Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, COUPLETS IN CRITICISM, by JOHN ALBERT MACY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

COUPLETS IN CRITICISM, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Whan that aprille' - these five hundred years
Last Line: Tame jungle tigers and make lambkins wild?
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets; Writing & Writers


CHAUCER

"Whan that Aprille" -- These five hundred years
Your April is twelve months of smiles and tears.

DICKENS

He violated every rule of art,
Except the feeling mind and thinking heart.

HARDY

When Tess and Jude knocked at the Heaven of Fate,
Ironic Pity opened wide the gate.

POPE

No poet? Calculated commonlace?
Ten razor blades in one neat couplet case!

WHITMAN

For you the couplet's dry rigidity
Dissolves in the immeasurable sea.

GOETHE

Eternal woman in a Gottlich plan
Gave birth to him, an everlasting man.

BACON

Unriddle my mystery and you shall find
Philosophy and poetry combined.

DRYDEN

In verse the twilight of an elder age;
In prose the day-break of a modern page.

OSCAR WILDE

A delicate design that lay like lace
Upon the purple velvet of disgrace.

FRANCIS THOMPSON

The pursued and the pursuer. Life, turn round!
I, sceptic, am believer for that hound.

POE

O raven death that shrouds your luminous head!
Not you but your biographers are dead!

SHELLY

He has a man's shape and the effectual wings
Of angels and like man and angel sings.

W. B. YEATS

Gray cloud puffs fringed with hindered light, and seas
That run in deep and shallow mysteries.

SWINBURNE

The sterile craters of the moon are bright
From a sunken sun, flame-god of lyric light.

BLAKE

How shall a wise man, babbling like a child,
Tame jungle tigers and make lambkins wild?





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