epilogue - Popular Poems and stories from category

Part 17
UE         The wordes of the Hoost to the Phisicien and the Pardoner
Oure Hooste gan to swere as he were wood;     "Harrow
" quod he, "by nayles and by blood

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme—why are they no help to me nowI want to makesomething imagined, not recalled
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens, it trembles to caress the light
But sometime...

("Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned; this man is neither simple, sensuous, nor impassioned; therefore he is not a poet")No man had ever heard a nightingale,
When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred To study and def...

O chansons foregoing You were a seven days' wonder
When you came out in the magazines You created considerable stir in Chicago,
And now you are stale and worn out,
You're a very depleted fashion,

A boat, beneath a sunny
Lingering onward
In an evening of July —Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing

Our bard, to modern epilogue a foe,
Thinks such mean mirth but deadens generous woe;
Dispels in idle air the moral sigh,
And wipes the tender tear from Pity's eye:

Carol, every violet
Heaven for a looking-glass
Every little valley
Under many-clouded skies;

Like some raw sophister that mounts the pulpit,
So trembles a young poet at a full pit
Unused to crowds, the parson quakes for fear,
And wonders how the devil he durst come there;

New ministers, when first they get in place,
Must have a care to please; and that's our case:
Some laws for public welfare we design,
If you, the power supreme, will please to join

Cramm'd to the throat with wholesome moral stuff,
Alas
poor audience
you have had enough

If Luther's day expand to Darwin's
Shall that exclude the hope--foreclose the
Unmoved by all the claims our times avow,
The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of    shade;

Rows of books around me stand,
Fence me in on either hand;
Through that forest of dead wordsI would hunt the living birds -So I write these lines for
Who have felt the death-wish too,