1]
Ode on a Grecian Urn (“Thou still unravished bride of quietness”) [1]
La Belle Dame sans Merci (“Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight”) [1]
Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) - Note
Ich liebe solche weisse Glieder/ I love such white limbs [1]
Das Sklavenschiff/ The Slave Ship (“Der Superkargo Mynheer van Koek”/ “The supercargo Mynheer van Koek”) [1]
Die Schlesischen Weber/ The Silesian Weavers (“Im düstern Auge keine Träne”/ “In the gloomy eye no tear”) [1]
Der Abgekühlte/ Gone Cold (“Und ist man tot, so muss man lang”/ “And when you’re dead, you have to [lie] long”) German [English]
Frau Sorge/ Mrs. Worry (“In meines Glückes Sonnenglanz”/ “In the sunlit days of my good fortune”) [German] [English]
Vermächtnis/ Last Will and Testament (“Nun mein Leben geht zu Ende,”/ “Now that my life is nearing its end,”) [English]
Ich sah sie lachen, sah sie lacheln,/ I saw them laugh [English]
Gedächtnisfeier/ Anniversary (“Keine Messe wird man singen,”/ “Nobody will sing a mass.”) [English] [German]
Thomas Hood (1799–1845) NEW
Death in the Kitchen (“Trim, thou art right!—’Tis sure that I”) [1]
She is far from the land (“Cables entangling her”) [1] NEW
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Clapham Academy (“Ah me! Those old familiar bounds”) [1] NEW
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) - Note
Attente/Anticipation (“Monte, écureuil, monte au grand chêne”/ “Rise, squirrel, up the great oak, rise”) [French] [English]
Le Manteau Impérial/ The Imperial Cloak (“Oh! Vous dont le travail est joie,”/ “Oh, you whose work is joy,”) [French] [English]
Le Chant de ceux qui s’en vont sur mer/ Song of the Departing Seafarers (“Adieu, patrie!”/ “Homeland, farewell!”)
—Va-t’en, me dit la bise / “Be off!” says the cold north wind [French] [English]
Fuis l’éden des anges déchus (“Flee the Eden of fallen angels;”) [English]
Jolies Femmes: Sonnet pour album/ Pretty Girls: Sonnet for an Album (“On leur fait des sonnets, passable quelquefois;”/ “You write them sonnets (sometimes pretty good);” [French] [English]
“Je suis fait d’ombre et de marbre.” (“I’m made of darkness and of marble.”) [French] [English]
A la France/ To France (“Livre, qu’un vent s’emporte”/ “Wind, carry this book”) [English]
Une Jeune Fille/ A Young Girl (“J’aime. O vents, chassez l’hiver.”/ “I’m in love. O winds, chase away winter.”) [English]
La Rose de l’Infante/ The Infanta’s Rose (“Elle est toute petite; une duègne la garde.”/ “She is quite small and a duenna minds her.”
Winthrop Praed (1802–1839)
A Letter of Advice (“You tell me you’re promised a lover”) [1]
Arrivals at a Watering Place (“I play a spade:—such strange new faces”) NEW [1]
The Belle of the Ball-Room (“Years, years ago—ere yet my dreams”) NEW [1]
Good-Night to the Season (“Good-night to the Season! ‘tis over”) [1]
The Last Quadrille (“Not yet, not yet—it’s hardly four;”) [1]
Helen Sheridan (1807–1867) NEW
The Charming Woman (“So Miss Myrtle is going to marry?”) [1]
Gérard de Nerval (1808–1855)
Politique / Politics (“Dans Sainte-Pélagie”/ “In Sainte-Pélagie prison”) [French and English]
Nobles et Valets/ Noblemen and Lackeys (“Ces nobles d’autrefois dont parlent les romans”/ “Those noblemen of bygone days you read of in romances”) [French] [English]
La Cousine/ The Cousin (“L’hiver a ses plasirs: et souvent, le dimanche” ; “Winter has its pleasures; and often on Sunday” [1] [French]
Fantasie/ Fantasy (“Il est un air pour qui je donnerai” /”There’s a tune for which I’d give”) [English] [French]
Myrtho/ Myrtho (“Je pense à toi, Myrtho, divine enchanteresse”/ “Myrtho, I think of you, O divine enchanteress”)[French] [English]
El Desdichado/ The Wretched One (“Je suis le ténébreux,— le veuf, —l’inconsolé”/ I am the shadowy one—the widower—the unconsoled”) [French and English]
Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
Mariana (“With blackest moss the flower-plots”) [1]
Tithonus (“The woods decay, the woods decay and fall”) [1]
Tears, Idle Tears (“Tears, idle tears”) [1]
Ulysses (“It little profits that an idle king”) [1]
Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) NEW
À Juana/ To Juana (“O ciel! Je vous revois, madame” / “Wonderful! So you’re back, madame”) [French] [English]
À Pépa/ To Pépa (“Pépa, quand la nuit est venue”/ “Pépa, when the night has come”) [French] [English]
À Julie/ To Julie (“On me demande, par les rues,” /”They ask me, in the streets”) [French] [English]
Robert Browning (1812–1889)
A Serenade at the Villa (“That was I, you heard last night”) [1]
The Bishop Orders His Tomb (“Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!”) [1]
May and Death (“I wish that when you died last May”)
Edward Lear (1812–1888)
“How pleasant to know Mr Lear [1]
Mr. and Mrs. Discobbolos (“Mr. and Mrs. Discobbolos”) [1] NEW
Théophile Gautier (1813–1872)
Sur les Lagunes/ On the lagoons (“Tra la, tra la, la, la, la laire”) [French and English]
Carmen (“Carmen est maigre. Un trait de bistre”/ Carmen is thin. A touch of bistre) [French and English]
L’Art (“Oui, l’oeuvre sort plus belle”/ Yes, the work emerges more beautiful) [French and English]
Jones Very (1813–1880)
The Hand and Foot (“The hand and foot that stir not, they shall find”) [1]
The Lost (“The fairest day that ever yet hath shone”) [1]
The Garden (“I saw the spot where out first parents dwelt”)
The Created (“There is naught for thee by thy haste to gain”) [1]
Emily Bronte (1818–1848)
Remembrance (“Cold in the Earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,” [1]
Long neglect has worn away [1]
Arthur Clough (1819–1861)
The Latest Decalogue (“Thou shalt have one God only; who”) [1]
Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) NEW
Battle Hymn of the Republic (“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”) [1]
Herman Melville (1819–1891)
The sighting of Moby Dick, chapter 133 (“Like noiseless nautilus shells, …streaming like pennons”) [1]
Frederick Tuckerman (1821–1873)
The Cricket (“The humming bee purrs softly o’er his flower”) [1]
An upper chamber in a darkened house [1]
Under the mountain, as when first I knew [1]
And change with hurried hand has swept these scenes NEW [1]
And faces, forms and phantoms, numbered not NEW [1]
And me my winter’s task is drawing over NEW [1]
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
Les Petites Vieilles/ The Little Old Ladies (“Dans les plis sinueux des vieilles capitals”/ In the winding folds of old capitals) [French] [English]
Le Jeu/ The Game (“Dans les fauteuils fanés des courtisanes vieilles”/ In the faded armchairs of old courtisans) [French] [French and English]
Le Cygne/ The Swan (“Andromaque, je pense à vous! Ce petit fleuve,”/ “Andromaque, I think of you! That little stream,”) [French] [French and English]
Le Goût du Néant / The Taste of Nothingness (“Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte”/ Mournful spirit, formerly in love with strife) [French] [French and English]
Hymne/ Hymn (“A la très-chere, à la très-belle”/ To the most dear and beautiful) [French] [French and English]
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
Dover Beach (“The sea is calm to-night”) [1]
The Last Word (“Creep into thy narrow bed”) [1]
Growing Old (“What is it to grow old?”) [1]
Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)
The Woodspurge (“The wind flapped loose, the wind was still”) [1]
Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)
A Pause (“They made the chamber sweet with flowers and leaves”) [1]
Rest (“O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes”) [1]
Echo (“Come to me in the silence of the night”)
A Dirge (“”Why were you born when the snow was falling?”) 1
The Queen of Hearts (“How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we”) [1]
Goblin Market (“Morning and evening”) [1]
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) - Note
These are the days when birds come back NEW [1]
There’s a certain slant of light [1]
I felt a funeral in my brain [1]
I started early, took my dog NEW [1]
Good morning, Midnight [1]
I heard a fly buzz, when I died [1]
He touched me, so I live to know NEW [1]
It was not death, for I stood up [1]
‘Twas warm, at first, like us [1]
What shall I do when the summer troubles NEW [1]
Louise Michel (1830–1905) - Note
Les Corbeaux/ The Crows (“De la Germanie à l’Ukraine” / “From Germany to the Ukraine”) [French] [English]
Chanson de Cirque: Corrida de la Muerte (“Les hauts barons blasonneés d’or,”/ “High barons blazoned with gold,”) [French] [English]
V’là la choléra/ Hey, cholera (“Parait qu’on attend le choléra”/ “Seems they’re expecting cholera”) [French and English]
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) NEW
The Mad Gardener’s Song (“He thought he saw an Elephant”) [1]
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
During Wind and Rain (“They sing their dearest songs”) [1]
In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’ (“Only a man harrowing clods”) [1]
Afterwards (“When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay”) [1]
An Ancient to Ancients (“Where once we danced, where once we sang”) [1] NEW
The Five Students (“The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,”) [1]
The Garden Seat (“Its former green is blue and thin,”)
The Going (“Why did you give no hint that night”) [1]
The Haunter (“He does not think that I haunt here nightly”) [1]
After a Journey (“Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost”) [1]
The Head Above the Fog (“Something do I see”) [1]
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) - Note
Brise Marine/ Sea Breeze (“La chair est triste, hélas! et j’ai lu tous les livres”/ The flesh is sad, alas, and I’ve read all the books) [French] [English]
Soupir/ Sigh (“Mon âme vers ton front où rêve, ô calme soeur”/ My eye, towards your brow where dreams, O calm sister”) [French and English]
Las de l’Amer Repos/ /Weary of the Bitter Repose (“Las de l’amer repos où ma paresse offense”/ “Weary of the bitter repose where my indolence insults”) [French]
Le Pitre Chatié/ The Chastised/ Clown (“Pour ses yeux—pour nager dans ces lacs, dont les quais”/ For her eyes—for the sake of a swim in those lakes whose banks”) [French] [English]
Robert Bridges (1844–1930)
Dejection (“Wherefore to-night so full of care”)
Eros (“Why hast thou nothing in thy face?”) [1]
Low Barometer (“The south-wind strengthens to a gale”) [1]
The Affliction of Richard (“Love not too much. But how”) [1]
The Philosopher and His Mistress (“We watch’d the wintry moon”) [1]
Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) - Note
Chanson d’Automne / Autumn Song (“Les sanglots longs” / “The long sobs”) [French] [English and French]
Clair de lune/ Moonlight (“Votre âme est un paysage choisi” / “Your soul’s a special landscape”) [French] [English]
Colloque Sentimental/ Sentimental Conversation (“Dans le vieux parc, solitaire et glace”/”In the old lonely frozen park” [French and English]
Dans l’interminable ennui/ In the unending tedium [French and English]
Art Poétique/ The Art of Poetry (“De la musique avant toute chose,”/ “Above all, music,”) [French and English]
Chevaux de bois/ Wooden Horses (“Tournez, tournez, bons chevaux de bois,” / “Turn, turn, you fine wooden horses,”) NEW [French] [English]
Faute hurler avec les loups/ Howling with the wolves (“Je m’suis marié le cinq ou l’six” / “Got married on the fifth or sixth”) NEW [French and English]
Impression Fausse/ Deceptive Impression (Dame souris trotte/ Mrs Mouse trots) NEW [French and English]
Pensionnaires/ Boarding School Girls(“L’une avait quinze ans, l’autre en avait seize,” / “One of them was fifteen, the other one sixteen,”) NEW [French] [English]
Gerard Hopkins (1844–1889)
I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark (“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.”) [1]
The Habit of Perfection (“Elected Silence, sing to me”) [1]
In the Valley of the Elwy (“I remember a house where all were good”) [1]
Inversnaid (“This darksome burn, horseback brown”) [1]
In Honour of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez (“Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say”) [1]
No Worst, There Is None (“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,”) [1]
Tristan Corbière (1845–1875)
Lettre du Mexique/ Letter from Mexico (“Vous m’avez confié le petit. — Il est mort.”/ “You entrusted the kid to me.—He’s dead.”) [French] [English]
À la Mémoire de Zulma/ To the Memory of Zulma (“Elle était riche de vingt ans”/ “She had youth’s twenty golden years”) [French] [English]
Cris d’Aveugle/ Cry of the Blind Man (“L’oeil tué n’est pas mort”/ The slain eye isn’t dead) [French] [English]
Bambine/Bambine (“Tu dors sous les panais, capitaine Bambine”/ “You’re pushing up the daisies, Captain Bambine”) NEW
Aristide Bruant (1851–1925) NEW
Dans la rue / In the street(“Moi, je n’sais pas si je suis de Grenelle”/ “Me, I don’t know if I’m from Grenelle”) [French]
A Batignolles/ In Batignolles (“Sa maman s’appelait Flora”/ “Her mama was called Flora”) [French]
La Noire/ Blackie (“La Noire est fille du canton”/ “Blackie’s a canteen girl”) [French]
A’s sont des tas/ They are those (“A’s sont des tas”/ “They are those”) [French and English]
Ah! les Salauds/ Oh! the Bastards (“I’s sont des tin’, I’s sont des tas”)[French]
Augusta Gregory (1852–1932), tr. - Note
Grief of a Girl’s Heart (“O Donal Oge, if you go across the sea,”) [1]
Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) - Note
Roman/Romance (“On n’est pas serieux quand on a dix-sept ans”/ “One isn’t serious-minded at seventeen”) [1]
Première Soirée/ First Evening (“Elle était fort déshabillée/ “She had very little on”) [French and English]
Les Effarés/The Transfixed (“Noirs dans la neige et dans la brume,”/ “Black in the snow and fog,”) [French and English]
Au Cabaret Vert/ At the Green Tavern (“Depuis huit jours j’avais dechiré mes bottines”/ “For eight days I’d been ripping my boots”) [French and English]
Larme/ Drop (“Loin des oiseaux, des troupeaux, des villageoises”/ “Far from the birds, the flocks, the village girls”) [French and English]
Le Coeur Volé (“Mon Coeur triste bave à la poupe,”/ “My sad heart slobbers at the stern,”) [1] [2] [3]
Les Corbeaux/ The Crows (“Seigneur, quand froide est la prairie,”/ “Lord, when the meadow is cold,”) [French] [English]
Les Mains de Jeanne-Marie/ The Hands of Jeanne-Marie (“Jeanne-Marie a des mains fortes,”/ “Jeanne-Marie has strong hands,”) NEW [French] [English]
Fêtes de la Faim/ Feasts of Hunger (“Ma faim, Anne, Anne,”/ “My hunger, Anne, Anne,”) [French]
A. Mary F. Robinson (1857–1944) NEW
Neurasthenia (“I watch the happier people of the house”) [1]
John Falkner (1858–1922) NEW
After Trinity (“We’ve done with dogma and divinity”) [1]
Jules Laforgue (1860–1887)
Complainte des Pianos/ Complaint of the Pianos (“Menez l’âme que les Lettres ont bien nourrie”/ Conduct the soul which Literature has nourished well) [French]
Complainte de Cette Bonne Lune (“Dans l’giron”) NEW [French]
Complainte des Nostalgies Préhistoriques (“La nuit bruine sur les villes”) NEW [French]
Complainte de l’Oubli des Morts (“Mesdames et Messieurs”) NEW [French]
Pierrots (“Il me faut vos yeux! Dès que je perds leur étoile”) NEW [French] [English]
Ballade de Retour (“Le Temps met Septembre en sa hotte”) NEW [French]
Le Brave, Brave Automne (“Quand reviendra l’automne”) NEW [French]
Amy Levy (1861–1889) NEW
To Lallie (“Up those Museum steps you came”) [1]
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)
“Willful-Missing” (“There is a world outside the one you know”) NEW [1]
The Coward (“I could not look on death, which being known,”)
The Storm Cone: 1932 (“This is the midnight—let no star”) [1]
William Yeats (1865–1939)
The Wild Swans at Coole (“The trees are in their autumn beauty”) [1]
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death (“I know that I shall meet my fate”) [1]
The Second Coming (“Turning and turning in the widening gyre”) [1]
The Stare’s Nest by My Window (“The bees build in the crevices”) NEW [1]
Sailing to Byzantium (“That is no country for old men. The young”) [1]
Lullaby (“Beloved, may your sleep be sound”) [1]
John Kinsella’s Lament for Mrs. Mary Moore (“A bloody and a sudden end”) NEW [1]
The Municipal Gallery Revisited (“Around me the images of thirty years”) [1]
Long-legged Fly (“That civilization may not sink”) [1]
Arthur Symons (1865–1945)
Prologue (“My life is like a music hall”) [1]
John Gray (1866–1934)
Mishka (‘Mishka is poet among the beasts’) [1]
Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)
Chanson sans Paroles (“In the deep violet air”) [1]
Francis Jammes (1868–1938)
Il va neiger… (“Il va neiger dans quelques jours. Je me souviens”/ “It’s going to snow in a few days. I remember”) [French and English]
J’aime dans les temps… (“J’aime dans les temps Clara d’Ellébeuse,”/ “I love, in other days, Clara d’Ellébeuse,” [French] [French and English]
Elle va à la pension…/ She goes to the boarding-school (“Elle va à la pension du Sacré-Coeur.”/ “She goes to the Sacred-Heart boarding school.”)
La jeune fille… (”La jeune fille est blanche,”/ “The young girl is white,”) [French] [English]
Edwin Robinson (1869–1935)
Eros Turannos (“She fears him, and will always ask”) [1]
Veteran Sirens (“The ghost of Ninon would be sorry now”) [1]
Luke Havergal (“Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal”) [1]
Hillcrest (“No sound of any storm that shakes”) [1]
Mr. Flood’s Party (“Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night”) [1]
Rembrandt to Rembrandt (“And there you are again, now as you are”) [1]
Charlotte Mew (1869–1928)
Requiescat (“Your birds that call from tree to tree”) [1]
The Trees are Down (“They are cutting down the great plane trees at the end of the garden”) [1]
Sturge Moore (1870–1944)
From Titian’s ‘Bacchanal’ in the Prado at Madrid (“She naked lies asleep beside the wine”)
Wlliam Handy (1873–1958) NEW
St. Louis Blues (“I hate to see de ev’nin’ sun go down”) [1]
Loveless Love (“Love is like a gold brick in a bunco game”) [1]
John Synge (1871–1909) NEW
The Curse (“Lord, confound this surly sister”) [1]
Danny (“One night a score of Erris men”) [1]
Queens (“Seven dog-days we let pass”) [1]
Paul Valéry (1871–1945)
Le Cimitière Marin/ The Cemetery by the Sea (“Ce toit tranquille, où marchent des colombes”/ This tranquil roof where doves are walking’) [1] [2]
Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898)
The Three Musicians (“Along the path that skirts the wood”) [1]
Robert Frost (1874–1963)
Acquainted with the Night (“I have been one acquainted with the night”) [1]
The Most of It (“He thought he kept the universe alone”) [1]
Spring Pools (“These pools that, though in forests, still reflect”) [1]
Never Again Would Birds’ Song be the Same (“He would declare and could himself believe”) [1]
Desert Places (“Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast”) [1]
Directive (“Back out of all this now too much for us”) [1]
Rainer Rilke (1875–1926) - Note
Herbsttag/Autumn Day (“Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr gross.”/” Lord, it is time. The summer was very great.”) [German and English] [Note]
Da stieg ein Baum. O reine Ubersteigung/ A tree ascended there. O pure transcendence (Sonnets to Orpheus, I/1) [English] [German]
Und fast ein Mädchen wars und ging hervor/ And a girl, almost, grew and came forth (Sonnets to Orpheus, I/2) [English and German]
Wartet…das schmekt…Schon ists auf der Flucht./ Wait…that tastes good…Already it’s fleeing. [English and German]
Wenige ihr, der einstigen Kindheit Gespielen/You few, my long-ago childhood playmates (Sonnets to Orpheus, II/8) [German and English]
Adelaide Crapsey (1878–1914)
Snow (“Look up”) [1]
Roma Aeterna (“The sun”) [1]
Amaze (“I know”) [1] NEW
To the Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window (“How can you lie so still? All day I watch”) [1] NEW
Edward Thomas (1878–1917)
Adlestrop (“Yes. I remember Adlestrop”) [1] [2] [3]
Gone, Gone Again (“Gone, gone again.”) [1] [2]
Sowing (“It was a perfect day”) [1]
The Long Small Room (“The long small room that showed willows in the west”) [1]
Lights Out (“I have come to the borders of sleep”) [1]
The Gallows (“There was a weasel lived in the sun”) [1]
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
Sunday Morning (“Complacencies of the peignoir, and late”) [1]
The Snow Man (“One must have a mind of winter”) [1]
Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb (“What word have you, interpreters, of men”)
Domination of Black (“At night, by the fire”) [1]
The Death of a Soldier (“Life contracts and death is expected”) [1]
The Course of a Particular (“Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind”) [1]
The Irish Cliffs of Moher (“Who is my father in this world, in this house,”)
The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm (“The house was quiet and the world was calm.”) [1]
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour (“Light the first light of evening, as in a room”)
Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918)
[Mal-Aimé]/ [Ill-Beloved] (“Un soir de demi-brume à Londres/ One evening in the London haze”) NEW [French] [English]
Le Pont Mirabeau/ The Pont Mirabeau (“Sous le Pont Mirabeau coule la Seine”/ “Under the Pont Mirabeau flows the Seine”) NEW [French] [English]
La synagogue/ The Synagogue (“Ottomar Scholem et Abraham Lœweren”/ “Ottomar Scholem and Abraham Loweren”) NEW [French] [English]
Les Saisons (“C’était un temps béni nous étions sur les plages”) NEW [French] [English]
Un Oiseau Chante/ A Bird is Singing (“Un oiseau chante ne sais où” / “A bird is singing don’t know where”) NEW [French] [English]
Anonymous
As I Walked Out on the Streets of Laredo [1]
The Hearse Song (“The old Grey Hearse goes rolling by”) [1]
Harry McClintock (1882–1957) NEW
The Big Rock Candy Mountains [1]
Ned Pratt (1882–1964)
The Titanic (“The hammers silent and the derricks still”) [1]
German Cabaret (ca. 1900–1933) NEW
William Williams (1883–1963)
Spring and All (“By the road to the contagious hospital”) [1]
The Widow’s Lament in Springtime (“Sorrow is my own yard”) [1]
To Waken an Old Lady (“Old age is”) [1]
Queen-Anne’s Lace (“Her body is not so white as”) [1]
Primrose (“Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!”) [1]
The Catholic Bells (“Tho’ I’m no Catholic”) [1] [2]
The Dance (“In Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess,”) [1]
The Yachts (“contend in a sea which the land partly encloses”) [1]
Burning the Christmas Greens (“Their time past, pulled down”) [1]
Thomas Hulme (1885–1917)
Above the Dock (“Above the quiet dock in midnight”) [1]
David Lawrence (1885–1930)
Snake (“A snake came to my water-trough”) [1]
Bavarian Gentians (“Not every man has gentians in his house”) [1]
Viola Meynell (1885–1956)
The Maid in the Rice-Fields (“Until the day when thou and I are wed”) [1]
A Girl Adoring (“His kisses touch her marveling eyes”)
Dermot O’Byrne (1885–1953) NEW
A Dublin Ballad—1916 (“O write it up above your hearth”) [1]
Ezra Pound (1885–1972) - Note
The Return (“See, they return; ah, see the tentative”) [1]
Doria (“Be in me as the eternal moods”) [1]
The River Merchant’s Wife: a Letter (“While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead”) [1]
Liu Ch’e (“The rustling of the silk is discontinued”) [1]
Lament of the Frontier Guard (“By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand,”) [1]
Homage to Sextus Propertius IX (“The twisted rhombs ceased their clamour of accompaniment;”)
The Lake Isle (“O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,”) [1]
Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
Heat (“O wind, rend open the heat”)† [1]
Balladry bleak NEW Note
Lamkin (“Old Lamkin was as good a mason”) [1]
The Three Butchers (“Johnson said to Dicky”)
The Miller’s Apprentice (“I fell in love with a Knoxville girl”)
The Single Girl (“When I was single, went dressed all so fine”)
Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) NEW
Does It Matter? (“Does it matter?—losing your legs?…”) [1]
To Any Dead Officer (“Well, how are things in Heaven? I wish you’d say.”) [1]
Elizabeth Daryush (1887–1977)
Fresh Spring (“Fresh Spring, in whose deep woods”)
March 21 (“The wood’s alive today”) [1]
Thomas Eliot (1888–1965)
Portrait of a Lady (“Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon”) [1]
Gerontion (“Here I am, an old man in a dry month”) [1]
Journey of the Magi (“A cold coming we had of it,”) [1]
John Ransom (1888–1974)
Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter (“There was such speed in her little body”) [1]
Piazza Piece (“—I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying”) [1]
Anonymous
John Henry (“John Henry was a li’l baby, uh-huh” [1] - Note
Bessie MacArthur (1889–1983) NEW
Nocht o’ Mortal Sicht (1942) (“A’ day aboot the hoose I work”) [1]
Arthur Waley (1889–1966) - Note
The deer which lives [1]
May the men who are born
“If you are dying of love”
When dawn comes
If only, when one heard
When
Estlin Cummings (1894–1962) NEW
I sing of olaf (“I sing of olaf glad and big”) [1]
Bessie Smith (1894–1937) NEW - Note
Backwater Blues (“When it rains five days and the skies turn dark as night”) [1]
Spider Man Blues (“Early in the mornin’ when it’s dark and dreary outdoors”) [1]
It Makes My Love Come Down (“When I see two sweethearts spoon”) [1]
Mark Van Doren (1894–1972)
Man (“Brown as the glade he moves in,”)
Robert Graves (1895–1985)
The Cool Web (“Children are dumb to say how hot the day is”) [1]
Down, Wanton, Down! (“Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame”) NEW [1]
Sick Love (“O Love, be fed with apples while you may”)
The Door (“When she came suddenly in”) [1]
Counting the Beats (“You, love, and I”) [1]
Not to Sleep (“Not to sleep all the night long, for pure joy”) NEW [1]
Maurine Smith (1896–1919)
Muted (“Since that autumnal yesterday is heard”) [1]
The Keen Edge (“The keen edge of my pride”) [1]
Louis Aragon (1897–1982) - Note
Zone Libre/ Unoccupied Zone (“Fading de la tristesse oubli”/ “Fade-out of forgotten grief”) [French] [English]
Bierstube Magie allemande / Beer-hall German magic [French] [English]
L’Amour qui n’est-pas un mot/ Love Which Isn’t a Word (“Mon Dieu jusqu’au dernier moment”/ My God, right up to the last minute”) [French] [English]
Louise Bogan (1897–1970)
Simple Autumnal (“The measured blood beats out the year’s delay”) [1]
Exhortation (“Give over seeking bastard joy”) [1]
Henceforth, from the mind (“Henceforth, from the mind”) [1]
Ruth Pitter (1897–1992)
The Estuary (“Light, stillness and peace lie on the broad sands,”)
Anonymous - Note
Frankie and Johnny (“Frankie and Johnny were lovers”) NEW [1]
Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) NEW - Note
Legende vom Toten Soldaten / Legend of the Dead Soldier (“Und als der Krieg im fünften Lenz”/ “And when the fifth springtime of war”) [English]
Apfelböck oder die Lilie auf dem Felde/ Apfelböck or the Lily of the Field (“Im milden Lichte Jakob Apfelböck”/ “In the mild daylight Jacob Apfelböck”) [English]
Die Moritat von Mackie Messer/ The Ballad of Mack the Knife (“Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne”/”Oh the shark has pretty teeth dear”) [English]
Die Seeräuber-Jenny/ Pirate Jenny (“Meine Herren, heute sehen Sie mich Gläser abwaschen”/ “Gentlemen, today you see me washing glasses”) [English]
Erich Kästner (1899–1974) NEW
Wiegenlied/ A Father’s Lullaby (“Sleep well, my child; my child, sleep well”) [English]
Besagter Lenz ist da/ Aforesaid Spring is Here (“It’s true. Now spring is set upon its course.”) [English]
Kennst du das Land, wo die Kanonen blühen?/ Knowst Thou the Land Where Only Cannons Grow? (“Knowst thou the land where only cannons grow?”) [English]
Die sehr moralische Autodroschke/ The Very Moral Taxi Ride (“He took a cab; he thought it right”) [English]
Junger Mann, 5 Uhr morgens/ Young Man, 5 a.m. (“Leaving you just on daybreak”) [English]
Leonie Adams (1899–1988)
The Figurehead (“This that is washed with weed and pebblestone”)
Hart Crane (1899–1932)
Garden Abstract (“The apple on the bough is her desire—”) [1]
Repose of Rivers (“The willows carried a slow sound”) [1]
Cutty Sark (“I met a man in South street—tall”) [1]
Janet Lewis (1899–1998)
In the Egyptian Museum (“Under the lucent glass”) [1]
Lines with a Gift of Herbs (“The summer’s residue”) [1]
Helen Grown Old (“We have forgotten Paris, and his fate”) [1]
Baby Goat (“New-born, gilded with blood,”)
Remembered Morning (“The axe rings in the wood,”)
Allen Tate (1899–1979)
The Mediterranean (“Where we went in the boat was a long bay”) [1]
Brinsley MacNamara (1890–1963) NEW - Note
On Seeing Swift in Laracor [1]
Yvor Winters (1900–1968)
Song (“Where I walk out”) [1] [2]
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (“Reptilian green, the wrinkled throat”)
A Summer Commentary (“When I was young, with sharper sense”) [1]
To the Holy Spirit (“Immeasurable haze”) [1] [2]
A Testament (“We will and move; the gain”)
At the San Francisco Airport (“This is the terminal: the light”) [1]
The Marriage (“Incarnate for our marriage you appeared”) [1]
The California Oaks (“Spreading and low, unwatered, concentrate’) [1]
Two Old-Fashioned Songs (“Who was who and where were they”/ “What was all the talk about?”) [1]
Sterling Brown (1901–1989) NEW
Choices (“Don’t want no yaller girl, dat’s a color will not stay,”)
Rent Day Blues (“I says to my baby”)
Market Street Woman (“Market Street woman is known fuh to have dark days,”)
He Was a Man (“It wasn’t about no woman,”)
To a Certain Lady, in Her Garden (“Lady, my lady, come from out the garden,”)
Abel Meeropol (1903–1986) NEW
Strange Fruit (“Southern trees bear a strange fruit”) [1]
Robert Francis (1901–1987)
Fall (“Leave the bars lying in the grass.”) [1]
Hay (“All afternoon the hayricks have rolled by”) [1]
Remind Me of Apples (“When the cicada celebrates the heat,”) [1]
Gold (“Suddenly all the gold I ever wanted”)
Roy Campbell (1902–1957)
The Zulu Girl (“When in the sun the hot red acres smoulder,”) [1]
Stevie Smith (1902–1971)
Infelice (“Walking swiftly with a dreadful duchess,”) [1]
Pretty (“Why is the word pretty so underrated?”) [1]
Grave by a Holm-oak (“You lie there, Anna,”)
Countee Cullen (1903–1946) NEW
That Bright Chimeric Beast (“That bright chimeric beast”) [1]
For a Lady I Know (“She even thinks that up in heaven”)
The Loss of Love (“All through an empty place I go”) [1]
Heritage (“What is Africa to me”) [1]
To John Keats, Poet, at Springtime (“I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;”) [1]
Raymond Queneau (1903–1976)
Je crains pas ça tellment/ I’m not so scared of that (“Je crains pas ça tellment la mort de mes entrailles”/ “ I’m not so scared about my guts dying”) [French] [English]
Charles Smith (1904–1970) NEW
Blues Stanzas (“Lord, Lord, how night falls”) [1]
Stanley Kunitz (1905–
The Summing-Up (“When young I scribbled, boasting, on my wall,”) [1]
Touch Me (“Summer is late, my heart.”) [1]
Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978)
The 5:32 (“She said, If tomorrow my world were torn in two,”) [1]
John Betjeman (1906–1984
The Cottage Hospital (“At the end of a long-walled garden”) [1]
In Westminster Abbey (“Let me take this other glove off”) [1]
Slough (“Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough”) [1]
Old Friends (“The sky widens to Cornwall. A sense of sea”) NEW
Wystan Auden (1907–1973) - Note
As I Walked Out One Evening (“As I walked out one evening”) [1]
Madrigal (“O lurcher-loving collier, black as night,”) [1]
Refugee Blues (“Say this city has ten million souls,”) [1]
Funeral Blues (“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,”) [1]
The biscuits are hard and the beef is high NEW [1]
James Honeyman (“James Honeyman was a silent child”) [1] NEW
Victor (“Victor was a little baby”) NEW [1]
Alec Hope (1907–2000)
Conquistador (“I sing of the decline of Henry Clay”) NEW
Imperial Adam (“Imperial Adam, naked in the dew,”) [1]
Meditation on a Bone (“Words scored upon a bone”) NEW [1]
Bounce to Pope (“Master, by Styx!—which is the poets’ oath”) NEW
A Letter from Rome (“Man being transitory likes to act”) NEW
On an Engraving by Caserius (“Set on this bubble of dead stone and sand”) NEW
The Lunch (“Under these trellised vines, below”) NEW
Louis MacNeice (1907–1963)
Meeting Point (“Time was away and somewhere else’”) [1]
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)
I Knew a Woman (“I knew a woman, lovely in her bones”) [1]
Plaint (“Day after somber day”) [1]
Light Listened (“O what could be more nice”) [1]
The Happy Three (“Inside, my darling wife”) [1]
The Saginaw Song (“In Saginaw, in Saginaw”) [1]
Meditation in Hydrotherapy (“Six hours a day I lay me down”) [1]
Infirmity (“In purest song one plays the constant fool”)
Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
One Art (“The art of losing isn’t hard to master”) [1]
Sestina (“September rain falls on the house”) [1]
The Burglar of Babylon (“On the fair green hills of Rio”) [1]
The Soldier and the Slot Machine (“I will not play the slot-machine”)
Pink Dog (“The sun is blazing and the sky is blue”)
Once on a hill I met a man (“Once on a hill I met a man”)
James Cunningham (1911–1985)
The Phoenix (“More than the ash stays you from nothingness”) [1]
With a Copy of Swift’s Works (“Underneath this pretty cover”)
Coffee (“When I awoke with cold”) [1]
Dark thoughts are my companions [1]
If wisdom, as it seems it is [1]
Night-Piece (“Three matches in a folder, you and me”) [1]
For a College Yearbook (“Somewhere on these bare rocks in some bare hall”)
New York: 8 March 1957 (“Lady, of anonymous flesh and face”) [1]
An Interview with Doctor Drink (“I have a fifth of therapy”) [1]
To My Wife (“And does the heart grow old? You know”) [1]
May Sarton (1912–1995)
Moving In (“I moved into my house one day”)
Dutch Interior (“I recognize the quiet and the charm.”)
Sigerson Clifford (1913–1985) NEW
The Ballad of the Tinker’s Wife (“When cocks curved throats for crowing”)
George Johnston (1913–2004)
The Cruising Auk (“Questioning Mr. Murple”)
On the Porch (“What’s on your mind tonight”)
Music on the Water (“Saturday night she comes in her little boat”)
Honey (“In summer when the fields are sweet”)
Donald Stanford (1913–1998
The Bee (“No more through summer’s haze I see”) [1]
The Cartesian Lawnmower (“The wandering vast unbounded green”) [1]
Dudley Randall (1914–2000)
Ballad of Birmingham (“Mother dear, may I go downtown”) [1]
Patrick Anderson (1915–1979)
Spiv Song (“Where are you going, my spiv, my wide boy”)
Judith Wright (1915– NEW
Brother and Sisters (“The road turned out to be a cul-de-sac”)
The Killer (“The day was clear as fire”)
Gum-trees Stripping (“Say the need’s born within the tree”)
Gavin Ewart (1916–1995)
A 14-Year-Old Convalescent Cat in the Winter (“I want him to have another living summer”) [1]
Thomas McGrath (1916–1990) NEW
Jig Tune: Not for Love (“Where are you going? asked Manny the Mayor”) [1]
A Real Gone Guy: Short Requiem for Percival Angelman (“As I walked out in the streets of Chicago”) [1]
A Little Song about Charity (“The boss came around at Christmas”) [1]
Poem (“The shadow of midnight lengthens across the world”) [1]
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) NEW
The preacher: ruminates behind the scenes (“I think it must be lonely to be God”) [1]]
The Rites for Cousin Vit (“Carried her unprotesting out the door”) [1]
Sadie and Maud (“Maud went to college”) [1]
At the Hairdresser’s (“Gimme an upsweep, Minnie”) [1]
The Ballad of Rudolph Reed (“Rudolph Reed was oaken.”) [1]
We Real Cool (“We real cool. We”) [1]
Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
Waking Early Sunday Morning (“O to break loose, like the chinook”) [1]
Anne Stanford (1917–1987)
The Walnuts (“There shine always the bright tops of the grove”) [1]
William Smith (1918–
Wedding Song (“I would have instruments that could express”)
Elma Mitchell (1919–2000) NEW
Thoughts After Ruskin (“Women reminded him of lilies and roses”) [1]
This Poem … (“This poem is dangerous: it should not be left”)
Joan LaBombard (1920– NEW
By the Beautiful Ohio (“Now at the dark’s perpetual descent,”) [1]
If We Were Water Voice (“We were the instrument. The waves and water”) [1]
Adam (“Without his trespass there to cast a shadow”) [1]
The Return (“Here is the well-kept lawn, the ordered garden,”) [1]
Georges Brassens 1921–1981
Le testament/ Last Will and Testament (“Je serai triste comme un saule”/ “I’ll be as sad as a willow”) [French and English]
Reine de bal/ Queen of the Ball (“Reine de bal, reine de bal champêtre”/ “Queen of the ball, queen of the garden party”) [French]
Le Bistrot/ The Bistro (“Dans un coin pourri”./ “In a rotten corner”) [French and English]
La complainte des filles de joie/ The Complaint of the Whores (“Bien que ces vaches de bourgeois”/ “Although those bourgeois swine”) [French]
La religieuse/ The Nun (“Tous les coeurs se rallient à sa blanche cornette”/ “Everyone yearns towards her white cornette”) [French]
Mourir pour des idé’s/ Die for Ideas (“Mourir pour des idé’s, l’idée est excellent”/ “Dying for ideas, what a great idea”) [French and English]
Lèche-cocu/ Cuckold-Schmoozer (“Comme il chouchoutait le maris”) [French]
Richard Wilbur (1921– NEW
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World (“The eyes open to a cry of pulleys”) [1]
Piccola Commedia (“He is no one I really know”) [1]
Cottage Street, 1953 (“Framed in her phoenix fire-screen, Edna Ward”) [1]
In Limbo (“What rattles in the dark? The blinds at Brewster?”) [1]
Leaving (“As we left the garden party”) [1]
This Pleasing Anxious Being (“In no time you are back where safety was”) [1]
Philip Larkin (1922–1985)
At Grass (“The eye can hardly pick them out”) [1]
Church Going (“Once I am sure there’s nothing going on”) [1]
Cut Grass (“Cut grass lies frail”) [1]
An Arundel Tomb (“Side by side, their faces blurred”) [1] NEW
The Whitsun Weddings (“That Whitsun, I was late getting away:”) [1]
The Explosion (“On the day of the explosion”) [1]
Going (“There is an evening coming in”) [1]
Denise Levertov (1923–1997) - Note
The Barricades (“If now you cannot hear me, it is because”) [1]
Casselden Road, N.W.10 (“The wind would fan the life-green fires that smouldered”) [1]
Edgar Bowers (1924–2000)
Dark Earth and Summer (“Earth is dark where you rest”) [1]
From William Tyndale to John Frith (“The letter I, your lone friend, write in sorrow”) [1]
The Astronomers of Mont Blanc (“Who are you there that, from your icy tower”) [1]
Adam’s Song to Heaven (“O depth sufficient to desire”) [1]
In the Last Circle (“You spoke all evening hatred and contempt,”) [1]
Wandering (“Customs, but there seems nothing to declare”) [1]
The Poet Orders His Tomb (“I summon up Panofsky from his bed”) [1]
An Elegy: December, 1970 (“Almost four years, and, though I merely guess”) [1]
John (“Before he wrote a poem, he learned the measure”) [1]
Catherine Davis (1924–2002)
After a Time (“After a time, all losses are the same”) [1]
Belongings (“Nothing about the first abandonment”) [1]
In New York (“What can I do here? I could learn to lie;”) [1]
Matthew Mead (1924– NEW
The Flickering Shadow Stanzas (“Into the unlit room like non-existence”) [1]
Sestina at the End of Socialism (“We watch the workers walk away”) [1]
Villanelle of the Last Gasp (“Put out the Final Cigarette”) [1]
A Double Villanelle (“I have decreed the fortyeight hour day”) [1]
Donald Justice (1925–
Psalm and Lament (“The clocks are sorry, the clocks are very sad.”) [1] [2]
The Wall (“The wall surrounding them they never saw”) [1]
But That Is Another Story (“I do not think the ending can be right.”)
Bus Stop (“Lights are burning”) [1]
Two Blues (“When the lights go on uptown,”/ “A dark time is coming, and the gypsy knows what else.”) [1]
The Sunset Maker (“The Bestor papers have come down to me”)
On an Anniversary (“Thirty years and more go by”)
Carolyn Kizer (1925–
A Muse of Water (“We who must act as handmaidens”) [1]
Maxine Kumin (1925–
Morning Swim (“Into my empty head there come”) [1]
Alan Stephens (1925– - Note
Prologue: Moments in a Glade (“Abiding snake: At thirty-four”) [1]
Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) NEW
Sickness Blues (“Lord Lord I got the sickness blues, I must’ve done something wrong”) [1]
τεθνάκην δ’ ολίγω ’πιδεύης φαίνομ’ αλαία (“Red cheeked boyfriends tenderly kiss me sweet mouthed”) [1]
Elizabeth Jennings (1926– - Note
Song at the Beginning of Autumn (“Now watch this autumn that arrives”)
To a Friend with a Religious Vocation (“Thinking of your vocation, I am filled”)
Christopher Middleton (1926– NEW - Note
The Moon from a Box of Lokum (“In a country garden outside Rome”) [1]
A Ballad of Arthur Rimbaud (“”That time of year comes round again,”) [1]
Envoi (“After the Revolution, Doctor Dark”) [1]
William Snodgrass (1926–
April Inventory (“The green catalpa tree has turned”) [1]
Henri Coulette (1927–1988) NEW
Evening in the Park (“The children have packed up the light”) [1]
The Fifth Season (“It will be summer, spring, or fall—“) [1]
The Wandering Scholar (“The light lies lightly on the leaf”) [1]
Night Thoughts (“Your kind of night, David, your kind of night,”) [1]
Helen Pinkerton (1927– - Note
Error Pursued II (“Satan in Eden was constrained”) [1]
Degrees of Shade (“Our darkness stays, the only dark we know”) [1]
Indecision (“Identity, known or unknown, survives”) [1]
The Return (“Once in September, having crossed the desert,”) [1]
Crossing the Pedregal (“The odor of charred embers penetrates”) [1]
On Watteau’s Pilgrimage to Cythera (1717) in the Louvre (“Not Compostela where these pilgrims journey.”) [1]
For an End (“Had I not loved,”) [1]
James Wright (1927–1980)
Written in a Copy of Swift’s Poems for Wayne Burns (“I promised once if I got hold of”) [1]
Herbert Morris (1928–
The Road (“I like the story of the circus waif”)
House of Words (“I had the most disturbing dream this morning.”)
Donald Petersen (1928–2005) NEW
The Ballad of Dead Yankees (“Where’s Babe Ruth, Sultan of Swat”) [1]
Adrienne Rich (1928–
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers (“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers prance across a screen,” [1]
Edward Sissman (1928–1976) NEW
Safety at Forty: or, An Abecedarian Takes a Walk [1]
Amazing Grace, 1974 [1]
Bannerman’s Funeral Chapel, Inc. [1]
Wesley Trimpi (1928–
On the Dedication of My First Book to My Father and Mother (“After such separation rest”)
Charles Gullans (1929–1993) NEW
On a Recording of Maria Cebotari (“I hear your voice through these defective grooves”) [1]
Labuntur Anni [1]
Open House (“The doors are open to the summer night”) [1]
Thom Gunn (1929–2004)
On the Move (“The blue jay scuffling in the bushes follows”) [1] [2]
To Yvor Winters, 1955 (“I leave you in your garden.”) [1] [2]
In Santa Maria del Popolo (“Waiting for when the sun an hour or less”) [1]
Considering the Snail (“The snail pushes through a green”) NEW [1]
Street Song (“I am too young to grow a beard”) NEW [1]
Waitress (“At one they hurry in to eat.”) NEW [1]
The J Car (“Last year I used to ride the J CHURCH line”) NEW [1]
Nasturtium (“Born in a sour waste lot”) NEW [1]
X.J. Kennedy (1929– NEW
In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day (“In a prominent bar in Secaucus one day”) [1]
Talking Dust Bowl (“Old cow’s almost dry now, her hooves scrape hard dirt.”) [1]
Terse Elegy for J.V. Cunningham (“Now Cunningham, who rhymed by fits and starts,”) [1]
A Curse on a Thief {“Paul Dempster had a handsome tackle box”) [1]
Pie (“Whoever dined in this café before us”) [1]
God’s Obsequies (“So I went to the funeral of God,”) [1]
For permissions, see Notes.
Ellen Kay (1930–
The Reply of Pluto to Ceres (“She was not so unwilling. Where the sun”) [1]
Claire McAllister (1931–
Rites of Autumn (“The lights of Autumn grazed across the fields”) [1]
Alistair Elliot (1932– NEW
A Touch of Death (“Strange fingers woke me, fumbling at my brow.” [1]
Fleur Adcock (1934– NEW
Note on Propertius (“Among the Roman love-poets, possession”)
Mornings After (“The surface dreams are easily remembered”)
Mr. Morrison (“Goslings dive in the lake”)
A Way Out (“The other option’s to become a bird.”)
The Ex-Queen among the Astronomers (“They serve revolving saucer eyes”)
Scott Momaday (1934–
Before an Old Painting of the Crucifixion (“I ponder how he died, despairing once”) [1]
Frederick Seidel (1936– NEW
That Fall (“The body on the bed is made of china,”)
The Blue-Eyed Doe (“I look at Broadway in the bitter cold,”) [1]
Morphine (“What hasn’t happened isn’t everything”)
Judith Sherwin (1936–
Ballade of the Grindstones (“when you and I draw close at night and play”)
Tony Harrison (1937–
The Heartless Art (“Death is in your house, but I’m out here”)
Kenneth Fields (1939–
Aubade: Near Coldwater Canyon (“A few nightbirds, the owls and the sly mockers,”) [1]
Come: the Sirens (“Our song is the only food you need: the sun”) [1]
Early Autumn (“It's been three years today. Who would have guessed it?”) [1]
Martha Collins (1940–
The Story We Know (“The way to begin is always the same. Hello,”) [1]
Robert Pinsky (1940– NEW
Shirt (“The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,”)
A Woman (“Thirty years ago: gulls keen in the blue,”)
At Pleasure Bay (“In the willows sliding along the river at Pleasant Bay”)
Eurydice and Stalin (“She crossed a bridge, and looking down she saw”)
John Finlay (1941–1991)
The Black Earth (“Toward dawn a dusty mirror frames the moon.”)
The Slaughter of the Herd (“The trucks will come tomorrow afternoon.”) [1]
The Symposium for Socrates (“The polished floor mirrors the burning lamps”)
John Peck (1941–
Rowing Early (“The mold-brown, moss-green, broad trunk of my wake”) NEW
Reliquary (“You walked into my boy’s eyes with a cane”) NEW
The Ringers (“One day ringing men will be a race gone”)
For a Friend’s Marriage (“Tall branches take first sun: she meets you where”) NEW
Marilyn Hacker (1942–
Dusk: July (“Late afternoon rain of a postponed summer:”)
Iva’s Birthday Poem (“All horns should honk like anything!”)
Ballad of Ladies Lost and Found (“Where are the women who, entre deux guerres,”) [1]
James Tranter (1943– NEW
The Great Artist Reconsiders the Homeric Simile (“He looks back over the last metaphor”)
Kit Wright (1944– NEW
January Birth (“Brightest splinter, scarlet berry”)
Elizabeth (“Up from Philadelphia”)
Red Boots On (“Way down Geneva”)
Every Day in Every Way (“When I got up this morning”)
Underneath the Archers or What’s all this about Walter’s Willy? (“Everyone’s on about Walter’s willy”)
Wendy Cope (1945– NEW
Waste Land Limericks (“In April one seldom feels cheerful”)
Proverbial Ballade (“Fine words won’t turn the icing pink”)
Rondeau Redoublé (“There are so many kinds of awful men”)
After the Lunch (“On Waterloo Bridge, where we said our goodbyes”)
By the Round Pond (“You watch yourself. You watch the watcher too“)
Dick Davis (1945–
The Shore (“He feels against his skin”)
With John Constable (“Slow-rotting planks and moody skies”) [1]
Desert Stop at Noon (“The house is one bare room”) [1]
John Whitworth (1945– NEW
The Things (“Some of the things our daughter’s got”) [1]
Criminal Damage (“A rumour round the village—something horrid”) [1]
Princess Time (“I am a princess and I need a prince”) [1]
Reading the Bones (“The tiny bones of children in a cupboard”) [1]
Clive Wilmer (1945–
The Goldsmith (“To stay anxiety I engrave this gold,”) [1]
The Natural History of the Rook (“The rooks are Gothick which have brought to mind”) [1]
Transference (“A moving tableau, so to speak.”) [1]
In Memory of Graham Davies, Psychotherapist (1937–1993) (“You, invisible, once again, I address”) [1]
Bottom’s Dream (“I was a weaver, and I wove”) [1]
Marilyn Nelson (1946–
Daughters, 1900 (“Five daughters, in the slant light on the porch,”) [1]
Balance (“He watch her like a coonhound watch a tree”)
The Ballad of Aunt Geneva (“Geneva was the wild one.”)
Robert Barth (1947–
A Letter to My Infant Son (“Some day, when you are hunting attic trunks”) [1]
Joseph Harrison (1957– NEW
At the Grave of Burns (“Ah, Burns, what have they done to ye”) [1]
On Rereading Some Lines of Poetry (“How many years have passed since I last read”) [1]
Dante in Erebus (“Will Dante, with no laurel and no lyre”) [1]
Robert Wells (1947–
The Winter’s Task (“The insects leave his toil. Frosts arrive”) [1]
R.S. Gwynn (1948– NEW
My Agent Says (“My agent says Los Angeles will call.”) [1]
Train for Ill: A Ballad (“The train for Ill is a long train”) [1]
Snow White and the Seven Deadly Sins (“Good Catholic girl, she didn’t mind the cleaning,”) [1]
Rachel Hadas (1948–
Winged Words (“Trying to speak means flailing with”) [1]
May (“As soon as the cold old sun gets warm,”)
Timothy Steele (1948–
Wait (“Six beds in a square room; you give your name”) [1]
The Sheets (“From breezeway or through front porch screen”) [1]
Stargazing at Barton (“For the child who leans out over”) [1]
An Aubade (“As she is showering, I wake to see”) [1]
Her Memory of the Picnic (“To finger-sponge crust crumbs of fruit meringue”) [1]
Eros (“By rights one should experience holy dread”) [1]
James Fenton (1949–
Hinterhof (“Stay near to me and I’ll stay near to you—“) [1]
In a Notebook (“There was a river overhung with trees”)
The Mistake (“With the mistake your life goes in reverse.”)
I Saw a Child (“I saw a child with silver hair”) NEW
Tiananmen (“Tiananmen”) [1]
God, a Poem (“A nasty surprise in a sandwich”) [1]
Letter to John Fuller (“Poets, from paupers to well-heeled,”)
Christopher Reid (1949–
The Gardeners (“I love these gardens, all their show”)
Alan Shapiro (1952–
New Year’s Eve in the Aloha Room (“The dance floor is an oval incandescence”) [1]
Old Joke (“Radiant child of Leto, farworking Lord Apollo”)
The Dawn Walkers (“Down the flat beach they come, the dawn walkers,”)
Dana Gioia (1950–
All Souls (“Suppose there is no heaven and no hell.”) [1]
The Next Time (“How much better it seems now”) [1]
The Archbishop (“O do not disturb the Archbishop,”) NEW [1]
Lives of the Great Composers (“Herr Bruckner often wandered into church”) NEW [1]
Ian Duhig (1954– NEW
Chocolate Soldier (“To Rowntrees one morning”)
Fiona Pitt-Kethley (1954– NEW
High Noon in the Oval Office (“’It’s time for a snack!’ the President drawled”)
The Serpent’s Complaint (“One day I heard a serpent hiss”)
Penis Envy (“Freud, you were right! I must expose my id”)
Married Bliss (“Right up until our wedding day”)
Carol Duffy (1955– NEW
Warming Her Pearls (“Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress”)
Circe (“I’m fond, nereids and nymphs, unlike some, of the pig”)
Catherine Bowman (1957– NEW
Demographics (“They don’t want to stop. They can’t stop.”)
William Herbert (1961– NEW
Cabaret McGonagall (“Come as ye dottilt, brain-deid hunks”)
Ballad of the House of Fear (“Eh’ve bideit in thi House o Fear”)
Beppe (“Signori, man whose name confirms his status”)
Elizabeth Alexander (1962– NEW
Letter: Blues (“Yellow freessias are like twining arms”) [1]
Catherine Tufariello (1963– NEW
Fruitless (“Now oleander flames along the beach”) [1]
Useful Advice (“You’re 37? Don’t you think that maybe”) [1]
Sue Goyette (1964–
The Season of Forgiveness (“In this weather, wood has warped and doors”) [1]
Vigil (“The last river nymph is dying of thirst. She is surrounded”) [1]
A.E. Stallings (1968– NEW
Persephone Writes a Letter to Her Mother (“First—hell is not so far underground—“) [1]
Bad News Blues (“When Bad News comes to town, hold on to your heart.”) [1]
Joshua Mehigan (1969– NEW
A Questionable Mother (“The camera crews were gone home for the evening”) [1]
Introduction to Poetry (“They choose a back road leading from the inn,”) [1]
Morri Creech (1970– NEW
Engine Work: Variations (“June morning. Sunlight flashes through the pines.”) [1]
The Canto of Ulysses (“Drowsing, head propped above the eighth circle”) [1]
The Music of Farewell (It’s true, of course, that the dusk-umbered leaves”) [1]
Erica Dawson (1979– NEW
High Heel (“I was born, Mom says, bull’s eye”) [1]
The Platitudinous and the Clever (“At parties always seem to know” [1]
Parallax (“Icicles plummet from the porch and sow”) [1]
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