Amoretti XV: Ye tradefull Merchants that with weary toyle BY EDMUND SPENSER Ye tradefull Merchants that with weary toyle, Do seeke most pretious things to make your gain: And both the Indias of their treasures spoile, What needeth you to seeke…
Adam’s Curse BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS We sat together at one summer’s end, That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, And you and I, and talked of poetry. I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does…
Among School Children BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and history, To cut and sew,…
Byzantium BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers’ song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The…
The Cap and Bells BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS The jester walked in the garden: The garden had fallen still; He bade his soul rise upward And stand on her window-sill. It rose in a straight blue garment, When owls began to…
The Circus Animals’ Desertion BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS I I sought a theme and sought for it in vain, I sought it daily for six weeks or so. Maybe at last being but a broken man I must be satisfied with…
A Coat BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world’s eyes As though they’d wrought it. Song, let…
Ozymandias BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,…
Whispers of Immortality BY T. S. ELIOT Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin; And breastless creatures under ground Leaned backward with a lipless grin. Daffodil bulbs instead of balls Stared from the sockets of…
The Waste Land BY T. S. ELIOT FOR EZRA POUND IL MIGLIOR FABBRO I. The Burial of the Dead April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull…
Sweeney among the Nightingales BY T. S. ELIOT Apeneck Sweeney spread his knees Letting his arms hang down to laugh, The zebra stripes along his jaw Swelling to maculate giraffe. The circles of the stormy moon Slide westward toward the River…
Rhapsody on a Windy Night BY T. S. ELIOT Twelve o’clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street…
Portrait of a Lady BY T. S. ELIOT Thou hast committed — Fornication: but that was in another country, And besides, the wench is dead. (The Jew of Malta) I Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon…
from Observations: Morning at the Window
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock BY T. S. ELIOT S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun,…
La Figlia che Piange BY T. S. ELIOT O quam te memorem virgo … Stand on the highest pavement of the stair— Lean on a garden urn— Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair— Clasp your flowers to you…
Hysteria BY T. S. ELIOT As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps,…
Honeymoon, Tr. by Barry Goldensohn BY T. S. ELIOT