List of Poems in Dead Poets Society

She Walks In Beauty - Lord Byron

The Ballad of William Bloat - Raymond Calvert
The Prophet - Abraham Cowley
To the Virgins, Make Much of Time - Robert Herrick
The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost
The Congo - Vachel Lindsay
A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare
Sonnet XVIII - William Shakespeare Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day?
Excerpt from Ulysses - Alfred Lord Tennyson
Excerpt from Walden - Henry David Thoreau
O Captain My Captain - Walt Whitman
O Me! O Life! - Walt Whitman
Song of Myself XVI - Walt Whitman
Song of Myself Section 52 - Walt Whitman

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write
poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is
filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are
noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance,
love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O
life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the
faithless--of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O
life?' Answer. That you are here--that life exists, and identity; that the
powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful
play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?"

Tom Schulman from "Dead Poets Society"

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;

Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities fill'd with
the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more
foolish than I and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light--of the objects mean--
of the struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid
crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest
me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid
these, O me, O life?
Answer. That you are here--that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
 In the 1600s, Robert Herrick reminded young women that beauty is fleeting.

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

She Walks In Beauty - Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
Which waves in every raven tress,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
But tell of days in goodness spent,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
A mind at peace with all below,
How pure, how dear, their dwelling-place.
A heart whose love is innocent!

The Ballad of William Bloat - Raymond Calvert

In a mean abode on the Skankill Road
Lived a man named William Bloat;
He had a wife, the curse of his life,
Who continually got his goat.
So one day at dawn, with her nightdress on
He cut her bloody throat.
With a razor gash he settled her hash
Oh never was crime so quick
But the drip drip drip on the pillowslip '
Of her lifeblood made him sick.
And the pool of gore on the bedroom floor
Grew clotted and cold and thick.
And yet he was glad he had done what he had
When she lay there stiff and still
But a sudden awe of the angry law
Struck his heart with an icy chill.
So to finish the fun so well begun
He resolved himself to kill.
He took the sheet from the wife's coul' feet
And twisted it into a rope
And he hanged himself from the pantry shelf,
'Twas an easy end, let's hope.
In the face of death with his latest breath
He solemnly cursed the Pope.
But the strangest turn to the whole concern
Is only just beginning.
He went to Hell but his wife got well
And she's still alive and sinning.
For the razor blade was German made
But the sheet was Belfast linen.

Excerpt from Ulysses - Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The Congo - Vachel Lindsay

A Study of the Negro Race

I. Their Basic Savagery

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,

Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,

# A deep rolling bass. #

Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.
I could not turn from their revel in derision.

# More deliberate. Solemnly chanted. #

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.
Then along that riverbank
A thousand miles
Tattooed cannibals danced in files;
Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song

# A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket. #

And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.

And "BLOOD" screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,
"BLOOD" screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors,
"Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,
Harry the uplands,
Steal all the cattle,
Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,
Bing.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,"

# With a philosophic pause. #

A roaring, epic, rag-time tune

From the mouth of the Congo
To the Mountains of the Moon.
Death is an Elephant,

# Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre. #

Torch-eyed and horrible,

Foam-flanked and terrible.
BOOM, steal the pygmies,
BOOM, kill the Arabs,
BOOM, kill the white men,
HOO, HOO, HOO.

# Like the wind in the chimney. #

Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost

Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.
Listen to the creepy proclamation,
Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation,
Blown past the white-ants' hill of clay,
Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play: --
"Be careful what you do,

# All the o sounds very golden. Heavy accents very heavy.

Light accents very light. Last line whispered. #

Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,

And all of the other
Gods of the Congo,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you."

II. Their Irrepressible High Spirits

# Rather shrill and high. #

Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call

Danced the juba in their gambling-hall
And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town,
And guyed the policemen and laughed them down
With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

# Read exactly as in first section. #

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

# Lay emphasis on the delicate ideas.

Keep as light-footed as possible. #

Excerpt from Walden - Henry David Thoreau

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of
life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to
practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck all the
marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to
cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest
terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and
publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able
to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a
strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily
concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Song of Myself Section 52 - Walt Whitman

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains
of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the
shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.