The HyperTexts

The World's Greatest Poets
by Michael R. Burch

Who are the world's greatest poets? Of course even the experts wouldn't come up with the same top 100 poets of all time, in the exact same order, but there would be many names in common. This is how I rank the world's top 100 poets, based primarily on the quality of their best poems, but also taking into account such things as overall impact, influence on other poets and literature in general, and, to a lesser but not insignificant degree, current readership.

This is my personal ranking of the world's greatest poets, the greatest poets of all time, from around the globe, in one poetry lover's opinion. If you don’t care for such lists, below the rankings you will find snippets of the best poems — some of the greatest lines in the English language — followed by some of the best full poems.

THE “BIG FOUR” EXPANDED TO A “BIG TEN”

The greatest poets of all time, according to the consensus or near consensus, include the “big four” of Homer, Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare, to which I would add Sappho, Neruda, Tagore, Goethe, Basho and Whitman, making it a “big ten.”

I agree with the ancient Greeks who so revered Sappho that they called her the tenth Muse. That's high praise indeed, since the other nine Muses were goddesses!

Mnemosyne was stunned into astonishment when she heard honey-tongued Sappho, wondering how mortal men merited a tenth Muse. — Antipater of Sidon, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

THE REST OF THE HIGHEST TIER OF GREAT POETS

Also in the highest ranks of the great poets, I have Li Bai, Blake, Burns, Chaucer, Dickinson, Frost, Housman, Keats, Milton, Pushkin, Rilke, Shelley, Wallace Stevens, Wordsworth and Yeats.

This gives me my top 25 poets.

STRONG CONTENDERS

Other strong contenders include Baudelaire, Elizabeth Bishop, Lord Byron, Hart Crane, e. e. cummings, John Donne, T. S. Eliot, Mirza Ghalib, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Hardy, Langston Hughes, Issa, Longfellow, Lorca, Robert Lowell, Ovid, Wilfred Owen, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Christina Rossetti, Rumi, Edmund Spenser, Tennyson, Dylan Thomas and Sir Thomas Wyatt.

This gives me my top 50 poets.

THE MOST UNDERRATED GREAT POETS

The most underrated great poets include Louise Bogan, Catullus, Fukuda Chiyo-ni, John Clare, Mahmoud Darwish, Enheduanna, Ernest Dowson, Ono no Komachi, Miklós Radnóti and Tzu Yeh.

This gives me my top 60 poets.

DARK HORSE POETS

My “dark horse” candidates include Anne Reeve Aldrich, The Archpoet, Yosa Buson, William Dunbar, Du Fu, Hafez, Robert Herrick, Robinson Jeffers, Ben Jonson, Eihei Dogen Kigen, Ezra Pound, E. A. Robinson, Sarah Teasdale, Wang Wei and Elinor Wylie.

This gives me my top 75 poets.

POETIC POWER COUPLES

Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine

This gives me my top 80 poets (Plath was already included).

CONTEMPORARY POETS

It takes time to sort out which contemporary poets will be read in the future, but these are my personal picks for future immortality: Conrad Aiken, Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jared Carter, Bob Dylan, Seamus Heaney, Robert Hayden, Philip Larkin, John Lennon, Archibald MacLeish, Louis MacNeice, Tom Merrill, Robert Mezey, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, Richard Thomas Moore, Kevin N. Roberts, A. E. Stallings, Derek Walcott, Richard Wilbur

This gives me my top 100 poets.

POETS WHO SHOULD BE IN MY TOP 100

My only excuse is that I ran out of room!

Anna Akhmatova, W. H. Auden (esp. “Lullaby”), Erinna, Euripides, Hafez, Heinrich Heine, Eihei Dogen Kigen, W. S. Rendra, Edward Thomas, Fadwa Tuqan, Marina Tsvetaeva, Yamaguchi Seishi, Masaoka Shiki, Charles Algernon Swinburne, Paul Valery

POETS BETTER KNOWN FOR OTHER THINGS

James Joyce (novels), D. H. Lawrence (novels), Christopher Marlowe (plays), Michelangelo, Sir Walter Raleigh, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (art), Leonardo da Vinci, Voltaire, Oscar Wilde (wit)

STILL GOING STRONG

Rhina P. Espaillat, R. S. Gwynn, Janet Kenny, Martin Mc Carthy, Harvey Stanbrough, F. F. Teague, Bob Zisk

YOUNGER POETS TO KEEP AN EYE ON

Annie Diamond, John Masella, Anaïs Vionet, Shannon Winestone

RECENTLY DEPARTED

Ann Drysdale, Jim Dunlap, Zyskandar Jaimot, Joe M. Ruggier, Luis Omar Salinas

BEST FOR HUMOR

Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein

POETS I LIKE FOR FOR A FEW POEMS

Poets I like for one poem or a few stellar poems but don’t rank in my top 100 poets include Coleridge, Allen Ginsberg (“Howl”), Kipling (dialect poems), D. H. Lawrence (esp. “Piano”), Anne Sexton

POETS WHO ARE NOT MY CUP OF TEA

Great poets by reputation who have never appealed to me personally include: Dante, Dryden, Emerson, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Alexander Pope, William Carlos Williams

POETS I HAVEN’T READ ENOUGH TO RANK, BUT LIKE WHAT I’VE READ

“So much to read, so little time!”

Outstanding poets by reputation but ones I haven’t read enough to rank include Maya Angelou, John Ashbery, John Berryman, Borges, Anne Bradstreet, Bukowski, Cavafy, Paul Celan, Leonard Cohen, Wendy Cope, Gulzar, H.D., Nazim Hikmet, Geoffrey Hill, Holderlin, Horace, Victor Hugo, Allama Iqbal, Omar Khayyam, Rupi Kaur, Audre Lorde, Czesław Miłosz, Sarojini Naidu, Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Fernando Pessoa, Petrarch, Pindar, Carl Sandburg, Wisława Szymborska, Ella Wilcox, Richard Wright

A number of full poems appear later on this page, after epigrams and snippets.

KEATS

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
Its loveliness increases; it will never
pass into nothingness …
―John Keats

SHELLEY

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley

SAPPHO

Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains
uprooting oaks.
—Sappho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.
—Sappho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She keeps her scents
in a dressing case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable place.
—Sappho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A short transparent frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!
—Sappho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

That enticing girl’s clinging dresses
leave me trembling, overcome with happiness,
as once, when I saw the Goddess in my prayers
eclipsing Cyprus.
—Sappho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

SHAKESPEARE

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them: ding-dong, bell.
—William Shakespeare

TAGORE

Come as you are, forget appearances!
Is your hair untamable, your part uneven, your bodice unfastened? Never mind.
Come as you are, forget appearances!
—Rabindranath Tagore

SEISHI

Grasses wilt:
the braking locomotive
grinds to a halt
―Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

DICKINSON

Come slowly—Eden
Lips unused to thee—
Bashful—sip thy jasmines—
As the fainting bee—
Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums—
Counts his nectars—alights—
And is lost in balms!
—Emily Dickinson

KOMACHI

If fields of autumn flowers
can shed their blossoms, shameless,
why can’t I also frolic here —
as fearless, wild and blameless?
—Ono no Komachi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I had thought to pluck
the flower of forgetfulness
only to find it
already blossoming in his heart.
—Ono no Komachi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

RADNOTI

I toppled beside him—his body already taut,
tight as a string just before it snaps,
shot in the back of the head.
"This is how you’ll end too; just lie quietly here,"
I whispered to myself, patience blossoming from dread.
"Der springt noch auf," the voice above me jeered;
I could only dimly hear
through the congealing blood slowly sealing my ear.
—Miklós Radnóti, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“Postcard 4” was Radnoti’s final poem, written October 31, 1944 near Szentkirályszabadja, Hungary, on a Nazi death march during the Holocaust. "Der springt noch auf" means something like "That one is still twitching."

EURIPIDES

Love distills the eyes’ desires,
love bewitches the heart with its grace.
—Euripides, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fools call wisdom foolishness.
—Euripides, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fresh tears are wasted on old griefs.
—Euripides, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

RUMI

Forget security!
Live by the perilous sea.
Destroy your reputation, however glorious.
Become notorious.
—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love calls, everywhere and always.
We're sky bound.
Are you coming?
—Rumi

Elevate your words, not their volume.
Rain grows flowers, not thunder.
—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

HAFEZ

The imbecile
constructs cages
for everyone he knows,
while the sage
(who has to duck his head
whenever the moon glows)
keeps dispensing keys
all night long
to the beautiful, rowdy,
prison gang.
—Hafez, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

PLATH

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.
—Sylvia Plath

TZU YEH

I heard my love was going to Yang-chou
So I accompanied him as far as Ch'u-shan.
For just a moment as he held me in his arms
I thought the swirling river ceased flowing and time stood still.
―Tzu Yeh, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Will I ever hike up my dress for you again?
Will my pillow ever caress your arresting face?
―Tzu Yeh, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I will wear my robe loose, not bothering with a belt;
I will stand with my unpainted face at the reckless window;
If my petticoat insists on fluttering about, shamelessly,
I'll blame it on the unruly wind!
―Tzu Yeh, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

BLAKE

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
—William Blake

Sweet babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.
—William Blake

SWINBURNE

Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne

ROBERTS

Despite the days and realms that we amassed,
Our time has passed.
—Kevin N. Roberts

DANTE

INSCRIPTION ON THE GATE OF HELL:
Before me nothing created existed, to fear.
Eternal I am, and eternal I endure.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
—Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Midway through my life’s journey
I awoke to find myself lost in a trackless wood,
for I had strayed far from the straight path.
—Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Little sparks may ignite great Infernos.
—Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She made my veins and even the pulses within them tremble.
—Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In Beatrice I beheld the outer boundaries of blessedness.
—Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

NERUDA

I do not love you like coral or topaz,
or the blazing hearth’s incandescent white flame;
I love you like phantoms embraced in the dark …
secretly, in shadows, unrevealed & unnamed.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
I stalk the streets, silent and starving.
Bread does not satisfy me; dawn does not divert me
from my relentless pursuit of your fluid spoor.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Please understand that when I awaken weeping
it's because I dreamed I was a lost child
searching the leaf-heaps for your hands in the darkness.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As if you were set on fire from within,
the moon whitens your skin.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You can crop all the flowers but you cannot detain spring.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

While nothing can save us from death,
still love can redeem each breath.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

CUMMINGS

… you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you …
―e. e. cummings

BASHO

The first soft snow:
leaves of the awed jonquil
bow low
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Winter in the air:
my neighbor,
how does he fare? …
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let us arrange
these lovely flowers in the bowl
since there's no rice
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, investigate loneliness!
a solitary leaf
clings to the Kiri tree
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A solitary crow
clings to a leafless branch:
nightfall
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

DONNE

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devils foot…
—John Donne

CHIYO-NI

Ah butterfly,
what dreams do you ply
with your beautiful wings?
—Fukuda Chiyo-ni, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Because morning glories
held my well-bucket hostage
I went begging for water!
—Fukuda Chiyo-ni, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

MICHELANGELO

Ravished, by all our eyes find fine and fair,
yet starved for virtues pure hearts might confess,
my soul can find no Jacobean stair
that leads to heaven, save earth's loveliness.
―Michelangelo, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

DA VINCI

Blinding ignorance misleads us.
Myopic mortals, open your eyes!
—Leonardo da Vinci, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

OWEN

They move not from her tapestries, their pall,
Nor pace her terraces, their hecatombs,
Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all.
—Wilfred Owen

HOUSMAN

Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
—A. E. Housman

FROST

And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
—Robert Frost

POUND

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
—Ezra Pound

KIGEN

This world?
Moonlit dew
flicked from a crane’s bill.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Seventy-one?
How long
can a dewdrop last?
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) by Michael R. Burch

YOSHITAKA

Both victor and vanquished are dewdrops:
flashes of light
briefly illuminating the void.
—Ouchi Yoshitaka, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) by Michael R. Burch

SHITAGO

This world—to what may we compare it?
To autumn fields darkening at dusk,
dimly lit by lightning flashes.
—Minamoto no Shitago, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) by Michael R. Burch

SENRYU

Like a lotus leaf’s evaporating dew,
I, too …
vanish.
—Senryu, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) Michael R. Burch

SHUGYO

Oh, fallen camellias,
if I were you,
I'd leap into the torrent!
― Takaha Shugyo, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Our life here on earth:
to what shall we compare it?
It is not like a rowboat
departing at daybreak,
leaving no trace of us in its wake?
― Takaha Shugyo, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Wild geese pass
leaving the emptiness of heaven
revealed
― Takaha Shugyo, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

ISSA

Petals I amass
with such tenderness
prick me to the quick.
—Kobayashi Issa, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This world of dew
is a dewdrop world indeed;
and yet, and yet …
—Kobayashi Issa, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lowly snail,
climb holy Mount Fuji,
but slowly, slowly!
—Kobayashi Issa, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

BUSON

A kite floats
at the same place in the sky
where yesterday it floated …
―Yosa Buson loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Picking autumn plums
my wrinkled hands
once again grow fragrant
―Yosa Buson loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

ROSSETTI

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
—Christina Rossetti, “Song”

VOLTAIRE

Once fanaticism has gangrened brains
the incurable malady invariably remains.
—Voltaire, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love is a canvas created by nature
and completed by imagination.
—Voltaire, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

PAVLOVA

I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.
―Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

DOWSON

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
—Ernest Dowson

KO UN

At Auschwitz
piles of glasses,
mountains of shoes …
returning, we stared out different windows.
―Ko Un, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

RANSETSU

The childless woman,
how tenderly she caresses
homeless dolls …
—Hattori Ransetsu, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

TENNYSON

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
—Alfred Tennyson

SPENSER

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away…
—Edmund Spenser, “Amoretti Sonnet #75”

WORDSWORTH

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity…
—William Wordsworth

COLERIDGE

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

MARTIAL

Lie lightly on her, grass and dew …
So little weight she placed on you.
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

LI BAI aka LI PO

The spring breeze knows partings are bitter;
The willow twig knows it will never be green again.
―Li Bai, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Water reforms, though we slice it with our swords;
Sorrow returns, though we drown it with our wine.
―Li Bai, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight illuminates my bed
as frost brightens the ground.
Lifting my eyes, the moon allures.
Lowering my eyes, I long for home.
―Li Bai, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My interpretation of this famous poem is a bit different from the norm. The moon symbolizes love, so I imagine the moon shining on Li Bai’s bed to be suggestive, an invitation. A man might lower his eyes to avoid seeing something his wife would not approve of.

CAPITO

Warmthless beauty attracts but does not engage us;
it floats like hookless bait.
—Capito, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

GOETHE

Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones,
like yesteryear’s
fading souvenirs,
I see the skulls arranged in strange-ordered rows.
―Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She says an epigram’s too terse
to reveal her tender heart in verse …
but really, darling, ain’t the thrill
of a kiss much shorter still?
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

GIBRAN

Thought is a bird of unbounded space,
which in a cage of words may unfold its wings
but cannot fly.
—Khalil Gibran, translation by Michael R. Burch

SHIKI

I'm trying to sleep!
Please swat the flies
lightly
—Masaoka Shiki, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Music When Soft Voices Die (To —)
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Requiescat
by Oscar Wilde

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.

Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.

The Wild Swans at Coole
by William Butler Yeats

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

Island
by Langston Hughes

Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now:
I see the island
Still ahead somehow.
I see the island
And its sands are fair:
Wave of sorrow,
Take me there.

Come As You Are
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

Come as you are, forget appearances!
Is your hair untamable, your part uneven, your bodice unfastened? Never mind.
Come as you are, forget appearances!
Skip with quicksilver steps across the grass.
If your feet glisten with dew, if your anklets slip, if your beaded necklace slides off? Never mind.
Skip with quicksilver steps across the grass.
Do you see the clouds enveloping the sky?
Flocks of cranes erupt from the riverbank, fitful gusts ruffle the fields, anxious cattle tremble in their stalls.
Do you see the clouds enveloping the sky?
You loiter in vain over your toilet lamp; it flickers and dies in the wind.
Who will care that your eyelids have not been painted with lamp-black, when your pupils are darker than thunderstorms?
You loiter in vain over your toilet lamp; it flickers and dies in the wind.
Come as you are, forget appearances!
If the wreath lies unwoven, who cares? If the bracelet is unfastened, let it fall. The sky grows dark; it is late.
Come as you are, forget appearances!

Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain.

By all truth, I tell you faithfully
that you are of life and death my queen;
for at my death this truth shall be seen:
your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1340-1400) is generally considered to be the first major English poet and the greatest English poet of the Medieval Period. He is best known for The Canterbury Tales but was also a master of lyric forms such as the rondel and balade. Chaucer has been called the "Father of English literature" and has been credited with helping to legitimize the English vernacular for literary purposes at a time when French and Latin were preferred by the "upper crust" in England. Chaucer was also the first writer to have been buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue men hold most dear―
except only that you are merciless.

Into your garden, today, I followed you;
there I found flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently―
yet nowhere one leaf nor petal of rue.

I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair flower and left her downcast;
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that I long to replant love's root again―
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.

Cradle Song
by William Blake

Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,
Dreaming in the joys of night;
Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep.

Sweet babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.

As thy softest limbs I feel
Smiles as of the morning steal
O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast
Where thy little heart doth rest.

O the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep!
When thy little heart doth wake,
Then the dreadful night shall break.

Rondel
by Kevin N. Roberts

Our time has passed on swift and careless feet,
With sighs and smiles and songs both sad and sweet.
Our perfect hours have grown and gone so fast,
And these are things we never can repeat.
Though we might plead and pray that it would last,
Our time has passed.

Like shreds of mist entangled in a tree,
Like surf and sea foam on a foaming sea,
Like all good things we know can never last,
Too soon we'll see the end of you and me.
Despite the days and realms that we amassed,
Our time has passed.

Poppies In October
by Sylvia Plath

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly —
A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky
Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.
O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.

The Kind Ghosts
by Wilfred Owen

She sleeps on soft, last breaths; but no ghost looms
Out of the stillness of her palace wall,
Her wall of boys on boys and dooms on dooms.
She dreams of golden gardens and sweet glooms,
Not marvelling why her roses never fall
Nor what red mouths were torn to make their blooms.
The shades keep down which well might roam her hall.
Quiet their blood lies in her crimson rooms
And she is not afraid of their footfall.
They move not from her tapestries, their pall,
Nor pace her terraces, their hecatombs,
Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all.

Wilfred Owen was a war poet, or, more properly, an anti-war poet. Who is the woman portrayed in the poem? Wilfred Owen may have had Britannia, the female personification of Britain, in mind. Or perhaps the war-prone British aristocracy, or rulers of warring nations in general.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Randall Jarrell worked as a control tower operator during World War II, an experience which influenced and provided material for his poetry.

Song
by John Donne

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devils foot;
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till Age snow white hairs on thee;
Thou, when thou return'st wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one let me know;
Such a pilgrimage were sweet.
Yet do not; I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet.
Though she were true when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two or three.

Servitude
by Anne Reeve Aldrich

The church was dim at vespers.
My eyes were on the Rood.
But yet I felt thee near me,
In every drop of blood.
In helpless, trembling bondage
My soul's weight lies on thee,
O call me not at dead of night,
Lest I should come to thee!

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

In My Craft Or Sullen Art
by Dylan Thomas

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

The Garden
by Ezra Pound

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.

Lullaby
by W. H. Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm:
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstacy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost.
All the dreaded cards foretell.
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought.
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

The Most of It
by Robert Frost

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree—hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder—broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter—love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff's talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush—and that was all.

They Flee from Me
by Sir Thomas Wyatt

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle tame and meek
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
And therewithal sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said, Dear heart, how like you this?

It was no dream, I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness
And she also to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served,
I would fain know what she hath deserved.

My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold
by William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Upon Julia's Clothes
by Robert Herrick

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free,
Oh, how that glittering taketh me!

Delight in Disorder
by Robert Herrick

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction—
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher—
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly—
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat—
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility—
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

A Noiseless Patient Spider
by Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

The Ruins of Balaclava
by Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, barren Crimean land, these dreary shades
of castles—once your indisputable pride—
are now where ghostly owls and lizards hide
as blackguards arm themselves for nightly raids.
Carved into marble, regal boasts were made!
Brave words on burnished armor, gilt-applied!
Now shattered splendors long since cast aside
beside the dead here also brokenly laid.
The ancient Greeks set shimmering marble here.
The Romans drove wild Mongol hordes to flight.
The Mussulman prayed eastward, day and night.
Now owls and dark-winged vultures watch and leer
as strange black banners, flapping overhead,
mark where the past piles high its nameless dead.

Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (1798-1855) is widely regarded as Poland’s greatest poet and as the national poet of Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. He was also a dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, professor and political activist. As a principal figure in Polish Romanticism, Mickiewicz has been compared to Byron and Goethe.

The Eagle
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Excerpt from "The Sunlight on the Garden"
by Louis MacNeice

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Grass
by Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work―
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Excerpt from "Macbeth"
by William Shakespeare

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Let No Charitable Hope
by Elinor Wylie

Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope:
I am in nature none of these.
I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
The little nourishment I get.
In masks outrageous and austere
The years go by in single file;
But none has merited my fear,
And none has quite escaped my smile.

Acquainted With The Night
by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

To Earthward
by Robert Frost

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of — was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Downhill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they’re gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young:
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass or sand,

The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
by Wallace Stevens

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one …
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae
by Ernest Dowson

"I am not as I was under the reign of the good Cynara"—Horace

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:
I have been faithful to you, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long;
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

On My First Son
by Ben Jonson

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and asked, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry,
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much."

This Is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

This Living Hand
by John Keats

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

Other poems of note:

• Anonymous masterpieces like “Tom O’Bedlam’s Song,” “Beowulf,” “Wulf and Eadwacer” and the “Epic of Gilgamesh”
• “Bread and Music” and the Senlin poems by Conrad Aiken
• “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold
• “Lullaby” and “Funeral Blues” and “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W. H. Auden
• “One Art” and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop
• “London” and “Jerusalem” by William Blake
• “After the Persian” and “Song for the Last Act” by Louise Bogan
• “Meeting at Night” and “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning
• “Afton Water” and “A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns
• “So We'll Go No More A-Roving” by George Gordon, Lord Byron
• “Mouse's Nest” and “I Am!” by John Clare
• “To Brooklyn Bridge” and “Voyages” and “The Broken Tower” by Hart Crane
• “i sing of Olaf glad and big” and several other poems by e. e. cummings
• “Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam” and “Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae” and “A Last Word” by Ernest Dowson
• “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Four Quartets” and “La Figlia Che Piange” (“The Weeping Girl”) by T. S. Eliot
• “Directive” and “To Earthward” and “The Most of It” and at least another dozen poems by Robert Frost
• “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg
• The two great elegies of Thomas Gray
• “The Darkling Thrush” and “The Convergence of the Twain” by Thomas Hardy
• “To Daffodils” by Robert Herrick
• “For My Funeral” and the Syrian Garden poem by A. E. Housman
• “The Windhover” and other curtal sonnets by Gerard Manley Hopkins
• “Harlem” (aka “A Dream Deferred”), “Minstrel Man” and other poems by Langston Hughes
• “Shine, Perishing Republic” and “Hurt Hawks” by Robinson Jeffers
• “This Be The Verse” and “The Whitsun Weddings” and “Church Going” by Philip Larkin
• “Piano” by D. H. Lawrence
• “The Silent Slain” and “Memorial Rain” by Archibald MacLeish
• “Bagpipe Music” by Louis MacNeice
• “Love Is Not All” and other fine sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay; also “Recuerdo”
• “Paradise Lost” by John Milton
• “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes is the most musical poem and the best poetic ghost story in the English language, in my opinion.
• “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “The Unreturning” by Wilfred Owen
• “Daddy” and “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
• “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Alan Poe
• “The Lie” by Sir Walter Raleigh
• “Luke Havergal” and “Mr. Flood’s Party” and “The Mill” by Edward Arlington Robinson
• “I Knew A Woman” by Theodore Roethke
• “Remember” and “Song” and “Uphill” by Christina Rossetti
• “Sudden Light” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• “Ozymandias” and “To the Moon” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Edmund Spenser for “The Faerie Queene” and a number of lyric poems
• “The Snow Man” and “The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad” and “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” and “The Old Lutheran Bells at Home” and “The Idea of Order at Key West” by Wallace Stevens
• “Wild Asters” and “Advice to a Girl” and “I Shall Not Care” by Sara Teasdale
• “Tears, Idle Tears” and “In Memoriam A. H. H.” by Alfred Tennyson
• “Fern Hill” and “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London” and “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” by Dylan Thomas
• “Adlestrop” by Edward Thomas
• “Go, Lovely Rose” by Edmund Waller
• “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” by William Wordsworth
• “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee from Me” by Sir Thomas Wyatt
• “Cold-Blooded Creatures” and “The Eagle and the Mole” by Elinor Morton Wylie
• “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” and at least a dozen more poems by William Butler Yeats

Poems of particular note by contemporary poets:

• “For Her Surgery” by Jack Butler
• “After the Rain” by Jared Carter
• “Friday” and “Word Made Flesh” by Ann Drysdale
• “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “All Along the Watchtower” by Bob Dylan
• “The Skeleton's Defense of Carnality” by Jack Foley
• “Skaters” by Conrad Geller
• “Release” by R. S. Gwynn
• “The Forge” and “Punishment” by Seamus Heaney
• “Sarabande On Attaining The Age Of Seventy-Seven” by Anthony Hecht
• “The Rushish Baths” and “I Empty” by Zyskandar A. Jaimot
• “First Confession” by X. J. Kennedy
• “Du” by Janet Kenny
• “Advice for Winston” and “Leitmotif” and “Novenas” and “Come Lord and Lift” and “Time in Eternity” by Tom Merrill
• “In the Dark Season” and “Depths” and “The Freeze” by Richard Moore; also his epic poem “The Mouse Whole”
• “The Lovemaker” by Robert Mezey and his “after Borges” sonnets
• “Allayne” and “Rondel” and “It Is Too Late” and “Astrologia” by Kevin N. Roberts
• “Part 6 from The Dark Side of the Deity: Interlude” by Joe M. Ruggier
• “Sometimes Mysteriously” by Luis Omar Salinas
• “The Ghost Ship” by A. E. Stallings
• “Sea Fevers” by Agnes Wathall
• “The Examiners” by John Whitworth
• “The Death of a Toad” and “The Writer” by Richard Wilbur

Related Pages: Poems by Michael R. Burch about Shakespeare, Dante Translations by Michael R. Burch, The World's Greatest Poets

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