CRIPPLE POEMS

Parallel Dimensions

In a parallel dimension,
Where everything is perfect,
No hate, no war, no injustice,
Prevail, only peace and happiness,
.....

Krishnapriya Ramanathan

The Brewing Of Soma

The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood curled;
'Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap,' the brewers spoke,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Endymion: Book Iii

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
.....

John Keats

Introduction: Pippa Passes

New Year's Day at Asolo in the Trevisan


Scene.-
.....

Robert Browning

Sonnets To The Sundry Notes Of Music

I.
IT was a lording's daughter, the fairest one of three,
That liked of her master as well as well might be,
Till looking on an Englishman, the fair'st that eye could see,
.....

William Shakespeare

Man's Limitation

Man says that He is jealous,
Man says that He is wise,
Man says that He is watching
From His throne beyond the skies.
.....

Arthur Conan Doyle

Tamar

I
A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl,
No, like a drunkard's last half-dollar
Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range,
.....

Robinson Jeffers

The Medal

Of all our antic sights and pageantry
Which English idiots run in crowds to see,
The Polish Medal bears the prize alone;
A monster, more the favourite of the town
.....

John Dryden

The Odyssey: Book 08

Now when the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared,
Alcinous and Ulysses both rose, and Alcinous led the way to the
Phaecian place of assembly, which was near the ships. When they got
there they sat down side by side on a seat of polished stone, while
.....

Homer

On The Way

(Philadelphia, 1794)

Note.- The following imaginary dialogue between
Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Idler

I IDLE stand that I may find employ,
Such as my Master when He comes will give;
I cannot find in mine own work my joy,
But wait, although in waiting I must live;
.....

Jones Very

Aylmer's Field

Dust are our frames; and gilded dust, our pride
Looks only for a moment whole and sound;
Like that long-buried body of the king,
Found lying with his urns and ornaments,
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came

I.

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
.....

Robert Browning

Localities

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Carl Sandburg

Tale Xx

THE BROTHERS.

Than old George Fletcher, on the British coast
Dwelt not a seaman who had more to boast:
.....

George Crabbe

Ave Maria

In the ages of Faith, before the day
When men were too proud to weep or pray,
There stood in a red-roofed Breton town
Snugly nestled 'twixt sea and down,
.....

Alfred Austin

Laws Xiii

Then a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?"

And he answered:

.....

Khalil Gibran

The Stranger

When trouble haunts me, need I sigh?
No, rather smile away despair;
For those have been more sad than I,
With burthens more than I could bear;
.....

John Clare

Andrew Jones

I hate that Andrew Jones; he'll breed
His children up to waste and pillage.
I wish the press-gang or the drum
With its tantara sound would come,
.....

William Wordsworth

Cripple

Once when I saw a cripple
Gasping slowly his last days with the white plague,
Looking from hollow eyes, calling for air,
Desperately gesturing with wasted hands
.....

Carl Sandburg

The Beggar And The Angel

An angel burdened with self-pity
Came out of heaven to a modern city.

He saw a beggar on the street,
.....

Duncan Campbell Scott

On Donne's Poetry

With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
.....

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Vesalius In Zante

Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
I loved light ever, light in eye and brain-
No tapers mirrored in long palace floors,
Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles,
.....

Edith Wharton

What The Ghost Of The Gambler Said

Where now the huts are empty,
Where never a camp-fire glows,
In an abandoned canyon,
A Gambler's Ghost arose.
.....

Vachel Lindsay

True Philosophy

I wouldn't count it worth my while
To sing about a rich man's smile,
Or quote a fellow, trouble free,
An' label that philosophy.
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Sonnet Xxxv: Some, Misbelieving

To Miracle

Some, misbelieving and profane in love,
When I do speak of miracles by thee,
.....

Michael Drayton

Her Name Liberty

I thought to do a deed of chivalry,
An act of worth, which haply in her sight
Who was my mistress should recorded be
And of the nations. And, when thus the fight
.....

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

The Loving Tree

Three women walked upon a road,
And the first said airily,
â??Of all the trees in all the world
Which is the loving tree?�
.....

John Shaw Neilson

The Little Cripple's Complaint

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Ann Taylor

The Happy Little Cripple

I'm thist a little cripple boy, an' never goin' to grow
An' get a great big man at all!--'cause Aunty told me so.
When I was thist a baby onc't, I falled out of the bed
An' got 'The Curv'ture of the Spine'--'at's what the Doctor said.
.....

James Whitcomb Riley

On Donne's Poetry

``With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots ;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.''
.....

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Albatross

Often to pass the time on board, the crew
will catch an albatross, one of those big birds
which nonchalently chaperone a ship
across the bitter fathoms of the sea.
.....

Charles Baudelaire

The Cripple

He totters round and dangles those odd shapes
That were his legs. His eyes are never dim.
He brags about his fame between the tapes,
And laughs the loudest when they laugh at him.
.....

Leon Gellert

L'albatros (the Albatross)

Souvent, pour s'amuser, les hommes d'équipage
Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers,
Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,
Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Santa Christina

At Tiro, in her father's tower,
The young Cristina had her bower,
Over blue Bolsena's lake,
Where small frolic ripples break
.....

Robert Laurence Binyon

The Merchant Of Venice: A Legend Of Italy

I believe there are few
But have heard of a Jew,
Named Shylock, of Venice, as arrant a 'screw'
In money transactions as ever you knew;
.....

Richard Harris Barham

The Recluse - Book First

HOME AT GRASMERE

Once to the verge of yon steep barrier came
A roving school-boy; what the adventurer's age
.....

William Wordsworth

The Task. Book V. The Winter Morning Walk.

'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
.....

William Cowper

When Gassy Thompson Struck It Rich

He paid a Swede twelve bits an hour
Just to invent a fancy style
To spread the celebration paint
So it would show at least a mile.
.....

Vachel Lindsay

Laughter In The Senate

In the South lies a lonesome, hungry Land;
He huddles his rags with a cripple's hand;
He mutters, prone on the barren sand,
What time his heart is breaking.
.....

Sidney Lanier

Consolation

She folded up the worn and mended frock,
And smoothed it tenderly upon her knee,
Then through the soft web of a wee red sock
She wove the bright wool, musing thoughtfully:
.....

Anonymous Americas

The Party

Dey had a gread big pahty down to Tom's de othah night;
Was I dah? You bet! I nevah in my life see sich a sight;
All de folks f'om fou' plantations was invited, an' dey come,
Dey come troopin' thick ez chillun when dey hyeahs a fife an' drum.
.....

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Hippodromania; Or, Whiffs From The Pipe (in Five Parts): Part Iii: Credat Judaeus Apella

Dear Bell,-I enclose what you ask in a letter,
A short rhyme at random, no more and no less,
And you may insert it, for want of a better,
Or leave it, it doesn't much matter, I guess;
.....

Adam Lindsay Gordon

City Contrasts

A barefooted child on the crossing,
Sweeping the mud away,
A lady in silks and diamonds,
Proud of the vain display;
.....

Anonymous Americas

The World-soul

Thanks to the morning light,
Thanks to the seething sea,
To the uplands of New Hampshire,
To the green-haired forest free;
.....

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cameron's Heart

The diggings were just in their glory when Alister Cameron came,
With recommendations, he told me, from friends and a parson `at hame';
He read me his recommendations -- he called them a part of his plant --
The first one was signed by an Elder, the other by Cameron's aunt.
.....

Henry Lawson

Old Town Types No. 7

Well I remember him - Big Jack Herrington;
Big Jack, the lumper, tanned and honest-eyed,
The clean, straight limbs of him,
The strength in those limbs of him
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

The Captain Of The Push

As the night was falling slowly down on city, town and bush,
From a slum in Jones's Alley sloped the Captain of the Push;
And he scowled towards the North, and he scowled towards the South,
As he hooked his little finger in the corners of his mouth.
.....

Henry Lawson

My World Is Pyramid

I

Half of the fellow father as he doubles
His sea-sucked Adam in the hollow hulk,
.....

Dylan Thomas

The Moralist

Three other soldier blokes 'n' me packed
'ome from foreign lands;
Bit into each the God of Battles' everlastin'
brands.
.....

Edward George Dyson