Poetry through the ages

From Second Satire
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42)

My mother’s maids, when they did sew and spin,

They sang sometimes a song of the field mouse,
That for because their livelihood was but so thin

Would needs go seek her townish sister’s house.

She thought herself endured to much pain:
The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse...

Country Song
Nicholas Breton (1545-1626)

Shall we go dance the hay, the hay?

Never pipe could ever play
Better shepherd’s roundelay.

Shall we go sing the song, the song?

Never Love did ever wrong,
Fair maids, hold hands all along.

Shall we go learn to woo, to woo?

Never thought ever came to,
Better deed could better do.

Shall we go learn to kiss, to kiss?

Never heart could ever miss
Comfort, where true meaning is.

Thus at base they run, they run.

When the sport was scarce begun.
But I waked–and all was done.

The Eagle
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92)

He clasps the crag with crooked hands:

Close to the sun it lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, it stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

From Two Voices
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92)

A still small voice spake unto me:

'Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?’

Then to the still small voice I said:

'Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made.’

Reduced Circumstances
Harvey Stanbrough (1954– )

He wasn’t always stretched that way, you know

strained through that fine sieve and powdered out
into polite society, a mote

in someone else’s eye. The guy trained hard,

compressed himself into the various molds
others thought he’d fit. Nobody bothered

to show they cared–to try to add three days

back into his week or put July
back into his year–they just smiled,

used him for their purposes, the last

of which was as the subject of some brief
but witty poem, and nobody knew

or wished to know the worst, most violent

effect: His circumstances were reduced
until he merely sat with folded hands.

Dragonfly
Susan Mitchell (1944-)

caught on the wing the wing is a

disarray of sun spots
overtaking

the air black dots on sheer on trans-

parency on wheel and whee
openness so

surprising it rivals invincibility what

is magic to do pull itself
out of a hat

saw itself in two what a to-do

grabs hold of my finger
extended will

not to be shaken free together we are one

stem one spire one shoot upshot
bent at a right

angle to itself so this is what it feels

to be reed a stem with wings
for leaves a

finger that can see how the wind blows what

whir ungloves my breath what whist
what wings two

sets can up can down can blow fast

forward faster re-
verse how is

language to keep up how outwing

those wings their gulps
and gobbles of

ricochet at every bump is this

what the world is this romp
this dizziness a fast

roll of the dice four dots and three hundreds

bounced into life the same
morning bumbling

babies they stub their fantastic

engines on air on me not
at all brainy

like a bow tied like a fancy gift done

up with organza like a spree
a paint-the-town dotty

such extravagance such waste too soon

they stump to a standstill in
puddles on hedges

tossed aside still brand new still shiny

the windup toy that will not wind a
mood run down

should i take back my delight delaminate

what wing was joy but oh my king-
dom for the tip of a branch