Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

by Ashbery, John
As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away, as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
Fur,...Read More
To Think of Time
by Whitman, Walt
1
TO think of time—of all that retrospection!
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue?

Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?...Read More
Old Pictures In Florence
by Browning, Robert
I.

The morn when first it thunders in March,

The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say:
As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch
Of the villa-gate this warm...Read More
An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kar
by Browning, Robert
Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The not-incurious in God's handiwork
(This man's-flesh he hath admirably made,
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,
To coop up and...Read More
The Sins of Kalamazoo
by Sandburg, Carl
THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.

The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab.

And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither...Read More
Tiresias
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
PART I

It is an hour before the hour of dawn.

Set in mine hand my staff and leave me here
Outside the hollow house that blind men fear,
More blind than I...Read More
And One For My Dame
by Sexton, Anne
A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.

A born talker,
he could sell one hundred wet-down bales
of that white stuff. He could clock...Read More
Aisling
by Muldoon, Paul
I was making my way home late one night
this summer, when I staggered
into a snow drift.
Her eyes spoke of a sloe-year,
her mouth a year of haws.

Was she Aurora, or...Read More

Love and Folly
by Bryant, William Cullen
Love's worshippers alone can know
The thousand mysteries that are his;
His blazing torch, his twanging bow,
His blooming age are mysteries.
A charming science--but the day
Were all too short to con it...Read More
519. Ballad on Mr. Heron's Election—No. 2
by Burns, Robert
FY, let us a’ to Kirkcudbright,
For there will be bickerin’ there;
For Murray’s light horse are to muster,
And O how the heroes will swear!
And there will be Murray,...Read More