Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, "Speak to us of Crime and Punishment."
And he answered saying:
...
October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud
...
ON thy stupendous summit, rock sublime !
That o'er the channel rear'd, half way at sea
The mariner at early morning hails,
...
When, by a decree of the sovereign power,
The poet makes his appearance in a bored world,
With fists clenched at the horror, his outraged mother
Calls on a pitying God, at whom these curses are hurled:
...
From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done
In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale,
Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure,
Had passed into the silent life of prayer,
...
Sit still, I say, and dispense with heroics!
I hurt your wrists? Well, you have hurt me.
It is time you found out that all men are not stoics,
...
Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade,
Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made,
For the god being one day too warm in his wooing,
She took to the tree to escape his pursuing
...
BOOK I
Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide
...
ABOVE the city hung the moon,
Right o'er a plot of ground
Where flowers and orchard-trees were fenced
With lofty walls around:
...
Friendless and faint, with martyred steps and slow,
Faint for the flesh, but for the spirit free,
Stung by the mob that came to see the show,
The Master toiled along to Calvary;
...
Two outraged English ladies
'deux madames Anglaise'
their only weapons being
...
Often, in these blue meadows,
I hear what passes for the bark of seals
...
Heaving a sigh
Of great relief;
With reverence
I tied my manuscript
...
Is this the land our fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the soil whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?
...
O Mother Earth! upon thy lap
Thy weary ones receiving,
And o'er them, silent as a dream,
Thy grassy mantle weaving,
...
He went to a public library that's quiet and free;
Arrested, he was, for murder, in the first degree;
Inside the library, there was a book to find,
...
After lunch, Jan went to sleep in his mother's lap,
As Kay sat silently looking at her son with affection.
She stroked her son's hair, gently lulling him to sleep.
Vincent kept staring at Kay's delicate features,
...
At a party,
She walked in late
Paused at the gate,
...
A lonely boy, far venturing from home
Out on the half-wild herd’s faint tracks I roam;
Mid rock-browned mountains, which with stony frown
Glare into haggard chasms deep adown;
...
Now is there solemn pause in earth and heaven;
The Conqueror now
His bonds hath riven,
And Angels wonder why He stays below:
...
'Thus do the generations of the earth
Go to the grave and issue from the womb,
Surviving still the imperishable change
...
The God of Scribes looked down and saw
The bitter band of seven,
Who had outraged his holy law
And lost their hope of Heaven:
...
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
Count Francesco Cenci.
Giacomo, his Son.
...
FROM the dusty jaded sunlight of the careless Cairo streets,
Through the open bedroom window where the pale blue held the
palms,
...
World! to arms!
Do you shrink?
What! shrink when the hoofs of the Cossack are crushing
The bosom of mother, the tonsure of priest,
...
DEGENERATE Douglas! oh, the unworthy Lord!
Whom mere despite of heart could so far please,
And love of havoc, (for with such disease
...
Long ere the Muse the strenuous chords had swept,
And the first lay as yet in silence slept,
A Time there was which since has stirred the lyre
...
The Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain,
And slavery half forgets her feudal chain;
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord--
...
Fair Mother Earth lay on her back last night,
To gaze her fill on Autumn's sunset skies,
When at a waving of the fallen light
...
Oh, dreams of France! Oh, faded dreams of France!
Ohm France, that I had ever dreamed of thee!
I thought to help thee bear thy brandished lance,
...
The Bell in the convent tower swung.
High overhead the great sun hung,
A navel for the curving sky.
...
Raschi of Troyes, the Moon of Israel,
The authoritative Talmudist, returned
From his wide wanderings under many skies,
...
'TWAS summer eve; the changeful beams still play'd
On the fir-bark and through the beechen shade;
...
'Heigh me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one,
Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our
...
It was Peter the Barbarian put an apron in his bag
And rolled up the honoured bundle that Australians call a swag;
...
ONE came to me in royal guise
With banners flying fair and free
But many griefs had made me wise
And I refused to bow the knee.
...
False! Good God, I am dreaming!
No, no, it never can be-
You who are so true in seeming,
You, false to your vows and me?
...
``Why do I bid the rising gale
To waft me from your shore?
Why hail I, as the vultures hail,
...
The report of cruel art
That existed in primitive age
Where sex was wildly managed
...
My Poem is-
Stale flowers of barren lover
No touchstone water, no fertilizer
...
Four great gates has the city of Damascus
And four Great Wardens, on their spears reclining,
All day long stand like tall stone men
...
The Landgrave Hermann held a gathering
Of minstrels, minnesingers, troubadours,
At Wartburg in his palace, and the knight,
...
O ye who by the gaping earth
Where, faint with resurrection, lay
An empire struggling into birth,
Her storm-strown beauty cold with clay,
...
Then, when we had got down to the sea shore we drew our ship into
the water and got her mast and sails into her; we also put the sheep
on board and took our places, weeping and in great distress of mind.
Circe, that great and cunning goddess, sent us a fair wind that blew
...
The Crossing of the Rubicon
Wars worse than civil on Emathian plains,
And crime let loose we sing; how Rome's high race
...
If there is a little man
that lives on my shoulder
and tells me 'no' when
I am tempted,
...
My mind now moves to distant places.
I'm walking the streets of Elsinore,
through its squares, and I recall
the very sad story-
that unfortunate king
killed by his nephew
because of some fanciful suspicions.
...
YOU have waited, Priests of Ireland, until the hour was late:
You have stood with folded arms until 'twas asked—Why do they wait?
By the fever and the famine you have seen your flocks grow thin,
Till the whisper hissed through Ireland that your silence was a sin.
...
It is Christmas Day in the Workhouse,
And the cold bare walls are bright
With garlands of green and holly,
And the place is a pleasant sight:
...
Poor, staggering brute, whom one and all disdain!
Maybe 'twas outraged Nature bade him slake.
...
It has now become so easy to kill
an author or an upright journalist
who doesn't tow the majoritarian line.
...
Landor, not that I doubt your word,
That you had strove with none
At seventy-five and had deferred
To nature and art alone;
...
The rejected word 'peace'
At the beginning of an outraged era;
A church lamp in a grotto
And the air of mountain lands
...
Prelude
I SEE the boy-bard neath life’s morning skies,
While hope’s bright cohorts guess not of defeat,
And ardour lightens from his earnest eyes,
...
This page is tranquil like its white..
On this
When I write to my Mother
About her lotus, her peacock
...
And now the westering sun's declining ray,
Shot faintly forth the fading light of day,
...
After all, at this late hour,
Beloved!
Like a whirlwind blind with dust
Day and Night
...
Charles goes, with his, against King Rodomont.
Gryphon in Norandino's tournament
Does mighty deeds; Martano turns his front,
...
My friend is of shy nature
May not like a word to utter
If that is not needed
May shake head if advice is heeded
...
I decide to stop posting
On "Muse India" with silent protest
As articles go unnoticed or unread
A sign of ungratefulness to the dead
...
---anankta ton pantôn huperbal-
lonta chronon makarôn.
Pindar. Hymn. frag. 33
...
From the Desk of Pope Francis
March,2014
To whom it may concern:
...
The thrones we used
to erect high up on the clouds
for the sake of our old mild gods
stayed for long empty, unoccupied.
...
"Vinashkale viprit buddhi"*
Tuesday, May 8,2018
11: 10 AM
...
Upon his sculptured judgment throne the Roman Ruler sate;
His glittering minions stood around in all their gorgeous state;
...
***Important information, ADDED August 7th 2017:
Readers of showcases, this August's showcase has been somewhat of a bother to me, for various reasons. I've had 'technical problems' maneuvering through the process of putting it together. Much of the trouble has to do with its length and my attempts to make it more user-friendly. PoemHunter does not always cooperate either. Now I am in the process of breaking the LONG showcase (over 40 poems, by over 40 poets) into FOUR PARTS: A, B, C, and D.
...
Hail, holy Peace, from thy sublime abode
Mid circling saints that grace the throne of God!
Before his arm around our embryon earth
...
The Chintamani temple in Theur
Is situated in a sacred place in Maharashtra,
Along the Pune Sholapur Highway,
Where three rivers Mula, Mutha and Bhima,
...
Glenda, The Good Witch: (condescending laugh) “You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas…”
Dorothy: (dubious) “I have? ”
...
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)
The streets are littered with broken glass
Jewish businesses set on fire
...
I was spawned from the glacier,
A thousand miles due north
Beyond Cape Chidley;
And the spawning,
...
Onlookers chatter in blood spattered dust
The basher and contenders spar and dance
On ruins and solemn graves pounded by both,
They size up and posture for what is right
...
Tragic deaths
Tuesday,25th December 2018
Oh, God! no more cruelty
...
Moshe has a headache
and wants to go
and see the doctor.
His friend advises against it:
...
The bougainvillea
taps its fingers
against the whiteness
...
Heavy sun heat on the paving road
The trees have been destroyed!
The peak heat now looks like a passer-by
Heat what a heat!
...
When the corpse revived at the funeral,
The outraged mourners killed it; and the soul
Of the revenant passed into the body
...
'Twas Athens first, the glorious in name,
That whilom gave to hapless sons of men
The sheaves of harvest, and re-ordered life,
And decreed laws; and she the first that gave
...
Maybe it's time that I finally grew up and moved on
In an instant ripping away that boring goody goody image Disney inpaled upon me
Loosened up and ready
Every part of me
...
I.
Thy country's curse is on thee, darkest crest
Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm
...
Akon angel
Is the only black angel that lives in heaven
The rest of the angels are white
And the white angels finally got used to akon angel
...
BUT THE FIRE IS SO DELIGHTFUL!
Frosty the Snowman
is outraged
...
Honestly, what is everyone so damn uptight about?
They're not even our people
It has nothing to do with us
So why not just let things be
...
It was her mercenary heart
that made the deltas of blood
in her veins molten rivulets
of obstinance, hot resolve.
...
My townspeople, beyond in the great world,
are many with whom it were far more
profitable for me to live than here with you.
These whirr about me calling, calling!
...
MY emotions have no color,
just a visionary statement,
probing my isolation, outraged,
by all these sarcastic words,
...
A mythological beauty, she had been;
A legendary beauty, she had grown.
Who is it other than Helen of Troy,
The epitome of seductive beauty?
...
The moment of the day I am born
When I get a knot around my waist
And a nail pressed at my bottom
To make sure I am sufficiently tight
...
Now
the dilemma is
the fellow mate is outraged
by the nature powerful bark
...
King, setting out from the castle on to the street
in his usual grandeur, elegance ‘n royal splendor
to enjoy the day in the garden, superfluously beautiful
beholds a pauper walking right up, in front, to his dismay
...
5/11/2012,15 year old girl, acid thrown in her innocent face,
Not by thugs but her parents, looked at a boy, oh the disgrace,
The Pakistani couple said the incident cause the family shame,
They had to kill their daughter to save the honor of their name.
...
Shorthand for trying
to put the clock back and to be
as in your twenties and to flee
all thoughts of dying,
...
No Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
no lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
though plowman homeward plods his weary way,
world sinks to darkness underneath the sea.
...
'O for a knight like Bayard,
Without reproach or fear;
My light glove on his casque of steel,
My love-knot on his spear!
...
Such was the Child-World of the long-ago--
The little world these children used to know:--
Johnty, the oldest, and the best, perhaps,
...
It's a disgusting thing but Paddy Gilhooley, who knew better as a child, had begun farting in church very early in life. He started in grammar school, many decades ago, long before the nuns selected him in fourth grade to be an altar boy to serve Mass.
...