A New Book of Verse

Celebratings

Geoffrey Chaucer (ca 1343–1400)

Your eyen two will slee me sodenly

To Rosemounde (“Madame, ye been of alle beautee shrine”)

Hyd, Absalon, thy gilte tresses clere (Balade)

Anonymous

I sing of a maiden

Thomas Wyatt (ca. 1503–1542)

Once, as me thought, Fortune me kissed

William Forrest (dates?)

A New Ballade of the Marigolde (“The God above, for man’s delight”)

Alexander Montgomerie (b. ca 1543–1558; d. 1598)

The Night is Neir Gone (“Hay! Now the day dawis”)

John Stewart (ca.1545–ca. 1605)

To the Honour of the Ladyis, and the Fortification of their Fame (“Just to declair the hie Magnificence”)

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599)

Epithalamion (“Ye learned sisters, which have oftentimes”)

Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

Only joy, now here you are

John Dowland (1563–1625)

Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

John Donne (ca. 1572–1631)

The Sun Rising (“Busy old fool, unruly Sun”)

Ben Jonson (ca. 1572–1637)

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair

“To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name”

Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

A Psalme or Hymn to the Graces (“Glory be to the Graces!”)

Robert Sempill (1595?–1665?)

The Life and Death of the Piper of Kilbarchan (“Kilbarchan now may say, alas!”)

Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612–1672)

To My Dear and Loving Husband (“If ever two were one, then surely we.”)

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)

On the Death of Mr. William Harvey (“It was a dismal, and a fearful night”)

Richard Lovelace ((1618–1658)

To Althea, from Prison (“When Love with unconfined wings”)

Andrew Marvell (ca.1621–1678)

The Garden (“How vainly men themselves amaze”)

The Mower to the Glow-Worms (“Ye living lamps, by whose dear light”)

Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)

His Books (“Bright books! The perspectives to our weak sights”)

John Dryden (1631–1700)

To the Memory of Mr. Oldham (“Farewell, too little and too lately known”)

Katherine Philips (1631–1664)

To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship (“I did not live, until this time”)

To Mrs. Mary Awbrey (“Soul of my soul, my joy, my crown, my friend,”)

Edward Taylor (ca.1642–1679)

View all ye eyes above, this night which flings

Oh! thou, my Lord, thou king of Saints, here mak’st

Oh! Good, Good, Good, my Lord. What more Love yet

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)

Stella’s Birthday, 1725 (“Ah, when a beauteous nymph decays”)

To Stella, March 13, 1724 (“Tormented with incessant pains,”)

Anna Seward (1742–1805)

An Old Cat’s Dying Soliloquy (“Years saw me still Acasto’s mansion grace”)

Robert Burns (1759–1796)

Elegy on Capt. Matthew Henderson (“O Death! thou tyrant fell and bloody”)

Richard Milliken (1767–1815)

The Groves of Blarney (“The groves of Blarney they look so charming”)

James Hogg (1770–1835)

Birniebouzle (“Will ye gang wi’ me, lassie”)

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843)

My Possession / Mein Eigentum (“In seiner Füller ruhet der Herbsttag nun”/In its fullness the Autumn day rests now)

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey (“Five years have past; five summers, with the length”)

The Solitary Reaper (“Behold her, single in the field”)

Walter Landor (1775–1864)

On Seeing a Hair of Lucretia Borgia (“Borgia, thou once were almost too august”)

Everything tells me you are near

Dirce (“Stand close around, ye Stygian set,”)

Jane Taylor (1783–1824)

The Squire’s Pew (“A slanting ray of evening light”)

Percy Shelley (1792–1822)

Ode to the West Wind (“O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being”)

John Clare (1793–1864)

The Skylark (“The rolls and harrow lie at rest beside”)

John Keats (1795–1821)

To Autumn (“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”)

Ode on a Grecian Urn (“Thou still unravished bride of quietness”)

Victor Hugo (1802–1885)

Anticipation / Attente (“Monte, écureuil, monte au grand chêne”/ “Rise, squirrel, up the great oak, rise”)

A Young Girl / Une Jeune Fille (“J’aime. O vents, chassez l’hiver.”/ “I’m in love. O winds, chase away winter.”)

Winthrop Praed (1802–1839)

The Last Quadrille (“Not yet, not yet—it’s hardly four;”)

Gérard de Nerval (1808–1855) Note

Fantasy / Fantasie (“Il est un air pour qui je donnerai” /”There is a melody for which I would give”)

Alfred de Musset (1810–1857)

To Juana / À Juana (“O ciel! Je vous revois, madame” / “Wonderful! So you’re back, madame”)

Théophile Gautier (1813–1872)

On the lagoons / Sur les Lagunes (“Tra la, tra la, la, la, la laire”) French and English

Carmen / Carmen (“Carmen est maigre, un trait de bistre” / “Carmen is thin; a yellow brown”) French, English.

Herman Melville (1819–1891)

The sighting of Moby Dick, chapter 133 (“Like noiseless nautilus shells, …streaming like pennons”)

Frederick Tuckerman (1821–1873)

The Cricket (“The humming bee purrs softly o’er his flower”)

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

The Little Old Ladies / Les Petites Vieilles (“Dans les plis sinueux des vieilles capitals”/ In the winding folds of old capitals)

Hymn / Hymne (“A la très-chere, à la très-belle”/ To the most dear and beautiful)

William Cory (1823–1892)

Hersilia (“I see her stand with arms akimbo”)

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

These are the days when birds come back

He touched me, so I live to know

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

The Going (“Why did you give no hint that night”)

The Haunter (“He does not think that I haunt here nightly”)

After a Journey (“Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost”)

Paul Verlaine (1844–1896)

Moonlight / Clair de lune (“Votre âme est un paysage choisi” / “Your soul’s a special landscape”)

Gerard Hopkins (1844–1889)

The Habit of Perfection (“Elected Silence, sing to me”)

Inversnaid (“This darksome burn, horseback brown”)

Tristan Corbière (1845–1875)

To the Memory of Zulma / À la Mémoire de Zulma (“Elle était riche de vingt ans”/ “She had youth’s twenty golden years”)

Bambine / Bambine (“Tu dors sous les panais, capitaine Bambine”/ “You’re pushing up the daisies, Captain Bambine”) French English

Aristide Bruant (1851–1925)

Blackie / La Noire (“La Noire est fille du canton”/ “Blackies’s a good old country girl”) French English

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)

At the Green Tavern / Au Cabaret Vert (“Depuis huit jours j’avais dechiré mes bottines”/ “For a whole week I’d been ripping my boots”)

John Falkner (1858–1922)

After Trinity (“We’ve done with dogma and divinity”)

Amy Levy (1861–1889)

To Lallie (“Up those Museum steps you came”)

William Yeats (1865–1939)

The Wild Swans at Coole (“The trees are in their autumn beauty”)

Lullaby (“Beloved, may your sleep be sound”)

John Kinsella’s Lament for Mrs. Mary Moore (“A bloody and a sudden end”)

Edwin Robinson (1869–1935)

Hillcrest (“No sound of any storm that shakes”)

Mr. Flood’s Party (“Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night”)

Paul Valéry (1871–1945)

The Cemetery by the Sea / Le Cimitière Marin (“Ce toit tranquille, où marchent des colombes”/ This tranquil roof where doves are walking’)

Rainer Rilke (1875–1926)

A tree ascended there. O pure transcendence / Da stieg ein Baum. O reine Ubersteigung (Sonnets to Orpheus, I/1)

And a girl, almost, grew and came forth / Und fast ein Mädchen wars und ging hervor (Sonnets to Orpheus, I/2)

Plump apple, smooth banana, melon, peach / Voller Apfel, Birne und Banane (Sonnets to Orpheus, I/13)

Edward Thomas (1878–1917)

Adlestrop (“Yes. I remember Adlestrop”)

Sowing (“It was a perfect day”)

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm (“The house was quiet and the world was calm.”)

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour (“Light the first light of evening, as in a room”)

Harry McClintock (1882–1957)

The Big Rock Candy Mountains

William Williams (1883–1963)

Primrose (“Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!”)

The Catholic Bells (“Tho’ I’m no Catholic”)

The Dance (“In Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess,”)

Burning the Christmas Greens (“Their time past, pulled down”)

David Lawrence (1885–1930)

Snake (“A snake came to my water-trough”)

Bavarian Gentians (“Not every man has gentians in his house”)

John Ransom (1888–1974)

Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter (“There was such speed in her little body”)

Robert Graves (1895–1985)

The Door (“When she came suddenly in”)

Counting the Beats (“You, love, and I”)

Not to Sleep (“Not to sleep all the night long, for pure joy”)

Yip Harburg (1896–1981)

The Springtime Cometh (“The Springtime cometh”)

Louis Aragon (1897–1982)

Love Which Isn’t a Word / L’Amour qui n’est-pas un mot (“Mon Dieu jusqu’au dernier moment”/ My God, right up to the last minute”) French English

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)

The Ballad of Mack the Knife / Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (“Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne”/”Oh the shark has pretty teeth dear”)

Fred Rose (1898–1954)

Setting the Woods on Fire (“Comb your hair and paint and powder”)

Janet Lewis (1899–1998)

Lines with a Gift of Herbs (“The summer’s residue”)

Baby Goat (“New-born, gilded with blood,”)

Remembered Morning (“The axe rings in the wood,”)

Allen Tate (1899–1979)

The Mediterranean (“Where we went in the boat was a long bay”)

Yvor Winters (1900–1968)

The Marriage (“Incarnate for our marriage you appeared”)

The California Oaks (“Spreading and low, unwatered, concentrate’)

Sterling Brown (1901–1989)

To a Certain Lady, in Her Garden (“Lady, my lady, come from out the garden,”)

Robert Francis (1901–1987)

Hay (“All afternoon the hayricks have rolled by”)

Remind Me of Apples (“When the cicada celebrates the heat,”)

Countee Cullen (1903–1946)

To John Keats, Poet, at Springtime (“I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;”)

Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978)

The 5:32 (“She said, If tomorrow my world were torn in two,”)

Charles Bruce (1906–1971)

Nova Scotia Fish Hut (“Rain, and blown sand, and southwest wind”)

Wool (“She turns the ancient wheel”)

Fall Grass (“This is the season when the darkest grass”)

Orchard in the Woods (“Red spruce and fir have crossed the broken lines”)

Wystan Auden (1907–1973)

Madrigal (“O lurcher-loving collier, black as night,”)

Alec Hope (1907–2000)

The Return of Persephone (“Gliding through the still air, he made no sound”)

Meditation on a Bone (“Words scored upon a bone”)

Louis MacNeice (1907–1963)

Meeting Point (“Time was away and somewhere else’”)

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)

I Knew a Woman (“I knew a woman, lovely in her bones”)

Light Listened (“O what could be more nice”)

The Happy Three (“Inside, my darling wife”)

James Cunningham (1911–1985)

Coffee (“When I awoke with cold”)

Night-Piece (“Three matches in a folder, you and me”)

For a College Yearbook (“Somewhere on these bare rocks in some bare hall”)

To My Wife (“And does the heart grow old? You know”)

George Johnston (1913–2004)

Music on the Water (“Saturday night she comes in her little boat”)

Ewan MacColl (1915–1989)

Sweet Thames, Flow Softly (“I met my girl at Woolwich Pier”)

The Big Hewer (“Out of the dirt and darkness I was born, go down”)

John Nims (1914–1999)

Love Poem (“My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases”)

Anne Stanford (1917–1987)

The Walnuts (“There shine always the bright tops of the grove”)

Joan LaBombard (1920–

By the Beautiful Ohio (“Now at the dark’s perpetual descent,”)

The Return (“Here is the well-kept lawn, the ordered garden,”)

Richard Wilbur (1921–

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World (“The eyes open to a cry of pulleys”)

Philip Larkin (1922–1985)

At Grass (“The eye can hardly pick them out”)

An Arundel Tomb (“Side by side, their faces blurred”)

The Whitsun Weddings (“That Whitsun, I was late getting away:”)

Donald Justice (1925–2004)

On an Anniversary (“Thirty years and more go by”)

Maxine Kumin (1925–

Morning Swim (“Into my empty head there come”)

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997)

τεθνάκην δ’ ολίγω ’πιδεύης φαίνομ’ αλαία (“Red cheeked boyfriends tenderly kiss me sweet mouthed”)

Henri Coulette (1927–1988)

Night Thoughts (“Your kind of night, David, your kind of night,”)

James Wright (1927–1980)

Written in a Copy of Swift’s Poems for Wayne Burns (“I promised once if I got hold of”)

Donald Petersen (1928–2005)

The Ballad of Dead Yankees (“Where’s Babe Ruth, Sultan of Swat”)

Charles Gullans (1929–1993)

On a Recording of Maria Cebotari (“I hear your voice through these defective grooves”)

Thom Gunn (1929–2004)

On the Move (“The blue jay scuffling in the bushes follows”)

To Yvor Winters, 1955 (“I leave you in your garden.”)

X.J. Kennedy (1929–

In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day (“In a prominent bar in Secaucus one day”)

Terse Elegy for J.V. Cunningham (“Now Cunningham, who rhymed by fits and starts”)

Claire McAllister (1931–

Rites of Autumn (“The lights of Autumn grazed across the fields”)

Marilyn Hacker (1942–

Dusk: July (“Late afternoon rain of a postponed summer:”)

Iva’s Birthday Poem (“All horns should honk like anything!”)

Ballad of Ladies Lost and Found (“Where are the women who, entre deux guerres,”)

Dick Davis (1945–

The Shore (“He feels against his skin”)

Clive Wilmer (1945–

In Memory of Graham Davies, Psychotherapist (1937–1993) (“You, invisible, once again, I address”)

Timothy Steele (1948–

An Aubade (“As she is showering, I wake to see”)

In Montmartre Cemetery (“The seated statue on Nijinsky’s tomb”) oval incandescence”)

Dana Gioia (1950–

The Next Poem (“How much better it seems now”)

Alan Shapiro (1952–

New Year’s Eve in the Aloha Room (“The dance floor is an oval incandescence”)

Aphrodite (“The gold adorned, the lover of smiles, is nearing”)

Old Joke (“Radiant child of Leto, farworking Lord Apollo”)

Joseph Harrison (1957–

On Rereading Some Lines of Poetry (“How many years have passed since I last read”)

George Elliott Clarke (1960–

How to Live in the Garden (“Cora brings a rural nobility to making food”)

W.N. Herbert (1961–

Beppe (“Signori, man whose name confirms his status”)

Sue Goyette (1964–

The Season of Forgiveness (“In this weather, wood has warped and doors”)

Caki Wilkinson (1980–

Lares and Penates (“The suburbs? Well, for heaven’s sake”)