Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IT IS NOT NICE, by JOHN COWPER POWYS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IT IS NOT NICE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: It is not nice to see
Last Line: An absolute nihilist!
Subject(s): Children; Education; Faces; Nothingness; Childhood; Nihilism; Voids


It is not nice to see
Quite such little children
Shiver with cold.
It is not nice to see
Quite such little children
Bought and sold.
It is not nice to hear the raucous
Voices of the civic caucus
Talk of popular education
While with hideous emulation
They scramble and spit
For the golden bit.
It is not nice to see the faces
Of eminent persons in their places,
Plotting after their sort;
It is not nice their women to see
Staring at the frippery
By rascals in shop-windows hung!
All these, and other things, among --
And worse is in the list --
Might really make a humble poet --
If he weren't afraid to show it
And wasn't earning his bread
By making rhymes on the dead
For the fattest of the living,
And hadn't a slight misgiving
And a suspicion dim
That 'twould be the end of him --
Into -- so bad is the list --
An absolute Nihilist!





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