Themes in Art

Poetry

Your kingship is good for the people. The people spend their days in abundance thanks to you.

A Praise Poem of Iddin-Dagan 1900BCE

I’d like to find and lose the philosopher’s stone. Make love and never lose control. Remove a great number of living beings with impunity. Afterward resuscitate a very small number of the dead.

Convulsionnaires Man Ray, André Breton, 1937

Crystal Flowers: Poems and a Libretto, Florine Stettheimer

Crystal Flowers: Poems and a Libretto Florine Stettheimer, 1949

Old poor poverty, fried rice with pickled sesame seeds

Fish Head Lê Thị Lựu, 1967

In this city of the generous, all are chivalrous

From a Paris Window–High Marsden Hartley, 1913

I would, to immerse my consciousness into your serenity

I Would to Love You Milena Pavlović-Barili, 1940

Must toiling Man for ever meet disgrace, and eat his hard earn’d bread with heated face, and all his acts in dull Oblivion lay

On Labour, Creativity and Patriotism Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1809

Without doubt you can call him John Testicle, who sets himself to criticizing someone else who could be his master for a hundred years.

Poems in mockery of painter Giovanni Baglione Caravaggio, 1603

Six Tuscan Poets, Giorgio Vasari

Six Tuscan Poets Giorgio Vasari, 1544

And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs — Every child may joy to hear.

Songs of Innocence William Blake, 1789

And I who am changed through her, as the winged magician wishes, do not see or ask anything but virtue and beauty, whence I could perhaps discern your whole soul.

Sonnets for Laura Battiferri Agnolo Bronzino, 1560

I travelled through a land of men, A land of men and women too, And heard and saw such dreadful things, As cold earth wanderers never knew.

The Mental Traveler William Blake, 1803

The Oldest Love Poem, Mesopotamia

The Oldest Love Poem 800BCE

The Poet Dainagon Sees an Apparition, Utagawa Kuniyoshi

The Poet Dainagon Sees an Apparition Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1860

Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight The Stars before him from the Field of Night,

The Rubaiyat Omar Khayyam, 1120

More than annoyed, sad. More than sad, unhappy. More than unhappy, suffering.

The Sedative Marie Laurencin, 1917

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