Dreaming on naught but idle poetry,
That fruitless and unprofitable art,
Good unto none, but least to the professors.
- Ben Jonson, ‘Every Man in his Humour’
Are these the fruits of all my travails and expenses? Is this the scope and aim of all thy studies? Are these the hopeful courses wherewith I have so long flattered all my expectations from thee? Verses? Poetry?
- Ben Jonson, Poetaster (Ovid’s father to Ovid)
Links to the poems quoted in these posts:
- Abu Abdallah Ibn Ghalib Al-Rusafi: Ashiyin Raiqin
- Yehuda Amichai: Jerusalem
- Maya Angelou: Human Family
- Maya Angelou: Still I Rise
- Maya Angelou: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
- Ibn Arabi: Wonder
- Simon Armitage: A Vision
- Matthew Arnold: Dover Beach
- W.H. Auden: Address To The Beasts
- W. H. Auden: The Unknown Citizen
- W.H. Auden: Voltaire at Ferney
- WH Auden: Bucolics, II: Woods (extract)
- Matsuo Basho: summer grasses
- Frances Bellerby: All Soul’s Day
- John Berger: Earth
- John Berger: They Are The Last
- James Berry, Benediction
- James Berry, Fantasy of an African Boy
- Wendell Berry: To Enrich the Earth
- Wendell Berry: What We Need Is Here
- Wendell Berry: The Peace of Wild Things
- Wendell Berry: Sabbaths (extract)
- Wendell Berry: The Vacation
- John Betjeman: Harvest Hymn
- Elizabeth Bishop: Brazil, January 1, 1502
- Elizabeth Bishop: The Moose
- William Blake: Jerusalem
- Eavan Boland: White Hawthorn in the West of Ireland
- Hans Børli: The Little Flute ( Den lille fløyten)
- Hans Børli: Autumn Night in the Mountain Woods ( Hostnatt pa Fjeliskogen)
- Hans Børli: The Tree That Grows Upside Down (Treet som vekser opp-ned)
- Hans Børli: Rock Salt ( Saltstein)
- Hans Børli: Whispers in the Cotton Grass (Sus i myrull)
- Hans Børli: A Moment of Stars ( Stjernestund)
- Hans Børli: It Is One of Those Nights ( Det er ei slik natt)
- Hans Børli: The Moose Heart ( Elghjertet)
- Hans Børli: Have You Listened to the Rivers in the Night? ( Har du lyttet til elvene om natta?)
- Hans Borli: Memories
- Bertold Brecht: A Worker Reads History
- John Burnside: On ‘The Cornfield’ by John Nash
- Lord Byron: Darkness
- Constantine Cavafy: Poseidonians
- Constantine Cavafy: Ithaca
- Amy Clampitt: Beach Glass
- John Clare: The Nightingale’s Nest
- John Clare: The Pettichap’s Nest
- John Clare: The Badger
- John Clare: The Dandelion
- John Clare: The Sycamore
- John Clare: To a Fallen Elm (extract)
- John Clare: Remembrances (extract)
- John Clare: Wood Pictures in Autumn
- John Clare: Wood Pictures in Summer
- Thomas A Clark: The One Hundred Thousand Places
- Thomas A Clark: The One Hundred Thousand Places
- Thomas A Clark: Forest Without Trees
- Thomas A Clark, The Path to the Sea
- Thomas A Clark: The Grey Fold
- Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah
- Leonard Cohen: Anthem
- RC: Lost
- RC: From the Window
- RC: At The Canal
- EE Cummings: i carry your heart with me
- Mahmoud Darwish: Under Siege
- Mahmoud Darwish: Identity Card
- Mahmoud Darwish: We have on this earth what makes life worth living
- WH Davies: Leisure
- Vivian de Sola Pinto: In The Train
- Emily Dickinson: I Reason, Earth is Short
- Emily Dickinson: Indian Summer
- Emily Dickinson: Indian Summer
- Emily Dickinson: The Dandelion’s Pallid Tube
- Emily Dickinson: A Soft Sea Washed Around the House
- Emily Dickinson: As if the Sea Should Part
- Emily Dickinson: There is no frigate like a book
- John Donne: No Man is an Island
- Mark Doty: Migratory
- Carol Ann Duffy: Politics
- Carol Ann Duffy: The Words Of Poems
- Carol Ann Duffy: Poet for our Times
- Carol Ann Duffy: Prayer
- Carol Ann Duffy: Mrs Darwin
- Carol Ann Duffy: Mean Time
- Carol Ann Duffy: Mrs Lazarus
- Carol Ann Duffy: Premonitions
- Carol Ann Duffy: Your School
- Carol Ann Duffy: The Maiden Names
- Carol Ann Duffy: Safe Sounds
- Carol Ann Duffy: Night Writing
- Carol Ann Duffy: Glad
- Carol Ann Duffy: The Twelve days of Christmas 2009
- Carol Ann Duffy: Birmingham: for Tariq Jahan
- Paul Laurence Dunbar: Sympathy
- Abou-Al-kacem El-chebbi: To the Tyrants of the World
- Abou-Al-kacem El-chebbi: If the People Wanted Life One Day
- T.S. Eliot: The Wasteland
- T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets, Little Gidding
- T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets, East Coker
- T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
- T.S. Eliot: Journey of the Magi
- Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Snow Storm
- Christine Evans: Llyn
- UA Fanthorpe: Earthed
- UA Fanthorpe: BC:AD
- UA Fanthorpe: Rising Damp
- UA Fanthorpe: Water Everywhere
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Dog
- Robert Frost: Mending Wall
- Robert Frost: Sand Dunes
- Robert Frost: The Sound of Trees and here
- Katherine Gallagher: The Year of the Tree
- Louise Gluck: Odysseus’ Decision
- WS Graham: The Thermal Stair
- Michael Hamburger: Oak
- Peter Handke: Song of Childhood
- Thomas Hardy: A Dream or No
- Thomas Hardy: After A Journey: Pentargon Bay
- Thomas Hardy: Beeny Cliff
- Seamus Heaney: from The Cure at Troy
- Adrian Henri: Love Is…
- Adrian Henri: Tonight at Noon
- Matthew Hollis: Landlock
- Thomas Hood: November
- Alfred Edward Housman: A Shropshire Lad
- Ted Hughes: A Swallow
- Ted Hughes: Swifts
- Ted Hughes: October Dawn
- Ted Hughes: The Thought Fox; The Thought Fox
- Ted Hughes: Work and Play
- Ted Hughes: The Badger (from What Is The Truth?)
- Ted Hughes: Coming Down Through Somerset
- Ted Hughes: Bridestones
- Ted Hughes: Wind
- Ted Hughes: That Morning
- Ted Hughes: Full Moon and Little Frieda
- Eileen Carney Hulme: Indian Summer
- Kathleen Jamie: The Tree House
- Kathleen Jamie: The Dash
- Kathleen Jamie: Ospreys
- Kathleen Jamie: The Overhaul
- Kathleen Jamie: Even the Raven
- Pauline Johnson: The Lifting of the Mist
- Ibrahim Ibn Khafaja: O Andalusin
- Jackie Kay: Old Tongue
- Jackie Kay: Darling
- John Keats: To Autumn
- John Keats: Ailsa Craig
- Rudyard Kipling: The Glory of the Garden
- Rudyard Kipling: Magna Carta
- Richard Lambert: The Magnolia
- Philip Larkin: Aubade
- Philip Larkin: I Remember, I Remember
- Philip Larkin: Going, Going
- Philip Larkin: This Be The Verse
- Philip Larkin: High Windows
- Philip Larkin: The Mower
- Philip Larkin: The Trees
- Philip Larkin: The Whitsun Weddings
- Edward Lear: Dingle Bank
- Primo Levi: Shema
- Primo Levi: To My Friends
- Christopher Logue: Lithe girl, Brown girl
- Christopher Logue: Know Thy Enemy
- Christopher Logue: I Shall Vote Labour
- Christopher Logue: Foreword to New Numbers
- Christopher Logue: Be Not To Hard (aka September Song)
- Christopher Logue: The Chorus of the Secret Police
- Sahir Ludhianvi: The Taj Mahal
- Norman MacCaig: The Shore Road
- Norman MacCaig: Toad
- Norman MacCaig: November night, Edinburgh
- Norman MacCaig: Climbing Suilven
- Norman MacCaig: A Man in Assynt
- Norman MacCaig: Notes on a winter journey
- Norman MacCaig: A.K. Macleod
- Norman MacCaig: London to Edinburgh
- Norman MacCaig: Ringed plover by a water’s edge
- Norman MacCaig: Sound of the sea on a still evening
- Norman MacCaig: Stonechat on Cul Beg
- Norman MacCaig: Humanism
- Norman MacCaig: Landscape Outside and In
- Norman MacCaig: On a beach
- Louis MacNeice: Snow
- Louis MacNeice: Fanfare for the Makers
- Louis MacNeice:The Suicide
- Louis MacNeice: Prayer Before Birth
- Louis MacNeice: from Autumn Journal
- Louis MacNeice: The Sunlight on the Garden
- Derek Mahon: The Banished Gods
- Derek Mahon: A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford
- Derek Mahon: The Thunder Shower
- Osip Mandelstam: We Live Without Feeling
- Patrick McGuinness: Blue
- Czeslaw Milosz: Eyes
- Adrian Mitchell: To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies About Vietnam)
- Edwin Morgan: The Sheaf
- Andrew Motion: The Sorcerer’s Mirror
- Andrew Motion: The Five Acts of Harry Patch
- Andrew Motion: What Is Given
- Les Murray: Ariel
- Les Murray: The Meaning of Existence
- Les Murray: The Emerald Dove
- Mzwakhe Mbuli: Ijuba
- Howard Nemerov: The Blue Swallows
- Pablo Neruda: Keeping Quiet
- Grace Nichols: Wherever I Hang
- Grace Nichols: Hurricane Hits England
- Norman Nicholson: Beck
- Norman Nicholson: The Megaliths
- Norman Nicholson: Sea to the West
- Sean O’Brien: Essay on Snow
- Mary Oliver: August
- Mary Oliver: Humpbacks
- Mary Oliver: Wild Geese
- John Ormond: Ancient Monuments
- George Orwell: On a Ruined Farm near the His Master’s Voice Gramophone Factory
- Alice Oswald: Written some time between the Month of May and the Month of May Not
- Alice Oswald: Dart (excerpt)
- Alice Oswald: Memorial (excerpt)
- Alice Oswald: Another Westminster Bridge
- Dorothy Parker: Indian Summer
- Nii Ayikwei Parkes: Barter
- Nii Ayikwei Parkes: Our Love is Here to Stay
- Giovanni Pascoli: The Fallen Oak
- Brian Patten: You come to me quiet as rain not yet fallen
- Brian Patten: Little Johnny’s confession
- Don Patterson: Waking with Russell
- Don Patterson: The Thread
- Tom Paulin: Killed In Crossfire
- Mario Petrucci: Heavy Water: a poem for Chernobyl
- Kathleen Raine: Nameless Islets
- Kathleen Raine: Water
- Rainer Maria Rilke: Eighth Duino Elegy [extract]
- Michael Symmons Roberts: Scrap Metal
- Michael Symmons Roberts: In Praise of Flaking Walls
- Michael Symmons Roberts: Abyss of Birds
- Peter Robinson: Otterspool Prom
- William Roscoe: The Nymph of the Dingle
- Christina Georgina Rossetti: Silent Noon
- Carl Sandburg: Nocturne Cabbage
- Carl Sandburg: Dream Girl
- Siegfried Sassoon: Morning Express
- F. R. Scott: Villanelle For Our Time
- Giorgios Seferis: The House Near the Sea
- Giorgios Seferis: Epiphany
- Giorgios Seferis: The Return of the Exile
- Yamaguchi Seishi: summer grasses
- William Shakespeare: Sonnet 18 (Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day)
- William Shakespeare: Sonnet 54
- Jo Shapcott: Uncertainty is not a good dog
- Jo Shapcott: I Go Inside the Tree
- Jo Shapcott: Phrase Book
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias
- Nan Shepherd: Achiltibuie
- Lyubov Sirota: Burden
- Lyubov Sirota: To Pripyat
- Patti Smith: Qana
- Gary Snyder: Burning the Small Dead
- Edith Södergran: The Land That Is Not
- Wallace Stevens: The Snow Man
- Arseny Tarkovsky: There Has to be More
- Sara Teasdale: Swallow Flight
- Sara Teasdale: There Will Come Soft Rains
- Justine Tennant: Norra Lorra Otters
- Alfred Lord Tennyson: The Brook
- AJ Tessimond: Not Love Perhaps
- Edward Thomas: Ash Grove
- Edward Thomas: After Rain
- Edward Thomas: March
- Edward Thomas: Old Man
- Edward Thomas: The Combe
- Edward Thomas: Fifty Faggots
- RS Thomas: Welsh Landscape
- RS Thomas: The Small Window
- RS Thomas: The Bright Field
- Helen Tookey: Prints
- Helen Tookey: At Burscough, Lancashire
- Tomas Tranströmer: Further In
- Tomas Tranströmer:Further In
- Tomas Tranströmer: Allegro
- Tomas Tranströmer: Tracks
- Tomas Tranströmer: Prelude
- Tomas Tranströmer: The Name
- Tomas Tranströmer: Alone
- Tomas Tranströmer: On the Outskirts of Work
- Derek Walcott: Earth
- Ionna Warwick: Stalin’s Moustache
- Sam Willetts: Garden
- William Carlos Williams: Queen Anne’s Lace
- William Carlos Williams: Winter Trees
- William Wordsworth: Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
- William Butler Yeats: The Wild Swans At Coole
- Liao Yiwu: Massacre
- Adam Zagajewski: Try To Praise The Mutilated World
- Benjamin Zephaniah: The British (serves 60 million)
- Benjamin Zephaniah, Talking Turkeys
