The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry Read online

  For Ben Spencer

  The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry Copyright © 1996 and 2009 by Christopher Burns. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Additional copyright information appears in the Acknowledgments.

  This is the Kindle edition of The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry, Release 2.06, April 2011. Corrections, comments and suggestions are welcome and may be sent to The Seashell Press at: [email protected]. Readers whose suggestions and corrections are incorporated in the next release of this book will receive a free copy of the corrected edition. Thank you for your support.

  Author Index> Title Index

  Introduction

  To the Reader, Denise Levertov

  The Creation

  The Creation, James Weldon Johnson

  They Ask: Is God, Too, Lonely?, Carl Sandburg

  The Earth, Anne Sexton

  I dwell in possibility, Emily Dickinson

  Song Making, Sara Teasdale

  One’s Self I sing, Walt Whitman

  God is indeed a jealous God, Emily Dickinson

  Yet Do I Marvel, Countee Cullen

  For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide,

  Etheridge Knight

  Constantly Risking Absurdity, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  The Artist, William Carlos Williams

  Ars Poetica, Archibald MacLeish

  Poetry, Carl Sandburg

  Prayers of Steel, Carl Sandburg

  How Poetry Comes To Me, Gary Snyder

  Digging, Seamus Heaney

  Paradoxes and Oxymorons, John Ashbery

  Coda, Ezra Pound

  Epilogue, Robert Lowell

  For My People

  I hear America Singing, Walt Whitman

  Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

  next to of course god america i, e. e. cummings

  A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg

  The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus

  Let other people come as streams,

  Charles Reznikoff

  I will write songs against you, Charles Reznikoff

  from “The People Yes”, Carl Sandburg

  For My People, Margaret Walker

  I, too, sing America, Langston Hughes

  Night Funeral in Harlem, Langston Hughes

  The Firebombers, Anne Sexton

  From “Howl”, Allen Ginsberg

  Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio,

  James Wright

  Limited, Carl Sandburg

  Chicago, Carl Sandburg

  Jazz Fantasia, Carl Sandburg

  The Dance, William Carlos Williams

  Night Journey, Theodore Roethke

  New Mexican Mountain, Robinson Jeffers

  Milton by Firelight, Gary Snyder

  High Flight, John Gillespie Magee

  The Highwayman

  Jack, Carl Sandburg

  The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer

  Cinderella, Anne Sexton

  Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll

  Felix Randal, Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Paul Revere's Ride, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  The Highwayman, Alfred Noyes

  The Ballad of William Sycamore,

  Stephen Vincent Benét

  The Carpenter's Son, A. E. Housman

  The Cremation of Sam McGee, Robert Service

  The Shooting of Dan McGrew, Robert Service

  Richard Cory, Edwin Arlington Robinson

  The Death of the Hired Man, Robert Frost

  The Performance, James Dickey

  Reuben Bright, Edwin Arlington Robinson

  Hard Rock Returns to Prison, Etheridge Knight

  The Examination, W. D. Snodgrass

  The Walrus and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll

  Mrs. Severin, Winfield Townley Scott

  The Unknown Citizen, W. H. Auden

  Arms and the Boy

  Anthem for Doomed Youth, Wilfred Owen

  The Send-Off, Wilfred Owen

  Base Details, Siegfried Sassoon

  Naming of Parts, Henry Reed

  The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe

  If we are marked to die, William Shakespeare

  If We Must Die, Claude McKay

  An Army Corps on the March, Walt Whitman

  Counterattack, Siegfried Sassoon

  Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen

  Ultima Ratio Regum, Stephen Spender

  The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, Randall Jarrell

  Arms and the Boy, Wilfred Owen

  Antrim, Robinson Jeffers

  The Rear Guard, Siegfried Sassoon

  Losses, Randall Jarrell

  Reconciliation, Walt Whitman

  Buttons, Carl Sandburg

  The Three Ravens, English Ballad

  Here dead lie we because we did not choose,

  A. E. Housman

  In Flanders Fields, John McCrae

  Grass, Carl Sandburg

  Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold

  Recessional, Rudyard Kipling

  What Were They Like?, Denise Levertov

  [I'm Dreaming the My Lai Soldier Again],

  Anne Sexton

  And did those feet in ancient time, William Blake

  Once more unto the breach, William Shakespeare

  The Last War, Kingsley Amis

  Earth, John Hall Wheelock

  The Way Through the Woods

  The Pasture, Robert Frost

  After Apple Picking, Robert Frost

  Root Cellar, Theodore Roethke

  When green buds hang in the elm, A. E. Housman

  The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost

  The Way Through Woods, Rudyard Kipling

  The Song of the Wandering Aengus,

  William Butler Yeats

  The Lake Isle of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats

  I taste a liquor never brewed, Emily Dickinson

  I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, William Wordsworth

  The Tiger, William Blake

  The Lamb, William Blake

  The Eagle, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  The Dalliance of Eagles, Walt Whitman

  Vulture, Robinson Jeffers

  Hurt Hawks, Robinson Jeffers

  God's World, Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Spring, Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Pied Beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Inversnaid, Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Love Calls Us To Things Of This World,

  Richard Wilbur

  Chinoiseries, Amy Lowell

  Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas

  Puritan Sonnet, Elinor Wylie

  Fog, Carl Sandburg

  The Waning Moon, Percy Bysshe Shelley

  What Lips My Lips Have Kissed

  Politics, William Butler Yeats

  I Knew a Woman, Theodore Roethke

  Nude Descending a Staircase, X. J. Kennedy

  Piazza di Spagna, Early Morning, Richard Wilbur

  Her Heart, John Masefield

  On a Certain Lady at Court, Alexander Pope

  Delight in Disorder, Robert Herrick

  Preference, Langston Hughes

  The Gypsy Girl, Ralph Hodgson

  No Images, Waring Cuney

  The Harlem Dancer, Claude McKay

  Blackberry Sweet, Dudley Randall

  To a Dark Girl, Gwendolyn Bennett

  Night Piece, to Julia, Robert Herrick

  To Celia, Ben Jonson

  To Helen, Edgar Allen Poe

  The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,

  Christopher Marlowe

&
nbsp; The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd,

  Sir Walter Raleigh

  A Simile for Her Smile, Richard Wilbur

  A Red, Red Rose, Robert Burns

  That time of year thou mayst in me behold,

  William Shakespeare

  if i have made, my lady, e. e. cummings

  Lullaby, W. H. Auden

  A Line-Storm Song, Robert Frost

  The Lost Mistress, Robert Browning

  If thou must love me, let it be for naught,

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  I am Not Yours, Sara Teasdale

  I want to die while you love me,

  Georgia Douglas Johnson

  My Last Duchess, Robert Browning

  Playboy, Richard Wilbur

  Request, Laurence Hope

  Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae,

  Ernest Dowson

  Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?,

  William Shakespeare

  Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,

  William Shakespeare

  When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,

  William Shakespeare

  Not marble, nor the gilded monuments,

  William Shakespeare

  Advice to a Girl, Thomas Campion

  Joy, Carl Sandburg

  To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,

  Robert Herrick

  Love is Not Concerned, Alice Walker

  To His Coy Love, Michael Drayton

  To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell

  Meeting at Night, Robert Browning

  Parting at Morning, Robert Browning

  That Day, Anne Sexton

  Staying at Ed's Place, May Swenson

  In May, J. M. Synge

  Gold, Donald Hall

  A Woman Waits for Me, Walt Whitman

  It Is This Way with Men, C. K. Williams

  may i feel said he, e. e. cummings

  Four Poems, Vidyakara’s “Treasury”

  Lightning, D. H. Lawrence

  Leda and the Swan, William Butler Yeats

  In Bertram's Garden, Donald Justice

  Two Songs, Adrienne Rich

  Mock Orange, Louise Glück

  Woman's Constancy, John Donne

  To a Lady asking him how long he would love her,

  Sir George Etheredge

  To My Inconstant Mistress, Thomas Carew

  The Constant Lover, Sir John Suckling

  For My Lover, Returning to His Wife, Anne Sexton

  The House Grown Silent, Sylvia Townsend Warner

  O Western Wind, Author Unknown

  Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest,

  Gary Snyder

  O that 'twere possible, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Sleepless, Sara Teasdale

  Belle Isle, 1949, Philip Levine

  If There Be Sorrow, Mari Evans

  Where Have You Gone, Mari Evans

  The heart asks pleasure first, Emily Dickinson

  La Belle Dame Sans Merci, John Keats

  Down by the salley gardens, William Butler Yeats

  The Hill, Rupert Brooke

  Because I Liked You Better, A. E. Housman

  One Art, Elizabeth Bishop

  Only Tell Her that I Love, John, Lord Cutts

  Love, Darwin T. Turner

  Separation, W. S. Merwin

  What lips my lips have kissed,

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  I Shall Go Back, Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Oh, when I was in love with you, A. E. Housman

  If Ever Two Were One

  To My Dear and Loving Husband, Anne Bradstreet

  How Do I Love Thee?, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Modern Declaration, Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Love is not all, Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Permanently, Kenneth Koch

  Love Poem, John Frederick Nims

  Oh! Death Will Find Me, Rupert Brooke

  Long I thought that knowledge alone

  would suffice, Walt Whitman

  Same in Blues, Langston Hughes

  50-50, Langston Hughes

  Soiled Dove, Carl Sandburg

  Let me not to the marriage of true minds,

  William Shakespeare

  When I Have Fears, John Keats

  The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter, Ezra Pound

  Love on the Farm, D. H. Lawrence

  The Farmer's Bride, Charlotte Mew

  I Have Been Through the Gates, Charlotte Mew

  The Wife's Tale, Seamus Heaney

  Meditation at Kew, Anna Wickham

  How sweet I roamed from field to field,

  William Blake

  Danse Russe, William Carlos Williams

  What Wild Dawns There Were, Denise Levertov

  Storm Fear, Robert Frost

  A Wife Waits, Thomas Hardy

  After Making Love We Hear Footsteps,

  Galway Kinnell

  A Question, J. M. Synge

  The Ache of Marriage, Denise Levertov

  Man and Wife, Mitchell Goodman

  Six Years Later, Joseph Brodsky

  Man and Wife, Robert Lowell

  To My Wife, J. V. Cunningham

  Coming to This, Mark Strand

  We never said farewell, Mary Coleridge

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

  Michael Drayton

  Oh, Oh, you will be sorry for that word,

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Unpunished, Mary Coleridge

  Divorce, Anna Wickham

  A Renewal, James Merrill

  Mag, Carl Sandburg

  Ah, You Thought, Anna Akhmatova

  Mementos, 1, W. D. Snodgrass

  Idolatry, Arna Bontemps

  Parting, Emily Dickinson

  Time does not bring relief, Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Seeing you stand once more before my eyes,

  Amy Lowell

  Alzheimer's: The Wife, C. K. Williams

  The Widow's Lament in Springtime,

  William Carlos Williams

  At least my dear, Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Complaint, James Wright

  On His Deceased Wife, John Milton

  Highland Mary, Robert Burns

  The Last Dance, May Riley Smith

  When You Are Old, William Butler Yeats

  My Papa's Waltz

  Morning Song, Sylvia Plath

  To L. B. S., Winfield Townley Scott

  Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note,

  Imamu Amiri Baraka

  Mill-Doors, Carl Sandburg

  The One Girl at the Boys Party, Sharon Olds

  35/10, Sharon Olds

  Spring and Fall, Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Portrait of Girl with Comic Book, Phyllis McGinley

  Young Girls, P. K. Page

  When I was a boy, Dylan Thomas

  Baudelaire, Delmore Schwartz

  This world is gradually becoming a place,

  John Berryman

  Momma Welfare Roll, Maya Angelou

  To My Mother, George Barker

  Nightingales in America, Jane Flanders

  Piano, D. H. Lawrence

  My Papa's Waltz, Theodore Roethke

  Those Winter Sundays, Robert Hayden

  Grandfather in the Old Men's Home, W. S. Merwin

  The Moss of His Skin, Anne Sexton

  Wanderer’s Song

  Wanderer's Song, Arthur Symons

  The World is Too Much with Us,

  William Wordsworth

  Sea Fever, John Masefield

  Sailing to Byzantium, William Butler Yeats

  Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Dolor, Theodore Roethke

  Departmental, Robert Frost

  the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls,

  e. e. cummings

  He stared at ruin, John Berryman

  Memories of West Street and Lepke, Robert Lowell

  Skunk Hour, R
obert Lowell

  Men at Forty, Donald Justice

  Third Avenue in Sunlight, Anthony Hecht

  The Hunchback in the Park, Dylan Thomas

  Thoughts, Michael Benedikt

  My Erotic Double, John Ashbery

  Sonnet 115, John Berryman

  The soul selects her own society, Emily Dickinson

  Much madness is divinest sense, Emily Dickinson

  Her Kind, Anne Sexton

  Ringing the Bells, Anne Sexton

  Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

  William Shakespeare

  Preludes, T.S. Eliot

  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

  To be, or not to be, William Shakespeare

  The Roofwalker, Adrienne Rich

  Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm,

  James Wright

  Above These Cares, Edna St. Vincent Millay

  A Poem Some People Will Have to Understand,

  Imamu Amiri Baraka

  In a Dark Time, Theodore Roethke

  The Leaden-Eyed, Vachel Lindsay

  On His Blindness, John Milton

  Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  The Runes, Denise Levertov

  So, we'll go no more a-roving,

  George Gordon, Lord Byron

  Weariness, Sara Teasdale

  Acquainted with the Night

  Acquainted with the Night, Robert Frost

  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,

  Robert Frost

  The Dark Forest, Edward Thomas

  Reluctance, Robert Frost

  Directive, Robert Frost

  Bereft, Robert Frost

  Terminus, Ralph Waldo Emerson

  On Growing Old, John Masefield

  The Villain, William Henry Davies

  You, Andrew Marvell, Archibald MacLeish

  Dream Variations, Langston Hughes

  London, William Blake

  Clear Night, Charles Wright

  Silver, Walter de la Mare

  Beginning, James Wright

  End of Summer, Stanley Kunitz

  Night is my sister, Edna St. Vincent Millay

  What if a much of a which of a wind,

  e. e. cummings

  A Dirge, Percy Bysshe Shelley

  The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

  Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!,

  William Shakespeare

  England in 1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Prophecy, Elinor Wylie

  Sleep, Sir Philip Sidney

  I Hear an Army, James Joyce

  The Watch, Frances Cornford

  Snowflakes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  The Bird, Rabindranath Tagore

  If—, Rudyard Kipling

  Invictus, William Ernest Henley

  Medicine Formula, Takelma Indian Song

  The Lord is My Shepherd, Book of Psalms

  The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry

  When Earth's last picture Is painted,

  Rudyard Kipling

  Epistle to Be Left in the Earth, Archibald MacLeish

  The End of the World, Archibald MacLeish