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The King’s Evil

They brought them up from their huts in the fens,
The woeful sufferers gaunt and grim;
They flocked from the city's noisome dens
To the Monarch's throne to be touched by him.
'For his touch,' they whisper, 'is sovereign balm,
The anointed King has a power to heal.'
Oh, the piteous prayers as the royal palm
Is laid on their necks while they humbly kneel!

Blind hope! But the cruel and cold deceit
A rich reward to the palace brings;
A snare for the untaught People's feet,
And a courtier's lie for the good of Kings.
But the years are sands, and they slip away
Till the baseless wall in the sun lies bare;
The touch of the King has no balm to-day,
And the Right Divine is the People's share.

The word remains: but the Evil now
Is caused, not cured, by imperial hands,—

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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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The Ballad Of The Foxhunter

'Lay me in a cushioned chair;
Carry me, ye four,
With cushions here and cushions there,
To see the world once more.

'To stable and to kennel go;
Bring what is there to bring;
Lead my Lollard to and fro,
Or gently in a ring.

'Put the chair upon the grass:
Bring Rody and his hounds,
That I may contented pass
From these earthly bounds.'

His eyelids droop, his head falls low,
His old eyes cloud with dreams;
The sun upon all things that grow
Falls in sleepy streams.

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poem by William Butler Yeats
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Gerunds

'We are no fragile poets, ' he said
sipping panaceas;
no,
we bleed in these bloody times.'

Our descriptors screech-
show calluses.

Our gerunds
are heavy-laden,
participled
and unrelieved.

In our time
we've had sex
with the dark and delicious.
Our tiny lusts are autographed
on our eyelids.

We have ridden the night bull

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poem by Lonnie Hicks
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Will Sail Tomorrow

THE good ship lies in the crowded dock,
Fair as a statue, firm as a rock:
Her tall masts piercing the still blue air,
Her funnel glittering white and bare,
Whence the long soft line of vapory smoke
Betwixt sky and sea like a vision broke,
Or slowly o'er the horizon curled
Like a lost hope fled to the other world:
She sails to-morrow,--
Sails to-morrow.

Out steps the captain, busy and grave,
With his sailor's footfall, quick and brave,
His hundred thoughts and his thousand cares,
And his steady eye that all things dares:
Though a little smile o'er the kind face dawns
On the loving brute that leaps and fawns,
And a little shadow comes and goes,
As if heart and fancy fled--where, who knows:
He sails to-morrow:

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poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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An Elegy on a Lap-dog

1 Shock's fate I mourn; poor Shock is now no more,
2 Ye Muses mourn, ye chamber-maids deplore.
3 Unhappy Shock! yet more unhappy fair,
4 Doom'd to survive thy joy and only care!
5 Thy wretched fingers now no more shall deck,
6 And tie the fav'rite ribbon round his neck;
7 No more thy hand shall smooth his glossy hair,
8 And comb the wavings of his pendent ear.
9 Yet cease thy flowing grief, forsaken maid;
10 All mortal pleasures in a moment fade:
11 Our surest hope is in an hour destroy'd,
12 And love, best gift of heav'n, not long enjoy'd.

13 Methinks I see her frantic with despair,
14 Her streaming eyes, wrung hands, and flowing hair
15 Her Mechlen pinners rent the floor bestrow,
16 And her torn fan gives real signs of woe.
17 Hence Superstition, that tormenting guest,
18 That haunts with fancied fears the coward breast;
19 No dread events upon his fate attend,

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poem by John Gay
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Wilson

The lowliest born of all the land,
He wrung from Fate's reluctant hand
The gifts which happier boyhood claims;
And, tasting on a thankless soil
The bitter bread of unpaid toil,
He fed his soul with noble aims.

And Nature, kindly provident,
To him the future's promise lent;
The powers that shape man's destinies,
Patience and faith and toil, he knew,
The close horizon round him grew,
Broad with great possibilities.

By the low hearth-fire's fitful blaze
He read of old heroic days,
The sage's thought, the patriot's speech;
Unhelped, alone, himself he taught,
His school the craft at which he wrought,
His lore the book within his, reach.

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Jephthah Judge of Israel

Have you not heard these many years ago,
Jeptha was judge of Israel?
He had one only daughter and no mo,
The which he loved passing well.
And as by lott,
God wot,
It so came to pass,
As Gods will was,
That great wars there should be,
And none should be chosen chief but he.

And when he was appointed judge,
And chieftain of the company,
A solemn vow to God he made,
If he returned with victory,
At his return,
To burn
The first live thing,
****
That should meet with him then,

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poem by Anonymous Olde English
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Reality

These things alone endure;
'They are the solid facts,' that we may grasp,
Leading us on and upward if we clasp
And hold them firm and sure.

In a wise fable old,
A hero sought a god who could at will
Assume all figures, and the hero still
Loosed not his steadfast hold,

For image foul or fair,
For soft-eyed nymph, who wept with pain and shame,
For threatening fiend or loathsome beast or flame,
For menace or for prayer.

Until the god, outbraved,
Took his own shape divine; not wrathfully,
But wondering, to the hero gave reply,
The knowledge that he craved.

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poem by Emma Lazarus
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90 North

At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe,
I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides
I sailed all night—till at last, with my black beard,
My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole.

There in the childish night my companions lay frozen,
The stiff fur knocked at my starveling throat,
And I gave my great sigh: the flakes came huddling,
Were they really my end? In the darkness I turned to my rest.

—Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence
Of the unbroken ice. I stand here,
The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare
At the North Pole . . .
And now what? Why, go back.

Turn as I please, my step is to the south.
The world—my world spins on this final point
Of cold and wretchedness: all lines, all winds
End in this whirlpool I at last discover.

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poem by Randall Jarrell
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Dr. sam

TO MISS GRACE KING

Down in the old French quarter,
Just out of Rampart street,
I wend my way
At close of day
Unto the quaint retreat
Where lives the Voodoo Doctor
By some esteemed a sham,
Yet I'll declare there's none elsewhere
So skilled as Doctor Sam
With the claws of a deviled crawfish,
The juice of the prickly prune,
And the quivering dew
From a yarb that grew
In the light of a midnight moon!

I never should have known him
But for the colored folk
That here obtain

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poem by Eugene Field
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