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The Sleeping City

A Princess in the eastern tale
Paced thro' a marble city pale,
And saw in ghastly shapes of stone
The sculptured life she breathed alone;

Saw, where'er her eye might range,
Herself the only child of change;
And heard her echoed footfall chime
Between Oblivion and Time;

And in the squares where fountains played,
And up the spiral balustrade,
Along the drowsy corridors,
Even to the inmost sleeping floors,

Surveyed in wonder chilled with dread
The seemingness of Death, not dead;
Life's semblance but without its storm,
And silence frosting every form;

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poem by George Meredith
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Rigoletto – Mobile Verse Parody Verdi

In this opera by Verdi, with the choicest of libretti
ranging up to alto, down to double bass,
to avoid the nitty-gritty of the plot would be a pity,
so in nineteen stanzas scan the rhymes encased.

Scene is set in some fair city where the search for someone pretty
was the past-time of a Duke with time to waste,
he’s the subject of this ditty which runs true to subject, witty,
wise, and well within the boundaries of taste.
.
Now this Duke had roving eyes bright, marriage ties seemed to despise quite,
all affection had forgotten for Her Grace,
Countess Cipriano one night spies at a party, quickly tries tight
to encircle, during dancing, by fair waist.

Noting, not without surprise where, anger blazing through his eyes’ stare,
the Count in fury fumed at the unchaste, -
she appeared a pretty prize there, perfect in both features, size, fair
and, despite his presence, to the dance made haste.

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poem by Jonathan Robin
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College heart aches

Morning glooms emerged stormy and waning pale
No light no sun but a wannish glare
In layers upon layers the gray clouds summons converged
And the budded peaks of the wood are dump cold congealed
Caught and cuffed by the cools gale
I had fancied it would be a spring day fair

As I flung myself down a craggy slope
Of bushes and outcrops
Ever muttered and madden and ever waned with despair
To attend a class of no slight interest or share
Whom but her should I meet

I the morning glooms when sunrise like sunset sank
In the blossomed gable-ends
At the head of the college street
Whom but her should I meet
And she touched me with a smile so sweet
That dwelt merely at the corner of her eyes

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poem by Isaac Ziv
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The Pangolin

Another armored animal–scale
lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until they
form the uninterrupted central
tail row! This near artichoke with head and legs and
grit-equipped gizzard,
the night miniature artist engineer is,
yes, Leonardo da Vinci’s replica–
impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear.
Armor seems extra. But for him,
the closing ear-ridge–
or bare ear licking even this small
eminence and similarly safe
contracting nose and eye apertures
impenetrably closable, are not;–a true ant-eater,
not cockroach-eater, who endures
exhausting solitary trips through unfamiliar ground at night,
returning before sunrise; stepping in the moonlight,
on the moonlight peculiarly, that the outside
edges of his hands may bear the weight and save the
claws

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poem by Marianne Moore
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Parramatta Girls

I wouldn’t say he was a bad man
But he got so violent
After my mother she fell ill
After her accident
She couldn’t really do much
She looked old beyond her years
And he took to drinking most the time
And scream he was her nurse
His anger was so scary
He’d shout and bang and crash
We’d try then to avoid him
In case we all got bashed
He never touched me sexually
But sometimes seemed to leer
Whenever I got close to him
Close enough to smell the beer
At 14 I had had enough
After his mates were round
Their eyes were just undressing me
And followed me around

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poem by David Keig
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The Angel In The House. Book II. Canto I.

Preludes.

I The Song of Songs
The pulse of War, whose bloody heats
Sane purposes insanely work,
Now with fraternal frenzy beats,
And binds the Christian to the Turk,
And shrieking fifes and braggart flags,
Through quiet England, teach our breath
The courage corporate that drags
The coward to heroic death.
Too late for song! Who henceforth sings,
Must fledge his heavenly flight with more
Song-worthy and heroic things
Than hasty, home-destroying war.
While might and right are not agreed,
And battle thus is yet to wage,
So long let laurels be the meed
Of soldier as of poet sage;
But men expect the Tale of Love,

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poem by Coventry Patmore
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From the Commemoration Ode

WASHINGTON

WHEN dreaming kings, at odds with swift paced time,
Would strike that banner down,
A nobler knight than ever writ or rhyme
With fame’s bright wreath did crown
Through armed hosts bore it till it floated high
Beyond the clouds, a light that cannot die!
Ah, hero of our younger race!
Great builder of a temple new!
Ruler, who sought no lordly place!
Warrior, who sheathed the sword he drew!
Lover of men, who saw afar
A world unmarred by want or war,
Who knew the path, and yet forbore
To tread, till all men should implore;
Who saw the light, and led the way
Where the gray would might greet the day;
Father and leader, prophet sure,
Whose will in vast works shall endure,

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poem by Harriet Monroe
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Dire Cure

"First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
in its behavior that at first they mis-
diagnosed it. "Your wife will die of it
within a year." But in ten days or so
I sat beside her bed with hot-and-sour
soup and heard an intern congratulate
her on her new diagnosis: a children's
cancer (doesn't that possessive break
your heart?) had possessed her. I couldn't stop
personifying it. Devious, dour,
it had a clouded heart, like Iago's.
It loved disguise. It was a garrison
in a captured city, a bad horror film
(The Blob), a stowaway, an inside job.
If I could make it be like something else,
I wouldn't have to think of it as what,
in fact, it was: part of my lovely wife.

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poem by William Matthews
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The Bride of the Wind and Rain

There was morning dew, and the sky was blue
When the stranger came to town,
Riding a painted wagon, pulled
By horses, black and brown,
He carried a wand of hickory,
Was clad in a purple cloak,
'The Master of Elementals'
Said the sign - 'of the Gypsy Folk.'

The people gathered to hear him speak
When he stopped in the village square,
'I hold the secrets of wind and rain,
Of summer clouds up there.
The gentle rain for your barley crop,
The breeze that flutters the leaves,
Or the menace of darkening thunderheads
As the lightning strikes at your eaves.'

The people laughed: 'He's a crazy loon, '
They said: 'We think you're a clown! '

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 2. Prelude

A cold, uninterrupted rain,
That washed each southern window-pane,
And made a river of the road;
A sea of mist that overflowed
The house, the barns, the gilded vane,
And drowned the upland and the plain,
Through which the oak-trees, broad and high,
Like phantom ships went drifting by;
And, hidden behind a watery screen,
The sun unseen, or only seen
As a faint pallor in the sky;--
Thus cold and colorless and gray,
The morn of that autumnal day,
As if reluctant to begin,
Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn,
And all the guests that in it lay.

Full late they slept. They did not hear
The challenge of Sir Chanticleer,
Who on the empty threshing-floor,

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poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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