Complete Poems

Table Of Contents

Complete PoemsAuthor’s Note
A Note on the Text
I. COLLECTED POEMS (1951)

Selected Poems (1935)
The Steeple-Jack
The Hero
The Jerboa
Camellia Sabina
No Swan So Fine
The Plumet Basilisk
The Frigate Pelican
The Buffalo
Nine Nectarines
To a Prize Bird
The Fish
In This Age of Hard Trying, Nonchalance Is Good and
To Statecraft Embalmed
Poetry
Pedantic Literalist
Critics and Connoisseurs
The Monkeys
In the Days of Prismatic Color
Peter
Picking and Choosing
England
When I Buy Pictures
A Grave
Those Various Scalpels
The Labors of Hercules
New York
People’s Surroundings
Snakes, Mongooses, Snake-Charmers, and the Like
Bowls
Novices
Marriage
An Octopus
Sea Unicorns and Land Unicorns
The Monkey Puzzle
Injudicious Gardening
To Military Progress
An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish
To a Steam Roller
To a Snail
“Nothing Will Cure the Sick Lion but to Eat an Ape”
To the Peacock of France
The Past Is the Present
“He Wrote the History Book”
Sojourn in the Whale
Silence

What Are Years (1941)
What Are Years?
Rigorists
Light Is Speech
He “Digesteth Harde Yron”
The Student
Smooth Gnarled Crape Myrtle
Bird-Witted
Virginia Brittania
Spenser’s Ireland
Four Quartz Crystal Clocks
The Pangolin
The Paper Nautilus

Nevertheless (1944)
Nevertheless
The Wood-Weasel
Elephants
A Carriage from Sweden
The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing
In Distrust of Merits

Collected Later (1951)
A Face
By Disposition of Angels
The Icosasphere
His Shield
“Keeping Their World Large”
Efforts of Affection
Voracities and Verities Sometimes Are Interacting
Propriety
Armor’s Undermining Modesty

II. LATER POEMS

Like a Bulwark (1956)
Like a Bulwark
Apparition of Splendor
Then the Ermine
Tom Fool at Jamaica
The Web One Weaves of Italy
The Staff of Aesculapius
The Sycamore
Rosemary
Style
Logic and “The Magic Flute”
Blessed Is the Man

O To Be a Dragon
O to Be a Dragon
I May, I Might, I Must
To a Chameleon
A Jelly-Fish
Values in Use
Hometown Piece for Messrs. Alston and Reese
Enough: Jamestown, 1607-1957
Melchior Vulpius
No Better Than a “Withered Daffodil”
In the Public Garden
The Arctic Ox (or Goat)
Saint Nicholas
For February 14th
Combat Cultural
Leonardo da Vinci’s

Tell Me, Tell Me (1966)
Granite and Steel
In Lieu of the Lyre
The Mind, Intractable Thing
Dream
Old Amusement Park
An Expedient – Leonardo da Vinci’s – and a Query
W. S. Landor
To a Giraffe
Charity Overcoming Envy
Blue Bug
Arthur Mitchell
Baseball and Writing
To Victor Hugo of My Crow Pluto
Rescue with Yul Brynner
Carnegie Hall: Rescued
Tell Me, Tell Me
Saint Valentine
Sun

Hitherto Uncollected
“Avec Ardeur”
Love in America –
Tippoo’s Tiger
The Camperdown Elm
Mercifully
“Reminiscent of a Wave at the Curl”
Enough: 1969
The Magician’s Retreat
Prevalent at One Time

Selections from The Fables of La Fontaine (1954)
The Fox and the Grapes
The Lion in Love
The Animals Sick of the Plague
The Bear and the Garden-Lover
The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid

A Note on the Notes
Notes
Index of Titles and Opening Lines