TENDENCY POEMS

The African Dictator

Have you ever heaped up
all the possible disgusting wastes
from a high-level hospital

.....

Michael Aete

Michael: A Pastoral Poem

If from the public way you turn your steps
Up the tumultuous brook of Green-head Ghyll,
You will suppose that with an upright path
Your feet must struggle; in such bold ascent
.....

William Wordsworth

A Rat Surrendered Here

1340

A Rat surrendered here
A brief career of Cheer
.....

Emily Dickinson

Christmas Eve

I

Out of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night-air again.
.....

Robert Browning

The Ram

(An interpretation of a Jewish face)

You've inherited the great ram's features,
The black-wooled one that bred with Jacob's herds.
.....

Franz Werfel

First Love

A clergyman in Berkshire dwelt,
The REVEREND BERNARD POWLES,
And in his church there weekly knelt
At least a hundred souls.
.....

William Schwenck Gilbert

A Suplication For The Joys Of Heaven

To the Superior World to Solemn Peace
To Regions where Delights shall never cease
To Living Springs and to Celestial shade
For change of pleasure not Protection made
.....

Anne Kingsmill Finch

No Hope

I am left with no hope at all,
No possibility to reach my goal,

The Day of my death is fixed,
.....

Mirza Ghalib

Bel Canto

The sun is high, the seaside air is sharp,
And salty light reveals the Mayan School.
The Irish hope their names are on the harp,
We see the sheep's advertisement for wool,
.....

Kenneth Koch

Don Juan: Canto The Seventh

O Love! O Glory! what are ye who fly
Around us ever, rarely to alight?
There's not a meteor in the polar sky
Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight.
.....

George Gordon Byron

An Appeal To End Appeals

Sir, - I try to do my duty as a patriotic man
With sane views about the science of gastronomy;
And I'd ask the promulgators of each food consuming plan
To consider man's interior economy.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Don Juan: Canto The Ninth

Oh, Wellington! (or 'Villainton'--for Fame
Sounds the heroic syllables both ways;
France could not even conquer your great name,
But punn'd it down to this facetious phrase-
.....

George Gordon Byron

Eureka - A Prose Poem (an Essay On The Material And Spiritual Universe)

It is with humility really unassumed, it is with a sentiment even of awe, that I pen the opening sentence of this work: for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn, the most comprehensive, the most difficult, the most august.

What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sublimity -- sufficiently sublime in their simplicity, for the mere enunciation of my theme?

.....

Edgar Allan Poe

Willaloo

By E. A. P.
In the sad and sodden street,
To and fro,
Flit the fever-stricken feet
.....

Sir Arthur Quiller-couch

The Excursion - Book Ninth - Discourse Of The Wanderer, And An Evening Visit To The Lake

"To every Form of being is assigned,"
Thus calmly spake the venerable Sage,
"An 'active' Principle: howe'er removed
From sense and observation, it subsists
.....

William Wordsworth

Joseph's Dreams And Reuben's Brethren (a Recital In Six Chapters)

CHAPTER I

I cannot blame old Israel yet,
For I am not a sage,
.....

Henry Lawson

Why We Oppose Votes For Men

1. Because man's place is the armory.

2. Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise
than by fighting about it.
.....

Alice Duer Miller

The Fairy Queen's Song

Oh, foolish fay,
Think you because
Man's brave array
My bosom thaws
.....

William Schwenck Gilbert

Celestial Love

Higher far,
Upward, into the pure realm,
Over sun or star,
Over the flickering Dæmon film,
.....

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Stork's Vocation

THE stork who worms and frogs devours

That in our ponds reside,
Why should he dwell on high church-towers,
.....

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

At Anchor

The soft asphaltum in the sun;
Betrays a tendency to run;
Whereas the dog that takes his way
Across its course concludes to stay.
.....

Ambrose Bierce

Old English Poetry (essay)

It should not be doubted that at least one-third of the affection with which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be attributed to what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry we mean to the simple love of the antique and that, again, a third of even the proper poetic sentiment inspired by their writings should be ascribed to a fact which, while it has strict connection with poetry in the abstract, and with the old British poems themselves, should not be looked upon as a merit appertaining to the authors of the poems.

Almost every devout admirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions,would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy,wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general handling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to ideality, but in the case in question it arises independently of the author's will, and is altogether apart from his intention.

.....

Edgar Allan Poe

Michael - A Pastoral Poem

If from the public way you turn your steps
Up the tumultuous brook of Green-head Ghyll,
You will suppose that with an upright path
Your feet must struggle; in such bold ascent
.....

William Wordsworth

The Prelude - Book Second

SCHOOL-TIME (continued)

Thus far, O Friend! have we, though leaving much
Unvisited, endeavoured to retrace
.....

William Wordsworth

The Muleteer

THE Lombard princes oft pervade my mind;
The present tale Boccace relates you'll find;
Agiluf was the noble monarch's name;
Teudelingua he married, beauteous dame,
.....

Jean De La Fontaine

The Prelude - Book Fourteenth

CONCLUSION

In one of those excursions (may they ne'er
Fade from remembrance!) through the Northern tracts
.....

William Wordsworth

The Prelude - Book Fifth

BOOKS

When Contemplation, like the night-calm felt
Through earth and sky, spreads widely, and sends deep
.....

William Wordsworth

The Birds Of Spring - Prose

by Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.


My quiet residence in the country, aloof from fashion, politics, and the money market, leaves me rather at a loss for important occupation, and drives me to the study of nature, and other low pursuits. Having few neighbors, also, on whom to keep a watch, and exercise my habits of observation, I am fain to amuse myself with prying into the domestic concerns and peculiarities of the animals around me; and, during the present season, have derived considerable entertainment from certain sociable little birds, almost the only visitors we have, during this early part of the year.
.....

Washington Irving

Paracelsus: Part V: Paracelsus Attains

Scene. Salzburg; a cell in the Hospital of St. Sebastian. 1541.
Festus, Paracelsus.


.....

Robert Browning

The Stork's Vocation.

The stork who worms and frogs devours

That in our ponds reside,
Why should he dwell on high church-towers,
.....

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Don Juan - Canto The Seventh.

O Love! O Glory! what are ye who fly
Around us ever, rarely to alight?
There 's not a meteor in the polar sky
Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight.
.....

George Gordon Byron

Christmas-eve

I.
OUT of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night air again.
I had waited a good five minutes first
.....

Robert Browning

Women's Suffrage

Fellow men! why should the lords try to despise
And prohibit women from having the benefit of the parliamentary Franchise?
When they pay the same taxes as you and me,
I consider they ought to have the same liberty.
.....

William Topaz Mcgonagall

Lines In Defence Of The Stage

Good people of high and low degree,
I pray ye all be advised by me,
And don't believe what the clergy doth say,
That by going to the theatre you will be led astray.
.....

William Topaz Mcgonagall

Bohemia

Bohemia, o'er thy unatlassed borders
How many cross, with half-reluctant feet,
And unformed fears of dangers and disorders,
To find delights, more wholesome and more sweet
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Lodestone

As needles point towards the pole,
When touched by the magnetic stone;
So faith in Jesus, gives the soul
A tendency before unknown.
.....

John Newton

The Carlysles

[I was talking with a newspaper man the other day who seemed to think that the fact that Mrs. Carlyle threw a teacup at Mr. Carlyle should be given to the public merely as a fact. But a fact presented to the people without the proper--or even, if necessary, without the improper--human being to go with it does not mean anything and does not really become alive or caper about in people's minds. But what I want and what I believe most people want when a fact is being presented is one or two touches that will make natural and human questions rise in and play about like this: 'Did a servant see Mrs. Carlyle throw the teacup? Was the servant an English servant with an English imagination or an Irish servant with an Irish imagination? What would the fact have been like if Mr. Browning had been listening at the keyhole? Or Oscar Wilde, or Punch, or the Missionary Herald, or The New York Sun, or the Christian Science Monitor?"--GERALD STANLEY LEE in the Saturday Evening Post]

BY OUR OWN ROBERT BROWNING

.....

Franklin Pierce Adams

You Can Be A Republican, I'm A Genocrat

Oh, "rorty" was a mid-Victorian word
Which meant "fine, splendid, jolly,"
And often to me it has reoccurred
In moments melancholy.
.....

Ogden Nash

Work Or Reflection

Now, I always have preserved a certain attitude
Quite definite in reference to Work
('Tis futility concealing
That I have the Weary Feeling
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Conclusion

The book of the Gulistan has been completed, and Allah had been invoked for aid! By the grace of the Almighty, may his name be honoured, throughout the work the custom of authors to insert verses from ancient writers by way of loan, has not been followed.

To adorn oneself with oneâ??s own rag
Is better than to ask for the loan of a robe.
.....

Saadi Shirazi

Book Fourteenth [conclusion]

In one of those excursions (may they ne'er
Fade from remembrance!) through the Northern tracts
Of Cambria ranging with a youthful friend,
I left Bethgelert's huts at couching-time,
.....

William Wordsworth

A Poet's Hope

'Twas a weary-looking mortal, and he wandered near the portal
Of the melancholy City of the Discontented Dead.
He was pale and worn exceeding and his manner was unheeding,
As if it could not matter what he did nor what he said.
.....

Ambrose Bierce

The Gallows

I.
THE suns of eighteen centuries have shone
Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Willaloo

By E. A. P.


In the sad and sodden street,
.....

Arthur Thomas Quiller-couch

Understood

I value more than I despise
My tendency to sin,
Because it helps me sympathise
With all my tempted kin.
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Life In An Indian Village

BY T. RAMAKRISHNA, B.A.


With an Introduction by the Right Hon. Sir M.E. GRANT DUFF, G.C.S.I.
.....

Ramakrishna, T.

The Misanthrope Reclaimed - Act Iii

Scene I. Near the place of the damned. Enter Werner and Spirit.

Werner.

.....

George W. Sands

Mrs. Miller

John B. McKinney, Attorney and Counselor at Law, as his sign read, was, for many reasons, a fortunate man. For many other reasons he was not. He was chiefly fortunate in being, as certain opponents often strove to witheringly designate him, "the son of his father," since that sound old gentleman was the wealthiest farmer in that section, with but one son and heir to, in time, supplant him in the role of "county god," and haply perpetuate the prouder title of "the biggest tax-payer on the assessment list." And this fact, too, fortunate as it would seem, was doubtless the indirect occasion of a liberal percentage of all John's misfortunes. From his earliest school-days in the little town, up to his tardy graduation from a distant college, the influence of his father's wealth invited his procrastination, humored its results, encouraged the laxity of his ambition, "and even now," as John used, in bitter irony, to put it, "it is aiding and abetting me in the ostensible practice of my chosen profession, a listless, aimless undetermined man of forty, and a confirmed bachelor at that!" At the utterance of this self-depreciating statement, John generally jerked his legs down from the top of his desk; and, rising and kicking his chair back to the wall, he would stump around his littered office till the manilla carpet steamed with dust. Then he would wildly break away, seeking refuge either in the open street, or in his room at the old-time tavern, The Eagle House, "where," he would say, "I have lodged and boarded, I do solemnly asseverate, for a long, unbroken, middle-aged eternity of ten years, and can yet assert, in the words of the more fortunately-dying Webster, that 'I still live!'"

Extravagantly satirical as he was at times, John had always an indefinable drollery about him that made him agreeable company to his friends, at least; and such an admiring friend he had constantly at hand in the person of Bert Haines. Both were Bohemians in natural tendency, and, though John was far in Bert's advance in point of age, he found the young man "just the kind of a fellow to have around;" while Bert, in turn, held his senior in profound esteem - looked up to him, in fact, and in even his eccentricities strove to pattern after him. And so it was, when summer days were dull and tedious, these two could muse and doze the hours away together; and when the nights were long, and dark, and deep, and beautiful, they could drift out in the noon-light of the stars, and with "the soft complaining flute" and "warbling lute," "lay the pipes," as John would say, for their enduring popularity with the girls! And it was immediately subsequent to one of these romantic excursions, when the belated pair, at two o'clock in the morning, had skulked up a side stairway of the old hotel, and gained John's room, with nothing more serious happening than Bert falling over a trunk and smashing his guitar, - just after such a night of romance and adventure it was that, in the seclusion of John's room, Bert had something of especial import to communicate.

.....

James Whitcomb Riley

The Sandpit

Bertrand had been surprised by the recoil of his father's rifle. He had not prepared for the sight of the weasel pasted against the barn door, a dozen pellets alone penetrating its upper neck and mid-thorax region. A mass of blood and fur seemed to have been twisted onto the vicinity of the latch then held in place as if from afar by many bullet-like prongs. Surely, the calibre of the shotgun was too strong for his choice of game.

Bertrand had a tendency for overkill. Possessing a temperament and a super-charged imagination that demanded structure even when little existed naturally, his mania for organization had presented itself on innumerable occasions about the homestead. There had been the case of his clearing a brood of starlings from the drive house. A messy business, if you let it but from one Bertrand would not flinch. A half dozen squawking, flightless birds coiled above the door in the attic were disposed of. After all, it was his job to end the clatter and they were an obscene, noxious bird what with laying their eggs in songbirds' nests and crowding out more desirable species. Moreover, their very presence constituted an eyesore and that, coupled with their grating noise, concluded their fate. They were pests, simple and unadulterated, and on a farm any such nuisance had to be wrenched aside. Still, he had not drowned them like unwanted kittens or burned them out like that nest of yellow jackets in the currant bush. A simple twist of their neck either between the fingers of his leathered gloves (he disliked the feel of flesh on feather so this necessitated hunting for a thick pair of mittens), or placing the head of the screaming nestling under one's boot did the business. Almost effortlessly, but again nothing about tending land was done entirely without deliberation or exertion. Structure and foresight held things together. It was the nature of the beast.

.....

Paul Cameron Brown

Woodnotes Ii

As sunbeams stream through liberal space
And nothing jostle or displace,
So waved the pine-tree through my thought
And fanned the dreams it never brought.
.....

Ralph Waldo Emerson