A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw it
Was an abyssinian maid and on her dulcimer she played
Singing of Mount Abora
Could I revive within me her symphony and song to such a deep delight would win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air
That sunny dome
Those caves of ice
And all who heard should see them there
And all should cry beware
Beware his flashing eyes
His floating hair
Weave a circle 'round him thrice
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honeydew hath fed
And drunk the milk of paradise
I'm living every day with the dead poet society
Rioting inside my head so it requires me to
Keep every word I've read close beside me
Inspiring me to never go quietly
I'm postering like I'm the offspring of Oscar Wilde
The foster child of Geoffrey Chaucer
Now hip hop's the trial of face here
So I adopt the style but I've gots to make clear that
Since my 8th year I've been posessed by Shakespeare
And William Blake's spirits
And still I wait to hear a voice like T.S Eliiot's
And Percy Shelly is the first to tell me just how to speak out of turn and keep my rebellious
I read Keats and learn from a Grecian urn
How to reach eternity through the gyre where Yeats burns
So I can meat Traherne, plus I'm a freak like Burns
With his twenty-something children
Though I'm still a young pilgrim
And I'm building a temple from the skills my tongue's yielding
So I feel like John Milton
Paradise is lost for the thrill
I'm John Skelton crossed with Wordsworth
And my zeal is unwelcome in George Herbert's church
I'm living every day with the dead poet society
Rioting inside my head so it requires me to
Keep every word I've read close beside me
Inspiring me to never go quietly
For a challenge I'm known to approach talent shows
With poems that I stole from Edgar Allen Poe's lips
Opium hits dope Alexander Pope's wits
I was Samuel Coleridge in a trance when I wrote this
And I woke with the whole song done I felt the soul of John Done
Andrew Marvel taught me to chase the sun
I can't make it stand still so instead I'll make it run
With pund denser than Edmund Spencer's
And modern lyrics modelled on Robert Herrick's
When I dispense words it's like a forge is firing
And I'm strikin' the iron inspired by Lord Byron
When I'm writin' the siren song
Evidence of desire went wrong
And lost innocence, my memory's gone
In a sense Tennyson has been reborn
In a form with the fingerprints of Henry Vaughn
I'm living every day with the dead poet society
Rioting inside my head so it requires me to
Keep every word I've read close beside me
Inspiring me to never go quietly
As a poet I'm conscious of the goals I accomplish that I owe to accomplices
And when I'm feeling honest
My conscience bids me to admit to stealing sonnet styles from Phillip Sydney
I'm fulfilling a promise I gave Dylon Thomas to rage against the dying of light
I'm like Adonis
I'm still a novice but I already got the skills to thrill a goddess
Or start a riot in the heart that's why it's pounding
I'm Thomas Wyatt's foundling on Ezra Pound's wings
I fly quietly grounding my weight on the past crutches
I'm Robert Browning and this rap is my last Dutchess
I'm putting the last touches on the way it's sounding
In strange surroundings my grasp clutches for balance
I spin words, recalling how fast structures fell and splintered at me feet
Like Alan Ginsburg that's how I'm ensured power of speech
Now I've been heard
I'm living every day with the dead poet society
Rioting inside my head so it requires me to
Keep every word I've read close beside me
Inspiring me to never go quietly
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments...
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so...
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes
On what wings dare he aspire
What the hand dare seize the fire...
As holy and enchanted
As 'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover...
Who'd stoop to blame this sort of trifling
Even had you skill in speech, which I have not...
Well those passions read, which yet survive
Stamped on these lifeless things...
To whom thou sayest "Beauty is Truth,
Truth Beauty, that is all ye know on earth
And all ye need to know"
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run