Poems
02.09.2010 / 19.47 pm
 
by James Kenneth Stephen
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Of sentences that stir my bile,
Of phrases I detest,
There's one beyond all others vile;
"He did it for the best."

Of course he did: I don't suppose,
Nor can you think I should,
The man's among my deadliest foes,
Or is not fairly good.

Of course he did it for the best:
What should he do it for?
But did he do it? that's the test:
I ask to know no more.

Alas! he did: and here am I,
Quite ruined, half disgraced;
And you can really ask me why
My wrath is not effaced:

And there is he, good worthy man,
With self-esteem possessed,
Still saying, as of course he can,
"I did it for the best."

No evil deed was ever done,
Or honest man withstood,
Since first this weary world begun,
Except for someone's good.

And can it signify to me
Whose good he did it for?
Mine was it? thus 'twas wont to be,
And will be ever more.

When inoffensive people plant
A dagger in your breast,
Your good is what they really want:
They do it for the best.


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A Sonnet (Two Voices Are There)

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
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The Ballade Of The Incompetent Ballade-monger

I am not ambitious at all:
I am not a poet, I know
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A Parodist's Apology

If I've dared laugh at you, Robert Browning,
'Tis with eyes that with you have often wept:
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Nettie PalmerNettie Palmer (3)
(1885 - 1964)
Janet Gertrude "Nettie" Palmer was a poet, essayist and Australia's leading literary critic.
Ralph HodgsonRalph Hodgson (3)
(1871 - 1962)
Ralph Hodgson was an English poet, very popular in his lifetime on the strength of a small number of anthology pieces, such as The Bull. He was one of the more 'pastoral' of the Georgian poets.
Karle Wilson BakerKarle Wilson Baker (9)
(1878 - 1960)
Karle Wilson Baker was an American poet and author.
Osip MandelstamOsip Mandelstam (7)
(1891 - 1938)
Was a Russian poet and essayist, one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets.

Song

Oh! To be a flower
Nodding in the sun,
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To Robin Red-breast

Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness be
With leaves and moss-work for to cover me;
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Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
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Amsterdam, September 1939

Vir Ernst

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St. John's, Cambridge

I stand beneath the tree, whose branches shade
Thy western window, Chapel of St. John!
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