You know the worst: your wills are fickle,
Your values blurred, your hearts impure
And your past life a ruined church?
But let your poison be your cure.

(Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Anglo-Irish poet. Thalassa (l. 9-12). . . New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press.)

By a high star our course is set,
Our end is Life. Put out to sea.

(Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Anglo-Irish poet. Thalassa (l. 17-18). . . New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press.)

But listen, up the road, something gulps, the church spire
Opens its eight bells out, skulls' mouths which will not tire
To tell how there is no music or movement which secures
Escape from the weekday time. Which deadens and endures.

(Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Anglo-Irish poet. Sunday Morning (l. 11-15). . . Norton Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. M. H. Abrams, general ed. (5th ed., 1986) W. W. Norton & Company.)

Down the road someone is practicing scales,
The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,

(Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Anglo-Irish poet. Sunday Morning (l. 1-2). . . Norton Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. M. H. Abrams, general ed. (5th ed., 1986) W. W. Norton & Company.)

This brand of soap has the same smell as once in the big
House he visited when he was eight:

(Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Anglo-Irish poet. Soap Suds (l. 1-2). . . New Oxford Book of Irish Verse, The. Thomas Kinsella, ed. and tr. (1986) Oxford University Press.)

And I envy the intransigence of my own
Countrymen who shoot to kill and never
See the victim's face become their own
Or find his motive sabotage their motives.

(Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Anglo-Irish poet. Autumn Journal (XVI, l. 5-8). . . Contemporary Irish Poetry; an Anthology. Anthony Bradley, ed. (New and rev. ed., 1988) University of California Press.)

Thus were we weaned to knowledge of the Will
That wills the natural world but wills us dead.

(Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Anglo-Irish poet. Brother Fire (l. 11-12). . . New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press.)

It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,
It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums.
It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

(Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Anglo-Irish poet. Bagpipe Music (l. 39-43). . . New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press.)

I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.

(Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Anglo-Irish poet. Prayer before Birth (l. 1-3). . . Golden Treasury of the Best Songs & Lyrical Poems in the English Language. Francis Turner Palgrave, comp. With a fifth book selected by John Press. (5th ed., 1964) Oxford University Press.)

The earth compels,

(Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Anglo-Irish poet. The Sunlight on the Garden (l. 17). . . New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press.)