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Le Mauvais Moine (The Bad Monk)

Les cloîtres anciens sur leurs grandes murailles
Etalaient en tableaux la sainte Vérité,
Dont l'effet réchauffant les pieuses entrailles,
Tempérait la froideur de leur austérité.

En ces temps où du Christ florissaient les semailles,
Plus d'un illustre moine, aujourd'hui peu cité,
Prenant pour atelier le champ des funérailles,
Glorifiait la Mort avec simplicité.

— Mon âme est un tombeau que, mauvais cénobite,
Depuis l'éternité je parcours et j'habite;
Rien n'embellit les murs de ce cloître odieux.

Ô moine fainéant! quand saurai-je donc faire
Du spectacle vivant de ma triste misère
Le travail de mes mains et l'amour de mes yeux?

The Bad Monk

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poem by Charles Baudelaire
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Nuremberg

In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient,
stands.

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and
song,
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them
throng:

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold,
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old;

And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth
rhyme,
That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every
clime.

In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron hand,
Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand;

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poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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The Burghers

THE sun had wheeled from Grey's to Dammer's Crest,
And still I mused on that Thing imminent:
At length I sought the High-street to the West.

The level flare raked pane and pediment
And my wrecked face, and shaped my nearing friend
Like one of those the Furnace held unshent.

"I've news concerning her," he said. "Attend.
They fly to-night at the late moon's first gleam:
Watch with thy steel: two righteous thrusts will end

"Her shameless visions and his passioned dream.
I'll watch with thee, to testify thy wrong--
To aid, maybe--Law consecrates the scheme."

I started, and we paced the flags along
Till I replied: "Since it has come to this
I'll do it! But alone. I can be strong."

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poem by Thomas Hardy
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The Death of Slavery

O THOU great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years,
Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield
The scourge that drove the laborer to the field,
And turn a stony gaze on human tears,
Thy cruel reign is o’er;
Thy bondmen crouch no more
In terror at the menace of thine eye;
For He who marks the bounds of guilty power,
Long-suffering, hath heard the captive’s cry,
And touched his shackles at the appointed hour,
And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled
Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.

A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;
Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks;
Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks
Send up hosannas to the firmament!
Fields where the bondman’s toil
No more shall trench the soil,
Seem now to bask in a serener day;

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poem by William Cullen Bryant
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Must Rhyme Draw Blank..et Criticism?

It’s sad to see that rhyming‘s thought redundant
by those who’s bark can’t steer poetic star,
who grudge, shout out, doubt scope, spout words abundant,
seek validation they’d from others bar.

‘Free verse’ disperse if this your fancy tickles
to jar the winter of your discontent,
with fallen leaves, sheaves garnered, unhoned sickles,
with [f]lagging letters, jagged sentiment.

Rhyme carries more than meaning: music, timing,
pattern, play, holistic core explore,
link sense to ‘whither’, ‘whence’, nor mummer’s miming,
nor lead tread led astray by crow’s harsh caw.

‘Rich rhyme’ or ‘prose’ debate is academic
when eight in ten can’t read three thousand words,
what counts is sense and sentiments – polemic
remains the province of small minds in herds

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poem by Jonathan Robin
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Fit the First: ( Hunting of the Snark )

The Landing

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."

The crew was complete: it included a Boots--
A maker of Bonnets and Hoods--
A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes--
And a Broker, to value their goods.

A Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense,
Might perhaps have won more than his share--
But a Banker, engaged at enormous expense,
Had the whole of their cash in his care.

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poem by Lewis Carroll
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Elmwood

Here, in the twilight, at the well-known gate
I linger, with no heart to enter more.
Among the elm-tops the autumnal air
Murmurs, and spectral in the fading light
A solitary heron wings its way
Southward--save this no sound or touch of life.
Dark is the window where the scholar's lamp
Was used to catch a pallor from the dawn.

Yet I must needs a little linger here.
Each shrub and tree is eloquent of him,
For tongueless things and silence have their speech.
This is the path familiar to his foot
From infancy to manhood and old age;
For in a chamber of that ancient house
His eyes first opened on the mystery
Of life, and all the splendor of the world.
Here, as a child, in loving, curious way,
He watched the bluebird's coming; learned the date
Of hyacinth and goldenrod, and made

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poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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Nero

This Rome, that was the toil of many men,
The consummation of laborious years—
Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead
And image of the wide desire of kings—
Is made my darkling dream's effulgency,
Fuel of vision, brief embodiment
Of wandering will and wastage of the strong
Fierce ecstasy of one tremendous hour,
When ages piled on ages like a pyre
Flamed to the years behind and years to be.

Yet any sunset were as much as this,
Save for the music forced from tongueless things,
The rape of Matter's huge, unchorded harp
By the many-fingered fire—a music pierced
With the tense voice of Life, more quick to cry
Its agony—and save that I believed
The radiance redder for the blood of men.
Destruction hastens and intensifies
The process that is beauty, manifests

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poem by Clark Ashton Smith (1912)
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The Cornishman

The train pulled away from the station,
The driver grinned up at the box,
The signalman glowered at the driver's face
As he slotted the lever across,
The train slid easily through the points
As it blew three whistle blasts,
One for the train, one for the box,
And one for Miss Caroline Glass.

Caroline waved him a cheery farewell
From the cottage she owned on the bank,
She'd once been engaged to the signalman,
But now she'd moved up a rank.
'A driver is such an important man, '
She'd said to her former beau,
'He holds all those lives in his hands when he drives,
And he crosses the country, so.'

'But you - you stand in this signal box,
Pull levers, and ring little bells,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Lalani

I swore, when my wife took off one night
That I'd never love again,
She'd left a note by the candlelight:
'I've been seeing other men! '
I stood in shock, I couldn't move,
Stood rooted to the floor,
And after I'd pulled the blinds, I cried,
Then locked the cottage door.

The love that she'd sworn, just shadows;
The plans that we'd made, just sand,
My life had become a darker place
By the scrawl from a woman's hand.
The cottage was wreathed in silence, it
Was still, like a living tomb,
The only sounds were my echoing steps
As I paced there, in the gloom.

I spent, God! How many weeks? I sat
Just stared at a blank, white wall,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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