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O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,
gimme a break before I die:
grant me wisdom, will, & wit,
purity, probity, pluck, & grit.
Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind,
gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind,
and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise:
make the bad people good
and the good people nice;
and before our world goes over the brink
teach the believers how to think.
– Philip Appleman
A. E. Housman Alfred Lord Tennyson Andrew Marvell Anna Swir Anna Wickham Anne Sexton Anonymous Arthur O’Shaughnessy Ben Johnson Bill Holm Carol Ann Duffy Christina Rossetti David Budbill David Wagoner Denise Levertov Dorothy Parker E.B. White e.e. cummings Edna St. Vincent Millay Edward Field Edwin Arlington Robinson Edwin Muir Fleur Adcock Frank O'Hara Galway Kinnell Gensei Grace Paley Gregory Corso Gwendolyn Brooks Hafiz Hayden Carruth Herman Melville Howard Nemerov Hugo Williams Issa James Fenton James Wright John Crowe Ransom John Keats Josephine Jacobsen Kate Light Kenneth Rexroth Langston Hughes Lee Robinson Leigh Hunt Leonard Nathan Li-Young Lee Linda Gregg Linda Hogan Lisel Mueller Louise Bogan Louis Simpson Louis Zukofsky Marilyn Chin Martha Baird Mary Oliver Matthew Arnold Maturai Eruttalan Centamputan Maurya Simon May Thielgaard Watts Michael Drayton Paul Verlaine Petronius Philip Appleman Philip Larkin R.S. Gwynn Rainer Maria Rilke Raymond Carver Richard Lovelace Robert Frost Robert Graves Robert Hayden Robert Herrick Robinson Jeffers Roger McGough Ryokan Sara Teasdale Sharon Olds Sheenagh Pugh Stanley Kunitz Stephen Dunn Steve Kowit T.S. Eliot T.S. Kerrigan Theodore Roethke Tom Clark Tu Fu W.H. Auden W.S. Merwin Walt Whitman Wendell Berry Wendy Cope William Baer William Butler Yeats William Carlos Williams William Henley William Henry Davies William Shakespeare William Wordsworth X.J. Kennedy