Orlando Furioso Canto 23 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Astolpho soars in air. Upon account Of Pinnabel is prisoned Scotland’s heir: By Roland freed, Frontino Rodomont Takes from Hippalca, trusted to her care. With Mandricardo strives Anglantes’ count: Who, next, offended by his lady fair, Into the fury falls, so strange and fell, Which in the world has not a parallel. I Let […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 22 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Atlantes’ magic towers Astolpho wight Destroys, and frees his thralls from prison-cell. Bradamant finds Rogero, who in fight O’erthrows four barons from the warlike sell, When on their way to save an errant knight Doomed to devouring fire: the four who fell For impious Pinnabel maintained the strife, Whom, after, Bradamant deprives of life. […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 2 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT A hermit parts, by means of hollow sprite, The two redoubted rivals’ dangerous play; Rinaldo goes where Love and Hope invite, But is dispatched by Charles another way; Bradamont, seeking her devoted knight, The good Rogero, nigh becomes the prey Of Pinabel, who drops the damsel brave Into the dungeon of a living grave. […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 18 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Gryphon is venged. Sir Mandricardo goes In search of Argier’s king. Charles wins the fight. Marphisa Norandino’s men o’erthrows. Due pains Martano’s cowardice requite. A favouring wind Marphisa’s gallery blows, For France with Gryphon bound and many a knight. The field Medoro and Cloridano tread, And find their monarch Dardinello dead. I High minded […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 16 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Gryphon finds traitorous Origilla nigh Damascus city, with Martano vile. Slaughtered the Saracens and Christians lie By thousands and by thousands heaped this while; And if the Moor outside of Paris die, Within the Sarzan so destroys each pile, Such slaughter deals, that greater ill than this Never before has been exprest, I wiss. […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 15 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Round about Paris every where are spread The assailing hosts of Africa and Spain. Astolpho home by Logistilla sped, Binds first Caligorantes with his chain; Next from Orrilo’s trunk divides the head; With whom Sir Aquilant had warred in vain, And Gryphon bold: next Sansonet discerns, Ill tidings of his lady Gryphon learns. I […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 14 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Two squadrons lack of those which muster under King Agramant, by single Roland slain; Hence furious Mandricardo, full of wonder And envy, seeks the count by hill and plain: Next joys himself with Doralice; such plunder, Aided by heaven, his valiant arms obtain. Rinaldo comes, with the angel-guide before, To Paris, now assaulted by […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 12 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Orlando, full of rage, pursues a knight Who bears by force his lady-love away, And comes where old Atlantes, by his sleight Had raised a dome, Rogero there to stay. Here too Rogero comes; where getting sight Of his lost love, the County strives in fray With fierce Ferrau, and, after slaughter fell Amid […]
Orlando Furioso Canto 18 by Ludovico Ariosto
ARGUMENT Gryphon is venged. Sir Mandricardo goes In search of Argier’s king. Charles wins the fight. Marphisa Norandino’s men o’erthrows. Due pains Martano’s cowardice requite. A favouring wind Marphisa’s gallery blows, For France with Gryphon bound and many a knight. The field Medoro and Cloridano tread, And find their monarch Dardinello dead. I High minded […]
New York’s Bad Dream by Matthew Abuelo
New York’s Bad Dream by Matthew Abuelo New York used to be a squatters town and a misfits town and a union town. This is where you could find a cheap room at the Chelsea or the Dexter House with a bathroom down the hall. Or at the Commander. Many SROs vanished into the remains […]
Temporary City by Nijole Miliauskaite
walking in the evening along the banks of the creek, as the sky is lighted by the glow from the hothouses, farther on the dump, the street, the pond, the hospital, farther still garages and the dried tops of pine trees here in the spring a nurse was raped as she walked to work one […]
Best Society by Philip Larkin
When I was a child, I thought, Casually, that solitude Never needed to be sought. Something everybody had, Like nakedness, it lay at hand, Not specially right or specially wrong, A plentiful and obvious thing Not at all hard to understand. Then, after twenty, it became At once more difficult to get And more desired; […]
Astrophel and Stella: XXXIII by Sir Philip Sidney
Astrophel and Stella: XXXIII by Sir Philip Sidney I might!–unhappy word–O me, I might, And then would not, or could not, see my bliss; Till now wrapt in a most infernal night, I find how heav’nly day, wretch! I did miss. Heart, rend thyself, thou dost thyself but right; No lovely Paris made thy Helen […]
Twelve Years by Paul Celan
The line that remained, that became true: . . . your house in Paris — become the alterpiece of your hands. Breathed through thrice, shone through thrice. ………………. It’s turning dumb, turning deaf behind our eyes. I see the poison flower in all manner of words and shapes. Go. Come. Love blots out its name: […]
The Theatre of Illusion by Pierre Corneille
The Theatre of Illusion by Pierre Corneille Act 2, Scene 2 Clindor, a young picaresque hero, has been living by his wits in Paris, but has now drifted to Bordeaux, to become the valet of a braggart bravo named Matamore. He is chiefly employed as a go-between, carrying Matamore’s amorous messages to the beautiful Isabelle—who […]
Second Poem by Peter Orlovsky
Second Poem by Peter Orlovsky Morning again, nothing has to be done, maybe buy a piano or make fudge. At least clean the room up for sure like my farther I’ve done flick the ashes & butts over the bed side on the floor. But frist of all wipe my glasses and drink the water […]
My Bed is Covered Yellow by Peter Orlovsky
My Bed is Covered Yellow by Peter Orlovsky My bed is covered yellow; Oh Sun, I sit on you Oh golden field I lay on you Oh money I dream of you More, More, cried the bed; talk to me more – Oh bed that taked the weight of the world – all the lost […]
Second Poem by Peter Orlovsky
Second Poem by Peter Orlovsky Morning again, nothing has to be done, maybe buy a piano or make fudge. At least clean the room up for sure like my farther I’ve done flick the ashes & butts over the bed side on the floor. But frist of all wipe my glasses and drink the water […]
First Poem by Peter Orlovsky
First Poem by Peter Orlovsky A rainbow comes pouring into my window, I am electrified. Songs burst from my breast, all my crying stops, mistory fills the air. I look for my shues under my bed. A fat colored woman becomes my mother. I have no false teeth yet. Suddenly ten children sit on my […]
From Another Sky by Pierre Reverdy
From Another Sky by Pierre Reverdy What shall become of me I feel myself dying Help me Ah Paris . . . the Pont Neuf I know this town Brief pleasures Brief sorrows My life Is it really worth mentioning Anyone could say the same And how else to pass the time I dream of […]
Autumn Day by Rainer Maria Rilke
Autumn Day by Rainer Maria Rilke Four Translations Lord: it is time. The summer was immense. Lay your shadow on the sundials and let loose the wind in the fields. Bid the last fruits to be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them to ripeness, and chase the last sweetness into the […]
A Servant to Servants by Robert Frost
I didn’t make you know how glad I was To have you come and camp here on our land. I promised myself to get down some day And see the way you lived, but I don’t know! With a houseful of hungry men to feed I guess you’d find…. It seems to me I can’t […]
Andrea del Sarto by Robert Browning
But do not let us quarrel any more, No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? I’ll work then for your friend’s friend, never fear, Treat his own subject after his own way, Fix his own […]
The Brigs of Ayr by Robert Burns
THE SIMPLE Bard, rough at the rustic plough, Learning his tuneful trade from ev’ry bough; The chanting linnet, or the mellow thrush, Hailing the setting sun, sweet, in the green thorn bush; The soaring lark, the perching red-breast shrill, Or deep-ton’d plovers grey, wild-whistling o’er the hill; Shall he—nurst in the peasant’s lowly shed, To […]
Remorse: A Fragment by Robert Burns
OF all the numerous ills that hurt our peace, That press the soul, or wring the mind with anguish Beyond comparison the worst are those By our own folly, or our guilt brought on: In ev’ry other circumstance, the mind Has this to say, “It was no deed of mine:” But, when to all the […]
Remorse: A Fragment by Robert Burns
OF all the numerous ills that hurt our peace, That press the soul, or wring the mind with anguish Beyond comparison the worst are those By our own folly, or our guilt brought on: In ev’ry other circumstance, the mind Has this to say, “It was no deed of mine:” But, when to all the […]
Epistle from Esopus to Maria by Robert Burns
FROM those drear solitudes and frowsy cells, Where Infamy with sad Repentance dwells; Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast, And deal from iron hands the spare repast; Where truant ’prentices, yet young in sin, Blush at the curious stranger peeping in; Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar, Resolve to drink, nay, half, to […]
One Viceroy Resigns by Rudyard Kipling
So here’s your Empire. No more wine, then? Good. We’ll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away. (You’ll know that fat old fellow with the knife — He keeps the Name Book, talks in English too, And almost thinks himself the Government.) O Youth, Youth, Youth! Forgive me, you’re so young. Forty from sixty — twenty […]
In the Neolithic Age by Rudyard Kipling
1895 I the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage For food and fame and woolly horses’ pelt. I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man, And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt. Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring Made the […]
Lovers in Cafe by Aiyah De Torres
A perfect morning, the sun shines aglow. Reflecting on leaves kissing by dew. Doves fills the scene outside… Two lovers meet in a wondrous site. Found the love they search too long. Inside the cafe in a midst of Paris, The place where lovers and friends belong. Sitting and sipping a cup of cappuccino. Eyes […]
The Bistro Styx by Rita Dove
She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness as she paused just inside the double glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape billowing dramatically behind her.What’s this, I thought, lifting a hand until she nodded and started across the parquet; that’s when I saw she was dressed all in gray, from a kittenish cashmere skirt […]
The Great Palaces Of Versailles by Rita Dove
Nothing nastier than a white person! She mutters as she irons alterations in the backroom of Charlotte’s Dress Shoppe. The steam rising from a cranberry wool comes alive with perspiration and stale Evening of Paris. Swamp she born from, swamp she swallow, swamp she got to sink again. The iron shoves gently into a gusset, […]
Limericks by Robby Charters
a poet named robby who wrote limericks bared his whole heart in rhyming rhetorics but the critics, et cetra made sure he’d get extra bad marks for indulging in polemerics *** the first draft: a seemingly educated limericist named curdy writes limericks too over exceedingly wordy in spite of much how he tries to sound […]
Limericks by Robby Charters
a poet named robby who wrote limericks bared his whole heart in rhyming rhetorics but the critics, et cetra made sure he’d get extra bad marks for indulging in polemerics *** the first draft: a seemingly educated limericist named curdy writes limericks too over exceedingly wordy in spite of much how he tries to sound […]
Paris In Spring by Sara Teasdale
The city’s all a-shining Beneath a fickle sun, A gay young wind’s a-blowing, The little shower is done. But the rain-drops still are clinging And falling one by one – Oh it’s Paris, it’s Paris, And spring-time has begun. I know the Bois is twinkling In a sort of hazy sheen, And down the Champs […]
The Tollund Man by Seamus Heaney
The Tollund Man by Seamus Heaney I Some day I will go to Aarhus To see his peat-brown head, The mild pods of his eye-lids, His pointed skin cap. In the flat country near by Where they dug him out, His last gruel of winter seeds Caked in his stomach, Naked except for The cap, […]
The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan by Shel Silverstein
The morning sun touched lightly on The eyes of Lucy Jordan In her white suburban bedroom In a white suburban town, As she lay there ‘neath the covers, Dreaming of a thousand lovers, Till the world turned to orange And the room went spinning ’round. At the age of 37 She realized she’d never ride […]
My Mind Keeps Movin’ by Shel Silverstein
Walk into a restaurant with chicken on my mind Look at the menu I want roastbeaf and wine A waitress comes up I order baked beans and bread Oh when she brings it I want ham’n eggs instead Because my mind keeps a movin’ bouncin’ and a groovin’ A flippin’ floppin’ every whichaway From minute […]
Infelice by Stevie Smith
Infelice by Stevie Smith Walking swiftly with a dreadful duchess, He smiled too briefly, his face was pale as sand, He jumped into a taxi when he saw me coming, Leaving my alone with a private meaning, He loves me so much, my heart is singing. Later at the Club when I rang him in […]
The Surgeon At 2 A.M. by Sylvia Plath
The white light is artificial, and hygienic as heaven. The microbes cannot survive it. They are departing in their transparent garments, turned aside From the scalpels and the rubber hands. The scalded sheet is a snowfield, frozen and peaceful. The body under it is in my hands. As usual there is no face. A lump […]