Five public-domain classics, set as their poets set them. Open the List View to see the structure — poem, stanza, line. Click inside a gap to widen or remove it; Tab and Shift+Tab move a line through its indents. This is an ordinary draft: edit it, publish it, or delete it as you please.
The Fish — Marianne Moore (1918)
wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide
there for the submerged shafts of the
sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices—
in and out, illuminating
the
turquoise sea
of bodies. The water drives a wedge
of iron through the iron edge
of the cliff; whereupon the stars,
pink
rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
lilies, and submarine
toadstools, slide each on the other.
All
external
marks of abuse are present on this
defiant edifice—
all the physical features of
ac-
cident—lack
of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
hatchet strokes, these things stand
out on it; the chasm-side is
dead.
Repeated
evidence has proved that it can live
on what can not revive
its youth. The sea grows old in it.
— Marianne Moore, “The Fish,” first published 1918. Public domain.
In a Station of the Metro — Ezra Pound (Poetry, April 1913)
The apparition of these faces in the crowd :
Petals on a wet, black bough .
— Ezra Pound, Poetry, April 1913. Public domain. Set with the spacing of the first printing.
in Just- — E. E. Cummings (1923)
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it’s
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
— E. E. Cummings, from “Tulips and Chimneys” (1923). Public domain.
Buffalo Bill ’s — E. E. Cummings (1923)
Buffalo Bill ’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
— E. E. Cummings, from “Tulips and Chimneys” (1923). Public domain.
Song of Myself, §31 — Walt Whitman (1891–92)
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'œuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
— Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” §31, “Leaves of Grass” (1891–92). Public domain.