Until Christmas, I’m posting some of my all-time favourite poems.

The Song of Mehitabel

this is the song of mehitabel

of mehitabel the alley cat

as i wrote you before boss

mehitabel is a believer

in the Pythagorean

theory of the transmigration

of the soul and she claims

that formerly her spirit

was incarnated in the body

of cleopatra

that was a long time ago

and one must not be

surprised if mehitabel

has forgotten some of her

more regal manners

i have had my ups and downs

but wotthehell wotthehell

yesterday sceptres and crowns

fried oysters and velvet gowns

and today i herd with bums

but wotthehell wotthehell

i wake the world from sleep

as i caper and sing and leap

when i sing my wild free tune

wotthehell wotthehell

under the blear eyed moon

i am pelted with cast off shoon

but wotthehell wotthehell

do you think that i would change

my present freedom to range

for a castle or moated grange

wotthehell wotthehell

cage me and i d go frantic

my life is so romantic

capricious and corybantic

and i m toujours gai toujours gai

i know that i am bound

for a journey down the sound

in the midst of a refuse mound

but wotthehell wotthehell

oh i should worry and fret

death and i will coquette

there s a dance in the old dame yet

toujours gai toujours gai

i once was an innocent kit

wotthehell wotthehell

with a ribbon my neck to fit

and bells tied onto it

o wotthehell wotthehell

but a maltese cat came by

with a come hither look in his eye

and a song that soared to the sky

and wotthehell wotthehell

and i followed adown the street

the pad of his rhythmical feet

o permit me again to repeat

wotthehell wotthehell

my youth i shall never forget

but there s nothing i really regret

wotthehell wotthehell

there s a dance in the old dame yet

toujours gai toujours gai

the things that i had not ought to

i do because i ve gotto

wotthehell wotthehell

and i end with my favorite motto

toujours gai toujours gai

boss sometimes i think

that our friend mehitabel

is a trifle too gay

Don Marquis

Marquis’s best-known creation was archy, a fictional cockroach who first appeared in Marquis’ newspaper column on March 29, 1916. Archy had been a free verse poet in a previous life, and supposedly left poems on Marquis’s typewriter by jumping on the keys. He typed only lower-case letters, without punctuation, because he could not operate the shift key.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

       And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

       With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                     Praise Him.

Gerald Manley Hopkins

Drummer Hodge

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest

     Uncoffined—just as found:

His landmark is a kopje-crest

     That breaks the veldt around;

And foreign constellations west

     Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew—

     Fresh from his Wessex home—

The meaning of the broad Karoo,

     The Bush, the dusty loam,

And why uprose to nightly view

     Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain

     Will Hodge for ever be;

His homely Northern breast and brain

     Grow up a Southern tree,

And strange-eyed constellations reign

     His stars eternally.

Thomas Hardy