ELDORADO. 

    Gaily bedight,
    A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
    Had journeyed long,
    Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

    But he grew old —
    This knight so bold —
And o'er his heart a shadow
    Fell, as he found
    No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

    And, as his strength
    Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow —
    'Shadow,' said he,
    'Where can it be —
This land of Eldorado?'

    'Over the Mountains
    Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
    Ride, boldly ride,'
    The shade replied, —
'If you seek for Eldorado!'

 

This is dramatic because there is a character speaking and using you. There is another character.

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Puritan Sonnet

My Papa's Waltz
                                    Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath		
                                    Could make a small boy dizzy;	
                                    But I hung on like death:		
                                    Such waltzing was not easy.	
                                    
                                    We romped until the pans
                                    Slid from the kitchen shelf;
                                    My mother's countenance
                                    Could not unfrown itself.
                                    
                                    The hand that held my wrist
                                    Was battered on one knuckle;
                                    At every step you missed
                                    My right ear scraped a buckle.
                                    
                                    You beat time on my head
                                    With a palm caked hard by dirt,
                                    Then waltzed me off to bed
                                    Still clinging to your shirt.

Constantly risking
                                    absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrechats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's
                                    the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward
                                    that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence
 

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every
                                    black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
 
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful
                                    Harlot's curse
Blasts the new born Infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.