Exempli Gratia: Classic Poetry

[quasimodo1]

(1631) Il Penseroso
This is the companion piece to Milton's "L'Allegro".


Hence, vain deluding joys,
The brood of folly without father bred,
How little you bestead,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the sunbeams,
Or likest hovering dreams,
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail thou Goddess sage and holy,
Hail divinest Melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view
O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue;
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above
The Sea-Nymphs, and their pow'rs offended.
Yet thou art higher far descended;
Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore
To solitary Saturn bore;
His daughter she (in Saturn's reign
Such mixture was not held a stain). ... {excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

(1631) L' ALLEGRO
This is the companion piece to Milton's "Il Penseroso".


Hence, loathed Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night raven sings;
There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come thou Goddess fair and free,
In heav'n ycleped Euphrosyne,
And by Men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister Graces more
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;
Or whether (as some sager sing)
The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying,
There on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful Jollity,
Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as you go
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tow'r in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise; ... {excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from the American Review, December 1847

TO — — —.

ULALUME: A BALLAD


THE skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispèd and sere —
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir —
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul —
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll —
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole —
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere —
Our memories were treacherous and sere —
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year —
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber —
(Though once we had journeyed down here) —
We remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn —
As the star-dials hinted of morn —
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn —
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said — "She is warmer than Dian:
She rolls through an ether of sighs —
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies —
To the Lethean peace of the skies —
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes —
Come up through the lair of the Lion
With Love in her luminous eyes."

[page 600:]

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said — "Sadly this star I mistrust —
Her pallor I strangely mistrust: —
Oh, hasten! — oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly! — let us fly! — for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings till they trailed in the dust —
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust —
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied — "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybillic splendor is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty to-night: —
See! — it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright —
We safely may trust to a gleaming
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom —
And conquered her scruples and gloom:
And we passed to the end of the vista,
And were stopped by the door of a tomb —
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said — "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied — "Ulalume — Ulalume —
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crispèd and sere —
As the leaves that were withering and sere,
And I cried — "It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed — I journeyed down here —
That I brought a dread burden down here —
On this night of all nights in the year,
Oh, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber —
This misty mid region of Weir —
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

Said we, then — the two, then — "Ah, can it
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls —
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls —
To bar up our way and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds —
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds —
Had drawn up the spectre of a planet
From the limbo of lunary souls —
This sinfully scintillant planet
From the Hell of the planetary souls?"

[quasimodo1]

Often haue I heard that it is the property of some wo-
men, not only to emulate the virtues and perfections
of the rest, but also by all their powers of ill speaking,
to ecclipse the brightness of their deserved fame: now
contrary to this custome, which men I hope uniustly lay to (5)
their charge, I haue written this small volume, or little booke,
for the generall vse of all virtuous Ladies and Gentlewomen
of this kingdome; and in commendation of some particular
persons of our owne sexe, such as for the most part, are so well
knowne to my selfe, and others, that I dare undertake Fame (10)
dares not to call any better. And this haue I done, to make
knowne to the world, that all women deserue not to be blamed
though some forgetting they are women themselues, and in
danger to be condemned by the words of their owne mouthes,
fall into so great an errour, as to speake vnaduisedly against (15)
the rest of their sexe; which if it be true, I am persuaded they
can shew their owne imperfection in nothing more: and there-
fore could wish (for their owne ease, modesties, and credit) they
would referre such points of folly, to be practised by euell dispo-
sed men, who forgetting they were borne of women, nourished (20)
of women, and that if it were not by the means of women, they
would be quite extinguished out of the world: and a finall ende
of them all, doe like Vipers deface the wombes wherein they
were bred, onely to giue way and vtterance to their want of
discretion and goodnesse. Such as these, were they that disho- (25)
noured Christ his Apostles and Prophets, putting them to
shamefull deaths. Therefore, we are not to regard any imputa-
tions that they vndeseruedly lay upon us, no otherwise than
to make vse of them to our owne benefits, as spurres to ver-
tue, making vs flie all occasions that may colour their uniust (30)

[Cellar Door]

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron. 1788–1824

600. She walks in Beauty

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light 5
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face; 10
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 15
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

[quasimodo1]

From
Yet Other Twelve Wonders of the World



IV. The Lawyer


The Law my calling is, my robe, my tongue, my pen,
Wealth and opinion gaine, and make me Iudge of men.
The knowne dishonest cause, I neuer did defend,
Nor spun out sutes in length, but wisht and sought and end :
Nor counsell did bewray, nor of both parties take,
Nor euer tooke I fee for which I neuer spake.

[quasimodo1]

VIII.

Labour and its Reward.

The Earl of Oxford to the Reader of Bedingfield’s Cardanus’s Comfort.

The labouring man that tills the fertile soil,
And reaps the harvest fruit, hath not indeed
The gain, but pain; and if for all his toil
He gets the straw, the lord will have the seed.
The manchet fine falls not unto his share;
On coarsest cheat his hungry stomach feeds.
The landlord doth possess the finest fare;
He pulls the flowers, he plucks but weeds.
The mason poor that builds the lordly halls,
Dwells not in them; they are for high degree;
His cottage is compact in paper walls,
And not with brick or stone, as others be.
The idle drone that lahours not at all,
Sucks up the sweet of honey from the bee;
Who worketh most to their share least doth fall,
With due desert reward will never be.
The swiftest hare unto the mastive slow
Oft-times doth fall, to him as for a prey;
The greyhound thereby doth miss his game we know
For which he made such speedy haste away.
So he that takes the pain to pen the book,
Reaps not the gifts of goodly golden muse;
But those gain that, who on the work shall look,
And from the sour the sweet by skill doth choose,
For he that beats the bush the bird not gets,
But who sits still and holdeth fast the nets.

{written 1576}

[stlukesguild]

An older poetry thread. We should have started such long ago. Here is one that might sound quite familiar. I found it in an old anthology, Elizabethan Lyrics from the Original Texts, edited by Norman Ault first published in 1949:

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise.
Sleep little wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby:
Rock them, rock them, lullaby.

Care is heavy, therefor sleep you
You are care, and care must keep you.
Sleep little wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby:
Rock them, rock them, lullaby.

attributed to Thomas Dekker c. 1600

[JBI]

Love (III) by George Herbert


Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack,
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack'd anything.

A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and tast me meat:
So I did sit and eat.

[JBI]

They Flee From Me by Sir Thomas Wyatt


They fle from me, that sometyme did me seke
With naked fote, stalking in my chambre.
I have seen theirn gentill, tame, and meke,
That nowe are wyld, and do not remembre
That sometyme they put theimself in daunger
To take bred at my hand; and nowe they raunge
Besely seking with a continuell chaunge.

Thancked be fortune, it hath ben othrewise
Twenty tymes better; but ons, in speciall,
In thyn arraye, after a pleasaunt gyse,
When her lose gowne from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her armes long and small,
Therewith all swetely did me kysse,
And softely saide: "Dere hert, howe like you this?"

It was no dreme: I lay brode waking.
But all is torned, thorough my gentilnes,
Into a straunge fasshion of forsaking;
And I have leve to goo of her goodness,
And she also to use new fangilnes:
But syns that I so kyndely am served,
I would fain knowe what she hath deserved.

[quasimodo1]

Thomas Dekker and Sir Thomas Wyatt, two great additions. This thread might be a useful place for members to post their favorites from former eras. The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer

PROLOGUE

Here bygynneth the Book of the tales of Caunterbury.

Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-

So priketh hem Nature in hir corages-
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende

Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for the seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.
Bifil that in that seson, on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay,

Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury, with ful devout corage,
At nyght were come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle

In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde. ... {excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

Book III Part VII: Learn Music and Read the Poets


The Sirens were sea-monsters, who, with singing voice,

could restrain a ship’s course as they wished.

Ulysses, your body nearly melted hearing them,

while the wax filled your companions’ ears.

Song is a thing of grace: girls, learn to sing:

for many your voice is a better procuress than your looks.

And repeat what you just heard in the marble theatre,

and the latest songs played in the Egyptian style.

No woman taught under my control should fail to know

how to hold her lyre with the left hand, the plectrum with her right.

Thracian Orpheus, with his lute, moved animals and stones,

and Tartarus’s lake and Cerberus, the triple-headed hound.

At your song, Amphion, just avenger of your mother,

the stones obligingly made Thebes’s new walls.

Though dumb, a Dolphin’s thought to have responded

to a human voice, as the tale of Arion’s lyre noted.

And learn to sweep both hands across the genial harp

that too is suitable for our sweet fun.

Let Callimachus, be known to you, Coan Philetas

and the Teian Muse of old drunken Anacreon:

And let Sappho be yours (well what’s more wanton?),

Menander, whose master’s gulled by his Thracian slaves’ cunning.

and be able to recite tender Propertius’s song,

or some of yours Gallus or Tibullus:

and the high-flown speech of Varro’s fleece

of golden wool, Phrixus, your sister Helle’s lament:

and Aeneas the wanderer, the beginnings of mighty Rome,

than which there is no better known work in Latin.

And perhaps my name will be mingled with those,

my works not all given to Lethe’s streams:

and someone will say: ‘Read our master’s cultured song,

in which he teaches both the sexes: or choose

from the three books stamped with the title Amores,

that you recite softly with sweetly-teachable lips:

or let your voice sing those letters he composed, the Heroides:

he invented that form unknown to others.’

O grant it so, Phoebus! And, you, sacred powers of poetry,

great horned Bacchus, and the Nine goddesses!

{from Ovid, The Art of Love}

[quasimodo1]

The Logicians Refuted

Logicians have but ill defined
As rational, the human kind;
Reason, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can.
Wise Aristotle and Smiglesius,
By ratiocinations specious,
Have strove to prove, with great precision,
With definition and division,
Homo est ratione praeditum;
But for my soul I cannot credit 'em,
And must, in spite of them, maintain,
That man and all his ways are vain;
And that this boasted lord of nature
Is both a weak and erring creature;
That instinct is a surer guide
Than reason, boasting mortals' pride;
And that brute beasts are far before 'em.


Deus est anima brutorum.
Whoever knew an honest brute
At law his neighbour prosecute,
Bring action for assault or battery,
Or friend beguile with lies and flattery?
O'er plains they ramble unconfined,
No politics disturb their mind;
They eat their meals, and take their sport
Nor know who's in or out at court.
They never to the levee go
To treat, as dearest friend, a foe:
They never importune his grace,
Nor ever cringe to men in place:
Nor undertake a dirty job,
Nor draw the quill to write for Bob.[1]


Fraught with invective, they ne'er go
To folks at Paternoster Row.
No judges, fiddlers, dancing-masters,
No pickpockets, or poetasters,
Are known to honest quadrupeds;
No single brute his fellow leads.
Brutes never meet in bloody fray,
Nor cut each other's throats for pay.
Of beasts, it is confess'd, the ape
Comes nearest us in human shape;
Like man, he imitates each fashion,
And malice is his lurking passion:
But, both in malice and grimaces,
A courtier any ape surpasses.
Behold him, humbly cringing, wait
Upon the minister of state;
View him soon after to inferiors
Aping the conduct of superiors;
He promises with equal air,
And to perform takes equal care.
He in his turn finds imitators,
At court, the porters, lacqueys, waiters,
Their masters' manner still contract,
And footmen, lords and dukes can act.
Thus, at the court, both great and small
Behave alike, for all ape all.

[quasimodo1]

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/19461734.html --
The Ultimate Literary Portrait


By Henrik Bering

Boswell's painterly masterpiece



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

"Among the great encounters of literature, none ranks higher than the one that took place between James Boswell and

Samuel Johnson in Tom Davis’s bookstore in Russell Street, Covent Garden on Monday, May 16, 1763. Boswell, a 22-

year-old Scot with literary ambitions, had long been desiring to meet the great man of English letters, but without

success, and was sitting in the back parlor of the shop having tea when Johnson suddenly entered the store."

[quasimodo1]

T H E
V A N I T Y
O F
H U M A N W I S H E S.
T H E
Tenth Satire of Juvenal,

IMITATED

By SAMUEL JOHNSON.

[image]

L O N D O N:
Printed for R. DODSLEY at Tully's Head in Pall-Mall,
and Sold by M. COOPER in Pater-noster Row.
___________________________
M.DCC.XLIX.


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

T H E
T E N T H S A T I R E
O F
J U V E N A L.

ET Observation with extensive View,
Survey Mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious Toil, each eager Strife,
And watch the busy Scenes of crowded Life;
Then say how Hope and Fear, Desire and Hate,
O'erspread with Snares the clouded Maze of Fate,
Where wav'ring Man, betray'd by vent'rous Pride,
To tread the dreary Paths without a Guide;
As treach'rous Phantoms in the Mist delude,
Shuns fancied Ills, or chases airy Good.
How rarely Reason guides the stubborn Choice,
Rules the bold Hand, or prompts the suppliant Voice,
How Nations sink, by darling Schemes oppress'd,
When Vengeance listens to the Fool's Request.
Fate wings with ev'ry Wish th'afflictive Dart,
Each Gift of Nature, and each Grace of Art,
With fatal Heat impetuous Courage glows,
With fatal Sweetness Elocution flows,
Impeachment stops the Speaker's pow'rful Breath,
And restless Fire precipitates on Death.

{first stanza only}

[JBI]

Milton, Paradise Lost first Paragraph

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
5Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
10Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
15Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first
20Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss,
And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That, to the height of this great argument,
25I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.

That's 2 sentences - talk about relative clauses.

[JBI]

From Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman
Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,--
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!
Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean
Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pre.

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion,
List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;
List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

Look at that metre - and he goes on like that for thousands and thousands of lines - that alone is impressive.

[JBI]

Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour, July 13, 1798 by William Wordsworth

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye;
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love.Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again;
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads than one
Who sought the thing he loved.For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all. I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colors and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, not any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense.For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes.Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service; rather say
With warmer love oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love.Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

[JBI]

To Autumn by John Keats

1
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
2
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

[Jozanny]

To Autumn by John Keats

1
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.[/COLOR]


What an extraordinary poet Keats was! You must be reading my mind JBI, as I have been thinking a lot about "To Autumn" in recent weeks. To me Keats says more about love and passion and mortality in this one poem than Roethke does in twenty with his obsession over ungainliness.

[quasimodo1]

SATVRA II

VLTRA Sauromatas fugere hinc libet et glacialem
Oceanum, quotiens aliquid de moribus audent
qui Curios simulant et Bacchanalia vivunt.
indocti primum, quamquam plena omnia gypso
5 Chrysippi invenias; nam perfectissimus horum,
si quis Aristotelen similem vel Pittacon emit
et iubet archetypos pluteum servare Cleanthas.
frontis nulla fides; quis enim non vicus abundat
tristibus obscaenis? castigas turpia, cum sis
10 inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinaedos?
hispida membra quidem et durae per bracchia saetae
promittunt atrocem animum, sed podice levi
caeduntur tumidae medico ridente mariscae.
rarus sermo illis et magna libido tacendi
15 atque supercilio brevior coma. verius ergo
et magis ingenue Peribomius; hunc ego fatis
inputo, qui vultu morbum incessuque fatetur.
horum simplicitas miserabilis, his furor ipse
dat veniam; sed peiores, qui talia verbis
20 Herculis invadunt et de virtute locuti
clunem agitant. "ego te ceventem, Sexte, verebor?"
infamis Varillus ait "quo deterior te?"
loripedem rectus derideat, Aethiopem albus;
quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes?

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

THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL

SATIRE II

MORALISTS WITHOUT MORALS

I would fain flee to Sarmatia and the frozen Sea when people who ape the Curii[1] and live like Bacchanals dare talk

about morals. In the first place, they are unlearned persons, though you may find their houses crammed with plaster

casts of Chrysippus;[2] for their greatest hero is the man who has brought a likeness of Aristotle or Pittacus,[3] or

bids his shelves preserve an original portrait of Cleanthes.[4] Men's faces are not to be trusted; does not every

street abound in gloomy-visaged debauchees? And do you rebuke foul practices, when you are yourself the most

notorious delving-ground among Socratic reprobates? A hairy body, and arms stiff with bristles, give promise of a

manly soul: but sleek are your buttocks when the grinning doctor cuts into the swollen piles. Men of your kidney talk

little; they glory in taciturnity, and cut their hair shorter than their eyebrows. Peribomius[5] himself is more open

and more honest; his face, his walk, betray his distemper, and I charge Destiny with his failings. Such men excite

your pity by their frankness; the very fury of their passions wins them pardon. Far worse are those who denounce evil

ways in the language of a Hercules; and after discoursing upon virtue, prepare to practise vice. "Am I to respect

you, Sextus," quoth the ill-famed Varillus, "when you do as I do? How am I worse than yourself?" Let the straight-

legged man laugh at the club-footed, the white man at the blackamoor: but who could endure the Gracchi railing at

sedition? Who will not confound heaven with earth, and sea with sky, if Verres denounce thieves, or Milo[6] cut-

throats? If Clodius condemn adulterers, or Catiline upbraid Cethegus;[7] or if Sulla's three disciples[8] inveigh

against proscriptions? Such a man was that adulterer[9] who, after lately defiling himself by a union of the tragic

style, revived the stern laws that were to be a terror to all men-ay, even to Mars and Venus-at the moment when Julia

was relieving her fertile womb and giving birth to abortions that displayed the similitude of her uncle. Is it not

then right and proper that the very worst of sinners should despise your pretended Scauri,[l0] and bite back when

bitten?
{from the inventor of satire}

[quasimodo1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/books/review/Hell-t.html?8bu&emc=bua2 --RIMBAUD

The Double Life of a Rebel

By Edmund White

192 pp. Atlas & Company. $24
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-More aspects of Rimbaud are known than can be assimilated: his vastly various, influential and innovative poetry

itself; his expressive letters; his scornful and unhesitating permanent abandonment of poetry at the age of 20; the

anecdotes of his contemporaries showing him as a drunken, filthy, amoral homosexualteenager who becomes a reserved,

hard-working, responsible and respectable (if misanthropic and disgust-ridden) adult merchant and explorer. One would

have to be a genius oneself to grasp the full significance of Arthur Rimbaud, or at least have the ability to hold

many opposed ideas in one’s mind at the same time and still function fully. Numerous writers have sought to

demonstrate their qualifications along these lines by publishing studies of him.

[quasimodo1]

A Season in Hell
by Arthur Rimbaud
Translated by Bertrand Mathieu


A while back, if I remember right, my life was one long party where all hearts were open wide, where all wines kept flowing.

One night, I sat Beauty down on my lap.—And I found her galling.—And I roughed her up.

I armed myself against justice.

I ran away. O witches, O misery, O hatred, my treasure's been turned over to you!

I managed to make every trace of human hope vanish from my mind. I pounced on every joy like a ferocious animal eager to strangle it.

I called for executioners so that, while dying, I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called for plagues to choke me with sand, with blood. Bad luck was my god. I stretched out in the muck. I dried myself in the air of crime. And I played tricks on insanity.

And Spring brought me the frightening laugh of the idiot.

So, just recently, when I found myself on the brink of the final squawk! it dawned on me to look again for the key to that ancient party where I might find my appetite once more.

Charity is that key.—This inspiration proves I was dreaming!

"You'll always be a hyena etc. . . ," yells the devil, who'd crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Deserve death with all your appetites, your selfishness, and all the capital sins!"

Ah! I've been through too much:-But, sweet Satan, I beg of you, a less blazing eye! and while waiting for the new little cowardly gestures yet to come, since you like an absence of descriptive or didactic skills in a writer, let me rip out these few ghastly pages from my notebook of the damned.

[stlukesguild]

Now there's teen angst of genius. By the way... "an amoral homosexual teenager who becomes a reserved, hard-working, responsible and respectable adult merchant and explorer?" Is that what they call deserting from the Dutch Colonial Army, smuggling and dealing arms in Abyssinia?

[quasimodo1]

An extended, ultimate euphemism. I wasn't aware Rimbaud was an old time arms dealer. Where did you get that information? Bio?

[Bitterfly]

Ah, I love Rimbaud. His Illuminations are also very beautiful. And his "Drunken Boat" - here's a translation of it (seems weird in prose):
(And by the way, yes, he was an arms dealer at one period of his life; it's even a quite well-known fact.)

As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers, I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers : gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets, nailing them naked to coloured stakes.

I cared nothing for all my crews, carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons. When, along with my haulers, those uproars were done with, the Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.

Into the ferocious tide-rips, last winter, more absorbed than the minds of children, I ran ! And the unmoored Peninsulas never endured more triumphant clamourings. The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings. Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves which men call eternal rollers of victims, for ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights !

Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children, the green water penetrated my pinewood hull and washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the splashes of vomit, carrying away both rudder and anchor.

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, devouring the green azures ; where, entranced in pallid flotsam, a dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down ; where, suddenly dying the bluenesses- deliriums and slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight, stronger than alcohol, vaster than music-ferment the bitter rednesses of love ! I have come to know the skies splitting with lightnings, and the waterspouts, and the breakers and currents ; I know the evening, and Dawn rising up like a flock of doves, and sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw!

I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors lighting up long violet coagulations like the performers in antique dramas ; waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds !

I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows, the kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas, the circulation of undreamed-of saps, and the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus !

I have followed, for whole months on end, the swells battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows, never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys could muzzle by force the snorting Oceans !

I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas, where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers in human skins ! Rainbows stretched like bridles under the seas-horizon to glaucous herds !

I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds !

Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm, and distances cataracting down into abysses !

Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals ! Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs where the giant snakes, devoured by vermin, fall from the twisted trees with black odours !

I should have liked to show to children those dolphins of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fishes.- Foam of flowers rocked my driftings, and at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.

Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones, the sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings lifted my shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me, and I hung there like a kneeling woman... [I was] almost an island, tossing on my beaches the brawls and droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds. And I was scudding along when across my frayed cordage drowned men sank backwards into sleep !...

But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves, hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether ; I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water, neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished up ; free, smoking, risen from violet fogs, I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky which bears a sweetmeat good poets find delicious : lichens of sunlight [mixed] with azure snot ; who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity, a crazy plank with black sea-horses for escort, when Julys were crushing with cudgel blows skies of ultramarine into burning funnels ; I who trembled to feel at fifty league's distance the groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms ; eternal spinner of blue immobilities, I long for Europe with it's age-old parapets !

I have seen archipelagos of stars ! and islands whose delirious skies are open to sailers : - Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights, O million golden birds, Life Force of the future ?

But, truly, I have wept too much ! The Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter : sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours. O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom !

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the black cold pool where into the scented twilight a child squatting full of sadness launches a boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.

I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves, sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons ; nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants ; nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.

[JBI]

SAID THE CANOE
Crawford, Isabella Valancy (1850-1887)

MY masters twain made me a bed
Of pine-boughs resinous, and cedar;
Of moss, a soft and gentle breeder
Of dreams of rest; and me they spread
With furry skins and, laughing, said:
"Now she shall lay her polished sides
As queens do rest, or dainty brides,
Our slender lady of the tides!"

My masters twain their camp-soul lit;
Streamed incense from the hissing cones;
Large crimson flashes grew and whirled;
Thin golden nerves of sly light curled
Round the dun camp; and rose faint zones,
Half way about each grim bole knit,
Like a shy child that would bedeck
With its soft clasp a Brave's red neck,
Yet sees the rough shield on his breast,
The awful plumes shake on his crest,
And, fearful, drops his timid face,
Nor dares complete the sweet embrace.

Into the hollow hearts of brakes--
Yet warm from sides of does and stags
Passed to the crisp, dark river-flags--
Sinuous, red as copper-snakes,
Sharp-headed serpents, made of light,
Glided and hid themselves in night.

My masters twain the slaughtered deer
Hung on forked boughs with thongs of leather:
Bound were his stiff, slim feet together,
His eyes like dead stars cold and drear.
The wandering firelight drew near
And laid its wide palm, red and anxious,
On the sharp splendour of his branches,
On the white foam grown hard and sere
On flank and shoulder.
Death--hard as breast of granite boulder--
Under his lashes
Peered thro' his eyes at his life's grey ashes.

My masters twain sang songs that wove--
As they burnished hunting-blade and rifle--
A golden thread with a cobweb trifle,
Loud of the chase and low of love:

"O Love! art thou a silver fish,
Shy of the line and shy of gaffing,
Which we do follow, fierce, yet laughing,
Casting at thee the light-winged wish?
And at the last shall we bring thee up
From the crystal darkness, under the cup
Of lily folden
On broad leaves golden?

"O Love! art thou a silver deer
With feet as swift as wing of swallow,
While we with rushing arrows follow?
And at the last shall we draw near
And o'er thy velvet neck cast thongs
Woven of roses, stars and songs--
New chains all moulden
Of rare gems olden?"

They hung the slaughtered fish like swords
On saplings slender; like scimitars,
Bright, and ruddied from new-dead wars,
Blazed in the light the scaly hordes.

They piled up boughs beneath the trees,
Of cedar web and green fir tassel.
Low did the pointed pine tops rustle,
The camp-fire blushed to the tender breeze.

The hounds laid dewlaps on the ground
With needles of pine, sweet, soft and rusty,
Dreamed of the dead stag stout and lusty;
A bat by the red flames wove its round.

The darkness built its wigwam walls
Close round the camp, and at its curtain
Pressed shapes, thin, woven and uncertain
As white locks of tall waterfalls.

[JBI]

O Mistress Mine by William Shakespeare, from Twelfth Night


O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear! Your truelove's coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting.
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.


What is love? 'Tis not hereafter.
Present mirth hath present laughter.
What's to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

[JBI]

The Passionate Shepherd to his Love by Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle:

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold:

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

[JBI]

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Raleigh

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall,

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten--
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.

[Kafka's Crow]

Such lovely happy poems JBI, let me spoil the game by inserting a lovely sad poem:

"ELEGY WRITTEN IN
A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD"

By Thomas Gray (1716-71)

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The ****'s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, --

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn;

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

"The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,-
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.

[Kafka's Crow]

from Prologue to the Canterbury Tales


A CLERK ther was of Oxenford also,
That unto logyk hadde longe ygo.
As leene was his hors as is a rake,
And he nas nat right fat, I undertake,
But looked holwe and therto sobrely.
Ful thredbare was his overeste courtepy;
For he hadde geten hym yet no benefice,
Ne was so worldly for to have office.
For hym was levere have at his beddes heed
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;
But al that he myghte of his freendes hente,
On bookes and on lernynge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf hym wherwith to scoleye.
Of studie took he moost cure and moost heede.
Noght o word spak he moore than was neede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quyk, and ful of hy sentence;
Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

(I once tried to model my life after this beautiful character)

[JBI]

Charles G. D. Roberts

Tantramar Revisited

Summers and summers have come, and gone with the flight of the swallow;
Sunshine and thunder have been, storm, and winter, and frost;
Many and many a sorrow has all but died from remembrance,
Many a dream of joy fall'n in the shadow of pain.
Hands of chance and change have marred, or moulded, or broken,
Busy with spirit or flesh, all I most have adored;
Even the bosom of Earth is strewn with heavier shadows, --
Only in these green hills, aslant to the sea, no change!
Here where the road that has climbed from the inland valleys and woodlands,
Dips from the hill-tops down, straight to the base of the hills, --
Here, from my vantage-ground, I can see the scattering houses,
Stained with time, set warm in orchards, meadows, and wheat,
Dotting the broad bright slopes outspread to southward and eastward,
Wind-swept all day long, blown by the south-east wind.

Skirting the sunbright uplands stretches a riband of meadow,
Shorn of the labouring grass, bulwarked well from the sea,
Fenced on its seaward border with long clay dykes from the turbid
Surge and flow of the tides vexing the Westmoreland shores.
Yonder, toward the left, lie broad the Westmoreland marshes, --
Miles on miles they extend, level, and grassy, and dim,
Clear from the long red sweep of flats to the sky in the distance,
Save for the outlying heights, green-rampired Cumberland Point;
Miles on miles outrolled, and the river-channels divide them, --
Miles on miles of green, barred by the hurtling gusts.

Miles on miles beyond the tawny bay is Minudie.
There are the low blue hills; villages gleam at their feet.
Nearer a white sail shines across the water, and nearer
Still are the slim, grey masts of fishing boats dry on the flats.
Ah, how well I remember those wide red flats, above tide-mark
Pale with scurf of the salt, seamed and baked in the sun!
Well I remember the piles of blocks and ropes, and the net-reels
Wound with the beaded nets, dripping and dark from the sea!
Now at this season the nets are unwound; they hang from the rafters
Over the fresh-stowed hay in upland barns, and the wind
Blows all day through the chinks, with the streaks of sunlight, and sways them
Softly at will; or they lie heaped in the gloom of a loft.

Now at this season the reels are empty and idle; I see them
Over the lines of the dykes, over the gossiping grass.
Now at this season they swing in the long strong wind, thro' the lonesome
Golden afternoon, shunned by the foraging gulls.
Near about sunset the crane will journey homeward above them;
Round them, under the moon, all the calm night long,
Winnowing soft grey wings of marsh-owls wander and wander,
Now to the broad, lit marsh, now to the dusk of the dike.
Soon, thro' their dew-wet frames, in the live keen freshness of morning,
Out of the teeth of the dawn blows back the awakening wind.
Then, as the blue day mounts, and the low-shot shafts of the sunlight
Glance from the tide to the shore, gossamers jewelled with dew
Sparkle and wave, where late sea-spoiling fathoms of drift-net
Myriad-meshed, uploomed sombrely over the land.

Well I remember it all. The salt, raw scent of the margin;
While, with men at the windlass, groaned each reel, and the net,
Surging in ponderous lengths, uprose and coiled in its station;
Then each man to his home, -- well I remember it all!

Yet, as I sit and watch, this present peace of the landscape, --
Stranded boats, these reels empty and idle, the hush,
One grey hawk slow-wheeling above yon cluster of haystacks, --
More than the old-time stir this stillness welcomes me home.
Ah, the old-time stir, how once it stung me with rapture, --
Old-time sweetness, the winds freighted with honey and salt!
Yet will I stay my steps and not go down to the marshland, --
Muse and recall far off, rather remember than see, --
Lest on too close sight I miss the darling illusion,
Spy at their task even here the hands of chance and change.

1883

[JBI]

Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)


The City at the End of Things

Beside the pounding cataracts
Of midnight streams unknown to us
'Tis builded in the leafless tracts
And valleys huge of Tartarus.
Lurid and lofty and vast it seems;
It hath no rounded name that rings,
But I have heard it called in dreams
The City of the End of Things.

Its roofs and iron towers have grown
None knoweth how high within the night,
But in its murky streets far down
A flaming terrible and bright
Shakes all the stalking shadows there,
Across the walls, across the floors,
And shifts upon the upper air
From out a thousand furnace doors;
And all the while an awful sound
Keeps roaring on continually,
And crashes in the ceaseless round
Of a gigantic harmony.
Through its grim depths re-echoing
And all its weary height of walls,
With measured roar and iron ring,
The inhuman music lifts and falls.
Where no thing rests and no man is,
And only fire and night hold sway;
The beat, the thunder and the hiss
Cease not, and change not, night nor day.
And moving at unheard commands,
The abysses and vast fires between,
Flit figures that with clanking hands
Obey a hideous routine;
They are not flesh, they are not bone,
They see not with the human eye,
And from their iron lips is blown
A dreadful and monotonous cry;
And whoso of our mortal race
Should find that city unaware,
Lean Death would smite him face to face,
And blanch him with its venomed air:
Or caught by the terrific spell,
Each thread of memory snapt and cut,
His soul would shrivel and its shell
Go rattling like an empty nut.

It was not always so, but once,
In days that no man thinks upon,
Fair voices echoed from its stones,
The light above it leaped and shone:
Once there were multitudes of men,
That built that city in their pride,
Until its might was made, and then
They withered age by age and died.
But now of that prodigious race,
Three only in an iron tower,
Set like carved idols face to face,
Remain the masters of its power;
And at the city gate a fourth,
Gigantic and with dreadful eyes,
Sits looking toward the lightless north,
Beyond the reach of memories;
Fast rooted to the lurid floor,
A bulk that never moves a jot,
In his pale body dwells no more,
Or mind or soul,—an idiot!
But sometime in the end those three
Shall perish and their hands be still,
And with the master's touch shall flee
Their incommunicable skill.
A stillness absolute as death
Along the slacking wheels shall lie,
And, flagging at a single breath,
The fires shall moulder out and die.
The roar shall vanish at its height,
And over that tremendous town
The silence of eternal night
Shall gather close and settle down.
All its grim grandeur, tower and hall,
Shall be abandoned utterly,
And into rust and dust shall fall
From century to century;
Nor ever living thing shall grow,
Nor trunk of tree, nor blade of grass;
No drop shall fall, no wind shall blow,
Nor sound of any foot shall pass:
Alone of its accursèd state,
One thing the hand of Time shall spare,
For the grim Idiot at the gate
Is deathless and eternal there.

1895

[JBI]

Robert Browning

My Last Duchess

Ferrara

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
'Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much,' or, 'Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:' such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart – how shall I say – too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace - all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men - good! but thanked
Somehow - I know not how - as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech - (which I have not) - to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark' - and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
- E'en that would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

[JBI]

William Butler Yeats

The second coming

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

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

[quasimodo1]

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry
(edited and chosen by David Lehman)

SALUTATION
(1913)

O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing

ALBA
When the nightingale to his mate
Sings day-long and night late
My love and I keep state
In bower,
In flower,
'Till the watchman on the tower
Cry:
"Up! Thou rascal, Rise,
I see the white
light
And the night
Flies."

(1913)

[quasimodo1]

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/07/07/080707crbo_books_kirsch?currentPage=all -- article in the New Yorker about Keats.

[quasimodo1]

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

To Virgil, Written at the Request of the Manuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of Virgil's Death


1Roman Virgil, thou that singest
2 Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,
3Ilion falling, Rome arising,
4 wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre;


5Landscape-lover, lord of language
6 more than he that sang the "Works and Days,"
7All the chosen coin of fancy
8 flashing out from many a golden phrase;


9Thou that singest wheat and woodland,
10 tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;
11All the charm of all the Muses
12 often flowering in a lonely word;


13Poet of the happy Tityrus
14 piping underneath his beechen bowers;
15Poet of the poet-satyr
16 whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;


17Chanter of the Pollio, glorying
18 in the blissful years again to be,
19Summers of the snakeless meadow,
20 unlaborious earth and oarless sea;


21Thou that seëst Universal
22 Nature moved by Universal Mind;
23Thou majestic in thy sadness
24 at the doubtful doom of human kind;


25Light among the vanish'd ages;
26 star that gildest yet this phantom shore;
27Golden branch amid the shadows,
28 kings and realms that pass to rise no more;


29Now thy Forum roars no longer,
30 fallen every purple Cæsar's dome--
31Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm
32 sound forever of Imperial Rome--


33Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd,
34 and the Rome of freemen holds her place,
35I, from out the Northern Island
36 sunder'd once from all the human race,


37I salute thee, Mantovano,
38 I that loved thee since my day began,
39Wielder of the stateliest measure
40 ever moulded by the lips of man.

[quasimodo1]

Anne Bradstreet



[written in 1678]

THE AUTHOR TO HER BOOK

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, expos'd to publick view,
Made thee in raggs, halting to th'press to trudg,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight;
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could:
I wash'd thy face, but more defects I saw
And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joynts to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobling than is meet;
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save homespun Cloth I'th'house I find.
In this array 'mongst Vulgars may'st thou roam.
In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come;
And take thy way where yet thou art not known;
If for thy Father asked, say thou hadst none;
And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,
Which caus'd her thus to send thee out of door.

[quasimodo1]

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/09/03/070903crbo_books_acocella/ -- Cloud Nine
A new translation of the Paradiso.
review by Joan Acocella -- Robert and Jean Hollander

[quasimodo1]

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry
(chosen and edited by David Lehman)

TO HELEN

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naid airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! In yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-Land!

1831

[quasimodo1]

Mithridates
I cannot spare water or wine,
Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;
From the earth-poles to the Line,
All between that works or grows,
Every thing is kin of mine.

Give me agates for my meat,
Give me cantharids to eat,
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes.

From all natures, sharp and slimy,
Salt and basalt, wild and tame,
Tree, and lichen, ape, sea-lion,
Bird and reptile be my game.

Ivy for my fillet band,
Blinding dogwood in my hand,
Hemlock for my sherbet cull me,
And the prussic juice to lull me,
Swing me in the upas boughs,
Vampire-fanned, when I carouse.

Too long shut in strait and few,
Thinly dieted on dew,
I will use the world, and sift it,
To a thousand humors shift it,
As you spin a cherry.
O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry,
O all you virtues, methods, mights;
Means, appliances, delights;
Reputed wrongs, and braggart rights;
Smug routine, and things allowed;
Minorities, things under cloud!
Hither! take me, use me, fill me,
Vein and artery, though ye kill me;
God! I will not be an owl,
But sun me in the Capitol.

[quasimodo1]

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)



WE WEAR THE MASK

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, --
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

{1895}

[mayneverhave]

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The ****'s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.



Fantastic how this site censor's unsavory content like "c0ck" - and when its used in such an innocent context. Who are the ones with the dirty minds? The web site? or us?

[quasimodo1]

BY THE ROAD TO THE CONTAGIOUS HOSPITAL
[1923]

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast -- a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

....

[quasimodo1]

PAIN -- HAS AN ELEMENT OF BLANK (650)

Pain -- has an Element of Blank --
It cannot recollect
When it begun -- or if there were
A time when it was not --

It has no Future -- but itself --
Its Infinite contain
Its past -- enlightened to perceive
New Periods -- of Pain

(1862)

[quasimodo1]

ECLOGUE.
I6I3, DECEMBER 26.

ALLOPHANES FINDING IDIOS IN THE COUNTRY IN
CHRISTMAS TIME, REPREHENDS HIS ABSENCE
FROM COURT, AT THE MARRIAGE OF THE EARL
OF SOMERSET ; IDIOS GIVES AN ACCOUNT OF
HIS PURPOSE THEREIN, AND OF HIS ACTIONS
THERE.

ALLOPHANES.
UNSEASONABLE man, statue of ice,
What could to countries solitude entice
Thee, in this year's cold and decrepit time ?
Nature's instinct draws to the warmer clime
Even smaller birds, who by that courage dare
In numerous fleets sail through their sea, the air.
What delicacy can in fields appear,
Whilst Flora herself doth a frieze jerkin wear ?
Whilst winds do all the trees and hedges strip
Of leaves, to furnish rods enough to whip
Thy madness from thee, and all springs by frost
Have taken cold, and their sweet murmurs lost?
If thou thy faults or fortunes wouldst lament
With just solemnity, do it in Lent.
At court the spring already advanced is,
The sun stays longer up ; and yet not his
The glory is ; far other, other fires.
First, zeal to prince and state, then love's desires
Burn in one breast, and like heaven's two great lights,
The first doth govern days, the other, nights.
And then that early light which did appear
Before the sun and moon created were,
The princes favour is diffused o'er all,
From which all fortunes, names, and natures fall.
Then from those wombs of stars, the bride's bright eyes,

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

[quasimodo1]

THE WILL



BEFORE I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,
Great Love, some legacies ; I here bequeath
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see ;
If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee ;
My tongue to Fame ; to ambassadors mine ears ;
To women, or the sea, my tears ;
Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore
By making me serve her who had twenty more,
That I should give to none, but such as had too much before.

My constancy I to the planets give ;
My truth to them who at the court do live ;
My ingenuity and openness,
To Jesuits ; to buffoons my pensiveness ;
My silence to any, who abroad hath been ;
My money to a Capuchin :
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by appointing me
To love there, where no love received can be,
Only to give to such as have an incapacity.

My faith I give to Roman Catholics ;
All my good works unto the Schismatics
Of Amsterdam ; my best civility
And courtship to an University ;
My modesty I give to soldiers bare ;
My patience let gamesters share :
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her that holds my love disparity,
Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.

I give my reputation to those
Which were my friends ; mine industry to foes ;
To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness ;
My sickness to physicians, or excess ;
To nature all that I in rhyme have writ ;
And to my company my wit :
Thou, Love, by making me adore
Her, who begot this love in me before,
Taught'st me to make, as though I gave, when I do but restore.

To him for whom the passing-bell next tolls,
I give my physic books ; my written rolls
Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give ;
My brazen medals unto them which live
In want of bread ; to them which pass among
All foreigners, mine English tongue :
Though, Love, by making me love one
Who thinks her friendship a fit portion
For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.

Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo
The world by dying, because love dies too.
Then all your beauties will be no more worth
Than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth ;
And all your graces no more use shall have,
Than a sun-dial in a grave :
Thou, Love, taught'st me by making me
Love her who doth neglect both me and thee,
To invent, and practise this one way, to annihilate all three.

[quasimodo1]

ANDROMEDA Now Time's Andromeda on this rock rude,
With not her either beauty's equal or
Her injury's, looks off by both horns of shore,
Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon's food.
Time past she has been attempted and pursued
By many blows and banes; but now hears roar
A wilder beast from West than all were, more
Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd.

Her Perseus linger and leave her tó her extremes?—
Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs
His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,
All while her patience, morselled into pangs,
Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,
With Gorgon's gear and barebill, thongs and fangs.

[quasimodo1]

MARBURG

I quivered. I flared up, and then was extinguished.
I shook. I had made a proposal - but late,
Too late. I was scared, and she had refused me.
I pity her tears, am more blessed than a saint.

I stepped into the square. I could be counted
Among the twice-born. Every leaf on the lime,
Every brick was alive, caring nothing for me,
And reared up to take leave for the last time.

The paving-stones glowed and the street's brow was
swarthy,
From under their lids the cobbles looked grim,
Scowled up at the sky, and the wind like a boatman
Was rowing through limes. And each was an emblem.

Be that as it may, I avoided their glances,
Averted my gaze from their greeting or scowling.
I wanted no news of their getting and spending.
I had to get out, so as not to start howling.

The tiles were afloat, and an unblinking noon
Regarded the rooftops. And someone, somewhere
In Marburg, was whistling, at work on a crossbow,
And someone else dressing for the Trinity fair.

Devouring the clouds, the sand showed yellow,
A storm wind was rocking the bushes to and fro,
And the sky had congealed where it touched a sprig
Ofwoundwort that staunched its flow.

Like any rep Romeo hugging his tragedy,
I reeled through the city rehearsing you.
I carried you all that day, knew you by heart
From the comb in your hair to the foot in your shoe.

And when in your room I fell to my knees,
Embracing this mist, this perfection of frost
(How lovely you are!), this smothering turbulence,
What were you thinking? 'Be sensible!' Lost!

Here lived Martin Luther. The Brothers Grimm, there.
And all things remember and reach out to them:
The sharp-taloned roofs. The gravestones. The trees.
And each is alive. And each is an emblem.

{excerpt}

1916, 1928
Translated by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France

[quasimodo1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/books/review/Coates-t.html?_r=1&ref=books --- ‘My Poetry Is Filthy — but Not I’




By STEVE COATES
Published: December 12, 2008
You have to admire a scholar who can produce a small library of erudite, elegant and accessible books on American history, the New Testament and his own powerful brand of Roman Catholicism, winning a Pulitzer Prize along the way. And you have to be impressed by a plucky Spanish provincial, in the dangerous days of Nero and Domitian, who could manage to earn a handsome living writing dirty poems for the urban sophisticates of ancient Rome. But can you condone what they get up to under a single set of covers? “Martial’s Epigrams,” Garry Wills’s enthusiastic verse translations of Marcus Valerius Martialis, Rome’s most anatomically explicit poet, offers a chance to find out.

{review of MARTIAL'S EPIGRAMS, A Selection by Garry Wills}

[quasimodo1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/books/review/Bailey-t.html?ref=review --- A Modern Victorian

{a review of Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life....by Paul Mariani}

By BLAKE BAILEY
Published: December 12, 2008
In 1868, at the age of 23, Gerard Manley Hopkins decided to burn the poetry he’d written up to that time: “Slaughter

of the Innocents,” he noted in his journal. Recognizing that poetry depended on deep and perhaps dangerous feeling —

and given what he would later concede was a disturbing affinity with Walt Whitman (“a very great scoundrel”) —

Hopkins decided it was incompatible with his calling to the Jesuit priesthood. ...

[quasimodo1]

AUTUMN

by: Kalidasa (c. 500)

HE autumn comes, a maiden fair
In slenderness and grace,
With nodding rice-stems in her hair
And lilies in her face.
In flowers of grasses she is clad;
And as she moves along,
Birds greet her with their cooing glad
Like bracelets' tinkling song.

A diadem adorns the night
Of multitudinous stars;
Her silken robe is white moonlight,
Set free from cloudy bars;
And on her face (the radiant moon)
Bewitching smiles are shown:
She seems a slender maid, who soon
Will be a woman grown.

Over the rice-fields, laden plants
Are shivering to the breeze;
While in his brisk caresses dance
The blossomed-burdened trees;
He ruffles every lily-pond
Where blossoms kiss and part,
And stirs with lover's fancies fond
The young man's eager heart.

This English translation of "Autumn" was composed by Arthur W. Ryder (1877-1938).

[quasimodo1]

Sonnet #115



CXV.

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning time, whose million'd accidents
Creep in 'twixt vows and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;
Alas, why, fearing of time's tyranny,
Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,'
When I was certain o'er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow?

[quasimodo1]

THE PASSING OF THE YEAR

My glass is filled, my pipe is lit,
My den is all a cosy glow;
And snug before the fire I sit,
And wait to feel the old year go.
I dedicate to solemn thought
Amid my too-unthinking days,
This sober moment, sadly fraught
With much of blame, with little praise.

Old Year! upon the Stage of Time
You stand to bow your last adieu;
A moment, and the prompter's chime
Will ring the curtain down on you.
Your mien is sad, your step is slow;
You falter as a Sage in pain;
Yet turn, Old Year, before you go,
And face your audience again.

That sphinx-like face, remote, austere,
Let us all read, whate'er the cost:
O Maiden! why that bitter tear?
Is it for dear one you have lost?
Is it for fond illusion gone?
For trusted lover proved untrue?
O sweet girl-face, so sad, so wan
What hath the Old Year meant to you?

And you, O neighbour on my right
So sleek, so prosperously clad!
What see you in that aged wight
That makes your smile so gay and glad?
What opportunity unmissed?
What golden gain, what pride of place?
What splendid hope? O Optimist!
What read you in that withered face? ...




Pasted from <http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19334>

[quasimodo1]

TO love thee, year by year
BY
Emily Dickinson





TO love thee, year by year,
May less appear
Than sacrifice and cease.
However, Dear,
Forever might be short
I thought, to show,
And so I pieced it with a flower now.

[quasimodo1]

The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads to madness. - Christopher Morley
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



VENICE

A click of window glass had roused me
Out of my sleep at early dawn.
Beneath me Venice swam in water;
A sodden pretzel made of stone.

I was all quiet now; however,
While still asleep, I heard a cry -
And like a sign that had been silenced
It still disturbed the morning sky.

It hung - a trident of the Scorpion -
Above the sleeping mandolins
And had been uttered by an angry
Insulted woman's voice, maybe.

Now it was silent. To the handle
Its fork was stuck in morning haze.
The Grand Canal, obliquely grinning
Kept looking back - a runaway.

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

Reality was born of dream-shreds
Far off, among the hired boats.
Like a Venetian woman, Venice
Dived from the bank to glide afloat.

1914

Translated by Lydia Pasternak Slater

[quasimodo1]

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.




AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

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

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

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

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

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

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

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

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

[quasimodo1]

SONGS OF INNOCENCE-NIGHT

The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.
The moon like a flower,
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.

Farewell, green fields and happy groves,
Where flocks have took delight;
Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves
The feet of angels bright;
Unseen they pour blessing,
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.

They look in every thoughtless nest,
Where birds are covered warm;
They visit caves of every beast,
To keep them all from harm:
If they see any weeping
That should have been sleeping,
They pour sleep on their head,
And sit down by their bed.

When wolves and tigers howl for prey,
They pitying stand and weep, -
Seeking to drive their thirst away,
And keep them from the sheep.
But if they rush dreadful,
The angels, most heedful,
Receive each mild spirit,
New worlds to inherit.

And there the lion's ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold,
And pitying the tender cries,
And walking round the fold,
Saying, "Wrath, by his meekness,
And, by his health, sickness
Is driven away
Form our immortal day.

"And now beside thee, bleating lamb,
I can lie down and sleep;
Or think on him who bore thy name,
Graze after thee and weep.
For, washed in life's river,
My bright mane for ever
Shall shine like the gold,
As I guard o'er the fold."

[quasimodo1]

Love's Secrets

LOVE'S eye should but answer the beam that invites it,
The glance that tells secrets true heart never won,
The delicate mind veils the hope that requites it,
Lest it die, like the fire when exposed to the sun.

Dear woman's the exquisite magnet of nature,
And love is the heart-thrilling homage we pay;
But beauty has not a more delicate feature,
Than the caution that Love should, if grateful display.

That name to the heart which sweet transport discloses
Too sacred should be for a toast or a tale;
And the breathings of Love, like the perfumes of roses,
Are exquisite death when surcharging the gale.

[quasimodo1]

THE GENESIS OF THE BUTTERFLY
The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers
The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers
That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings
In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,
That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,
With muffled music, murmured far and wide.
Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the lays
That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays,
Of the fond hearts within a billet bound,
Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound,
The messages of love that mortals write
Filled with intoxication of delight,
Written in April and before the May time
Shredded and flown, playthings for the wind's playtime,
We dream that all white butterflies above,
Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love,
And leave their lady mistress in despair,
To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair,
Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies
Flutter, and float, and change to butterflies

[quasimodo1]

An Art Critic

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

Ira P. Rankin, you've a nasal name--
I'll sound it through "the speaking-trump of fame,"
And wondering nations, hearing from afar
The brazen twang of its resounding jar,
Shall say: "These bards are an uncommon class--
They blow their noses with a tube of brass!"
Rankin! ye gods! if Influenza pick
Our names at christening, and such names stick,
Let's all be born when summer suns withstand
Her prevalence and chase her from the land,
And healing breezes generously help
To shield from death each ailing human whelp!
"What's in a name?" There's much at least in yours
That the pained ear unwillingly endures,
And much to make the suffering soul, I fear,
Envy the lesser anguish of the ear.

So you object to Cytherea! Do,
The picture was not painted, sir, for you!
Your mind to gratify and taste address,
The masking dove had been a dove the less.
Provincial censor! all untaught in art,
With mind indecent and indecent heart,
Do you not know--nay, why should I explain?
Instruction, argument alike were vain--
I'll show you reasons when you show me brain.

[quasimodo1]

No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i'the cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, and who's out;
And take upon 's the mystery of things,
As if we were Gods' spies; and we'll wear out,
In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon. (5.3.8-19)

[quasimodo1]

MORE STRONG THAN TIME

by: Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

SINCE I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,
Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,
Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it,
And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade;

Since it was given to me to hear on happy while,
The words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries,
Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile,
Your lips upon my lips, and your eyes upon my eyes;

Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam,
A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always,
Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime's stream,
Of one rose petal plucked from the roses of your days;

I now am bold to say to the swift changing hours,
Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old,
Fleet to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers,
One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold.

Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill
The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet;
My heart has far more fire than you can frost to chill,
My soul more love than you can make my soul forget.

This English translation of "More Strong than Time" was composed by Andrew Lang (1844-1912).

[quasimodo1]

THE OCEAN'S SONG

by: Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

E walked amongst the ruins famed in story
Of Rozel-Tower,
And saw the boundless waters stretch in glory
And heave in power.

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

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

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

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

This English translation of "The Ocean's Song" was composed by Toru Dutt (1856-1877).

[quasimodo1]

"How came it that this prudent, economical man was also generous? That this chaste adolescent, this model father,

grew to be, in his last years, an ageing faun? That this legitimist changed, first into a Bonapartist, only, later

still, to be hailed as the grandfather of the Republic? That this pacifist could sing, better than anybody, of the

glories of the flags of Wagram? That this bourgeois in the eyes of other bourgeois came to assume the stature of a

rebel? These are the questions that every biographer of Victor Hugo must answer." (from Olympio: The Life of Victor

Hugo by André Maurois, 1954)

[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 (1923)

[quasimodo1]

To My Sister

IT is the first mild day of March:
Each minute sweeter than before
The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.

There is a blessing in the air,
Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.

My sister! ('tis a wish of mine)
Now that our morning meal is done,
Make haste, your morning task resign;
Come forth and feel the sun.

Edward will come with you—and, pray,
Put on with speed your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.

No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living calendar:
We from to-day, my Friend, will date
The opening of the year.

Love, now a universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth:
—It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more
Than years of toiling reason:
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey:
We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,
We'll frame the measure of our souls:
They shall be tuned to love.

Then come, my Sister! come, I pray,
With speed put on your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.


— William Wordsworth, 1798

[quasimodo1]

THE GARDEN OF PROSPERPINE

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

[LitNetIsGreat]

Song from Cymbeline by William Shakespeare

Fear no more the heat o' th' sun
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Though thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta'en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' th' great;
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke.
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak.
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor th' all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear no slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan.
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee,
Nor no witchcraft charm thee.
Ghost unlaid forbear thee;
Nothing ill come near thee.
Quiet consummation have,
And renowned be thy grave.

[quasimodo1]

ABRACADABRA.

By Abracadabra we signify
An infinite number of things.
'Tis the answer to What? and How? and Why?
And Whence? and Whither? -- a word whereby
The Truth (with the comfort it brings)
Is open to all who grope in night,
Crying for Wisdom's holy light.

Whether the word is a verb or a noun
Is knowledge beyond my reach.
I only know that 'tis handed down.
From sage to sage,
From age to age --
An immortal part of speech!

Of an ancient man the tale is told
That he lived to be ten centuries old,
In a cave on a mountain side.
(True, he finally died.)
The fame of his wisdom filled the land,
For his head was bald, and you'll understand
His beard was long and white
And his eyes uncommonly bright.

Philosophers gathered from far and near
To sit at his feat and hear and hear,
Though he never was heard
To utter a word
But "Abracadabra, abracadab,
Abracada, abracad,
Abraca, abrac, abra, ab!"
'Twas all he had,
'Twas all they wanted to hear, and each
Made copious notes of the mystical speech,
Which they published next --
A trickle of text
In the meadow of commentary.
Mighty big books were these,
In a number, as leaves of trees;
In learning, remarkably -- very!

He's dead,
As I said,
And the books of the sages have perished,
But his wisdom is sacredly cherished.
In Abracadabra it solemnly rings,
Like an ancient bell that forever swings.
O, I love to hear
That word make clear
Humanity's General Sense of Things.
{allegedly written by Jamrach Holobom}

[quasimodo1]

THE MALDIVE SHARK

by: Herman Melville (1819-1891)

BOUT the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw,
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril's abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat--
Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.

"The Maldive Shark" was originally published in John Marr and Other Sailors. Herman Melville. Privately printed, 1888.

[Dinkleberry2010]

The Harlot's House

We caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot's house.

Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play
The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss.

Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.

We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.

Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sliding through the slow quadrille,

Then took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.

Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon the steps like a live thing.

Then, turning to my love, I said,
'The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust.'

But she--she heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered in:
Love passed into the house of lust.

Then suddenly the tune went false,
The dancers wearied of the waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.

And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.

[quasimodo1]

Ode To Himself, An

Where dost thou careless lie
Buried in ease and sloth?
Knowledge that sleeps, doth die
And this security,
It is the common moth
That eats on wits and arts, and that destroys them both.

Are all the Aonian springs
Dried up? lies Thespia waste?
Doth Clarius` harp want strings,
That not a nymph now sings;
Or droop they as disgraced,
To see their seats and bowers by chattering pies defaced?

If hence thy silence be,
As `tis too just a cause,
Let this thought quicken thee:
Minds that are great and free
Should not on fortune pause;
`Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.

What though the greedy fry
Be taken with false baits
Of worded balladry,
And think it poesy?
They die with their conceits,
And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits.

Then take in hand thy lyre;
Strike in thy proper strain;
With Japhet`s line aspire
Sol`s chariot, for new fire
To give the world again:
Who aided him, will thee, the issue of Jove`s brain.

And, since our dainty age
Cannot endure reproof,
Make not thyself a page
To that strumpet the stage;
But sing high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf`s black jaw, and the dull ***` hoof.

[Dinkleberry2010]

Thank you quasimodo for the link to the article about Frank and his work on Dostoevsky.

[quasimodo1]

Neither man or nation can exist without a sublime idea.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

[quasimodo1]

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
--I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

[Dinkleberry2010]

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

[Dinkleberry2010]

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

[quasimodo1]

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6940404.ece

[Dinkleberry2010]

Richard Cory

WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich,—yes, richer than a king,—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

[Dinkleberry2010]

Miniver Cheevy

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.


Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.


Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.


Miniver mourned for the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.


Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.


Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediaeval grace
Of iron clothing.


Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.


Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.

[quasimodo1]

from Frost, Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays
from New Hampshire


THE STAR-SPLITTER

'You know Orion always comes up sideways,
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To make fun of my way of doing things,
Or else fun of Orion's having caught me.
Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?'
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
'Til having failed at hugger-mugger farming,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a life-long curiosity
About our place among the infinities.

{first stanza}

[Dinkleberry2010]

To An Athlete Dying Young

THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

[quasimodo1]

ERAT HORA

“Thank you, whatever comes.” And then she turned
And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers
Fades when the wind hath lifted them aside,
Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes
One hour was sunlit and the most high gods
May not make boast of any better thing
Than to have watched that hour as it passed.

[quasimodo1]

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrrection

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.

[wlz]

Sun of the Sleepless! by Lord Byron

Sun of the sleepless! melancholy star!
Whose tearful beam glows tremulously far,
That show'st the darkness thou canst not dispel,
How like art thou to joy remember'd well!

So gleams the past, the light of other days,
Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays;
A night-beam Sorrow watcheth to behold,
Distinct but distant -- clear -- but, oh how cold!

[wlz]

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by E. E. Cummings

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

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

[wlz]

My True Love Hath My Heart, And I Have His by Sir Philip Sidney

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange, one for the other giv'n.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a better bargain driv'n.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;
He loves my heart, for once it was his own;
I cherish his, because in me it bides.
His heart his wound received from my sight:
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me, on him his hurt did light,
So still me thought in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss:
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

[wlz]

God Moves In A Mysterious Way by William Cowper

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

[quasimodo1]

THE SECRET LIFE OF EMILY DICKINSON

By Jerome Charyn

Illustrated. 348 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $24.95

--- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/books/review/James-t.html?ref=books --- "The Rose Did Caper on Her Cheek" a review
By CARYN JAMES
Published: February 16, 2010

[quasimodo1]

Song from the Ship

To sea, to sea! The calm is o'er;
The wanton water leaps in sport,
And rattles down the pebbly shore;
The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort,
And unseen Mermaids' pearly song
Comes bubbling up, the weeds among.
Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar:
To sea, to sea! the calm is o'er.
To sea, to sea! our wide-winged bark
Shall billowy cleave its sunny way,
And with its shadow, fleet and dark,
Break the caved Tritons' azure day,
Like mighty eagle soaring light
O'er antelopes on Alpine height.
The anchor heaves, the ship swings free,
The sails swell full. To sea, to sea!

--Thomas Lovell Beddoes

[quasimodo1]

From Selected Poems
(translated by Eamon Grennan)

TO SILVIA

Silvia, do you still remember
The time in your brief life here
When beauty brightened
Your eyes and your shy smile,
And you stood in pensive joy on the brink
Of becoming a young woman?

All day the hushed rooms
And the roads around the house
Rang with your singing
As you bent to the spinning wheel,
Happily adrift in your hazy
Dreams of the future. Day
After day you spent like that,
All the fragrant month of May.

Sometimes, getting up
From the books I loved
And those sweat-stained pages
Where I spent the best of my youth,
I'd lean from the terrace of my father's house
Toward the sound of your voice
And the quick click of your hands
At the heavy loom. Wonder-struck, I'd stare
Up at the cloudless blue of the sky
Out at the kitchen gardens and the roads
That shone like gold, and off there
To the mountains and there, to the distant sea.
No human tongue could tell
The feelings beating in my heart.

What tender thoughts we had,
What hopes, what hearts, Silvia!
How fate and human life
Looked then! Now
When I think of all that hope
I'm bitterly stricken,
Beyond consolation, and begin
Lamenting again my own misfortunes.
Ah, nature, nature, why
Can you never make good
Your promises? Why
Must you so deceive your own children?

Before winter had withered the grass,
You were dying, dear girl,
Struck and cut down by blind disease.
And you didn't see your years
Break into blossom, nor ever felt
Your heart melt
Under honeyed praise of your jet-black tresses
Or the shy enamored light in your eyes.
And never did your friends spend Sundays
Whispering with you, all about love.

And soon, too, my own fond hopes
Withered and died: my youth too,
The fates cut off. Ah,
Alas how you've faded,
My tearstained hope, beloved
Comrade of those spring days!
Is this the world we imagined? These
The pleasures, love, adventures
We two together talked and talked of?
Is this what it means to be born human?
At the very first touch of things as they are
You shriveled, poor thing.
And with raised hand pointed away
To the cold figure of death
And an unmarked grave.

[quasimodo1]

from Death's Jest Book, III, i


I followed once a fleet and mighty serpent
Into a cavern in a mountain's side;
And, wading many lakes, descending gulphs,
At last I reached the ruins of a city,
Built not like ours but of another world,
As if the aged earth had loved in youth
The mightiest city of a perished planet,
And kept the image of it in her heart,
So dreamlike, shadowy, and spectral was it.
Nought seemed alive there, and the very dead
Were of another world the skeletons.
The mammoth, ribbed like to an arched cathedral,
Lay there, and ruins of great creatures else
More like a shipwrecked fleet, too great they seemed
For all the life that is to animate:
And vegetable rocks, tall sculptured palms,
Pines grown, not hewn, in stone; and giant ferns,
Whose earthquake shaken leaves bore graves for nests.

[JBI]

From Selected Poems
(translated by Eamon Grennan)

TO SILVIA

Silvia, do you still remember
The time in your brief life here
When beauty brightened
Your eyes and your shy smile,
And you stood in pensive joy on the brink
Of becoming a young woman?

All day the hushed rooms
And the roads around the house
Rang with your singing
As you bent to the spinning wheel,
Happily adrift in your hazy
Dreams of the future. Day
After day you spent like that,
All the fragrant month of May.

Sometimes, getting up
From the books I loved
And those sweat-stained pages
Where I spent the best of my youth,
I'd lean from the terrace of my father's house
Toward the sound of your voice
And the quick click of your hands
At the heavy loom. Wonder-struck, I'd stare
Up at the cloudless blue of the sky
Out at the kitchen gardens and the roads
That shone like gold, and off there
To the mountains and there, to the distant sea.
No human tongue could tell
The feelings beating in my heart.

What tender thoughts we had,
What hopes, what hearts, Silvia!
How fate and human life
Looked then! Now
When I think of all that hope
I'm bitterly stricken,
Beyond consolation, and begin
Lamenting again my own misfortunes.
Ah, nature, nature, why
Can you never make good
Your promises? Why
Must you so deceive your own children?

Before winter had withered the grass,
You were dying, dear girl,
Struck and cut down by blind disease.
And you didn't see your years
Break into blossom, nor ever felt
Your heart melt
Under honeyed praise of your jet-black tresses
Or the shy enamored light in your eyes.
And never did your friends spend Sundays
Whispering with you, all about love.

And soon, too, my own fond hopes
Withered and died: my youth too,
The fates cut off. Ah,
Alas how you've faded,
My tearstained hope, beloved
Comrade of those spring days!
Is this the world we imagined? These
The pleasures, love, adventures
We two together talked and talked of?
Is this what it means to be born human?
At the very first touch of things as they are
You shriveled, poor thing.
And with raised hand pointed away
To the cold figure of death
And an unmarked grave.

I feel sorry for everybody - that poem lacks the qualities of transition - it feels episodic in its translation, and so jumpy, so that the reflective to the present transition with accusation of nature feels almost comical.Probably because of the choices of the words stricken, and lamenting, with that grammar and word order. It seems close to the original, except that the feeling is completely lost in the translation - the idiom of the whole poem to me seems a bit off, in terms of the way English works.

[LitNetIsGreat]

This is the Nichols translation out of interest:

To Silvia

Do you remember still,
Silvia, that moment in your mortal days
When you, so beautiful,
With your bright eyes still bent upon the ground,
Had hardly thought of really going through
That door with youth beyond?

The silent rooms were ringing,
And all the streets around,
With your perpetual singing,
And you the while, intent on housewifery,
Contented as might be
With that vague future which you had in mind.
And so you used to spend, in scented May,
The best part of each day.

I left upon one side
My writings and the volumes I perused,
On which my early prime
And all the best of me was being used,
From balconies of my ancestral home
I pricked my ears up just to hear your voice,
And how your hand would race
Over the rapid labour of the loom,
I looked at the clear sky,
At golden streets and gardens,
With here the mountain, there the distant sea,
No mortal tongue can talk
Of such felicity.

What pleasing thoughts were ours,
What hopes, with both of us in such good heart!
How human life and fate
Seemed fraught with blessedness!
When I remember now how hope was high
Passion oppresses me,
And bitter, comfortless,
I turn again to grieve my misadventure.
O nature, tell me, nature,
Why do you never keep
Your early promises? And why deceive
Your children with such hope?

Before the grass stopped growing in the winder,
You were assaulted by some hidden taint
And perished, still a child. We never saw
Your years come into bloom;
Nor did men ever move
Your heart with praises, now of your black hair,
Now of the kindling shyness in your eyes;
Nor did you with your friends on holy days
Dwell longingly on love.

All the high hope I had
Died also, not long after: fate denied
To me too any youth.
So you, yes you, alas,
You too have disappeared,
Precious companion of my primal age,
Hoe, and are gone for ever!
This is that world then? These
The joys, the love, the works, whatever else
We used to talk about so much together?
This is the fate of all the human race?
The moment truth appeared
You shrank away, poor wretch: and from afar
Your hand directed me towards chill death,
A naked sepulchre.

[quasimodo1]

Under his pen name, Muhibbi, Suleiman composed this poem for Roxelana:

"Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.
My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan, my one and only love.
The most beautiful among the beautiful…
My springtime, my merry faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf…
My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this world…
My Istanbul, my Caraman, the earth of my Anatolia
My Badakhshan, my Baghdad and Khorasan
My woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of mischief…
I'll sing your praises always
I, lover of the tormented heart, Muhibbi of the eyes full of tears, I am happy."

[quasimodo1]

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/04/28/arts/20100430-dickinson-slideshow.html

[quasimodo1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/arts/design/16emily.html?ref=books

[quasimodo1]

HAMATREYA
Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, "'Tis mine, my children's and my name's.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.'

Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain;
'This suits me for a pasture; that's my park;
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland, where to go for peat.
The land is well,--lies fairly to the south.
'Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back,
To find the sitfast acres where you left them.'
Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.
Hear what the Earth says:--


Earth-Song
'Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours, Earth endures;
Stars abide--
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.
'The lawyer's deed
Ran sure,
In tail,
To them, and to their heirs
Who shall succeed,
Without fail,
Forevermore.

'Here is the land,
Shaggy with wood,
With its old valley,
Mound and flood.
"But the heritors?--
Fled like the flood's foam.
The lawyer, and the laws,
And the kingdom,
Clean swept herefrom.

'They called me theirs,
Who so controlled me;
Yet every one
Wished to stay, and is gone,
How am I theirs,
If they cannot hold me,
But I hold them?'

When I heard the Earth-song,
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled
Like lust in the chill of the grave.
1846

[quasimodo1]

Ardor and the Abyss
James Longenbach --- Emily Dickinson http://www.thenation.com/article/ardor-and-abyss?page=full --- http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz321/quasimodo1/emily_dickinson1.jpg

[quasimodo1]

The Marshes of Glynn

Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)


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, 5
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 marginal sand-beach within 10
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;—
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noonday 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, 15
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; 20
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, 25
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 30
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 35
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:— 40
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 45
On the firm-packed sand,
Free

By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.
Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band
Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. 50
Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl
As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl.
Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,
Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.

And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? 55
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,
Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main. 60

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free 65
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. 70

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod 75
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: 80
Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate channels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, 85
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
Farewell, my lord Sun!
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run; 90
’Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run,
And the sea and the marsh are one.

How still the plains of the waters be! 95
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height:
And it is night.

And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men, 100
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep?
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn. 105 --- http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz321/quasimodo1/SidneyLanier.jpg

[quasimodo1]

POEMS DONE ON A LATE NIGHT CAR
I. CHICKENS

I AM The Great White Way of the city:
When you ask what is my desire, I answer:
"Girls fresh as country wild flowers,
With young faces tired of the cows and barns,
Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries,
Slender supple girls with shapely legs,
Lure in the arch of their little shoulders
And wisdom from the prairies to cry only softly at
the ashes of my mysteries."


II. USED UP

Lines based on certain regrets that come with rumination
upon the painted faces of women on
North Clark Street, Chicago

Roses,
Red roses,
Crushed
In the rain and wind
Like mouths of women
Beaten by the fists of
Men using them.
O little roses
And broken leaves
And petal wisps:
You that so flung your crimson
To the sun
Only yesterday. ...
{excerpt} --- http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz321/quasimodo1/Sandburg1922.jpg

[quasimodo1]

ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS

by: Mark Twain (1835-1910)

ND did young Stephen sicken,
And did young Stephen die?
And did the sad hearts thicken,
And did the mourners cry?

No; such was not the fate of
Young Stephen Dowling Bots;
Though sad hearts round him thickened,
'Twas not from sickness' shots.

No whooping-cough did rack his frame,
Nor measles drear, with spots;
Not these impaired the sacred name
Of Stephen Dowling Bots.

Despised love struck not with woe
That head of curly knots,
Nor stomach troubles laid him low,
Young Stephen Dowling Bots.

O no. Then list with tearful eye,
Whilst I his fate do tell.
His soul did from this cold world fly,
By falling down a well.

They got him out and emptied him;
Alas it was too late;
His spirit was gone for to sport aloft
In the realms of the good and great. --- http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz321/quasimodo1/CaptainMTwain.jpg

[erminia]

I love this - thankyou

and for you - not so joyous I can still feel the sea air in my hair

As I sing Time, the colossus of the world
Shall totter by
And sweep dead mortals with it.
As I sing Time, the colossus of the world
That strides with each foot plunged
in darkness silent glides
And puffs death's cloud upon us.

It is vain to struggle with the tide
We all must sink still grasping the thin air
With frantic pain grappling with fame to bouy us.

[quasimodo1]

ON WHITMAN

By C. K. Williams

187 pp. Princeton University Press. $19.95 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/books/review/Vendler-t.html?_r=1&ref=books --- "Singing the Poet Electric" by Helen Vendler - a review - 6/24/10

[quasimodo1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/books/review/Benfey-t.html?_r=1&ref=books --- Explosive Inheritance
By CHRISTOPHER BENFEY
Published: July 30, 2010 --- LIVES LIKE LOADED GUNS

Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds

By Lyndall Gordon

Illustrated. 491 pp. Viking. $32.95

[DanielBenoit]

YE learned sisters, which have oftentimes
Beene to me ayding, others to adorne,
Whom ye thought worthy of your gracefull rymes,
That even the greatest did not greatly scorne
To heare theyr names sung in your simple layes,
But joyed in theyr praise;
And when ye list your owne mishaps to mourne,
Which death, or love, or fortunes wreck did rayse,
Your string could soone to sadder tenor turne,
And teach the woods and waters to lament
Your dolefull dreriment:
Now lay those sorrowfull complaints aside;
And, having all your heads with girlands crownd,
Helpe me mine owne loves prayses to resound;
Ne let the same of any be envide:
So Orpheus did for his owne bride!
So I unto my selfe alone will sing;
The woods shall to me answer, and my Eccho ring.

continued at http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Edmund_Spenser/18127

[DanielBenoit]

1.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

[DanielBenoit]

The Song of songs, which is Solomon's.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:

for thy love is better than wine.
Because of the savor of thy good ointments

thy name is as ointment poured forth,
therefore do the virgins love thee.
Draw me, we will run after thee:

the King hath brought me into his chambers:
we will be glad and rejoice in thee,
we will remember thy love more than wine:
the upright love thee.
I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,

as the tents of Kedar,
as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black,

because the sun hath looked upon me:
my mother's children were angry with me;
they made me the keeper of the vineyards;
but mine own vineyard have I not kept.
Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest,

where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon:
for why should I be as one that turneth aside
by the flocks of thy companions?
If thou know not, O thou fairest among women,

go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock,
and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents.

continued at http://204.232.255.211/108/22/

[stlukesguild]

Epithalamion by Spenser
YE learned sisters, which have oftentimes
Beene to me ayding, others to adorne,
Whom ye thought worthy of your gracefull rymes,
That even the greatest did not greatly scorne
To heare theyr names sung in your simple layes,
But joyed in theyr praise;
And when ye list your owne mishaps to mourne,
Which death, or love, or fortunes wreck did rayse,
Your string could soone to sadder tenor turne,
And teach the woods and waters to lament
Your dolefull dreriment:
Now lay those sorrowfull complaints aside;
And, having all your heads with girlands crownd,
Helpe me mine owne loves prayses to resound;
Ne let the same of any be envide:
So Orpheus did for his owne bride!
So I unto my selfe alone will sing;
The woods shall to me answer, and my Eccho ring.

continued at http://www.poetryconnection.net/poet..._Spenser/18127

Ack!!! Spenser's Epithalimion!!! One of my absolute favorite poems.;):):thumbsup::yesnod:

[DanielBenoit]

Ack!!! Spenser's Epithalimion!!! One of my absolute favorite poems.;):):thumbsup::yesnod:

Indeed, mine too. It certainly has one of the best and most musical refrains in all of literature.

Apparently Cummings also wrote an epithalamion, which of course is nothing compared to Spenser's, but is still quite clever:

I

Thou aged unreluctant earth who dost
with quivering continual thighs invite
the thrilling rain the slender paramour
to toy with thy extraordinary lust,
(the sinuous rain which rising from thy bed
steals to his wife the sky and hour by hour
wholly renews her pale flesh with delight)
-immortally whence are the high gods fled?

Speak elm eloquent pandar with thy nod
significant to the ecstatic earth
in token of his coming whom her soul
burns to embrace-and didst thou know the god
from but the imprint of whose cloven feet
the shrieking dryad sought her leafy goal,
at the mere echo of whose shining mirth
the furious hearts of mountains ceased to beat?

Wind beautifully who wanderest
over smooth pages of forgotten joy
proving the peaceful theorems of the flowers
-didst e'er depart upon more exquisite quest?
and did thy fortunate fingers sometime dwell
(within a greener shadow of secret bowers)
among the curves of that delicious boy
whose serious grace one goddess loved too well?

Chryselephantine Zeus Olympian
sceptred colossus of the Pheidian soul
whose eagle frights creation,in whose palm
Nike presents the crown sweetest to man,
whose lilied robe the sun's white hands emboss,
betwixt whose absolute feet anoint with calm
of intent stars circling the acerb pole
poises,smiling,the diadumenos

in whose young chiseled eyes the people saw
their once again victorious Pantarkes
(whose grace the prince of artists made him bold
to imitate between the feet of awe),
thunderer whose omnipotent brow showers
its curls of unendured eternal gold
over the infinite breast in bright degrees,
whose pillow is the graces and the hours,

father of gods and men whose subtle throne
twain sphinxes bear each with a writhing youth
caught to her brazen breasts,whose foot-stool tells
how fought the looser of the warlike zone
of her that brought forth tall Hippolytus,
lord on whose pedestal the deep expels
(over Selene's car closing uncouth)
of Helios the sweet wheels tremulous-

are there no kings in Argos,that the song
is silent,of the steep unspeaking tower
within whose brightening strictness Danae
saw the night severed and the glowing throng
descend,felt on her flesh the amorous strain
of gradual hands and yielding to that fee
her eager body's unimmortal flower
knew in the darkness a more burning rain?

continued at http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/11899

[quasimodo1]

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
–I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
{– A. E. Housman, from A Shropshire Lad}

[quasimodo1]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/08/AR2010090806543.html

[quasimodo1]

SONG OF THE WESTERN COUNTRIES
Oh the nighttime beating of the soul’s wings:
Herders of sheep once, we walked along the forests
that were growing dark,
And the red deer, the green flower and the speaking
river followed us
In humility. Oh the old old note of the cricket,
Blood blooming on the altarstone,
And the cry of the lonely bird over the green silence
of the pool.
And you Crusades, and glowing punishment
Of the flesh, purple fruits that fell to earth
In the garden at dusk, where young and holy men
walked,
Enlisted men of war now, waking up out of wounds
and dreams about stars.
Oh the soft cornflowers of the night.
And you long ages of tranquillity and golden
harvests,
When as peaceful monks we pressed out the purple
grapes;
And around us the hill and forest shone strangely.
The hunts for wild beasts, the castles, and at night,
the rest,
When man in his room sat thinking justice,
And in noiseless prayer fought for the living head
of God.
And this bitter hour of defeat,
When we behold a stony face in the black waters.
But radiating light, the lovers lift their silver eyelids:
They are one body. Incense streams from rose-
colored pillows
And the sweet song of those risen from the dead.

[quasimodo1]

ABEND IN LANS


Our travels through the fading summer
Toward bundles of ripened grain are over.
Under white-washed arches
Where the swallows flew in and out,
we drink fiery wine.

Beautiful: o melancholy and purple
laughter.
Evening and the dark perfume
of green
Cools with showers our burning foreheads.

Silver water runs down
stairs in the forest,
The night and the wordless,
forgotten life.
Friend: the leaf-covered path
from the village.

{translated from the Germann by Parker Smathers}

[quasimodo1]

http://chronicle.com/article/William-Blakes-America-2010/125024/ --- "Blake suggests that if you want to understand the moral state of a country, you had better check first and see how it deals with its children. Does it treat them with loving kindness, or does it exploit them? Does it look down upon them from the perspective of the greedy and frightened Selfhood, or regard them with the generosity of the enlightened Soul? Blake's verdict on his own nation is not hard to discern. Can our own nation claim to be doing better?"

[quasimodo1]

Poem by Hadrian
According to the Historia Augusta Hadrian composed shortly before his death the following poem:[64]

Animula, vagula, blandula
Hospes comesque corporis
Quae nunc abibis in loca
Pallidula, rigida, nudula,
Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos...
P. Aelius Hadrianus Imp.
Roving amiable little soul,
Body's companion and guest,
Now descending for parts
Colorless, unbending, and bare
Your usual distractions no more shall be there...

[Silas Thorne]

Song.
by John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester

Leave this gaudy guilded stage,
From custom more than use frequented,
Where fools of either sex and age
Crowd to see themselves presented.
To Love's theatre, the bed,
Youth and beauty fly together,
And act so well it may be said
The laurel there was due to either.
Twixt strifes of love and war, the difference lies in this:
When neither overcomes, love's triumph greater is.

[quasimodo1]

The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower


The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.


The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.


The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime. ...{excerpt}

[Silas Thorne]

Thanks q1! That Dylan Thomas one is one of my all-time favorites! :)

[Silas Thorne]

'Acquainted with the Night', by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

(excerpt)

[Silas Thorne]

'The Darkling Thrush', by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
(excerpt)

[Duskwaith]

O'Captain, My Captain-Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Personal favourite of mine

[quasimodo1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/books/review/Campion-t.html?pagewanted=all ----- The Solitary Life -- By PETER CAMPION
Published: December 17, 2010 ----- The Solitary Life -- By PETER CAMPION


"In one of his notebooks from 1820, Giacomo Leopardi, the greatest Italian poet of the 19th century, wrote that “it is not enough to understand a true proposition; one must also feel the truth of it.” Writers of the Romantic age are supposed to make such statements. Theirs was the era of “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and “the holiness of the heart’s affections.” Coming from Leopardi, however, that credo can seem a little peculiar. Stunted by scoliosis, wearied from melancholy and badgered throughout his 38 years by his mother, a reactionary marchesa who stormed around the family palazzo in her riding boots, Leopardi was never an adventurer of felt experience. He spent most of his life confined by his parents to their home in the provincial hill town of Recanati, nestled above the Adriatic Sea."



Getty Images/DeAgostini
Giacomo Leopardi
CANTI

By Giacomo Leopardi

Translated and annotated by Jonathan Galassi.

498 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $35

[quasimodo1]

The Afternoon of a Faun

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

by Stephane Mallarme'

Translation from French by Roger Fry

Paintings by Rebecca A. Barrington

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


These nymphs I would perpetuate.

So clear

Their light carnation, that it floats in the air

Heavy with tufted slumbers.


Was it a dream I loved?

My doubt, a heap of ancient night, is finishing

In many a subtle branch, which, left the true

Wood itself, proves, alas! that all alone I gave

Myself for triumph the ideal sin of roses.

Let me reflect


. . .if the girls of which you tell

Figure a wish of your fabulous senses!

Faun, the illusion escapes from the blue eyes

And cold, like a spring in tears, of the chaster one:

But, the other, all sighs, do you say she contrasts

Like a breeze of hot day in your fleece!

But no! through the still, weary faintness

Choking with heat the fresh morn if it strives,

No water murmurs but what my flute pours

On the chord sprinkled thicket; and the sole wind


Prompt to exhale from my two pipes, before

It scatters the sound in a waterless shower,

Is, on the horizon's unwrinkled space,

The visible serene artificial breath

Of inspiration, which regains the sky.


Oh you, Sicilian shores of a calm marsh

That more than the suns my vanity havocs,

Silent beneath the flowers of sparks, RELATE

"That here I was cutting the hollow reeds tamed

By talent, when on the dull gold of the distant

Verdures dedicating their vines to the springs,


There waves an animal whiteness at rest:

And that to the prelude where the pipes first stir .... {excerpt}

{ http://www.angelfire.com/art/doit/mallarme.html }

[quasimodo1]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/bs-ae-poe-toaster-20110119,0,1160186.story ---Mysterious Poe visitor doesn't show for 2nd year
On the 202nd anniversary of Poe's birth, the tradition of quietly leaving three roses and a bottle of cognac at his graveside may be gone for good
--- By Chris Kaltenbach, The Baltimore Sun

4:14 p.m. EST, January 19, 2011

[quasimodo1]

LULLABY

Hush, lullay.
Your treasures all
Encrust with rust,
Your trinket pleasures fall
To dust.
Beneath the sapphire arch,
Upon the grassy floor,
Is nothing more
To hold,
And play is over-old.
Your eyes
In sleepy fever gleam,
Their lids droop
To their dream.
You wander late alone,
The flesh frets on the bone,
Your love fails in your breast,
Here is the pillow.
Rest.

[Pierre Menard]

I wanna bring this thread back from the dead!

Edmund Spenser: Amoretti LXII

The weary yeare his race now having run,
The new begins his compast course anew:
With shew of morning mylde he hath begun,
Betokening peace and plenty to ensew.
So let us, which this chaunge of weather vew,
Chaunge eeke our mynds and former lives amend,
The old yeares sinnes forepast let us eschew,
And fly the faults with which we did offend.
Then shall the new yeares joy forth freshly send,
Into the glooming world his gladsome ray:
And all these stormes which now his beauty blend,
Shall turne to caulmes and tymely cleare away.
So likewise love cheare you your heavy spright,
And chaunge old yeares annoy to new delight.

[Pierre Menard]

Thomas Wyatt: Unstable Dream


Unstable dream, according to the place,
Be steadfast once, or else at least be true.
By tasted sweetness make me not to rue
The sudden loss of thy false feignèd grace.
By good respect in such a dangerous case
Thou broughtest not her into this tossing mew
But madest my sprite live, my care to renew,
My body in tempest her succour to embrace.
The body dead, the sprite had his desire,
Painless was th'one, th'other in delight.
Why then, alas, did it not keep it right,
Returning, to leap into the fire?
And where it was at wish, it could not remain,
Such mocks of dreams they turn to deadly pain.

[stlukesguild]

PM... you tempt me with the poem from Spenser's Amoretti... long one of my favorite works. I'm tied up today... but hopefully you'll keep this alive long enough to drag myself and others into the fray.

[North Star]

Robert Herrick - Hesperides

The Argument of His Book

I sing of Brooks, of Blossomes, Birds, and Bowers:
Of April, May, of June, and July-Flowers.
I sing of May-poles, Hock-carts, Wassails, Wakes,
Of Bride-grooms, Brides, and of their Bridall-cakes.
I write of Youth, of Love;—and have Accesse
By these, to sing of cleanly-Wantonnesse.
I sing of Dewes, of Raines, and, piece by piece
Of Balme, of Oyle, of Spice, and Amber-Greece.
I sing of Times trans-shifting; and I write
How Roses first came Red, and Lilies White.
I write of Groves, of Twilights, and I sing
The Court of Mab, and of the Fairie-King.
I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)
Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.

[Pierre Menard]

PM... you tempt me with the poem from Spenser's Amoretti... long one of my favorite works. I'm tied up today... but hopefully you'll keep this alive long enough to drag myself and others into the fray.


It would be fantastic if we could get some more people to participate in the thread. There's a wealth of older poetry that I feel doesn't get talked about enough (guys like Traherne, Herrick, Spenser, Herbert, etc) so it'd be cool if there were more and more samples - not that it has to be only from that sort of era, I actually quite like the free-wheeling nature of the thread and how it seemed to range from Ancient times to the 19th century.

I only just recently discovered Spenser's Amoretti. I was aware of it for a long time, but only just started properly reading it. It's stunning, and very beautiful. I'm a little ways off approaching The Faerie Queene, but his shorter poetry more than suffices for now as it's really great!

[Pierre Menard]

Robert Herrick - Hesperides

The Argument of His Book

I sing of Brooks, of Blossomes, Birds, and Bowers:
Of April, May, of June, and July-Flowers.
I sing of May-poles, Hock-carts, Wassails, Wakes,
Of Bride-grooms, Brides, and of their Bridall-cakes.
I write of Youth, of Love;—and have Accesse
By these, to sing of cleanly-Wantonnesse.
I sing of Dewes, of Raines, and, piece by piece
Of Balme, of Oyle, of Spice, and Amber-Greece.
I sing of Times trans-shifting; and I write
How Roses first came Red, and Lilies White.
I write of Groves, of Twilights, and I sing
The Court of Mab, and of the Fairie-King.
I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)
Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.


Nice choice North Star. I like Herrick a lot, and I think I will go with one of his poems myself:

Delight in Disorder:

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.

[Pike Bishop]

The Afternoon of a Faun

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

by Stephane Mallarme'

Translation from French by Roger Fry

Paintings by Rebecca A. Barrington

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


These nymphs I would perpetuate.

So clear

Their light carnation, that it floats in the air

Heavy with tufted slumbers.


Was it a dream I loved?

My doubt, a heap of ancient night, is finishing

In many a subtle branch, which, left the true

Wood itself, proves, alas! that all alone I gave

Myself for triumph the ideal sin of roses.

Let me reflect


. . .if the girls of which you tell

Figure a wish of your fabulous senses!

Faun, the illusion escapes from the blue eyes

And cold, like a spring in tears, of the chaster one:

But, the other, all sighs, do you say she contrasts

Like a breeze of hot day in your fleece!

But no! through the still, weary faintness

Choking with heat the fresh morn if it strives,

No water murmurs but what my flute pours

On the chord sprinkled thicket; and the sole wind


Prompt to exhale from my two pipes, before

It scatters the sound in a waterless shower,

Is, on the horizon's unwrinkled space,

The visible serene artificial breath

Of inspiration, which regains the sky.


Oh you, Sicilian shores of a calm marsh

That more than the suns my vanity havocs,

Silent beneath the flowers of sparks, RELATE

"That here I was cutting the hollow reeds tamed

By talent, when on the dull gold of the distant

Verdures dedicating their vines to the springs,


There waves an animal whiteness at rest:

And that to the prelude where the pipes first stir .... {excerpt}

{ http://www.angelfire.com/art/doit/mallarme.html }
Mallarme is so good it's scary.

[North Star]

It would be fantastic if we could get some more people to participate in the thread. There's a wealth of older poetry that I feel doesn't get talked about enough (guys like Traherne, Herrick, Spenser, Herbert, etc) so it'd be cool if there were more and more samples - not that it has to be only from that sort of era, I actually quite like the free-wheeling nature of the thread and how it seemed to range from Ancient times to the 19th century.
Hear, hear!

Nice choice North Star. I like Herrick a lot, and I think I will go with one of his poems myself:

Delight in Disorder:

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.

A good choice, as well.


Katherine, Lady Dyer: [Epitaph on Sir William Dyer] (1621)

My dearest dust could not thy hasty day
Afford thy drowzy patience leave to stay
One hower longer; so that we might either

Sate up, or gone to bedd together?
But since thy finisht labor hath possest

Thy weary limbs with early rest,
Enjoy it sweetly; and thy widdowe bride
Shall soone repose her by thy slumbering side;
Whose business, now is only to prepare

My nightly dress, and call to prayre:
Mine eyes wax heavy and the day growes old

The dew falls thick, my bloud growes cold;
Draw, draw the closed curtaynes: and make room;
My deare, my dearest dust; I come, I come.

[Pierre Menard]

^^^ Nice!


I'm gonna jump forward a couple hundred years:

In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 5: Alfred Lord Tennyson

I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.

[North Star]

^Beautiful.

And I'll jump back again a half a century or so.

Oliver Goldsmith: from The Deserted Village (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173557) (1770)

Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close,
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;
There, as I past with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came soften'd from below;
The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung,
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young;
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,
The playful children just let loose from school;
The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind,
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
And filled each pause the nightingale had made.
But now the sounds of population fail,
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,
No busy steps the grass-grown foot-way tread,
For all the bloomy flush of life is fled.
All but yon widowed, solitary thing
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;
She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread,
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn,
To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn;
She only left of all the harmless train,
The sad historian of the pensive plain.

[North Star]

JOHN KEATS: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

[Pierre Menard]

^^^ That makes me want to re-read Keats as soon as possible. Great poem.

I've been away for a few days, but I'm back with a poem from Thomas Traherne. A bit longer than the other ones I've posted so far, but I enjoy it a lot.


The Salutation by Thomas Traherne



These little limbs,
These eyes and hands which here I find,
These rosy cheeks wherewith my life begins,
Where have ye been? behind
What curtain were ye from me hid so long?
Where was, in what abyss, my speaking tongue?

When silent I
So many thousand, thousand years
Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie,
How could I smiles or tears,
Or lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive?
Welcome ye treasures which I now receive.

I that so long
Was nothing from eternity,
Did little think such joys as ear or tongue
To celebrate or see:
Such sounds to hear, such hands to feel, such feet,
Beneath the skies on such a ground to meet.

New burnished joys,
Which yellow gold and pearls excel!
Such sacred treasures are the limbs in boys,
In which a soul doth dwell;
Their organizèd joints and azure veins
More wealth include than all the world contains.

From dust I rise,
And out of nothing now awake;
These brighter regions which salute mine eyes,
A gift from God I take.
The earth, the seas, the light, the day, the skies,
The sun and stars are mine if those I prize.

Long time before
I in my mother’s womb was born,
A God, preparing, did this glorious store,
The world, for me adorn.
Into this Eden so divine and fair,
So wide and bright, I come His son and heir.

A stranger here
Strange things doth meet, strange glories see;
Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear,
Strange all and new to me;
But that they mine should be, who nothing was,
That strangest is of all, yet brought to pass.

[North Star]

Hadn't read Traherne before, but that is great.

Another one from Traherne:

Eden

A learned and a happy ignorance
Divided me
From all the vanity,
From all the sloth, care, pain, and sorrow that advance
The madness and the misery
Of men. No error, no distraction I
Saw soil the earth, or overcloud the sky.

I knew not that there was a serpent’s sting,
Whose poison shed
On men, did overspread
The world; nor did I dream of such a thing
As sin, in which mankind lay dead.
They all were brisk and living wights to me,
Yea, pure and full of immortality.

Joy, pleasure, beauty, kindness, glory, love,
Sleep, day, life, light,
Peace, melody, my sight,
My ears and heart did fill and freely move.
All that I saw did me delight.
The Universe was then a world of treasure,
To me an universal world of pleasure.

Unwelcome penitence was then unknown,
Vain costly toys,
Swearing and roaring boys,
Shops, markets, taverns, coaches, were unshown;
So all things were that drown’d my joys:
No thorns chok’d up my path, nor hid the face
Of bliss and beauty, nor eclips’d the place.

Only what Adam in his first estate,
Did I behold;
Hard silver and dry gold
As yet lay under ground; my blessed fate
Was more acquainted with the old
And innocent delights which he did see
In his original simplicity.

Those things which first his Eden did adorn,
My infancy
Did crown. Simplicity
Was my protection when I first was born.
Mine eyes those treasures first did see
Which God first made. The first effects of love
My first enjoyments upon earth did prove;

And were so great, and so divine, so pure;
So fair and sweet,
So true; when I did meet
Them here at first, they did my soul allure,
And drew away my infant feet
Quite from the works of men; that I might see
The glorious wonders of the Deity.

[Pierre Menard]

That was going to be my other Traherne choice. A lovely poem! He's definitely an under appreciated Poet.



I'm not a religious man, but I do love religious imagery in art, and there were very few better than those great religious poets of the 17th century and 18th centuries when it came to passionate and vigorous imagery.


The Day of Judgement by Isaac Watts


When the fierce north wind with his airy forces
Rears up the Baltic to a foaming fury,
And the red lightning with a storm of hail comes
Rushing amain down,

How the poor sailors stand amazed and tremble,
While the hoarse thunder, like a bloody trumpet,
Roars a loud onset to the gaping waters,
Quick to devour them!

Such shall the noise be and the wild disorder,
(If things eternal may be like these earthly)
Such the dire terror, when the great Archangel
Shakes the creation,

Tears the strong pillars of the vault of heaven,
Breaks up old marble, the repose of princes;
See the graves open, and the bones arising,
Flames all around ’em!

Hark, the shrill outcries of the guilty wretches!
Lively bright horror and amazing anguish
Stare through their eyelids, while the living worm lies
Gnawing within them.

Thoughts like old vultures prey upon their heart-strings,
And the smart twinges, when the eye beholds the
Lofty Judge frowning, and a flood of vengeance
Rolling afore him.

Hopeless immortals! how they scream and shiver,
While devils push them to the pit wide-yawning
Hideous and gloomy, to receive them headlong
Down to the center.

Stop here, my fancy: (all away ye horrid
Doleful ideas); come, arise to Jesus;
How He sits God-like! and the saints around him
Throned, yet adoring!

Oh may I sit there when he comes triumphant
Dooming the nations! then ascend to glory
While our hosannas all along the passage
Shout the Redeemer.

[North Star]

That was going to be my other Traherne choice. A lovely poem! He's definitely an under appreciated Poet.

I'm not a religious man, but I do love religious imagery in art, and there were very few better than those great religious poets of the 17th century and 18th centuries when it came to passionate and vigorous imagery.
I am an areligious man as well, and also love much religious art. Splendid choice, that Watts piece, too.

Something seasonal:


Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517 – 19 January 1547 / Norfolk)

The soote season, that bud and bloom forth bringes,
With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale:
The nightingale with fethers new she singes:
The turtle to her make hath told her tale:
Somer is come, for every spray nowe springes,
The hart hath hong his olde hed on the pale:
The buck in brake his winter cote he flinges:
The fishes flote with newe repaired scale:
The adder all her sloughe away she slinges:
The swift swallow pursueth the flyes smale:
The busy bee her honye now she minges:
Winter is worne that was the flowers bale:
And thus I see, among these pleasant things
Eche care decayes, and yet my sorow springes.

[Pierre Menard]

Howard is definitely a poet I have to check out more of. Another quality choice!


On a Drop of Dew - Andrew Marvell

See how the orient dew,
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,
Yet careless of its mansion new,
For the clear region where ’twas born
Round in itself incloses:
And in its little globe’s extent,
Frames as it can its native element.
How it the purple flow’r does slight,
Scarce touching where it lies,
But gazing back upon the skies,
Shines with a mournful light,
Like its own tear,
Because so long divided from the sphere.
Restless it rolls and unsecure,
Trembling lest it grow impure,
Till the warm sun pity its pain,
And to the skies exhale it back again.
So the soul, that drop, that ray
Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
Could it within the human flow’r be seen,
Remembering still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green,
And recollecting its own light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater heaven in an heaven less.
In how coy a figure wound,
Every way it turns away:
So the world excluding round,
Yet receiving in the day,
Dark beneath, but bright above,
Here disdaining, there in love.
How loose and easy hence to go,
How girt and ready to ascend,
Moving but on a point below,
It all about does upwards bend.
Such did the manna’s sacred dew distill,
White and entire, though congealed and chill,
Congealed on earth : but does, dissolving, run
Into the glories of th’ almighty sun.

[North Star]

Howard is definitely a poet I have to check out more of. Another quality choice!


On a Drop of Dew - Andrew Marvell
I haven't read too much, or enough, Howard either yet. And a good one from you too.


[4] from Certain Sonnets - Sir Philip Sidney


The Nightingale as soone as Aprill bringeth
Unto her rested sense a perfect waking,
While late bare earth, proud of new clothing springeth,
Sings out her woes, a thorne her song-booke making:

And mournfully bewailing,
Her throate in tunes expresseth
What griefe her breast opresseth,
For Theseus force on her chaste will prevailing.

O Philomela faire, ô take some gladnesse,
That here is juster cause of plaintfull sadnesse:
Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth,
Thy thorne without, my thorne my thorne my heart invadeth.

Alas she hath no other cause of anguish
But Theseus love, on her by strong hand wrokne,
Wherein she suffring all her spirits languish,
Full womanlike complaines her will was brokne.

But I who dayly craving,
Cannot have to content me,
Have more cause to lament me,
Since wanting is more woe then too much having.

O Philomela faire, ô take some gladnesse,
That here is juster cause of plaintfull sadnesse:
Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth,
Thy thorne without, my thorne my thorne my heart invadeth.

[Pierre Menard]

Very fine choice. I might keep with the Sidney flavour:


Astrophil and Stella 30


With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb’st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What! may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel’st a lover’s case:
I read it in thy looks; thy languished grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call ‘virtue’ there—ungratefulness?



I really love those first two lines. Simple, but effective.


On a side note, it really bothers me that every time I go to post, it changes the structure of the poem. As in, it just immediately aligns the poem left, even when I type it out in it's proper pattern. For example, the last two lines should start just under about the 'o' of 'do'. There must be away to post the poem the way it actually looks without linnet changing it.

[North Star]

Very fine choice. I might keep with the Sidney flavour:

Astrophil and Stella 30


I really love those first two lines. Simple, but effective.


On a side note, it really bothers me that every time I go to post, it changes the structure of the poem. As in, it just immediately aligns the poem left, even when I type it out in it's proper pattern. For example, the last two lines should start just under about the 'o' of 'do'. There must be away to post the poem the way it actually looks without linnet changing it.

A beautiful choice indeed.

Yes, it irks me as well. Oh well, no need for any such devices in this one:


Katherine Philips: EPITAPH. On her Son H.P. at St. Syth's Church where her body also lies Interred

What on Earth deserves our trust?
Youth and Beauty both are dust.
Long we gathering are with pain,
What one moment calls again.
Seven years childless marriage past,
A Son, a son is born at last:
So exactly lim'd and fair,
Full of good Spirits, Meen, and Air,
As a long life promised,
Yet, in less than six weeks dead.
Too promising, too great a mind
In so small room to be confin'd:
Therfore, as fit in Heav'n to dwell,
He quickly broke the Prison shell.
So the subtle Alchimist,
Can't with Hermes Seal resist
The powerful spirit's subtler fight,
But t'will bid him long good night.
And so the Sun if it arise
Half so glorious as his Eyes,
Like this Infant, takes a shrowd,
Buried in a morning Cloud.

[Pierre Menard]

And after a lengthy absence, I have returned, to once again attempt to resurrect this thread. I quite like this from Sir Walter Raleigh:



A Vision Upon the Fairy Queen


Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn; and, passing by that way,
To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer Virtue kept:
All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen;
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept,
And, from thenceforth, those Graces were not seen:
For they this queen attended; in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura’s hearse:
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce:
Where Homer’s spright did tremble all for grief,
And cursed the access of that celestial thief!

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Ben Jonson
My Picture Left in Scotland

"I now think love is rather deaf, than blind,
For else it could not be,
That she,
Whom I adore so much, should so slight me,
And cast my love behind:
I'm sure my language was as sweet,
And every close did meet
In sentence of as subtle feet
As hath the youngest he,
That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree.

Oh, but my conscious fears,
That fly my thoughts between,
Tell me that she hath seen
My hundreds of gray hairs,
Told seven and forty years,
Read so much waist, as she cannot embrace
My mountain belly and my rock face,
As all these, through her eyes, have stopt her ears."

[Nikonani]

A Ballad of Death
BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
Upon the flesh to cleave,
Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
And many sorrows after each his wise
For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.

O Love's lute heard about the lands of death,
Left hanged upon the trees that were therein;
O Love and Time and Sin,
Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,
Three lovers, each one evil spoken of;
O smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine
Came softer with her praise;
Abide a little for our lady's love.
The kisses of her mouth were more than wine,
And more than peace the passage of her days.

O Love, thou knowest if she were good to see.
O Time, thou shalt not find in any land
Till, cast out of thine hand,
The sunlight and the moonlight fail from thee,
Another woman fashioned like as this.
O Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her
Was made a goodly thing;
Yea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss,
With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier
Than lips of amorous roses in late spring.

By night there stood over against my bed
Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black,
Both sides drawn fully back
From brows wherein the sad blood failed of red,
And temples drained of purple and full of death.
Her curled hair had the wave of sea-water
And the sea's gold in it.
Her eyes were as a dove's that sickeneth.
Strewn dust of gold she had shed over her,
And pearl and purple and amber on her feet.

Upon her raiment of dyed sendaline
Were painted all the secret ways of love
And covered things thereof,
That hold delight as grape-flowers hold their wine;
Red mouths of maidens and red feet of doves,
And brides that kept within the bride-chamber
Their garment of soft shame,
And weeping faces of the wearied loves
That swoon in sleep and awake wearier,
With heat of lips and hair shed out like flame.

The tears that through her eyelids fell on me
Made mine own bitter where they ran between
As blood had fallen therein,
She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see
If any glad thing be or any good
Now the best thing is taken forth of us;
Even she to whom all praise
Was as one flower in a great multitude,
One glorious flower of many and glorious,
One day found gracious among many days:

Even she whose handmaiden was Love—to whom
At kissing times across her stateliest bed
Kings bowed themselves and shed
Pale wine, and honey with the honeycomb,
And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering;
Even she between whose lips the kiss became
As fire and frankincense;
Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king,
Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame,
Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence.

Then I beheld, and lo on the other side
My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead.
Sweet still, but now not red,
Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died.
And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade,
The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes.
And sweet, but like spoilt gold,
The weight of colour in her tresses weighed.
And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes,
The body that was clothed with love of old.

Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair
And all the hollow bosom of her gown—
Ah! that my tears ran down
Even to the place where many kisses were,
Even where her parted breast-flowers have place,
Even where they are cloven apart—who knows not this?
Ah! the flowers cleave apart
And their sweet fills the tender interspace;
Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss
Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart.

Ah! in the days when God did good to me,
Each part about her was a righteous thing;
Her mouth an almsgiving,
The glory of her garments charity,
The beauty of her bosom a good deed,
In the good days when God kept sight of us;
Love lay upon her eyes,
And on that hair whereof the world takes heed;
And all her body was more virtuous
Than souls of women fashioned otherwise.

Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands
And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves
Rain-rotten in rank lands,
Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves
And grass that fades ere any of it be mown;
And when thy bosom is filled full thereof
Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth,
And say "My master that was thrall to Love
Is become thrall to Death."
Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan.
But make no sojourn in thy outgoing;
For haply it may be
That when thy feet return at evening
Death shall come in with thee.

[Nikonani]

eh one more for the night

Voyages II

Hart Crane

--And yet this great wink of eternity,
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
Samite sheeted and processioned where
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;

Take this Sea, whose diapason knells
On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,
The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends
As her demeanors motion well or ill,
All but the pieties of lovers’ hands.

And onward, as bells off San Salvador
Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,
In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,--
Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,
Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.

Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,
And hasten while her penniless rich palms
Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,--
Hasten, while they are true,--sleep, death, desire,
Close round one instant in one floating flower.

Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.

[Nikonani]

Fuscara; Or, The Bee Errant
John Cleveland

Nature's Confectioner the Bee,
(Whose Suckets are moist Alchimy;
The Still of his refining Mold
Minting the Garden into Gold)
Having rifled all the Fields
Of what Dainties Flora yields.
Ambitious now to take Excise
Of a more fragrant Paradise,
At my Fuscara's sleeve arriv'd,
Where all delicious Sweets are hiv'd.
The Airy Freebooter distrains
First on the Violet of her Veins,
Whose Tincture could it be more pure,
His ravenous kiss had made it blewer.
Here did he sit, and Essence quaff,
Till her coy Pulse had beat him off;
That Pulse, which he that feels may know
Whether the World's long liv'd, or no.
The next he preys on is her Palm,
That Alm'ner of transpiring Balm;
So soft, 'tis Air but once remov'd,
Tender as 'twere a Jelly glov'd.
Here, while his canting Drone-pipe scan'd
The mystick Figures of her hand,
He tipples Palmestry, and dines
On all her Fortune-telling Lines:
He bathes in Bliss, and finds no odds
Betwixt this Nectar and the Gods.
He pearches now upon her Wrist
(A proper Hawk for such a Fist)
Making that Flesh his Bill of Fare,
Which hungry Canibals would spare,
Where Lillies in a lovely brown
Inoculate Carnation.
Her Argent Skin with Or so stream'd,
As if the milky-way were cream'd;
From hence he to the Woodbine bends
That quivers at her fingers ends,
That runs division on the Tree,
Like a thick-branching Pedigree;
So 'tis not her the Bee devours,
It is a pretty Maze of Flowers.
It is the Rose that bleeds, when he
Nibbles his nice Phlebotomy.
About her finger he doth cling
Ith' fashion of a Wedding Ring,
And bids his Comrades of the Swarm
Crawl like a Bracelet 'bout her Arm,
Thus when the hovering Publican
Had suck'd the Toll of all her Span,
(Tuning his Draughts with drowsie Hums,
As Danes Carouze by Kettle-drums)
It was decreed (that Posie glean'd)
The small Familiar should be wean'd.
At this the Errant's Courage quails;
Yet ayded by his native Sails,
The bold Columbus still designs
To find her undiscover'd Mines.
To th' Indies of her Arm he flies,
Fraught both with East and Western Prize,
Which when he had in vain essay'd,
(Arm'd like a Dapper Lancepresade
With Spanish Pike) he broach'd a Pore,
And so both made and heal'd the Sore:
For as in Gummy Trees there's found
A Salve to issue at the Wound;
Of this her breach the like was true,
Hence trickled out a Balsom too.
But oh! What Wasp was't that could prove
Raviliack to my Queen of Love?
The King of Bees now jealous grown,
Lest her Beams should melt his Throne,
And finding that his Tribute slacks,
His Burgesses and State of Wax
Turn'd to an Hospital; the Combs
Built Rank and File, like Beadsmens Rooms,
And what they bleed but tart and sowre
Match'd with my Danae's golden showre,
Live Hony all, the envious Elf
Stung her, cause sweeter than himself.
Sweetness and She are so alli'd,
The Bee committed Paricide.

[Nikonani]

The weft of the world was untorn
That is woven of the day on the night,
The hair of the hours was not white
Nor the raiment of time overworn,
When a wonder, a world's delight,
A perilous goddess was born,
And the waves of the sea as she came
Clove, and the foam at her feet,
Fawning, rejoiced to bring forth
A fleshly blossom, a flame
Filling the heavens with heat
To the cold white ends of the north.

[North Star]

Shakespeare: Threnos from [Let the bird of loudest lay]

Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclos'd, in cinders lie.

Death is now the Phoenix' nest,
And the Turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity:
'Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.

Truth may seem but cannot be;
Beauty brag but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

[Nikonani]

And so I leve leelly (Lord forbede ellis!)
That pardon and penaunce and preieres doon save
Soules that have synned seven sithes dedly.
Ac to trust on thise triennals--trewely, me thynketh,
It is noght so siker for the soule, certes, as is Dowel.
Forthi I rede 3ow renkes that riche ben on this erthe,
Upon trust of 3oure tresor triennals to have,
Be 3e never the bolder to breke the ten hestes;
And namely 3e maistres, meires and iugges,
That have the welthe of this world and wise men ben holden,
To purchace3ow pardon and the Popes bulles.
At the dredful dome, whan dede shulle arise
And comen alle bifore Crist acountes to 3elde--
How thow laddest thi lif here and hise lawes keptest,
And how thow didest day by day the doom wole reherce.
A pokeful of pardon there, ne provincials lettres,
Theigh e be founde in the fraternite of alle the foure ordres
And have indulgences doublefold--but Dowel 3ow helpe,
I sette 3oure patentes and 3oure pardon at one pies hele!
Forthi I counseille alle Cristene to crie God mercy,
And Marie his moder be oure meene bitwene,
That God gyve us grace here, er we go hennes,
Swiche werkes to werche, while we ben here,
That after oure deth day, Dowel reherce
At the day of dome, we dide as he hi3te.

[Pierre Menard]

Emily Dickinson


After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

[North Star]

Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art —

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.

[Lykren]

This is a lovely poem not to figure out:

Sestina

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

Elizabeth Bishop

[North Star]

Robert Herrick: To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time [from Hesperides]


Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

[Pierre Menard]

John Donne



At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there; here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou'hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.

[Pierre Menard]

Thomas Campion - “Now Winter Nights Enlarge”


Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o’erflow with wine,
Let well-turned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep’s leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
With lovers’ long discourse;
Much speech hath some defense,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.