The World's Greatest Poets

These are the world's greatest poets, the greatest poets of all time, from around the globe, in one poetry lover's opinion...

THE WORLD’S GREATEST POETS
by Michael R. Burch

This is my personal ranking of the world's greatest poets, the greatest poets of all time from around the globe, from the first poet we know by name, Enheduanna, to the best living poets. 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, many via translation — followed by some of the best full poems.

THE “BIG FOUR” EXPANDED

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, Li Bai, Matsuo Basho, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Pablo Neruda, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rabindranath Tagore, Walt Whitman and William Butler Yeats. Poets who might have challenged for the highest ranks if they had lived longer include Thomas Chatterton, Hart Crane, John Keats, Wilfred Owen, Sylvia Plath and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

1. William Shakespeare is first primarily for his great verse plays such as Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and several others. I think his sonnets tend to be overrated and if this ranking were strictly about lyric poetry, I would rank Sappho first.
   
   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, “Full Fathom Five”

2. Homer was the first great narrative poet we know by name and he remains one of the great storytellers along with Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dickens, Tolkien and Twain.
   
   Passage home? Impossible! Surely you have something else in mind, Goddess, urging me to cross the ocean’s endless expanse in a raft. So vast, so full of danger! Hell, sometimes not even the sea-worthiest ships can prevail, aided as they are by Zeus’s mighty breath! I’ll never set foot on a raft, Goddess, until you swear by all that’s holy you’re not plotting some new intrigue! — Homer, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

3. Sappho of Lesbos was the first great lyric poet we know by name. She would rank first if I considered only lyric poetry. Sappho was so revered by her ancient peers that they called her the Tenth Muse, and the other nine Muses were goddesses! I and others have proposed that Sappho was the first modern poet because she wrote introspectively in the first person about her innermost thoughts, fears and desires. It also bears noting that Sappho wrote the first “make love, not war” poem a mere 2,500 years ahead of her time. The poem has been titled “Some Say,” “Some People Say” and “Helen’s Eidolon.”
   
   Mnemosyne was stunned into astonishment when she heard honey-tongued Sappho, wondering how mortal men merited a tenth Muse. — Antipater of Sidon, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
   
   Eros harrows my heart:
   wild winds whipping desolate mountains
   uprooting oaks.
   —Sappho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
   
   A short transparent frock?
   It's just my luck
   your lips were made to mock!
   —Sappho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
   
   That enticing girl's clinging dresses
   leave me trembling, overcome by happiness,
   as once, when I saw the Goddess in my prayers
   eclipsing Cyprus.
   —Sappho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
   
   Gongyla, wear, I beg,
   that revealing white dress …
   —Sappho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
   
   She keeps her scents
   in a dressing-case.
   And her sense?
   In some undiscoverable place.
   —Sappho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
   
   May the gods prolong the night
   —yes, let it last forever!—
   as long as you sleep in my sight.
   —Sappho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

4. Pablo Neruda was arguably the greatest poet of the 20th century, or certainly in the running with Robert Frost, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rabindranath Tagore, William Butler Yeats and a very few others.
   
   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.
   
   I long for your liquid laughter,
   for your sunburned hands like savage harvests.
   I lust for your fingernails' pale marbles.
   I want to devour your breasts like almonds, whole.
   
   I want to ingest the sunbeams singed by your beauty,
   to eat the aquiline nose from your aloof face,
   to lick your eyelashes' flickering shade.
   
   I pursue you, snuffing the shadows,
   seeking your heart's scorching heat
   like a puma prowling the heights of Quitratue.
   —Pablo Neruda, “Love Sonnet XI,” translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

5. Matsuo Bashō was the greatest of the great Japanese haikuists, in my opinion, as much as I love Kobayashi Issa and Fukuda Chiyo-ni.
   
   Winter in the air:
   my neighbor,
   how does he fare? ...
   ―Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
   
   The first soft snow:
   leaves of the awed jonquil
   bow low
   ―Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
   
   Come, investigate loneliness!
   a solitary leaf
   clings to the Kiri tree
   ―Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

6. Walt Whitman wins a near-tie with Emily Dickinson due to his worldwide influence as the first major free verse poet.
   
   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.
   —Walt Whitman, “A Noiseless Patient Spider”

7. Emily Dickinson has a reputation as a recluse and spinster, but she wrote marvelous erotic love poems like “Wild Nights” and her suggestive bee poems…
   
   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, “Come Slowly, Eden”

8. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a polymath and the German Shakespeare. Goethe was a formidable intellectual, yet had a very tender touch in his love poems…
   
   Excerpt from "To the Moon"
   by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
   translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
   
   Scattered, pole to starry pole,
   glide Cynthia's mild beams,
   whispering to the receptive soul
   whatever moonbeams mean.
   
   Bathing valley, hill and dale
   with her softening light,
   loosening from earth's frigid chains
   my restless heart tonight!
   
   Over the landscape, near and far,
   broods darkly glowering night;
   yet welcoming as Friendship's eye,
   she, soft!, bequeaths her light.
   
   Touched in turn by joy and pain,
   my startled heart responds,
   then floats, as Whimsy paints each scene,
   to soar with her, beyond…

9. William Butler Yeats wrote magnificent poems like “The Wild Swans at Coole,” “Sailing to Byzantium,” “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” and many others. Yeats was arguably the last of the great Romantics and the greatest of the Modernists.
   
   When you are old and gray and full of sleep
   and nodding by the fire, take down this book…
   —William Butler Yeats, “When You Are Old”

10. Rabindranath Tagore is revered in India, and rightly so.
    
    Come As You Are
    by Rabindranath Tagore
    translation/interpretation 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!
    
    Only Let Me Love You
    by Michael R. Burch
    
    after Rabindranath Tagore
    
    Only let me love you, and the pain
    of living will be easier to bear.
    Only let me love you. Nay, refrain
    from pinning up your hair!
    
    Only let me love you. Stay, remain.
    A face so lovely never needs repair!
    Only let me love you to the strains
    of Rabindranath on a soft sitar.
    
    Only let me love you, while the rain
    makes music: gentle, eloquent, sincere.
    Only let me love you. Don’t complain
    you need more time to make yourself more fair!
    
    Only let me love you. Stay, remain.
    No need for rouge or lipstick! Only share
    your tender body swiftly ...

11. Robert Frost wrote masterpieces in “To Earthward,” “Directive,” “Acquainted with the Night” and several others. Few poets have as many great poems as 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.
    —Robert Frost, “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

12. Rainer Maria Rilke should be in my top ten, but the competition is fierce!
    
    Archaischer Torso Apollos ("Archaic Torso of Apollo")
    by Rainer Maria Rilke
    translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    We cannot know the beheaded god
    nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
    the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
    of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
    emanates dynamism. Otherwise
    the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us,
    nor the centering loins make us smile
    at the thought of their generative animus.
    Otherwise the stone might seem deficient,
    unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin
    projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards,
    unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within
    like an inchoate star—demanding our belief.
    You must change your life.
    
    Herbsttag ("Autumn Day")
    by Rainer Maria Rilke
    translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
    Lay your long shadows over the sundials
    and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
    Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
    O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
    Urge them to completion, and with power
    convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
    Who has no house now, never will build one.
    Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
    he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
    and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
    restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.

13. Li Bai (701-762), also known as Li Po, was one of the very best ancient poets and he influenced Modernism through his influence on Ezra Pound. Li Bai has been called the Chinese Byron and was friends with Du Fu, who also appears in this ranking.
    
    The spring breeze knows partings are bitter;
    The willow twig knows it will never be green again.
    —Li Bai, “Lines from Laolao Ting Pavilion,” 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, “A Toast to Uncle Yun,” 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, “Quiet Night Thoughts,” translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

14. Virgil was the Roman Homer, a superior storyteller.
    
    "The Descent into the Underworld"
    by Virgil
    translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    The Sibyl began to speak:
    
    “God-blooded Trojan, son of Anchises,
    descending into the Underworld’s easy
    since Death’s dark door stands eternally unbarred.
    But to retrace one’s steps and return to the surface:
    that’s the conundrum, that’s the catch!
    Godsons have done it, the chosen few
    whom welcoming Jupiter favored
    and whose virtue merited heaven.
    However, even the Blessed find headway’s hard:
    immense woods barricade boggy bottomland boggy / briared
    where the Cocytus glides with its dark coils.
    But if you insist on ferrying the Styx twice
    and twice traversing Tartarus,
    if Love demands you indulge in such madness,
    listen closely to how you must proceed...”

15. Wallace Stevens created masterpieces in “The Snow Man,” “Sunday Morning,” and several others. A word musician and an amazing talent.

16. Alexander Pushkin was a major Russian poet, playwright and novelist.
    
    I Loved You
    by Alexander Pushkin
    translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    I loved you ... perhaps I love you still ...
    perhaps for a while such emotions may remain.
    But please don't let my feelings trouble you;
    I do not wish to cause you further pain.
    
    I loved you ... thus the hopelessness I knew ...
    The jealousy, the diffidence, the pain
    resulted in two hearts so wholly true
    the gods might grant us leave to love again.

17. Geoffrey Chaucer is almost universally considered the first major English poet, primarily for the Canterbury Tales, but he was also an accomplished lyric poet.
    
    Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
    by Geoffrey Chaucer
    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.

18. Langston Hughes is particularly notable for his “fusion” of the blues and jazz with traditional poetry and he was able to communicate emotion in poems like “Island” and “Minstrel Man.” I believe he has been underestimated by many critics.
    
    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.
    —Langston Hughes, “Island”

19. Mirza Ghalib is arguably the greatest of the Urdu poets, or certainly one of the greatest.
    
    Ghazal
    by Mirza Ghalib
    translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    It's time for the world to hear Ghalib again!
    May these words and their shadows like doors remain open.
    
    Tonight the watery mirror of stars appears
    while night-blooming flowers gather where beauty rests.
    
    She who knows my desire is speaking,
    or at least her lips have recently moved me.
    
    Why is grief the fundamental element of night
    when everything falls as the distant stars rise?
    
    Tell me, how can I be happy vast oceans from home
    when mail from my beloved lies here, so recently opened?

20. William Wordsworth was a very influential poet and his “Intimations” is an utter masterpiece and one of the better longer poems in any language.
    
    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.
    —William Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold”

21. E. E. Cummings has been a favorite of mine since my boyhood and I have written a number of poems “after” Cummings, such as “i (dedicated to u).”
    
    … you are whatever a moon has always meant
    and whatever a sun will always sing is you …
    ―e. e. cummings

22. Rumi has international appeal; he was the best-selling poet in the United States not so very long ago.
    
    Forget security!
    Live by the perilous sea.
    Destroy your reputation, however glorious.
    Become notorious.
    —Rumi, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    Your heart’s candle is ready to be kindled.
    Your soul’s void is ready to be filled.
    You can feel it, can’t you?
    —Rumi, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    Raise your words, not their volume.
    Rain grows flowers, not thunder.
    —Rumi, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    This is love: to fly toward a mysterious sky,
    to cause ten thousand veils to fall.
    First, to stop clinging to life,
    then to step out without feet ...
    —Rumi, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    Let yourself be guided by the strange magnetism of what you really love:
    It will not lead you astray.
    The lion is most majestic when stalking prey.
    —Rumi, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

23. William Blake is one of my heroes and mentors. His poem “The Tyger” is the world’s most-anthologized poem and quite possibly the most-read poem of all time. But this is my favorite poem of his…
    
    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.
    —William Blake, “Cradle Song”

24. Robert Burns was not just the greatest Scottish poet, he was voted the #1 Scotsman of all time in a radio poll! My favorite Burns poems include “A Red, Red Rose,” “Afton Water,” “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye,” “To a Mouse” and “To a Louse.”

25. John Keats died young, at age 25, or he might be first on this list. He had that kind of talent.
    
    A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
    Its loveliness increases; it will never
    pass into nothingness …
    ―John Keats
    
    This is a tie between friends who died young or they would both rank much higher.
    
    Percy Bysshe Shelley joins his friend Keats in my top 25. Shelley died at age 30, if I remember things correctly.
    
    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.

26. Enheduanna (circa 2285 BC) is the first poet we know by name, and she wrote the first anti-war poem over 4,000 years ago!
    
    Lament to the Spirit of War
    by Enheduanna
    translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    You hack down everything you see, War God!
    
    Rising on fearsome wings
    you rush to destroy our land:
    raging like thunderstorms,
    howling like hurricanes,
    screaming like tempests,
    thundering, raging, ranting, drumming,
    whiplashing whirlwinds!
    
    Men falter at your approaching footsteps.
    
    Tortured dirges scream on your lyre of despair.
    
    Like a fiery Salamander you poison the land:
    growling over the earth like thunder,
    vegetation collapsing before you,
    blood gushing down mountainsides.
    
    Spirit of hatred, greed and vengeance!
    
    Dominatrix of heaven and earth!
    
    Your ferocious fire consumes our land.
    
    Whipping your stallion
    with furious commands,
    you impose our fates.
    
    You triumph over all human rites and prayers.
    
    Who can explain your tirade,
    why you carry on so?

27. Petrarch

28. John Donne

29. Dylan Thomas

30. Catullus
    
    Catullus CI: “His Brother’s Burial”
    translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    Through many lands and over many seas
    I have journeyed, brother, to these wretched rites,
    to this final acclamation of the dead ...
    and to speak — however ineffectually — to your voiceless ashes
    now that Fate has wrested you away from me.
    Alas, my dear brother, wrenched from my arms so cruelly,
    accept these last offerings, these small tributes
    blessed by our fathers’ traditions, these small gifts for the dead.
    Please accept, by custom, these tokens drenched with a brother’s tears,
    and, for all eternity, brother, “Hail and Farewell.”

31. Federico Garcia Lorca died young, the victim of foul play, or who knows what he would have accomplished?
    
    Canción del jinete (“Song of the Rider” or “The Horseman’s Song”)
    by Federico Garcia Lorca
    translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    Cordoba. Distant and lone.
    Black pony, big moon,
    olives in my saddlebag.
    Although my pony knows the way,
    I never will reach Cordoba.
    
    High plains, high winds.
    Black pony, blood moon.
    Death awaits me, watching
    from the towers of Cordoba.
    
    Such a long, long way!
    Oh my brave pony!
    Death awaits me
    before I arrive in Cordoba!
    
    Cordoba. Distant and lone.

32. Sylvia Plath has her detractors among the critics, but she was a marvelous poet in her best poems. In particular, I think “Tulips” and “Daddy” are masterpieces. Definitely one of the best modern poets.
    
    I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
    Whatever I see I swallow immediately
    Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
    I am not cruel, only truthful‚
    The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
    Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
    —Sylvia Plath, excerpt from “The Mirror”

33. Charles Baudelaire
    
    Invitation to the Voyage
    by Charles Baudelaire
    translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    My child, my sister,
    Consider the rapture
    Of living together!
    To love at our leisure
    Till the end of all pleasure,
    Then in climes so alike you, to die!
    
    The misty sunlight
    Of these hazy skies
    Charms my spirit:
    So mysterious
    Your treacherous eyes,
    Shining through tears.
    
    There, order and restraint redress
    Opulence, voluptuousness.

34. Ono no Komachi (circa 850 AD) was a legendary beauty who wrote tanka (also known as waka), the most traditional form of Japanese lyric poetry. Although little is known about her life with any surety, Ono no Komachi continues to speak eloquently through her poetry. Komachi is best known today for her recurring themes of autumn rains, wilting flowers and passionate dreams, and for her pensive, melancholic and erotic poems…
    
    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, 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, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

35. Mahmoud Darwish was a marvelous Palestinian poet who wrote poems in Arabic.

36. Hafez aka Hafiz was a wonderful Persian poet and Sufi mystic.
    
    Infectious!
    Hafez
    translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    I became infected with happiness tonight
    as I wandered idly, singing in the starlight.
    Now I'm wonderfully contagious—
    so kiss me!
    
    Dispensing Keys
    by Hafiz aka Hafez
    translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    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.

37. Yosa Buson
    
    A kite floats
    at the same place in the sky
    where yesterday it floated ...
    ―Yosa Buson translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    Your coolness:
    the sound of the bell
    departing the bell.
    —Yosa Buson, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

38. A. E. 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

39. T. S. Eliot is a bit of an enigma for me. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a masterpiece and I love his “Weeping Girl” poem and admire “Four Quartets,” but think Eliot has been overrated otherwise.

40. Christina Rossetti deserves to be here, for her best poems, which are marvelous and as good as anyone’s in their genres.

41. Wilfred Owen was the author of multiple masterpieces and the greatest of all the war poets and anti-war poets, in my opinion.

42. Thomas Hardy was a great poet and a great novelist, although I like his poetry better. I especially admire “The Darkling Thrush” and “The Convergence of the Twain.”

43. Hart Crane

44. Sir Thomas Wyatt

45. Issa
    
    Right at my feet!
    When did you arrive here,
    snail?
    ―Kobayashi Issa, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    Composed like the Thinker, he sits
    contemplating the mountains:
    the sagacious frog!
    —Kobayashi Issa, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    Unaware of these degenerate times,
    cherry blossoms abound!
    —Kobayashi Issa, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

46. Charles d’Orleans was one the world’s greatest love poets, esp. “Oft in my Thought.”

47. Seamus Heaney

48. Gerard Manley Hopkins

49. Alfred Tennyson aka Alfred, Lord Tennyson is not a personal favorite of mine, but he continues to have popular appeal, so good for him.

50. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is underrated in many circles and compares favorably with Tennyson.

51. Pindar

52. Wang Wei

53. John Milton remains famous for “Paradise Lost” but is not a personal favorite of mine.

54. Dante Alighieri is not a personal favorite of mine. By reputation, Dante is elite, among the top four poets of all time, but I don’t see it myself. Perhaps in the original Italian. An enigma for me among the great poets.
    
    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, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
    
    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, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

55. Lord Byron shone most brightly in “Don Juan.”

56. Luis de Camoes

57. Edna St. Vincent Millay was a marvelous poet in her best poems. I like some of her love sonnets better than Shakespeare’s.

58. Louise Bogan

59. Fukuda Chiyo-ni

60. Tzu Yeh

61. Ernest Dowson

62. John Clare

63. Fadwa Tuqan was the Grand Dame of Palestinian poetry.

64. Du Fu

65. Miklós Radnóti

66. Robert Lowell

67. Elizabeth Bishop

68. Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva (a tie between friends).

69. Martial

70. Ovid

71. Paul Valery

72. Philip Larkin

73. Sara Teasdale

74. Edmund Spenser

75. Arthur Rimbaud

76. Paul Verlaine

77. Sir Philip Sidney

78. Ezra Pound is another enigma for me. I love his lovely Kensington Garden poem, an utter masterpiece.

79. Callimachus

80. W. H. Auden is not a personal favorite, but I consider his lovely “Lullaby” an utter masterpiece.

81. Edgar Allan Poe was a major writer when we include his short stories, essays and innovations, but not a greater poet than those above him on this list, in my opinion.
    
    Helen, thy beauty is to me
    Like those Nicean barks of yore,
    That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
    The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
    To his own native shore.
    —Edgar Allan Poe, excerpt from “To Helen”

82. Oscar Wilde wrote a masterpiece, “Requiscat,” but didn’t have the output of the greatest poets, probably because he spent most of his time writing plays and prose. He ranks much higher as a major writer.

83. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning (a tie between husband and wife).

84. Robert Herrick

85. Thomas Gray esp. his immortal Elegy

86. Robinson Jeffers

87. Lao Tzu

88. Eihei Dogen Kigen

89. Heinrich Heine

90. Hermann Hesse

91. Omar Khayyam

92. Horace

93. Pierre de Ronsard was a French poet called the "prince of poets."

94. Friedrich Schiller

95. Robert Hayden

96. Adam Mickiewicz has been called the Polish Byron.

97. Kajal Ahmad is a wonderful Kurdish poet.

98. Friedrich Holderlin

99. Taras Shevchenko

100. Samuel Taylor Coleridge esp. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

101. Su Shi

102. Giacomo Leopardi

103. Mikhail Lermontov

104. Bertolt Brecht

105. Ben Jonson

106. E. A. Robinson

107. William Dunbar

108. Boris Pasternak

109. Edward Thomas

110. Elinor Wylie

111. Carl Sandburg

112. Matthew Arnold esp. “Dover Beach”

113. Allen Ginsberg esp. “Howl”

114. D. H. Lawrence esp. “Piano”

115. Stephen Crane

116. Francois Villon

117. Robert Bridges

118. Erinna left only a few poems, or she would rank higher.

119. Anne Reeve Aldrich died young or she would undoubtedly rank higher.

120. Thomas Chatterton died at age 17, or he might top this list.

121. Digby Dolben died young, or he would rank much higher.

122. Christopher Marlowe ranks higher as a playwright

123. Walter Savage Landor

124. Dante Gabriel Rossetti ranks higher as a painter.

125. Algernon Charles Swinburne

126. Walter de la Mare

127. Christopher Smart

128. Thomas Campion

129. James Weldon Johnson

130. Anne Sexton

131. Emily Bronte ranks higher as a novelist.

132. Herman Melville ranks higher as a novelist.

133. The Pearl Poet

134. Rudyard Kipling was not a better poet than Basho, Donne, Goethe, Shelley, et al! I like Kipling’s dialect poems, don’t care for his “white man’s burden” nonsense or jingoism. He ranks higher as a major writer for Jungle Book and his best short stories.

135. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a better essayist than poet, although he had his moments.

136. William Carlos Williams is not a personal favorite of mine.

137. Sulpicia is one of the few female poets of ancient Rome whose work survives, and is arguably the most notable, but she only left a few poems.

138. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

139. John Skelton

140. William Langland

141. Isaac Rosenberg

142. Michael Drayton

143. Richard Lovelace

144. Sir John Suckling

145. Mary Sidney

146. Jonathan Swift

147. Alexander Pope

148. John Dryden

149. Dr. Samuel Johnson

150. John Gay

---

BEST FOR HUMOR

Hilaire Belloc, John Berryman, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Spike Milligan, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, Mark Twain

SONGWRITERS

Adele, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, Eminem, Woody Guthrie, Dan Fogelberg (so good but underrated), Billy Joel, Carole King, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, Dolly Parton, Prince, Little Richard, Sade, Smokey Robinson, Tupac Shakur, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Hank Williams Sr.

THE MOST UNDERRATED POETS

The most underrated poets include Li Bai (in the West), Basho (ditto), Louise Bogan, Catullus, Gregory Corso, Hart Crane, Fukuda Chiyo-ni, John Clare, Ernest Dowson, William Dunbar, Enheduanna, Erinna, John Gower, Robert Hayden, Ono no Komachi, Charlotte Mew, Miklós Radnóti, John Skelton, Christopher Smart, Edmund Spenser and Tzu Yeh.

DARK HORSE POETS

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

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, Rhina P. Espaillat, Seamus Heaney, Anthony Hecht, Robert Hayden, Randall Jarrell, Philip Larkin, Archibald MacLeish, Louis MacNeice, Tom Merrill, Robert Mezey, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, Howard Nemerov, Richard Thomas Moore, John Crowe Ransom, Kevin N. Roberts, W.D Snodgrass, A. E. Stallings, Allen Tate, Derek Walcott (esp. “Omeros”), Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wilbur (esp. “The Death of a Toad”)

David Whyte was nominated by Stoic Journeys in the comments.

STILL GOING STRONG

R. S. Gwynn, Janet Kenny, Martin Mc Carthy, Harvey Stanbrough, F. F. Teague, Gail White, Bob Zisk

YOUNGER POETS TO KEEP AN EYE ON

Annie Diamond, John Masella, RS, Anais Vionet, Shannon Winestone

RECENTLY DEPARTED

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

POETIC POWER COUPLES

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

ONE-HIT WONDERS

These poets had one poem that really stood out:

• The anonymous authors of “Beowulf,” “Wulf and Eadwacer,” “The Wife’s Lament,” “The Ruin,” “The Seafarer,” “The Song of Songs,” “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song”

• The Archpoet “His Confession”

• Anne Askew “Newgate Ballad”

• Julia Ward Howe “Battle Hymn of the Republic”

• Lionel Johnson “The Dark Angel”

• Emma Lazarus “The New Colossus”

• Andrew Marvell “To His Coy Mistress”

• Thomas Nashe “Litany in Time of Plague”

• Alfred Noyes "The Highwayman"

• Sir Walter Raleigh “The Lie”

• Henry Reed "Naming of Parts"

• Christopher Smart “Jubilate Agno”

• Robert Southwell “The Burning Babe”

• Chidiock Tichborne “My Prime of Youth is but a Frost of Cares”

• James Thomson “The Seasons”

• Edmund Waller “Go Lovely Rose”

POETS I LIKE BUT HAVEN’T READ ENOUGH TO RANK

“So much to read, so little time!”

Let me note that I have translated some of the poets in this category, but translating a few poems doesn’t mean that I’m familiar with their oerves. I have read all the poets below, but not enough to compare them to the poets I have ranked.

Outstanding poets by reputation but ones I haven’t read enough to rank include:

Maya Angelou, John Ashbery, Amiri Baraka, Aphra Behn

John Berryman, Giovanni Boccaccio, Eavan Boland, Christian Bok, Jose Luis Borges, Anne Bradstreet, Joseph Brodsky, William Cullen Bryant, Charles Bukowski

Constantine P. Cavafy, Anne Carson, Margaret Cavendish, Paul Celan, Lucille Clifton, Billy Collins, Wendy Cope, Countee Cullen

Samuel Daniel, James Dickey, Rita Dove, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Carol Ann Duffy, Paul Laurence Dunbar

Louise Erdrich

Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ahmed Faraz, Anne Finch

Dana Gioia, Khalil Gibran, Louise Gluck, Jorie Graham, Gunter Grass, Robert Graves, Gulzar, Thom Gunn

H.D., Daniel Hall, Tony Harrison, Felicia Dorothea Hemans, Zbigniew Herbert, Johann Gottfried Herder, Nazim Hikmet, Geoffrey Hill, A.D. Hope, Ted Hughes, Victor Hugo

Allama Iqbal

Patrick Kavanagh, Sarah Kay, Rupi Kaur, Nasir Kazmi, Omar Khayyam, Walid Khazindar, Yusef Komunyakaa

Denise Levertov, Li-Young Lee, Lyn Lifshin, Audre Lorde, Lucretius

Hugh MacDiarmid, Antonio Machado, Derek Mahon, George Meredith, Jame Merrill, Charlotte Mew, Czesław Miłosz, Mir Taqi Mir, Gabriela Mistral, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Thomas Moore, Andrew Motion, Paul Muldoon, Les Murray

Sarojini Naidu, Novalis

Mary Oliver

Octavio Paz, Fernando Pessoa, Robert Pinsky

Li Qingzhao

Craig Raine, Adrienne Rich, Alberto Rios, Yiannis Ritsos, Theodore Roethke

Hans Sachs, Vijay Seshadri, Parveen Shakir, Tupac Shakur, Warsan Shire, Charlotte Smith, Stevie Smith, Tracy K. Smith, Mark Strand, Wisława Szymborska

Georg Trakl, Natasha Trethewey

Lope de Vega

Derek Walcott (esp. “Omeros”), Rosanna Warren, Phillis Wheatley, David Whyte, Ella Wilcox, John Wilmot, Charles Wright, James Wright, Richard Wright, Mary Wroth

Zhai Yongming

UNEXPECTED POETS

Muhammad Ali, Samuel Beckett, Jimmy Carter, Ben Franklin, Queen Elizabeth I, Ernest Hemingway, King Henry VIII, Thomas Jefferson, James Joyce, Abraham Lincoln, Herman Melville, Marilyn Monroe, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leonard Nimoy, Plato, Ronald Reagan, George Santayana, James Stewart, Mark Twain, Herschel Walker, Oscar Wilde

POETS WHO ARE NOT MY CUP OF TEA

Outstanding poets by reputation who have never appealed to me personally include: A.R. Ammons, Robert Bly, Dante, John Dryden, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Herbert, Kenneth Koch, Andrew Marvell, Frank O’Hara, Alexander Pope, Gertrude Stein, Henry Vaughan, William Carlos Williams



SELECTED POEMS AND EXCERPTS

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.

The Solitude of Night
by Li Bai
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

At the wine party
I lay comatose, knowing nothing.
Windblown flowers fell, perfuming my lap.
When I arose, still drunk,
The birds had all flown to their nests.
All that remained were my fellow inebriates.
I left to walk along the river—alone with the moonlight.

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

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