This poem by Andrew Motion was inspired by a Thomas Jones painting in London's National Gallery in which Motion reflects upon the enduring value of artistic creation.
This nonsense poem was written by Dr. W. H. Williams for a faculty club dinner on the eve of the physicist Eddington's departure from Berkeley in 1924.
Thomas Hood wrote at the start of the nineteenth century, but he sounds surprisingly modern. In this poem, Hood takes a look at winter in a cold, urban climate, expressed with a nice sense of humour.
This poem is about teaching English and conveys powerful emotions through observation of small, almost banal details: shoes in shoe shops, bright dresses, the artificial language of an English lesson.
In this fable – written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement - a squirrel and a mountain have an argument!
"O say what is that thing call'd Light, | Which I must ne'er enjoy"
In this short poem, Poet Laureate Colley Cibber describes the feelings of a boy who has never been able to see.
This Taoist poem shows that trying to label something can make a non-existent thing wrongly seem as if it had concrete or material existence, as Starshine finds out when he questions Non-Being.
In 'Progress', Osbert Sitwell provides negative images of the city and conjures up fond memories of the country. In 'The City', Charles Hanson Towne does the opposite.
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