1. Alfred, Lord Tennyson - written by Dorothy Parker
From Sunset Gun. Published in 1928. Read 3212 times on American Poems.

Should Heaven send me any son,
I hope he's not like Tennyson.
I'd rather have him play a fiddle
Than rise and bow and speak an idyll.(Read full poem)

THEY are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom... (Read full poem)

3. Cousin Nancy - written by T.S. Eliot
From Prufrock and Other Observations. Published in 1917. Read 5585 times on American Poems.

MISS NANCY ELLICOTT
Strode across the hills and broke them,
Rode across the hills and broke them—
The barren New England hills—
Riding to hounds
Over the cow-pasture.

Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked
And danced all the modern dances;
And her aunts were... (Read full poem)

THE READERS of the Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.

When evening quickens faintly in the street,
Wakening the appetites of life in some
And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript,
I mount the steps and... (Read full poem)

5. Conversation Galante - written by T.S. Eliot
From Prufrock and Other Observations. Published in 1917. Read 2248 times on American Poems.

I OBSERVE: “Our sentimental friend the moon!
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
It may be Prester John’s balloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travellers to their distress.”
She then: “How you digress!”

And I then: “Someone... (Read full poem)

MISS HELEN SLINGSBY was my maiden aunt,
And lived in a small house near a fashionable square
Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was silence in heaven
And silence at her end of the street.
The shutters were drawn and... (Read full poem)

7. Alfred Moir - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 387 times on American Poems.

Why was I not devoured by self-contempt,
And rotted down by indifference
And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones?
Why, with all of my errant steps
Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke?
And why, though I stood at Burchard's bar,
As a sort... (Read full poem)

To Alfred Tennyson 

Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine;
Not as a knight, who on the listed field
Of tourney touched his adversary's shield
In token of defiance, but in sign
Of homage to the mastery, which is thine,
In English song;... (Read full poem)

9. Hysteria - written by T.S. Eliot
From Prufrock and Other Observations. Published in 1917. Read 5163 times on American Poems.

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth
were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at
each momentary recovery, lost finally in the... (Read full poem)

In a lingering fever many visions come to you:
I was in the little house again
With its great yard of clover
Running down to the board-fence,
Shadowed by the oak tree,
Where we children had our swing.
Yet the little house was a manor hall
Set... (Read full poem)

11. Mr. Apollinax - written by T.S. Eliot
From Prufrock and Other Observations. Published in 1917. Read 2536 times on American Poems.

WHEN Mr. Apollinax visited the United States
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees,
And of Priapus in the shrubbery
Gaping at the lady in the swing.
In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at... (Read full poem)

O quam te memorem virgo...



STAND on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in... (Read full poem)

13. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - written by T.S. Eliot
From Prufrock and Other Observations. Published in 1917. Read 20840 times on American Poems.

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


Let us go then, you and... (Read full poem)

En l’an trentiesme do mon aage
Que toutes mes hontes j’ay beues...


PIPIT sate upright in her chair
Some distance from where I was sitting;
Views of the Oxford Colleges
Lay on the table, with the knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,
Here... (Read full poem)

15. Preludes - written by T.S. Eliot
From Prufrock and Other Observations. Published in 1917. Read 11843 times on American Poems.

I

THE WINTER evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers... (Read full poem)

TWELVE o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic... (Read full poem)

17. Portrait of a Lady - written by T.S. Eliot
From Prufrock and Other Observations. Published in 1917. Read 11360 times on American Poems.

Thou hast committed—
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.

The Jew of Malta.


I

AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—
With “I have saved... (Read full poem)