To “Doc” Wylie
THOUGH doctors may your name discard
And say you physicked vilely,
I would I were as good a bard
As you a doctor, Wylie!
How often, when your skill subdued
The fever ranging highly,
You won a bushman’s gratitude,
Though little more, Doc Wylie!
How oft across the regions wide
Where scrub for many a mile lay
The bushman rode, as bushmen ride,
To seek your aid, Doc Wylie!
But now, when bushman’s wife or child
Lies ill and suffering direly,
He’ll need to ride a weary while
Before he finds Doc Wylie.
I hope where they have made your bed,
And where these verses I lay,
They’ll raise a board above your head—
And write your name—Doc Wylie!
poem by Henry Lawson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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If any have a stone to throw It is not I, ever or now.
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One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen.
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Ignorance is not bliss - it is oblivion.
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I love going to the set every day, because Noah Wylie will be there waiting.
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We can shape their wylie coat, but no their word,
I am better able to imagine hell than heaven; it is my inheritance, I suppose.
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If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.
quote by Philip Wylie
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Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache.
quote by Philip Wylie
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God must hate common people, because he made them so common.
quote by Philip Wylie
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In masks outrageous and austere, The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile.
quote by Elinor Wylie
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Curious Circumstance
The sailorman's child
And the girl of the witch--
They can't be defiled
By touching pitch.
The sailorman's son
Had a ship for a nursery;
The other one
Was baptised by sorcery.
Although he's shipped
To the Persian Gulf, her
Body's been dipped
In burning sulphur.
poem by Elinor Morton Wylie
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It was always fun to skate with Paul Wylie and Paul Martini.
quote by Nancy Kerrigan
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Little Joke
Stripping an almond tree in flower
The wise apothecary's skill
A single drop of lethal power
From perfect sweetness can distill
From bitterness in efflorescence,
With murderous poisons packed therein;
The poet draws pellucid essence
Pure as a drop of metheglin.
poem by Elinor Morton Wylie
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Beauty
Say not of beauty she is good,
Or aught but beautiful,
Or sleek to doves' wings of the wood
Her wild wings of a gull.
Call her not wicked; that word's touch
Consumes her like a curse;
But love her not too much, too much,
For that is even worse.
O, she is neither good nor bad,
But innocent and wild!
Enshrine her and she dies, who had
The hard heart of a child.
poem by Elinor Morton Wylie
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Pekingese
For a picture
This Pekingese, that makes the sand-grains spin,
Is digging little tunnels to Pekin:
Dream him emerging in a porcelain cave
Where wounded dragons stain a pearly wave.
poem by Elinor Morton Wylie
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Now let no charitable hope
Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope:
I am by nature none of these.
I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
What little nourishment I get.
In masks outrageous and austere
The years go by in single file;
But none has merited my fear,
And none has quite escaped my smile.
poem by Elinor Morton Wylie
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Death and the Maiden
BARCAROLE ON THE STYX
Fair youth with the rose at your lips,
A riddle is hid in your eyes;
Discard conversational quips,
Give over elaborate disguise.
The rose's funeral breath
Confirms by intuitive fears;
To prove your devotion, Sir Death,
Avaunt for a dozen of years.
But do not forget to array
Your terror in juvenile charms;
I shall deeply regret my delay
If I sleep in a skeleton's arms.
poem by Elinor Morton Wylie
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Venetian Interior
Allegra, rising from her canopied dreams,
Slides both white feet across the slanted beams
Which lace the peacock jalousies: behold
An idol of fine clay, with feet of gold
poem by Elinor Morton Wylie
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Cold-Blooded Creatures
Man, the egregious egoist
(In mystery the twig is bent)
Imagines, by some mental twist,
That he alone is sentient
Of the intolerable load
That on all living creatures lies,
Nor stoops to pity in the toad
The speechless sorrow of his eyes.
He asks no questions of the snake,
Nor plumbs the phosphorescent gloom
Where lidless fishes, broad awake,
Swim staring at a nightmare doom.
poem by Elinor Morton Wylie
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Silver Filigree
The icicles wreathing
On trees in festoon
Swing, swayed to our breathing:
They're made of the moon.
She's a pale, waxen taper;
And these seem to drip
Transparent as paper
From the flame of her tip.
Molten, smoking a little,
Into crystal they pass;
Falling, freezing, to brittle
And delicate glass.
Each a sharp-pointed flower,
Each a brief stalactite
Which hangs for an hour
In the blue cave of night.
poem by Elinor Morton Wylie
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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