100 Selected Poems
Note to the Reader
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Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.
Copyright © 1923, 1925, 1931, 1935, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1954 by E. E. Cummings
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This edition does not include selections from 95 Poems published by Harcourt, Brace and Company
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 59-15193
ISBN: 978-0-8021-3784-5 (pbk.)
eISBN: 978-0-8021-9207-3
Cover Design by Reg Perry
Cover photograph by Marion Morehouse
Grove Press
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Contents
Title Page
Note to the Reader
Copyright
Dedication
TULIPS AND CHIMNEYS (1923)
1. Thy fingers make early flowers of
2. All in green went my love riding
3. when god lets my body be
4. in Just—
5. O sweet spontaneous
6. Buffalo Bill’s
7. the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
8. it may not always be so; and i say
& {AND} (1925)
9. suppose
10. raise the shade
11. here is little Effie’s head
12. Spring is like a perhaps hand
13. who knows if the moon’s
14. i like my body when it is with your
XLI POEMS (1925)
15. little tree
16. Humanity i love you
is 5 (1926)
17. POEM, OR BEAUTY HURTS MR. VINAL
18. nobody loses all the time
19. mr youse needn’t be so spry
20. she being Brand
21. MEMORABILIA
22. a man who had fallen among thieves
23. voices to voices, lip to lip
24. “next to of course god america i
25. my sweet old etcetera
26. here’s a little mouse)and
27. in spite of everything
28. since feeling is first
29. if i have made, my lady, intricate
W {ViVa} (1931)
30. i sing of Olaf glad and big
31. if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
32. a light Out)
33. a clown s smirk in the skull of a baboon
34. if i love You
35. somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
36. but if a living dance upon dead minds
no thanks (1935)
37. sonnet entitled how to run the world)
38. may i feel said he
39. little joe gould has lost his teeth and doesn’t know where
40. kumrads die because they’re told)
41. conceive a man, should he have anything
42. here’s to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap
43. what a proud dreamhorse pulling(smoothloomingly)through
44. Jehovah buried. Satan dead,
45. this mind made war
46. love’s function is to fabricate unknownness
47. death(having lost)put on his universe
NEW POEMS {from Collected Poems} (1938)
48. kind)
49. (of Ever-Ever Land i speak
50. this little bride & groom are
51. my specialty is living said
52. if i
53. may my heart always be open to little
54. you shall above all things be glad and young.
50 POEMS (1940)
55. flotsam and jetsam
56. spoke joe to jack
57. red-rag and pink-flag
58. proud of his scientific attitude
59. a pretty a day
60. as freedom is a breakfastfood
61. anyone lived in a pretty how town
62. my father moved through dooms of love
63. i say no world
64. these children singing in stone a
65. love is the every only god
66. love is more thicker than forget
67. hate blows a bubble of despair into
68. what freedom’s not some under’s mere above
1 X 1 {ONE TIMES ONE} (1944)
69. of all the blessings which to man
70. a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse
71. a politician is an arse upon
72. plato told
73. pity this busy monster, manunkind,
74. one’s not half two. It’s two are halves of one:
75. what if a much of a which of a wind
76. no man, if men are gods; but if gods must
77. when god decided to invent
78. rain or hail
79. let it go—the
80. nothing false and possible is love
81. except in your
82. true lovers in each happening of their hearts
83. yes is a pleasant country:
84. all ignorance toboggans into know
85. darling! because my blood can sing
86. “sweet spring is your
87. O by the by
88. if everything happens that can’t be done
XAIPE (1950)
89. when serpents bargain for the right to squirm
90. if a cheerfulest Elephantangelchild should sit
91. o to be in finland
92. no time ago
93. to start, to hesitate; to stop
94. if(touched by love’s own secret)we,like homing
95. i thank You God for most this amazing
96. the great advantage of being alive
97. when faces called flowers float out of the ground
98. love our so right
99. now all the fingers of this tree(darling)have
100. lum
inous tendril of celestial wish
to marion
1
Thy fingers make early flowers of
all things.
thy hair mostly the hours love:
a smoothness which
sings, saying
(though love be a day)
do not fear, we will go amaying.
thy whitest feet crisply are straying
Always
thy moist eyes are at kisses playing,
whose strangeness much
says; singing
(though love be a day)
for which girl art thou flowers bringing?
To be thy lips is a sweet thing
and small.
Death, Thee i call rich beyond wishing
if this thou catch,
else missing.
(though love be a day
and life be nothing, it shall not stop kissing).
2
All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.
Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.
Four red roebuck at a white water
the cruel bugle sang before.
Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.
Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.
Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrow sang before.
Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.
Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.
Four tall stags at a green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.
All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.
3
when god lets my body be
From each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit that dangles therefrom
the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing
a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes
will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow
Into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass
their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea
4
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it’s
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
5
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty . how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
6
Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
7
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church’s protestant blessings
daughters, unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things—
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
. . . . the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy
8
it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
another’s, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another’s face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;
if this should be, i say if this should be–
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
9
suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head.
young death sits in a café
smiling, a piece of money held between
his thumb and first finger
(i say “will he buy flowers” to you
and “Death is young
life wears velour trousers
life totters, life has a beard” i
say to you who are silent.–“Do you see
Life? he is there and here,
or that, or this
or nothing or an old man 3 thirds
asleep, on his head
flowers, always crying
to nobody something about les
roses les bluets
yes,
will He buy?
Les belles bottes–oh hear
, pas chères”)
and my love slowly answered I think so. But
I think I see someone else
there is a lady, whose name is Afterwards
she is sitting beside young death, is slender;
likes flowers.
10
raise the shade
will youse dearie?
rain
wouldn’t that
get yer goat but
we don’t care do
we dearie we should
huh
dearie?
yknow
i’m
sorry for awl the
poor girls that
gets up god
knows when every
day of their
lives
aint you
oo-oo. dearie
not so
hard dear
you’re killing me
11
here is little Effie’s head
whose brains are made of gingerbread
when the judgment day comes
God will find six crumbs
stooping by the coffinlid
waiting for something to rise
as the other somethings did—
you imagine His surprise
bellowing through the general noise
Where is Effie who was dead?
—to God in a tiny voice,
i am may the first crumb said