Poets that lasting marble seek Must come in Latin or in Greek.
quote by Edmund Waller

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Of English Verse
Poets may boast, as safely vain,
Their works shall with the world remain;
Both, bound together, live or die,
The verses and the prophecy.
But who can hope his lines should long
Last in a daily changing tongue?
While they are new, envy prevails;
And as that dies, our language fails.
When architects have done their part,
The matter may betray their art;
Time, if we use ill-chosen stone,
Soon brings a well-built palace down.
Poets that lasting marble seek
Must carve in Latin or in Greek;
We write in sand, our language grows,
And, like the tide, our work o'erflows.
Chaucer his sense can only boast,
The glory of his numbers lost!
Years have defaced his matchless strain,
And yet he did not sing in vain.
The beauties which adorned that age,
The shining subjects of his rage,
Hoping they should immortal prove,
Rewarded with success his love.
This was the generous poet's scope,
And all an English pen can hope,
To make the fair approve his flame,
That can so far extend their fame.
Verse, thus designed, has no ill fate
If it arrive but at the date
Of fading beauty; if it prove
But as long-lived as present love.
poem by Edmund Waller

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Iota Subscript
Seek not in me the bit I capital,
Not yet the little dotted in me seek.
If I have in me any I at all,
'Tis the iota subscript of the Greek.
So small an I as an attention beggar.
The letter you will find me subscript to
Is neither alpha, eta, nor omega,
But upsilon which is the Greek for you.
poem by Robert Frost

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To John Milton (1608 -1674)
Let's tell a story
Of a man who lost his sight
But endowed with vision upright
The heavenly muses of love, epic and poetry
Inspirited thy heart`s territory
Thou once a pride of the Puritan Court
Summoned the whole Areopagus in support
A divine in heart but Greek in thought
Love and Liberty you did proclaim
As Greek, French and Latin was thy domain
As ancient Greece proud of Solon*
You`re distinction of London
As majestic were thy rhymes
A statesman too was sublime
For centuries thy prose and verse
Ignite the passion and had Converse
I wish I were born in thy poesy arms
Grace my wit and will with thy lasting charm
poem by Gulsher john

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A Poor Scholar Of The 'Forties
MY eyelids red and heavy arc
With bending o'er the smold'ring peat.
I know the Aeneid now by heart,
My Virgil read in cold and heat,
In loneliness and hunger smart.
And I know Homer, too, I ween,
As Munster poets know Ossian.
And I must walk this road that winds
Twixt bog and bog, while east there lies
A city with its men and books;
With treasures open to the wise,
Heart-words from equals, comrade-looks;
Down here they have but tale and song,
They talk Repeal the whole night long.
'You teach Greek verbs and Latin nouns,'
The dreamer of Young Ireland said,
'You do not hear the muffled call,
The sword being forged, the far-off tread
Of hosts to meet as Gael and Gall
What good to us your wisdom-store,
Your Latin verse, your Grecian lore?'
And what to me is Gael or Gall?
Less than the Latin or the Greek
I teach these by the dim rush-light
In smoky cabins night and week.
But what avail my teaching slight?
Years hence, in rustic speech, a phrase,
As in wild earth a Grecian vase!
poem by Padraic Colum

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The British system had requirements, including Latin. I'm not positive you ever had to know Greek, but there are certainly kinds of curricula where you had to know Greek too. I think in Britain there was the most mindless, repetitive sort of learning.
quote by William Scott

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Harmony is an obscure and difficult musical science, but most difficult to those who are not acquainted with the Greek language; because it is necessary to use many Greek words to which there are none corresponding in Latin.
quote by Marcus V. Pollio

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Good Poets and Bad Poets
Some poets get awards and think they are good poets.
Some poets never get awards and think they are bad poets.
Some poets think they are good poets only in their own mind
Some poets think they are bad poets in somebody's else mind.
Some poets think they are good poets in somebody else mind.
Some poets think others think they are good poets but they don't in their hearts.
Some poets think they are good poets in their hearts but not in anyone else's mind.
All are insecure, except those who get security from the opinions of others and that, alas, doesn't last and isn't real.
Some poets have left the entire scene and live only in their mind.
Some poets take criticism and don't mind.
Some poets avoid criticism and do mind.
Some poets write poetry to get love.
Some poets love to write poetry.
Some poets are ahead of their time, in their mind
Some poets spend a lifetime feeling like failures in their mind
Some poets live only after they die.
Some poets have much to say but can't articulate
Some poets retreat, believing others don't understand
So which one of these am I?
I guess I am all of these and none of these
and no matter what my description
I intend to keep doing what I do:
Write. Right
poem by Lonnie Hicks

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In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.
quote by James Broughton

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Poets
What on earth do you call a collection of poets?
A verse a rhyme a stanza or sonnets?
Perhaps it is best not to seek out this noun
And just to be grateful there are poets around.
poem by David Keig

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And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek.
quote by Ben Jonson

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Wisdom doesn't always speak in greek and latin.
Poem about Poery - Poetic World
a hindrance for poets
are those who read
some poems and
think they know what
all poets are up to
they live in a world
of make believe -
a poetic world indeed
that somehow clashes
with the actual poetic world
if the rain would just fall
down in one straight line
the ants all created in a single rank
and the wind, blowing from
one lasting direction
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo

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I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.
quote by Heraclitus

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.
quote by Jose Marti

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I Read and Reread/ The Poets I Love
I READ AND REREAD/ THE POETS I LOVE
I read and reread
The poets I love-
I seek new poets
To love poetry more with-
I write my own small poems
And read them again occasionally-
Sometimes I find in them lines
I want to return to
And remember.
If only I could be such a stranger to myself
That I in reading a poem of my own
Would know it belongs to Literature.
poem by Shalom Freedman

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A lot of names in America and Europe have their roots in Latin and Greek words. A lot of them go back to archetypes and their stories.
quote by Maynard James Keenan

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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It Was Written
It was written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin!
Because, the English language was not spoken by then;
And like the muse of your love which is now exposed to all.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis

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In England only uneducated people show off their knowledge; nobody quotes Latin or Greek authors in the course of conversation, unless he has never read them.
quote by George Mikes

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
quote by T.S. Eliot (1920)

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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