neglected poets

[quasimodo1]

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

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

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

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

The Independent Louis Untermeyer

[Janine]

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


Debt

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

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

Sara Teasdale


Jewels


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

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

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

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

Sara Teasdale


I Am Not Yours

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

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

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

Sara Teasdale

Enough

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

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

Sara Teasdale

April Song

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

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

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

Sara Teasdale

Would Live In Your Love

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

Sara Teasdale

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

[quasimodo1]

Fires

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

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

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

Joseph Campbell

[quasimodo1]

Premonition

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

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

.........

George Santayana

[kiz_paws]

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

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

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

[quasimodo1]

Where The Mind is Without Fear

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

Rabindranath Tagore

[kiz_paws]

Where The Mind is Without Fear

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

Rabindranath Tagore

I loved that one, Quasi. Thank you for posting it.

[quasimodo1]

The Fire Soul

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

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

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

George Charles Selden

[uranderson]

Chaplinesque
by Hart Crane


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

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

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

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

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

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

LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS AT SUNRISE
—W.S. Merwin

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

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

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

Where else am I walking even now
Looking for me

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

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

[quasimodo1]

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

[kiz_paws]

LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS AT SUNRISE
—W.S. Merwin

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

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

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

Where else am I walking even now
Looking for me

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

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

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

[uranderson]

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

Thanks

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

[kiz_paws]

Thanks

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

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

[quasimodo1]

The Taj

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

H.G. Keene

[uranderson]

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

Here is one by Creeley:

The Rain

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

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

Robert Creeley

***********

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

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

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