Potential Titles: Idle

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To train the ivy of an idle legend on - Thomas Bailey Aldrich "Wyndham Towers"

And stand idly by while our fellows bear stones - Horatio Alger Jr "Nothing to Do"

Vanity in the sense of idle conceit - Rae Armantrout "A Conceit"

Lazy paws of light claw idly up and down - Stephen Vincent Benet "Chanson at Madison Square"

Snared in tiny toils both frail and idle - William Rose Benét "The City"

When those who work are idling - Elizabeth Bishop "Suicide of a Moderate Dictator"

Through the idle mesh of power - William Cullen Bryant "The Ages"

The record of an idle revery - William Cullen Bryant "Hymn to Death"

The children of an idle brain - Jennifer Chang "Future Snow"

And join the wiser idlers there - Arthur Hugh Clough "Dipsychus"

Idly watering weeds of casual growth - Hartley Coleridge "Regrets"

Ask not the idle cards to show - Rev. William Crowe "To a Lady, Fortune-Telling with Cards"

Nor for a second summons idly wait - Eleanor C. Donnelly "The Vision of the Monk Gabriel" [The Continental Monthly v.3 no.3, March 1863]

Idle music on the strand - Edward Dowden "Windle-Straws"

A fluttering of idle butterflies - Edward Dowden "Wise Passiveness"

Their withered bloom and idle pride - D.F. "The Fall of the Year" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 4th series, no.719, 6 Oct. 1877]

called you from your idle dream-workshop - Logan February "I Woke You with Wagner,"

Printless on the idle dial - Zona Gale "Exercise in Spenserians"

And still for idle loitering make excuse - Julia Goddard "The Deserted Garden" [Chambers' Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 4th series, no.718, 29 Sept. 1877]

Idly pluck a thousand meek-faced daisies - Grace Greenwood "The Spanish Princess to the Moorish Knight" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXIII no.3, Sept. 1848]

Idle talk's quintessences - L.P. Hartley "Candlemas"

Earnest gaze but idle hand - Alfred Hayes "My Study"

An idle dream to which we cling - Leslie Pickney Hill "Tuskegee"

With opiates for idleness to quaff - Emily Pauline Johnson "Under Canvas"

Idle minutes are his reign - Ben Jonson "Venus' Runaway"

Shows a rainbow hope to quell all idle fears - Mrs. R.B.K. "To --" [International Weekly Miscellany v.1 no.2, July 1850]

Such idle tenants of the soul - Emily Lawless "From a Western Shoreway IV: Vagrants"

Your wealth of idle waves - Emily Lawless "Wide Is the Shannon"

Had passed six idle years - Eugene Lee-Hamilton "The Wonder of the World"

The silver cup idly glinting at the moon - Li Po "Drinking Song" transl. by Arthur Waley

As weeds continue to idle - Sandra Lim "Certainty"

With dower of many idler things - Don Marquis "The Awakening"

Kin to the idle lilies - Don Marquis "The Child and the Mill"

Wastes only idle breath - George Martin "The Lover's Dream"

Idle in the dew drenched night - Claude McKay "Subway Wind"

The careless sceptic's idle mood - Lewis Morris "The Lesson of Time"

Idle words breathed of the dead - Mrs. R.S. Nichols "[I know that thou wilt sorrow]" [Graham's Magazine v.XIX no.2, Aug. 1841]

Idle doodles and arbitrary scratches - Gregory Orr "Eden and After: To Write"

Rewards of no idle dream - Theodore Rand "Song-Waves"

If my conscience seem an idle joke - Helen Rowland "The Rubáiyát of a Bachelor"

And with vain hands beat idly at thy gate - Francis Sherman "A Prelude"

This worse than idle habit - Leta V. Meyers Smart "A Young Man's Adventure with Opportunity"

Idle as any song of mine - George Sterling "The Echo and the Quest"

Idling in streets and thoroughfares - Tao Yuan-ming aka T'ao Ch'ien "On Being Assigned as Military Advisor to the Garrison Army, Written when Passing Ch'ua" transl. by Burton Watson

Played at glory's idle game - Henry van Dyke "The Vain King"

Fate idly throws these alms - Helen Hay Whitney "Flowers of Ice"

Pleasant songs in idle years - John Greenleaf Whittier "My Birthday"

And idle lay the useless oars - John Greenleaf Whittier "Snow-Bound"

Let the polished plows stay idle - William Carlos Williams "Portrait of the Author"


Out of idleness into urgency - Rick Barot "Adjacent, Against, Upon"

Lingered in shimmering idleness - Maxwell Bodenheim "Dialogue Between a Past and Present Poet"

Orange of Idleness which flaunts the sun - Coningsby Dawson "Florence on a Certain Night"

This audience of idleness - Emily Dickinson "Book 2: Nature VII: The Butterfly's Day"

To look on mists in idleness - John Keats "The Human Seasons"

A doll dress'd up for idleness - John Keats "Modern Love"

Purged of the vain alloys of idleness - E. Nesbit "At the Gate"

Let go of the wrists of idleness - Mary Oliver "Black Oaks"

Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe - Dorothy Parker "Inventory"

In a Sunday's violent idleness - Wallace Stevens "Two Illustrations That the World Is What You Make of It"


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