CURIOSITY POEMS
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Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding
I
Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
.....
T. S. Eliot
I
Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
.....
T. S. Eliot
An Octopus
of ice. Deceptively reserved and flat,
it lies “in grandeur and in mass”
beneath a sea of shifting snow-dunes;
dots of cyclamen-red and maroon on its clearly defined
.....
Marianne Moore
of ice. Deceptively reserved and flat,
it lies “in grandeur and in mass”
beneath a sea of shifting snow-dunes;
dots of cyclamen-red and maroon on its clearly defined
.....
Marianne Moore
The Nightingale
NO easy matter 'tis to hold,
Against its owner's will, the fleece
Who troubled by the itching smart
Of Cupid's irritating dart,
.....
Jean De La Fontaine
NO easy matter 'tis to hold,
Against its owner's will, the fleece
Who troubled by the itching smart
Of Cupid's irritating dart,
.....
Jean De La Fontaine
The Odyssey: Book 23
Euryclea now went upstairs laughing to tell her mistress that her
dear husband had come home. Her aged knees became young again and
her feet were nimble for joy as she went up to her mistress and bent
over her head to speak to her. “Wake up Penelope, my dear child,”
.....
Homer
Euryclea now went upstairs laughing to tell her mistress that her
dear husband had come home. Her aged knees became young again and
her feet were nimble for joy as she went up to her mistress and bent
over her head to speak to her. “Wake up Penelope, my dear child,”
.....
Homer
Lancelot 08
For longer war they came, and with a fury
That only Modred's opportunity,
Seized in the dark of Britain, could have hushed
And ended in a night. For Lancelot,
.....
Edwin Arlington Robinson
For longer war they came, and with a fury
That only Modred's opportunity,
Seized in the dark of Britain, could have hushed
And ended in a night. For Lancelot,
.....
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Vacation
When I asked my mother why they were called sand tarts,
she couldn't answer me-
perhaps this ravenous curiosity causes my brother
.....
Elizabeth Wilcox
When I asked my mother why they were called sand tarts,
she couldn't answer me-
perhaps this ravenous curiosity causes my brother
.....
Elizabeth Wilcox
The Iliad Of Homer: Translated Into English Blank Verse: Book I.
Argument Of The First Book.
The book opens with an account of a pestilence that prevailed in the Grecian camp, and the cause of it is assigned. A council is called, in which fierce altercation takes place between Agamemnon and Achilles. The latter solemnly renounces the field. Agamemnon, by his heralds, demands Brisë is, and Achilles resigns her. He makes his complaint to Thetis, who undertakes to plead his cause with Jupiter. She pleads it, and prevails. The book concludes with an account of what passed in Heaven on that occasion.
.....
William Cowper
Argument Of The First Book.
The book opens with an account of a pestilence that prevailed in the Grecian camp, and the cause of it is assigned. A council is called, in which fierce altercation takes place between Agamemnon and Achilles. The latter solemnly renounces the field. Agamemnon, by his heralds, demands Brisë is, and Achilles resigns her. He makes his complaint to Thetis, who undertakes to plead his cause with Jupiter. She pleads it, and prevails. The book concludes with an account of what passed in Heaven on that occasion.
.....
William Cowper
Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages
(The Dry Salvages-presumably les trois sauvages
- is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E.
coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced
to rhyme with assuages. Groaner: a whistling buoy.)
.....
T. S. Eliot
(The Dry Salvages-presumably les trois sauvages
- is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E.
coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced
to rhyme with assuages. Groaner: a whistling buoy.)
.....
T. S. Eliot
The Killing
That was the day they killed the Son of God
On a squat hill-top by Jerusalem.
Zion was bare, her children from their maze
Sucked by the dream of curiosity
.....
Edwin Muir
That was the day they killed the Son of God
On a squat hill-top by Jerusalem.
Zion was bare, her children from their maze
Sucked by the dream of curiosity
.....
Edwin Muir
The Damp
When I am dead, and doctors know not why,
And my friends' curiosity
Will have me cut up to survey each part,-
When they shall find your picture in my heart,
.....
John Donne
When I am dead, and doctors know not why,
And my friends' curiosity
Will have me cut up to survey each part,-
When they shall find your picture in my heart,
.....
John Donne
The Hills Erect Their Purple Heads
1688
The Hills erect their Purple Heads
The Rivers lean to see
.....
Emily Dickinson
1688
The Hills erect their Purple Heads
The Rivers lean to see
.....
Emily Dickinson
Inventory
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
.....
Dorothy Parker
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
.....
Dorothy Parker
Captain Craig Iii
I found the old man sitting in his bed,
Propped up and uncomplaining. On a chair
Beside him was a dreary bowl of broth,
A magazine, some glasses, and a pipe.
.....
Edwin Arlington Robinson
I found the old man sitting in his bed,
Propped up and uncomplaining. On a chair
Beside him was a dreary bowl of broth,
A magazine, some glasses, and a pipe.
.....
Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Disciples
"To Lionel Engers-Kennedy: to the memory of Hargrave Jennings: and
to A. C. W. G. and H. E. H."
.....
Aleister Crowley
"To Lionel Engers-Kennedy: to the memory of Hargrave Jennings: and
to A. C. W. G. and H. E. H."
.....
Aleister Crowley
The 'utopia'
The table was filled with many objects
The wild tribesmen in the hills,
whose very robes were decorated with designs
.....
Lee Harwood
The table was filled with many objects
The wild tribesmen in the hills,
whose very robes were decorated with designs
.....
Lee Harwood
I Watched The Moon Around The House (629)
I watched the Moon around the House
Until upon a Pane --
She stopped -- a Traveller's privilege -- for Rest --
And there upon
.....
Emily Dickinson
I watched the Moon around the House
Until upon a Pane --
She stopped -- a Traveller's privilege -- for Rest --
And there upon
.....
Emily Dickinson
A City Winter
1
I understand the boredom of the clerks
fatigue shifting like dunes within their eyes
a frightful nausea gumming up the works
.....
Frank O'hara
1
I understand the boredom of the clerks
fatigue shifting like dunes within their eyes
a frightful nausea gumming up the works
.....
Frank O'hara
The Creole Girl; Or, The Physician-s Story
I.
SHE came to England from the island clime
Which lies beyond the far Atlantic wave;
.....
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
I.
SHE came to England from the island clime
Which lies beyond the far Atlantic wave;
.....
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
Lillian
I. PROEM.
This was a sweet white wildwood violet
I found among the painted slips that grow
Where, under hot-house glass, the flowers forget
.....
Arthur Symons
I. PROEM.
This was a sweet white wildwood violet
I found among the painted slips that grow
Where, under hot-house glass, the flowers forget
.....
Arthur Symons
Zaccheus
Zaccheus climbed the tree,
And thought himself unknown;
But how surprised was he
When Jesus called him down!
.....
John Newton
Zaccheus climbed the tree,
And thought himself unknown;
But how surprised was he
When Jesus called him down!
.....
John Newton
Recreation
WE took our work, and went, you see,
To take an early cup of tea.
We did so now and then, to pay
The friendly debt, and so did they,
.....
Jane Taylor
WE took our work, and went, you see,
To take an early cup of tea.
We did so now and then, to pay
The friendly debt, and so did they,
.....
Jane Taylor
The Star-splitter
You know Orien always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
.....
Robert Lee Frost
You know Orien always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
.....
Robert Lee Frost
The Glass-vendor
There are some natures purely contemplative and antipathetic to action, who nevertheless, under a mysterious and inexplicable impulse, sometimes act with a rapidity of which they would have believed themselves incapable. Such a one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards action, like an arrow from a bow.
The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the most absurd and even the most dangerous acts.
One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only too well.
Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, in order to see, to know, to tempt Destwiy, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most indolent and dreamy beings.
.....
Charles Baudelaire
There are some natures purely contemplative and antipathetic to action, who nevertheless, under a mysterious and inexplicable impulse, sometimes act with a rapidity of which they would have believed themselves incapable. Such a one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards action, like an arrow from a bow.
The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the most absurd and even the most dangerous acts.
One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only too well.
Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, in order to see, to know, to tempt Destwiy, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most indolent and dreamy beings.
.....
Charles Baudelaire
The Widows
Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's cripples. To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn towards all that' is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft.
An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected lineaments ; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported.
Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who exhibit a full complement of sorrow.
Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by the hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite alone? I do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several long hours an aged and afflicted woman of this kind : rigid and erect, wrapped in a little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride of stoicism.
.....
Charles Baudelaire
Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's cripples. To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn towards all that' is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft.
An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected lineaments ; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported.
Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who exhibit a full complement of sorrow.
Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by the hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite alone? I do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several long hours an aged and afflicted woman of this kind : rigid and erect, wrapped in a little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride of stoicism.
.....
Charles Baudelaire
Poems - The New Edition - Preface
In two small volumes of Poems, published anonymously, one in 1849, the other in 1852, many of the Poems which compose the present volume have already appeared. The rest are now published for the first time.
I have, in the present collection, omitted the Poem from which the volume published in 1852 took its title. I have done so, not because the subject of it was a Sicilian Greek born between two and three thousand years ago, although many persons would think this a sufficient reason. Neither have I done so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the delineation which I intended to effect. I intended to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there entered much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much, the fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to us are sufficient at least to indicate. What those who are familiar only with the great monuments of early Greek genius suppose to be its exclusive characteristics, have disappeared; the calm, the cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disappeared: the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced; modern problems have presented themselves; we hear already the doubts, we witness the discouragement, of Hamlet and of Faust.
.....
Matthew Arnold
In two small volumes of Poems, published anonymously, one in 1849, the other in 1852, many of the Poems which compose the present volume have already appeared. The rest are now published for the first time.
I have, in the present collection, omitted the Poem from which the volume published in 1852 took its title. I have done so, not because the subject of it was a Sicilian Greek born between two and three thousand years ago, although many persons would think this a sufficient reason. Neither have I done so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the delineation which I intended to effect. I intended to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there entered much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much, the fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to us are sufficient at least to indicate. What those who are familiar only with the great monuments of early Greek genius suppose to be its exclusive characteristics, have disappeared; the calm, the cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disappeared: the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced; modern problems have presented themselves; we hear already the doubts, we witness the discouragement, of Hamlet and of Faust.
.....
Matthew Arnold
The Art Of Book Making - Prose
If that severe doom of Synesius be true, "It is a greater offence to steal dead men's labor, than their clothes," what shall become of most writers?
- BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY.
.....
Washington Irving
If that severe doom of Synesius be true, "It is a greater offence to steal dead men's labor, than their clothes," what shall become of most writers?
- BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY.
.....
Washington Irving
Westminster Abbey - Prose
When I behold, with deep astonishment,
To famous Westminster how there resorte,
Living in brasse or stoney monument,
The princes and the worthies of all sorte;
.....
Washington Irving
When I behold, with deep astonishment,
To famous Westminster how there resorte,
Living in brasse or stoney monument,
The princes and the worthies of all sorte;
.....
Washington Irving
The Angler - Prose
This day Dame Nature seem'd in love,
The lusty sap began to move,
Fresh juice did stir th' embracing vines,
And birds had drawn their valentines.
.....
Washington Irving
This day Dame Nature seem'd in love,
The lusty sap began to move,
Fresh juice did stir th' embracing vines,
And birds had drawn their valentines.
.....
Washington Irving
It Was A Grave, Yet Bore No Stone
876
It was a Grave, yet bore no Stone
Enclosed 'twas not of Rail
.....
Emily Dickinson
876
It was a Grave, yet bore no Stone
Enclosed 'twas not of Rail
.....
Emily Dickinson
The Missing All'prevented Me
985
The Missing All-prevented Me
From missing minor Things.
.....
Emily Dickinson
985
The Missing All-prevented Me
From missing minor Things.
.....
Emily Dickinson
Within My Garden, Rides A Bird
500
Within my Garden, rides a Bird
Upon a single Wheel-
.....
Emily Dickinson
500
Within my Garden, rides a Bird
Upon a single Wheel-
.....
Emily Dickinson
The Star Splitter
‘You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
.....
Robert Frost
‘You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
.....
Robert Frost
I Watched The Moon Around The House
629
I watched the Moon around the House
Until upon a Pane-
.....
Emily Dickinson
629
I watched the Moon around the House
Until upon a Pane-
.....
Emily Dickinson
Avon's Harvest
Fear, like a living fire that only death
Might one day cool, had now in Avon's eyes
Been witness for so long of an invasion
That made of a gay friend whom we had known
.....
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Fear, like a living fire that only death
Might one day cool, had now in Avon's eyes
Been witness for so long of an invasion
That made of a gay friend whom we had known
.....
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Within And Without: A Dramatic Poem: Part Iv
And should the twilight darken into night,
And sorrow grow to anguish, be thou strong;
Thou art in God, and nothing can go wrong
Which a fresh life-pulse cannot set aright.
.....
George Macdonald
And should the twilight darken into night,
And sorrow grow to anguish, be thou strong;
Thou art in God, and nothing can go wrong
Which a fresh life-pulse cannot set aright.
.....
George Macdonald
Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric
Dramatis Personae
Hugo, a Norman Baron and a Scholar.
.....
Adam Lindsay Gordon
Dramatis Personae
Hugo, a Norman Baron and a Scholar.
.....
Adam Lindsay Gordon
No, Not The Moon, But Simple Dial-plate
No, not the moon, but simple dial-plate
Is lightning me, and â??tis my nasty fate,
That lights of stars I feel as light internal!
.....
Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
No, not the moon, but simple dial-plate
Is lightning me, and â??tis my nasty fate,
That lights of stars I feel as light internal!
.....
Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
The Missing All-prevented Me
985
The Missing Allâ??prevented Me
From missing minor Things.
.....
Emily Dickinson
985
The Missing Allâ??prevented Me
From missing minor Things.
.....
Emily Dickinson
Phoenix Lyrics
I
If nature is life, nature is death:
It is winter as it is spring:
.....
Delmore Schwartz
I
If nature is life, nature is death:
It is winter as it is spring:
.....
Delmore Schwartz
Reasonable Interest
I want to know how Bernard Shaw
Likes beefsteak-fairly done, or raw?
I want to know what kinds of shoes
M. Maeterlinck and Howells use.
.....
Ellis Parker Butler
I want to know how Bernard Shaw
Likes beefsteak-fairly done, or raw?
I want to know what kinds of shoes
M. Maeterlinck and Howells use.
.....
Ellis Parker Butler
Peace On Earth
He took a frayed hat from his head,
And “Peace on Earth” was what he said.
“A morsel out of what you're worth,
And there we have it: Peace on Earth.
.....
Edwin Arlington Robinson
He took a frayed hat from his head,
And “Peace on Earth” was what he said.
“A morsel out of what you're worth,
And there we have it: Peace on Earth.
.....
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Egotism. A Letter To J. T. Becher
If Fate should seal my Death to-morrow,
(Though much I hope she will postpone it,)
I've held a share Joy and Sorrow,
Enough for Ten; and here I own it.
.....
George Gordon Lord Byron
If Fate should seal my Death to-morrow,
(Though much I hope she will postpone it,)
I've held a share Joy and Sorrow,
Enough for Ten; and here I own it.
.....
George Gordon Lord Byron
Curiosity
Mammy's in de kitchen, an' de do' is shet;
All de pickaninnies climb an' tug an' sweat,
Gittin' to de winder, stickin' dah lak flies,
Evah one ermong us des all nose an' eyes.
.....
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Mammy's in de kitchen, an' de do' is shet;
All de pickaninnies climb an' tug an' sweat,
Gittin' to de winder, stickin' dah lak flies,
Evah one ermong us des all nose an' eyes.
.....
Paul Laurence Dunbar
The Bell(e) Of Baltimore
[One of the notable features of Baltimore is the big bell
that hangs in the city hall tower, to strike the hour and
sound the fire alarm. It is called “Big Sam,” and weighs
5,000 pounds]
.....
Hattie Howard
[One of the notable features of Baltimore is the big bell
that hangs in the city hall tower, to strike the hour and
sound the fire alarm. It is called “Big Sam,” and weighs
5,000 pounds]
.....
Hattie Howard
Angkor
I
Out of the Forest into a terrible splendour
Of noon, the pinnacles of the temple--portals,
Stone Faces, immense in carven ruin
.....
Robert Laurence Binyon
I
Out of the Forest into a terrible splendour
Of noon, the pinnacles of the temple--portals,
Stone Faces, immense in carven ruin
.....
Robert Laurence Binyon