Category Poets

(Epilogue to ‘The Two Poets of Croisic.’) What a pretty tale you told meOnce upon a time–Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)Was it prose or was it rhyme,Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,While your shoulder propped my head. Anyhow…

Verse-making was least of my virtues: I viewed with despairWealth that never yet was but might be–all that verse-making wereIf the life would but lengthen to wish, let the mind be laid bare.So I said, “To do little is bad,…

O’ Lyric Love, half angel and half bird,And all a wonder and a wild desire,—Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,Took sanctuary within the holier blue,And sang a kindred soul out to his face,—Yet human at the red-ripe of…

I. This is a spray the Bird clung to,Making it blossom with pleasure,Ere the high tree-top she sprang to,Fit for her nest and her treasure.Oh, what a hope beyond measureWas the poor spray’s, which the flying feet hung to,—So to…

I. Dear, had the world in its capriceDeigned to proclaim “I know you both,“Have recognized your plighted troth,Am sponsor for you: live in peace!”—How many precious months and yearsOf youth had passed, that speed so fast,Before we found it out…

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there! Something to see, by Bacchus,…

Overhead the tree-tops meet,Flowers and grass spring ‘neath one’s feet;There was nought above me, and nought below,My childhood had not learned to know:For what are the voices of birds—Ay, and of beasts,—but words—our words,Only so much more sweet?The knowledge of…

I. Said Abner, “At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,“Kiss my cheek, wish me well!” Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.And he, “Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent,“Neither drunken…

“As certain also of your own poets have said”—(Acts 17.28) Cleon the poet (from the sprinkled isles,Lily on lily, that o’erlace the seaAnd laugh their pride when the light wave lisps “Greece”)—To Protus in his Tyranny: much health! They give…

I. The morn when first it thunders in March,The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say:As I leaned and looked over the aloed archOf the villa-gate this warm March day,No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolledIn the valley…