Exempli Gratia: Classic Poetry

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.

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/bo...html?ref=books --- "The Rose Did Caper on Her Cheek" a review
By CARYN JAMES
Published: February 16, 2010

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

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.

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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.

---

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.

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.

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."

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/201...slideshow.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/ar...html?ref=books

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

Ardor and the Abyss
James Longenbach --- Emily Dickinson http://www.thenation.com/article/ard...byss?page=full --- http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/z...dickinson1.jpg

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/z...dneyLanier.jpg

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/z...ndburg1922.jpg

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/z...tainMTwain.jpg