The Giant Book of Poetry Read online

  Organization of the Poems

  The poems are sorted by author date of birth, then alphabetically by author, then generally alphabetically by poem title. In some cases where poems are related somehow or have a natural order, I’ve adjusted the order of the poems for a given author. I elected to group them by author date of birth rather than grouping them by subject or author last name for the following reasons:

  • It is easier to read a group of poems all written in a single writing style based on the century when written, rather than jumping back and forth between modern English and 16th or 17th century English.

  • It is helpful to see the evolution of different schools of poetry over time. Just observing different poetic styles come into and go out of favor over the centuries is insightful.

  A Note on Meter

  In Appendix A I provide guidance on poetic meter that may be of interest to the advanced reader, however a quick note here is relevant for all readers. For many of the earlier poets writing in English, poetic meter requires that an archaic pronunciation be used for certain words ending in “ed”. For example, the work “banished” would be pronounced today in two syllables, or beats— ban-ished, however in Middle English it would be pronounced in three syllables, or beats—ban-ish-ed. Using the modern pronunciation will throw off the rhythm of these poems. To help the reader, in cases where the “ed” should be unnaturally pronounced as a separate syllable I have spelled it thus: “ëd.”

  A few terms (slightly simplified here) will be especially helpful in reading the footnotes to the poems:

  • Iambic: characterized by the pattern da-DUM;

  • Dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter: Having lines with 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 feet (e.g., iambs) per line;

  • Ballad: alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter lines;

  • Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter; and

  • Sonnet: Iambic pentameter, 14 lines.

  A Request for Understanding and Assistance

  Although I’ve worked hard on this book, it still contains errors. Any work of this size must have errors. I humbly request that you maintain a tolerant attitude toward these errors, and further request that you bring them to my attention so that I can fix them in future printings of the book. I can be reached care of Level 4 Press at 13518 Jamul Drive, Jamul, CA91935, or email at [email protected].

  I hope that you enjoy reading this book as much as I’ve enjoyed compiling it!

  William H. Roetzheim

  Editor

  Poems

  Unknown (possibly 4,000 BC)

  Ishtar1

  Translated from the Babylonian Cuneiform by Lewis Spence

  The unconsecrated foe entered my courts,

  placed his unwashed hands upon me,

  and caused me to tremble.

  Putting forth his hand

  He smote me with fear.

  He tore away my robe

  and clothed his wife therein;

  he stripped off my jewels

  and placed them upon his daughter.

  Like a quivering dove upon a beam

  I sat.

  Like a fleeing bird from my cranny

  swiftly I passed

  from my temple.

  Like a bird

  they caused me to fly.

  Archilochos (circa 700 BC – 650 BC)

  Will, lost in a sea of trouble1

  translated by Kenneth Rexroth

  Will, lost in a sea of trouble,

  rise, save yourself from the whirlpool

  of the enemies of willing.

  Courage exposes ambushes.

  Steadfastness destroys enemies.

  Keep your victories hidden.

  Do not sulk over defeat.

  Accept good. Bend before evil.

  Learn the rhythm which binds all men.

  The Bible

  Address of Ruth to Naomi2

  Entreat me not to leave thee,

  or to return from following after thee:

  for whither thou goest,

  I will go;

  and where thou lodgest,

  I will lodge.

  Thy people shall be my people,

  and thy god my god.

  Where thou diest, will I die,

  and there will I be buried.

  The Lord do so to me, and more also,

  if ought but death part thee and me.

  Mei Sheng (Circe 140 BC)

  The Beautiful Toilet1

  Translated by Ezra Pound

  Blue, blue is the grass about the river

  and the willows have overfilled the close garden.

  And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth,

  white, white of face, hesitates, passing the door.

  Slender, she puts forth a slender hand;

  and she was a courtesan in the old days,

  and she has married a sot,

  who now goes drunkenly out

  and leaves her too much alone.

  Horace (65 BC – 8 BC)

  The young bloods come less often now2

  Translated from the Latin by James Michie

  The young bloods come round less often now,

  pelting your shutters and making a row

  and robbing your beauty sleep. Now the door

  clings lovingly close to the jamb—though, before,

  it used to move on its hinge pretty fast.

  Those were the days—and they’re almost past—

  when lovers stood out all night long crying,

  “Lydia, wake up! Save me! I’m dying!”

  Soon your time’s coming to be turned down

  and to feel the scorn of the men about town—a

  cheap hag haunting alley places

  O moonless nights when the wind from Thrace is

  rising and raging, and so is the fire

  in your raddled loins, the brute desire

  that drives the mothers of horses mad.

  You’ll be lonely then and complain how sad

  that the gay young boys enjoy the sheen

  of ivy best or the darker green

  of myrtle: dry old leaves they send

  as a gift to the east wind, winter’s friend.

  Norse Myth (circa 50 BC)

  from The Longbeards’ Saga1

  Translated by Charles Kingsley

  Out of the morning land,

  over the snowdrifts,

  beautiful Freya came

  tripping to Scoring.

  White were the moorlands,

  and frozen before her;

  green were the moorlands,

  and blooming behind her.

  Out of her gold locks

  shaking the spring flowers,

  out of her garments

  shaking the south wind,

  around in the birches

  awaking the throstles,

  and making chaste housewives all

  long for their heroes home.

  Loving and love-giving,

  came she to Scoring.

  Petronius Arbiter (27 AD – 66 AD)

  Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short2

  Translated from the Latin by Ben Jonson

  Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short;

  and done, we straight repent us of the sport:

  let us not rush blindly on unto it,

  like lustful beasts, that only know to do it:

  for lust will languish, and that heat decay,

  but thus, thus, keeping endless holy-day,

  let us together closely lie, and kiss,

  there is no labor, nor no shame in this;

  this hath pleased, doth please and long will please; never can this decay,

  but is beginning ever.

  Tao Yuan-ming (To-Em-Mei) (365-427)

  The Unmoving Cloud1

  Translated by Ezra Pound

  I.

  The clouds have gathered, and gathered,

  and the rain falls and falls,


  the eight ply of the heavens

  are all folded into one darkness,

  and the wide, flat road stretches out.

  I stop in my room toward the East, quiet, quiet,

  I pat my new cask of wine.

  My friends are estranged, or far distant,

  I bow my head and stand still.

  II.

  Rain, rain, and the clouds have gathered,

  the eight ply of the heavens are darkness,

  the flat land is turned into river.

  “Wine, wine, here is wine!”

  I drink by my eastern window.

  I think of talking and man,

  and no boat, no carriage, approaches.

  III.

  The trees in my east-looking garden

  are bursting out with new twigs,

  they try to stir new affection,

  and men say the sun and moon keep on moving

  because they can’t find a soft seat.

  IV.

  The birds flutter to rest in my tree,

  and I think I have heard them saying,

  “It is not that there are no other men

  But we like this fellow the best,

  But however we long to speak

  He can not know of our sorrow.”

  Li Po (701 – 762)

  The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter1

  Translated from the Chinese by Ezra Pound

  While my hair was still cut straight

  across my forehead

  I played at the front gate, pulling flowers.

  You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

  you walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.

  And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

  two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

  At fourteen I married My Lord you.

  I never laughed, being bashful.

  Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

  Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

  At fifteen I stopped scowling,

  I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

  forever and forever and forever.

  Why should I climb the lookout?

  At sixteen you departed,

  you went into far Ku-to-en,

  by the river of swirling eddies,

  and you have been gone five months.

  The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

  You dragged your feet when you went out,

  by the gate now, the moss is grown,

  the different mosses,

  too deep to clear them away!

  The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

  The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

  over the grass in the West garden;

  they hurt me. I grow older.

  If you are coming down through the narrows

  of the river Kiang,

  please let me know beforehand,

  and I will come out to meet you

  as far as Cho-fu-sa.

  Omar Khayam (1044-1123)

  Translated by Edward Fitzgerald

  XI1

  Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,

  a flask of wine, a book of verse—and thou

  beside me singing in the wilderness—

  and wilderness is paradise enow.

  XXIII2

  Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

  before we too into the dust descend;

  dust into dust, and under dust, to lie,

  sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and—sans end!

  XXVIII3

  With them the seed of wisdom did I sow,

  and with my own hand labored it to grow:

  and this was all the harvest that I reaped—

  “I came like water, and like wind I go.”

  LI1

  The moving finger writes; and, having writ,

  moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit

  shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

  nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

  Moritake (1452 – 1540)

  One fallen flower2

  Translated from the Japanese by Peter Beilenson

  One fallen flower

  returning to the Branch? … Oh no!

  A white butterfly

  Sir Philip Sidney (1554 – 1586)

  A Ditty3

  My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,

  by just exchange one for another given:

  I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,

  there never was a better bargain driven:

  my true-love hath my heart, and I have his.

  My heart in me keeps him and me in one,

  my heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:

  he loves my heart, for once it was his own,

  I cherish his because in me it bides:

  my true-love hath my heart, and I have his.

  Be Your Words Made, Good Sir of Indian Ware1

  Be your words made, good Sir, of Indian ware,

  that you allow me them by so small rate?

  Or do you cutted Spartans imitate?

  Or do you mean my tender ears to spare

  that to my questions you so total are?

  When I demand of Phoenix Stella’s state,

  you say, forsooth, you left her well of late:

  O God, think you that satisfies my care?

  I would know whether she did sit or walk;

  how clothed; how waited on; sighed she or smiled;

  whereof, with whom, how often did she talk;

  with what pastime time’s journey she beguiled;

  if her lips deigned to sweeten my poor name:

  say all; and, all well said, still say the same.

  Loving in Truth2

  Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,

  that She, dear She,

  might take some pleasure of my pain;

  pleasure might cause her read,

  reading might make her know,

  knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain;

  I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,

  studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain;

  oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow

  some fresh and fruitful showers

  upon my sunburned brain.

  But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay;

  invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows;

  and others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.

  Thus, great with child to speak,

  and helpless in my throes,

  biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite.

  “Fool,” said my Muse to me,

  “look in thy heart, and write!”

  To Sleep1

  Come, Sleep; O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,

  the baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,

  the poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,

  th’ indifferent judge between the high and low;

  with shield of proof, shield me from out the prease

  of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw:

  O make in me those civil wars to cease;

  I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.

  Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,

  a chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,

  a rosy garland and a weary head:

  and if these things, as being thine by right,

  move not thy heavy grace, though shalt in me,

  livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.

  Robert Greene (1560 … 1592)

  Content2

  Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content;

  the Quiet mind is richer than a crown;

  sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent;

  the poor estate scorns Fortune’s angry frown.

  Such sweet content, such minds, such slee
p, such bliss,

  beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.

  The homely house that harbors Quiet rest;

  the cottage that affords no pride nor care;

  the mean that ’grees with country music best;

  the sweet consort of mirth and music’s fare;

  obscured life sets down a type of bliss:

  a mind content both crown and kingdom is.

  Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

  Love’s Farewell1

  Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part—

  nay I have done, you get no more of me;

  and I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,

  that thus so cleanly I myself can free;

  shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,

  and when we meet at any time again,

  be it not seen in either of our brows

  that we one jot of former love retain,

  now at the last gasp of love’s latest breath,

  when his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,

  when faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

  and innocence is closing up his eyes,

  —now if though would’st when all have given him over,

  from death to life though might’st him yet decover!

  William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

  All the World’s a Stage1