Favorite Poets

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Post here another's work here: something awe-inspiring or simply sweet sounding to the ears.

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The Watcher Self

I am satisfied . . . . I see, dance, laugh, sing;
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet . . . . .
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, business, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks -- or of myself . . . . or
ill-doing . . . . or loss or lack of money . . . . or depressions or exaltations,
They come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looks with its side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.

-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

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XLVII

1. Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
2. And each doth good turns now unto the other:
3. When that mine eye is famish'd for a look,
4. Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,
5. With my love's picture then my eye doth feast,
6. And to the painted banquet bids my heart;
7. Another time mine eye is my heart's guest,
8. And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:
9. So, either by thy picture or my love,
10. Thy self away, art present still with me;
11. For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,
12. And I am still with them, and they with thee;
13. Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
14. Awakes my heart, to heart's and eyes' delight.


-Shakespeare

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Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is the madman; the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt;
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!

-Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (VI i)

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The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
"In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."

--Stephen Crane

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A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

-- Stephen Crane