The wonderful L Sprague de Camp was a great early figure not only of SF itself but also of its history and criticism. His 1978 collection The Best of L. Sprague de Camp contained two poems that I loved so much that I committed them to memory.
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I MADE my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But he fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.

(A Coat, W B Yeats, from Responsibilities and Other Poems, 1916)

Awake! For morning, in the bowl of night
Hath cast the stone that put the stars to flight
And lo, the hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's turret in a noose of light.

Lovely poem, awesome translation. I read it to a girl once. She fell asleep. Poetry: not always a great seduction technique. Mind you, a fragment of Beowulf did very well, once ( Read more... )