neglected poets

[quasimodo1]

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The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be the finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Wallace Stevens

[quasimodo1]

The Bayadere

[Ed. Note: "Bayadere" means "Hindu dancing girl."]

NEAR strange, weird temples, where the Ganges' tide
Bathes domed Lahore, I watched, by spice-trees fanned,
Her agile form in some quaint saraband,
A marvel of passionate chastity and pride.
Nude to the loins, superb and leopard-eyed,
With fragrant roses in her jeweled hand,
Before some Kaat-drunk Rajah, mute and grand,
Her flexile body bends, her white feet glide.
The dull Kinoors throb one monotonous tune,
And wail with zeal as in a hasheesh trance;
Her scintillant eyes in vague, ecstatic charm
Burn like black stars below the Orient moon,
While the suave, dreamy languor of the dance
Lulls the grim, drowsy cobra on her arm.

Francis S. Saltus

[quasimodo1]

The Song of Steel

Yea, art thou lord, O Man, since Tubal Cain
Brought me into being, white and torn with pain--
Wrung me, in fierce, hot agony of birth,
Writhing from out of the womb of mother earth.

Art thou, then, king, and did I make thee lord,
Clothe thee in mail and gird thee with the sword,
Give thee the plough, the ax, the whirring wheel--
To every subtle craft its tools of steel?

Look! We have slain the forests, thou and I--
Soiled the bright streams and murked the very sky;
Crushed the glad hills and shocked the quiet stars
With roaring factories and clanging cars!

Thou builder of machines, who dost not see!
That which thou mad'st to drive, is driving thee--
Ravening, tireless, pitiless its strain
For thy last ounce of work from hand and brain.
.........
Charles Buxton Going

[quasimodo1]

Beauty

HORNS to bulls wise Nature lends;
Horses she with hoofs defends;
Hares with nimble feet relieves;
Dreadful teeth to lions gives;
Fishes learn through streams to slide;
Birds through yielding air to glide;
Men to courage she supplies;
But to women these denies.
What then give she? Beauty, this
Both their arms and armor is:
She, that can this weapon use,
Fire and sword with ease subdues.

Anakreon (Translated by Thomas Stanley, 1651)

[quasimodo1]

A Country Boy in Winter

THE wind may blow the snow about,
For all I care, says Jack,
And I don't mind how cold it grows,
For then the ice won't crack.
Old folks may shiver all day long,
But I shall never freeze;
What cares a jolly boy like me
For winter days like these?

Far down the long snow-covered hills
It is such fun to coast,
So clear the road! the fastest sled
There is in school I boast.
The paint is pretty well worn off,
But then I take the lead;
A dandy sled's a loiterer,
And I go in for speed.

When I go home at supper-time,
Ki! but my cheeks are red!
They burn and sting like anything;
I'm cross until I'm fed.
You ought to see the biscuit go,
I am so hungry then;
And old Aunt Polly says that boys
Eat twice as much as men.

There's always something I can do
To pass the time away;
The dark comes quick in winter-time--
A short and stormy day
And when I give my mind to it,
It's just as father says,
I almost do a man's work now,
And help him many ways.

I shall be glad when I grow up
And get all through with school,
I'll show them by-and-by that I
Was not meant for a fool.
I'll take the crops off this old farm,
I'll do the best I can.
A jolly boy like me won't be
A dolt when he's a man.

I like to hear the old horse neigh
Just as I come in sight,
The oxen poke me with their horns
To get their hay at night.
Somehow the creatures seem like friends,
And like to see me come.
Some fellows talk about New York,
But I shall stay at home.

Sarah Orne Jewett 1849-1909/writer of short stories, novels, poetry and friends with Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry James, Tennyson, Kipling and Willa Cather

[quasimodo1]

The Marshes of Glynn
by Sidney Lanier
Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven


Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,--

Emerald twilights,--
Virginal shy lights,

Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,


Of the heavenly woods and glades,

That run to the radiant margianl sand-beach within


The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;--
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,--
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,--
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;--

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,
While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine;
But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,--
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke


Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,

That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,--

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face


The vast sweet visage of space.

To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,


For a mete and a mark

To the forest-dark:--

So:

Affable live-oak, leaning low,--
Thus--with your favor--soft, with a reverent hand,
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!)
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand
On the firm-packed sand

SIDNEY LANIER

[quasimodo1]

The Wall Street Pit

I SEE the hell of faces surge and whirl,
Like malestrom in the ocean--faces lean
And fleshless as the talons of a hawk--
Hot faces like the faces of the wolves
That track the traveller fleeing through the night--
Grim faces shrunken up and fallen in,
Deep-plowed like weather-eaten bark of oak--
Drawn faces like the faces of the dead,
Grown suddenly old upon the brink of Earth.

Is this a whirl of madmen ravening,
And blowing bubbles in their merriment?
Is Babel come again with shrieking crew
To eat the dust and drink the roaring wind?
And all for what? A handful of bright sand
To buy a shroud with and a length of earth?

Oh, saner are the hearts on stiller ways!
Thrice happier they who, far from these wild hours
Grow softly as the apples on a bough.
Wiser the plowman with his scudding blade,
Turning a straight, fresh furrow down a field--
Wiser the herdsman whistling to his heart,
In the long shadows at the break of day--
Wiser the fisherman with quiet hand,
Slanting his sail against the evening wind.

The swallows sweep back south again,
The green of May is edging all the boughs,
The shy arbutus shimmers in the wood,
And yet this hell of faces in the town--
This storm of tongues, this whirlpool roaring on,
Surrounded by the quiets of the hills;
The great calm stars forever overhead,
And, under all, the silence of the dead!

Edwin Markham originally Charles Edward Anson American poet, farmer, bronco-rider, ranch hand, teacher, school principal and superintendent

[quasimodo1]

Which are You?

THERE are two kinds of people on earth to-day;
Just two kinds of people, no more, I say.

Not the sinner and saint, for it's well understood,
The good are half bad, and the bad are half good.

Not the rich and the poor, for to rate a man's wealth,
You must first know the state of his conscience and health.

Not the humble and proud, for in life's little span,
Who puts on vain airs, is not counted a man.

Not the happy and sad, for the swift flying years
Bring each man his laughter and each man his tears.

No; the two kinds of people on earth I mean,
Are the people who lift, and the people who lean.

Wherever you go, you will find the earth's masses,
Are always divided in just these two classes.

And oddly enough, you will find too, I ween,
There's only one lifter to twenty who lean.

In which class are you? Are you easing the load,
Of overtaxed lifters, who toil down the road?

Or are you a leaner, who lets others share
Your portion of labor, and worry and care?

by Michael Wigglesworth, 1631-1705, American poet

[quasimodo1]

Strange Meeting

IT seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through caverns which titanic wars had groined,
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in sleep or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile I knew that sullen hall.
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained,
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns whooped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours
Was my hope also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For of my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold:
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift, with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariots wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells.
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint
I would have poured my spirit without stint.
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark--for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried, but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now..."

Wilfred Owen
Has war changed that much? quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

The Fourth Elegy

O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes?
We are not of one mind. Are not like birds
in unison migrating. And overtaken,
overdue, we thrust ourselves into the wind
and fall to earth into indifferent ponds.
Blossoming and withering we comprehend as one.
And somewhere lions roam, quite unaware,
in their magnificence, of any weaknesss.

But we, while wholly concentrating on one thing,
already feel the pressure of another.
Hatred is our first response. And lovers,
are they not forever invading one another's
boundaries? -although they promised space,
hunting and homeland. Then, for a sketch
drawn at a moment's impulse, a ground of contrast
is prepared, painfully, so that we may see.
For they are most exact with us. We do not know
the contours of our feelings. We only know
what shapes them from the outside.
............

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

[quasimodo1]

Art

IN placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt--a wind to freeze;
Sad patience--joyous energies;
Humility--yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity--reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel--Art.

Herman Melville

[quasimodo1]

I Was Made of This and This

(I WAS made of this and this --
An angel's prayer, a gipsy's kiss.)

My mother bore me prayerfully
And reared me sweet as a gift for God,
And taught me to look shudderingly
On ways my father trod.
...........

Gertrude Robinson Ross (from the best poems of 1923)

[quasimodo1]

I Was Made of This and This

(I WAS made of this and this --
An angel's prayer, a gipsy's kiss.)

My mother bore me prayerfully
And reared me sweet as a gift for God,
And taught me to look shudderingly
On ways my father trod.

They buried him long and long ago
(I just remember his eyes were blue),
He always did -- they say who know --
Things it was wrong to do.
............
Gertrude Robinson Ross (from the best poems of 1923)

[kiz_paws]

I cannot sing the old songs,
And even if I could,
I could not find a listener
To say that they were good.

For poetry is modern,
And poetry is "free,"
And poetry's "expression,"
And Poetry is Me.

And poets all are busy,
And poets have no time
To waste on words melodic,
Or spend on silly rhyme.
...........
Franklin P. Adams
From Christopher Columbus and Other Patriotic Verses (1931)

[quasimodo1]

Thomas Buchanan Read. 1822–1872

150. Sheridan's Ride

UP from the South at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door,
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar, 5
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.

And wider still those billows of war,
Thundered along the horizon's bar;
And louder yet into Winchester rolled 10
The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,
Making the blood of the listener cold,
As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.

But there is a road from Winchester town, 15
A good, broad highway leading down;
And there, through the flush of the morning light,
A steed as black as the steeds of night,
Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight,
As if he knew the terrible need; 20
He stretched away with his utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.

Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South,
The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth; 25
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster.
The heart of the steed, and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls; 30
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.

Under his spurning feet the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape sped away behind 35
Like an ocean flying before the wind,
And the steed, like a barque fed with furnace ire,
Swept on, with his wild eyes full of fire.
But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire;
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray, 40
With Sheridan only five miles away.

The first that the general saw were the groups
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;
What was done? what to do? a glance told him both,
Then, striking his spurs, with a terrible oath, 45
He dashed down the line 'mid a storm of huzzas,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;
By the flash of his eye, and the red nostril's play, 50
He seemed to the whole great army to say,
"I have brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester, down to save the day!"

Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!
Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man! 55
And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky,
The American soldier's Temple of Fame;
There with the glorious general's name,
Be it said, in letters both bold and bright, 60
"Here is the steed that saved the day,
By carrying Sheridan into the fight,
From Winchester, twenty miles away!"

Thomas Buchanan Read was just one of many poets who wrote immortal lines about the was that allowed the US to survive as a national entity. More soldiers died in one day at Antietem, Maryland than any other day in the military history of the United States.

[quasimodo1]

On the Birth of a Child
Lo -- to the battle-ground of Life,
Child, you have come, like a conquering shout,
Out of a struggle -- into strife;
Out of a darkness -- into doubt.

Girt with the fragile armor of Youth,
Child, you must ride into endless wars,
With the sword of protest, the buckler of truth,
And a banner of love to sweep the stars. . . .

About you the world's despair will surge;
Into defeat you must plunge and grope --
Be to the faltering, an urge;
Be to the hopeless years, a hope!

Be to the darkened world a flame;
Be to its unconcern a blow --
For out of its pain and tumult you came,
And into its tumult and pain you go.

The Independent Louis Untermeyer

[Janine]

Hi quai, here are several lovely, simplistic, and (perhaps) 'neglected poems' by Sara Teasdale:


Debt

What do I owe to you
Who loved me deep and long?
You never gave my spirit wings
Or gave my heart a song.

But oh, to him I loved
Who loved me not at all,
I owe the little open gate
That led thru heaven's wall.

Sara Teasdale


Jewels


If I should see your eyes again,
I know how far their look would go --
Back to a morning in the park
With sapphire shadows on the snow.

Or back to oak trees in the spring
When you unloosed my hair and kissed
The head that lay against your knees
In the leaf shadow's amethyst.

And still another shining place
We would remember -- how the dun
Wild mountain held us on its crest
One diamond morning white with sun.

But I will turn my eyes from you
As women turn to put away
The jewels they have worn at night
And cannot wear in sober day.

Sara Teasdale


I Am Not Yours

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love--put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

Sara Teasdale

Enough

It is enough for me by day
To walk the same bright earth with him;
Enough that over us by night
The same great roof of stars is dim.

I have no care to bind the wind
Or set a fetter on the sea--
It is enough to feel his love
Blow by like music over me.

Sara Teasdale

April Song

Willow in your April gown
Delicate and gleaming,
Do you mind in years gone by
All my dreaming?

Spring was like a call to me
That I could not answer,
I was chained to loneliness,
I, the dancer.

Willow, twinkling in the sun,
Still your leaves and hear me,
I can answer spring at last,
Love is near me!

Sara Teasdale

Would Live In Your Love

I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,
Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes;
I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me,
I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul as it leads.

Sara Teasdale

These are some 'romantic ones' for the 'youth' around here. How's that for keeping your thread alive, quasi?;)

[quasimodo1]

Fires

THE little fires that Nature lights --
The scilla's lamp, the daffodil --
She quenches, when of stormy nights
Her anger whips the hill.

The fires she lifts against the cloud --
The irised bow, the burning tree --
She batters down with curses loud,
Nor cares that death should be.

The fire she kindles in the soul --
The poet's mood, the rebel's thought --
She cannot master, for their coal
In other mines is wrought.

Joseph Campbell

[quasimodo1]

Premonition

THE muffled syllables that Nature speaks
Fill us with deeper longing for her word;
She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,
She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

A hidden light illumines all our seeing,
An unknown love enchants our solitude.
We feel and know that from the depths of being
Exhales an infinite, a perfect good.

.........

George Santayana

[kiz_paws]

Quasimodo1 -- I hope that you didn't think that I was being a smart-aleck by posting that poem by F.P. Adams. I just saw the thread about neglected poets, and thought that the poem kind of fit in .... in the sense the Adams was lamenting 'modern' poetry and its' freedoms, etc.

Anyhow, thought that I'd explain, because I didn't want you to think I was disrespecting you.

I like the poetry that you and Janine have posted, good thread. :)

[quasimodo1]

Where The Mind is Without Fear

WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Rabindranath Tagore

[kiz_paws]

Where The Mind is Without Fear

WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Rabindranath Tagore
I loved that one, Quasi. Thank you for posting it. :)

[quasimodo1]

The Fire Soul

I sat by my fire in the night, in the night,
The darkness grew deeper around me,
The last faint gleams of the flickering light
Faded out of my sight, into night, into night,
And the spell of revery bound me.

When sudden I saw in the vanishing light
A phantom hovering o'er me;
It wavered an instant in its flight;-
Then faded from sight, into night, into night,
And left but the darkness before me.

And yet so swift and sudden its flight,
So deep the shadows before me,
I knew not whether a beckoning sprite
Had glimmered white, in the night, in the night,
Or only a thought sped o'er me.

George Charles Selden

[uranderson]

Chaplinesque
by Hart Crane


We make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

*****************************

LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS AT SUNRISE
—W.S. Merwin

When it is not yet day
I am walking on centuries of dead chestnut leaves
In a place without grief
Though the oriole
Out of another life warns me
That I am awake

In the dark while the rain fell
The gold chanterelles pushed through a sleep that was not mine
Waking me
So that I came up the mountain to find them

Where they appear it seems I have been before
I recognize their haunts as though remembering
Another life

Where else am I walking even now
Looking for me

******************************

I don't know if these two qualify as neglected. They are certainly well known within academic circles, but I don't think they are very popular, sadly.

[quasimodo1]

Thank you Uranderson for a fine addition to this thread...quasimodo1

[kiz_paws]

LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS AT SUNRISE
—W.S. Merwin

When it is not yet day
I am walking on centuries of dead chestnut leaves
In a place without grief
Though the oriole
Out of another life warns me
That I am awake

In the dark while the rain fell
The gold chanterelles pushed through a sleep that was not mine
Waking me
So that I came up the mountain to find them

Where they appear it seems I have been before
I recognize their haunts as though remembering
Another life

Where else am I walking even now
Looking for me

******************************

I don't know if these two qualify as neglected. They are certainly well known within academic circles, but I don't think they are very popular, sadly.
I particularly enjoyed this one, thank you for submitting it. Oh, and a warm welcome to LitNet! :)

[uranderson]

I particularly enjoyed this one, thank you for submitting it. Oh, and a warm welcome to LitNet! :)


Thanks :)

That poem is from The Lice, one of his earliest books, and the first to show his distinctive, mature style. It was written in the late sixties. All of his work is more or less good, but there was a real magic to the poems in that book that he never really recaptured completely in his later stuff. I was lucky that one of my professors told me to start there, or I might not have ended up loving his work as much as I do.

[kiz_paws]

Thanks :)

That poem is from The Lice, one of his earliest books, and the first to show his distinctive, mature style. It was written in the late sixties. All of his work is more or less good, but there was a real magic to the poems in that book that he never really recaptured completely in his later stuff. I was lucky that one of my professors told me to start there, or I might not have ended up loving his work as much as I do.

And guess which book I shall try to find at my library now! Thanks, this promises to be a very good read. :)

[quasimodo1]

The Taj

WHITE, like a spectre seen when night is old
Yet stained with hues of many a tear and smart,
Cornelian, blood-stone, matched in callous art:
Aflame, like passion, like dominion cold,
Bed of imperial consorts whom none part
For ever (domed with glory, heart to heart)
Still whispering to the ages, 'Love is bold
And seeks the height, though rooted in the mould':
Touched, when the dawn floats in an opal mist
By fainter blush than opening roses own;
Calm in the evening's lucent amethyst;
Pearl-crowned, when midnight airs aside have blown
The clouds that rising moonlight faintly kissed;
-- An aspiration fixed, a sigh made stone.

H.G. Keene

[uranderson]

I particularly like the last line of that poem, quasimodo.

Here is one by Creeley:

The Rain

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quite, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it
..............

Robert Creeley

***********

An equally loved and hated poet, his stylistic oddity can either grate or enchant. I'm one of the ones that love him. I found an old book called "For Love and The Charm" in a tiny rural West Virginia library several years ago. I sat up all night reading it from cover to cover, something I've never done before or since with a book of poems. At that time in my life the poems spoke directly to the problems I had, being a young man and trying to come to terms with how to communicate (both with myself and others), to love (both myself and someone else) and how to "Be wet/with a decent happiness".

It turns out that the book was actually a combination of two of his early books "For Love" and "The Charm". Many of the poems were written to his wife, Bobbie.

As with Merwin I don't feel that he ever completely recaptured the magic of this early work in his long later career.

[quasimodo1]

A Likeness
Portrait Bust of an Unknown, Capitol, Rome


In every line a supple beauty --
The restless head a little bent --
Disgust of pleasure, scorn of duty,
The unseeing eyes of discontent.
I often come to sit beside him,
This youth who passed and left no trace
Of good or ill that did betide him,
Save the disdain upon his face.

The hope of all his House, the brother
Adored, the golden-hearted son,
Whom Fortune pampered like a mother;
And then, -- a shadow on the sun.
Whether he followed Cæsar's trumpet,
Or chanced the riskier game at home
To find how favor played the stumpet
In fickle politics at Rome;

Whether he dreamed a dream in Asia
He never could forget by day,
Or gave his youth to some Aspasia,
Or gamed his heritage away;
Once lost, across the Empire's border
This man would seek his peace in vain;
His look arraigns a social order
Somehow entrammelled with his pain.

"The dice of gods are always loaded";
One gambler, arrogant as they,
Fierce, and by fierce injustice goaded,
Left both his hazard and the play.
Incapable of compromises,
Unable to forgive or spare,
The strange awarding of the prizes
He had not fortitude to bear.

Tricked by the forms of things material --
The solid-seeming arch and stone,
The noise of war, the pomp imperial,
The heights and depths about a throne --
He missed, among the shapes diurnal,
The old, deep-travelled road from pain,
The thoughts of men which are eternal,
In which, eternal, men remain.

Ritratto d'ignoto; defying
Things unsubstantial as a dream --
An Empire, long in ashes lying --
His face still set against the stream.
Yes, so he looked, that gifted brother
I loved, who passed and left no trace,
Not even -- luckier than this other --
His sorrow in a marble face.
Ritratto d'ignoto: Probably a reference to Antonello da Messina's famous
masterpiece "Ritratto d'Ignoto" (Portrait of an unknown man)
http://www.sicily.cres.it/uk/localita/PA/cefalu/fotografie/dipinti/ritratto.html
Scribner's / Willa Sibert Cather

[quasimodo1]

THE PICTURE

by: Anacreon (c.572-488 BC)

AINTER, by unmatch'd desert
Master of the Rhodian art,
Come, my absent mistress take,
As I shall describe her: make
First her hair, as black as bright,
And if colours so much right
Can but do her, let it too
Smell of aromatic dew;
Underneath this shade, must then
Draw her alabaster brow;
Her dark eyebrows so dispose
That they neither part nor close
But by a divorce so slight
Be disjoined, may cheat the sight:
From her kindly killing eye
Make a flash of lightning fly,
Sparkling like Minerva's, yet
Like Cythera's mildly sweet:
Roses in milk swimming seek
For the pattern of her cheek;
In her lip such moving blisses,
As from all may challenge kisses;
Round about her neck (outvying
Parian stone) the Graces flying;
And o'er all her limbs at last
A loose purple mantle cast;
But so ordered that the eye
Some part naked may descry,
An essay by which the rest
That lies hidden may be guess'd.
So, to life th' hast come so near,
All of her, but voice, is here.

TRANSLATED BY THOMAS STANLEY, 1651

[chasestalling]

neglected no longer. first stanza is delightful. the rest? i'll have to take a second look.

[quasimodo1]

Men, Women, and Words

CHLORINDA in the slipping gown
Unblushingly parades her soul
For clinical inspection as
Example of the Sapphic rôle;

While Doris shudders gracefully
And droops against the man in black,
Confessing that she marvels at
His length of limb and breadth of back.

(Dear Doris: so ingenuous!
Emotionally so sincere!)
The man in black is wholly charmed,
And lends a firm, hedonic ear.
.....

Ben Ray Redman

[quasimodo1]

To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence

I WHO am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.

I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure in the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.

But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?

How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Maeonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago,

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet Engligh tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.

Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.

James Elroy Flecker

[chasestalling]

i'm referring to a likeness, a portrait bust of an unknown. as i said the 1st stanza is delightful and the rest haunting. byron's the giaour bears a strong resemblence thematic wise to this neglected poem. hmm...

[quasimodo1]

To Chasestalling: Since you brought up this point of comparison...thought mabe let's take a look. This is Byron's poem...usersites.horrorfind.com/home/vampires/ennoia/thegiaour1.htm Next I'll post some information on Willa Sibert Cather. quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

To Chasestalling: Willa Sibert Cather (1873-1947). {Quote by Oscar Levant..."Imitation is the sincerest form of plaigarism"} I don't think that's what happened here. Cather, had an unbelievable life, overcoming so many things includiing being considered a Nebraskan. She lived in Pittsburg, NY, and was born in VA. She had the kind of old school classic education and would surely have been well read enough to know of Byron's work. Did some of this echo in a "Likeness"; i think not. Here's a great link...http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1207.html

[littlewing53]

quasi...i was wondering when i saw her first poem you posted if that was wila who wrote my antonia...and you are correct awesome writer...read all her books...she was a woman who was definitely before her time and lived her life as she so desired...i have been reading the poems you've posted and some of them are really incredible...thanks for bringing these authors to our attention...

[quasimodo1]

Marconi's Cottage

by Medbh McGuckian





Marconi's Cottage

Small and watchful as a lighthouse,
A pure clear place of no particular childhood,
It is as if the sea had spoken in you
And then the words had dried.

Bitten and fostered by the sea
And by the British spring,
There seems only this one way of happening,
And a poem to prove it has happened.

Now I am close enough, I open my arms
To your castle-thick walls, I must learn
To use your wildness when I lock and unlock
Your door weaker than kisses.
...........

[quasimodo1]

Just one more by Medbh (pronounced Maeve, Gaelic) McGuekian Minus 18 Street from the collection, "On Ballycastle Beach"

I never loved you more
Than when I let you sleep another hour,
As if you intended to make such a gate of time
Your home. Speechless as night animals,
The breeze and I breakfasted
With the pure desire of speech; but let
Each petal of your dream have its chance,
The many little shawls that covered you:
..............

[quasimodo1]

Sappho (c.610 - c.580 BC)
Translated by William Bowles (17th century)
Sapho's Ode out of Longinus.

By the same.


I.

THE Gods are not more blest than he,
Who fixing his glad Eyes on thee,
With thy bright Rays his Senses chears,
And drinks with ever thirsty ears.
The charming Musick of thy Tongue,
Does ever hear, and ever long;
That sees with more than humane Grace,
Sweet smiles adorn thy Angel Face.

II.

But when with kinder beams you shine,
And so appear much more divine,
My feeble sense and dazl'd sight,
No more support the glorious light,
And the fierce Torrent of Delight.
Oh! then I feel my Life decay,
My ravish'd Soul then flies away,
Then Faintness does my Limbs surprize,
And Darkness swims before my Eyes.

III.

Then my Tongue fails, and from my Brow
The liquid drops in silence flow,
Then wand'ring Fires run through my Blood,
And Cold binds up the stupid Flood,
All pale, and breathless then I lye,
I sigh, I tremble, and I dye.

[quasimodo1]

Poem: THE YOUNG MAN’S WISH.



[From an old copy, without printer’s name; probably one from the Aldermary Church-yard press. Poems in triplets were very popular during the reign of Charles I., and are frequently to be met with during the Interregnum, and the reign of Charles II.]


If I could but attain my wish,
I’d have each day one wholesome dish,
Of plain meat, or fowl, or fish.

A glass of port, with good old beer,
In winter time a fire burnt clear,
Tobacco, pipes, an easy chair.

In some clean town a snug retreat,
A little garden ‘fore my gate,
With thousand pounds a year estate.

After my house expense was clear,
Whatever I could have to spare,
The neighbouring poor should freely share.

To keep content and peace through life,
I’d have a prudent cleanly wife,
Stranger to noise, and eke to strife.

Then I, when blest with such estate,
With such a house, and such a mate,
Would envy not the worldly great.

Let them for noisy honours try,
Let them seek worldly praise, while I
Unnoticèd would live and die.

But since dame Fortune’s not thought fit
To place me in affluence, yet
I’ll be content with what I get.

He’s happiest far whose humble mind,
Is unto Providence resigned,
And thinketh fortune always kind.

Then I will strive to bound my wish,
And take, instead of fowl and fish,
Whate’er is thrown into my dish.

Instead of wealth and fortune great,
Garden and house and loving mate,
I’ll rest content in servile state.

I’ll from each folly strive to fly,
Each virtue to attain I’ll try,
And live as I would wish to die.
{Author unidentified at least since 1685}

[quasimodo1]

The Sonnets to Orpheus: XIX
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Though the world keeps changing its form
as fast as a cloud,
still what is accomplished falls home
to the Primeval,

Over the change and the passing,
larger and freer,
soars your eternal song,
god with the lyre.
..............
Translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell

[quasimodo1]

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
from My Childhood-Home I See Again


My childhood's home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.

O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise,

And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-tones that, passing by,
In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar—
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.

[uranderson]

Wow, not bad at all. It has the same sense of building drama that made his speeches so incredible.

[quasimodo1]

Lincoln wrote three more elegies as he called them, two were published anonymously and one I'm still tracking down. quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

Through a Glass, Darkly
General George Patton

Through the travail of the ages,
Midst the pomp and toil of war,
Have I fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon this star.

In the form of many people
In all panoplies of time
Have I seen the luring vision
Of the Victory Maid, sublime.

I have battled for fresh mammoth,
I have warred for pastures new,
I have listed to the whispers
When the race trek instinct grew.

I have known the call to battle
In each changeless changing shape
From the high souled voice of conscience
To the beastly lust for rape.

I have sinned and I have suffered,
Played the hero and the knave;
Fought for belly, shame, or country,
And for each have found a grave.

I cannot name my battles
For the visions are not clear,
Yet, I see the twisted faces
And I feel the rending spear.

Perhaps I stabbed our Savior
In His sacred helpless side.
Yet, I've called His name in blessing
When after times I died.

In the dimness of the shadows
Where we hairy heathens warred,
I can taste in thought the lifeblood;
We used teeth before the sword.

While in later clearer vision
I can sense the coppery sweat,
Feel the pikes grow wet and slippery
When our Phalanx, Cyrus met.

Hear the rattle of the harness
Where the Persian darts bounced clear,
See their chariots wheel in panic
From the Hoplite's leveled spear.

See the goal grow monthly longer,
Reaching for the walls of Tyre.
Hear the crash of tons of granite,
Smell the quenchless eastern fire.

Still more clearly as a Roman,
Can I see the Legion close,
As our third rank moved in forward
And the short sword found our foes.

Once again I feel the anguish
Of that blistering treeless plain
When the Parthian showered death bolts,
And our discipline was in vain.

I remember all the suffering
Of those arrows in my neck.
Yet, I stabbed a grinning savage
As I died upon my back.

Once again I smell the heat sparks
When my Flemish plate gave way
And the lance ripped through my entrails
As on Crecy's field I lay.

In the windless, blinding stillness
Of the glittering tropic sea
I can see the bubbles rising
Where we set the captives free.

Midst the spume of half a tempest
I have heard the bulwarks go
When the crashing, point blank round shot
Sent destruction to our foe.

I have fought with gun and cutlass
On the red and slippery deck
With all Hell aflame within me
And a rope around my neck.

And still later as a General
Have I galloped with Murat
When we laughed at death and numbers
Trusting in the Emperor's Star.

Till at last our star faded,
And we shouted to our doom
Where the sunken road of Ohein
Closed us in it's quivering gloom.

So but now with Tanks a'clatter
Have I waddled on the foe
Belching death at twenty paces,
By the star shell's ghastly glow.

So as through a glass, and darkly*
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o'er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought.

So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.

[quasimodo1]

Moonlight

WHAT time the meanest brick and stone
Take on a beauty not their own,
And past the flaw of builded wood
Shines the intention whole and good,
And all the little homes of man
Rise to a dimmer, nobler span;
When colour's absence gives escape
To the deeper spirit of the shape,

-- Then earth's great architecture swells
Among her mountains and her fells
Under the moon to amplitude
Massive and primitive and rude:

-- Then do the clouds like silver flags
Stream out above the tattered crags,
And black and silver all the coast
Marshalls its hunched and rocky host,
And headlands striding sombrely
Buttress the land against the sea,
-- The darkened land, the brightening wave --
And moonlight slants through Merlin's cave.

Victoria Sackville-West

[quasimodo1]

The Good Wife Taught Her Daughter
by Medbh McGuckian


Lordship is the same activity
Whether performed by lord or lady.
Or a lord who happens to be a lady,
All the source and all the faults.


A woman steadfast in looking is a callot,
And any woman in the wrong place
Or outside of her proper location
Is, by definition, a foolish woman.


The harlot is talkative and wandering
By the way, not bearing to be quiet,
Not able to abide still at home,
Now abroad, now in the streets,


Now lying in wait near the corners,
Her hair straying out of its wimple.
The collar of her shift and robe
Pressed one upon the other.


She goes to the green to see to her geese,
And trips to wrestling matches and taverns.
The said Margery left her home
In the parish of Bishopshill,


And went to a house, the which
The witness does not remember,
And stayed there from noon
Of that day until the darkness of night.


But a whip made of raw hippopotamus
Hide, trimmed like a corkscrew,
And anon the creature was stabled
In her wits as well as ever she was biforn,


And prayed her husband as so soon
As he came to her that she might have
The keys to her buttery
To take her meat and drink.


He should never have my good will
For to make my sister for to sell
Candle and mustard in Framlyngham,
Or fill her shopping list with crossbows,


Almonds, sugar and cloth.
The captainess, the vowess,
Must use herself to work readily
As other gentilwomen doon,


In the innermost part of her house,
In a great chamber far from the road.
So love your windows as little as you can,
For we be, either of us, weary of other.

[Poetess]

I can`t read all of them now!
But I can say that "I cannot sing old songs" had taken me by!
And about Sara Teasdale.. some of the so-called "neglected poems" of hers are NEVER neglected by me.. especially "I Am Not Yours".. and I long to be a droplet of rain lost in an ocean

[quasimodo1]

(I think kiz-paws likes this poet:)
Thoughts on the Cosmos


I

I do not hold with him who thinks
The world is jonahed by a jinx;
That everything is sad and sour,
And life a withered hothouse flower.

II

I hate the Polyanna pest
Who says that All Is for the Best,
And hold in high, unhidden scorn
Who sees the Rose, nor feels the Thorn.

III

I do not like extremists who
Are like the pair in (I) and (II);
But how I hate the wabbly gink,
Like me, who knows not what to think!

Franklin P. Adams 1881-1060

[quasimodo1]

Franklin P. Adams, again:
The Jazzy Bard


Labor is a thing I do not like;
Workin's makes me want to go on strike;
Sittin' in an office on a sunny afternoon,
Thinkin o' nothin' but a ragtime tune.

'Cause I got the blues, I said I got the blues,
I got the paragraphic blues,
Been a'sittin' here since ha' pas' ten,
Bitin' a hole in my fountain pen;
Brain's all stiff in the creakin' joints,
Can't make up no wheezes on the fourteen points;
Can't think o' nothin' 'bout the end o' booze,
'Cause I got the para--, I said I got the paragraphic, I mean the column constructin' blues.

Franklin P. Adams

[quasimodo1]

Poetry Page

By cutting to the truth of our experience, poetry shakes us and awakens us. Through it we open our eyes to what Robert Frost called “the pleasure of taking pains.” And what is gratitude besides this playful engagement with life as it unfolds in all its challenges and delights?


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

Lösch mir die Augen aus
by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Br. David Steindl-Rast
Every now and then we let ourselves imagine the worst that could happen to us: How could we survive? This testimony of dedication and trust attests to an enduring relationship that goes beyond our vision, our hearing, our speech, our mobility, and even our ability to think...a relationship which cannot be extinguished. In the sureness of this relationship -- and our ability to surrender to it -- lies consolation beyond measure.
(PCC)
Read Rilke's original in German.

[quasimodo1]

Lay of Ancient Rome

OH, the Roman was a rogue,
He erat was, you bettum;
He ran his automobilis
And smoked his cigarettum;
He wore a diamond studibus
And elegant cravattum,
A maxima cum laude shirt,
And stylish hattum!

He loved the luscious hic-haec-hoc,
And bet on games and equi;
At times he won, at others, though,
He got it in the necqui;
He winked (quo usque tandem?)
At puellas on the Forum,
And sometimes even made
Those goo-goo oculorum!

He frequently was seen
At combats gladitorial,
And ate enough to feed
Ten boarders at Memorial;
He often went on sprees
And said, on starting homus,
"Hic labor --- opus est,
Oh, where's my hic--hic--domus?"

Although he lived in Rome--
Of all the arts the middle--
He was (excuse the phrase)
A horrid individ'l;
Ah! what a diff'rent thing
Was the homo (dative, hominy)
Of far-away B.C.
From us of Anno Domini.

Thomas Ybarra

[quasimodo1]

Street in Agrigentum by Salvatore Quasimodo
There is still the wind that I remember
firing the manes of horses, racing,
slanting, across the plains,
the wind that stains and scours the sandstone,

and the heart of gloomy columns, telamons,
overthrown in the grass. Spirit of the ancients, grey

with rancour, return on the wind,
breathe in that feather-light moss
that covers those giants, hurled down by heaven.
How alone in the space that’s still yours!
And greater, your pain, if you hear, once more,
the sound that moves, far off, towards the sea,
where Hesperus streaks the sky with morning:
the jew’s-harp vibrates
in the waggoner’s mouth
as he climbs the hill of moonlight, slow,
in the murmur of Saracen olive trees.
(namesake accidental) quasi

[quasimodo1]

Magnets

A FAR look in absorbed eyes, unaware
Of what some gazer thrills to gather there;
A happy voice, singing to itself apart,
That pulses new blood through a listener's heart;
Old fortitude; and, 'mid an hour of dread,
The scorn of all odds in a proud young head;--
These are themselves, and being but what they are,
Of others' praise or pity have no care,
Yet still are magnets to another's need.
Invisibly as wind, blowing stray seed,
Life breathes on life, though ignorant what it brings,
And spirit touches spirit on the strings
Where music is: courage from courage glows
In secret; shy powers to themselves unclose;
And the most solitary hope, that gray
Patience has sister'd, ripens far away
In young bosoms. Oh, we have failed and failed,
And never knew if we or the world ailed,
Clouded and thwarted; yet perhaps the best
Of all we do and dream of lives unguessed.

Laurence Binyon

[quasimodo1]

Decalogue by Ambrose Bierce
Thou shalt no God but me adore:
'Twere too expensive to have more.

No images nor idols make
For Roger Ingersoll to break.

Take not God's name in vain: select
A time when it will have effect.

Work not on Sabbath days at all,
But go to see the teams play ball.

Honor thy parents. That creates
For life insurance lower rates.

Kill not, abet not those who kill;
Thou shalt not pay thy butcher's bill.

Kiss not thy neighbor's wife, unless
Thine own thy neighbor doth caress.

Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete
Successfully in business. Cheat.

Bear not false witness--that is low--
But "hear 'tis rumored so and so."

Covet thou naught that thou hast got
By hook or crook, or somehow, got.

[quasimodo1]

On Hearing Of A Death by Rainer Maria Rilke
We lack all knowledge of this parting. Death
does not deal with us. We have no reason
to show death admiration, love or hate;
his mask of feigned tragic lament gives us

a false impression. The world's stage is still
filled with roles which we play. While we worry
that our performances may not please,
death also performs, although to no applause.

But as you left us, there broke upon this stage
a glimpse of reality, shown through the slight
opening through which you dissapeared: green,
evergreen, bathed in sunlight, actual woods.

We keep on playiing, still anxious, our difficult roles
declaiming, accompanied by matching gestures
as required. But your presence so suddenly
removed from our midst and from our play, at times

overcomes us like a sense of that other
reality: yours, that we are so overwhelmed
and play our actual lives instead of the performance,
forgetting altogehter the applause.

[quasimodo1]

John Clare (1793-1864) Insects by John Clare
These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard,
And happy units of a numerous herd
Of playfellows, the laughing Summer brings,
Mocking the sunshine on their glittering wings,
How merrily they creep, and run, and fly!
No kin they bear to labour's drudgery,
Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose;
And where they fly for dinner no one knows—
The dew-drops feed them not—they love the shine
Of noon, whose suns may bring them golden wine
All day they're playing in their Sunday dress—
When night reposes, for they can do no less;
Then, to the heath-bell's purple hood they fly,
And like to princes in their slumbers lie,
Secure from rain, and dropping dews, and all,
In silken beds and roomy painted hall.
So merrily they spend their summer-day,
Now in the corn-fields, now in the new-mown hay.
One almost fancies that such happy things,
With coloured hoods and richly burnished wings,
Are fairy folk, in splendid masquerade
Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid,
Keeping their joyous pranks a mystery still,
Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill.

[quasimodo1]

Futurelessness by Ivan Donn Carswell
Why can't I keep out of harm's way?
Am I so preoccupied, simultaneously looking ahead,
concurrently looking behind; concerned to avoid
what I'll fail to heed and blunder on into calamity?
I lurch with no confidence from moment to moment
in a blindness as complete as if we'd never met.
Colliding with figments of your imagination or mine,
recoiling from dead-ends and dangling conversations,
half-truths and dyspeptic distortions.
And when we crash into the inevitable wall
I am gutted by its abruptness.
There is scant time to plan avoidance as each clash is
instant and after our loud but brittle utterances
you leave in mnemonic silence and I burn to ashes.
The fire is ruthless, it devours egregiously, consuming
all reason without respite, and though I cringe
in its aftermath, shocked in a charred hell,
cursing my stupidity bodes no pyrrhic insight.

Time to count the torrid cost of careless words inflicted on
your battered dignity, time to close the ugly face that chanted
out invective foul and shattered amity, time to quell
the fervid rush of feckless wrath which weighs
against the bloodied loss this manic madness brusque
and hot has flung across the face of sanity.

And I think of the words we've used; how we've talked
without touching the matter directly, or walking it to sleep,
not laying a hand on its heart, resolving nothing other
than knowing it hurt too much to say more, or
having said too much afraid we would be buried too deep.
And I fear the litanies, the trifling banter which offended none
until a fatal line was uttered and the battle thus begun.
And now I think a thousand lines and fear to utter one.

Who are these strangers in our house?
Cavalier of feeling, lacking sensitivity,
cartoons of battered self-esteem circling vulturously.
What were their origins and why are they so,
are they one and same we know?
I wish they'd stay their distance but fear
they share a common path - they bear a strange resemblance.

When I equate your sapping pain the sickness
in my stomach quells my need to eat or drink and bile
derides a bitter taste upon my tongue. I tremble in the aftershock,
ravaged numb with boiling shame; my deed it was, I knew it not
for what it was and bear the blame. I wear this millstone
as a symbol of my fate, a fate that weighs alone.
That you should feel the weight belies
your quiet, so deathly hushed it is without you home.

Time to count the torrid cost of careless words inflicted on
your battered dignity, time to close the ugly face that chanted
out invective foul and shattered amity, time to quell
the fervid rush of feckless wrath which weighs
against the bloodied loss this manic madness brusque
and hot has flung across the face of sanity.

Where is the person you once were?
Who is the one you have become? Can I find you in between?
I searched in memories which span the years we knew together
but rummaged in a closet bare. It is as if
you’d left with every vestige of yourself, and though
mementos and odds and ends remain
they are cold and inanimate, giving no clues.
I don't know who the new You is, and I am sorely afraid
it isn't the same You I knew. I don't know the new me either; I can't see,
I am blinded by futureless prospects which appal and terrify me.

I know of your wont for contentment for when you are not
I am despondent and spiritless; yet you need me to be happy
to mollify your joy, which to me is as much affliction as frivolity.
It is difficult to rise above the effect you have and impossible to deflect
this curse of your decent geniality and courteous respect,
you are the civilised soul; I, the angst-ridden ghoul.
Had we common joys to share and shared them not
to keep a pact we never made, preserve a calm of artifice,
I'd be a hand to misery - but share we did and kept a peace
we'd never trade. Low as I am and ready to sleep,
I smile to recall the gentle snores I hear
through the walls that separate us now. They woke me at times,
I could touch to reassure you, if not myself,
that at the heart of the matter, the matter was we were together.
Now I'm not so sure.
Can we be together still but need to be apart?

Time to count the torrid cost of careless words inflicted on
your battered dignity, time to close the ugly face that chanted
out invective foul and shattered amity, time to quell
the fervid rush of feckless wrath which weighs
against the bloodied loss this manic madness brusque
and hot has flung across the face of sanity.
© I.D. Carswell

[quasimodo1]

The Buddha in the Glory (translated by C. F. MacIntyre)

Center of centers, of all seeds the germ,
O almond self-enclosed and growing sweeter,
from here clear to the starry swarms
your fruit's flesh grows. I greet you.

Lo, you feel how nothing more depends
on you; into infinity your shell
waxes; there the strong sap works and fills you.
And from beyond a gloriole descends

to help, for high above your head your suns,
full and fulgurating, turn.
And yet, already in you is begun
something which longer than the suns shall burn.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, from Neue Gedichte: Anderer Teil

[tinustijger]

That's a beautiful translation! I only knew this one, I don't know who translated it:

Buddha in Glory

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.


The original is beautiful too!

Buddha in der Glorie

Mitte aller Mitten, Kern der Kerne,
Mandel, die sich einschließt und versüßt, -
dieses Alles bis an alle Sterne
ist dein Fruchtfleisch: Sei gegrüßt.

Sieh, du fühlst, wie nichts mehr an dir hängt;
im Unendlichen ist deine Schale,
und dort steht der starke Saft und drängt.
Und von außen hilft ihm ein Gestrahle,

denn ganz oben werden deine Sonnen
voll und glühend umgedreht.
Doch in dir ist schon begonnen,
was die Sonnen übersteht.


Rainer Maria Rilke, Sommer 1908 (vor dem 15.7.), Paris

[quasimodo1]

The Volunteer
Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent
Toiling at ledgers in a city grey,
Thinking that so his days would drift away
With no lance broken in life's tournament:
Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes
The gleaming eagles of the legions came,
And horsemen, charging under phantom skies,
Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.

And now those waiting dreams are satisfied;
From twilight to the halls of dawn he went;
His lance is broken; but he lies content
With that high hour, in which he lived and died.
And falling thus he wants no recompense,
Who found his battle in the last resort;
Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence,
Who goes to join the men of Agincourt.

Herbert Asquith
May, 1915

[quasimodo1]

FOLLY, n. That "gift and faculty divine" whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns his life.

Folly! although Erasmus praised thee once
In a thick volume, and all authors known,
If not thy glory yet thy power have shown,
Deign to take homage from thy son who hunts
Through all thy maze his brothers, fool and dunce,
To mend their lives and to sustain his own,
However feebly be his arrows thrown,

Howe'er each hide the flying weapons blunts.
All-Father Folly! be it mine to raise,
With lusty lung, here on his western strand
With all thine offspring thronged from every land,
Thyself inspiring me, the song of praise.
And if too weak, I'll hire, to help me bawl,
Dick Watson Gilder, gravest of us all.
Aramis Loto Frope......................................author' s name a Bierce fabrication

[tinustijger]

By the way: would you call Rainer Maria Rilke a neglected poet? (I wouldn't)

[quasimodo1]

To Tinustijger: Guess Rilke is not neglected like most of the others but in this country perhaps, underappreciated. You can speak Deutchlander, yes? In Europe he is, and I'm guessing, more widely known; especially to poetry lovers in Germany, Austria and that general area. Have you ever heard of a Romanian poet ...E.M.Cioran? quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

Companions
A Tale of A Grandfather

I KNOW not of what we pondr'd
Or made pretty pretence to talk
As, her hand within mine, we wander'd
Tow'rd the pool by the limetree walk,
While the dew fell in showers from the passion flowers
And the blush-rose bent on her stalk.

I cannot recall her figure:
Was it regal as Juno's own?
Or only a trifle bigger
Than the elves who surround the throne
Of the Faery Queen, and are seen, I ween,
By mortals in dreams alone?

What her eyes were like, I know not;
Perhaps they were blurr'd with tears;
And perhaps in your skies there glow not
(On the contrary) clearer spheres.
No! as to her eyes I am just as wise
As you or the cat, my dears.

Her teeth, I presume, were 'pearly':
But which was she, brunette or blonde?
Her hair, was it quaintly curly,
Or as straight as a beadle's wand?
That I fail'd to remark;--it was rather dark
And shadowy round the pond.

Then the hand that reposed so snugly
In mine--was it plump or spare?
Was the countenance fair or ugly?
Nay, children, you have me there!
My eyes were p'haps blurr'd; and besides I'd heard
That it's horribly rude to stare.

And I--was I brusque and surly?
Or oppressively bland and fond?
Was I partial to rising early?
Or why did we twain abscond,
All breakfastless too, from the public view
To prowl by a misty pond?

What pass'd, what was felt or spoken--
Whether anything pass'd at all--
And whether the heart was broken
That beat under that shelt'ring shawl--
(If shawl she had on, which I doubt)--has gone,
Yes, gone from me past recall.

Was I haply the lady's suitor?
Or her uncle? I can't make out--
Ask your governess, dears, or tutor.
For myself, I'm in hopeless doubt
As to why we were there, who on earth we were,
And what this is all about.

Charles S. Calverley.......English poet, humorist,parodist, translator, lawyer. (1831-1884)

[tinustijger]

@quasimodo: I speak a little German yes, I live near to the German border (Holland) I never heard of that poet you mentioned though! I love Rilke! But the first poems I read by him, were English translations!

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Beautiful.

[quasimodo1]

To tinustijger: The only translator of Rilke that is any good is Mitchell (my opinion) and you are lucky to be able to read him in the original German. quasimodo1

[tinustijger]

Haha! The original of der Panther is really spectaculair, the translation I posted is not to be compared with the original, you're right about that!

[Nossa]

These poems are amazing, thank you for sharing. And I agree, some poets aren't really neglected, at least not by everyone, like Sarah Teasdale, she's really good, and I think she's not really neglected!

[quasimodo1]

The beauty of flames

The beauty of flames lies in their strange play, beyond all proportion and harmony. Their diaphanous flare symbolizes at once grace and tragedy, innocence and despair, sadness and voluptuousness. The burning transcendence has something of the lightness of great purifications. I wish the fiery transcendence would carry me up and throw me into a sea of flames, where, consumed by their delicate and insidious tongues, I would die an ecstatic death. The beauty of flames creates the illusion of a pure, sublime death similar to the light of dawn. Immaterial, death in flames is like a burning of light, graceful wings. Do only butterflies die in flames? What about those devoured by the flames within them?

from EM Cioran's book "On the Heights of Despair."

[quasimodo1]

Excert from generic biography of Guilluame Apollinaire

THE FRENCH-ITALIAN-POLISH poet Guillaume Apollinaire wasn't quite sure of his identity. Right in the middle of a hectic life of pleasure in early 20th century Paris, he halted for one moment - and asked himself "who am I", in a stanza without punctuation.
He was born in Rome in 1880 and died in Paris at the end of the war in 1918. At the time of his funeral, people ran out into the streets shouting: "Down with Guillaume!" But this did not refer to the poet, but to the German emperor Wilhelm (Guillaume in French). The chief mourners, following the casket - his mother and all kinds of artists - were shocked, supposing the uproar was on account of the dead poet.
Apollinaire's real name was Wilhelm-Apollinaris von Kostrowitzky. His mother was a Polish noble lady, who lived in the Vatican. Without being married, she became pregnant and had two sons. Apollinaire's maternal grandfather was a colonel and commander of the papal Swiss guards. But nobody knows for certain who Guillaume's father was. In Paris there were rumours that the pope himself was the father. This was neither confirmed nor denied by the poet.

[quasimodo1]

Mirabeau Bridge by Guillaume Apollinaire..............................see previous posting
Under Mirabeau Bridge runs the Seine
And our loves
Must I remember them
Joy came always after pain
Let arriving night explain
Days fade I remain
Arm in arm let us stay face to face
While below
The bridge at our hands passes
With eternal regards the wave so slow
Let arriving night explain
Days fade I remain
Love goes like this water flows
Love goes
Like life is slow
And like hope is violent
Let arriving night explain
Days fade I remain
The days passed and the weeks spent
Not times past
Nor loves sent return again
Under Mirabeau bridge runs the Seine .......... by G. Apollinaire (1880-1918)

[quasimodo1]

Louise Labe (1524-1566)........"I Live, I Die, I Burn, I Drown"
I live, I die, I burn, I drown
I endure at once chill and cold
Life is at once too soft and too hard
I have sore troubles mingled with joys

Suddenly I laugh and at the same time cry
And in pleasure many a grief endure
My happiness wanes and yet it lasts unchanged
All at once I dry up and grow green

Thus I suffer love's inconstancies
And when I think the pain is most intense
Without thinking, it is gone again.

Then when I feel my joys certain
And my hour of greatest delight arrived
I find my pain beginning all over once again.

[quasimodo1]

"On Retirement" by Philip Freneau
A HERMIT'S house beside a stream
With forests planted round,
Whatever it to you may seem
More real happiness I deem
Than if I were a monarch crowned.

A cottage I could call my own
Remote from domes of care;
A little garden, walled with stone,
The wall with ivy overgrown,
A limpid fountain near,

Would more substantial joys afford,
More real bliss impart
Than all the wealth that misers hoard,
Than vanquished worlds, or worlds restored--
Mere cankers of the heart!

Vain, foolish man! how vast thy pride,
How little can your wants supply!--
'Tis surely wrong to grasp so wide--
You act as if you only had
To triumph--not to die!

[Logos]

Great idea for a topic quasi :)

.

I don't see much mention or discussion of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950): http://www.online-literature.com/millay/ . . . but I think she wrote some fabulous stuff--[hey, I don't pretend to be a poet :lol: ] and she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry [1923]: http://www.pulitzer.org/cgi-bin/catquery.cgi?category=Poetry

From my favourite poem of hers:

.




Renascence

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And -- sure enough! -- I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and -- lo! -- Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.
I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not, -- nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out. -- Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire, --
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each, -- then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.


. . . .



.

[kiz_paws]

(I think kiz-paws likes this poet:)

Thoughts on the Cosmos


I

I do not hold with him who thinks
The world is jonahed by a jinx;
That everything is sad and sour,
And life a withered hothouse flower.

II

I hate the Polyanna pest
Who says that All Is for the Best,
And hold in high, unhidden scorn
Who sees the Rose, nor feels the Thorn.

III

I do not like extremists who
Are like the pair in (I) and (II);
But how I hate the wabbly gink,
Like me, who knows not what to think!

Franklin P. Adams 1881-1060

quasimodo1: thank you for posting Franklin P. Adams (and on my birthday, too!). Yes indeed, he is rough around the edges but I admire his stuff.

This whole thread is wonderful, there is lots to absorb here, love it! :)

[quasimodo1]

Glad to hear it kiz-paws, some of the poetry here has been rescued from much dust. quasi

[ifiaskaquestion]

Mirabeau Bridge by Guillaume Apollinaire..............................see previous posting
Under Mirabeau Bridge runs the Seine
And our loves
Must I remember them
Joy came always after pain
Let arriving night explain
Days fade I remain
Arm in arm let us stay face to face
While below
The bridge at our hands passes
With eternal regards the wave so slow
Let arriving night explain
Days fade I remain
Love goes like this water flows
Love goes
Like life is slow
And like hope is violent
Let arriving night explain
Days fade I remain
The days passed and the weeks spent
Not times past
Nor loves sent return again
Under Mirabeau bridge runs the Seine .......... by G. Apollinaire (1880-1918)

quasimodo1.... do you have any other poems by this poet that you could share...or even just a link to some ?

[quasimodo1]

To Ifiaskaquestion: let me see what is available, poem and link. Thanks for asking. quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

"LACE PASSES INTO NOTHINGNESS ..." by Stephen Mallarme
Lace passes into nothingness,
With the ultimate Gamble in doubt,
In blasphemy revealing just
Eternal absence of any bed.
This concordant enmity
Of a white garland and the same,
In flight against the pallid glass,
Hovers and does not enshroud.

But where, limned gold, the dreamer dwells,
There sleeps a mournful mandola,
Its deep lacuna source of song,

Of a kind that toward some window,
Formed by that belly or none at all,
Filial, one might have been born.


Translation by Patricia Terry and Maurice Z. Shroder Mallarme influenced poetry and music of his era and later, including Rilke and Ravel and even Poe.

[uranderson]

A short poem of Mark Strand's, found here (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-coming-of-light/):

The Coming of Light


Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

*****

I haven't read a lot of his, but I intend to. His poems are quiet, empty of pretention or ornamentation. There are few verbal pyrotechnics here, even less abstraction, and in my opinion the work shines more clearly because of it.

"Even this late the bones of the body shine"

"stars gather, dreams pour into your pillow,"

Great lines, disarming in their directness and simplicity, they tread that difficult line between the genuinely beautiful and the sentimental, and to me, never lose their way.

[sin]

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be the finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Wallace Stevens


Ice cream is cold and thick, but it is also sweet all the while a frozen rock waiting to melt in your mouth.

[sin]

Louise Labe (1524-1566)........"I Live, I Die, I Burn, I Drown"
I live, I die, I burn, I drown
I endure at once chill and cold
Life is at once too soft and too hard
I have sore troubles mingled with joys

Suddenly I laugh and at the same time cry
And in pleasure many a grief endure
My happiness wanes and yet it lasts unchanged
All at once I dry up and grow green

Thus I suffer love's inconstancies
And when I think the pain is most intense
Without thinking, it is gone again.

Then when I feel my joys certain
And my hour of greatest delight arrived
I find my pain beginning all over once again.

This is the beginning and end of life, living life itself. Everything learned may come at something forgotten and everything gained may have come from something lost.

[MaryLupin]

From Moment to Moment

As everybody knows, Keats said:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" - That is all


Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Oh yeah?

Lao Tzu said:

True words are not beautiful.


Beautiful words are not true.

Now what?


And





The Three Goals

The first goal is to see the thing itself
in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.

No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.

In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously.

Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

[Igorevich]

As one of the neglected poets quoted here, many thanks!

I refer to the poem: Futurelessness by Ivan Donn Carswell

[quasimodo1]

A Letter to a Live Poet
Sir, since the last Elizabethan died,
Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse,
Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious
Or deeper blindness, no man's hand, as thine,
Has, on the world's most noblest chord of song,
Struck certain magic strains. Ears satiate
With the clamorous, timorous whisperings of to-day,
Thrilled to perceive once more the spacious voice
And serene unterrance of old. We heard
-- With rapturous breath half-held, as a dreamer dreams
Who dares not know it dreaming, lest he wake --
The odorous, amorous style of poetry,
The melancholy knocking of those lines,
The long, low soughing of pentameters,
-- Or the sharp of rhyme as a bird's cry --
And the innumerable truant polysyllables
Multitudinously twittering like a bee.
Fulfilled our hearts were with the music then,
And all the evenings sighed it to the dawn,
And all the lovers heard it from all the trees.
All of the accents upon the all the norms!
-- And ah! the stress of the penultimate!
We never knew blank verse could have such feet.

Where is it now? Oh, more than ever, now
I sometimes think no poetry is read
Save where some sepultured Cѕsura bled,
Royally incarnadining all the line.
Is the imperial iamb laid to rest,
And the young trochee, having done enough?
Ah! turn again! Sing so to us, who are sick
Of seeming-simple rhymes, bizarre emotions,
Decked in the simple verses of the day,
Infinite meaning in a little gloom,
Irregular thoughts in stanzas regular,
Modern despair in antique metres, myths
Incomprehensible at evening,
And symbols that mean nothing in the dawn.
The slow lines swell. The new style sighs. The Celt
Moans round with many voices.
God! to see
Gaunt anapѕsts stand up out of the verse,
Combative accents, stress where no stress should be,
Spondee on spondee, iamb on choriamb,
The thrill of all the tribrachs in the world,
And all the vowels rising to the E!
To hear the blessed mutter of those verbs,
Conjunctions passionate toward each other's arms,
And epithets like amaranthine lovers
Stretching luxuriously to the stars,
All prouder pronouns than the dawn, and all
The thunder of the trumpets of the noun!
...Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

[quasimodo1]

You Gote-heard Gods by Sir Philip Sidney
Strephon.

You Gote-heard Gods, that loue the grassie mountaines,
You Nimphes that haunt the springs in pleasant vallies,
You Satyrs ioyde with free and quiet forests,
Vouchsafe your silent eares to playning musique,
Which to my woes giues still an early morning;
And drawes the dolor on till wery euening.

Klaius.

O Mercurie, foregoer to the euening,
O heauenlie huntresse of the sauage mountaines,
O louelie starre, entitled of the morning,
While that my voice doth fill these wofull vallies,
Vouchsafe your silent eares to plaining musique,
Which oft hath Echo tir'd in secrete forrests.

Strephon.

I that was once free-burges of the forrests,
Where shade from Sunne, and sports I sought at euening,
I that was once esteem'd for pleasant musique,
Am banisht now among the monstrous mountaines
Of huge despaire, and foule afflictions vallies,
Am growne a shrich-owle to my selfe each morning.

Klaius.

I that was once delighted euery morning,
Hunting the wilde inhabiters of forrests,
I that was once the musique of these vallies,
So darkened am, that all my day is euening,
Hart-broken so, that molehilles seeme high mountaines,
And fill the vales with cries in steed of musique.

Strephon.

Long since alas, my deadly Swannish musique
Hath made it selfe a crier of the morning,
And hath with wailing strength clim'd highest mountaines:
Long since my thoughts more desert be then forrests:
Long since I see my ioyes come to their euening,
And state throwen downe to ouer-troden vallies.

Klaius.

Long since the happie dwellers of these vallies,
Haue praide me leaue my strange exclaiming musique,
Which troubles their dayes worke, and ioyes of euening:
Long since I hate the night, more hate the morning:
Long since my thoughts chase me like beasts in forrests,
And make me wish my selfe layd vnder mountaines.

Strephon.

Me seemes I see the high and stately mountaines,
Transforme themselues to lowe deiected vallies:
Me seemes I heare in these ill changed forrests,
The Nightingales doo learne of Owles their musique:
Me seemes I feele the comfort of the morning
Turnde to the mortall serene of an euening.

Klaius.

Me seemes I see a filthie clowdie euening,
As soon as Sunne begins to clime the mountaines:
Me seemes I feele a noysome sent, the morning
When I doo smell the flowers of these vallies:
Me seemes I heare, when I doo heare sweete musique,
The dreadfull cries of murdred men in forrests.

Strephon.

I wish to fire the trees of all these forrests;
I giue the Sunne a last farewell each euening;
I curse the fidling finders out of Musicke:
With enuie I doo hate the loftie mountaines;
And with despite despise the humble vallies:
I doo detest night, euening, day, and morning.

Klaius.

Curse to my selfe my prayer is, the morning:
My fire is more, then can be made with forrests;
My state more base, then are the basest vallies:
I wish no euenings more to see, each euening;
Shamed I hate my selfe in sight of mountaines,
And stoppe mine eares, lest I growe mad with Musicke.

Strephon.

For she, whose parts maintainde a perfect musique,
Whose beautie shin'de more then the blushing morning,
Who much did passe in state the stately mountaines,
In straightnes past the Cedars of the forrests,
Hath cast me wretch into eternall euening,
By taking her two Sunnes from these darke vallies.

Klaius.

For she, to whom compar'd, the Alpes are vallies,
She, whose lest word brings from the spheares their musique,
At whose approach the Sunne rose in the euening,
Who, where she went, bare in her forhead morning,
Is gone, is gone from these our spoyled forrests,
Turning to desarts our best pastur'de mountaines.

Strephon. Klaius.

These mountaines witnesse shall, so shall these vallies,
These forrests eke, made wretched by our musique,
Our morning hymne is this, and song at euening.
by Sir Phillip Sidney (1554-1586)

[quasimodo1]

AT THE OTHER END OF THE TELESCOPE (by George Bradley)
the people are very small and shrink,
dwarves on the way to netsuke hell
bound for a flea circus in full
retreat toward sub-atomic particles--
difficult to keep in focus, the figures
at that end are nearly indistinguishable,
generals at the heads of minute armies
differing little from fishwives,
emperors the same as eskimos
huddled under improvisations of snow--
eskimos, though, now have the advantage,
for it seems to be freezing there, a climate
which might explain the population's
outrй dress, their period costumes
of felt and silk and eiderdown,
their fur concoctions stuffed with straw
held in place with flexible strips of bark,
and all to no avail, the midgets forever
stamping their match-stick feet,
blowing on the numb flagella of their fingers--
but wait, bring a light, clean the lens....
can it be those shivering arms are waving,
are trying to attract attention, hailing you?
seen from the other end of the telescope,
your eye must appear enormous,
must fill the sky like a sun,
and as you occupy their tiny heads
naturally they wish to communicate,
to tell you of their diminishing perspective--
yes, look again, their hands are cupped
around the pinholes of their mouths,
their faces are swollen, red with effort;
why, they're screaming fit to burst,
though what they say is anybody's guess,
it is next to impossible to hear them,
and most of them speak languages
for which no Rosetta stone can be found--
but listen harder, use your imagination....
the people at the other end of the telescope,
are they trying to tell you their names?
yes, surely that must be it, their names
and those of those they love, and possibly
something else, some of them.... listen....
the largest are struggling to explain
what befell them, how it happened
that they woke one morning as if adrift,
their moorings cut in the night,
and were swept out over the horizon,
borne on an ebbing tide and soon
to be discernible only as distance,
collapsed into mirage, made to become
legendary creatures now off every map.
by George Bradley (1821-1903)

[quasimodo1]

Born in poverty in the Adirondacks in 1879, Foster in her poetry chronicled the people and customs, the farms and lumber shanties, of the North Country of her youth. Her talent, character, and beauty gained her the friendship, trust, and admiration of writers and artists as various as Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Ford, George Russell, and John and William Butler Yeats.

She became a famous model (the "Fisher Girl" of 1903), an editor (the Review of Reviews ) and an astute collector of Irish art and literary manuscripts. Her final years were spent in Schenectady, where she worked to improve the welfare of the elderly. She received an honorary doctorate from Union College shortly before her death in 1970.

http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/friends/jrf_event.htm

[From a "temporary" website dedicated to celebrating her poetry] A sample of her work in following post. quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

The Bitter Herb
( by Jeanne Robert Foster )

O bitter herb, Forgetfulness,
I search for you in vain;
You are the only growing thing
Can take away my pain.

When I was young, this bitter herb
Grew wild on every hill;
I should have plucked a store of it,
And kept it by me still.

I hunt through all the meadows
Where once I wandered free,
But the rare herb, Forgetfulness,
It hides away from me.

O bitter herb, Forgetfulness,
Where is your drowsy breath?
Oh, can it be your seed has blown
Far as the Vales of Death?

[quasimodo1]

"But the others, the men of my mettle, the men who would 'stablish my fame
Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honor, not shame;
Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,
Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;
Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks,
Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks.
I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.
Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,
Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first;
Visioning camp-fires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn,
Feeling my womb o'er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn.
Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway,
And I wait for the men who will win me -- and I will not be won in a day;
And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,
But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child;
Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat,
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat.


from the Law of the Yukon, by Robert W Service

[quasimodo1]

Cleis
by Sappho

Sleep, darling
I have a small
daughter called
Cleis, who is

like a golden
flower
I wouldn't
take all Croesus'
kingdom with love
thrown in, for her

---

Don't ask me what to wear
I have no embroidered
headband from Sardis to
give you, Cleis, such as
I wore
and my mother
always said that in her
day a purple ribbon
looped in the hair was thought
to be high style indeed

but we were dark:
a girl
whose hair is yellower than
torchlight should wear no
headdress but fresh flowers

[kiz_paws]

Love Outlasteth All

Could I borrow the laverock's lifting note,
Or the silvery song from the blackbird's throat,
Then would I warble the whole day long,
Telling, in floods of passionate song,
How worlds might tremble, or skies might fall.
But Love, true Love, outlasteth all.

Or, with picturesque words, in phrases neat,
With ringing rhymes, and in sonnets sweet,
Had I the skill of the schoolman's craft
My song the murmurous breeze should waft,
And tell to her whom my heart loves best,
How Love outlasteth all the rest.

Harry Breaker Morant

[quasimodo1]

DREAM-PEDLARY

IF there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
Some a light sigh,
That shakes from Life's fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rang the bell,
What would you buy?

A cottage lone and still,
With bowers nigh,
Shadowy, my woes to still,
Until I die.
Such pearls from Life's fresh crown
Fain would I shake me down.
Were dreams to have at will,
This would best heal my ill,
This would I buy.

But there were dreams to sell
Ill didst thou buy;
Life is a dream, they tell,
Waking, to die.
Dreaming a dream to prize,
Is wishing ghosts to rise;
And if I had the spell
To call the buried well,
Which one should I?

If there are ghosts to raise,
What shall I call,
Out of hell's murky haze,
Heaven's blue pall?
Raise my loved long-lost boy,
To lead me to his joy.--
There are no ghosts to raise;
Out of death lead no ways;
Vain is the call.

Know'st thou not ghosts to sue,
No love thou hast.
Else lie, as I will do,
And breathe thy last.
So out of Life's fresh crown
Fall like a rose-leaf down.
Thus are the ghosts to woo;
Thus are all dreams made true,
Ever to last!

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

[quasimodo1]

Novel (by Arthur Rimbaud)
I.

No one's serious at seventeen.
--On beautiful nights when beer and lemonade
And loud, blinding cafés are the last thing you need
--You stroll beneath green lindens on the promenade.

Lindens smell fine on fine June nights!
Sometimes the air is so sweet that you close your eyes;
The wind brings sounds--the town is near--
And carries scents of vineyards and beer. . .

II.

--Over there, framed by a branch
You can see a little patch of dark blue
Stung by a sinister star that fades
With faint quiverings, so small and white. . .

....

That night. . .you return to the blinding cafés;
You order beer or lemonade. . .
--No one's serious at seventeen
When lindens line the promenade. .......by Arthur Rimbaud

[quasimodo1]

De Profundis ( by Georg Trakl )
There is a stubble field on which a black rain falls.
There is a tree which, brown, stands lonely here.
There is a hissing wind which haunts deserted huts---
How sad this evening.

Past the village pond
The gentle orphan still gathers scanty ears of corn.
Golden and round her eyes are gazing in the dusk
And her lap awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

Returning home
Shepherds found the sweet body
Decayed in the bramble bush.

A shade I am remote from sombre hamlets.
The silence of God
I drank from the woodland well.

On my forehead cold metal forms.
Spiders look for my heart.
There is a light that fails in my mouth.

At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with garbage and the dust of stars.
In the hazel copse
Crystal angels have sounded once more.

[quasimodo1]

A SONG OF LIFE ( by Ella Wheeler Wilcox)
In the rapture of life and of living,
I lift up my head and rejoice,
And I thank the great Giver for giving
The soul of my gladness a voice.
In the glow of the glorious weather,
In the sweet-scented, sensuous air,
My burdens seem light as a feather –
They are nothing to bear.

In the strength and the glory of power,
In the pride and the pleasure of wealth
(For who dares dispute me my dower
Of talents and youth-time and health?) ,
I can laugh at the world and its sages –
I am greater than seers who are sad,
For he is most wise in all ages
Who knows how to be glad.

I lift up my eyes to Apollo,
The god of the beautiful days,
And my spirit soars off like a swallow,
And is lost in the light of its rays.
Are tou troubled and sad? I beseech you
Come out of the shadows of strife –
Come out in the sun while I teach you
The secret of life.

Come out of the world – come above it –
Up over its crosses and graves,
Though the green earth is fair and I love it,
We must love it as masters, not slaves.
Come up where the dust never rises –
But only the perfume of flowers –
And your life shall be glad with surprises
Of beautiful hours.
Come up where the rare golden wine is
Apollo distills in my sight,
And your life shall be happy as mine is,
And as full of delight.

[quasimodo1]

MOUNTAIN LIFE
IN summer dusk the valley lies
With far-flung shadow veil;
A cloud-sea laps the precipice
Before the evening gale:
The welter of the cloud-waves grey
Cuts off from keenest sight
The glacier, looking out by day
O'er all the district, far away,
And crowned with golden light.

But o'er the smouldering cloud-wrack's flow,
Where gold and amber kiss,
Stands up the archipelago,
A home of shining peace.
The mountain eagle seems to sail
A ship far seen at even;
And over all a serried pale
Of peaks, like giants ranked in mail,
Fronts westward threatening heaven.

But look, a steading nestles, close
Beneath the ice-fields bound,
Where purple cliffs and glittering snows
The quiet home surround.
Here place and people seem to be
A world apart, alone; --
Cut off from men by spate and scree
It has a heaven more broad, more free,
A sunshine all its own.

Look: mute the saeter-maiden stays,
Half shadow, half aflame;
The deep, still vision of her gaze
Was never word to name.
She names it not herself, nor knows
What goal my be its will;
While cow-bells chime and alp-horn blows
It bears her where the sunset glows,
Or, maybe, further still.

Too brief, thy life on highland wolds
Where close the glaciers jut;
Too soon the snowstorm's cloak enfolds
Stone byre and pine-log hut.
Then wilt thou ply with hearth ablaze
The winter's well-worn tasks; --
But spin thy wool with cheerful face:
One sunset in the mountain pays
For all their winter asks. (by Henrik Ibsen, 1828-1906)

[quasimodo1]

'O WHICH is the last rose?'
A blossom of no name.
At midnight the snow came;
At daybreak a vast rose,
In darkness unfurl'd,
O'er-petall'd the world.

Its odourless pallor
Blossom'd forlorn,
Till radiant valour
Establish'd the morn--
Till the night
Was undone
In her fight
With the sun.

The brave orb in state rose,
And crimson he shone first;
While from the high vine
Of heaven the dawn burst,
Staining the great rose
From sky-line to sky-line.

The red rose of morn
A white rose at noon turn'd;
But at sunset reborn
All red again soon burn'd.
Then the pale rose of noonday
Rebloom'd in the night,
And spectrally white
In the light
Of the moon lay.

But the vast rose
Was scentless,
And this is the reason:
When the blast rose
Relentless,
And brought in due season
The snow rose, the last rose
Congeal'd in its breath,
Then came with it treason;
The traitor was Death.

In lee-valleys crowded,
The sheep and the birds
Were frozen and shrouded
In flights and in herds.
In highways
And byways
The young and the old
Were tortured and madden'd
And kill'd by the cold.
But many were gladden'd
By the beautiful last rose,
The blossom of no name
That came when the snow came,
In darkness unfurl'd--
The wonderful vast rose
That fill'd all the world.
(by John Davidson, 1857-1909)

[quasimodo1]

http://www.indians.org/welker/anasazi.htm ...indigenous people's literature link, specifically Anasazi culture but the core site allows other tribes. quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
Light on the towns and cities, and peace for evermore!
The Big Five met in the world's light as many had met before,
And the future of man is settled and there shall be no more war.

The lamb shall lie down with the lion, and trust with treachery;
The brave man go with the coward, and the chained mind shackle the free,
And the truthful sit with the liar ever by land and sea.

And there shall be no more passion and no more love nor hate;
No more contempt for the paltry, no more respect for the great;
And the people shall breed like rabbits and mate as animals mate.

For lo! the Big Five have said it, each with a fearsome frown;
Each for his chosen country, State, and city and town;
Each for his lawn and table and the bed where he lies him down.

Cobbler and crank and chandler, magpie and ape disguised;
Each bound to his grocery corner – these are the Five we prized;
Bleating the teaching of others whom they ever despised.

But three shall meet in a cellar, companions of mildew and rats;
And three shall meet in a garret, pungent with stench of the cats,
And three in a cave in the forest where the torchlight maddens the bats –

Bats as blind as the people, streaming into the glare –
And the Nine shall turn the nations back to the plain things there;
Tracing in chalk and charcoal treaties that none can tear:

Truth that goes higher than airships and deeper than submarines,
And a message swifter than wireless – and none shall know what it means –
Till an army is rushed together and ready behind the scenes.

The Big Five sit together in the light of the World and day,
Each tied to his grocery corner though he travel the world for aye,
Each bleating the dreams of dreamers whom he has despised alway.

And intellect shall be tortured, and art destroyed for a span –
The brute shall defile the pictures as he did when the age began;
He shall hawk and spit in the palace to prove that he is a man.

Cobbler and crank and chandler, magpie and ape disguised;
Each bound to his grocery corner – these are the Five we prized;
Bleating the teaching of others whom they ever despised.

Let the nations scatter their armies and level their arsenals well,
Let them blow their airships to Heaven and sink their warships to Hell,
Let them maim the feet of the runner and silence the drum and the bell;

But shapes shall glide from the cellar who never had dared to "strike",
And shapes shall drop from the garret (ghastly and so alike)
To drag from the cave in the forest powder and cannon and pike.

As of old, we are sending a message to Garcia still –
Smoke from the peak by sunlight, beacon by night from the hill;
And the drum shall throb in the distance – the drum that never was still.

(by Henry Lawson, 1867-1922) You have to wonder what he might think of the United Nations) quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

BLUE
Blue, but you are Rose, too,
and buttermilk, but with blood
dots showing through.
A little salty your white
nape boy-wide. Glinting hairs
shoot back of your ears' Rose
that tongues like to feel
the maze of, slip into the funnel,
tell a thunder-whisper to.
When I kiss, your eyes' straight
lashes down crisp go like doll's
blond straws. Glazed iris Roses,
your lids unclose to Blue-ringed
targets, their dark sheen-spokes
almost green. I sink in Blue-
black Rose-heart holes until you
blink. Pink lips, the serrate
folds taste smooth, and Rosehip-
round, the center bud I suck.
I milknip your two Blue-skeined
blown Rose beauties, too, to sniff
their berries' blood, up stiff
pink tips.

....

( ...by May Swenson, 1913-1989 ) Swenson graduated the prestigous Bryn Mahr University in PA, tought poetry there, and is considered the third best poet of her day )

[quasimodo1]

HIDDEN FLAME
Feed a flame within, which so torments me
That it both pains my heart, and yet contains me:
'Tis such a pleasing smart, and I so love it,
That I had rather die than once remove it.

Yet he, for whom I grieve, shall never know it;
My tongue does not betray, nor my eyes show it.
Not a sigh, nor a tear, my pain discloses,
But they fall silently, like dew on roses.

Thus, to prevent my Love from being cruel,
My heart's the sacrifice, as 'tis the fuel;
And while I suffer this to give him quiet,
My faith rewards my love, though he deny it.

On his eyes will I gaze, and there delight me;
While I conceal my love no frown can fright me.
To be more happy I dare not aspire,
Nor can I fall more low, mounting no higher.
(1631-1700)

[Psycheinaboat]

Revenge
by Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L.E.L.)


Ay, gaze upon her rose-wreath'd hair,
And gaze upon her smile;
Seem as you drank the very air
Her breath perfumed the while;

And wake for her the gifted line,
That wild and witching lay,
And swear your heart is as a shrine,
That only holds her sway.

'Tis well: I am revenged at last;--
Mark you that scornful cheek,--
The eye averted as you pass'd,
Spoke more than words could speak.

Ay, now by all the bitter tears
That I have shed for thee,--
The racking doubts, the burning fears,--
Avenged they well may be--

By the nights pass'd in sleepless care,
The days of endless woe;
All that you taught my heart to bear,
All that yourself will know.

I would not wish to see you laid
Within an early tomb;
I should forget how you betray'd,
And only weep your doom:

But this is fitting punishment,
To live and love in vain,--
O my wrung heart, be thou content,
And feed upon his pain.

Go thou and watch her lightest sigh,--
Thine own it will not be;
And bask beneath her sunny eye,--
It will not turn on thee.

'Tis well: the rack, the chain, the wheel,
Far better hadst thou proved;
Ev'n I could almost pity feel,
For thou art nor beloved.

[quasimodo1]

You do not need many things

My house is buried in the deepest recess of the forest
Every year, ivy vines grow longer than the year before.
Undisturbed by the affairs of the world I live at ease,
Woodmen’s singing rarely reaching me through the trees.
While the sun stays in the sky, I mend my torn clothes
And facing the moon, I read holy texts aloud to myself.
Let me drop a word of advice for believers of my faith.
To enjoy life’s immensity, you do not need many things.


- Ryokan

[quasimodo1]

ON IMAGINAGION
Thy various works, imperial queen, we see,
How bright their forms! how deck'd with pomp by thee!
Thy wond'rous acts in beauteous order stand,
And all attest how potent is thine hand.

From Helicon's refulgent heights attend,
Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend:
To tell her glories with a faithful tongue,
Ye blooming graces, triumph in my song.

Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies,
Till some lov'd object strikes her wand'ring eyes,
Whose silken fetters all the senses bind,
And soft captivity involves the mind.

Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
Th' empyreal palace of the thund'ring God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind:
>From star to star the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies, and range the realms above.
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze th' unbounded soul.

Though Winter frowns to Fancy's raptur'd eyes
The fields may flourish, and gay scenes arise;
The frozen deeps may break their iron bands,
And bid their waters murmur o'er the sands.
Fair Flora may resume her fragrant reign,
And with her flow'ry riches deck the plain;
Sylvanus may diffuse his honours round,
And all the forest may with leaves be crown'd:
Show'rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose,
And nectar sparkle on the blooming rose.

Such is thy pow'r, nor are thine orders vain,
O thou the leader of the mental train:
In full perfection all thy works are wrought,
And thine the sceptre o'er the realms of thought.
Before thy throne the subject-passions bow,
Of subject-passions sov'reign ruler thou;
At thy command joy rushes on the heart,
And through the glowing veins the spirits dart.

Fancy might now her silken pinions try
To rise from earth, and sweep th' expanse on high:
>From Tithon's bed now might Aurora rise,
Her cheeks all glowing with celestial dies,
While a pure stream of light o'erflows the skies.
The monarch of the day I might behold,
And all the mountains tipt with radiant gold,
But I reluctant leave the pleasing views,
Which Fancy dresses to delight the Muse;
Winter austere forbids me to aspire,
And northern tempests damp the rising fire;
They chill the tides of Fancy's flowing sea,
Cease then, my song, cease the unequal lay.
By Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784)

[kiz_paws]

quasi, thank you for the American Indian Poetry link above -- very cool stuff.

I also loved the Zen Poetry, beautiful.

Psyche, loved that Revenge, thanks!

[quasimodo1]

To Kiz paws: If you know any genre of poetry that hasn't been posted, maybe you could let me know. That zen stuff is the best; have to do more of that. quasi

[quasimodo1]

{Exerpt from this poem by Vladislav (Vlanes) Nekliaeu, 1969 to the present} Whatever dies in this gigantic rut
overfilled with agony and water, it rockets to the stars
amassed like silver coins upon a plate of brass,
it soars far above the predator that cut it,

flies, flows, flaps its ravaged wings
made whole again on the other side -
it does not have to wince and hide,
but being whole, ends up beyond its vital accident,
to reappear rapidly, when the outer circle is complete,
like a stray tongue of light,

dazzling its former monsters overspent,
fatigued by their thirst and greed -
this light congeals on their fur like a green
thread of algae, a small emerald enframed by these machines,
it rolls down abruptly, jumps from hair to hair, gleans
their ponderous vapour, their clean

spirit that envelops them and leans
towards them, freeing them within their time,
so that they can palpitate, unbridled, tame,
until no greed is left, no thirst for throbbing flesh, no taste
of boiling salt, no memory of twitching fins, and haste
with which a creature shrinks towards its doom,

and freezes, and submits, once
the first resistance is broken, and the hands
of destiny grab it and rend apart, without the sense
of their soul, the precious music, the untasted meal of time – out
it is spat, disgorged, revived, restored to its own dying shout
which now begins to modulate and hastens

through each chord that resonates around
the tactile crystal spheres falling down so
fast that the unfurled drab wings appear slow
and awkward, and lag behind, beating about madly,
scattering the feathers of the sunrise, and then halt, and suddenly
release the loudest, the sharpest shriek, too

[quasimodo1]

TO A LADY
SWEET rois of vertew and of gentilness,
Delytsum lily of everie lustynes,
Richest in bontie and in bewtie clear,
And everie vertew that is wenit dear,
Except onlie that ye are mercyless

Into your garth this day I did persew;
There saw I flowris that fresche were of hew;
Baith quhyte and reid most lusty were to seyne,
And halesome herbis upon stalkis greene;
Yet leaf nor flowr find could I nane of rew.

I doubt that Merche, with his cauld blastis keyne,
Has slain this gentil herb, that I of mene;
Quhois piteous death dois to my heart sic paine
That I would make to plant his root againe,--
So confortand his levis unto me bene.
by William Dunbar (1460-1520) ...This poem was composed during the reign of Henry VIII. Before he broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, the clerics tasked with censorship would not have given their two seals of approval, i.e. impramatur and nihil obstat....Latin expressions written on the reverse side of the cover page which meant "it is permitted" and "nothing objectionable" respectively. And today people complain about violations of First Ammendment rights. In Dunbar's day, bawdy writing could get you imprisoned or worse; all the while, Henry lived in style that eventually would cause his death...from tertiary syphillis. Those were the days. quasi

[kiz_paws]

To Kiz paws: If you know any genre of poetry that hasn't been posted, maybe you could let me know. That zen stuff is the best; have to do more of that. quasi

Yes indeed, quasi -- more ZEN! :thumbs_up

[quasimodo1]

The past is already past.
Don’t try to regain it.
The present does not stay.
Don’t try to touch it.

From moment to moment.
The future has not come;
Don’t think about it
Beforehand.

Whatever comes to the eye,
Leave it be.
There are no commandments
To be kept;
There’s no filth to be cleansed.

With empty mind really
Penetrated, the dharmas
Have no life.

When you can be like this,
You’ve completed
The ultimate attainment.
Layman P’ang (740-808)

[quasimodo1]

ARMS, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
Virgil

[kiz_paws]

The past is already past.
Don’t try to regain it.
The present does not stay.
Don’t try to touch it.

From moment to moment.
The future has not come;
Don’t think about it
Beforehand.

Whatever comes to the eye,
Leave it be.
There are no commandments
To be kept;
There’s no filth to be cleansed.

With empty mind really
Penetrated, the dharmas
Have no life.

When you can be like this,
You’ve completed
The ultimate attainment.
Layman P’ang (740-808)

Oh, I loved this one, quasi. Thank you very much. :)

[quasimodo1]

YVONNE OF BRITTANY
In your mother's apple-orchard,
Just a year ago, last spring:
Do you remember, Yvonne!
The dear trees lavishing
Rain of their starry blossoms
To make you a coronet?
Do you ever remember, Yvonne,
As I remember yet?

In your mother's apple-orchard,
When the world was left behind:
You were shy, so shy, Yvonne!
But your eyes were calm and kind.
We spoke of the apple harvest,
When the cider press is set,
And such-like trifles, Yvonne,
That doubtless you forget.

In the still, soft Breton twilight,
We were silent; words were few,
Till your mother came out chiding,
For the grass was bright with dew:
But I know your heart was beating,
Like a fluttered, frightened dove.
Do you ever remember, Yvonne,
That first faint flush of love?

In the fulness of midsummer,
When the apple-bloom was shed,
Oh, brave was your surrender,
Though shy the words you said.
I was glad, so glad, Yvonne!
To have led you home at last;
Do you ever remember, Yvonne,
How swiftly the days passed?

In your mother's apple-orchard
It is grown too dark to stray,
There is none to chide you, Yvonne!
You are over far away.
There is dew on your grave grass, Yvonne!
But your feet it shall not wet:
No, you never remember, Yvonne!
And I shall soon forget.
(by Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900)

[quasimodo1]

IN PRAISE OF WRITING LETTERS
Blest be the Man! his Memory at least,
Who found the Art, thus to unfold his Breast,
And taught succeeding Times an easy way
Their secret Thoughts by Letters to convey;
To baffle Absence, and secure Delight,
Which, till that Time, was limited to Sight.

The parting Farewel spoke, the last Adieu,
The less'ning Distance past, then loss of View,
The Friend was gone, which some kind Moments gave,
And Absence separated, like the Grave.
The Wings of Love were tender too, till then
No Quill, thence pull'd, was shap'd into a Pen,
To send in Paper-sheets, from Town to Town,
Words smooth was they, and softer than his Down.
O'er such he reign'd, whom Neighborhood had join'd,
And hopt, from Bough to Bough, supported by the Wind.
When for a Wife the youthful Patriarch sent,
The Camels, Jewels, and the Steward went,
A wealthy Equipage, tho' grave and slow;
But not a Line, that might the Lover shew.
The Rings and Bracelets woo'd her Hands and Arms;
But had she known of melting Words, the Charms
That under secret Seals in Ambush lie,
To catch the Soul, when drawn into the Eye,
The Fair Assyrian had not took this Guide,
Nor her soft Heart in Chains of Pearl been ty'd.


Had these Conveyances been then in Date,
Joseph had known his wretched Father's State,
Before a Famine, which his Life pursues,
Had sent his other Sons, to tell the News.


Oh! might I live to see an Art arise,
As this to Thoughts, indulgent to the Eyes;
That the dark Pow'rs of distance cou'd subdue,
And make me See, as well as Talk to You;
That tedious Miles, nor Tracts of Air might prove
Bars to my Sight, and shadows to my Love!
Yet were it granted, such unbounded Things
Are wand'ring Wishes, born on Phancy's Wings,
They'd stretch themselves beyond this happy Case,
And ask an Art, to help us to Embrace.
By Anne Kingsmill (1661-1720)

[quasimodo1]

In Memory of My Mother

I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday--
You meet me and you say:
'Don't forget to see about the cattle--'
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.
And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life--

excerpt of "In Memory of My Mother" by Patrick Kavanagh

[quasimodo1]

THE JOURNEY
I went upon a journey
To countries far away,
From province unto province
To pass my holiday.

And when I came to Serbia,
In a quiet little town
At an inn with a flower-filled garden
With a soldier I sat down.

Now he lies dead at Belgrade.
You heard the cannon roar!
It boomed from Rome to Stockholm,
It pealed to the far west shore.

And when I came to Russia,
A man with flowing hair
Called me his friend and showed me
A flowing river there.

Now he lies dead at Lemberg,
Beside another stream,
In his dark eyes extinguished
The friendship of his dream.

And then I crossed two countries
Whose names on my lips are sealed . . .
Not yet had they flung their challenge
Nor led upon the field

Sons who lie dead at Liège,
Dead by the Russian lance,
Dead in southern mountains,
Dead through the farms of France.

I stopped in the land of Louvain,
So tranquil, happy, then.
I lived with a good old woman,
With her sons and her grandchildren.

Now they lie dead at Louvain,
Those simple kindly folk.
Some heard, some fled. It must be
Some slept, for they never woke.

I came to France. I was thirsty.
I sat me down to dine.
The host and his young wife served me
With bread and fruit and wine.

Now he lies dead at Cambrai --
He was sent among the first.
In dreams she sees him dying
Of wounds, of heat, of thirst.

At last I passed to Dover
And saw upon the shore
A tall young English captain
And soldiers, many more.

Now they lie dead at Dixmude,
The brave, the strong, the young!
I turned unto my homeland,
All my journey sung!

Grace Fallow Norton

[quasimodo1]

ON A HONEY BEE
Thou born to sip the lake or spring,
Or quaff the waters of the stream,
Why hither come on vagrant wing?--
Does Bacchus tempting seem--
Did he, for you, the glass prepare?--
Will I admit you to a share?

Did storms harrass or foes perplex,
Did wasps or king-birds bring dismay--
Did wars distress, or labours vex,
Or did you miss your way?--
A better seat you could not take
Than on the margin of this lake.

Welcome!--I hail you to my glass:
All welcome, here, you find;
Here let the cloud of trouble pass,
Here, be all care resigned.--
This fluid never fails to please,
And drown the griefs of men or bees.

What forced you here, we cannot know,
And you will scarcely tell--
But cheery we would have you go
And bid a glad farewell:
On lighter wings we bid you fly,
Your dart will now all foes defy.

Yet take not oh! too deep a drink,
And in the ocean die;
Here bigger bees than you might sink,
Even bees full six feet high.
Like Pharaoh, then, you would be said
To perish in a sea of red.

Do as you please, your will is mine;
Enjoy it without fear--
And your grave will be this glass of wine,
Your epitaph--a tear--
Go, take your seat in Charon's boat,
We'll tell the hive, you died afloat.
by Philip Freneau

[quasimodo1]

OCTOBER
AY, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath! When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief
And the year smiles as it draws near its death. Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks
And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.



By: William Cullen Bryant (this poem mentioned in memory of a passing)

[quasimodo1]

Slopes of Mount Kugami




Slopes
of Mount Kugami—
in the mountain's shade
a hut beneath the trees—
how many years
it's been my home?
The time comes
to take leave of it—
my thoughts wilt
like summer grasses,
I wander back and forth
like the evening star—
till that hut of mine
is hidden from sight,
till that grove of trees
can no longer be seen,
at each bend
of the long road,
at every turning,
I turn to look back
in the direction of that mountain

By: Ryokan

[quasimodo1]

Strange That The Goddess Prosper


Strange is it that the godless, who have sprung
From evil-doers, should fare prosperously,
While good men, born of noble stock, should be
By adverse fortune vexed. It was ill done
For the gods thus to order lives of men.
What to be is this, that godly souls
Should from the gods gain some clear recompense
And the unjust pay some clear penalty;
So none would prosper who are base of soul

[quasimodo1]

The Triumph Of Achilles by Paul Celan
In the story of Patroclus
no one survives, not even Achilles
who was nearly a god.
Patroclus resembled him; they wore
the same armor.

Always in these friendships
one serves the other, one is less than the other:
the hierarchy
is always apparant, though the legends
cannot be trusted--
their source is the survivor,
the one who has been abandoned.
(Paul Celan is not the first writer/poet commenting on history being written by the victors) {first two stanzas}

[quasimodo1]

Lay of Ancient Rome

OH, the Roman was a rogue,
He erat was, you bettum;
He ran his automobilis
And smoked his cigarettum;
He wore a diamond studibus
And elegant cravattum,
A maxima cum laude shirt,
And stylish hattum!

He loved the luscious hic-haec-hoc,
And bet on games and equi;
At times he won, at others, though,
He got it in the necqui;
He winked (quo usque tandem?)
At puellas on the Forum,
And sometimes even made
Those goo-goo oculorum!



Thomas Ybarra

(first two stanzas)

[quasimodo1]

I SAID TO THIS WANTING -CREATURE INSIDE ME:
I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?

There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is no body, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.

Kabir

[quasimodo1]

These solitary hills have always been dear to me.
Seated here, this sweet hedge, which blocks the distant horizon opening inner silences and interminable distances.
I plunge in thought to where my heart, frightened, pulls back.
Like the wind which I hear tossing the trembling plants which surround me, a voice from the inner depths of spirit shakes the certitudes of thought.
Eternity breaks through time, past and present intermingle in her image.
In the inner shadows I lose myself,
drowning in the sea-depths of timeless love.
...............by Giacomo Leopardi

[quasimodo1]

THE BELL FROM EUROPE
The tower bell in the Tenth Street Church
Rang out nostalgia for the refugee
Who knew the source of bells by sound.
We liked it, but in ignorance.
One meets authorities on bells infrequently.

Europe alone made bells with such a tone,
Herr Mannheim said. The bell
Struck midnight, and it shook the room.
He had heard bells in Leipzig, Chartres, Berlin,
Paris, Vienna, Brussels, Rome.
He was a white-faced man with sad enormous eyes.

Reader, for me that bell marked nights
Of restless tossing in this narrow bed,
The quarrels, the slamming of a door,
The kind words, friends for drinks, the books we read,
Breakfasts with streets in rain.
It rang from europe all the time.
That was what Mannheim said.
........most of this poem by Weldon Kees

[quasimodo1]

CELANDINE
Thinking of her had saddened me at first,
Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie
Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame,
A living thing, not what before I nursed,
The shadow I was growing to love almost,
The phantom, not the creature with bright eye
That I had thought never to see, once lost.

She found the celandines of February
Always before us all. Her nature and name
Were like those flowers, and now immediately
For a short swift eternity back she came,
Beautiful, happy, simply as when she wore
Her brightest bloom among the winter hues
Of all the world; and I was happy too,
Seeing the blossoms and the maiden who
Had seen them with me Februarys before,
Bending to them as in and out she trod
And laughed, with locks sweeping the mossy sod.

But this was a dream; the flowers were not true,
Until I stooped to pluck from the grass there
One of five petals and I smelt the juice
Which made me sigh, remembering she was no more,
Gone like a never perfectly recalled air.
.................................................. ..by Edward Thomas(1878-1917)

[quasimodo1]

UNLYRIC LOVE SONG
It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first:
To offer you now at last my least and my worst:
Minor, absurd preserves,
The shell's end-curves,
A document kept at the back of a drawer,
A tin hidden under the floor,
Recalcitrant prides and hesitations:
To pile them carefully in a desparate oblation
And say to you "quickly! turn them
Once over and burn them".

.............First part of this poem, by A.S.J. Tessimond

[quasimodo1]

THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

THERE are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In the place of their self-content;
There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze the paths
Where highways never ran-
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner's seat
Nor hurl the cynic's ban-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I see from my house by the side of the road
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife,
But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
Both parts of an infinite plan-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead,
And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.
And still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish - so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,
Or hurl the cynic's ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

Sam Walter Foss

[quasimodo1]

THE PAPER NAUTILUS


For authorities whose hopes
are shaped by mercenaries?
Writers entrapped by
teatime fame and by
commuters' comforts? Not for these
the paper nautilus
constructs her thin glass shell.

Giving her perishable
souvenir of hope, a dull
white outside and smooth-
edged inner surface
glossy as the sea, the watchful
maker of it guards it
day and night; she scarcely

eats until the eggs are hatched.
Buried eight-fold in her eight
arms, for she is in
a sense a devil-
fish, her glass ram'shorn-cradled freight
is hid but is not crushed;
as Hercules, bitten

{first three stanzas of this poem}

[quasimodo1]

THE OBSERVATORY ODE


I
The Universe:
We'd like to understand,
But any piece, in the palm, gets out of hand,
Any stick, any stone,
- How mica burns! - or worse,
Any star we catch in pans of glass,
Sift to a twinkle the vast nuclear stone,
Lava-red, polar-blue,
Apple-gold (noon our childhood knew),
Colors that through the prism, like dawn through Gothic, pass,
Or in foundries sulk among grots and gnomes, in glare of zinc or brass.
Would Palomar's flashy cannon say? Would you,
Old hourglass, galaxy of sand,
You, the black hole where Newton likes to stand?
II
Once on this day,
Our Victorian renaissance-man,
Percival Lowell - having done Japan,
And soon to be seen
Doing over all heaven his way -
Spoke poems here. (These cheeks, a mite
Primped by the laurel leaves' symbolic green,
Should glow like the flustered beet
To scuff, in his mighty shoes, these feet.)
He walked high ground, each long cold Arizona night,
Grandeurs he'd jot: put folk on Mars, but guessed a planet right,
Scribbling dark sums and ciphers at white heat
For his Pluto, lost. Till - there it swam!
Swank, with his own P L monogram.
III
Just down the way
The Observatory. And girls
Attending, with lint of starlight in their curls,
To lens, 'scope, rule.
Sewing bee, you could say:
They stitch high heaven together here,
Save scraps of the midnight sky. Compile, pole, pool.
One, matching star with star,
Learns that how bright can mean how far.
That widens the galaxies! Each spiraling chandelier
In three-dimensional glamour hangs; old flat nights disappear.
Desk-bound, they explore the immensities. Who are
These woman that, dazed at dusk, arise?
- No Helen with so much heaven in her eyes.
IV
With what good night
Did the strange women leave?
What did the feverish planet-man achieve?
A myth for the sky:
All black. Then a haze of light,
A will-o'-the-wisp, hints time and place.
Whirling, the haze turned fireball, and let fly
Streamers of bright debris,
The makings of our land and sea.
Great rafts of matter crash, their turbulence a base
For furnaces of nuclear fire that blast out slag in space.
Primal pollution, dust and soot, hurl free
Lead, gold - all that. Heaven's gaudy trash.
This world - with our joy in June - is a drift of ash.
V
That fire in the sky
On the Glorious Fourth, come dark,
Acts "Birth of the Universe" out, in Playland Park.
Then a trace of ash
In the moon. Suppose we try
- Now only suppose - to catch in a jar
That palmful of dust, on bunsens burn till it flash,
Could we, from that gas aglow,
Construct the eventful world we know,
Or a toy of it, in the palm? Yet our world came so: we are
Debris of a curdled turbulence, and dust of a dying star
- The children of nuclear fall-out long ago.
No wonder if late world news agree
With Eve there's a creepy varmint in the Tree.
( First stanzas of this poem )

[quasimodo1]

I WOULD LIKE TO DESCRIBE



I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me
but I know it does not resemble
any star
for it is not so bright
not so pure
and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage
without dragging behind me a dusty lion
and also anxiety
without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way
I would give all metaphors
in return for one word
drawn out of my breast like a rib
for one word
contained within the boundaries
of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say - I love
I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds
and my tenderness
which after all is not made of water
asks the water for a face
and anger
different from fire
borrows from it
a loquacious tongue

{first half of the poem}

[quasimodo1]

If, then, to the meanest of mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disasterous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! . . . (Moby-Dick, Chapter 26)
This prose is equal to any poetry. ( by Herman Melville )

[Virgil]

If, then, to the meanest of mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disasterous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! . . . (Moby-Dick, Chapter 26)
This prose is equal to any poetry. ( by Herman Melville )

You're right, Quasi. Melville's prose in Moby Dick is equivalent to any poetry, possbilby the best prose ever written in the English language. I especially like Chapter 1.

[firefangled]

— Rainer Maria Rilke


Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.

It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their face to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
disappointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise each other
have to sleep together in one bed —

that is when loneliness receives the rivers….

[quasimodo1]

OF MANY WORLDS IN THIS


Just like as in a nest of boxes round,
Degrees of sizes in each box are found:
So, in this world, may many others be
Thinner and less, and less still by degree:
Although they are not subject to our sense,
A world may be no bigger than two-pence.
Nature is curious, and such works may shape,
Which our dull senses easily escape:
For creatures, small as atoms, may there be,
If every one a creature’s figure bear.
............first part of this poem by Margaret Cavendish

[quasimodo1]

SHADOWS OF HIS LADY


Within the sand of what far river lies
The gold that gleams in tresses of my Love?
What highest circle of the Heavens above
Is jewelled with such stars as are her eyes?
And where is the rich sea whose coral vies
With her red lips, that cannot kiss enough?
What dawn-lit garden knew the rose, whereof
The fled soul lives in her cheeks' rosy guise?

What Parian marble that is loveliest,
Can match the whiteness of her brow and breast?
When drew she breath from the Sabaean glade?
Oh happy rock and river, sky and sea,
Gardens, and glades Sabaean, all that be
The far-off splendid semblance of my maid!


MOONLIGHT
JACQUES TAHUREAU, 1527-1555.

The high Midnight was garlanding her head
With many a shining star in shining skies,
And, of her grace, a slumber on mine eyes,
And, after sorrow, quietness was shed.
Far in dim fields cicalas jargoned
A thin shrill clamour of complaints and cries;
And all the woods were pallid, in strange wise,
With pallor of the sad moon overspread.

Then came my lady to that lonely place,
And, from her palfrey stooping, did embrace
And hang upon my neck, and kissed me over;
Wherefore the day is far less dear than night,
And sweeter is the shadow than the light,
Since night has made me such a happy lover.

[quasimodo1]

MOONLIGHT

WHAT time the meanest brick and stone
Take on a beauty not their own,
And past the flaw of builded wood
Shines the intention whole and good,
And all the little homes of man
Rise to a dimmer, nobler span;
When colour's absence gives escape
To the deeper spirit of the shape,

-- Then earth's great architecture swells
Among her mountains and her fells
Under the moon to amplitude
Massive and primitive and rude:

-- Then do the clouds like silver flags
Stream out above the tattered crags,
And black and silver all the coast
Marshalls its hunched and rocky host,
And headlands striding sombrely
Buttress the land against the sea,
-- The darkened land, the brightening wave --
And moonlight slants through Merlin's cave.



by.......Victoria Sackville-West

[quasimodo1]

GENIUS
Genius, like gold and precious stones,
is chiefly prized because of its rarity.

Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild,
incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility,
and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter.

Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres
far above the vulgar world and fills his soul
with regal contempt for the gross and sordid things of earth.

It is probably on account of this
that people who have genius
do not pay their board, as a general thing.

Geniuses are very singular.

If you see a young man who has frowsy hair
and distraught look, and affects eccentricity in dress,
you may set him down for a genius.

If he sings about the degeneracy of a world
which courts vulgar opulence
and neglects brains,
he is undoubtedly a genius.

If he is too proud to accept assistance,
and spurns it with a lordly air
at the very same time
that he knows he can't make a living to save his life,
he is most certainly a genius.

If he hangs on and sticks to poetry,
notwithstanding sawing wood comes handier to him,
he is a true genius.

If he throws away every opportunity in life
and crushes the affection and the patience of his friends
and then protests in sickly rhymes of his hard lot,
and finally persists,
in spite of the sound advice of persons who have got sense
but not any genius,
persists in going up some infamous back alley
dying in rags and dirt,
he is beyond all question a genius.

But above all things,
to deftly throw the incoherent ravings of insanity into verse
and then rush off and get booming drunk,
is the surest of all the different signs
of genius.

{Twain is not a neglected writer but his poetry is not well known. This poem from an acknowledged genius ironically illustrates the false indeces of the trait.}

[firefangled]

- Jane Mead, From The Lord and the General Din of the World

He mispronounces you,
the judge, rhyming your first
with your second name,
making you into something
ridiculous: Gillis Willis Mead.

But you stand as still
as they taught you in the army
when you were a young man trying hard
to keep secret what you knew
about how to kill with germs.
As quietly as we used to stand
on the front porch together at dusk
listening for the first cricket of the evening.

Now you stand accused
of wanting to die, of saying so
endlessly, with needles - and the speechless
track marks recording it all.

The evidence is
a red river mounting.
It wants to carry you
away like an old chair
some fisherman forgot
to take home. And I want
to shout: listen
-this man
is my father
I love him.

Is there a place
where all those things
that catch in the throat
gather themselves
into something as soft
as the G in Giles
was meant to be pronounced?

Is that where you thought
you were going?

[quasimodo1]

PARABOLA
Year after year the princess lies asleep
Until the hundred years foretold are done,
Easily drawing her enchanted breath.
Caught on the monstrous thorns around the keep,
Bones of the youths who sought her, one by one
Rot loose and rattle to the ground beneath.

But when the Destined Lover at last shall come,
For whom alone Fortune reserves the prize
The thorns give way; he mounts the cobwebbed stair
Unerring he finds the tower, the door, the room,
The bed where, waking at his kiss she lies
Smiling in the loose fragrance of her hair.

That night, embracing on the bed of state,
He ravishes her century of sleep
And she repays the debt of that long dream;
Future and Past compose their vast debate;
His seed now sown, her harvest ripe to reap
Enact a variation on the theme.

For in her womb another princess waits,
A sleeping cell, a globule of bright dew.
Jostling their way up that mysterious stair,
A horde of lovers bursts between the gates,
All doomed but one, the destined suitor, who
By luck first reaches her and takes her there.

A parable of all we are or do!
The life of Nature is a formal dance
In which each step is ruled by what has been
And yet the pattern emerges always new
The marriage of linked cause and random chance
Gives birth perpetually to the unforeseen.

{first stanzas of "Parabola" by
Alec Derwent Hope}

[quasimodo1]

WALKING THE SEAWALL



pacing the ancient earthworks, the fortifications of silence,
I know I am not through with you, I will never be through,
and not one of us who leap from stone



to stone on the road of boulders
that leads to the old lighthouse, not one of us
who clamber the grassy slope



to the lookout point, not one of us
who tread the path along the shore
next to the tangled wall of morning glory,



not one is through or will ever be through
with your ways of hovering, your
ash in the air, your clouds at daybreak



trailing departure, your echoes of rhyme and joke,
hugs of archaic fleece, smiles
a rubble around us, arms



now sunken, irretrievable. . . .
In your unending
absence we keep on keeping



brave and starched.
Beside the point,
a field of muck sinks into itself:



here we scramble on
splintery boards.
Stench of skunk,



stench of animal grief!
You who were here, too, you who waded
in mud beside us,



stand up again in your plaid and freckles
the way you used to once!
Unfurl your striped umbrellas!



Step heavily or lightly, as you did,
twitching and rustling your coats, your furs,
across the bridge from sleep!



Just this single extra
minute
we’ll stumble down the uneven beach,



pick our way across the lumps of granite
flung down at water’s edge,
creep together just once more


{first half of "Walking the Seawall" by Sandra M. Gilbert

[quasimodo1]

...............FIVE BELLS............................
Time that is moved by little fidget wheels
Is not my time, the flood that does not flow.
Between the double and the single bell
Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells
From the dark warship riding there below,
I have lived many lives, and this one life
Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.

Deep and dissolving verticals of light
Ferry the falls of moonshine down. Five bells
Coldly rung out in a machine's voice. Night and water
Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats
In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water.

Why do I think of you, dead man, why thieve
These profitless lodgings from the flukes of thought
Anchored in Time? You have gone from earth,
Gone even from the meaning of a name;
Yet something's there, yet something forms its lips
And hits and cries against the ports of space,
Beating their sides to make its fury heard.

Are you shouting at me, dead man, squeezing your face
In agonies of speech on speechless panes?
Cry louder, beat the windows, bawl your name!

But I hear nothing, nothing...only bells,
Five bells, the bumpkin calculus of Time.
Your echoes die, your voice is dowsed by Life,
There's not a mouth can fly the pygmy strait -
Nothing except the memory of some bones
Long shoved away, and sucked away, in mud;
And unimportant things you might have done,
Or once I thought you did; but you forgot,
And all have now forgotten - looks and words
And slops of beer; your coat with buttons off,
Your gaunt chin and pricked eye, and raging tales
Of Irish kings and English perfidy,
And dirtier perfidy of publicans
Groaning to God from Darlinghurst.
Five bells.

Then I saw the road, I heard the thunder
Tumble, and felt the talons of the rain
The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark,
So dark you bore no body, had no face,
But a sheer voice that rattled out of air
(As now you'd cry if I could break the glass),
A voice that spoke beside me in the bush,
Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind,
Of Milton, melons, and the Rights of Man,
And blowing flutes, and how Tahitian girls
Are brown and angry-tongued, and Sydney girls
Are white and angry-tongued, or so you'd found.
But all I heard was words that didn't join
So Milton became melons, melons girls,
And fifty mouths, it seemed, were out that night,
And in each tree an Ear was bending down,
Or something that had just run, gone behind the grass,
When blank and bone-white, like a maniac's thought,
The naphtha-flash of lightning slit the sky,
Knifing the dark with deathly photographs.
There's not so many with so poor a purse
Or fierce a need, must fare by night like that,
Five miles in darkness on a country track,
But when you do, that's what you think.
Five bells.
......................................{half of this great poem by Kenneth Slessor}

[Virgil]

Wow, that's a good poem Quasi. I have never heard of Slessor. I will have to look him up.

[quasimodo1]

To Virgil: He is the poet, this Slessor, and he has many others. It's so frustrating not to post the whole piece, but rules about copyright are serious. I try to come up with something like diversity in these selections (and just discovered a couple of huge databases of contemporary stuff). Even broke down and bought some Dylan Thomas collections and a huge new anthology whose only fault, in my view, is over representation of Whitman. There are many comments that I'd like to make about these entries but this would just slant or prejudice the reader in some way. Thanks for the comment. quasi

[quasimodo1]

TO IRON-FOUNDERS AND OTHERS

WHEN you destroy a blade of grass
You poison England at her roots:
Remember no man’s foot can pass
Where evermore no green life shoots.

You force the birds to wing too high
Where your unnatural vapours creep:
Surely the living rocks shall die
When birds no rightful distance keep.

You have brought down the firmament
And yet no heaven is more near;
You shape huge deeds without event,
And half-made men believe and fear.

Your worship is your furnaces,
Which, like old idols, lost obscenes,
Have molten bowels; your vision is
Machines for making more machines.

O, you are busied in the night,
Preparing destinies of rust;
Iron misused must turn to blight
And dwindle to a tetter’d crust.

The grass, forerunner of life, has gone,
But plants that spring in ruins and shards
Attend until your dream is done:
I have seen hemlock in your yards.

The generations of the worm
Know not your loads piled on their soil;
Their knotted ganglions shall wax firm
Till your strong flagstones heave and toil.

When the old hollow’d earth is crack’d,
And when, to grasp more power and feasts,
Its ores are emptied, wasted, lack’d,
The middens of your burning beasts

Shall be raked over till they yield
Last priceless slags for fashionings high,
Ploughs to wake grass in every field,
Chisels men’s hands to magnify.


{by Gordon Bottomley}

[firefangled]

— Charles Simic, Hotel Insomnia

This chair was once a student of Euclid.

The book of his laws lay on its seat.
The schoolhouse windows were open,
So the wind turned the pages
Whispering the glorious proofs.

The sun set over the golden roofs.
Everywhere the shadows lengthened,
But Euclid kept quiet about that.

[quasimodo1]

ON THE BIRTH OF A CHILD
Lo -- to the battle-ground of Life,
Child, you have come, like a conquering shout,
Out of a struggle -- into strife;
Out of a darkness -- into doubt.

Girt with the fragile armor of Youth,
Child, you must ride into endless wars,
With the sword of protest, the buckler of truth,
And a banner of love to sweep the stars. . . .

About you the world's despair will surge;
Into defeat you must plunge and grope --
Be to the faltering, an urge;
Be to the hopeless years, a hope!

Be to the darkened world a flame;
Be to its unconcern a blow --
For out of its pain and tumult you came,
And into its tumult and pain you go.

The Independent ......... Louis Untermeyer {published 1913}

[stlukesguild]

Quasimodo you are certainly doing an excellent job of keeping the poetry discussions going... almost single-handedly. I think a lot of potential posters might have gotten scared off... especially from the contemporary poetry thread... due to the limitations imposed upon them by the administrators. Considering the obscene awards and fines that the music and film industry have been slamming violators of intellectual property rights with it is probably not ridiculous to fear book publishers will be next. Nevertheless... I just thought I'd throw Thomas Traherne in here... cross posted from the 100 Books You Never Heard of thread:

Thomas Traherne- Selected Poems and Prose
http://www.amazon.com/Traherne-Selec...1977700&sr=1-6

Traherne is one of the great religious poetic visionaries... a marvelous precursor to William Blake, but unfortunately far too little known. He lived 1637-1674... but his writings were not first discovered until the very end of the 19th century and the author was not identified and the works published until the early 20th century. As recently as 1967 another volume of his work was dramatically rescued from a burning garbage dump in London. This work, the Commentaries of Heaven was not identified as being by Traherne until 1982 and had not yet been edited or published at the time of the publication of this Penguin volume. To this sad history one must also add the fact that Traherne was poorly served by his literary executor... his brother... who made a shambles (mutilation?) of his attempts at editing Traherne's work in order to make them more fit for the staid religious audience he imagined. Luckily, a good body of these works also exist in Traherne's own original autograph.

Trahernes writings include poems and poetic prose that recalls nothing so much as Blake or Novalis. His poetic structures are incredibly varied and avoid traditional form. Whether this was intentional or simply due to the fact that he was little aware of poetic traditions is unknown. In a manner also similar to Blake his poems often appear upon first reading to convey a child-like innocence or naïvety which grows in depth upon subsequent readings:

Wonder

HOW like an Angel came I down!
How bright are all things here!
When first among His works I did appear
O how their glory me did crown!
The world resembled His Eternity, 5
In which my soul did walk;
And every thing that I did see
Did with me talk.

The skies in their magnificence,
The lively, lovely air, 10
Oh how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!
The stars did entertain my sense,
And all the works of God, so bright and pure,
So rich and great did seem,
As if they ever must endure 15
In my esteem.

A native health and innocence
Within my bones did grow,
And while my God did all his Glories show,
I felt a vigour in my sense 20
That was all Spirit. I within did flow
With seas of life, like wine;
I nothing in the world did know
But ’twas divine.

Harsh ragged objects were concealed, 25
Oppressions, tears and cries,
Sins, griefs, complaints, dissensions, weeping eyes
Were hid, and only things revealed
Which heavenly Spirits and the Angels prize.
The state of Innocence 30
And bliss, not trades and poverties,
Did fill my sense.

The streets were paved with golden stones,
The boys and girls were mine,
Oh how did all their lovely faces shine! 35
The sons of men were holy ones,
In joy and beauty they appeared to me,
And every thing which here I found,
While like an Angel I did see,
Adorned the ground. 40

Rich diamond and pearl and gold
In every place was seen;
Rare splendours, yellow, blue, red, white and green,
Mine eyes did everywhere behold.
Great wonders clothed with glory did appear, 45
Amazement was my bliss,
That and my wealth was everywhere;
No joy to this!

Cursed and devised proprieties,
With envy, avarice 50
And fraud, those fiends that spoil even Paradise,
Flew from the splendour of mine eyes,
And so did hedges, ditches, limits, bounds,
I dreamed not aught of those,
But wandered over all men’s grounds, 55
And found repose.

Proprieties themselves were mine,
And hedges ornaments;
Walls, boxes, coffers, and their rich contents
Did not divide my joys, but all combine. 60
Clothes, ribbons, jewels, laces, I esteemed
My joys by others worn:
For me they all to wear them seemed
When I was born.

In spite of the beauty of his poetry, his prose work, Centuries of Meditations is commonly thought of as his masterwork. This visionary and poetic bit of prose reminds me not only of William Blake and the great German Romantic, Novalis, but also of the ecstatic and declaratory manner of Walt Whitman:

1. An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things... I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders...

2. Do not wonder that I promise to fill it with those truths you love but know not: for tho it be a maxim in the schools, that there is no love of a thing unknown: yet I have found, that the things unknown have a secret influence on the soul...

3. I will open my mouth in parables: I will utter things that have been kept secret from the foundations of the world. Things strange, yet common; incredible, yet known; most high, yet plain; infinitely profitable, but not esteemed. Is it not a great thing that you should be heir of the world?...

4. I will not by the noise of bloody wars and the dethroning of kings advance you to glory; but by the gentle ways of peace and love... Yet shall the end be so glorious that angels durst not hope for so great a one til they had seen it.

15. ...Souls are God's jewels. Every one of which is worth many worlds... So that I alone am the end of the world. Angels and men being all mine... God gave me alone to all the world, and all the world to me alone.

[quasimodo1]

IN PRAISE OF WRITING LETTERS
Blest be the Man! his Memory at least,
Who found the Art, thus to unfold his Breast,
And taught succeeding Times an easy way
Their secret Thoughts by Letters to convey;
To baffle Absence, and secure Delight,
Which, till that Time, was limited to Sight.

The parting Farewel spoke, the last Adieu,
The less'ning Distance past, then loss of View,
The Friend was gone, which some kind Moments gave,
And Absence separated, like the Grave.
The Wings of Love were tender too, till then
No Quill, thence pull'd, was shap'd into a Pen,
To send in Paper-sheets, from Town to Town,
Words smooth was they, and softer than his Down.
O'er such he reign'd, whom Neighborhood had join'd,
And hopt, from Bough to Bough, supported by the Wind.
When for a Wife the youthful Patriarch sent,
The Camels, Jewels, and the Steward went,
A wealthy Equipage, tho' grave and slow;
But not a Line, that might the Lover shew.
The Rings and Bracelets woo'd her Hands and Arms;
But had she known of melting Words, the Charms
That under secret Seals in Ambush lie,
To catch the Soul, when drawn into the Eye,
The Fair Assyrian had not took this Guide,
Nor her soft Heart in Chains of Pearl been ty'd.


Had these Conveyances been then in Date,
Joseph had known his wretched Father's State,
Before a Famine, which his Life pursues,
Had sent his other Sons, to tell the News.


Oh! might I live to see an Art arise,
As this to Thoughts, indulgent to the Eyes;
That the dark Pow'rs of distance cou'd subdue,
And make me See, as well as Talk to You;
That tedious Miles, nor Tracts of Air might prove
Bars to my Sight, and shadows to my Love!
Yet were it granted, such unbounded Things
Are wand'ring Wishes, born on Phancy's Wings,
They'd stretch themselves beyond this happy Case,
And ask an Art, to help us to Embrace.
{by Anne Kingsmill Finch, 1661-1720}

[firefangled]

Congratulations to Charles Simic, our new Poet Laureate!

He is one of my favorite poets.

[quasimodo1]

THE PROGRESS OF POETRY
The Farmer's Goose, who in the Stubble,
Has fed without Restraint, or Trouble;
Grown fat with Corn and Sitting still,
Can scarce get o'er the Barn-Door Sill:
And hardly waddles forth, to cool
Her Belly in the neighb'ring Pool:
Nor loudly cackles at the Door;
For Cackling shews the Goose is poor.

But when she must be turn'd to graze,
And round the barren Common strays,
Hard Exercise, and harder Fare
Soon make my Dame grow lank and spare:
Her Body light, she tries her Wings,
And scorns the Ground, and upward springs,
While all the Parish, as she flies,
Hear Sounds harmonious from the Skies.

Such is the Poet, fresh in Pay,
(The third Night's Profits of his Play;)
His Morning-Draughts 'till Noon can swill,
Among his Brethren of the Quill:
With good Roast Beef his Belly full,
Grown lazy, foggy, fat, and dull:
Deep sunk in Plenty, and Delight,
What Poet e'er could take his Flight?
Or stuff'd with Phlegm up to the Throat,
What Poet e'er could sing a Note?
Nor Pegasus could bear the Load,
Along the high celestial Road;
The Steed, oppress'd, would break his Girth,
To raise the Lumber from the Earth.

But, view him in another Scene,
When all his Drink is Hippocrene,
His Money spent, his Patrons fail,
His Credit out for Cheese and Ale;
His Two-Year's Coat so smooth and bare,
Through ev'ry Thread it lets in Air;
With hungry Meals his Body pin'd,
His Guts and Belly full of Wind;
And, like a Jockey for a Race,
His Flesh brought down to Flying-Case:
Now his exalted Spirit loaths
Incumbrances of Food and Cloaths;
And up he rises like a Vapour,
Supported high on Wings of Paper;
He singing flies, and flying sings,
While from below all Grub-street rings.
.................................................. .................................................. .... {by Jonathan Swift, 11667-1745)

[karo]

Hey Quasimodo, this is an excellent thread. Saw the Zen poems and thought I'd contribute with some Haikus.

What lives in the lake
filled with a blue
that has no name?

kimiko itami

Muffled in white breath-
voice of the
heart.

koko kato

May, come quick!
the earth at the horse's hooves
has fallen in.

kiyoko uda

And here's one I wrote:

Self-possessed black rose
Veiled in velvety darkness
Like a young widow

karo

[quasimodo1]

FIVE PRECEPTS ON HAPPINESS

1

Though your friends and family
will likely try
to save you from it,
yours is nobody else’s
business or responsibility.

2

You cannot cause,
manufacture or manipulate it.
It comes, if at all,
as gift to be received
with gratitude.

3

Hope to receive it
and prepare by giving away
what you least want to lose.
On this point
Jesus and Buddha dance.

4

Refuse to carry the burden
of maintaining it.
That’s unnecessary baggage,
will betroth you
to a boulder and a hill.


{excerpt from Bonnie Thurston's poem}

[quasimodo1]

INSOMNIA




Thin are the night-skirts left behind
By daybreak hours that onward creep,
And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
That wavers with the spirit's wind:
But in half-dreams that shift and roll
And still remember and forget,
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.


Our lives, most dear, are never near,
Our thoughts are never far apart,
Though all that draws us heart to heart
Seems fainter now and now more clear.
To-night Love claims his full control,
And with desire and with regret
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.


Is there a home where heavy earth
Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
Where water leaves no thirst again
And springing fire is Love's new birth?
If faith long bound to one true goal
May there at length its hope beget,
My soul that hour shall draw your soul
For ever nearer yet.
{by Dante Gabriel Rossetti}

[quasimodo1]

Poetry April 26, 2007


by Isabella Whitney

Will and Testament

A communication which the Author had to London, before she made her Will.

1 The time is come I must departe
2 from thee, ah, famous Citie:
3 I never yet, to rue my smart,
4 did finde that thou hadst pitie,
5 Wherefore small cause ther is, that I
6 should greeve from thee to go:
7 But many Women foolyshly,
8 lyke me, and other moe.
9 Doe such a fyxed fancy set,
10 on those which least desarve,
11 That long it is ere wit we get,
12 away from them to swarve,
13 But tyme with pittie oft wyl tel
14 to those that wil her try:
15 Whether it best be more to mell,
16 or vtterly defye.
17 And now hath time me put in mind,
18 of thy great cruelnes:
19 That never once a help wold finde,
20 to ease me in distres.
21 Thou never yet woldst credit geve
22 to boord me for a yeare:
23 Nor with Apparell me releve
24 except thou payed weare.
25 No, no, thou never didst me good,
26 nor ever wilt, I know:
27 Yet am I in no angry moode,
28 but wyll, or ere I goe,
29 In perfect love and charytie
30 my Testament here write:
31 And leave to thee such Treasurye,
32 as I in it recyte.
33 Now stand a side and geve me leave
34 to write my latest Wyll:
35 And see that none you do deceave,
36 of that I leave them tyl.

The maner of her Wyll, and what she left to London: and to all those in it: at her departing.

37 I whole in body, and in minde,
38 but very weake in Purse:
39 Doo make, and write my Testament
40 for feare it wyll be wurse.
41 And fyrst I wholy doo commend,
42 my Soule and Body eke:
43 To God the Father and the Son,
44 so long as I can speake.
45 And after speach: my Soule to hym,
46 and Body to the Grave:
47 Tyll time that all shall rise agayne,
48 their Judgement for to have.
49 And then I hope they both shal meete.
50 to dwell for aye in ioye:
51 Whereas I trust to see my Friends
52 releast, from all annoy.
53 Thus have you heard touching my soule,
54 and body what I meane:
55 I trust you all wyll witnes beare,
56 I have a stedfast brayne.

57 And now let mee dispose such things,
58 as I shal leave behinde:
59 That those which shall receave the same,
60 may know my wylling minde.
61 I firste of all to London leave
62 because I there was bred:
63 Braue buildyngs rare, of Churches store,
64 and Pauls to the head.
65 Betweene the same: fayre streats there bee,
66 and people goodly store:
67 Because their keeping craveth cost,
68 I yet wil leave him more.
69 First for their foode, I Butchers leave,
70 that every day shall kyll:
71 By Thames you shal have Brewers store,
72 and Bakers at your wyll.
73 And such as orders doo obserue,
74 and eat fish thrice a weeke:
75 I leave two Streets, full fraught therwith,
76 they neede not farre to seeke.
77 Watlyng Streete, and Canwyck streete,
78 I full of Wollen leave:
79 And Linnen store in Friday streete,
80 if they mee not deceave.
81 And those which are of callyng such,
82 that costlier they require:
83 I Mercers leave, with silke so rich,
84 as any would desyre.
85 In Cheape of them, they store shal finde
86 and likewise in that streete:
87 I Goldsmithes leave, with Iuels such,
88 as are for Ladies meete.
89 And Plate to furnysh Cubbards with,
90 full braue there shall you finde:
91 With Purle of Siluer and of Golde,
92 to satisfye your minde.
93 With Hoods, Bungraces, Hats or Caps,
94 such store are in that streete:
95 As if on ton side you should misse
96 the tother serues you feete.
97 For Nets of every kynd of sort,
98 I leave within the pawne:
99 French Ruffes, high Purles, Gorgets and Sleeves
100 of any kind of Lawne.
101 For Purse or Kniues, for Combe or Glasse,
102 or any needeful knacke
103 I by the Stoks have left a Boy,
104 wil aske you what you lack.
105 I Hose doo leave in Birchin Lane,
106 of any kynd of syse:
107 For Women stitchte, for men both Trunks
108 and those of Gascoyne gise.
109 Bootes, Shoes or Pantables good store,
110 Saint Martins hath for you:
111 In Cornwall, there I leave you Beds,
112 and all that longs thereto.
113 For Women shall you Taylors have,
114 by Bow, the chiefest dwel:
115 In every Lane you some shall finde,
116 can doo indifferent well.
117 And for the men, few Streetes or Lanes,
118 but Bodymakers bee:
119 And such as make the sweeping Cloakes,
120 with Gardes beneth the Knee.
121 Artyllery at Temple Bar,
122 and Dagges at Tower hyll:
123 Swords and Bucklers of the best,
124 are nye the Fleete vntyll.
125 Now when thy Folke are fed and clad
126 with such as I have namde:
127 For daynty mouthes, and stomacks weake
128 some Iunckets must be framde.
129 Wherfore I Poticaries leave,
130 with Banquets in their Shop:
131 Phisicians also for the sicke,
132 Diseases for to stop.
133 Some Roysters styll, must bide in thee,
134 and such as cut it out:
135 That with the guiltlesse quarel wyl,
136 to let their blood about.
137 For them I cunning Surgions leave,
138 some Playsters to apply.
139 That Ruffians may not styll be hangde,
140 nor quiet persons dye.
141 For Salt, Otemeale, Candles, Sope,
142 or what you els doo want:
143 In many places, Shops are full,
144 I left you nothing scant.
145 Yf they that keepe what I you leave,
146 aske Mony: when they sell it:
147 At Mint, there is such store, it is
148 vnpossible to tell it.
149 At Stiliarde store of Wines there bee,
150 your dulled mindes to glad:
151 And handsome men, that must not wed
152 except they leave their trade.
153 They oft shal seeke for proper Gyrles,
154 and some perhaps shall fynde:
155 (That neede compels, or lucre lures
156 to satisfye their mind.)
157 And neare the same, I houses leave,
158 for people to repayre:
159 To bathe themselues, so to preuent
160 infection of the ayre.
161 On Saturdayes I wish that those,
162 which all the weeke doo drug:
163 Shall thyther trudge, to trim them vp
164 on Sondayes to looke smug.
165 Yf any other thing be lackt
166 in thee, I wysh them looke:
167 For there it is: I little brought
168 but nothyng from thee tooke.
169 Now for the people in thee left,
170 I have done as I may:
171 And that the poore, when I am gone,
172 have cause for me to pray.
173 I wyll to prisons portions leave,
174 what though but very small:
175 Yet that they may remember me,
176 occasion be it shall:
177 And fyrst the Counter they shal have,
178 least they should go to wrack:
179 Some Coggers, and some honest men,
180 that Sergantes draw a back.
181 And such as Friends wyl not them bayle,
182 whose coyne is very thin:
183 For them I leave a certayne hole,
184 and little ease within.
185 The Newgate once a Monthe shal have
186 a sessions for his share:
187 Least being heapt, Infection might
188 procure a further care.
189 And at those sessions some shal skape,
190 with burning nere the Thumb:
191 And afterward to beg their fees,
192 tyll they have got the some.
193 And such whose deedes deserueth death,
194 and twelue have found the same:
195 They shall be drawne vp Holborne hill,
196 to come to further shame:
197 Well, yet to such I leave a Nag
198 shal soone their sorowes cease:
199 For he shal either breake their necks
200 or gallop from the preace.
201 The Fleete, not in their circuit is,
202 yet if I geve him nought:
203 It might procure his curse, ere I
204 unto the ground be brought.
205 Wherfore I leave some Papist olde
206 to vnder prop his roofe:
207 And to the poore within the same,
208 a Boxe for their behoofe.
209 What makes you standers by to smile.
210 and laugh so in your sleeve:
211 I thinke it is, because that I
212 to Ludgate nothing geve.
213 I am not now in case to lye,
214 here is no place of iest:
215 I dyd reserve, that for my selfe,
216 yf I my health possest.
217 And ever came in credit so
218 a debtor for to bee.
219 When dayes of paiment did approch,
220 I thither ment to flee.
221 To shroude my selfe amongst the rest,
222 that chuse to dye in debt:
223 Rather then any Creditor,
224 should money from them get.
225 Yet cause I feele my selfe so weake
226 that none mee credit dare:
227 I heere reuoke: and doo it leave,
228 some Banckrupts to his share.
229 To all the Bookebinders by Paulles
230 because I lyke their Arte:
231 They e'ry weeke shal mony have,
232 when they from Bookes departe.
233 Amongst them all, my Printer must,
234 have somwhat to his share:
235 I wyll my Friends these Bookes to bye
236 of him, with other ware.
237 For Maydens poore, I Widdoers ritch,
238 do leave, that oft shall dote:
239 And by that meanes shal mary them,
240 to set the Girles aflote.
241 And wealthy Widdowes wil I leave,
242 to help yong Gentylmen:
243 Which when you have, in any case
244 be courteous to them then:
245 And see their Plate and Iewells eake
246 may not be mard with rust.
247 Nor let their Bags too long be full,
248 for feare that they doo burst.
249 To e'ry Gate vnder the walles,
250 that compas thee about:
251 I Fruit wives leave to entertayne
252 such as come in and out.
253 To Smithfeelde I must something leave
254 my Parents there did dwell:
255 So carelesse for to be of it,
256 none wolde accompt it well.
257 Wherfore it thrice a weeke shall have,
258 of Horse and neat good store,
259 And in his Spitle, blynd and lame,
260 to dwell for evermore.
261 And Bedlem must not be forgot,
262 for that was oft my walke:
263 I people there too many leave,
264 that out of tune doo talke.
265 At Bridewel there shal Bedelles be,
266 and Matrones that shal styll
267 See Chalke wel chopt, and spinning plyde,
268 and turning of the Mill.
269 For such as cannot quiet bee,
270 but striue for House or Land:
271 At Th' innes of Court, I Lawyers leave
272 to take their cause in hand.
273 And also leave I at ech Inne
274 of Court, or Chauncerye:
275 Of Gentylmen, a youthfull roote,
276 full of Actiuytie:
277 For whom I store of Bookes have left,
278 at each Bookebinders stall:
279 And parte of all that London hath
280 to furnish them withall.
281 And when they are with study cloyd:
282 to recreate theyr minde:
283 Of Tennis Courts, of dauncing Scooles,
284 and fence they store shal finde.
285 And every Sonday at the least,
286 I leave to make them sport.
287 In diuers places Players, that
288 of wonders shall reporte.
289 Now London have I (for thy sake)
290 within thee, and without:
291 As coms into my memory,
292 dispearsed round about
293 Such needfull thinges, as they should have
294 heere left now unto thee:
295 When I am gon, with consience,
296 let them dispearced bee.
297 And though I nothing named have,
298 to bury mee withall:
299 Consider that aboue the ground,
300 annoyance bee I shall.
301 And let me have a shrowding Sheete
302 to couer mee from shame:
303 And in obliuyon bury mee
304 and never more mee name.
305 Ringings nor other Ceremonies,
306 vse you not for cost:
307 Nor at my buriall, make no feast,
308 your mony were but lost.
309 Reioyce in God that I am gon,
310 out of this vale so vile.
311 And that of ech thing, left such store,
312 as may your wants exile.
313 I make thee sole executor, because
314 I lou'de thee best.
315 And thee I put in trust, to geve
316 the goodes unto the rest.
317 Because thou shalt a helper neede,
318 In this so great a chardge,
319 I wysh good Fortune, be thy guide, least
320 thou shouldst run at lardge.
321 The happy dayes and quiet times,
322 they both her Seruants bee.
323 Which well wyll serue to fetch and bring,
324 such things as neede to t
325 Wherfore (good London) not refuse,
326 for helper her to take:
327 Thus being weake and wery both
328 an end heere wyll I make.
329 To all that aske what end I made,
330 and how I went away:
331 Thou answer maist like those which heere,
332 no longer tary may.
333 And unto all that wysh mee well,
334 or rue that I am gon:
335 Doo me comend, and bid them cease
336 my absence for to mone.
337 And tell them further, if they wolde,
338 my presence styll have had:
339 They should have sought to mend my luck;
340 which ever was too bad.
341 So fare thou well a thousand times,
342 God sheelde thee from thy foe:
343 And styll make thee victorious,
344 of those that seeke thy woe.
345 And (though I am perswade) that I
346 shall never more thee see:
347 Yet to the last, I shal not cease
348 to wish much good to thee.
349 This, xx. of October I,
350 in ANNO DOMINI:
351 A Thousand: v. hundred seuenty three
352 as Alminacks descry.
353 Did write this Wyll with mine owne hand
354 and it to London gaue:
355 In witnes of the standers by,
356 whose names yf you wyll have.
357 Paper, Pen and Standish were:
358 at that same present by:
359 With Time, who promised to reveale,
360 so fast as she could hye
361 The same: least of my nearer kyn,
362 for any thing should vary:
363 So finally I make an end
364 no longer can I tary.

{reprinted in the Antlantic Monthy}

[quasimodo1]

THE METEORITE
Among the hills a meteorite
Lies huge; and moss has overgrown,
And wind and rain with touches light
Made soft, the contours of the stone.

Thus easily can Earth digest
A cinder of sidereal fire,
And make her translunary guest
The native of an English shire.

Nor is it strange these wanderers
Find in her lap their fitting place,
For every particle that's hers
Came at the first from outer space.

All that is Earth has once been sky;
Down from the sun of old she came,
Or from some star that travelled by
Too close to his entangling flame.
{excerpt from this poem by C. S. Lewis}

[firefangled]

Juan Ramon Jimenez

Into the infinite white,
snow, spice-plants, and salt he took
his imagination, and left it.

The color white is walking
over a silent carpet
made of the feathers of a dove.

With no eyes or geatures
it takes in a dream without moving.
But it trembles inside.

In the infinite white
his imagination left
such a pure and deep wound!

In the infinite white.
Snow, Spice-Plants. Salt

[quasimodo1]

To firefangled: Thanks for your fine post; wish more members would add bits of poetry that they are familiar with and would seem "neglected" in the larger sense. quasi

[firefangled]

To firefangled: Thanks for your fine post; wish more members would add bits of poetry that they are familiar with and would seem "neglected" in the larger sense. quasi

I wish I brought more to this thread, Quasi. It is good to see poets that we maybe don't hear of as often. I have seen some post for poets I never heard of.

Thanks for starting the thread.

[quasimodo1]

MNEMOSYNE

IT'S autumn in the country I remember.

How warm a wind blew here about the ways!
And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber
During the long sun-sweetened summer-days.

It's cold abroad the country I remember.

The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain
At midday with a wing aslant and limber;
And yellow cattle browsed upon the plain.

It's empty down the country I remember.

I had a sister lovely in my sight:
Her hair was dark, her eyes were very sombre;
We sang together in the woods at night.

It's lonely in the country I remember.

The babble of our children fills my ears,
And on our hearth I stare the perished ember
To flames that show all starry thro' my tears.

It's dark about the country I remember.

There are the mountains where I lived. The path
Is slushed with cattle-tracks and fallen timber,
The stumps are twisted by the tempests' wrath.

But that I knew these places are my own,
I'd ask how came such wretchedness to cumber
The earth, and I to people it alone.

It rains across the country I remember.

by Trumbull Stickney {The Titan goddess of memory and the inventor of words, daughter of Uranus and Gaea. She is one of the three elder Muses.......origin of MNEMOSYNE}

[quasimodo1]

.........................When we depart and when we return;
When we plant and when we harvest.
Let us bring up our children. It is not
the place of some official to hand to them
their heritage.
If others impart to our children our knowledge
and ideals, they will lose all of us that is
wordless and full of wonder.
Let us build memories in our children,
lest they drag out joyless lives,
lest they allow treasures to be lost because
they have not been given the keys.
We live, not by things, but by the meanings
of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords
from generation to generation.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery {last part of this poem}

[firefangled]

In Nature There Is Neither Right nor Left nor Wrong


Men are what they do, women are what they are.
These erect breasts, like marble coming up for air
Among the cataracts of my breathtaking hair,
Are goods in my bazaar, a door ajar
To the first paradise of whores and mothers.

Men buy their way back into me from the upright
Right-handed puzzle that men fit together
From their deeds, the pieces. Women shoot from
Or dive back into its interstices
As squirrels inhabit geometry.

We women sell ourselves for sleep, for flesh,
To those wide-awake, successful spirits, men —
Who, lying each midnight with their sinister
Beings, their dark companions, women,
Suck childhood, breasthood, from a mother’s breasts.

A fat bald rich man comes home at twilight
And lectures me about my parking tickets; gowned in gold
Lamé, I look at him and think: “You’re old,
I’m old.” Husband, I sleep with you every night
and like it; but each morning when I wake
I’ve dreamed of my first love, the subtle serpent.

[mazHur]

In Nature There Is Neither Right nor Left nor Wrong


Men are what they do, women are what they are.
These erect breasts, like marble coming up for air
Among the cataracts of my breathtaking hair,
Are goods in my bazaar, a door ajar
To the first paradise of whores and mothers.

Men buy their way back into me from the upright
Right-handed puzzle that men fit together
From their deeds, the pieces. Women shoot from
Or dive back into its interstices
As squirrels inhabit geometry.

We women sell ourselves for sleep, for flesh,
To those wide-awake, successful spirits, men —
Who, lying each midnight with their sinister
Beings, their dark companions, women,
Suck childhood, breasthood, from a mother’s breasts.

A fat bald rich man comes home at twilight
And lectures me about my parking tickets; gowned in gold
Lamé, I look at him and think: “You’re old,
I’m old.” Husband, I sleep with you every night
and like it; but each morning when I wake
I’ve dreamed of my first love, the subtle serpent.

Really nice poem but why only blame men?

SANA KHWAN-E-TAQDEES-E-MASHRIQ KAHAN HIEN ?
(Where are the eulogists of the East?)

Infact this is a universal problem everywhere !

[quasimodo1]

Lions and Ants

ONCE a hunter met a lion near the hungry critter's lair, and the way that lion mauled him was decidedly unfair; but the hunter never whimpered when the surgeons, with their thread, sewed up forty-seven gashes in his mutilated head; and he showed the scars in triumph, and they gave him pleasant fame, and he always blessed the lion that had camped upon his frame. Once that hunter, absent minded, sat upon a hill of ants, and about a million bit him, and you should have seen him dance! And he used up lots of language of a deep magenta tint, and aphostrophized the insects in a style unfit to print. And it's thus with worldly troubles; when the big ones come along, we serenely go to meet them, feeling valiant, bold and strong, but the weary little worries with their poisoned stings and smarts, put the lid upon our courage, make us gray, and break our hearts.

by Walt Mason {I'm not sure if this was supposed to be a prose poem, but this is the way it was presented} quasi

[quasimodo1]

THE MAN BORN TO FARMING



The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

whose hands reach into the ground and sprout

to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death

yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down

in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.

His thought passes along the row ends like a mole. ..........

{from Farming: A Handbook, 1970, excerpt by Wendell Berry}

[firefangled]

I Took Off Petal After Petal

I took off petal after petal, as if you were a rose,
in order to see your soul,
and I didn't see it.

However, everything around -
horizons of fields and oceans -
everything, even what was infinite,
was filled with a perfume,
immense and living.

[quasimodo1]

Self

Through work we define ourselves, and upon our work we leave our image. It is part of who we are, and who we shall become.
One of Juan Ramón's best-known works in progress was his I, his public self. Over the years, in a series of vignettes and aphorisms (like the ones on the following pages), he portrayed himself as god, as nature, as his own disciple and master; in short, as a sufficient, alternate universe.
Like his poetry, that I, that public ego, was in a constant state of revision. In his earliest poses for the photographer, one sees the sad, dark eyes of a self- declared "martyr of Beauty," a "precision instrument for thinking and feeling." The well-trimmed beard and careful, elegant attire suggest a master of perfection: "My kingdom lles in the difficult." His look could be sharp and fastidious, and one or two of the photos might have been inscribed with the aphorism "Let us cultivate, before all else, the art of rejection!" On an imaginary calling card--one of many he handed to posterity--he engraved the words

{since firefangled chose this poet...a bit of backround, quasi}

[firefangled]

Oceans

I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing...Silence...Waves...

-Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?


{thanks, quasi. an earlier poem I posted by Lorca was typical of his debt to Jimenez. Many of Lorcas early poems were modeled after Jimenez's style. }

[quasimodo1]

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.
{it's a stretch to consider Keats neglected, except maybe by the plethora of colleges for whom a liberal arts major has become an endagered species}

[quasimodo1]

Robert Frost in The Atlantic Monthly January 31, 2006
An Atlantic editor snubs a poet and lives to regret it


The First Three Poems and One That Got Away



Sometime in 1912, before Robert Frost made his famous leap to "live under thatch" in England, where he would become known as a poet, he sent some of his poems to Ellery Sedgwick, the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and in due course received a personal reply that read, "We are sorry that we have no place in The Atlantic Monthly for your vigorous verse." Frost's submission included some of his finest early poems — "Reluctance," for example.




Sedgwick's ambiguous snub rankled in Frost's memory. During the two and a half years he lived in England his first two books of poetry, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), were published there, though not yet in the United States. Thanks partly to Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and Harriet Monroe's Poetry magazine, Frost's poems were hailed in advance of U.S. publication as representing a new American voice. In February, 1915, North of Boston was published in New York, just as the Frost family set foot back in the United States.
{a poet neglected no longer}

[quasimodo1]

A SENSE OF HUMOR


No man should stand before the moon
To make sweet song thereon,
With dandified importance,
His sense of humor gone.

Nay, let us don the motley cap,
The jester's chastened mien,
If we would woo that looking-glass
And see what should be seen.

O mirror on fair Heaven's wall,
We find there what we bring.
So, let us smile in honest part
And deck our souls and sing.

Yea, by the chastened jest alone
Will ghosts and terrors pass,
And fays, or suchlike friendly things,
Throw kisses through the glass.

by Vachel Lindsay