neglected poets

[uranderson]

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

[quasimodo1]

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

[quasimodo1]

Through a Glass, Darkly
General George Patton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[quasimodo1]

Moonlight

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

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

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

Victoria Sackville-West

[quasimodo1]

The Good Wife Taught Her Daughter
by Medbh McGuckian


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

[Poetess]

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

[quasimodo1]

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


I

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

II

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

III

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

Franklin P. Adams 1881-1060

[quasimodo1]

Franklin P. Adams, again:
The Jazzy Bard


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

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

Franklin P. Adams

[quasimodo1]

Poetry Page

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


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

[quasimodo1]

Lay of Ancient Rome

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

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

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

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

Thomas Ybarra

[quasimodo1]

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

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

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

[quasimodo1]

Magnets

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

Laurence Binyon

[quasimodo1]

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

No images nor idols make
For Roger Ingersoll to break.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[quasimodo1]

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

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

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

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

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

[quasimodo1]

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