Poem of the Day [Archive] - Page 2 - Literature Network Forums

ShoutGrace

07-13-2006, 02:33 PM

In Three Days
Robert Browning

I.
SO, I shall see her in three days
And just one night, but nights are short,
Then two long hours, and that is morn,
See how I come, unchanged, unworn!
Feel, where my life broke off from thine,
How fresh the splinters keep and fine,—
Only a touch and we combine!

II.
Too long, this time of year, the days!
But nights, at least the nights are short.
As night shows where her one moon is,
A hand’s-breadth of pure light and bliss,
So life’s night gives my lady birth
And my eyes hold her! What is worth
The rest of heaven, the rest of earth?

III.
O loaded curls, release your store
Of warmth and scent, as once before
The tingling hair did, lights and darks
Out-breaking into fairy sparks,
When under curl and curl I pried
After the warmth and scent inside,
Thro’ lights and darks how manifold—
The dark inspired, the light controlled!
As early Art embrowned the gold.

IV.
What great fear—should one say, “Three days
That change the world might change as well
Your fortune; and if joy delays,
Be happy that no worse befell!”
What small fear—if another says,
“Three days and one short night beside
May throw no shadow on your ways;
But years must teem with change untried,
With chance not easily defied,
With an end somewhere undescried.”
No fear!—or if a fear be born
This minute, it dies out in scorn.
Fear? I shall see her in three days
And one night, now the nights are short,
Then just two hours, and that is morn.

ShoutGrace

07-15-2006, 12:35 PM

MEETING AT NIGHT
Robert Browning (1812-1889)

I.

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

II.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating, each to each!

Virgil

07-15-2006, 12:40 PM

Very nice Shoutgrace. You must be reading a bit of Robert Browning lately.

Petrarch's Love

07-15-2006, 01:48 PM

Hi Shoutgrace. :wave: Yes, thanks for the Browning. I hadn't read "Meeting at Night " before. I like it.

ShoutGrace

07-15-2006, 06:18 PM

........

Virgil

07-18-2006, 07:44 AM

Since we are discussing Stevens on the Poem of the Week thread, how about another Stevens here.

Bantams in Pine-Woods
by Wallace Stevens

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Damned universal ****, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.

Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.
Your world is you. I am my world.

You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,

Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.
I don't claim to understand it, but I think it's a fun one.

edit: Oh, I see lit net has interpreted a word to be a naughty one. It is not a dirty word as Stevens is using it. The word is c0ck, a synonym for rooster, and thats how Stevens is using it.

Hyacinth Girl

07-19-2006, 02:12 PM

I love this poem, Virgil. I crack up every time I read it. In my mind I see this big strutting rooster and a little bristly caterpillar daring the rooster to "come and get me". he he he :D

ShoutGrace

07-22-2006, 03:47 PM

Thomas Carew

'Song'

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars 'light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixèd become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.

“Widely popular, and several times set to music, this poem exists in a variety of different forms and presentations.”

water lily

07-23-2006, 12:37 PM

To understand this poem, you must be familiar with Andrew Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress (http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/158.html)"

His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell

Since you have world enough and time
Sir, to admonish me in rhyme,
Pray Mr Marvell, can it be
You think to have persuaded me?
Then let me say: you want the art
To woo, much less to win my heart.
The verse was splendid, all admit,
And, sir, you have a pretty wit.
All that indeed your poem lacked
Was logic, modesty, and tact,
Slight faults and ones to which I own,
Your sex is generally prone;
But though you lose your labour, I
Shall not refuse you a reply:

First, for the language you employ:
A term I deprecate is "coy";
The ill-bred miss, the bird-brained Jill,
May simper and be coy at will;
A lady, sir, as you will find,
Keeps counsel, or she speaks her mind,
Means what she says and scorns to fence
And palter with feigned innocence.

The ambiguous "mistress" next you set
Beside this graceless epithet.
"Coy mistress", sir? Who gave you leave
To wear my heart upon your sleeve?
Or to imply, as sure you do,
I had no other choice than you
And must remain upon the shelf
Unless I should bestir myself?
Shall I be moved to love you, pray,
By hints that I must soon decay?
No woman's won by being told
How quickly she is growing old;
Nor will such ploys, when all is said,
Serve to stampede us into bed.

When from pure blackmail, next you move
To bribe or lure me into love,
No less inept, my rhyming friend,
Snared by the means, you miss your end.
"Times winged chariot", and the rest
As poetry may pass the test;
Readers will quote those lines, I trust,
Till you and I and they are dust;
But I, your destined prey, must look
Less at the bait than at the hook,
Nor, when I do, can fail to see
Just what it is you offer me:
Love on the run, a rough embrace
Snatched in the fury of the chase,
The grave before us and the wheels
Of Time's grim chariot at our heels,
While we, like "am'rous birds of prey",
Tear at each other by the way.

To say the least, the scene you paint
Is, what you call my honour, quaint!
And on this point what prompted you
So crudely, and in public too,
To canvass and , indeed, make free
With my entire anatomy?
Poets have licence, I confess,
To speak of ladies in undress;
Thighs, hearts, brows, breasts are well enough,
In verses this is common stuff;
But -- well I ask: to draw attention
To worms in -- what I blush to mention,
And prate of dust upon it too!
Sir, was this any way to woo?

Now therefore, while male self-regard
Sits on your cheek, my hopeful bard,
May I suggest, before we part,
The best way to a woman's heart
Is to be modest, candid, true;
Tell her you love and show you do;
Neither cajole nor condescend
And base the lover on the friend;
Don't bustle her or fuss or snatch:
A suitor looking at his watch
Is not a posture that persuades
Willing, much less reluctant maids.

Remember that she will be stirred
More by the spirit than the word;
For truth and tenderness do more
Than coruscating metaphor.
Had you addressed me in such terms
And prattled less of graves and worms,
I might, who knows, have warmed to you;
But, as things stand, must bid adieu
(Though I am grateful for the rhyme)
And wish you better luck next time.

-- A. D. Hope

Petrarch's Love

07-23-2006, 01:03 PM

Water Lily--I hadn't seen that one before. It's great. :lol: Maybe I should pass a copyof this out to my classes when I teach the Marvel. :D I found these lines particularly pithy and amusing:

A suitor looking at his watch
Is not a posture that persuades
Willing, much less reluctant maids.

water lily

07-23-2006, 03:34 PM

Lol, I know. It's hilarious. I was so pleasant to stumble upon.

Scheherazade

07-24-2006, 12:21 PM

Te Deum

Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.

Not for victory
but for the day's work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table.

by Charles Reznikoff

Dolwen

07-25-2006, 11:20 AM

May I post a poem? If I did this wrong, I am sorry-I haven't been on the forum very long.

THE LAPSE OF TIME

Lament who will, in fruitless tears,
The speed with which our moments fly:
I sigh not over vanished years,
But watch the years that hasten by.

Look, how they come,-a mingled crowd
Of bright and dark, but rapid days;
Beneath them, like a summer cloud,
The wide world changes as I gaze.

What! grieve that time has brought so soon
The sober age of manhood on?
As idly might I weep, at noon,
To see the blush of morning gone.

Could I give up the hopes that glow
In prospect, like the Elysian isles;
And let the charming future go,
With all her promises and smiles?

The future!-cruel were the power
Whose doom would tear the from my heart
Thou sweetener of the present hour!
We cannot-no-we will not part.

Oh,leave me, still the rapid flight
That makes the changing seasons gay,
The grateful speed that brings the night,
The swift and glad return of day;

The months that touch with added grace,
This little prattler on my knee,
In whose arch eye and speaking face
New meaning every hour I see;

The years, that o'er each sister land
Shall lift the country of my birth
And nurse her strength, till she shall stand
The pride and pattern of the earth;

Till younger commonwealths, for aid,
Shall cling about her ample robe,
And from her frown shall shrink afraid
The crowned oppressors of the globe.

True,- time will seam and blanch my brow-
Well- I shall sit with aged men,
And my good glass will tell me how
A grizzly beard becomes me then

And should no foul dishonor lie
Upon my head, when I am gray,
Love yet shall watch my fading eye,
And smooth the path of my decay.

Then, haste thee, Time- 'tis kindness all
That speeds thy winged feet so fast;
Thy pleasures stay not till they pall,
And all thy pains are quickly past.

Thou fliest and bearst away our woes,
And as thy shadowy train depart,
The memory of sorrow grows
A lighter burden on the heart.

By William Cullen Bryant

I like that he has this optimistic view of time, without being all bouncy and giddy

Hyacinth Girl

07-26-2006, 12:17 PM

FERN HILL
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the **** on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Dylan Thomas

Virgil

07-28-2006, 01:36 PM

This will be my 5000th post. For this milestone, how about a loving poem to a Papa since I've spent the last few days with my Papa.

My Papa's Waltz by Thoedore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Petrarch's Love

07-28-2006, 06:41 PM

Congrats on the 5000 posts Virg. Maybe you'll make 10,000 posts before the count to 10,000 game is over. :D I like the poem. Thanks for sharing it. I hope your Papa is doing well.

mono

07-28-2006, 07:04 PM

Happy 5,000th post, Virgil. ;)

My Papa's Waltz by Thoedore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
I have read this Roethke poem many times, and believe it has much more depth than from the first read. The first time I read it, a former poetry instructor had her students read it and analyze it in class.
With the use of Roethke's language, several students felt confused, wondering if the narrator of the poem experienced abuse, hence some of the awkward sentences and terms, such as 'I hung on like death,' 'we romped,' 'the hand that held my wrist / was battered on one knuckle,' 'my ear scraped a buckle,' and 'beat time on my head.' I never agreed with this interpretation, but tossed it around in my head; unfortunately, the only proof I could provide relied on the sentence 'my mother's countenance / could not unfrown itself.' The amibiguity of language really always confused me; I would like to think that the more awkward sentences and vocabulary more referred to the lack of grace during intoxication ('the whiskey on your breath'), to phrase the term nicely. Needless to say, I have always loved the poem, and enjoy analyzing such debatable poems. :)

Virgil

07-29-2006, 04:05 PM

You know, there is both love and a sense of danger associated with the Papa in the poem. I never took it as abuse, but I guess the line "You beat time on my head" may lead you to think it.

Thanks Mono and Petrarch.

stlukesguild

07-30-2006, 11:05 PM

Since there has been a posting upon sonnets which it must be admitted slipped into a series of digressions, I thought I would post this sonnet which in a truly Post-Modern, self-referential manner refers to or imagines the very birth of the form:

He looks over the laborious drafts
of that first sonnet (still to be so called),
the random scribbles clustering the page-
triads, quatrains promiscuously scrawled.
Slowly he smoothes down angularities,
then stops. Has some faint music reached his sense,
notes of far-off nightingales relayed
out of an awesome future ages hence?
Has he realized that he is not alone
and that Apollo, unbelievably arcane,
has made an archetype within him sing-
one crystal-clear and eager to absorb
whatever night conceals or day unveils:
labyrinths, mazes, enigmas, Oedipus King?

Jorge Luis Borges
tr. Alan S. Trueblood

Borges' poetry deals with many of the same themes as his "fictions": eternity, oblivion, the beginings and the ends, the labyrinths of human knowledge and understanding, the greater labyrinth of human ignorance... and always: books.

Virgil

07-31-2006, 07:30 AM

Thanks, St Lukes. I thought that was interesting. I'm not familiar with Borges's poetry.

genoveva

07-31-2006, 02:34 PM

Thank you, I love Borges and didn't realize he wrote sonnets!

stlukesguild

07-31-2006, 04:07 PM

Actually, Borges wrote quite a few sonnets... especially collected in the book of poems entitled, The Self and the Other (1964). My personal favorite collection of Borges' work is El hacedor ("The Maker"), which is published in the US as Dreamtigers. It's an very thin book, very difficult to describe: a collection of poems, aphorisms, meditations, fictions, etc...

Petrarch's Love

07-31-2006, 07:07 PM

Thanks for posting this one, SLG. I enjoyed Borges' probing into sonnetary origins.

Hyacinth Girl

08-01-2006, 04:12 PM

Thanks for posting the Borges, SLG - I'm actually reading Ficciones right now, so great timing! ;)

Virgil

08-03-2006, 11:58 AM

How about a John Donne Sonnet for poem of the day.

Batter My Heart by John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Hyacinth Girl

08-03-2006, 12:24 PM

This is my favorite of the Holy Sonnets - thank you for posting it Virgil.
I love it because in it we see the old Johnny. . . bold, sensual, vigorous. Here is no pompous dean, but a man in thrall to his old self, using the vocabulary he knows best and applying it to his faith. Granted, Theresa of Avila also used highly sexual language when describing her ecstasies, and the use of contradictory imagery or ideas like being frozen by the fire of a woman's eyes was typical of sonnets, but I think the conceit of Donne as a beseiged city and then a woman to be kidnapped and ravished by a deity is quite unusual.

Virgil

08-03-2006, 02:42 PM

Yes, I would agree with all you say, Hyacinth. I would also add we see the typical Donne meter, that is to say he is purposely unconventional.

Flint

08-04-2006, 02:13 PM

"Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by the fate, on the just day.
Oh, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?---
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and asked, say here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry;
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much."

I think that this poem should be relatively simple. I know from previous observance that "child of my right hand" is the literal meaning of the sons name in Hebrew, and that his paying on the "just day" means that the son died on his birthday.

I have superficial trouble with the last two lines though . . . . he doesn't want to "like too much" the things that he "loves"? He even makes "all his vows" to that end. :confused:

Jean-Baptiste

08-06-2006, 10:53 PM

Very nice selection, Flint. I think you're right about the last lines, in that he perhaps feels guilty, or selfish about liking the thing that he loves. Take the clue in the second line; he feels that he should have been contented with love, but made something more of the father son relationship. Perhaps he regrets the "sin" of pride, which a father often commits for a son. In any case, it seems to me that he will not make the mistake again. Pitty.

fitzgolden

08-11-2006, 12:12 AM

I like this, by New Zealand poet James K. Baxter:

A Pair of Sandals

A pair of sandals, old black pants
And leather coat — I must go, my friends,
Into the dark, the cold, the first beginning
Where the ribs of the ancestor are the rafters
Of a meeting house — windows broken
And the floor white with bird dung — in there
The ghosts gather who will instruct me
And when the river fog rises
Te ra rite tonu te Atua —
The sun who is like the Lord
Will warm my bones, and his arrows
Will pierce to the centre of the shapeless clay of the mind.

Hemi (James in Maaori) was a devout Catholic who tried to follow Jesus' example in giving most of his possessions away and living an abstemious life. I find several of the images in this poem very evocative - the meeting house where the rafters are the "ribs of the ancestor", and where the "ghosts gather" over a "floor white with bird dung."

Virgil

08-11-2006, 01:02 PM

Very nice, Fitz. I think it's a marvelous poem. I have never heard of Baxter, or any New Zealand poet for that matter. Is there a translation to the foreign language lines, which I assume are in Maaori? They are centered at the heart of the poem and I gather are central.

fitzgolden

08-12-2006, 01:50 AM

Thank you Virgil - I'm very glad you like it :D The line is the Maaori rendition of the English line which follows: The sun which is godlike.

I shall have to look out some more Baxter poems - he is one of my favourite modern poets.

ShoutGrace

08-14-2006, 09:53 AM

The twilight turns from amethyst
To deep and deeper blue,
The lamp fills with pale green glow
The trees of the avenue.

The old piano plays an air,
Sedate and slow and gay;
She bends upon the yellow keys,
Her heads inclines this way.

Shy thoughts and grave wide eyes and hands
That wander as they list---
The twilight turns to darker blue
With lights of amethyst.

Jame Joyce

Nightwalk

08-14-2006, 01:04 PM

Unfinished Poem

IV

It's already past one. You'll have gone to bed.
In the night, a silvery river is the Milky Way.
I'm not in a hurry, and there's no need
to disturb you with the lightning of my cables.
Besides, as they say, the incident is closed.
The ship of love has foundered on life's reef.
You and I are even. And why should we list
our mutual grievances, our hurts, our griefs.
See how still the world has grown.
Night has laid the sky under a tribute of stars.
In such an hour as this, one may rise and address
the ages, history, the universe.

- Vladimir Mayakovsky ( 1893 - 1930 )

Translation from the Russian by Daniel Weissbort

Jean-Baptiste

08-14-2006, 04:04 PM

Congratulations, ShoutGrace, I've never considered James Joyce much of a poet, though I love his prose, but you've posted my favorite of his poems.

Nightwalk, this is a very lonesome poem. Are many of Mayakovsky's poems like that? I'll have to look into it. Very good selection.

I take it, the theme for today is night. Excellent, but that will have to wait.

Nightwalk

08-15-2006, 12:32 PM

Hello Jean-Baptiste. Yes, it's one of Mayakovsky's most sombre and stirring lyrics. In fact, he included a few lines of the poem in his suicide note.

Mayakovsky's poetry was a contrast between the experimental and the lyrical. He was one of the founders and leaders of the Futurist movement in pre-WW1 Russia. But he was also noted for his verses on love and loneliness. He was said to have mocked the poetry of Anna Akhmatova in public but read her love poems in secret.

Here is a link to the best compilation of Mayakovsky's works in English.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0253201896/sr=1-1/qid=1155658871/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-8769847-3999953?ie=UTF8&s=books

Jean-Baptiste

08-15-2006, 04:44 PM

Very interesting; I'll have to pick it up. Thanks, Nightwalk.

Here's my selection for today:

PAGANI’S, NOVEMBER 8
by Ezra Pound

"Suddenly discovering in the eyes of the very beautiful
Normande cocotte
The eyes of the very learned British Museum assistant."

ShoutGrace

08-17-2006, 11:12 PM

U.S. 1946

Having invented a new Holocaust,
And been the first with it to win a war,
How they make haste to cry with fingers crossed,
King's X -- no fairs to use it anymore!

by Robert Frost

genoveva

08-19-2006, 09:26 PM

Seizure

To me he seems like a god
the man who sits facing you
and hears you near as you speak
softly and laugh

in a sweet echo that jolts
the heart in my ribs. For now
as I look at you my voice
is empty and

can say nothing as my tongue
cracks and slender fire is quick
under my skin. My eyes are dead
to light, my ears

pound, and sweat pours over me.
I convulse, greener than grass,
and feel my mind slip as I
go close to death,

yet I must suffer all things,
being poor.

Sappho

mono

08-20-2006, 12:22 PM

Thank you for posting more poetry by Sappho, genoveva - lovely, lovely. :nod:
Besides writing very early in the history of poetry, few poets of her era, location, and culture wrote with the immense passion as she did.
This particular poem, I think I read in a different translation, as it looks familiar from somewhere; it has elements of both anger and sadness, I think, and a bit of shame. Why she mentions her poverty, however, I cannot understand, since she married, allegedly, a wealthy merchant of some kind - perhaps a different kind of poverty to this 'man who seems like a god'?

genoveva

08-20-2006, 02:23 PM

Why she mentions her poverty, however, I cannot understand, since she married, allegedly, a wealthy merchant of some kind - perhaps a different kind of poverty to this 'man who seems like a god'?

Good point. Most undoubtedly the translation of "being poor" does not refer to financials in my opinion. Btw, that translation was by Willis Barnstone.

Here is another translation by Mary Barnard where she omits the ending lines which must be fragmented:

He is more than a hero

He is a god in my eyes-
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you- he

who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing

laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast. If I meet
you suddenly, I can't

speak- my tongue is broken;
a think flame runs under
my skin; seeing nothing,

hearing only my own ears
drumming, I drip with sweat;
trembling shakes my body

and I turn paler than
dry grass. At such times
death isn't far from me

genoveva

08-20-2006, 02:29 PM

Here's a third translation by Jim Powell who translates very close to Greek without conjecturing missing parts. The ending line is very interesting in comparing it to the first, Willis Barnstone translation. The ending bracket shows where the original papyrus text was ripped; hence, missing pieces of the poem!

In my eyes he matches the gods, that man who
sits there facing you- any man whatever-
listening from closeby to the sweetness of your
voice as you talk, the

sweetness of your laughter; yes, that- I swear it-
sets the heart to shaking inside my breast, since
once I look at you for a moment, I can't
speak any longer,

but my tongue breaks down, and then all at once a
subtle fire races inside my skin, my
eyes can't see a thing and a whirring whistle
thrums at my hearing,

cold sweat covers me and a trembling takes
ahold of me all over: I'm greener than the
grass is and appear to myself to be a little
short of dying.

But all must be endured, since even a poor [

Basil

08-25-2006, 02:57 AM

Piazza Piece

—I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying
To make you hear. Your ears are soft and small
And listen to an old man not at all,
They want the young men's whispering and sighing.
But see the roses on your trellis dying
And hear the spectral singing of the moon;
For I must have my lovely lady soon,
I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying.

—I am a lady young in beauty waiting
Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.
But what gray man among the vines is this
Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream?
Back from my trellis, Sir, before I scream!
I am a lady young in beauty waiting.

John Crowe Ransom

Jean-Baptiste

08-27-2006, 10:42 PM

:lol: That's good stuff, Basil. I've been thinking of looking into John Crowe Ransom, just because I like his name. This poem gives me a creepy feeling. I don't know which character to feel sorry for. Thanks for posting.

zanyzenni

08-28-2006, 03:50 PM

That is an interesting poem. They way he gives the perspective of the two charecters almost creates two stories. This poem feels like it is emphasising the basis of love on external charectaristics. Also the idealistic ideas behind finding your true love especialy seen with the young beuty.
Beutifull poem, nice selection. I havent heard of John Crow Ransom before.

Nightwalk

09-05-2006, 01:18 PM

Scheherazade

09-06-2006, 11:21 AM

howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
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howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
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howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
Who still considers himself very likeable

-Tristan Tzara

Translation from the French by Barbara WrightThat must have been a toughie to translate! :p

As for today... Quite possibly I have posted this poem somewhere before as it is one of my favorites but it sums up my mood well today so... Here we go again:

The World is Too Much With Us

The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,-
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

-- William Wordsworth

Virgil

09-06-2006, 01:13 PM

Lovely choice, Scher. That's an old favorite of mine.

Riesa

09-06-2006, 08:58 PM

As for today... Quite possibly I have posted this poem somewhere before as it is one of my favorites but it sums up my mood well today so... Here we go again:

The World is Too Much With Us

The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,-
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

-- William Wordsworth

hey, that fits my mood today too.

what really gets me right now is:

"are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not."

great choice, Scher.

Nightwalk

09-07-2006, 12:24 PM

from The Dramatic Symphony

1. The by-street was bathed in sun. The road was turning white. In place of the sky there hung a gigantic turquoise.

2. The neo-classical house had six columns, and on the six columns stood six white, stone maidens.

3. The stone maidens had six stone cushions on their heads, and the cornice of the house rested on the cushions.

4. In the little asphalt courtyard stood a pile of damp red sand.

5. Blond-curled children played on the pile of sand dressed in sailors' jackets with red anchors.

6. They sank their little hands into the cold sand and threw the sand in handfuls over the dry asphalt.

7. On top of the pile of sand stood a little boy; his face was austere and thoughtful. His deep blue eyes absorbed the colour of the sky. His curly hair was soft as flax and tumbled in dreamy waves onto his shoulders.

8. With austere authority the little boy held in his hands an iron piston, found heaven knows where. The child was beating his little sisters with a rod of iron, as the vessels of a potter breaking them to shivers.

9. His little sisters squealed and threw handfuls of sand at the despot.

10. With austere authority the boy wiped the red sand from his face and looked thoughtfully up at the turquoise of the sky as he leaned on his rod.

11. Then suddenly he abandoned his iron piston, leaped from the pile of sand and ran along the asphalt courtyard, crying out joyfully.

12. A cab carried Leavenovsky by. Leavenovsky was proceeding to the fair-haired prophet to talk about general mysteries.

1. A monk was walking along a fashionable street. His head-dress rose high above his lean face.

2. He wore a silver cross and walked quickly through the festive crowd.

3. His black beard reached down to his waist; it began right beneath his eyes.

4. His eyes were sad and mournful despite the fact that it was Whitsunday.

5. Suddenly the monk stopped and spat superstitiously. A malicious smile twisted his austere features.

6. This happened because the cynical mystic had uttered yet another new thought, and it had been published in Polar Patterns.

1. Prophets and prelates had been on display in the window of an art shop on Kuznetsky Bridge Street.

2. And the prophets appeared to be shouting from behind the glass windows, stretching their bare hands towards the street, shaking their sorrowful heads.

3. The prelates, however, looked serene and smiled quietly, hiding a crafty grin in their whiskers.

4. People clustered by the windows with wide-open mouths.

1. Golden streams of light flooded into the windows of the decadent house.

2. They fell on a mirror. The mirror reflected the next room. From where the sound of suppressed sobbing could be heard.

3. In the middle of the flowers and silk stood the fairy-tale who had turned very pale. Her reddish hair gleamed in the gold of the sun and her pale violet dress was covered with white irises.

4. She had found out at the festival of flowers about the death of the dreamer, and now the orphaned fairy-tale was wringing her slender white hands.

5. Her coral-coloured lips trembled and silver pearls ran down her pale marble cheeks, freezing in the irises pinned to her breast.

6. She stood distraught and weeping, looking out of the window.

7. And from the window the mad dawn laughed at her tears, as it burnt through a jasper-coloured cloud.

8. The fairy-tale's tears were futile because the time of democrats was passing.

9. The wave of time had washed away the dreamer, had borne him away to eternal rest.

10. This is what the mad dawn told her, laughing to the point of exhaustion, and the fairy-tale wept over the scattered irises.

11. And ... in the next ... room stood the shattered centaur. He had entered this room ... and seen the reflection of his nymph.

12. He stood there stunned, not believing the looking-glass reflection, not daring to verify the perfidious mirror.

13. Two sorrowful wrinkles creased the brow of the good-natured centaur, and he pulled pensively at his elegant beard.

14. Then he quietly left the room.

- Andrey Bely ( 1880 - 1934 )

Translation from the Russian by Roger and Angela Keys

Anonymous Angel

09-11-2006, 12:35 AM

I'm not too sure about Cummings myself. He seems a bit clever-clever and lacking in real emotional depth. Although I haven't read a lot of his work, just odd poems in anthologies. I know you like him a lot Scher, perhaps you could recommend some titles that would prove me wrong.
I'm not quite sure he's lacking in emotional depth, I just wonder whether his view of life might have been a bit different. I know he seems clever, but I think some of his thoughts betray a creativity that's certainly missing sometimes from a lot of modern poetry. Anyway, he's not one of my favorite poets, but I do like him. One of his poems I've always liked is "Who Knows?" I don't know. Just the thought of the moon being a balloon coming out of a keen city in the sky makes me want to smile

Basil

09-13-2006, 04:00 AM

Virgil

09-13-2006, 08:10 AM

Nice poem Basil. I don't know Joyce Sutphen. Last stanza is fabulous.

Scheherazade

09-13-2006, 11:57 AM

Naming the Stars

This present tragedy will eventually
turn into myth, and in the mist
of that later telling the bell tolling
now will be a symbol, or, at least,
a sign of something long since lost.

This will be another one of those
loose changes, the rearrangement of
hearts, just parts of old lives
patched together, gathered into
a dim constellation, small consolation.

Look, we will say, you can almost see
the outline there: her fingertips
touching his, the faint fusion
of two bodies breaking into light.

Joyce SutphenHadn't read this poem before (nor am I familiar with Joyce Sutphen) but I love it, Basil. I cannot claim to have understood it all especially in relation to the title but I still like its overall meaning and flow. Thank you for posting it! :)
Nice poem Basil. I don't know Joyce Sutphen. Last stanza is fabulous.The second one is my favorite.

Hyacinth Girl

09-13-2006, 12:10 PM

Wonderful poem - I really like the mist of time obscuring the present and turning it into something meaningful and resonant, yet an abstract of that actual present. To me, it speaks of the power of imagination, the fluidity of meaning and reality, and yet, hints at the importance inherent in everything, even if that importance is unintentional.
Plus, the language just gives me goosebumps. :D

Scheherazade

09-13-2006, 12:34 PM

To me, it speaks of the power of imagination, the fluidity of meaning and reality, and yet, hints at the importance inherent in everything, even if that importance is unintentional.
Very interesting! :) Even though I agree with you its emphasis on the fluidity of meaning, I am not sure about the latter that the everything is inherently important. To me, the poem is pointing the other way round... That things we attach great importance today are not likely to be so in future; that they will melt into each other to form a part of a bigger picture and lose their seeming importance of the present... And that we maybe should not lose our heads concentrating on the moment.

Hyacinth Girl

09-14-2006, 01:05 PM

Very interesting! :) Even though I agree with you its emphasis on the fluidity of meaning, I am not sure about the latter that the everything is inherently important. To me, the poem is pointing the other way round... That things we attach great importance today are not likely to be so in future; that they will melt into each other to form a part of a bigger picture and lose their seeming importance of the present... And that we maybe should not lose our heads concentrating on the moment.
I agree that that the poem demonstrates how the actions of the present blend into the greater picture of the future.
My reading of present actions containing untold meaning arises from the first stanza:

This present tragedy will eventually
turn into myth, and in the mist
of that later telling the bell tolling
now will be a symbol, or, at least,
a sign of something long since lost.
The present will become myth - to me, that means that the present will become part of a tradition with meaning layered upon meaning throught time. The everyday will become epic, and what seems insignificant at present will take on meaning in the future.
The bell, at present, seems nothing more than an accident of fate. It tolls, but for no particular reason, yet in the future recasting, it will have great signinficance: "a sign of something long since lost".
In the end, all these layers of meaning combine in an undefined constellation of existence that bears resemblance to the truth, but also creates space for interpretation and creation

Scheherazade

09-14-2006, 06:36 PM

Thank you very much for replying, Hyacinth. I am really under the spell of this poem - been turning it in my head since yesterday - and it is wonderful to be able to discuss it with someone :)
The present will become myth - to me, that means that the present will become part of a tradition with meaning layered upon meaning throught time. The everyday will become epic, and what seems insignificant at present will take on meaning in the future.It seems like the word 'myth' is saying different things to each of us. To me, it does not signal something epic but a 'mere story';something you hear of but never sure of; sometimes you know they are made up stories (like Greek Mythology - true, epic elements here but we know that they are imaginary stories) or sometimes you can never be sure they are really true (like urban myths).

So, the present events, no matter how tragic they are, will fade in time, losing their seeming importance and melting in the greater picture. So much so that we will have a hard time to remember whether they have really happened or they have been just a figment of our imagination.
The bell, at present, seems nothing more than an accident of fate. It tolls, but for no particular reason, yet in the future recasting, it will have great signinficance: "a sign of something long since lost".Here, I thought the bell tolling was not accidental but, on the contrary, is quite significant. It is annoucing something tragic, something effecting us deeply (a death maybe?) but, the persona in the poem is suggesting that once the present turns into a myth, even the bells tolling will not seem so important; they will not sound so tragic anymore but just remind something lost long ago.
In the end, all these layers of meaning combine in an undefined constellation of existence that bears resemblance to the truth, but also creates space for interpretation and creationYes, all these present incidents (even tragedies) will melt and merge into something greater in future but I have to admit that I am still not comfortable with the last stanza, especially with the way the poem ends and would like to hear your detailed interpretation.

Nightwalk

09-18-2006, 12:42 PM

The Jewels

My darling was naked, and, knowing my heart, she had kept on only her sounding jewels, whose rich array gave her the all-conquering look that the slaves of the Moors have in their happier times.

When, as it moves, it throws out its sharp, mocking sound, that glittering world of metal and stone ravishes me into ecstasy, and I love to distraction things where sound is mingled with light.

She was lying there, then, and letting herself be loved, and from her vantage point on the couch she smiled happily at my love, deep and gentle as the sea, as it rose towards her as if to its cliff.

Her eyes fixed on me like a tamed tiger's, with a dreamy, vague look she tried out new poses, and the combination of candour and lubricity lent a new charm to her various shapes;

And her arm and her leg, and her thigh and her hips, smooth as oil, undulating like a swan, passed before my eyes, all-seeing and serene; and her belly and her breasts, those clusters of my vine,

Thrust forward, more tempting than the Angels of evil, to trouble the state of rest my soul had entered, and to displace it from the crystal rock where, calm and alone, it had seated itself.

I felt I was seeing, by some new device, the haunches of Antiope joined to the torso of a beardless youth, so strongly did her waist set off her pelvis. On that wild, brown skin the make-up was wonderful!

-And the lamp having died down at last, as the fire alone lit up the chamber, every time it heaved a flaming sigh, it flooded with blood that amber-coloured skin.

- Charles Baudelaire ( 1821 - 1867 )

Translation from the French by Carol Clark

Hyacinth Girl

09-18-2006, 01:39 PM

Thank you very much for replying, Hyacinth. I am really under the spell of this poem - been turning it in my head since yesterday - and it is wonderful to be able to discuss it with someone :)
. . . I am still not comfortable with the last stanza, especially with the way the poem ends and would like to hear your detailed interpretation.
My apologies for the delay - I don't have access to the computer on the weekends. For me, the final stanza sums up the first two. It posits a future in which the speaker and companion will trace the outline of their lives, the "present tragedy" (which, by the by, I interpret as not being tragic in the sense of any catastrophe, but as ending in death rather than a marriage for comic mode). It will be reimagined/reinterpreted through the 'mist" of time and experience. The use of "constellation" in the previous stanza informs the final one. . . just as the Greeks found the outline of mythic figures in the stars, so too, do the speaker and companion find their myth in the heavens, and the constellation they create is no less arbitrary than that of the Greek astronomers. . . . and it is also fraught with as much meaning as its predecessors.
I like the idea of "the faint fusion of two bodies, breaking into light" - it gives me a sense of two becoming one to form light=knowledge=truth=illumination= divine inspiration. The lives found in the stars speak truth,. It also brings to mind the Sistine Chapel, with the fusion of God and Adam's fingertips creating a point of light, or if you are of a more pop culture bent, ET and the boy touching fingertips.:p

ShoutGrace

09-19-2006, 12:17 PM

I am in love with him
To whom a hyacinth is dearer
Than I shall ever be dear.

On nights when the field-mice
Are abroad, he cannot sleep.
He hears their narrow teeth
At the bulbs of his hyacinths.

But the gnawing at my heart he does not hear.

----- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Scheherazade

09-19-2006, 12:40 PM

It also brings to mind the Sistine Chapel, with the fusion of God and Adam's fingertips creating a point of light, or if you are of a more pop culture bent, ET and the boy touching fingertips.:pI love these references :)

We should have this one as Poem of the Week maybe! :D

Hyacinth Girl

09-20-2006, 11:51 AM

I'm game for it. . . I love this poem.

ShoutGrace, how clever of you to find the Millay Hyacinth poem! :D

Nightwalk

09-24-2006, 09:08 AM

LXX

My woman says there's no one she would rather wed

Than me, not even if asked by Jove himself.
Says - but what a woman says to an eager lover

One should write on the wind or the running water.

- Catullus ( c. 84 B.C. - c. 54 B.C. )

Translation from the Latin by Guy Lee

stlukesguild

09-24-2006, 09:45 PM

If only I could force
some fragment of your ecstasy
into this clumsy music of mine;
had I the talent to match your voices
with my stammering speech-
I who once dreamed of acquiring
those salt-sea words of yours
where nature fuses with art-
and with your vast language proclaim the sadness
of an aging boy who shouldn't have learned to think.
But moldy disctionary words
are all I have, and that voice of mystery
dictated by love grows faint,
turns literary, elegaic.
All I have are these words
that, like public women,
offer themselves to any takers;
all I have are these cliches
which student rabble might tomorrow steal
in real poetry.
And your booming grows, and the blue
of the fresh shadow widens.
My thoughts fail; they leave me.
I have no sense, no senses. No limit.

Eugenio Montale
from "Mediterranean" from the book Cuttlefish Bones
translated by William Arrowsmith

I just recently came across this poem while re-reading Montale... perhaps my favorite 20th century Italian writer after Calvino (and definitely my favorite poet). I am struck with the manner in which the poet (great as he is) feels himself to be something of a failure... impotent... in the face of the Mediterranean... and one gets the feeling that within this concept of the Mediterreanean, Montale is thinking of his great poetic precursors... especially Dante.

Virgil

09-24-2006, 10:31 PM

That is alovely poem St Lukes. Would it be possible to get the original Italian?

stlukesguild

09-25-2006, 11:56 PM

Potessi almeno costringere
in questo mio ritmo stento
qualche poco del tuo vanneggiamento;
dato mi mi fosse accordare
alle tue voci il mio balbo parlare: -
io che sognava rapirti
le salmastre parole
in cui natura ed arte si confondono,
per gridar meglio la mia malinconia
di fanciullo invecchiato che non doveva pensare.
Ed invece non ho che le lettere fruste
dei dizionari, e l'oscura
voce che amore detta s'affioca,
si fa lamentaosa letteratura.
Non ho che queste parole
che come donne pubblicate
s'offrono a chi le richiede;
non ho che queste frasi stancate
che potranno rubarmi anche domani
gli studenti canaglie in versi veri.
Ed il tuo rombo cresce, e si dilata
azzurra l'ombra nuova.
M'abbandonano a prova i miei pensieri.
Sensi non ho; sé senso. Non ho limite.

Riesa

09-26-2006, 07:42 AM

Nice. It's been awhile since I've picked up my Montale, and what a poem! Thanks, slg.

GothMan

09-27-2006, 05:51 AM

Tears, Idle Tears

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

---Alfred Tennyson

Nightwalk

10-08-2006, 01:34 PM

Welcome to the forums GothMan, that's a timeless and stirring poem from the Victorian Poet Laureate.

Nightwalk

10-08-2006, 02:06 PM

Sentimental Dialogue

In the lonely, frozen old park, two figures passed by just
now.

Their eyes are dead and their lips are limp, and their words
can hardly be heard.

In the lonely, frozen old park, two spectres evoked the past.

- Do you remember our old rapture?
- Why on earth should I remember that?

- Does your heart still beat at my very name? Do you still
see my soul in dreams? - No.

Ah! those fine days of ineffable bliss when our lips were
joined! - It may have been so.

- How blue the sky was, how great was hope!

- Hope has fled, defeated, towards the black sky.

Thus they walked among the wild oats, and the darkness
alone heard their words.

- Paul Verlaine ( 1844 - 1896 )

Translation from the French by William Rees

GothMan

10-10-2006, 02:32 AM

To tell the truth I haven't read this one from Verlaine yet (especially in English... ;) ) but it's really a gem! Thanks for sharing! :thumbs_up

Nightwalk

10-10-2006, 03:50 AM

Hello GothMan, I'm glad you liked the poem. The title and subject of the piece could have fallen into mush with lesser hands, but Verlaine's talent makes it timelessly resonating.

I first read the poem from an anthology of great French poets from France's greatest poetical period. It includes all of the great poets of the era and a lot of lesser-known but talented ones. One of it's attributes is that the originals are placed alongside the translations. An essential collection and an enriching read.

Here's a link of the book from Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Book-French-Poetry-Translations/dp/0140423850/sr=1-1/qid=1160466228/ref=sr_1_1/104-6463327-3963967?ie=UTF8&s=books

holograph

10-10-2006, 06:56 AM

mm. i like it a lot.

Hyacinth Girl

10-11-2006, 03:23 PM

I love the French poetry from this period, especially Verlaine and Rimbaud. Great poem!

Taliesin

10-13-2006, 11:37 AM

We once posted this poem by Liselotte Raune in another topic, but since it is a good one, we will post it here too:

First in German:

Als mein Vater
mich zum erstenmal fragte,
was ich mal werden will,
sagte ich nach kurzer Denkpause
"Ich möchte mal glücklich werden."
Sa sah mein Vater sehr unglücklich aus
aber dann bin ich
doch was anderes geworden
und alle waren mit mit zufrieden.

To translate loosely:

When my father
asked me for the first time
what I once want to be(come),
said I after a small thinking-pause:
"I want to be happy"
Then my father looked very unhappy
but then I
still became something else
and everyone was very pleased with me

Hyacinth Girl

10-13-2006, 06:58 PM

I think this is a very poignant poem. Thank you Tal. It seems a commentary on parents' expectations for their children, as well as the ability to obtain happiness as an adult.

hitchhiker

10-14-2006, 02:38 PM

Oh to be love
One may say it to be bliss
And if this may be this
Thier bliss be but of one tree in my forest
-Clark

romeo boy

10-15-2006, 12:11 PM

I heard somebody talking about love so I am here because Love is My Reiligion. More Love Poems Dear.

Scheherazade

11-17-2006, 06:36 AM

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

John Milton

Janine

12-02-2006, 03:03 AM

Beautiful Pushkin poem. Love it!

Sylph

12-02-2006, 02:08 PM

Fatima by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

O Love, Love, Love! O withering might!
O sun, that from thy noonday height
Shudderest when I strain my sight,
Throbbing thro' all thy heat and light,
Lo, falling from my constant mind,
Lo, parch'd and wither'd, deaf and blind,
I whirl like leaves in roaring wind.

Last night I wasted hateful hours
Below the city's eastern towers:
I thirsted for the brooks, the showers:
I roll'd among the tender flowers:
I crush'd them on my breast, my mouth;
I look'd athwart the burning drouth
Of that long desert to the south.

Last night, when some one spoke his name,
From my swift blood that went and came
A thousand little shafts of flame
Were shiver'd in my narrow frame.
O Love, O fire! once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul thro'
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.

Before he mounts the hill, I know
He cometh quickly: from below
Sweet gales, as from deep gardens, blow
Before him, striking on my brow.
In my dry brain my spirit soon,
Down-deepening from swoon to swoon,
Faints like a daled morning moon.

The wind sounds like a silver wire,
And from beyond the noon a fire
Is pour'd upon the hills, and nigher
The skies stoop down in their desire;
And, isled in sudden seas of light,
My heart, pierced thro' with fierce delight,
Bursts into blossom in his sight.

My whole soul waiting silently,
All naked in a sultry sky,
Droops blinded with his shining eye:
I will possess him or will die.
I will grow round him in his place,
Grow, live, die looking on his face,
Die, dying clasp'd in his embrace.

ShoutGrace

12-31-2006, 05:59 AM

Here's a double whammy, just because it has been so long. ;)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/97/Plath_Self-portrait.jpg

April 18

the slime of all my yesterdays
rots in the hollow of my skull

and if my stomach would contract
because of some explicable phenomenon
such as pregnancy or constipation

I would not remember you

or that because of sleep
infrequent as a moon of greencheese
that because of food
nourishing as violet leaves
that because of these

and in a few fatal yards of grass
in a few spaces of sky and treetops

a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight

"Metaphors,"

I'm a riddle in nine syllables.
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

--- Sylvia Plath

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d6/Sylvia_Plath_A_Literary_Life.jpg

ShoutGrace

01-06-2007, 01:59 PM

To Those Without Pity

Cruel of heart, lay down my song.
Your reading eyes have done me wrong.
Not for you was the pen bitten,
And the mind wrung, and the song written.

Evening on Lesbos

Twice having seen your shingled heads adorable
Side by side, the onyx and the gold,
I know that I have had what I could not hold.

Twice have I entered the room, not knowing she was here.
Two agate eyes, two eyes of malachite,
Twice have been turned upon me, hard and bright.

Whereby I know my loss.
Oh, not restorable
Sweet incense, mounting in the windless night!

Both by Edna Millay.

ShoutGrace

01-07-2007, 05:56 PM

Willie Nelson

“This looks like a December day.
This looks like a time to remember day.
And I remember a spring - such a sweet tender thing,
And love's summer college, where the green leaves of knowledge
Were waiting to fall with the fall . . .
And where September wine numbed a measure of time
Through the tears of October
Now November's over; and this looks like . . . a December day . . .

This looks like a December day, it looks like we've come to the end of the way
And as my memories race back to love's eager beginning
Reluctant to play with the thoughts of the ending - the ending that won't go away . . .

And as my memories race back to love's eager beginning
Reluctant to play with the thoughts of the ending - the ending that won't go away.
Yes, this looks like . . . a December day . . .”

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p236/SpaceMoose45/WillieNelsonprofilesized.jpg

BSturdy

01-17-2007, 10:00 AM

I hope it is not too presumptious to ask for comments on this poem I have written. Whilst it is critical I believe I have the creative right to express myself. I will not go into the personal reasons - that would be wrong.

The Bitterer the Better (for Lucien Freud).

Shuffling love rat,
Paints half naked.
Likes music hall,
And poetry.

Grand pup of
Psycho analysis:
Attention seeking,
Fleeting novelty.

Smears on canvas,
His mauve droppings.
Like make-up,
Applied badly.

Shuns publicity!?
Cards held close.
Wizened egomaniac,
Public laundry.

One trick vermin,
Boring clique:
Lucifer, fraud,
Have some warfarin with your tea.

Adolescent09

01-17-2007, 01:04 PM

white shadows

01-17-2007, 03:46 PM

cant get it out of my head...

imagine all the thought that flowed intot his poem.

a clear masterpiece

white shadows

01-17-2007, 03:50 PM

The moon shone bright

Under a midnight sky
The moon shone bright.
Nothing more,
Nothing less.
No stars were out for a
Walk at night.
No clouds hung around to
Talk to the Earth
Nothing more,
Nothing less.
Than a bright moon at night.

BSturdy

01-17-2007, 08:35 PM

The Maserati Hilton Continues On:

It almost got her again:

I call a spade a lodestar
Did you call it a day?
Tomorrow crawls into my dreams
Rome was built and remains

She was mesmerised by the horrible old hypnotysing guy - yuk!

Lucien get some style guy you is rancid

BSturdy

01-17-2007, 11:29 PM

Invitations to any sort of commentary:

BSturdy

01-17-2007, 11:33 PM

How depressing can you get?

Time to cheer things up

Asa Adams

02-19-2007, 01:37 PM

Willow Tree
I sang of the Moon to a restless willow, once.
I said “Such beauty, Willow tree, is the moon,
Don’t you see?”
Not the moon, nor beauty, did the restless willow speak, but
Only of the wind passing through her leaves.

I sang of the sky to a waking willow, once.
I sang, “Such vastness, Willow tree, the sky holds to thee,
Don’t you see?”
Yet Willow tree cared not for the sky, nor the moon,
But only of the wind passing through her leaves.

I sang of the stars to a dying willow once,
I cried “I see a star in the heavens, doth twinkle
Don’t you see?”
Not the twinkle of the heavens, the breadth of the sky,
Nor the cold of the moon sought the Willow,
But only the failing wind through her leaves.

J. R. Johnson

Madhuri

02-20-2007, 05:45 AM

20th Feb

The Road Not Taken -- Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Virgil

02-21-2007, 08:27 AM

Today is Ash Wednesday, a Christian religious day leading to Easter Sunday. I'm always reminded on this day of a poem from T.S. Eliot named, "Ash Wednesday." It's too long to post the entire thing, but I'll post my favorite section, Part II.

From Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot

II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been
contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

You can read the entire thing here: http://www.poetry-online.org/eliot_sweeney_ash_wednesday.htm

Riesa

02-22-2007, 06:33 PM

Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff

Paula Becker 1876-1907
Clara Westhoff 1878-1954

became friends at Worpswede, an artist's colony near Bremen, Germany, summer 1899. In January 1900, spent a half-year together in Paris, where Paula painted and Clara studied sculpture with Rodin. In August they returned to Worpswede, and spent the next winter together in Berlin. In 1901, Clara married the poet Rainer Maria Rilke; soon after, Paula married the painted Otto Modersohn. She died in a hemorrhage after childbirth, murmuring, What a shame!

The autumn feels slowed down,
summer still holds on here, even the light
seems to last longer than it should
or maybe I'm using it to the thin edge.
The moon rolls in the air. I didn't want this child.
You're the only one I've told.
I want a child maybe, someday, but not now.
Otto has a calm, complacent way
of following me with his eyes, as if to say
Soon you'll have your hands full!
And yes, I will; this child will be mine
not his, the failures, if I fail
will all be mine. We're not good, Clara,
at learning to prevent these things,
and once we have a child it is ours.
But lately I feel beyond Otto or anyone.
I know now the kind of work I have to do.
It takes such energy! I have the feeling I'm
moving somewhere, patiently, impatiently,
in my loneliness. I'm looking everywhere in nature
for new forms, old forms in new places,
the planes of an antique mouth, let's say, among the leaves.
I know and do not know
what I am searching for.
Remember those months in the studio together,
you up to your strong forearms in wet clay,
I trying to make something of the strange impressions
assailing me—the Japanese
flowers and birds on silk, the drunks
sheltering in the Louvre, that river-light,
those faces...Did we know exactly
why we were there? Paris unnerved you,
you found it too much, yet you went on
with your work...and later we met there again,
both married then, and I thought you and Rilke
both seemed unnerved. I felt a kind of joylessness
between you. Of course he and I
have had our difficulties. Maybe I was jealous
of him, to begin with, taking you from me,
maybe I married Otto to fill up
my loneliness for you.
Rainer, of course, knows more than Otto knows,
he believes in women. But he feeds on us,
like all of them. His whole life, his art
is protected by women. Which of us could say that?
Which of us, Clara, hasn't had to take that leap
out beyond our being women
to save our work? or is it to save ourselves?
Marriage is lonelier than solitude.
Do you know: I was dreaming I had died
giving birth to the child.
I couldn't paint or speak or even move.
My child—I think—survived me. But what was funny
in the dream was, Rainer had written my requiem—
a long, beautiful poem, and calling me his friend.
I was your friend
but in the dream you didn't say a word.
In the dream his poem was like a letter
to someone who has no right
to be there but must be treated gently, like a guest
who comes on the wrong day. Clara, why don't I dream of you?
That photo of the two of us—I have it still,
you and I looking hard into each other
and my painting behind us. How we used to work
side by side! And how I've worked since then
trying to create according to our plan
that we'd bring, against all odds, our full power
to every subject. Hold back nothing
because we were women. Clara, our strength still lies
in the things we used to talk about:
how life and death take one another's hands,
the struggle for truth, our old pledge against guilt.
And now I feel dawn and the coming day.
I love waking in my studio, seeing my pictures
come alive in the light. Sometimes I feel
it is myself that kicks inside me,
myself I must give suck to, love...
I wish we could have done this for each other
all our lives, but we can't...
They say a pregnant woman
dreams her own death. But life and death
take one another's hands. Clara, I feel so full
of work, the life I see ahead, and love
for you, who of all people
however badly I say this
will hear all I say and cannot say.

Adrienne Rich

bazarov

02-23-2007, 06:50 AM

Asa is back!!!

I loved you; and perhaps I love you still,
The flame, perhaps, is not extinguished; yet
It burns so quietly within my soul,
No longer should you feel distressed by it.
Silently and hopelessly I loved you,
At times too jealous and at times too shy.
God grant you find another who will love you
As tenderly and truthfully as I.

Basil

03-02-2007, 03:15 AM

A pantoum is a poem composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza are "promoted" to the first and third lines of the following stanza. The final stanza will often feature the first and third lines of the first stanza; thus, the last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.

Incident by Natasha Trethewey

We tell the story every year--
how we peered from the windows, shades drawn--
though nothing really happened,
the charred grass now green again.

We peered from the windows, shades drawn,
at the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,
the charred grass still green. Then
we darkened our rooms, lit the hurricane lamps.

At the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,
a few men gathered, white as angels in their gowns.
We darkened our rooms and lit hurricane lamps,
the wicks trembling in their fonts of oil.

It seemed the angels had gathered, white men in their gowns.
When they were done, they left quietly. No one came.
The wicks trembled all night in their fonts of oil;
by morning the flames had all dimmed.

When they were done, the men left quietly. No one came.
Nothing really happened.
By morning all the flames had dimmed.
We tell the story every year.

ALLENDALE

03-03-2007, 12:17 AM

i am fat
u r a cat

by me

Abgail

03-08-2007, 11:07 AM

ktd222

03-08-2007, 11:36 AM

My english is not very good,but I like poems very much.Since I can not speak out my feelings properly, I just read your words and enlarge my knowledge about poems.It will be very helpful if any of you give me some advice of reading poems. Thanks.

I think you will find some good advice in the How to Analyze Poems thread. Here is the link:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17439

sumalan monica

03-23-2007, 12:20 PM

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

Cummings always shares a very distinct point of view-it might be a vision ,a dream or a fantasy.Evey line occurs so unexpected, a number of his poems feature a typographically exuberant style.As a painter Cummings understood the importance of presentation using topography to paint a picture with some of his poems.Anyway he was criticized for his lack of artistic growth.

dryden_now

03-24-2007, 11:35 AM

my best poem for today is:
"To My Dear and Loving Husband"
by Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persevere
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
Anne Bradstreet

Il Penseroso

03-25-2007, 01:19 AM

Have Folded My Sorrows

by Bob Kaufman

I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its alloted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingles hippo becomes the gay unicorn.
No, my traffic is not addled keepers of yesterday's disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday's pains.
Blues come dressed like introspective echoes of a journey.
And yes, I have searched the rooms of the moon on cold summer nights.
And yes, I have refought those unfinished encounters. Still, they remain unfinished.
And yes, I have at times wished myself something different.

The tragedies are sung nightly at the funerals of the poet;
The revisited soul is wrapped in the aura of familiarity.

DahliaBlood

03-30-2007, 08:20 AM

Why did my poem get deleted?

Dalua

03-30-2007, 02:26 PM

WOW!!! this is really good I like it

Scheherazade

03-30-2007, 04:18 PM

Why did my poem get deleted?Your poem hasn't been deleted but moved to 'Personal Poetry' section, Dahlia:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23401

quasimodo1

06-03-2007, 05:36 AM

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Jean-Baptiste

06-11-2007, 11:54 PM

Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

~The ever-so-lovely Edna St. Vincent Millay

quasimodo1

06-12-2007, 05:00 AM

ARCHAIC TORSO OF APOLLO
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

firefangled

06-30-2007, 07:57 AM

What struck me first was their panic.

Some were pulled by the wind from moving
to the ends of the stacked cages,
some had their heads blown through the bars—

and could not get them in again.
Some hung there like that—dead—
their own feathers blowing, clotting

in their faces. Then
I saw the one that made me slow some—
I lingered there beside her for five miles.

She had pushed her head through the space
between bars—to get a better view.
She had the look of a dog in the back

of a pickup, that eager look of a dog
who knows she’s being taken along.
She craned her neck.

She looked around, watched me, then
strained to see over the car—strained
to see what happened beyond.

That is the chicken I want to be.

- Jane Mead

I discovered Jane Mead because I judged her book by its cover (later that day I left open the refigerator door). "The Lord and the General Din of the World." This poem the epiphany at the end of a painful journey.

quasimodo1

07-02-2007, 08:50 PM

All poems are included in the current edition of Dylan Thomas’ Collected Poems.

I see the boys of summer
Where once the twilight locks
A process in the weather of the heart
Before I knocked
The force that through the green fuse
My hero bares his nerves
Where once the waters of your face
If I were tickled by the rub of love
Our eunuch dreams
Especially when the October wind
When, like a running grave
From love’s first fever
In the beginning
Light breaks where no sun shines
I fellowed sleep
I dreamed my genesis
My world is pyramid
All all and all

quasimodo1

07-07-2007, 10:00 AM

CANTO I

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Crice's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wreteched men there.
The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.
Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,
And drawing sword from my hip
I dug the ell-square pitkin;
Poured we libations unto each the dead,
First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour
Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death's-heads;
As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best
For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods,
A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep.
Dark blood flowed in the fosse,
Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides
Of youths and of the old who had borne much;
Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender,
Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads,
Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms,
These many crowded about me; with shouting,
Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts;
Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze;
Poured ointment, cried to the gods,
To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine;
Unsheathed the narrow sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,
Till I should hear Tiresias.
But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in the sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
"Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
"Cam'st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?"
And he in heavy speech:
"Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Crice's ingle.
"Going down the long ladder unguarded,
"I fell against the buttress,
"Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
"But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
"Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
"A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
"And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows."

And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban,
Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first:
"A second time? why? man of ill star,
"Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region?
"Stand from the fosse, leave me my bloody bever
"For soothsay."
And I stepped back,
And he strong with the blood, said then: "Odysseus
"Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,
"Lose all companions." Then Anticlea came.
Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus,
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.
And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outwards and away
And unto Crice.
Venerandam,
In the Cretan's phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite,
Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, oricalchi, with golden
Girdle and breat bands, thou with dark eyelids
Bearing the golden bough of Argicidia. So that:

Ezra Pound

quasimodo1 (being a controversial poet...how about a short poll, like or dislike)

Virgil

07-07-2007, 10:01 AM

Love that poem Quasi.

quasimodo1

07-08-2007, 06:00 AM

CHICAGO

by: Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

OG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be the Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

PrinceMyshkin

07-08-2007, 07:17 AM

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W. B. Yeats

firefangled

07-11-2007, 01:28 PM

PrinceMyshkin

07-11-2007, 02:49 PM

This and Among School Children are my favorites.

And are you familiar with the theosophical stuff WBY believed that's relevant to The Second Coming?

You may have come upon my THREE FOR WBY, but better still Auden's "Earth receive an honoured guest..."

firefangled

07-11-2007, 08:12 PM

And are you familiar with the theosophical stuff WBY believed that's relevant to The Second Coming?

You may have come upon my THREE FOR WBY, but better still Auden's "Earth receive an honoured guest..."

Earth, receive an honoured guest;
William Yeats is laid to rest:
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

firefangled

07-11-2007, 08:38 PM

PrinceMyshkin

07-11-2007, 08:54 PM

Sailing to Byzantium I remember, but not very well. Auden's lines I wrote, I sort of remembered, but I looked them up to be sure.

I should probably revisit both in my "old age." School Children I have read dozens of times over and am constantly bring it to mind for the "O Chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer...." stanza.

Thanks for reminding me.

Do you know that wacky story by Borges: "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote"? In the fashion of Menard I'd almost be tempted to adopt the dress and character of a late 19th-early 20th century Irishman, fall helplessly in love with Maud Gonne and take up Mme Blavatsky & the other theosophists if I could then write like that SOB!

firefangled

07-11-2007, 11:11 PM

Do you know that wacky story by Borges: "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote"? In the fashion of Menard I'd almost be tempted to adopt the dress and character of a late 19th-early 20th century Irishman, fall helplessly in love with Maud Gonne and take up Mme Blavatsky & the other theosophists if I could then write like that SOB!

No I don't know that story, but...

I always thought I would fall for Maud Gonne if we met...and then he had to say, "but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face."

That cinched it. I wouldn't even ask for anything in exchange for all the grief she would have put me through. I would liked to have met her when I was 18and rallying against Viet Nam. Our letters to each other from separate prisons would be famous now.

Yeats was a bit too well behaved for Maud Gonne? He looked somewhat proper when he was young. I know he had a sense of humor and was even ribald in his writing sometimes, but that could have been his outlet.

ampoule

07-12-2007, 06:49 AM

The Cranberries sing of her in their song, Yeats' Grave.

Silenced by death in the grave
William Butler Yeats couldn't save
Why did you stand here
Were you sickened in time
But I know by now
Why did you sit here?
In the grave.

Why should I blame her,
that she filled my days
With misery or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways
Or hurled the little streets upon the great
Had they but courage
Equal to desire

Sad that Maud Gonne couldn't stay
But she had MacBride anyway
And you sit here with me
On the Isle Inisfree

And you are writing down everything
But I know by now
Why did you sit here
In the grave..

Why should I blame her
Had they but courage equal to desire

PrinceMyshkin

07-12-2007, 07:51 AM

PrinceMyshkin

07-12-2007, 08:00 AM

No I don't know that story, but...

Well, to save you the trouble of looking it up and going through the vexation I did: Pierre Menard is an early 20th c. Frenchman who conceives a desire to write Don Quixote so, to begin with, he dresses like a Spaniard of Cervantes' time, reads all the romance novels that Cervantes read... but then decides that that is the way Cervantes wrote it so he reverts to his original habits...

At his death it is found that he had completed a certain number of chapters of Book 1, etc. Borges then quotes a paragraph from Cervantes' version, and one that Menard wrote, and the reader goes effing crazy looking from one to the other to realize that indeed every word, every g/d comma is the same...

The point? Search me....

quasimodo1

07-12-2007, 08:00 AM

I have no idea who wrote this but I wish I did write it. quasimodo1

PrinceMyshkin

07-12-2007, 08:02 AM

I have no idea who wrote this but I wish I did write it. quasimodo1

Well read my reply to firefangled just above yours, and you'll see that you COULD write it!

ampoule

07-12-2007, 10:31 AM

WHAT! Did you write this gorgeous poem? If not, please HASTEN to add the name of the author!

I have spoken!

No PrinceMyshkin, I wish I could make you that happy! But, the words and music, recorded by the Cranberries, is by their singer, Dolores O'Riordan, born September 6, 1971, in Limerick, England.

AuntShecky

07-12-2007, 02:18 PM

(Evidently my previous posting was in the wrong place. Please forgive me, I'm new.)

Ditties for the Week of July 9-uh,oh, 13th
A Clerihew is a humorous, "pseudo-biographical" ditty invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. As a young lad he came up with the idea when he was trying to avoid doing his homework. The name of the subject, usually a celebrity, appears at the end of Line One. (So you're more likely to find a Clerihew about someone whose name is easy to rhyme, like Donald Trump or Condoleeza Rice say, as opposed to David Ignatow or Zbignew Brzezinski.)
Here’s a couple, which like Law and Order plots, are ripped off today’s headlines:
Like a veggie out of the can, that Scooter “Libby”
Essentially scot-free from being all fibby,
He’s still driving a Bentley (not a Jeep)?
I guess it pays to be pals with The Veep.

Way down in the ratings, Ms Couric, Katie,
Gussied up for the news, all flirty and date-y,
Putting sober(?) CBS execs into a lather,
Consoled, at least, that she’s not Dan Rather.

And in honor of the All Star Game that nobody watched, a baseball extra by Auntie Clerihew Shecky:

Rewind

Inside the park home run!
Safe!
Home plate ump outstretches his arms.
too late.
Delivery to the catcher
runner slides-------------
who fires it home
cut off by the second baseman
the throw
the sprint from third
base coach waves ‘im in
finally retrieved by the center fielder
the ball ricochets against the wall
it’s heading for the corner
the runner rounding second
he still can't get it!
The right-fielder chases–
It’s going down the line!
Wait–it’s rolling–
Fair ball !
he busts out of the box
–-a line towards first
--and the swing--
center of the plate--
the pitcher deals –
Here’s the wind-up –
He’s looking for a fastball inside
Now here’s a guy who’s as good as anybody with a bat
Two outs
Nobody on.

firefangled

07-16-2007, 11:55 PM

From Questions About Angels by Billy Collins.

Questions About Angels

Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.

No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time
besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin
or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth
or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.

Do they fly through God's body and come out singing?
Do they swing like children from the hinges
of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?
Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors?

What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes,
their diet of unfiltered divine light?
What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall
these tall presences can look over and see hell?

If an angel fell off a cloud would he leave a hole
in a river and would the hole float along endlessly
filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?

If an angel delivered the mail would he arrive
in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume
the appearance of the regular mailman and
whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?

No, The medieval theologians control the court.
The only question you ever hear is about
the little dance floor on the head of a pin
where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.

It is designed to make us think in millions,
billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse
into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:
one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,
a small jazz combo working in the background.

She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful
eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over
to glance at his watch because she has been dancing
forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.

ampoule

07-17-2007, 11:24 AM

Oh how that makes me smile. Thank you for sharing angels, Fire.

Annabel Lee

07-18-2007, 01:31 AM

Emily Dickinson-

Glee! The great storm is over!
Four have recovered the land;
Forty gone down together
Into the boiling sand.

Ring, for the scant salvation!
Toll, for the bonnie souls, --
Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
Spinning upon the shoals!

How they will tell the shipwreck
When winter shakes the door,
Till the children ask, "But the forty?
Did they come back no more?"

Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller's eye;
And the children no further question,
And only the waves reply.

I chose this poem because I really enjoy reading about the ocean. And this poem has truth in it. This poem describes something that happens quite often in the seafaring world; a tragedy occurs, "and only the waves reply".

But I have to admit, it was hard trying to decide whether to use Emily D or William W; they're probably my favorite... along with some others of course.

quasimodo1

07-20-2007, 02:37 AM

Rhymes of a Rolling Stone
by

Robert W. Service
The Song of the Camp-Fire
I

Heed me, feed me, I am hungry, I am red-tongued with desire;
Boughs of balsam, slabs of cedar, gummy fagots of the pine,
Heap them on me, let me hug them to my eager heart of fire,
Roaring, soaring up to heaven as a symbol and a sign.
Bring me knots of sunny maple, silver birch and tamarack;
Leaping, sweeping, I will lap them with my ardent wings of flame;
I will kindle them to glory, I will beat the darkness back;
Streaming, gleaming, I will goad them to my glory and my fame.
Bring me gnarly limbs of live-oak, aid me in my frenzied fight;
Strips of iron-wood, scaly blue-gum, writhing redly in my hold;
With my lunge of lurid lances, with my whips that flail the night,
They will burgeon into beauty, they will foliate in gold.
Let me star the dim sierras, stab with light the inland seas;
Roaming wind and roaring darkness! seek no mercy at my hands;
I will mock the marly heavens, lamp the purple prairies,
I will flaunt my deathless banners down the far, unhouseled lands.
In the vast and vaulted pine-gloom where the pillared forests frown,
By the sullen, bestial rivers running where God only knows,
On the starlit coral beaches when the combers thunder down,
In the death-spell of the barrens, in the shudder of the snows;
In a blazing belt of triumph from the palm-leaf to the pine,
As a symbol of defiance lo! the wilderness I span;
And my beacons burn exultant as an everlasting sign
Of unending domination, of the mastery of Man;
I, the Life, the fierce Uplifter, I that weaned him from the mire;
I, the angel and the devil, I, the tyrant and the slave;
I, the Spirit of the Struggle; I, the mighty God of Fire;
I, the Maker and Destroyer; I, the Giver and the Grave.
II

Gather round me, boy and grey-beard, frontiersman of every kind.
Few are you, and far and lonely, yet an army forms behind:
By your camp-fires shall they know you, ashes scattered to the wind.

Peer into my heart of solace, break your bannock at my blaze;
Smoking, stretched in lazy shelter, build your castles as you gaze;
Or, it may be, deep in dreaming, think of dim, unhappy days.

Let my warmth and glow caress you, for your trails are grim and hard;
Let my arms of comfort press you, hunger-hewn and battle-scarred:
O my lovers! how I bless you with your lives so madly marred!

For you seek the silent spaces, and their secret lore you glean:
For you win the savage races, and the brutish Wild you wean;
And I gladden desert places, where camp-fire has never been.

From the Pole unto the Tropics is there trail ye have not dared?
And because you hold death lightly, so by death shall you be spared,
(As the sages of the ages in their pages have declared).

On the roaring Arkilinik in a leaky bark canoe;
Up the cloud of Mount McKinley, where the avalanche leaps through;
In the furnace of Death Valley, when the mirage glimmers blue.

Now a smudge of wiry willows on the weary Kuskoquim;
Now a flare of gummy pine-knots where Vancouver's scaur is grim;
Now a gleam of sunny ceiba, when the Cuban beaches dim.

Always, always God's Great Open: lo! I burn with keener light
In the corridors of silence, in the vestibules of night;
'Mid the ferns and grasses gleaming, was there ever gem so bright?

Not for weaklings, not for women, like my brother of the hearth;
Ring your songs of wrath around me, I was made for manful mirth,
In the lusty, gusty greatness, on the bald spots of the earth.

Men, my masters! men, my lovers! ye have fought and ye have bled;
Gather round my ruddy embers, softly glowing is my bed;
By my heart of solace dreaming, rest ye and be comforted!
III

I am dying, O my masters! by my fitful flame ye sleep;
My purple plumes of glory droop forlorn.
Grey ashes choke and cloak me, and above the pines there creep
The stealthy silver moccasins of morn.
There comes a countless army, it's the Legion of the Light;
It tramps in gleaming triumph round the world;
And before its jewelled lances all the shadows of the night
Back in to abysmal darknesses are hurled.

Leap to life again, my lovers! ye must toil and never tire;
The day of daring, doing, brightens clear,
When the bed of spicy cedar and the jovial camp-fire
Must only be a memory of cheer.
There is hope and golden promise in the vast portentous dawn;
There is glamour in the glad, effluent sky:
Go and leave me; I will dream of you and love you when you're gone;
I have served you, O my masters! let me die.

A little heap of ashes, grey and sodden by the rain,
Wind-scattered, blurred and blotted by the snow:
Let that be all to tell of me, and glorious again,
Ye things of greening gladness, leap and glow!
A black scar in the sunshine by the palm-leaf or the pine,
Blind to the night and dead to all desire;
Yet oh, of life and uplift what a symbol and a sign!
Yet oh, of power and conquest what a destiny is mine!
A little heap of ashes -- Yea! a miracle divine,
The foot-print of a god, all-radiant Fire.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------sometimes called the poet of the Yukon, Robert Service quasimodo1

genoveva

07-20-2007, 07:02 PM

She Is Dead

“She is dead,” they said
And they gathered up the things
Of her days.
Life’s little spindle,
Her gentle ways,
The comforting words
That were left a wall
About their fears
To keep them from climbing
Into future years.

The hopes of her pleasing,
Her little vigil hours,
The chest of her maiden dreams,
The flowers of a gladder faith,
The lavender of old tears.

The linen of her fingers weaving
The garments for her children’s souls
From words writ in the Holy booke.
And the memory
Or strong caressing hands
That they had always found
Understanding.

Afterwards, in one old chest
In the room she had slept in,
They found the gentle joys
Of her waiting years-
The petals of the hopes
At her children’s birthing.

- Opal Whiteley

quasimodo1

07-21-2007, 07:41 PM

quasimodo1

07-21-2007, 07:48 PM

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins

genoveva

07-21-2007, 11:52 PM

To Genoveva: Your "favourite poet" being an unknown to me, had to do some looking. You are aware that an editor of the Atlantic Monthly encouraged the poet to reconstruct a collection of poems which for some reason was torn to pieces. The fragments were saved and published. I found this link useful...http://intersect.uoregon.edu/opal/ Another, if somewhat obscure, great talent. quasimodo1

Yes, quasimodo1, however, it was not a collection of poems that were torn to pieces and published, it was her childhood diary. A very interesting author from here in Oregon!

quasimodo1

07-25-2007, 10:22 PM

The Lake Isle

O GOD, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,
With the little bright boxes
piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragrant cavendish
and the shag,
And the bright Virginia
loose under the bright glass cases,
And a pair of scales not too greasy,
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing,
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
or install me in any profession
Save this damn'd profession of writing,
where one needs one's brains all the time.

Ezra Pound

airam

07-25-2007, 11:48 PM

Breathe on me winter wind
Sweep back old leaves, new shoots stir
Always, clouds come, have gone.

my first haiku. Airam. Criticism more than welcome

airam

07-26-2007, 12:06 AM

amazing how plath can make one thing, like a mushroom, be so many other things, a fist, shelves, tables, hammers etc, etc, So clever. Her words give life to ordinary things, even though living, and assimilates them to be equal to our own lives..........all living things being of equal importance.
reminds of The Carpet Sweeper by carol Rumens.
Airam

airam

07-26-2007, 12:10 AM

Everone who wants to write knows where ezra is coming from. However he did make it!

quasimodo1

07-28-2007, 08:55 PM

Megalosaurus

A MONSTER like a mountain, leathern limbed,
With eyes of sluggish ore and claws of stone,
He heaved his thunder-throated body, rimmed
By marsh fires human eyes have never known.
A monolith carved out of savage night,
He hid in his impenetrable hide
Muscle and blood, and nerves to sense delight
And agony that tore him when he died.

The clumsy terror of his frame has gone
The way of his blind, simple savagery.
Out of his casual bones men build the dawn
That bore and bred such brutish game as he.
But still endures his dull, confounding shape:
In wars of the wise offspring of the ape.

Babette Deutsch

quasimodo1

08-04-2007, 12:32 AM

(Mack The Knife by Bertolt Brecht)
Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear
And he shows them pearly white.
Just a jack knife has Macheath, dear
And he keeps it out of sight.

When the shark bites with his teeth, dear
Scarlet billows start to spread.
Fancy gloves, though, wears Macheath, dear
So there's not a trace of red.

On the side-walk Sunday morning
Lies a body oozing life;
Someone's sneaking 'round the corner.
Is that someone Mack the Knife?

From a tugboat by the river
A cement bag's dropping down;
The cement's just for the weight, dear.
Bet you Mackie's back in town.

Louie Miller disappeared, dear
After drawing out his cash;
And Macheath spends like a sailor.
Did our boy do something rash?

Sukey Tawdry, Jenny Diver,
Polly Peachum, Lucy Brown
Oh, the line forms on the right, dear
Now that Mackie's back in town.

quasimodo1

08-10-2007, 06:53 PM

This novelist, poet and lover of jazz wrote some amazing if experimental stuff. His book "The Journal of Albion Moonlight" has great flashes of genious and humor. Here is a fragment of one of his poems. "Let Us Have Madness" by Kenneth Patchen
Let us have madness openly.
O men Of my generation.
Let us follow
The footsteps of this slaughtered age:
See it trail across Time's dim land
Into the closed house of eternity
With the noise that dying has,
With the face that dead things wear--
nor ever say
We wanted more; we looked to find
An open door, an utter deed of love,
Transforming day's evil darkness;
but We found extended hell and fog Upon the earth,
and within the head

quasimodo1

08-13-2007, 06:52 PM

The Bells
(Alcools: Les Cloches)

My gipsy beau my lover
Hear the bells above us

We loved passionately

Thinking none could see us

But we so badly hidden

All the bells in their song

Saw from heights of heaven

And told it everyone

Tomorrow Cyprien Henry

Marie Ursule Catherine

The baker’s wife her husband

and Gertrude that’s my cousin

Will smile when I go by them

I won’t know where to hide

You far and I’ll be crying

Perhaps I shall be dying

genoveva

08-14-2007, 10:48 PM

Lines Written in Oregon

Esmeralda! now we rest
Here, in the bewitched and blest
Mountain forests of the West.

Here the very air is stranger.
Damzel, anchoret, and ranger
Share the woodland’s dream and danger

And to think I deemed you dead!
(In a dungeon, it was said;
Tortured, strangled); but instead –

Blue birds from the bluest fable,
Bear and hare in coats of sable,
Peacock moth on picnic table.

Huddled roadsigns softly speak
Of Lake Merlin, Castle Creek,
And (obliterated) Peak.

Do you recognize that clover?
Dandelions, l’or du pauvre?
(Europe, nonetheless, is over).

Up the turk, along the burn
Latin lilies climb and turn
Into Gothic fir and fern.

Cornfields have befouled the prairies
But these canyons laugh! And there is
Still the forest with its fairies.

And I rest where I awoke
In the sea shade – l’ombre glauque –
Of a legendary oak;

Where the woods get ever dimmer,
Where the Phantom Orchids glimmer –
Esmeralda, immer, immer.

– Vladimir Nabokov

quasimodo1

08-20-2007, 11:01 AM

Love's Blindness
Now do I know that Love is blind, for I
Can see no beauty on this beauteous earth,
No life, no light, no hopefulness, no mirth,
Pleasure nor purpose, when thou art not nigh.
Thy absence exiles sunshine from the sky,
Seres Spring's maturity, checks Summer's birth,
Leaves linnet's pipe as sad as plover's cry,
And makes me in abundance find but dearth.
But when thy feet flutter the dark, and thou
With orient eyes dawnest on my distress,
Suddenly sings a bird on every bough,
The heavens expand, the earth grows less and less,
The ground is buoyant as the ether now,
And all looks lovely in thy loveliness. Alfred Austin (1835-1913) succeeded Alfred Lord Tennyson as poet laureate of England...1896

quasimodo1

08-21-2007, 10:01 AM

The Microbe
by Hilaire Belloc

The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him through a microscope.
His jointed tongue that lies beneath
A hundred curious rows of teeth;
His seven tufted tails with lots
Of lovely pink and purple spots,
On each of which a pattern stands,
Composed of forty separate bands;
His eyebrows of a tender green;
All these have never yet been seen--
But Scientists, who ought to know,
Assure us that they must be so....
Oh! let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!

tome_keeper

08-26-2007, 06:23 PM

I am the wind which breathes upon the sea
I am the wave of the ocean.
I am the murmur of the billows.
I am the ox of the seven combats.
I am the vulture upon the rocks.
I am a beam of the Sun.
I am the fairest of plants.
I am a wild boar in valour.
I am a salmon in the water.
I am a lake in the plain.
I am a word of science.
I am a point of a lance in battle.
I am the God who created in the head the fire.
Who is it who throws into light the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the Moon?
Who teaches the place where couches the Sun?
If not I?

- Amergin

quasimodo1

08-28-2007, 07:24 AM

LOVE AND THE GENTLE HEART
Love and the gentle heart are one thing,
just as the poet says in his verse,
each from the other one as well divorced
as reason from the mind’s reasoning.

Nature craves love, and then creates love king,
and makes the heart a palace where he’ll stay,
perhaps a shorter or a longer day,
breathing quietly, gently slumbering.

Then beauty in a virtuous woman’s face
makes the eyes yearn, and strikes the heart,
so that the eyes’ desire’s reborn again,
and often, rooting there with longing, stays,

Till love, at last, out of its dreaming starts.
Woman’s moved likewise by a virtuous man.
( Dante Alighiere )

quasimodo1

08-29-2007, 09:40 AM

TO A YOUNG CHILD
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
by Gerald Manley Hopkins

blp

08-29-2007, 09:52 AM

Great great choice, q. I'm becoming more and more aware of just how interesting this poet is.

I should let you know, though, it's Gerard, not Gerald.

quasimodo1

08-29-2007, 10:55 AM

To blp: Thank's for alerting me on typo (partially result of miniscule dyslexia) and Hopkins is great, underread and poetically unigue in the extreme. quasimodo1

quasimodo1

08-30-2007, 08:24 AM

The Brain -- is wider than the Sky --
The Brain -- is wider than the Sky --
For -- put them side by side --
The one the other will contain
With ease -- and You -- beside --

The Brain is deeper than the sea --
For -- hold them -- Blue to Blue --
The one the other will absorb --
As Sponges -- Buckets -- do --

The Brain is just the weight of God --
For -- Heft them -- Pound for Pound --
And they will differ -- if they do --
As Syllable from Sound --
..................Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

quasimodo1

08-31-2007, 11:36 AM

(Famous Poems Rewritten as Limericks)
Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
There once was a horse-riding chap
Who took a trip in a cold snap
He stopped in the snow
But he soon had to go
He was miles away from a nap. }
The Raven
There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lot of questions
And the bird always says "Nevermore." }
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
There was an old father of Dylan
Who was seriously, mortally illin'
"I want," Dylan said
"You to ***** till you're dead.
"I'll be cheesed if you kick it while chillin'." }
I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
There once was a poet named Will
Who tramped his way over a hill
And was speechless for hours
Over some stupid flowers
This was years before TV, but still. }
Footprints in the Sand
There was a man who, at low tide
Would walk with the Lord by his side
Jesus said "Now look back;
You'll see one set of tracks.
That's when you got a piggy-back ride."
*************************************five limericks/no disrespect intended

Virgil

08-31-2007, 05:39 PM

quasimodo1

08-31-2007, 06:05 PM

To Virgil: Be advised i didn't write them and hope i didn't give that impression. Make sure the credit is not mine, all I did was discover that they exist. BTW, did you see the latest by Nightshade. Niamh said the poem belongs in the "best loved poems by litneters" and it does. As for the limericks; just tried to bring a little levity into this forum. They are neet though. quasi

Nightshade

08-31-2007, 06:39 PM

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
There was an old father of Dylan
Who was seriously, mortally illin'
"I want," Dylan said
"You to ***** till you're dead.
"I'll be cheesed if you kick it while chillin'." }

I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
There once was a poet named Will
Who tramped his way over a hill
And was speechless for hours
Over some stupid flowers
This was years before TV, but still. }

I think lonely as a cloud is my fav. IN DNGG is it **** in the limmerick or did the litnet censor it ( its just I cant figure out the word and its bugging me, plus the orignal version is one of all time favs. *sigh*

quasimodo1

09-01-2007, 10:47 PM

To Nightshade: You did read the post before yours, yes? They are neat and I just intended to put a bit of levity into the mix. I guess they did get censored a bit so if that blank space is bothering you, I can PM the original text. Sometimes it's important to stand back and realize that from a geological point of view, we are way ephemeral. Hence the attempt at humor. BTW (see, I can use these hip abreviations) your poem from yesterdays post really is quality stuff. I have reems of stuff I wrote back in the day, but my daughter's have them and won't give them up. Sooner or later though... I was going to tell you to keep on writing your poetry and that is a sound idea but I also think it's possible to let poetry kind of subconsciously stew and when the time is right, they seem to jump onto the page. Just a theory. quasi

Nightshade

09-02-2007, 07:32 AM

quasimodo1

09-07-2007, 10:05 AM

"My poet-child, I want you to sing with Me:
I barter nothing with time and deeds.
My cosmic Play is done.
The One Transcendental I was.
The Many Universal I am.
I am the Soul-Flower of My Eternity.
I am the Heart-Fragrance of My Infinity."

By: Sri Chinmoy http://www.srichinmoypoetry.com/sri_chinmoy

quasimodo1

09-09-2007, 04:44 PM

"for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions,
has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world"

– Nobel Citation

quasimodo1

09-09-2007, 04:49 PM

Creed

I believe in my heart that when

The wounded heart sunk within the depth of God sings

It rises from the pond alive

As if new-born. (first stanza)

Mrs. Dalloway

09-11-2007, 05:34 AM

September 11th,

today is the national day of Catalonia, so I post a poem written by Salvador Espriu (I also post the original poem). The page I've read the poem is: http://proxy.cwe.es/folch/poesia/espriu_.htm#XLVI

I hope you enjoy it. I really like this poet ;)

English translation:

[XLVI] from La pell de brau (Literal translation by Magda Bogin)

Sometimes it is necessary and right
for a man to die for a people.
But a whole people must never die
for a single man:
remember this, Sepharad.
Keep the bridge of dialogue secured
and try to understand and love
the different minds and tongues of all your children.
Let the rain fall drop by drop on the fields
and the air cross the ample fields
like a soft, benevolent hand.
Let Sepharad live forever
in order and in peace, in work,
and in difficult, hard_won
liberty.

In Catalan:

[XLVI]

A vegades és necessari i forçós
que un home mori per un poble,
però mai no ha de morir tot un poble
per un home sol:
recorda sempre això, Sepharad.
Fes que siguin segurs els ponts del diàleg
i mira de comprendre i estimar
les raons i les parles diverses dels teus fills.
Que la pluja caigui a poc a poc en els sembrats
i l'aire passi com una estesa mà
suau i molt benigna damunt els amples camps.
Que Sepharad visqui eternament
en l'ordre i en la pau, en el treball,
en la difícil i merescuda
llibertat.

Salvador Espriu

AuntShecky

09-12-2007, 11:22 AM

Robert Lowell (b. 1917) died on this day, September 12, in 1977. Love his poems, but they're too long, SO:

Given the short attention span of yours truly and heraffection for "tiny" poems, here presented in its entirety is a poem by the author of The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane ( 1871-1900)-- years conveniently outside the 1923 copyright restrictions:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
“A sense of obligation.”

quasimodo1

09-18-2007, 11:28 AM

COMPLAINT
They call me and I go.
It is a frozen road
past midnight, a dust
of snow caught
in the rigid wheeltracks.
The door opens.
I smile, enter and
shake off the cold.
Here is a great woman
on her side in the bed.
She is sick,
perhaps vomiting,
perhaps laboring
to give birth to
a tenth child. Joy! Joy!
Night is a room
darkened for lovers,
through the jalousies the sun
has sent one golden needle!
I pick the hair from her eyes
and watch her misery
with compassion.
......................................by William Carlos Williams

quasimodo1

09-20-2007, 06:42 PM

quasimodo1

09-21-2007, 10:02 PM

THE LIVING FLAME
THEY pass before me, these Eyes full of light,
Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise;
The holy brothers pass before my sight,
And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes.

They keep me from all sin and error grave,
They set me in the path whence Beauty came;
They are my servants, and I am their slave,
And all my soul obeys the living flame.

Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light
As candles lighted at full noon; the sun
Dims not your flame phantastical and bright.

You sing the dawn; they celebrate life done;
Marching you chaunt my soul's awakening hymn,
Stars that no sun has ever made grow dim!

Logos

10-02-2007, 11:07 AM

Robert Frost's "October" :)

http://www.online-literature.com/frost/boys-will/30/

O HUSHED October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost--
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

.
.

Truley_aLlI

10-02-2007, 10:18 PM

I made up my own poem see if its good or not.

That single moment
when we look into eachothers eyes
we get closer and closer
everything around us turns into an invisble suprise

Your eyes close
right when mine do
closing the world outside
I tilt my head
and wonder when the fireworks subside

out lips touch
I do not worry when our hands clutch
*KiSs*

karo

10-04-2007, 10:20 AM

Deliver me from the usual thing,
The clever inevitability of the conversation,
The brilliant platitudes and the second-hand
Remarks about life...
O for the tangent terror
Of the metaphor no one has used --
The keenness of cutting edges
On the fresh green ice of thought.

Spring 1939

AuntShecky

10-04-2007, 02:34 PM

I got into trouble posting stuff today, but I'm feeling bold
and would like to nominate a pre-1923 poem by Helen Hunt Jackson, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Great Northeast (U.S.) Snowstorm of October 4, 2007.
(incidentally, it is also the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi.)

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)
October's Bright Blue Weather

O SUNS and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;

When loud the bumble-bee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And Golden-Rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When Gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather.

O suns and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.

jdadler

10-05-2007, 10:59 PM

A Poem For Friday 10/5

Conscience

Conscience is instinct bred in the house,
Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin
By an unnatural breeding in and in.
I say, Turn it out doors,
Into the moors.
I love a life whose plot is simple,
And does not thicken with every pimple,
A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it,
That makes the universe no worse than 't finds it.
I love an earnest soul,
Whose mighty joy and sorrow
Are not drowned in a bowl,
And brought to life to-morrow;
That lives one tragedy,
And not seventy;
A conscience worth keeping;
Laughing not weeping;
A conscience wise and steady,
And forever ready;
Not changing with events,
Dealing in compliments;
A conscience exercised about
Large things, where one may doubt.
I love a soul not all of wood,
Predestinated to be good,
But true to the backbone
Unto itself alone,
And false to none;
Born to its own affairs,
Its own joys and own cares;
By whom the work which God begun
Is finished, and not undone;
Taken up where he left off,
Whether to worship or to scoff;
If not good, why then evil,
If not good god, good devil.
Goodness! you hypocrite, come out of that,
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
I have no patience towards
Such conscientious cowards.
Give me simple laboring folk,
Who love their work,
Whose virtue is song
To cheer God along.

Henry David Thoreau

firefangled

10-06-2007, 08:44 PM

- Wallace Stevens

In the weed of summer, comes this green sprout why.
The sun aches and ails and then returns halloo
Upon the horizon amid adult enfantillages.

Its fire fails to pierce the vision that beholds it,
Fails to destroy the antique acceptances,
Except that the grandson sees it as it is,
Peter the voyant who says, "Mother what is that" —
The object that rises with so much rhetoric,
But not for him. His question is complete.
It is the question of what he is capable
It is the extreme, the expert aetat. 2.
He will never ride the red horse she describes.

His question is complete because it contains
His utmost statement. It is his own array,
His own pageant and procession and display,

As far as nothingness permits . . . Hear him.
He does not say, "Mother, my mother, who are you,"
The way the drowsy, infant, old men do.

symphony

10-09-2007, 09:30 AM

To......

MUSIC, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory-
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

It was a pleasure to see this one here. It was, and remains, one of my favorite poems. Of all times. Thanks for posting it. :)

karo

10-13-2007, 06:16 PM

I have been with the trees all day.
I don't think they will remember what I said.
The wind came between us
And we dreamt a little on either side of it
And our dreams may have met.
I think I felt a tremor in the leaves once
While my fingers dreamt of playing them.....
I have been with the trees all day,
Learning to forget.

Now I may go.
I have removed all trace of me.
Where I sat, where I walked, where I slept,
Where a corner I loved resembled me too much,
In my most private places I have set
Something unlike me,
Something to make them strange to themselves again,
Something to make them forget.

With you, I have done none of these things,
Sure if I went out quietly enough
You would not miss me more than yesterday,
Having forgotten so long already
That a parting sign from me
Might make you remember,
Regret my going.

I have picked up
Every bit of me scattered about
And burried all of it.....somewhere....I forget.....
Over the wall!
I am going out
As somebody else!

Laura Riding

HailStorm

10-17-2007, 06:11 PM

It was reading this thread that prompted me to register, such lovely posts here. Needless to say I love poetry. I'd like to add one of my favourite poets as my first post.
"Hello everyone" ;)

Madison Caiwein ~ 1865-1914

FIELD AND FOREST CALL

I

There is a field, that leans upon two hills,
Foamed o'er of flowers and twinkling with clear rills;
That in its girdle of wild acres bears
The anodyne of rest that cures all cares;
Wherein soft wind and sun and sound are blent
With fragrance--as in some old instrument
Sweet chords;--calm things, that Nature's magic spell
Distills from Heaven's azure crucible,
And pours on Earth to make the sick mind well.
There lies the path, they say--
Come away! come away!

II

There is a forest, lying 'twixt two streams,
Sung through of birds and haunted of dim dreams;
That in its league-long hand of trunk and leaf
Lifts a green wand that charms away all grief;
Wrought of quaint silence and the stealth of things,
Vague, whispering' touches, gleams and twitterings,
Dews and cool shadows--that the mystic soul
Of Nature permeates with suave control,
And waves o'er Earth to make the sad heart whole.
There lies the road, they say--
Come away! come away!

quasimodo1

10-20-2007, 05:22 AM

CHILDREN'S PARTY
May I join you in the doghouse, Rover?
I wish to retire till the party's over.
Since three o'clock I've done my best
To entertain each tiny guest. My conscience now I've left behind me,
And if they want me, let them find me.
I blew their bubbles, I sailed their boats,
I kept them from each other's throats. I told them tales of magic lands,
I took them out to wash their hands.
I sorted their rubbers and tied their laces,
I wiped their noses and dried their faces. Of similarities there's lots
Twixt tiny tots and Hottentots.
I've earned repose to heal the ravages
Of these angelic-looking savages. Oh, progeny playing by itself
Is a lonely little elf,
But progeny in roistering batches
Would drive St. Francis from here to Natchez. ..........................................{first part of this poem by Ogden Nash}

quasimodo1

10-20-2007, 11:03 AM

1845
THE VALLEY OF UNREST

"The Valley of Unrest" was published in an
edition of 1831 under the title, "Valley of Nis." (see below)

Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sunlight lazily lay.
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley's restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless-
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye-
Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave: — from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep: — from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.

-The End-

[This version of the poem bears only a slight
resemblance to its predecessor "The Valley Nis."]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1831
The Valley Nis
by Edgar Allan Poe

Far away — far away —
Far away — as far at least
Lies that valley as the day
Down within the golden east —
All things lovely — are not they
Far away — far away ?

It is called the valley Nis.
And a Syriac tale there is
Thereabout which Time hath said
Shall not be interpreted.
Something about Satan's dart —
Something about angel wings —
Much about a broken heart —
All about unhappy things:
But "the valley Nis" at best
Means "the valley of unrest."

Once it smil'd a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell,
Having gone unto the wars —
And the sly, mysterious stars,
With a visage full of meaning,
O'er the unguarded flowers were leaning:
Or the sun ray dripp'd all red
Thro' the tulips overhead,
Then grew paler as it fell
On the quiet Asphodel.

Now the unhappy shall confess
Nothing there is motionless:
Helen, like thy human eye
There th' uneasy violets lie —
There the reedy grass doth wave
Over the old forgotten grave —
One by one from the tree top
There the eternal dews do drop —
There the vague and dreamy trees

Do roll like seas in northern breeze
Around the stormy Hebrides —
There the gorgeous clouds do fly,
Rustling everlastingly,
Through the terror-stricken sky,
Rolling like a waterfall
O'er th' horizon's fiery wall —
There the moon doth shine by night
With a most unsteady light —
There the sun doth reel by day
"Over the hills and far away."

-The End-

{Two versions of "The Valley of Unrest" by Edgar Allan Poe}

quasimodo1

10-24-2007, 08:48 AM

'Love for Marie'
Pierre de Ronsard
Translated From The French by Rosemary Clark
I
If any lover in Anjou pass by
A pine tree overlooking Bourgueil town,
He'd mark, displayed upon its pointed crown,
My freedom, victim of a beauteous eye.
Triumphant Love, who likes my torment well,
Hung it as spoil, to vaunt my servitude
And to proclaim to travellers on the road
That loving's an exquisite prison cell.
Nor could I choose a tree of nobler mark
To hang my poor remains, for such rough bark
On Ida's slopes young Atys' skin encased.
Yet he and I conceived love differently,
For he was smitten by a wrinkled face,
I by a beauty half in infancy.
II
Marie, if men should try to twist your name
They'd find aimer – so love me then, Marie.
Your name requires it . You must loving be;
Refusal would be mortal sin and shame.
If you consent to pledge me all your heart,
I give you mine, and so we shall partake
Of all life's pleasures; and I undertake,
No other fancy shall command my thought. [End Page 167]
Mistress, to love is every mortal's share.
The man who loves not, wretchedly must bear
A Scythian's life, and all his days will spend
Without the sweetness of all sweets the height.
What! Without love, where then lies all delight?
The day I love no more, then may I meet my end.
III
Get up, Marie, you lie in bed too long.
The lark already carols high above
And the nightingale has warbled out her love
Upon the thorn in streams of plaintive song.
Up with you! Come and see the greensward bright
With dewdrops, and your pretty rose-tree crowned
With buds, your dainty pinks that deck the ground
Which with such care you watered late last night.
Last night you swore at bedtime by your eyes
Sooner than I this morning to be dressed,
But the sleep of dawn, which soft on maidens lies,
Holds you in dreams, your lashes still close pressed.
I'll kiss them, so! And your nipple rosy red
A hundred times, to get you out of bed.
IV
Hide your bright horns tonight, indulgent Moon!
So may Endymion, pillowed on your breast,
Be ever loving, ever take his rest,
And no enchanter seek to importune.
Hateful is day to me and night my boon.
By day I feel the threat of watchful eyes;
More bold at nightfall, through the camp of spies
I pass, defended by dusk's gathering gloom.
Moon, you know well how potent is Love's smart,
How Pan for a white fleece could sway your heart,
And pity me, you brilliant stars above;
Look kindly on the flame that burns in me,
And think, you constellations, it was love
That set you there, to shine eternally. [End Page 168] {only part of this long poem}

firefangled

10-25-2007, 03:01 AM

For a man needs only to be turned around once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost. . . . Not til we are lost . . . do we begin to find ourselves.”
—Thoreau, Walden

Kind Sir: This is an old game
that we played when we were eight and ten.
Sometimes on The Island, in down Maine,
in late August, when the cold fog blew in
off the ocean, the forest between Dingley Dell
and grandfather’s cottage grew white and strange.
It was as if every pine tree were a brown pole
we did not know; as if day had rearranged
into night and bats flew in sun. It was a trick
to turn around once and know you were lost;
knowing the crow’s horn was crying in the dark,
knowing that supper would never come, that the coast’s
cry of doom from that far away bell buoy’s bell
said your nursemaid is gone. O Mademoiselle,
the rowboat rocked over. Then you were dead.
Turn around once, eyes tight, the thought in your head.

....

-Anne Sexton, To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)

quasimodo1

10-27-2007, 09:05 AM

Untitled, Tamerlane and Other Poems, 1827
Untitled
by Edgar Allan Poe

The happiest day — the happiest hour
My sear'd and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride, and power,
I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween
But they have vanish'd long alas!
The visions of my youth have been —
But let them pass.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?
Another brow may ev'n inherit
The venom thou hast pour'd on me —
Be still my spirit.

The happiest day — the happiest hour
Mine eyes shall see — have ever seen
The brightest glance of pride and power
I feel — have been:

But were that hope of pride and power
Now offer'd, with the pain
Ev'n then I felt — that brightest hour
I would not live again:

For on its wing wall dark alloy
And as it flutter'd — fell
An essence — powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.

-The End-

"[The Happiest Day]", North American (Baltimore), Sept. 15, 1827
(Original.)
by Edgar Allan Poe

The happiest day — the happiest hour,
My sear'd and blighted heart has known,
The brightest glance of pride and power

I feel hath flown —

Of power, said I? Yes, such I ween —
But it has vanish'd — long alas!
The visions of my youth have been —

But let them pass. —

And pride! what have I now with thee?
Another brow may e'en inherit
The venom thou hast pour'd on me:

Be still my spirit.

The smile of love — soft friendship's charm —
Bright hope itself has fled at last,
'T will ne'er again my bosom warm—

'Tis ever past.

The happiest day, — the happiest hour,
Mine eyes shall see, — have ever seen, —
The brightest glance of pride and power,

I feel has been. W. H. P.
-The End-

["W. H. P." are the initials of Edgar's brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, usually called Henry. As this version of the poem appeared only a few months after the abortive publication of Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), it is presumed that they are a revision of Edgar's verses rather than the other way around. T. O Mabbott felt that the rather tepid value of the modifications suggests that they were made by Henry, though perhaps with Edgar's approval.]

[A photographic facsimile of this printing was included by Hervey Allen and T. O. Mabbott in Poe's Brother, New York: George H. Doran Company, 1926, p. 43.]

[The full title of the newspaper was North American, or Weekly Journal of Politics, Science and Literature. ] (notes from: http://www.eapoe.org/)

{this posting is a direct result of a statement made in the "what is a good poem" thread saying, in paraphrase, I wish we could go back to the day and style of E.A.Poe}

quasimodo1

10-31-2007, 05:47 PM

"Married people often look that way"—
"seldom and cold, up and down,
mixed and malarial
with a good day and a bad."
"When do we feed?"
We occidentals are so unemotional,
we quarrel as we feed;
self lost, the irony preserved
in "the Ahasuerus tête-à-tête banquet,
with its small orchids like snakes' tongues,
with its "good monster, lead the way,"
with little laughter
and munificence of humour
in that quixotic atmosphere of frankness...................
{excerpt from Marianne Moore's poem, "Marriage"}

quasimodo1

11-01-2007, 03:17 PM

AN ALPHABET OF FAMOUS GOOPS.
Which you 'll Regard with Yells and Whoops.
Futile Acumen!
For you Yourselves are Doubtless Dupes
Of Failings Such as Mar these Groups --
We all are Human!

1 ABEDNEGO was Meek and Mild; he Softly Spoke, he Sweetly Smiled.
2 He never Called his Playmates Names, and he was Good in Running Games;
3 But he was Often in Disgrace because he had a Dirty Face!

4 BOHUNKUS would Take Off his Hat, and Bow and Smile, and Things like That.
5 His Face and Hair were Always Neat, and when he Played he did not Cheat;
6 But Oh! what Awful Words he Said, when it was Time to Go to Bed!

7 The Gentle CEPHAS tried his Best to Please his Friends with Merry Jest;
8 He tried to Help Them, when he Could, for CEPHAS, he was Very Good;
9 And Yet -- They Say he Used to Cry, and Once or Twice he Told a Lie!

10 DANIEL and DAGO were a Pair who Acted Kindly Everywhere;
11 They studied Hard, as Good as Gold, they Always did as They were Told;
12 They Never Put on Silly Airs, but They Took Things that were Not Theirs.

13 EZEKIEL, so his Parents said, just Simply Loved to Go to Bed;
14 He was as Quiet as could Be whenever there were Folks to Tea;
15 And yet, he had a Little Way of Grumbling, when he should Obey.

16 When FESTUS was but Four Years Old his Parents Seldom had to Scold;
17 They never Called him 'FESTUS DON'T!' he Never Whined and said 'I Won't!'
18 Yet it was Sad to See him Dine. His Table Manners were Not Fine.

19 GAMALIEL took Peculiar Pride in Making Others Satisfied.
20 One Time I asked him for his Head. 'Why, Certainly! GAMALIEL Said.
21 He was Too Generous, in Fact. But Bravery he Wholly Lacked.

22 HAZAEL was (at Least he Said he Was) Exceedingly Well Bred;
23 Forbidden Sweets he would not Touch, though he might Want them very Much.
24 But Oh, Imagination Fails to quite Describe his Finger Nails!

25 How Interesting ISAAC Seemed! He never Fibbed, he Seldom Screamed;
26 His Company was Quite a Treat to all the Children on the Street;
27 But Nurse has Told me of his Wrath when he was Made to Take a Bath!

28 Oh, Think of JONAH when you 're Bad; Think what a Happy Way he had
29 Of Saying 'Thank You! -- 'If you Please' -- 'Excuse Me, Sir,' and Words like These.
30 Still, he was Human, like Us All. His Muddy Footprints Tracked the Hall.

31 Just fancy KADESH for a Name! Yet he was Clever All the Same;
32 He knew Arithmetic, at Four, as Well as Boys of Nine or More!
33 But I Prefer far Duller Boys, who do Not Make such Awful Noise!

34 Oh, Laugh at LABAN, if you Will, but he was Brave when he was Ill.
35 When he was Ill, he was so Brave he Swallowed All his Mother Gave!
36 But Somehow, She could never Tell why he was Worse when he was Well!

37 If MICAH's Mother Told him 'No' he Made but Little of his Woe;
38 He Always Answered, 'Yes, I'll Try!' for MICAH Thought it Wrong to Cry.
39 Yet he was Always Asking Questions and Making quite Ill-timed Suggestions.

40 I Fancy NICODEMUS Knew as Much as I, or even You;
41 He was Too Careful, I am Sure, to Scratch or Soil the Furniture;
42 He never Squirmed, he never Squalled; he Never Came when he was Called!

43 Some think that OBADIAH'S Charm was that he Never Tried to Harm
44 Dumb Animals in any Way, though Some are Cruel when they Play.
45 But though he was so Sweet and Kind, his Mother found him Slow to Mind.

46 When PELEG had a Penny Earned, to Share it with his Friends he Yearned.
47 And if he Bought a Juicy Fig, his Sister's Half was Very Big!
48 Had he not Hated to Forgive, he would have been Too Good to Live!

49 When QUARTO'S brother QUARTO Hit, was QUARTO Angry? Not a Bit!
50 He Called the Blow a Little Joke, and so Affectionately Spoke,
51 That Everybody Loved the Lad. Yet Oh, What Selfish Ways he had!

{A to Q of this "Alphabet..........." by Gelett Burgess}

quasimodo1

11-06-2007, 01:57 PM

AS WINDS THAT BLOW AGAINST A STAR
(For Aline)

Now by what whim of wanton chance
Do radiant eyes know sombre days?
And feet that shod in light should dance
Walk weary and laborious ways?
But rays from Heaven, white and whole,
May penetrate the gloom of earth;
And tears but nourish, in your soul,
The glory of celestial mirth.
The darts of toil and sorrow, sent
Against your peaceful beauty, are
As foolish and as impotent
As winds that blow against a star.

firefangled

11-07-2007, 07:38 AM

The Dove in the Belly

The whole of appearance is a toy. For this,
The dove in the belly builds his nest and coos,

Selah, tempestuous bird. How is it that
The rives shine and hold their mirrors up,

.........................................

Virgil

11-07-2007, 08:38 AM

I've never seen that Stevens poem before, Fire. What a marvelous poem. Like most Stevens poems I can't quite grasp it, but the language is wonderful.

firefangled

11-07-2007, 10:10 AM

I've never seen that Stevens poem before, Fire. What a marvelous poem. Like most Stevens poems I can't quite grasp it, but the language is wonderful.

I know what you mean. I have read it I don't know how many times and I still don't have my head around it completely.

With Stevens, a part of me does not want to get him completely. it is the beauty of his poems. One his obsession was the imagination and I seem to understand his poems the way I understand human imagination - not quite totally. It is somewhat like the Mona Lisa and her smile, an eternal mystery and better for it. Some things understanding diminishes, don't you think?

The Poems of Our Climate by Bloom, Words Chosen Out of Desire, Parts of a World, and, of course, The Necessary Angel, all helped me to not understand him better.

Stevens said, "The poem must resist the intelligence/Almost successfully." I have always thought him one of the greatest masters to have done that so well so often.

Do you remember the struggle of the main characters in Close Encounters of the Third Kind to understand the iconic image of the Devils Tower? Roy kept saying to himself, "This means something." That's how I feel about Stevens and it is frustrating and soothing at the same time.

quasimodo1

11-07-2007, 11:22 AM

To Firefangled:With Stevens, "a part of me does not want to get him completely. it is the beauty of his poems. One his obsession was the imagination and I seem to understand his poems the way I understand human imagination - not quite totally. It is somewhat like the Mona Lisa and her smile, an eternal mystery and better for it. Some things understanding diminishes, don't you think?" This view of Stevens, elegantly stated by you, is common with readers of his poetry. I think you ought know nothing of the authors history before you read his/her work. Someone once told me to never read introductions or prefaces before you read the poem or novel; then read those parts. quasimodo1

firefangled

11-10-2007, 09:43 AM

FROM Girl Without Hands

Walking through the ruins
on your way to work
that do not look like ruins
with the sunlight pouring over
the seen world
like hail or melted
silver, that bright
and magnificent, each leaf
and stone quickened and specific in it,
and you can't hold it,
you can't hold any of it. Distance surrounds you,
marked out by the ends of your arms
when they are stretched to their fullest.
You can walk no further than this,
you think, walking forward,
pushing the distance in front of you
like a metal cart on wheels
with its barriers and horizontals.

....

© 1995 by Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House, Houghton Mifflin Company

Virgil

11-10-2007, 11:16 AM

That is a haunting poem, Firef. I enjoyed it very much. Thanks.

firefangled

11-11-2007, 08:24 AM

That is a haunting poem, Firef. I enjoyed it very much. Thanks.

It's one of my favorite by Atwood. Her inspiration, I think, was a Grimm's Fairytale of the same name.

I also love "Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing."

firefangled

11-11-2007, 08:37 AM

partial posting

Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing

The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.

....

quasimodo1

11-21-2007, 02:47 PM

Over the river, and through the wood,
to Grandfather's house we go;
the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river, and through the wood,
to Grandfather's house away!
We would not stop for doll or top,
for 'tis Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood-
oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose,
as over the ground we go.

Over the river, and through the wood.
with a clear blue winter sky,
The dogs do bark and the children hark,
as we go jingling by.

Over the river, and through the wood,
to have a first-rate play.
Hear the bells ring, “Ting a ling ding!”
Hurray for Thanskgiving Day!

Over the river, and through the wood-
no matter for winds that blow;
Or if we get the sleigh upset
into a bank of snow.

Over the river, and through the wood,
to see little John and Ann;
We will kiss them all, and play snowball
and stay as long as we can.

Over the river, and through the wood,
trot fast my dapple gray!
Spring over the ground like a hunting-hound!
For 'tis Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood
and straight through the barnyard gate.
We seem to go extremely slow-
it is so hard to wait!

Over the river, and through the wood-
Old Jowler hears our bells;
He shakes his paw with a loud bow-wow,
and thus the news he tells.

Over the river, and through the wood-
when Grandmother sees us come,
She will say, “O, dear, the children are here,
bring pie for everyone.”

Over the river, and through the wood-
now Grandmothers cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

_ { by Lydia Maria Child, published 1844} __________________________________________________ _____________

quasimodo1

11-28-2007, 04:39 AM

. . . The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning, to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in the statue devil;--Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously tranferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and, then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it. (Moby-Dick, Chapter 41)

--Herman Melville

quasimodo1

11-29-2007, 06:05 PM

It dropped so low in my regard

IT dropped so low in my regard
I heard it hit the ground,
And go to pieces on the stones
At bottom of my mind;

Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less
Than I reviled myself
For entertaining plated wares
Upon my silver shelf.

Emily Dickinson

quasimodo1

11-30-2007, 04:04 AM

Winter

No more tire morn, with tepid rays,
Unfolds the flow'r of various hue;
Noon spreads no more the genial blaze,
Nor gentle eve distils the dew.
The ling'ring hours prolong the night,
Usurping darkness shares the day;
Her mists restrain the force of light,
And Phoebus holds a doubtful sway.
By gloomy twilight, half reveal'd,
With sighs we view the hoary hill,
The leafless wood, the naked field,
The snow-topp'd cot, the frozen rill.
No musick warbles through the grove,
No vivid colours paint the plain;
No more, with devious steps, I rove
Through verdant paths, now sought in vain.
Aloud the driving tempest roars,
Congeal'd, impetuous show'rs descend;
Haste, close the window, bar the doors,
Fate leaves me Stella, and a friend.
In nature's aid, let art supply
With light and heat my little sphere;
Rouse, rouse the fire, and pile it high,
Light up a constellation here.
Let musick sound the voice of joy,
Or mirth repeat the jocund tale;
Let love his wanton wiles employ,
And o'er the season wine prevail.
Yet time life's dreary winter brings,
When mirth's gay tale shall please no more
Nor musick charm--though Stella sings;
Nor love, nor wine, the spring restore.
Catch, then, Oh! catch the transient hour,
Improve each moment as it flies;
Life's a short summer--man a flow'r:
He dies--alas! how soon he dies!

quasimodo1

12-01-2007, 07:00 PM

TO YOU
WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands;
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume,
crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true Soul and Body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, forms,
clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem;
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb;
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;
I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;
None have understood you, but I understand you;
None have done justice to you—you have not done justice to yourself;
None but have found you imperfect—I only find no imperfection in you;
None but would subordinate you—I only am he who will never consent to subordinate
you;
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits
intrinsically
in yourself.

Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all;
From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light;
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color’d
light;
From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing
forever.

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are—you have slumber’d upon yourself all your life;
Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time;
What you have done returns already in mockeries;
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their
return?)

The mockeries are not you;
Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
I pursue you where none else has pursued you;
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom’d routine, if
these
conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me;
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others, they do
not
balk me,
The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all
these I
part aside.

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you;
There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you;
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you;
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to you;
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory
ofyou.
Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you;
These immense meadows—these interminable rivers—you are immense and interminable
as
they;
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution—you
are
he or she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles—you find an unfailing sufficiency;
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges
itself;
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted;
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.

quasimodo1

12-03-2007, 09:24 PM

CHORUSES FROM THE ROCK

Then came at a predetermined moment,
a moment in time and of time,
A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history:
transecting, bisecting the world of time,
a moment in time, but not like a moment of time,
A moment in time but time was made through that moment:
for without the meaning there is no time,
and that moment in time gave the meaning.
Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of the Word,
Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being.
1934 {excerpt}

Beverly S

12-03-2007, 09:50 PM

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, and did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

quasimodo1

12-04-2007, 06:45 PM

`The stars are glittering in the frosty sky'

THE stars are glittering in the frosty sky,
Frequent as pebbles on a broad sea-coast;
And o'er the vault the cloud-like galaxy
Has marshalled its innumerable host.
Alive all heaven seems! with wondrous glow
Tenfold refulgent every star appears,
As if some wide celestial gale did blow,
And thrice illume the ever-kindled spheres.
Orbs, with glad orbs rejoicing, burning, beam,
Ray-crowned, with lambent lustre in their zones,
Till o'er the blue, bespangled spaces seem
Angels and great archangels on their thrones;
A host divine, whose eyes are sparkling gems,
And forms more bright than diamond diadems.

Charles Heavysege

quasimodo1

12-05-2007, 10:00 PM

Where's the Poet?

WHERE'S the Poet? show him! show him,
Muses nine! that I may know him.
'Tis the man who with a man
Is an equal, be he King,
Or poorest of the beggar-clan
Or any other wonderous thing
A man may be 'twixt ape and Plato;
'Tis the man who with a bird,
Wren or Eagle, finds his way to
All its instincts; he hath heard
The Lion's roaring, and can tell
What his horny throat expresseth,
And to him the Tiger's yell
Come articulate and presseth
Or his ear like mother-tongue.

John Keats

quasimodo1

12-06-2007, 09:24 PM

The Exequy

ACCEPT, thou shrine of my dead saint,
Instead of dirges, this complaint;
And for sweet flowers to crown thy hearse,
Receive a strew of weeping verse
From thy grieved friend, whom thou might'st see
Quite melted into tears for thee.

Dear loss! since thy untimely fate
My task hath been to meditate
On thee, on thee; thou art the book,
The library whereon I look,
Though almost blind. For thee, loved clay,
I languish out, not live, the day,
Using no other exercise
But what I practise with mine eyes;
By which wet glasses I find out
How lazily time creeps about
To one that mourns; this, only this,
My exercise and business is.
So I compute the weary hours
With sighs dissolvëd into showers.

Nor wonder if my time go thus
Backward and most preposterous;
Thou hast benighted me; thy set
This eve of blackness did beget,
Who wast my day, though overcast
Before thou hadst thy noon-tide past;
And I remember must in tears,
Thou scarce hadst seen so many years
As day tells hours. By thy clear sun
My love and fortune first did run;
But thou wilt never more appear
Folded within my hemisphere,
Since both thy light and motïon
Like a fled star is fall'n and gone;
And 'twixt me and my soul's dear wish
An earth now interposëd is,
Which such a strange eclipse doth make
As ne'er was read in almanac.

I could allow thee for a time
To darken me and my sad clime;
Were it a month, a year, or ten,
I would thy exile live till then,
And all that space my mirth adjourn,
So thou wouldst promise to return,
And putting off thy ashy shroud,
At length disperse this sorrow's cloud.

But woe is me! the longest date
Too narrow is to calculate
These empty hopes; never shall I
Be so much blest as to descry
A glimple of thee, till that day come
Which shall the earth to cinders doom,
And a fierce fever must calcine
The body of this world like thine,
My little world. That fit of fire
Once off, our bodies shall aspire
To our souls' bliss; then we shall rise
And view ourselves with clearer eyes
In that calm region where no night
Can hide us from each other's sight.

Meantime, thou hast her, earth; much good
May my harm do thee. Since it stood
With heaven's will I might not call
Her longer mine, I give thee all
My short-lived right and interest
In her whom living I loved best;
With a most free and bounteous grief,
I give thee what I could not keep.
Be kind to her, and prithee look
Thou write into thy doomsday book
Each parcel of this rarity
Which in thy casket shrined doth lie.
See that thou make thy reck'ning straight,
And yield her back again by weight;
For thou must audit on thy trust
Each grain and atom of this dust,
As thou wilt answer Him that lent,
Not gave thee, my dear monument.

So close the ground, and 'bout her shade
Black curtains draw, my bride is laid.

Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed,
Never to be disquieted!
My last good-night! Thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake;
Till age, or grief, or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves, and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there, I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
And think not much of my delay;
I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrws breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And ev'ry hour a step towards thee.
At night when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rise nearer my west
Of life, almost by eight hours' sail,
Than when sleep breathed his drowsy gale.

Thus from the sun my bottom steers,
And my day's compass downward bears;
Nor labor I to stem the tide
Through which to thee I swiftly glide.

'Tis true, with shame and grief I yield,
Thou like the van first tookst the field,
And gotten hath the victory
In thus adventuring to die
Before me, whose more years might crave
A just precedence in the grave.
But hark! my pulse like a soft drum
Beats my approach, tells thee I come;
And slow howe'er my marches be,
I shall at last sit down by thee.

The thought of this bids me go on,
And wait my dissolutïon
With hope and comfort. Dear, forgive
The crime, I am content to live
Divided, with but half a heart,
Till we shall meet and never part.

Henry King, Bishop of Chichester

Sonnet

quasimodo1

12-07-2007, 12:29 PM

Personal Ad
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rain clouds ok, as long as rainbows appear -
eventually. eyes that radiate magic
essential. must be prepared
to carry heart of stone until it again
becomes a feather. send resume
on the wings of blackbirds. will respond
by same.

Ken Mitchell, © 1996 http://theotherpages.org/universe/mitchell.html {To Logos: This short poem is posted in entirety; it is, I believe, a promotional example of this new poet's work and barring any other examples, it's probably ok to exhibit this short preview.}

quasimodo1

12-08-2007, 09:56 PM

O Intelligence Moving The Third Heaven

O Intelligences moving the third heaven,
the reasons heed that from my heart come forth,
so new, it seems, that no one else should know.
The heaven set in motion by your worth,
beings in gentleness created even,
keeps my existence in its present woe,
so that to speak of what I feel and know
means to converse most worthily with you:
I beg you, then, to listen to me well.
Of something in me new I now will tell—
how grief and sadness this my soul subdue,
and how a contradiction from afar
speaks through the rays descending from your star.

A thought of loveliness seems now to be
life to my ailing heart: it used to fly
oft to the very presence of your Sire;
and there a glorious Lady sitting high
it also saw, who spoke so pleasingly,
my soul would say “Up there dwells my desire.”
Now one appears, which I in dread admire
a mighty lord that makes it flee away,
so mighty, terror from my heart outflows.
To me he brings a lady very close,
and “Who salvation seeks,” I hear him say,
“let him but gaze into this lady’s eyes,
if he can suffer agony of sighs.”

Such is the contradiction, it can slay
the humble thought that is still telling me
of a fair angel up in heaven crowned.
My soul bemoans its present misery,
saying, “Unhappy me! How fast away
went he, in whom I had some solace found!”
And of my eyes it says, with mournful sound,
“When was it such a lady pierced their sight?
Why did they fail to see me in her guise?
I said, ‘Oh, surely, in this lady’s eyes
the one must dwell who kills my peers with fright.’
To no avail I warned them (Oh, my dread!),
but look at her they did, and I fell dead.”

“Oh, no, not dead, you are bewildered much,
O my poor soul, so pained and grieving so,”
replies a loving spirit, kind and sweet,
“For the fair woman, that you feel and know,
has changed your life so quickly and so much,
you now are trembling in your vile defeat.
Look how humility and mercy meet
in one so wise and gentle in her height:
so call her Lady, as by now you must.
And you will see, if steadfast is your trust,
such lofty miracles, such full delight,
you’ll say, ‘O Love, true lord, do as you please:
here is your humble handmaid on her knees.’”

My song, I do believe that those are few
who can unravel your most hidden sense,
so intricate and mighty is your wit.
Therefore, if by some fate or circumstance
you stray and venture among people who
seem not completely to have fathomed it,
oh, then, I pray, console yourself a bit,
and say, O lovely latest song, to them,
“Notice, at least, how beautiful I am!”

Dante Alighieri

quasimodo1

12-09-2007, 09:42 PM

POET SYNDROME
I'm a person you would call a poet.
I'll be writing poems before you know it.
People say that I'm obsessed.
Others think that I'm possessed.
I tell them I'm sorry that I always rhyme.
I just can't help it. I do it all the time.
So my dog's name is Tanka and my fish's is Haiku.
I don't think I'm that obsessed, what about you?

-- Submitted by Kristin Aoyagi from Des Plaines, IL
e-mail: [email protected]

quasimodo1

12-10-2007, 09:42 PM

The Key Note

I DREAMED I was dreaming one morn as I lay
In a garden with flowers teeming.
On an island I lay in a mystical bay,
In the dream I dreamed I was dreaming.

The ghost of a scent--had it followed me there
From the place where I truly was resting?
It filled like an anthem the aisles of the air,
The presence of roses attesting.

Yet I thought in the dream that I dreamed I dreamed
That the place was all barren of roses--
That it only seemed; and the place, I deemed,
Was the Isle of Bewildered Noses.

Full many a seaman had testified
How all who sailed near were enchanted,
And landed to search (and in searching died)
For the roses the Sirens had planted.

For the Sirens were dead, and the billows boomed
In the stead of their singing forever;
But the roses bloomed on the graves of the doomed,
Though man had discovered them never.

I though in my dream 'twas an idle tale,
A delusion that mariners cherished--
That the fragrance loading the conscious gale
Was a ghost of a rose long perished.

I said, "I will fly from this island of woes."
And acting on that decision,
By that odor of rose I was led by the nose,
For 'twas truly, ah! truly, Elysian.

I ran, in my madness, to seek out the source
Of the redolent river--directed
By some supernatural, sinister force
To a forest, dark, haunted, infected.

And still as I threaded ('twas all in the dream
That I dreamed I was dreaming) each turning
There were many a scream and a sudden gleam
Of eyes all uncannily burning!

The leaves were all wet with a horrible dew
That mirrored the red moon's crescent,
And all shapes were fringed with a ghostly blue,
Dim, wavering, phosphorescent.

But the fragrance divine, coming strong and free,
Led me on, though my blood was clotting,
Till--ah, joy!--I could see, on the limbs of a tree,
Mine enemies hanging and rotting!

Ambrose Bierce

quasimodo1

12-14-2007, 08:06 PM

"Quatre Poems"3.
what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where ebery instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the pantings the frenzies toward succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above it's ballast dust

what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness

{translated from the French by the author...Part 3, of "Dieppe"}

quasimodo1

12-16-2007, 11:02 PM

THE VICTOR DOG
Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez,
The little white dog on the Victor label
Listens long and hard as he is able.
It's all in a day's work, whatever plays.

From judgment, it would seem, he has refrained.
He even listens earnestly to Bloch,
Then builds a church upon our acid rock.
He's man's--no--he's the Leiermann's best friend,

Or would be if hearing and listening were the same.
Does he hear?I fancy he rather smells
Those lemon-gold arpeggios in Ravel's
"Les jets d'eau du palais de ceux qui s'aiment."
{excerpt from this poem, first three stanzas, by James Merrill}

quasimodo1

12-18-2007, 05:06 PM

OPTIMISM
At last there'll dawn the last of the long year,
Of the long year that seemed to dream no end,
Whose every dawn but turned the world more drear,
And slew some hope, or led away some friend.
Or be you dark, or buffeting, or blind,
We care not, day, but leave not death behind.

The hours that feed on war go heavy-hearted,
Death is no fare wherewith to make hearts fain.
Oh, we are sick to find that they who started
With glamour in their eyes came not again.
O day, be long and heavy if you will,
But on our hopes set not a bitter heel.

For tiny hopes like tiny flowers of Spring
Will come, though death and ruin hold the land,
Though storms may roar they may not break the wing
Of the earthed lark whose song is ever bland.
Fell year unpitiful, slow days of scorn,
Your kind shall die, and sweeter days be born.

A. Victor Ratcliffe

quasimodo1

12-19-2007, 08:39 PM

Sonnet #107

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assured
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
{posted by request; the only problem with posting Shakespeare is that after reading a sonnet like this, you don't feel like writing anything. This writer was no glovemaker's son...He was the 3rd Earl of Oxford who has an empty crypt in Canteberry Cathedral}

tinustijger

12-20-2007, 09:16 AM

I don't think shakespeare's original. Those sonnets, blaahh, always kinda the same. The metre gets so boring!! You can just read one sonnet and then you want something else. Am I the only one with this feeling?

quasimodo1

12-21-2007, 08:54 AM

"SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI"
"Sic transit gloria mundi,"
"How doth the busy bee,"
"Dum vivimus vivamus,"
I stay mine enemy!

Oh "veni, vidi, vici!"
Oh caput cap-a-pie!
And oh "memento mori"
When I am far from thee!

Hurrah for Peter Parley!
Hurrah for Daniel Boone!
Three cheers, sir, for the gentleman
Who first observed the moon!

Peter, put up the sunshine;
Patti, arrange the stars;
Tell Luna, tea is waiting,
And call your brother Mars!

Put down the apple, Adam,
And come away with me,
So shalt thou have a pippin
From off my father's tree!

I climb the "Hill of Science,"
I "view the landscape o'er;"
Such transcendental prospect,
I ne'er beheld before!

Unto the Legislature
My country bids me go;
I'll take my india rubbers,
In case the wind should blow!

During my education,
It was announced to me
That gravitation, stumbling,
Fell from an apple tree!

The earth upon an axis
Was once supposed to turn,
By way of a gymnastic
In honor of the sun!

It was the brave Columbus,
A sailing o'er the tide,
Who notified the nations
Of where I would reside!

Mortality is fatal --
Gentility is fine,
Rascality, heroic,
Insolvency, sublime!

Our Fathers being weary,
Laid down on Bunker Hill;
And tho' full many a morning,
Yet they are sleeping still, --

The trumpet, sir, shall wake them,
In dreams I see them rise,
Each with a solemn musket
A marching to the skies!

A coward will remain, Sir,
Until the fight is done;
But an immortal hero
Will take his hat, and run!

Good bye, Sir, I am going;
My country calleth me;
Allow me, Sir, at parting,
To wipe my weeping e'e.

In token of our friendship
Accept this "Bonnie Doon,"
And when the hand that plucked it
Hath passed beyond the moon,

The memory of my ashes
Will consolation be;
Then, farewell, Tuscarora,
And farewell, Sir, to thee!
{for those unfamiliar with Latin...the title means "So Passes the Glory of the World}

quasimodo1

12-21-2007, 11:52 PM

THE BATTLE OF AGINCORT
Fair stood the wind for France
When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the main,
At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train,
Landed King Harry.

And taking many a fort,
Furnished in warlike sort,
Marcheth towards Agincourt
In happy hour;
Skirmishing day by day
With those that stopped his way,
Where the French gen'ral lay
With all his power;

Which, in his height of pride,
King Henry to deride,
His ransom to provide
Unto him sending;
Which he neglects the while,
As from a nation vile,
Yet with an angry smile
Their fall portending.

And turning to his men,
Quoth our brave Henry then,
"Though they to one be ten,
Be not amazed.
Yet have we well begun,
Battles so bravely won
Have ever to the sun
By fame been raised.

"And for myself (quoth he),
This my full rest shall be;
England ne'er mourn for me,
Nor more esteem me.
Victor I will remain,
Or on this earth lie slain;
Never shall she sustain
Loss to redeem me.

"Poitiers and Cressy tell,
When most their pride did swell,
Under our swords they fell;
No less our skill is
Than when our grandsire great,
Claiming the regal seat,
By many a warlike feat
Lopped the French lilies."

The Duke of York so dread
The eager vaward led;
With the main Henry sped
Amongst his henchmen.
Exeter had the rear,
A braver man not there;—
O Lord, how hot they were
On the false Frenchmen!

They now to fight are gone,
Armour on armour shone,
Drum now to drum did groan,
To hear was wonder;
That with the cries they make
The very earth did shake;
Trumpet to trumpet spake,
Thunder to thunder.

Well it thine age became,
O noble Erpingham,
Which didst the signal aim
To our hid forces!
When from a meadow by,
Like a storm suddenly,
The English archery
Stuck the French horses.

With Spanish yew so strong,
Arrows a cloth-yard long,
That like to serpents stung,
Piercing the weather;
None from his fellow starts,
But, playing manly parts,
And like true English hearts,
Stuck close together.

When down their bows they threw,
And forth their bilbos drew,
And on the French they flew,
Not one was tardy;
Arms were from shoulders sent,
Scalps to the teeth were rent,
Down the French peasants went—
Our men were hardy!

This while our noble king,
His broadsword brandishing,
Down the French host did ding,
As to o'erwhelm it;
And many a deep wound lent,
His arms with blood besprent,
And many a cruel dent
Bruised his helmet.

Gloucester, that duke so good,
Next of the royal blood,
For famous England stood
With his brave brother;
Clarence, in steel so bright,
Though but a maiden knight,
Yet in that furious fight
Scarce such another.

Warwick in blood did wade,
Oxford the foe invade,
And cruel slaughter made
Still as they ran up;
Suffolk his axe did ply,
Beaumont and Willoughby
Bare them right doughtily,
Ferrers and Fanhope.

Upon Saint Crispin's Day
Fought was this noble fray,
Which fame did not delay
To England to carry.
O, when shall English men
With such acts fill a pen;
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry?
By Michael Drayton {echoes of Henry V?--quasimodo1}

quasimodo1

12-24-2007, 11:21 AM

THANKS
HER griefs were the hours
When my struggle was sore,--
Her joys were the powers
That the climber upbore.

Her home is the boundless
Free ocean that seems
To rock, calm and soundless,
My galleon of dreams.

Half hers are the glancing
Creations that throng
With pageant and dancing
The ways of my song.

My fires when they dwindle
Are lit from her brand;
Men see them rekindle
Nor guess by whose hand.

Of thanks to requite her
No least thought is hers,--
And therefore I write her,
Once, thanks in a verse.

kilted exile

12-24-2007, 06:03 PM

The poem of today is and must be

Twas the night before christmas

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

Virgil

12-25-2007, 11:20 AM

quasimodo1

12-29-2007, 09:47 AM

THE OCEAN'S SONG
We walked amongst the ruins famed in story
Of Rozel-Tower,
And saw the boundless waters stretch in glory
And heave in power.

O Ocean vast! We heard thy song with wonder,
Whilst waves marked time.
"Appear, O Truth!" thou sang'st with tone of thunder,
"And shine sublime!

"The world's enslaved and hunted down by beagles,
To despots sold.
Souls of deep thinkers, soar like mighty eagles!
The Right uphold.

"Be born! arise! o'er the earth and wild waves bounding,
Peoples and suns!
Let darkness vanish; tocsins be resounding,
And flash, ye guns!

"And you who love no pomps of fog or glamour,
Who fear no shocks,
Brave foam and lightning, hurricane and clamour,--
Exiles: the rocks!"

AuntShecky

01-01-2008, 03:56 PM

This is a short passage (i.e. "fair use") from
New Year Letter
by W. H. Auden

"Instruct us in the civil art
Of making from the muddled heart
A desert and a city where
The thoughts that have to labour there
May find locality and peace,
And pent-up feelings their release,
Send strength sufficient for our day,
And point out knowledge on its way,
O da quode jubes, Domine."

mukta581

01-07-2008, 09:21 AM

Love Is…

Love is patient, Love is kind
Love is not jealous, is not proud.

Is not puffed up,
It does not behave badly.
Love does not easily get angry,
It does not think evil.

Love does not rejoice in iniquity,
But rejoices in the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things,
Hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.

quasimodo1

01-08-2008, 02:20 AM

ON FAME
Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gypsy,—will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her;
A Jilt, whose ear was never whispered close,
Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gypsy is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
Ye love-sick Bards! repay her scorn for scorn;
Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!
Makeyour best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.

mukta581

01-08-2008, 03:16 AM

Love is a Sickness

LOVE is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries—
Heigh ho!

Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting; 10
And Jove hath made it of a kind
Not well, nor full nor fasting.
Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries
Heigh ho!

mukta581

01-08-2008, 03:20 AM

quasimodo1

01-09-2008, 04:38 PM

ASIA: FROM PROMETHEUS UNBOUND
My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
In music's most serene dominions;
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
And we sail on, away, afar,
Without a course, without a star,
But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;
Till through Elysian garden islets
By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
Where never mortal pinnace glided,
The boat of my desire is guided:
Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.

We have past Age's icy caves,
And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,
And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray:
Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
A paradise of vaulted bowers,
Lit by downward-gazing flowers,
And watery paths that wind between
Wildernesses calm and green,
Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!

quasimodo1

01-14-2008, 01:08 AM

SONG FROM AMPHITRYON*
Air Iris I love, and hourly I die,
But not for a lip, nor a languishing eye:
She's fickle and false, and there we agree,
For I am as false and as fickle as she.
We neither believe what either can say;
And, neither believing, we neither betray.
'Tis civil to swear, and say things of course;
We mean not the taking for better or worse.
When present, we love; when absent, agree:
I think not of Iris, nor Iris of me.
The legend of love no couple can find,
So easy to part, or so equally joined. .................................................. .................................................. ..................... *Amphitryon... Amphitryon is an interesting and unique character, as the tales surrounding him bear witness. His name, as defined above, flows thematically throughout the material we have about him. Not only is he harassed by unrequitable love and duty, he is also harassed by Zeus, who sends him on an errand and then uses his wife to bear Hercules. Furthermore, though Zeus was disguised as Amphitryon while he seduced Alcmene, the real Amphitryon cannot lay claim as progenitor to the great Hercules, who often berates him for offending the gods.

mukta581

01-18-2008, 10:43 AM

What words can not say alone!

More often than not,
Words can't describe,
My feelings for you,
Which go far and beyond.

Feelings for you,
that grow stronger and stronger,
With every minute in the day,
With every beat of my heart.
From the moment I saw you,
I knew you were the one for me,
Right from the start,
there was no moment of doubt.

There are no moments,
In the day,
That I can find,
where you face and smile
Do not magically appear
In my loving thoughts.

I long to be with you,
when we are apart.
To hold you,
To touch you,
To love you.

We share something so special,
A love not all can find.
There are no words,
That could ever describe,
This here a feeling,
From deep within my soul,
A love so true, but only true to you.

aabbcc

01-19-2008, 06:53 AM

ORIGINAL:

VERRA LA MORTE E AVRA I TUOI OCCHI

Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi
questa morte che ci accompagna
dal mattino alla sera, insonne,
sorda, come un vecchio rimorso
o un vizio assurdo. I tuoi occhi
saranno una vana parola,
un grido taciuto, un silenzio.
Cosí li vedi ogni mattina
quando su te sola ti pieghi
nello specchio. O cara speranza,
quel giorno sapremo anche noi
che sei la vita e sei il nulla.
Per tutti la morte ha uno sguardo.
Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi.
Sarà come smettere un vizio,
come vedere nello specchio
riemergere un viso morto,
come ascoltare un labbro chiuso.
Scenderemo nel gorgo muti.
(Cesare Pavese)

TRANSLATION:

Death Will Come with Your Eyes

Death will come with your eyes—
this death that accompanies us
from morning till night, sleepless,
deaf, like an old regret
or a stupid vice. Your eyes
will be a useless word,
a muted cry, a silence.
As you see them each morning
when alone you lean over
the mirror. O cherished hope,
that day we too shall know
that you are life and nothing.
For everyone death has a look.
Death will come with your eyes.
It will be like terminating a vice,
as seen in the mirror
a dead face re-emerging,
like listening to closed lips.
We'll go down the abyss in silence.

mukta581

01-19-2008, 09:56 AM

My Perfect Life Part 1

remember when we met,
How could I forget?
That was a special day,
My problems rushed away.
My life began when I saw you,
Ever since then, I started off new.
Whenever we are together,
I just wish the moment would last forever.
You give me a smile when it seems impossible,
You are my everything,
My one true love, sent from above.
When I was little and I watched people kiss,
I thought it was wrong, but now I have this.
I have you, my perfect life,
My beautiful girl, my future wife.
I dont need money to be rich,
Because with you I am,
The richest of the rich.
I dont need no one else,
Just you and myself.
Us against the world,
Me and you girl.
I love you so much,
I love your touch.
I love your eyes,
It makes my heart fly.
You give me everything, you give me breath,
We will not part, not until death.
When I hold you in my arms,
The world makes sense,
When I feel your warmth,
I am in heaven.
You are my saviour,
My gaurdien angel,
My darling, beautiful, you're mine.
Never will I leave, I will stay throughout all time.

quasimodo1

01-20-2008, 05:47 PM

INFANT JOY

"I have no name:
I am but two days old."
What shall I call thee?
"I happy am,
Joy is my name."
Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet Joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while;
Sweet joy befall thee!

{for a new person named Penelope}

Tuninks

01-22-2008, 11:58 AM

I saw you walking on the street once,
Your hair kept in a bow of red silk.
And when we passed,
We glimpsed into each other's eyes like lovers do.

Your eyes were blue that day,
Almost as blue as the sky.
I smiled that day,
I smiled like never before.

I wish to smile like that,
one more time, please?
I wish to smile one more time,
Just to feel that warmth.

I saw you walking on the street once,
Your hair kept in a bow of red silk.
And when we passed,
We glimpsed into each other's eyes like lovers do.

I wish to smile like that,
As I lay on this cement,
As the world grows colder around me.
One more time, please?

quasimodo1

02-02-2008, 12:57 PM

MORTAL LIMIT
I saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming.
It rose from coniferous darkness, past gray jags
Of mercilessness, past whiteness, into the gloaming
Of dream-spectral light above the lazy purity of snow-snags.

There--west--were the Tetons.Snow-peaks would soon be
In dark profile to break constellations.Beyond what height
Hangs now the black speck?Beyond what range will gold eyes see
New ranges rise to mark a last scrawl of light?

....

symphony

02-04-2008, 01:33 PM

This is a Photograph of Me

It was taken some time ago
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you can see something in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

...

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/this-is-a-photograph-of-me/

AuntShecky

02-06-2008, 11:38 AM

For Wednesday, February 6, 2008.

From 1930, a brief passage from "Ash Wednesday,"
by T. S. Eliot:

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope

Bumble-BE

02-09-2008, 10:21 PM

My soul is dark - Oh! quickly string
The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let thy gentle fingers fling
Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,
That sound shall charm it forth again:
If in these eyes there lurk a tear,
'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.
But bid the strain be wild and deep,
Nor let thy notes of joy be first:
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
Or else this heavy heart will burst;
For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
And ached in sleepless silence, long;
And now 'tis doomed to know the worst,
And break at once - or yield to song.

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron

mukta581

02-10-2008, 08:58 AM

The Meaning

To love is to share life together
to build special plans just for two
to work side by side
and then smile with pride
as one by one, dreams all come true.

To love is to help and encourage
with smiles and sincere words of praise
to take time to share
to listen and care
in tender, affectionate ways.

To love is to have someone special
one who you can always depend
to be there through the years
sharing laughter and tears
as a partner, a lover, a friend.

To love is to make special memories
of moments you love to recall
of all the good things
that sharing life brings
love is the greatest of all.

I've learned the full meaning
of sharing and caring
and having my dreams all come true;
I've learned the full meaning
of being in love
by being and loving with you.

quasimodo1

02-14-2008, 12:54 AM

Poem 15
RIng ye the bels, ye yong men of the towne,
And leaue your wonted labors for this day:
This day is holy; doe ye write it dovvne,
that ye for euer it remember may.
This day the sunne is in his chiefest hight,
With Barnaby the bright,
>From whence declining daily by degrees,
He somewhat loseth of his heat and light,
When once the Crab behind his back he sees.
But for this time it ill ordained was,
To chose the longest day in all the yeare,
And shortest night, when longest fitter weare.
Yet neuer day so long, but late would passe.
Ring ye the bels, to make it weare away,
And bonefiers make all day,
And daunce about them, and about them sing:
that all the woods may answer, and your eccho ring.

quasimodo1

02-16-2008, 07:39 PM

River Remembered

The rhododendrons’ darkened leaves are curled
Into tight scrolls, whose dry, hermetic books
Will stay unread now, till the whitened world
Unlocks its warmth; the frozen local brooks

Muttering sotto voce at their own
Ice remind us of a general notion:
Some vast and abstract river’s monotone
Running through land to an eventual ocean ---

Not the one Wallace Stevens called “the river
Of rivers in Connecticut,” inspired
Taker of water from the sea, and giver
Of meaning to the name the land acquired

(Algonquian: “long [or, tidal]-river-at”)
Yet meditations on a name demand
Pulling new meanings out of an old hat:
Remembering this stream, I understand… {excerpt from River Remembered}

quasimodo1

03-01-2008, 03:53 PM

An Elegy On The Glory Of Her Sex, Mrs Mary Blaize
Good people all, with one accord
Lament for Madam Blaize,
Who never wanted a good word,—
From those who spoke her praise.

The needy seldom passed her door,
And always found her kind;
She freely lent to all the poor,—
Who left a pledge behind.

She strove the neighbourhood to please
With manners wondrous winning;
And never followed wicked ways,—
Unless when she was sinning.

At church, in silks and satins new,
With hoop of monstrous size,
She never slumbered in her pew,—
But when she shut her eyes.

Her love was sought, I do aver,
By twenty beaux and more;
The king himself has followed her,—
When she has walked before.

But now her wealth and finery fled,
Her hangers-on cut short all;
The doctors found, when she was dead,—
Her last disorder mortal.

Let us lament in sorrow sore,
For Kent Street well may say
That had she lived a twelvemonth more,—
She had not died today.

AuntShecky

03-01-2008, 08:54 PM

A gorgeous poem for the waning days of winter. The second stanza and the penultimate stanza may rank as some of the finest lines ever written in nineteenth century
English poetry.

The Garden of Proserpine
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

Here life has death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.

No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.

Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
Comes out of darkness morn.

Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.

Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.

She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.

There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.

We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.

quasimodo1

03-05-2008, 11:46 PM

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)

Always dear to me was this lonely hill,
And this hedge, which from me so great a part
Of the farthest horizon excludes the gaze.
But as I sit and watch, I invent in my mind
endless spaces beyond, and superhuman
silences, and profoundest quiet;
wherefore my heart
almost loses itself in fear. And as I hear the wind
rustle through these plants, I compare
that infinite silence to this voice:
and I recall to mind eternity,
And the dead seasons, and the one present
And alive, and the sound of it. So in this
Immensity my thinking drowns:
And to shipwreck is sweet for me in this sea.

quasimodo1

03-17-2008, 09:17 AM

Oh gracious moon, now as the year turns,
I remember how, heavy with sorrow,
I climbed this hill to gaze on you,
And then as now you hung above those trees
Illuminating all. But to my eyes
Your face seemed clouded, temulous
From the tears that rose beneath my lids,
So painful was my life: and is, my
Dearest moon; its tenor does not change.
And yet, memory and numbering the epochs
Of my grief is pleasing to me. How welcome
In that youthful time -when hope's span is long,
And memory short -is the remembrance even of
Past sad things whose pain endures.

Giacomo Leopardi

quasimodo1

03-22-2008, 12:39 PM

A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

quasimodo1

03-29-2008, 04:04 PM

Ploughman at the Plough

HE behind the straight plough stands
Stalwart, firm shafts in his hands.

Naught he cares for wars and naught
For the fierce disease of thought.

Only for the winds, the sheer
Naked impule of the year,

Only for the soil which stares
Clean into God's face he cares.

In the stark might of his deed
There is more than art or creed;

In his wrist more strength is hid
Than in the monstrous pyramid;

Stauncher than stern Everest
Be the muscles of his breast;

Not the Atlantic sweeps a flood
Potent as the ploughman's blood.

He, his horse, his ploughshare, these
Are the onnly verities.

Dawn to dusk with God he stands,
The earth poised on his broad hands.

Louis Golding

zhanyundong

04-01-2008, 07:33 AM

The Solitary Reaper

Behold her， single in the field，

Yon solitary Highland Lass！

Reaping and singing by herself；

Stop here， or gently pass！

Alone she cuts and binds the grain，

And sings a melancholy strain；

O listen！ for the Vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt

More welcome notes to weary bands

Of travellers in some shady haunt，

Among Arabian sands：

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard

In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird，

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings？——

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old， unhappy， far-off things，

And battles long ago：

Or is it some more humble lay，

Familiar matter of to-day？

Some natural sorrow， loss， or pain，

That has been， and may be again？

Whate'er the theme， the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending；

I saw her singing at her work，

And o'er the sickle bending；——

I listened， motionless and still；

And， as I mounted up the hill，

The music in my heart I bore，

Long after it was heard no more.

quasimodo1

04-05-2008, 01:20 AM

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.

32. Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves

EARNEST, earthless, equal, attuneable, ' vaulty, voluminous, … stupendous
Evening strains to be tíme’s vást, ' womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ' her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height
Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ' stárs principal, overbend us,
Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth ' her being has unbound, her dapple is at an end, as- 5
tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; ' self ín self steedèd and páshed—qúite
Disremembering, dísmémbering ' áll now. Heart, you round me right
With: Óur évening is over us; óur night ' whélms, whélms, ánd will end us.
Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish ' damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black,
Ever so black on it. Óur tale, O óur oracle! ' Lét life, wáned, ah lét life wind 10
Off hér once skéined stained véined variety ' upon, áll on twó spools; párt, pen, páck
Now her áll in twó flocks, twó folds—black, white; ' right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind
But thése two; wáre of a wórld where bút these ' twó tell, each off the óther; of a rack
Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, ' thóughts agaínst thoughts ín groans grínd.