The Craftsman

Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid,
He to the overbearing Boanerges
Jonson, uttered (if half of it were liquor,
Blessed be the vintage!)

Saying how, at an alehouse under Cotswold,
He had made sure of his very Cleopatra,
Drunk with enormous, salvation-contemning
Love for a tinker.

How, while he hid from Sir Thomas's keepers,
Crouched in a ditch and drenched by the midnight
Dews, he had listened to gipsy Juliet
Rail at the dawning.

How at Bankside, a boy drowning kittens
Winced at the business; whereupon his sister,
Lady Macbeth aged seven,thrust 'em under,
Sombrely scornful.

How on a Sabbath, hushed and compassionate,
She being known since her birth to the townsfolk,
Stratford dredged and delivered from Avon
Dripping Ophelia

So, with a thin third finger marrying
Drop to wine-drop domed on the table,
Shakespeare opened his heart till the sunrise,
Entered to hear him.

London waken and he, imperturbable,
Passed from waking to hurry after shadows . . .
Busied upon shows of no earthly importance?
Yes, but he knew it!

Rudyard

Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. His notable works include the novels 'The Jungle Book,' 'Kim,' and the poem 'If—.' Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, making him the youngest recipient of the award.

Rudyard

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Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

An Unfortunate Likeness.

I've painted Shakespeare all my life -
"An infant" (even then at "play"!)
"A boy," with stage-ambition rife,
Then "Married to Ann Hathaway."

"The bard's first ticket night" (or "ben."),
His "First appearance on the stage,"
His "Call before the curtain" then
"Rejoicings when he came of age."

The bard play-writing in his room,
The bard a humble lawyer's clerk.
The bard a lawyer ^{1} parson ^{2} groom ^{3} -
The bard deer-stealing, after dark.

The bard a tradesman ^{4} and a Jew ^{5} -
The bard a botanist ^{6} a beak ^{7} -
The bard a skilled musician ^{8} too -
A sheriff ^{9} and a surgeon ^{10} eke!

Yet critics say (a friendly stock)
...

William Schwenck Gilbert

Shakespeare's Expostulation

Masters, I sleep not quiet in my grave,
There where they laid me, by the Avon shore,
In that some crazy wights have set it forth
By arguments most false and fanciful,
Analogy and far-drawn inference,
That Francis Bacon, Earl of Verulam
(A man whom I remember in old days,
A learned judge with sly adhesive palms,
To which the suitor's gold was wont to stick) —
That this same Verulam had writ the plays
Which were the fancies of my frolic brain.
What can they urge to dispossess the crown
Which all my comrades and the whole loud world
Did in my lifetime lay upon my brow?
Look straitly at these arguments and see
How witless and how fondly slight they be.
Imprimis, they have urged that, being born
In the mean compass of a paltry town,
I could not in my yout...

Arthur Conan Doyle

1827; Or, The Poet's Last Poem.

Ye Bards in all your thousand dens,
Great souls with fewer pence than pens,
Sublime adorers of Apollo,
With folios full, and purses hollow;
Whose very souls with rapture glisten,
When you can find a fool to listen;
Who, if a debt were paid by pun,
Would never be completely done.
Ye bright inhabitants of garrets,
Whose dreams are rich in ports and clarets,
Who, in your lofty paradise,
See aldermanic banquets rise--
And though the duns around you troop,
Still float in seas of turtle soup.
I here forsake the tuneful trade,
Where none but lordlings now are paid,
Or where some northern rogue sits puling,
(The curse of universal schooling)--
A ploughman to his country lost,
An author to his printer's cost--
A slave to every man who'll buy ...

Thomas Gent

To The Memory Of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, And What He Hath Left Us

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much.
`Tis true, and all men`s suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For silliest Ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind Affection, which doth ne`er advance
The truth, but gropes and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin where it seem`d to raise.
These are as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill - fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore, will begin. Soul of the age!
The ap...

Ben Jonson

Richard Savage

By J. M. Barrie and H. B. Marriott Watson, Criterion Theatre, April 16, 1891.

To other boards for pun and song and dance!
Our purpose is an essay in romance:
An old-world story where such old-world facts
As hate and love and death, through four swift acts -
Not without gleams and glances, hints and cues,
From the dear bright eyes of the Comic Muse! -
So shine and sound that, as we fondly deem,
They may persuade you to accept our dream:
Our own invention, mainly - though we take,
Somewhat for art but most for interest's sake
One for our hero who goes wandering still
In the long shadow of PARNASSUS HILL;
Scarce within eyeshot; but his tragic shade
Compels that recognition due be made,
When he comes knocking at the student's door,
Something as poet, if as b...

William Ernest Henley

Prologue To "The Pilgrim." By Beaumont And Fletcher.

REVIVED FOR OUR AUTHOR'S BENEFIT, ANNO 1700.


    How wretched is the fate of those who write!
    Brought muzzled to the stage, for fear they bite.
    Where, like Tom Dove, they stand the common foe;
    Lugg'd by the critic, baited by the beau.
    Yet worse, their brother poets damn the play,
    And roar the loudest, though they never pay.
    The fops are proud of scandal, for they cry,
    At every lewd, low character,--That's I.
    He who writes letters to himself would swear,
    The world forgot him, if he was not there.
    What should a poet do? 'Tis hard for one
    To pleasure all the fools that would be shown:
    And yet not two in ten will pass the town.
    Most coxcombs are not of the laughing kind;
    More goes to make a fop, than f...

John Dryden