SKULL POEMS

Jobson's Amen

"Blessed be the English and all their ways and works.
Cursed be the Infidels, Hereticks, and Turks!"
"Amen," quo' Jobson, "but where I used to lie
Was neither Candle, Bell nor Book to curse my brethren by,
.....

Rudyard Kipling

The Cup Of Joy

Let us mix a cup of Joy
That the wretched may employ,
Whom the Fates have made their toy.

.....

Madison Julius Cawein

Listen...

There is a knocking in the skull,
An endless silent shout
Of something beating on a wall,
And crying, â??Let me out!â?
.....

Ogden Nash

Brothers

See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air
Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he
Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye!
No light is there; none, save the glint that shines
.....

James Weldon Johnson

Premonition

'Twas a year ago and the moon was bright
(Oh, I remember so well, so well);
I walked with my love in a sea of light,
And the voice of my sweet was a silver bell.
.....

Robert Service

Prejudice

IN yonder red-brick mansion, tight and square,
Just at the town's commencement, lives the mayor.
Some yards of shining gravel, fenced with box,
Lead to the painted portal--where one knocks :
.....

Jane Taylor

Landing On The Moon

When in the mask of night there shone that cut,
we were riddled. A probe reached down
and stroked some nerve in us,
as if the glint from a wizard's eye, of silver,
.....

May Swenson

Hyperion: Book Ii

Just at the self-same beat of Time's wide wings
Hyperion slid into the rustled air,
And Saturn gain'd with Thea that sad place
Where Cybele and the bruised Titans mourn'd.
.....

John Keats

Lancelot 08

For longer war they came, and with a fury
That only Modred's opportunity,
Seized in the dark of Britain, could have hushed
And ended in a night. For Lancelot,
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

To A Black Gin

Daughter of Eve, draw nearâ??I would behold thee.
Good Heavens! Could ever arm of man enfold thee?
Did the same Nature that made Phryne mould thee?

.....

James Brunton Stephens

My Favoured Fare

Some poets sing of scenery;
Some to fair maids make sonnets sweet.
A fig for love and greenery,
Be mine a song of things to eat.
.....

Robert Service

Tom Paine

An Englishman was Thomas Paine
Who bled for liberty;
But while his fight was far from vain
He died in poverty:
.....

Robert Service

History

History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had--
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
.....

Robert Lowell

Penance

"Why do you sit, O pale thin man,
At the end of the room
By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?
It is cold as a tomb,
.....

Thomas Hardy

The Surf Sprite

I.

In the far off sea there is many a sprite,
Who rests by day, but awakes at night.
.....

Sam G. Goodrich

Birth-night Of The Humming Birds

I.

I'll tell you a Fairy Tale that's new:
How the merry Elves o'er the ocean flew
.....

Sam G. Goodrich

Psalm

It is a light, that the wind has extinguished.
It is a pub on the heath, that a drunk departs in the afternoon.
It is a vineyard, charred and black with holes full of spiders.
It is a space, that they have white-limed with milk.
.....

Georg Trakl

Ornithology

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.....

Ronald Koertge

Fragment Of 'the Castle Builder.'

To-night I'll have my friar -- let me think
About my room, -- I'll have it in the pink;
It should be rich and sombre, and the moon,
Just in its mid-life in the midst of June,
.....

John Keats

Point Spread

The skull in the box is that of Cornelius A. Burleigh, the first man to be hanged in London, Ontario, August 19, 1830. The public hanging attracted an audience of over 3,000 when the village of London numbered only a few hundred. Because the rope broke, he was hanged twice! The top of the skull was taken on a world tour by Dr. O.S. Fowler, a phrenologist.
This part of the skull was presented to the Harris family.
(Eldon House brochure)

.....

Paul Cameron Brown

Passion And The Skull

An Old Colophon

Passion sits on the skull
Of Humanity,
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Hornets

How strangely like a churchyard skull
The thing that's there amongst the leaves!

A Hornets' nest; but stir the branch
.....

Padraic Colum

Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills

Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of Misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on-
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Iliad: Book 10

Now the other princes of the Achaeans slept soundly the whole
night through, but Agamemnon son of Atreus was troubled, so that he
could get no rest. As when fair Juno's lord flashes his lightning in
token of great rain or hail or snow when the snow-flakes whiten the
.....

Homer

The Iliad: Book 08

Now when Morning, clad in her robe of saffron, had begun to suffuse
light over the earth, Jove called the gods in council on the topmost
crest of serrated Olympus. Then he spoke and all the other gods gave
ear. “Hear me,” said he, “gods and goddesses, that I may speak even as
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 18

Now there came a certain common tramp who used to go begging all
over the city of Ithaca, and was notorious as an incorrigible
glutton and drunkard. This man had no strength nor stay in him, but he
was a great hulking fellow to look at; his real name, the one his
.....

Homer

Sword Blades And Poppy Seed

A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,
And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves
.....

Amy Lowell

Yorick

Hard by an excavated street one sat
In solitary session on the sand;
And ever and anon he spake and spat
And spake again-a yellow skull in hand,
.....

Ambrose Bierce

Drought Year

That time of drought the embered air
burned to the roots of timber and grass.
The crackling lime-scrub would not bear
and Mooni Creek was sand that year.
.....

Judith Wright

Poem - Iii

Through the dark aisles of the wood
Where the pine-needles deaden all sound
And the dove flutters in the black boughs

.....

Henry Treece

Up At A Villa' Down In The City

(As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)

I

.....

Robert Browning

And These--are These Indeed The Rnd

And these-are these indeed the end,
This grinning skull, this heavy loam?
Do all green ways whereby we wend
Lead but to yon ignoble home?
.....

William Watson

Lake

Maidenly lake, fathomless lake,
Stay as you were once, overgrown with rushes,
Idling with a reflected cloud, for my sake
Whom your shore no longer touches.
.....

Czeslaw Milosz

The Shrike

When night comes black
Such royal dreams beckon this man
As lift him apart
From his earth-wife's side
.....

Sylvia Plath

The Jesters

A toast to the Fools!
Pierrot, Pantaloon,
Harlequin, Clown,
Merry-Andrew, Buffoon-
.....

Don Marquis

In Memoriam A. H. H. Obiit Mdcccxxxiii: Introduction

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Society Upon The Stanislaus

I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
.....

Bret Harte

The Ballad Of The Battle Of Gibeon

Five kings rule o'er the Amorite,
Mighty as fear and old as night;
Swathed with unguent and gold and jewel,
Waxed they merry and fat and cruel.
.....

G. K. Chesterton

Bruadar And Smith And Glinn

Bruadar and Smith and Glinn,
Amen, dear God, I pray,
May they lie low in waves of woe,
And tortures slow each day!
.....

Douglas Hyde

The Mississippi

I.

Far in the West, where snow-capt mountains rise,
Like marble shafts beneath Heaven's stooping dome,
.....

Sam G. Goodrich

Love And Black Magic

To the woods, to the woods is the wizard gone;
In his grotto the maiden sits alone.
She gazes up with a weary smile
At the rafter-hanging crocodile,
.....

Robert Graves

The Alligator Bride

The clock of my days winds down.
The cat eats sparrows outside my window.
Once, she brought me a small rabbit
which we devoured together, under
.....

Donald Hall

The Boy And The Mantle

In Carleile dwelt King Arthur,
A prince of passing might;
And there maintain'd his Table Round,
Beset with many a knight.
.....

Anonymous Olde English

Intrigue

THOU art my love
And thou art the peace of sundown
When the blue shadows soothe
And the grasses and the leaves sleep
.....

Stephen Crane

Totem

All Souls' over, the roast seeds eaten, I set
on a backporch post our sculpted pumpkin
under the weather, warm still for November.
Night and day it gapes in at us
.....

Eamon Grennan

At Delphi

I
Apollo! Apollo! Apollo!

II
.....

Alfred Austin

And So To-day

And so to-day- they lay him away-
the boy nobody knows the name of-
the buck private- the unknown soldier-
the doughboy who dug under and died
.....

Carl Sandburg

Anhelli - Chapter 11

e hymn of the tombs,
complaining, as it were a complaint of the ashes to God.

But as soon as the groans arose,
.....

Juliusz Slowacki

Old Adam, The Carrion Crow

Old Adam, the carrion crow,
The old crow of Cairo;
He sat in the shower, and let it flow
Under his tail and over his crest;
.....

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

A Te Deum

Now let me praise the Lord,
The Lord, the Maker of all!
I will praise Him on timbrel and chord;
Will praise Him, whatever befall.
.....

Alfred Austin