Six Centuries of Great Poetry

GEOFFREY CHAUCER/1340?-1400 Merciles Beaute Your yen two wol slee me sodenly, I may the beaute of hem not sustene, So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene. And but your word wol helen hastily My hertes wounde, whyl that hit is grene, Your yen two wol slee me sodenly, I may the beaute of hem not sustene. Upon my trouthe I sey yow feithfully That ye ben of my lyf and deeth the quene; For with my deeth the trouthe shal be sene. Your yen two wol slee me sodenly, I may the beaute of hem not sustene. So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene. JOHN DONNE/1573-1631 The Canonization For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his honour, or his grace, Or the king's real, or his stamped face. Contemplate, what you will approve, So you will let me love. Alas, alas, who's injured by my love? What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned? Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguey bill? Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, which quarrels move, Though she and I do love. Call us what you will, we are made such by love; Call her one, me another fly, We are tapers too, and at our own cost die, And we in us find the eagle and the dove. The phoenix riddle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it. So to one neutral thing both sexes fit, We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love. We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no piece of chronicle we prove, We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms; As well a well-wrought urn becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs, And by these hymns, all shall approve Us canonized for love; And thus invoke us; you whom reverend love Made one another's hermitage; You to whom love was peace, that now is rage; Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove Into the glasses of your eyes (So made such mirrors, and such spies, That they did all to you epitomize), Countries, towns, courts: beg from above A pattern of your love! JONATHAN SWIFT/1667-1745 A City Shower In Imitation of Virgil's Georgics Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more; Returning home at night, you'll find the sink Strike your offended sense with double stink. If you be wise, then, go not far to dine: You'll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine. A coming shower your shooting corns presage, Old aches will throb, your hollow tooth will rage. Sauntering in coffee-house is Dulman seen; He damns the climate, and complains of spleen. Meanwhile, the south, rising with dabbled wings, A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings, That swilled more liquor than it could contain, And, like a drunkard, gives it up again. Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope, While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope: Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean: You fly, invoke the gods; then, turning, stop To rail; she, singing, still whirls on her mop. Not yet the dust had shunned th' unequal strife, But aided by the wind, fought still for life; And, wafted with its foe by violent gust, 'Twas doubtful which was rainWarren, Robert Penn is the author of 'Six Centuries of Great Poetry', published 1992 under ISBN 9780440213833 and ISBN 0440213835.