I should have been a plumber fixing drains.
And mending pure white bathtubs for the great Diogenes
(who scorned all lies, all liars, and all tyrannies),

And then, perhaps, he would bestow on me-majesty!
(O modesty aside, forgive my fallen pride, O hidden
majesty,
The lamp, the lantern, the lucid light he sought for

All too often-sick humanity!)

(C) Delmore Schwartz
01/01/2000


Best Poems of Delmore Schwartz

• A Dream Of Whitman Paraphrased, Recognized And Made More Vivid By Renoir
• Prothalamion
• Poem (you, My Photographer, You, Most Aware)
• Saint, Revolutionist
• The Greatest Thing In North America
• The Journey Of A Poem Compared To All The Sad Variety Of Travel
• Philology Recapitulates Ontology, Poetry Is Ontology
• The Poet
• Out Of The Watercolored Window, When You Look
• This Is A Poem I Wrote At Night, Before The Dawn
• America, America!
• The Ballad Of The Children Of The Czar
• Albert Einstein To Archibald Macleish
• A Young Child And His Pregnant Mother
• For The One Who Would Not Take His Life In His Hands
• Faust In Old Age
• Far Rockaway
• Concerning The Synthetic Unity Of Apperception
• Baudelaire
• Archaic Bust Of Apollo
• Apollo Musagete, Poetry, And The Leader Of The Muses