25 poems

After about a decade of collecting and appreciating poems, I’ve decided to put together an anthology of my favourites, along with some commentary on what I like about each. My tastes lean towards short poems, and ones with an immediate poignancy or beauty to them - with a few notable exceptions which you’ll see below. I’m now 25, so it seemed appropriate to include 25 poems, in three sections. In general, poems are only ever about love or loss, and usually both, so the first two sections deal with those two themes. The third section consists of those rarest of creatures: non-romantic poems which are actually (mostly) happy. I hope you enjoy all of them as much as I have.

Love poems:

1. since feeling is first, by e e cummings
2. No second Troy, by William Butler Yeats
3. Marrysong, by Dennis Scott
4. How do I love thee, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
5. A quoi bon dire, by Charlotte Mew
6. La figlia che piange, by T. S. Eliot
7. He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, by William Butler Yeats
8. Jenny Kiss’d me, by Leigh Hunt
9. When in the chronicle of wasted time, by William Shakespeare

Poems about death and loss:

1. When I have fears that I may cease to be, by John Keats
2. Sailing to Byzantium, by William Butler Yeats
3. The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot
4. What lips my lips have kissed, by Edna St. Vincent Millay
5. Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, by Ernest Dowson
6. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S. Eliot
7. The trees are down, by Charlotte Mew
8. i sing of Olaf glad and big, by e e cummings
9. If only we had taller been, by Ray Bradbury
10. pity this busy monster, manunkind, by e e cummings

Happy poems:

1. As kingfishers catch fire, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
2. On his seventy-fifth birthday, by Walter Savage Landor
3. High flight, by John Magee
4. Lake isle of Innisfree, by William Butler Yeats
5. My heart leaps up, by William Wordsworth
6. Bread dipped in olive oil and salt, by Theo Dorgan

Poems about love

since feeling is first, by e e cummings

My favourite love poem. e e cummings (as he styled himself) was a 20th-century poet whose unconventional use of punctuation, structure and words themselves made him controversial. In this, one of his more ‘normal’ poems, there’s a delicious tension between cummings’ words and his actions: although he claims that love is about being swept away (and many of his poems are about passionate love) he also planned every word, every space, and every punctuation mark meticulously. The overall effect is of unabashed sincerity of emotion. His warning against over-intellectualising emotions ends on a darker note - I’ve spent a long time trying to decipher the last line. Perhaps, though, it’s not meant to be deciphered; maybe the poem is just a joyous celebration of life which, as always, ends abruptly in death.

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you; wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

No second Troy, by William Butler Yeats

Too often, love poems portray their female subject as no more than a meek, gentle object of admiration. No second Troy is the opposite: a poem dedicated to a woman’s intensity and hauteur. The narrator is in awe, and it shows: he pictures her as some near-mythical classical ideal, despite (or maybe because of) her callousness towards him. She is a revolutionary, a firebrand - yet out of place in this relatively civilised and calm era. Of course the narrator overstates his case: Helen did not burn Troy herself. She merely inflamed the hearts of men until they were senseless - just as the narrator feels.

Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great,

Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?

How do I love thee, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I hesitated to put this in, because it’s become a little worn from overuse. But really, nothing compares to it as an outpouring of love. Not just passionate, it’s also a beautifully-constructed poem which tells the speaker’s own story through her choice of phrases.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

A quoi bon dire, by Charlotte Mew

The title translates to something like: what’s the good of saying? And maybe it belongs in the section of poems about death and loss - but the poignant beauty of the last stanza means I can’t think of it except as a statement of unwavering love.

Seventeen years ago you said

Something that sounded like Good-bye;

And everybody thinks that you are dead,

But I.

So I, as I grow stiff and cold

To this and that say Good-bye too;

And everybody sees that I am old

But you.

And one fine morning in a sunny lane

Some boy and girl will meet and kiss and swear

That nobody can love their way again

While over there

You will have smiled, I shall have tossed your hair.

Marrysong, by Dennis Scott

Like No second Troy, Marrysong portrays a narrator in thrall to a tempestuous yet bewitching woman. The long years which the narrator spends on his exploration of her mind contrast with the short, sharp sentences showing his lover’s changes: “He charted. She made wilderness again.” One can almost picture the narrator’s bewilderment as his wife’s love waxes and wanes - and yet there’s something beautiful in his never-ending pursuit, something which would be missing from a more conventional relationship. Why is it a song of marriage? Perhaps because the author thinks that even after our lives settle down, they should still capture this spirit of adventure.

He never learned her, quite. Year after year

That territory, without seasons, shifted

under his eye. An hour he could be lost

in the walled anger of her quarried hurt

on turning, see cool water laughing where

the day before there were stones in her voice.

He charted. She made wilderness again.

Roads disappeared. The map was never true.

Wind brought him rain sometimes, tasting of sea -

and suddenly she would change the shape of shores

faultlessly calm. All, all was each day new;

the shadows of her love shortened or grew

like trees seen from an unexpected hill,

new country at each jaunty helpless journey.

So he accepted that geography, constantly strange.

Wondered. Stayed home increasingly to find

his way among the landscapes of her mind.

La figlia che piange, by T. S. Eliot

This is a tricky poem to interpret. The title: “Young girl weeping”. The epigraph: “Maiden, by what name shall I address you?” Ostensibly, the speaker is narrating a scene viewed from a third-person perspective - but his transitions between that and a first-person perspective betray that it’s actually about him leaving his own lover. It’s a framing which highlights his startling detachment. The breakup is, to him, little more than a piece of art, “a gesture and a pose” - except during his “troubled midnight”, when emotion seeps through. I guess it’s ironic that, in selecting this poem, I’ve made the same mistake as the narrator: letting aesthetics displace sincerity. But it’s so aesthetic!

O quam te memorem virgo…

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—

Lean on a garden urn—

Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—

Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—

Fling them to the ground and turn

With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:

But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,

So I would have had her stand and grieve,

So he would have left

As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,

As the mind deserts the body it has used.

I should find

Some way incomparably light and deft,

Some way we both should understand,

Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather

Compelled my imagination many days,

Many days and many hours:

Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.

And I wonder how they should have been together!

I should have lost a gesture and a pose.

Sometimes these cogitations still amaze

The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, by William Butler Yeats

This poem and the next embody the simplicity and sincerity of the very best love poems. In this one, note the use of repetition and colour. In fact, the whole poem repeats old cliches, and there’s reason to think that Yeats intended it to be slightly ironic. But I prefer to interpret it as a reminder that love and devotion, and the ways they are expressed, are timeless.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Jenny Kiss’d me, by Leigh Hunt

Here’s to innocent, joyful love - what more could we ask for?

Jenny kiss’d me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in!

Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,

Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,

Say I’m growing old, but add,

Jenny kiss’d me.

When in the chronicle of wasted time, by William Shakespeare

I find most of Shakespeare’s sonnets a bit bland in their endless adoration of a generic lover, but the narrative of this one stands out. While praising ‘beauty’ alone is rather outdated, the conceit of all past lovers and poets leading up to this point is a clever and powerful one. There’s also the amusing irony of Shakespeare bemoaning his inarticulacy in verse that has lived on for centuries, and will do so for centuries more.

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rhyme

In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,

Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their antique pen would have express'd

Even such a beauty as you master now.

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring;

And, for they look'd but with divining eyes,

They had not skill enough your worth to sing:

For we, which now behold these present days,

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

Poems about death and loss

When I have fears that I may cease to be, by John Keats

This poem, more than any other I know, captures a sense of wonder and longing which is often absent from our day-to-day lives - for which we turn to poetry, and art, and nature. Although it’s technically addressed to Keats’ lover, her appearance in the poem is fleeting: Keats is concerned with human insignificance in the face of the universe and the grand ‘romance’ being played out in the cosmos (mentioned in what is probably my favourite line from any poem). And yet, despite the pessimistic topic, the poem ends on a note of ambiguity: if the narrator has thought away his concern for love and fame espoused in body of the poem, what’s left? Is there not something intrinsically worthwhile in art - in this poem itself? Is his work not the ‘grain’ of his life? But even if so, it’s not ‘full-ripened’: Keats himself died tragically young.

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,

Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Sailing to Byzantium, by William Butler Yeats

The first of two poems in this collection about immortality. I love it because of its striking imagery: "a tattered coat upon a stick"; "the mackerel-crowded seas". And is there any summary of the human condition more unsettling than 'sick with desire, and fastened to a dying animal'? Not that being 'set upon a golden bough to sing' is an ideal substitute, though. Despite the golden glory of Byzantium, the triumph of mind over matter in this poem is double-edged in a way that I can't quite pin down.

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot

This is the masterpiece of 20th century poetry, a lament for the spiritual drought of the modern age which leaves us living in a ‘waste land’ (a powerful idea also conveyed in Yeats’ The Second Coming). It’s a poem which rewards careful reading and re-reading. Littered with classical allusions, Hindu mythology and snatches of foreign languages, its subtleties could barely be explored in a book, let alone this short paragraph. Unfortunately, at 434 lines in five parts, it’s also too long to reproduce in full here. I’ve therefore excerpted about a third of the poem, consisting of the first half of part I and then parts IV and V in their entirety.

            I. The Burial of the Dead

 April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

 What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

             IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

And the profit and loss.

                               A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool.

                               Gentile or Jew

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

             V. What the Thunder Said

 After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying

Prison and palace and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying

With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were water we should stop and drink

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand

If there were only water amongst the rock

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit

There is not even silence in the mountains

But dry sterile thunder without rain

There is not even solitude in the mountains

But red sullen faces sneer and snarl

From doors of mudcracked houses

                                  If there were water

  And no rock

  If there were rock

  And also water

  And water

  A spring

  A pool among the rock

  If there were the sound of water only

  Not the cicada

  And dry grass singing

  But sound of water over a rock

  Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees

  Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

  But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded

I do not know whether a man or a woman

—But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air

Murmur of maternal lamentation

Who are those hooded hordes swarming

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth

Ringed by the flat horizon only

What is the city over the mountains

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air

Falling towers

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vienna London

Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight

And fiddled whisper music on those strings

And bats with baby faces in the violet light

Whistled, and beat their wings

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall

And upside down in air were towers

Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel

There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

It has no windows, and the door swings,

Dry bones can harm no one.

Only a cock stood on the rooftree

Co co rico co co rico

In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust

Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder

DA

Datta: what have we given?

My friend, blood shaking my heart

The awful daring of a moment’s surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract

By this, and this only, we have existed

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms

DA

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

We think of the key, each in his prison

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours

Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

DA

Damyata: The boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded

Gaily, when invited, beating obedient

To controlling hands

                                I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

              Shantih shantih shantih

What lips my lips have kissed, by Edna St. Vincent Millay

There’s not much to say about this poem: here, Millay is word-perfect. I often think about how the transience of memory carves away parts of us over time, leaving a nostalgia for what “sings no more”. For another excellent poem on a similar theme, see Tennyson’s Tears, Idle Tears.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, by Ernest Dowson

Dowson’s specialty was making English sound like a Romance language, and making it flow off the tongue. The title is taken from Horace - “I am not as I was in the reign of good Cynara” - and the poem echoes this sense of wistfulness as it describes a man who struggles to move on from his lover. The poem’s most famous line - “I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind” - inspired the title of the classic American novel. It is ironic that, despite the narrator claiming he’s forgotten so much, her memory still has such a hold on him - throughout the poem, her name is emphasised with an exclamation mark every time it appears, making it seem an impassioned plea directly to her.

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine

There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed

Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;

And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,

Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;

Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;

But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

When I awoke and found the dawn was grey:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,

Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind,

But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,

But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,

Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;

And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,

Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S. Eliot

Perhaps my favourite poem. The epigraph is from Dante’s Inferno, and describes a damned soul who only speaks because he knows his tale will never be reported. The poem is filled with allusions to Hamlet and the Bible, amongst other works - fitting, since Prufrock’s indecisiveness is second only to Hamlet’s. Brilliant turns of phrase - “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”; “to squeeze the universe into a ball” - frame Prufrock’s all-important question. Is it a marriage proposal? Or the start of a romance? Or a visit to a brothel, as some critics interpret it? It’s remarkable that Eliot wrote this poem whilst only 22: although the narrator is hesitant, his musings form an exquisitely-constructed portrait of lonely middle-age.

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.

Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,

Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

              So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

              And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

              And should I then presume?

              And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

              Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

              That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

              “That is not it at all,

              That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

The trees are down, by Charlotte Mew

A lyrical poem which, in simple language, evokes the glory of nature in contrast to the irreverence of humanity. The poem starts off conversational, but by the end strong rhythm and rhyme schemes have crept in as the poet becomes more passionate. Notice also the use of sound: the “whoops” and the “whoas”, the “grate” and the “swish”, the sound of sparrows flying... The essence of Spring is something which can’t be pinned down except by gesturing to the world around us - it’s in the trees, and the birds, and the rats, and something great which is slowly toppling.

—and he cried with a loud voice:

Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees—

(Revelation)

They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens.

For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall,

The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,

With the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas,’ the loud common talk, the loud common laughs of the men, above it all.

I remember one evening of a long past Spring

Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large dead rat in the mud of the drive.

I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing,

But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive.

The week’s work here is as good as done. There is just one bough

  On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,

         Green and high

         And lonely against the sky.

               (Down now!—)

         And but for that,   

         If an old dead rat

Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought of him again.

It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;

These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:

When the men with the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’ have carted the whole of the whispering loveliness away

Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them.

It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes;

Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,   

         In the March wind, the May breeze,

In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the great seas.

         There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;

         They must have heard the sparrows flying,   

And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying—

         But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:

         ‘Hurt not the trees.’

i sing of Olaf glad and big, by e e cummings

This is the one poem that struck me hardest after first reading it. For the next few days, I just kept coming back and back, like a spectator at a car crash, horrified yet entranced. I did consider replacing it with one of the classic war poems, but actually I think this one speaks much better to the nature of modern war. It’s not for the faint of heart, though.

i sing of Olaf glad and big

whose warmest heart recoiled at war:

a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig

westpointer most succinctly bred)

took erring Olaf soon in hand;

but--though an host of overjoyed

noncoms(first knocking on the head

him)do through icy waters roll

that helplessness which others stroke

with brushes recently employed

anent this muddy toiletbowl,

while kindred intellects evoke

allegiance per blunt instruments--

Olaf(being to all intents

a corpse and wanting any rag

upon what God unto him gave)

responds,without getting annoyed

“I will not kiss your fucking flag”

straightway the silver bird looked grave

(departing hurriedly to shave)

but--though all kinds of officers

(a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride)

their passive prey did kick and curse

until for wear their clarion

voices and boots were much the worse,

and egged the firstclassprivates on

his rectum wickedly to tease

by means of skilfully applied

bayonets roasted hot with heat--

Olaf(upon what were once knees)

does almost ceaselessly repeat

“there is some shit I will not eat”

our president,being of which

assertions duly notified

threw the yellowsonofabitch

into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)

i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because

unless statistics lie he was

more brave than me:more blond than you.

If only we had taller been, by Ray Bradbury

It’s not the most artful poem, but this one really speaks to me, because it’s filled with my own longings. Bradbury read it at a celebration of NASA's Mariner 9 mission to Mars: it's one of a far-too-small corpus of poems celebrating scientific progress. I rather like John Salvatier’s commentary on it. Other poems which share its anti-death message: Thomas’ Do not go gentle into that good night and Owen’s The Next War.

The fence we walked between the years

Did balance us serene

It was a place half in the sky where

In the green of leaf and promising of peach

We'd reach our hands to touch and almost touch the sky

If we could reach and touch, we said,

'Twould teach us, not to, never to, be dead

We ached and almost touched that stuff;

Our reach was never quite enough.

If only we had taller been

And touched God's cuff, His hem,

We would not have to go with them

Who've gone before,

Who, short as us, stood as they could stand

And hoped by stretching tall that they might keep their land

Their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul.

But they, like us, were standing in a hole

O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall

Across the Void, across the Universe and all?

And, measured out with rocket fire,

At last put Adam's finger forth

As on the Sistine Ceiling,

And God's hand come down the other way

To measure man and find him Good

And Gift him with Forever's Day?

I work for that

Short man, Large dream

I send my rockets forth between my ears

Hoping an inch of Good is worth a pound of years

Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal mall:

We've reached Alpha Centauri!

We're tall, O God, we're tall!

pity this busy monster, manunkind, by e e cummings

Another cummings - this one about the “comfortable disease” of modern life. My concerns are not quite the same as his, but the spirit is the same: the bigness of our littleness, the meaninglessness of our busyness.

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:

your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness

--- electrons deify one razorblade

into a mountainrange; lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish

returns on its unself.

                         A world of made

is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this

fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell

of a good universe next door; let's go

Happy poems

As kingfishers catch fire, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

It’s not so much that this poem is about happiness, as that reading it out loud is a joyous experience. Try it! Hopkins, like Dowson, managed to beautify the English language, with phrases that chase each other along with such rhythm and music that afterwards, you’re astonished to find out they actually make sense (with a bit of creative license). While reading, note that the accents are Hopkins’ way of indicating stressed syllables.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

On his seventy-fifth birthday, by Walter Savage Landor

A classic. It doesn’t quite fit my own philosophy, but there’s a quiet dignity here which commands respect.

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:

Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:

I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;

It sinks; and I am ready to depart.

High flight, by John Magee

Just as How do I love thee is the purest expression of love I’ve seen, this poem is the purest outpouring of joy that I’ve ever read.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air...

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark or even eagle flew --

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Lake isle of Innisfree, by William Butler Yeats

This poem, even more relevant now than when it was written, is about the longing for simplicity and peace. Yeats characterises the island of Innisfree with exquisite care: the honey-bees’ hive, the linnets’ wings, the colour of the sky. A simple life is lived in details and moments. Through the portrait he builds up, the reader begins to share his sense that there is something special about such a life, something about it which might be calling to us “night and day”, if only we were listening.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

My heart leaps up, by William Wordsworth

Joy in nature is Wordsworth’s constant theme - I think this poem best captures the essence of that, starting from childhood and lasting throughout a life whose days are “bound each to each”. Compare his contemporary Keats’ worry in Lamia that knowledge of science will “unweave the rainbow” and destroy its beauty.

My heart leaps up when I behold

  A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

  Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

Bread dipped in olive oil and salt, by Theo Dorgan

An ode to the Mediterranean life! Again, it’s about simplicity. But what I really love in this poem is the idea of continuity across time: story opening story, over and over again. As Watchmen had it: “Nothing ends… nothing ever ends.” Here’s hoping for that.

Bread dipped in olive oil and salt,

a glass of rough dry white.

A table beside the evening sea

where you sit shelling pistachios,

flicking the next open with the half-

shell of the last, story opening story,

on down to the sandy end of time.

The stars coming out on the life that I call mine