Tag Archives: English poetry

Maid of Amsterdam

In Amsterdam there lived a maid,
Mark well what I do say—
In Amsterdam there lived a maid
And she was mistress of her trade
I’ll go no more a-rovin’ with you fair maid

A-rovin’, a-rovin’, since rovin’s been my  ru – i – n
I’ll go no more a-rovin’ with you fair maid…

Dryden’s Golden Trump

JUDGEMENT Heard on high2TAROT jdgmnt51St Cecelia

When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground;
When, in the Valley of Jehoshaphat,
The judging God shall close the book of Fate,
And there the last assizes keep
For those who wake and those who sleep;
When rattling bones together fly
From the four corners of the sky;
When sinews o’er the skeletons are spread,
Those cloth’d with flesh, and life inspires the dead;
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,
And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
For they are cover’d with the lightest ground;
And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet Saint, before the quire shalt go,
As harbinger of Heaven, the way to show,
The way which thou so well hast learn’d below
GnosiSofiaNEGATIVE

John Dryden: Ode To the Pious Memory of the accomplished young lady, Mrs. Anne Killigrew
(1685)

Kiss the Pope Goodbye

To a Lady on the Characters of Women by Alexander Pope is a fine screed, and I am the wiser for reading it—however in light of our post-postmodern attention span, I found it a bit LONG and WORDY. Therefore I leave it to you, you lyrical omnivore, to read the whole thing on your own (after you have paid the bills & updated your FeedBook face). Thus, having confessed, I must say goodbye and adieu to Pastora, Fannia, Leda,  Magdalen, Cecilia, Cynthia, Rufa, Sappho, Calista, Papillia, Calypso, Narcissa, and even haughty Philomede. I shall miss you all and I prize more keenly your feminine charms.

The flits who feed on Twitter-seed
and Instagram their meals
are not expected, then, to heed
what poetry reveals.
Alexander’s verses scold
the children of this cyber-age
yet Pope, still witty, waxes bold
to goad the dunces into rage.

  Pope 2

The Destruction of Sennacherib

 
 

George Gordon (Lord Byron)  1788 – 1824

 

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
   Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
   For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
   And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
   And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
   And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

 

Gabriel1