Date: 1937
"Figure on her waxen mind / Images of life refin'd."
preview | full record— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)
Date: 1937
"Make [her mind], as a garden gay, / Every bud of thought display, / Till, improving year by year, / The whole culture shall appear,"
preview | full record— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)
Date: 1940
"The provinces of his body revolted, / The squares of his mind were empty, / Silence invaded the suburbs, / The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers."
preview | full record— Auden, W. H. (1907-1973)
Date: 1940
"In the deserts of the heart / Let the healing fountain start."
preview | full record— Auden, W. H. (1907-1973)
Date: 1953
"Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart / Or squash it flat?"
preview | full record— Amis, Kingsley (1922-1995)
Date: 1959
"And I believe in the spurred flame, / Those racing tongues, but cannot come / Out of my heart's unbroken room."
preview | full record— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)
Date: 1959
"O quiet deed! / This is the breaking of the bread; / On this the leanest heart may feed / When by the stiffly-linened priest / All wounds of light are newly dressed, / Healed by the pouring-in of wine / From bitter — as from sweet — grapes bled."
preview | full record— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)
Date: 1959
"And so my heart has ceased to breathe / (Though there God's worm blunted its head / And stayed.)"
preview | full record— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)
Date: 1959
"The heart's tough shell is still to crack / When, spent of all its wine and bread, / Unwinkingly the altar lies / Wreathed in its sour breath, cold and dead, / A server has put out its eyes."
preview | full record— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)
Date: 1959
"Still beneath / Live skin stone breathes, about which fires but play, / Fierce heart that is the iced brain's to command / To judgment -- studied reflex, contained breath) -- / Their best of worlds since, on the ordained day, / This world went spinning from Jehovah's hand."
preview | full record— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)