A New Book of Verse

Socializings

Villon

Ballade: the Reply to Franc Gontier / Ballade: les contradits de Franc Gontier

Thomas Campion (ca.1567–1619)

Now winter nights enlarge

Ben Jonson (ca. 1572–1637)

Inviting a Friend to Supper (“Tonight, grave sir, both my poor house, and I”)

The Goodwife’s Ale (“When shall we meet again and have a taste”)

Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

Corinna’s Going A-Maying (“Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morn”)

Now is the time for mirth

Robert Sempill (1595?–1665?)

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

John Suckling (1609–1642)

A Ballad Upon a Wedding (“I tell thee Dick where I have been”)

Francis Sempill (1616?–1686)

The Blythsome Wedding (“Fy let us all to the Briddel”)

Thomas d’Urfey? (1653–1723)

The Green-Gowne (“Pan leave Piping, the Gods have done Feasting”)

John Gay (1685–1732)

The Birth of the Squire (“Ye sylvan Muses, loftier strains recite”)

Allan Ramsay (1686–1758)

Lucky Spence’s Last Advice (“Three Times the Carline grain’d and rifted”)

Elegy on Maggy Johnston (“Auld Reeky mourn in Sable Hue”)

Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

The Rape of the Lock (“What dire offence from amorous causes springs”)

Epistle to Miss Blount, on Her Leaving the Town, after the Coronation (“As some fond virgin, whom her mother’s care”)

George Stevens (1710–1784)

Bartleme Fair (“While gentlefolk strut in their silver and satins”)

Charles Dibdin (1745–1814)

The Lady’s Diary

Anonymous

Hob upon a Holiday (“Hob yawned three times and rubbed his eyes”)

Mary Robinson (1758–1800)

The Camp {“Tents, marquees, and baggage-waggons;”)

Jane Taylor (1783–1824)

Recreation (“We took our work, and went, you see”)

Anonymous

The Night Before Larry Was Stretched

George Byron (1788–1824)

Lines to Mr. Hodgson Written on Board the Lisbon Packet (“Huzza! Hodgson, we are going”)

Canto XI / Don Juan (“When Bishop Berkeley said ‘there was no matter’”)

William Watt (1792–1859)

The Tinkler’s Waddin’ (“In June, when broom in bloom was seen”)

Thomas Hood (1799–1845)

She is far from the land (“Cables entangling her”)

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Clapham Academy (“Ah me! Those old familiar bounds”)

Winthrop Praed (1802–1839)

Arrivals at a Watering Place (“I play a spade:—such strange faces”)

Good-Night to the Season (“Good-night to the Season! ‘tis over”)

Helen Sheridan (1807–1867)

The Charming Woman (“So Miss Myrtle is going to marry?”)

Gérard de Nerval (1808–1855)

The Cousin / La Cousine (“L’hiver a ses plasirs: et souvent, le dimanche” ; “Winter has its pleasures; and often on Sunday” French

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

The Game / Le Jeu (“Dans les fauteuils fanés des courtisanes vieilles”/ In the faded armchairs of old courtisans) French French and

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)

The Queen of Hearts (“How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we”)

William Gilbert (1836–1911)

Down to the Derby (“Waggon and cart, ready to start”)

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

An Ancient to Ancients (“Where once we danced, where once we sang”)

The Five Students (“The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,”)

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”)

Jules Laforgue (1860–1887)

Ballade of Return / Ballade de Retour (“Le Temps met Septembre en sa hotte”/ “The weather puts September in its bundle”)

Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898)

The Three Musicians (“Along the path that skirts the wood”)

Rainer Rilke (1875–1926)

You few, my long-ago childhood playmates / Wenige ihr, der einstigen Kindheit Gespielen (Sonnets to Orpheus, II/8)

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

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

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918)

The Synagogue / La synagogue (“Ottomar Scholem et Abraham Lœweren”/ “Ottomar Scholem and Abraham Loweren”)

William Williams (1883–1963)

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

Erich Kästner (1899–1974)

Aforesaid Spring is Here / Besagter Lenz ist da (“It’s true. Now spring is set upon its course.”)

Charles Bruce (1906–1971)

Girls in the Parlour (“They have held funerals and weddings here”)

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)

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

The Saginaw Song (“In Saginaw, in Saginaw”)

Gavin Ewart (1916–1995)

The Larkin Automatic Car Wash (“Back from the palace of a famous king”)

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000)

The Rites for Cousin Vit (“Carried her unprotesting out the door”)

At the Hairdresser’s (“Gimme an upsweep, Minnie”)

William Smith (1918–

Wedding Song (“I would have instruments that could express”)

Richard Wilbur (1921–

Cottage Street, 1953 (“Framed in her phoenix fire-screen, Edna Ward”)

Leaving (“As we left the garden party”)

Philip Larkin (1922–1985)

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

James Baxter (1926–1972)

Lament for Barney Flanagan (“Flanagan got up on a Saturday morning”)

Edward Sissman (1928–1976)

Amazing Grace, 1974

Charles Gullans (1929–1993)

Open House (“The doors are open to the summer night”)

X.J. Kennedy (1929–

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

John Whitworth (1945–

Criminal Damage (“A rumour round the village—something horrid”)

Marilyn Nelson (1946–

Daughters, 1900 (“Five daughters, in the slant light on the porch,”)

Churchgoing (“The Lutherans sit stolidly in rows”)

Timothy Steele (1948–

Her Memory of the Picnic (“To finger-sponge crust crumbs of fruit meringue”)

Erica Dawson (1979–

The Platitudinous and the Clever (“At parties always seem to know”

Caki Wilkinson (1980–

Itinerant (“He’s driving, one hand down an Arby’s sack”)