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My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.
Love
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, [......] these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more. So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then.
Love
Still to be neat, still to be dressed, As you were going to a feast; Still to be powdered, still perfumed; Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art's hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound. Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free; Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all th'adulteries of art. They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
Love
Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late school boys and sour prentices, Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices, Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. Thy beams, so reverend and strong Why shouldst thou think? I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, But that I would not lose her sight so long; If her eyes have not blinded thine, Look, and tomorrow late, tell me, Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me. Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday, And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay. She's all states, and all princes, I, Nothing else is. Princes do but play us; compared to this, All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy. Thou, sun, art half as happy as we, In that the world's contracted thus. Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be To warm the world, that's done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.
Love
There is a garden in her face Where roses and white lilies grow; A heav'nly paradise is that place Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow. There cherries grow which none may buy, Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry. Those cherries fairly do enclose Of orient pearl a double row, Which when her lovely laughter shows, They look like rose-buds fill'd with snow; Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy, Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry. Her eyes like angels watch them still, Her brows like bended bows do stand, Threat'ning with piercing frowns to kill All that attempt with eye or hand Those sacred cherries to come nigh, Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.
Love
They flee from me that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themself in danger To take bread at my hand; and now they range, Busily seeking with a continual change. Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise Twenty times better; but once in special, In thin array after a pleasant guise, When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall, And she me caught in her arms long and small; Therewithall sweetly did me kiss And softly said, Dear heart, how like you this? It was no dream: I lay broad waking. But all is turned thorough my gentleness Into a strange fashion of forsaking; And I have leave to go of her goodness, And she also, to use newfangleness. But since that I so kindly am served I would fain know what she hath deserved.
Love
Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air, Thrice sit thou mute in this enchanted chair, Then thrice three times tie up this true love's knot, And murmur soft "She will, or she will not." Go burn these pois'nous weeds in yon blue fire, These screech-owl's feathers and this prickling briar, This cypress gathered at a dead man's grave, That all my fears and cares an end may have. Then come, you fairies! dance with me a round; Melt her hard heart with your melodious sound. In vain are all the charms I can devise: She hath an art to break them with her eyes.
Love
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 feigned 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.
Love
As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say The breath goes now, 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 Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we by a love so much refined, That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured 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 airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do. And though it in the center 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.
Love
Let me pour forth My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here, For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear, And by this mintage they are something worth, For thus they be Pregnant of thee; Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more, When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore, So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore. On a round ball A workman that hath copies by, can lay An Europe, Afric, and an Asia, And quickly make that, which was nothing, all; So doth each tear Which thee doth wear, A globe, yea world, by that impression grow, Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow This world; by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so. O more than moon, Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere, Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear To teach the sea what it may do too soon; Let not the wind Example find, To do me more harm than it purposeth; Since thou and I sigh one another's breath, Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.
Love
What needeth these threnning words and wasted wind? All this cannot make me restore my prey. To rob your good, iwis, is not my mind, Nor causeless your fair hand did I display. Let love be judge or else whom next we meet That may both hear what you and I can say: She took from me an heart, and I a glove from her. Let us see now if th'one be worth th'other.
Love
What should I say, Since faith is dead, And truth away From you is fled? Should I be led With doubleness? Nay, nay, mistress! I promised you, And you promised me, To be as true As I would be. But since I see Your double heart, Farewell my part! Though for to take It is not my mind, But to forsake [One so unkind] And as I find, So will I trust: Farewell, unjust! Can ye say nay? But you said That I alway Should be obeyed? And thus betrayed Or that I wiste Farewell, unkissed.
Love
When thou must home to shades of underground, And there arriv'd, a new admired guest, The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round, White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest, To hear the stories of thy finish'd love From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move; Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights, Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make, Of tourneys and great challenges of knights, And all these triumphs for thy beauty's sake: When thou hast told these honours done to thee, Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.
Love
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, helas, I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
Love
Ye old mule that think yourself so fair, Leave off with craft your beauty to repair, For it is true, without any fable, No man setteth more by riding in your saddle. Too much travail so do your train appair. Ye old mule With false savour though you deceive th'air, Whoso taste you shall well perceive your lair Savoureth somewhat of a Kappurs stable. Ye old mule Ye must now serve to market and to fair, All for the burden, for panniers a pair. For since gray hairs been powdered in your sable, The thing ye seek for, you must yourself enable To purchase it by payment and by prayer, Ye old mule.
Love
I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick, Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm, Weak from the noon-day heat. A church bell sounded mournfully far away, I heard the cry of a baby, And the coughing of John Yarnell, Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying, Then the violent voice of my wife: "Watch out, the potatoes are burning!" I smelled them ... then there was irresistible disgust. I pulled the trigger ... blackness ... light ... Unspeakable regret ... fumbling for the world again. Too late! Thus I came here, With lungs for breathing ... one cannot breathe here with lungs, Though one must breathe Of what use is it To rid one's self of the world, When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life?
Mythology & Folklore
I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge. When I felt the bullet enter my heart I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary, Instead of running away and joining the army. Rather a thousand times the county jail Than to lie under this marble figure with wings, And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, Pro Patria. What do they mean, anyway?
Mythology & Folklore
I was only eight years old; And before I grew up and knew what it meant I had no words for it, except That I was frightened and told my Mother; And that my Father got a pistol And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy, Fifteen years old, except for his Mother. Nevertheless the story clung to me. But the man who married me, a widower of thirty-five, Was a newcomer and never heard it Till two years after we were married. Then he considered himself cheated, And the village agreed that I was not really a virgin. Well, he deserted me, and I died The following winter.
Mythology & Folklore
W. B. Yeats, Lapis Lazuli from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright 1933 by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed 1961 by Georgie Yeats. Reprinted with the permission of A. P. Watt, Ltd. on behalf of Michael Yeats.
Mythology & Folklore
Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire? What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?
Mythology & Folklore
I GLOOM! An October like November; August a hundred thousand hours, And all September, A hundred thousand, dragging sunlit days, And half October like a thousand years . . . And doom! That then was Antwerp. . . In the name of God, How could they do it? Those souls that usually dived Into the dirty caverns of mines; Who usually hived In whitened hovels; under ragged poplars; Who dragged muddy shovels, over the grassy mud, Lumbering to work over the greasy sods. . . Those men there, with the appearance of clods Were the bravest men that a usually listless priest of God Ever shrived. . . And it is not for us to make them an anthem. If we found words there would come no wind that would fan them To a tune that the trumpets might blow it, Shrill through the heaven that's ours or yet Allah's, Or the wide halls of any Valhallas. We can make no such anthem. So that all that is ours For inditing in sonnets, pantoums, elegiacs, or lays Is this: In the name of God, how could they do it? II For there is no new thing under the sun, Only this uncomely man with a smoking gun In the gloom. . . What the devil will he gain by it? Digging a hole in the mud and standing all day in the rain by it Waiting his doom; The sharp blow, the swift outpouring of the blood, Till the trench of gray mud Is turned to a brown purple drain by it. Well, there have been scars Won in many wars . . . Punic, Lacedmonian, wars of Napoleon, wars for faith, wars for honour, for love, for possession, But this Belgian man in his ugly tunic, His ugly round cap, shooting on, in a sort of obsession, Overspreading his miserable land, Standing with his wet gun in his hand . . . Doom! He finds that in a sudden scrimmage, And lies, an unsightly lump on the sodden grass . . . An image that shall take long to pass! III For the white-limbed heroes of Hellas ride by upon their horses Forever through our brains. The heroes of Cressy ride by upon their stallions; And battalions and battalions and battalions The Old Guard, the Young Guard, the men of Minden and of Waterloo, Pass, for ever staunch, Stand, for ever true; And the small man with the large paunch, And the gray coat, and the large hat, and the hands behind the back, Watches them pass In our minds for ever . . . But that clutter of sodden corses On the sodden Belgian grass That is a strange new beauty. IV With no especial legends of marchings or triumphs or duty, Assuredly that is the way of it, The way of beauty . . . And that is the highest word you can find to say of it. For you cannot praise it with words Compounded of lyres and swords, But the thought of the gloom and the rain And the ugly coated figure, standing beside a drain, Shall eat itself into your brain: And you will say of all heroes, They fought like the Belgians! And you will say: He wrought like a Belgian his fate out of gloom. And you will say: He bought like a Belgian his doom. And that shall be an honourable name; Belgian shall be an honourable word; As honourable as the fame of the sword, As honourable as the mention of the many-chorded lyre, And his old coat shall seem as beautiful as the fabrics woven in Tyre. V And what in the world did they bear it for? I don't know. And what in the world did they dare it for? Perhaps that is not for the likes of me to understand. They could very well have watched a hundred legions go Over their fields and between their cities Down into more southerly regions. They could very well have let the legions pass through their woods, And have kept their lives and their wives and their children and cattle and goods. I don't understand. Was it just love of their land? Oh, poor dears! Can any man so love his land? Give them a thousand thousand pities And rivers and rivers of tears To wash off the blood from the cities of Flanders. VI This is Charing Cross; It is midnight; There is a great crowd And no light. A great crowd, all black that hardly whispers aloud. Surely, that is a dead womana dead mother! She has a dead face; She is dressed all in black; She wanders to the bookstall and back, At the back of the crowd; And back again and again back, She sways and wanders. This is Charing Cross; It is one o'clock. There is still a great cloud, and very little light; Immense shafts of shadows over the black crowd That hardly whispers aloud. . . And now! . . That is another dead mother, And there is another and another and another. . . And little children, all in black, All with dead faces, waiting in all the waiting-places, Wandering from the doors of the waiting-room In the dim gloom. These are the women of Flanders. They await the lost. They await the lost that shall never leave the dock; They await the lost that shall never again come by the train To the embraces of all these women with dead faces; They await the lost who lie dead in trench and barrier and foss, In the dark of the night. This is Charing Cross; it is past one of the clock; There is very little light. There is so much pain. LEnvoi And it was for this that they endured this gloom; This October like November, That August like a hundred thousand hours, And that September, A hundred thousand dragging sunlit days, And half October like a thousand years. . . Oh, poor dears!
Mythology & Folklore
As I went up by Ovillers In mud and water cold to the knee, There went three jeering, fleering spectres, That walked abreast and talked of me. The first said, Heres a right brave soldier That walks the dark unfearingly; Soon hell come back on a fine stretcher, And laughing for a nice Blighty. The second, Read his face, old comrade, No kind of lucky chance I see; One day hell freeze in mud to the marrow, Then look his last on Picardie. Though bitter the word of these first twain Curses the third spat venomously; Hell stay untouched till the wars last dawning Then live one hour of agony. Liars the first two were. Behold me At sloping arms by one two three; Waiting the time I shall discover Whether the third spake verity.
Mythology & Folklore
She was a village Of lovely knowledge The high roads left her aside, she was forlorn, a maid Water ran there, dusk hid her, she climbed four-wayed. Brown-gold windows showed last folk not yet asleep; Water ran, was a centre of silence deep, Fathomless deeps of pricked sky, almost fathomless Hallowed an upward gaze in pale satin of blue. And I was happy indeed, of mind, soul, body even Having got given A sign undoubtful of a dear England few Doubt, not many have seen, That Will Squele he knew and was so shriven. Home of Twelfth Night Edward Thomas by Arras fallen, Borrow and Hardy, Sussex tales out of Roman heights callen. No madrigals or field-songs to my all reverent whim; Till I got back I was dumb.
Mythology & Folklore
If it were not for England, who would bear This heavy servitude one moment more? To keep a brothel, sweep and wash the floor Of filthiest hovels were noble to compare With this brass-cleaning life. Now here, now there Harried in foolishness, scanned curiously o'er By fools made brazen by conceit, and store Of antique witticisms thin and bare. Only the love of comrades sweetens all, Whose laughing spirit will not be outdone. As night-watching men wait for the sun To hearten them, so wait I on such boys As neither brass nor Hell-fire may appal, Nor guns, nor sergeant-major's bluster and noise.
Mythology & Folklore
Only the wanderer Knows England's graces, Or can anew see clear Familiar faces. And who loves joy as he That dwells in shadows? Do not forget me quite, O Severn meadows.
Mythology & Folklore
Little did I dream, England, that you bore me Under the Cotswold hills beside the water meadows, To do you dreadful service, here, beyond your borders And your enfolding seas. I was a dreamer ever, and bound to your dear service, Meditating deep, I thought on your secret beauty, As through a child's face one may see the clear spirit Miraculously shining. Your hills not only hills, but friends of mine and kindly, Your tiny knolls and orchards hidden beside the river Muddy and strongly flowing, with shy and tiny streamlets Safe in its bosom. Now these are memories only, and your skies and rushy sky-pools Fragile mirrors easily broken by moving airs ... But deep in my heart for ever goes on your daily being, And uses consecrate. Think on me too, O Mother, who wrest my soul to serve you In strange and fearful ways beyond your encircling waters; None but you can know my heart, its tears and sacrifice; None, but you, repay.
Mythology & Folklore
He's gone, and all our plans Are useless indeed. We'll walk no more on Cotswold Where the sheep feed Quietly and take no heed. His body that was so quick Is not as you Knew it, on Severn river Under the blue Driving our small boat through. You would not know him now ... But still he died Nobly, so cover him over With violets of pride Purple from Severn side. Cover him, cover him soon! And with thick-set Masses of memoried flowers Hide that red wet Thing I must somehow forget.
Mythology & Folklore
Now, youth, the hour of thy dread passion comes; Thy lovely things must all be laid away; And thou, as others, must face the riven day Unstirred by rattle of the rolling drums, Or bugles' strident cry. When mere noise numbs The sense of being, the sick soul doth sway, Remember thy great craft's honour, that they may say Nothing in shame of poets. Then the crumbs Of praise the little versemen joyed to take Shall be forgotten; then they must know we are, For all our skill in words, equal in might And strong of mettle as those we honoured; make The name of poet terrible in just war, And like a crown of honour upon the fight.
Mythology & Folklore
When I remember plain heroic strength And shining virtue shown by Ypres pools, Then read the blither written by knaves for fools In praise of English soldiers lying at length, Who purely dream what England shall be made Gloriously new, free of the old stains By us, who pay the price that must be paid, Will freeze all winter over Ypres plains. Our silly dreams of peace you put aside And brotherhood of man, for you will see An armed mistress, braggart of the tide, Her children slaves, under your mastery. We'll have a word there too, and forge a knife, Will cut the cancer threatens England's life.
Mythology & Folklore
Doors, from Wind Song, is copyright 1957 by Carl Sandburg, and renewed 1985 by Margaret Sandburg, Janet Sandburg, and Helga Sandburg Crile, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Mythology & Folklore
Ezra Pound, "Canto I" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Mythology & Folklore
Ezra Pound, "Canto III" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Mythology & Folklore
Ezra Pound, "Canto IV" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Mythology & Folklore
Ezra Pound, "Canto LXXXI" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Mythology & Folklore
Ezra Pound, "Canto XLV " from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Mythology & Folklore
Ezra Pound, "Canto XXXVI" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Mythology & Folklore
So in Pieria, from the wedded bliss Of Time and Memory, the Muses came To be the means of rich oblivion, And rest from cares. And when the Thunderer Took heaven, then the Titans warred on him For pity of mankind. But the great law, Which is the law of music, not of bread, Set Atlas for a pillar, manacled His brother to the rocks of the Scythia, And under Aetna fixed the furious Typhon. So should thought rule, not force. And Amphion, Pursuing justice, entered Thebes and slew His mother's spouse; but when he would make sure And fortify the city, then he took The lyre that Hermes gave, and played, and watched The stones move and assemble, till a wall Engirded Thebes and kept the citadel Beyond the reach of arrows and of fire. What other power but harmony can build A city, and what gift so magical As that by which a city lifts its walls? So men, in years to come, shall feel the power Of this man moving through the high-ranged thought Which plans for beauty, builds for larger life. The stones shall rise in towers to answer him.
Mythology & Folklore
My bands of silk and miniver Momently grew heavier; The black gauze was beggarly thin; The ermine muffled mouth and chin; I could not suck the moonlight in. Harlequin in lozenges Of love and hate, I walked in these Striped and ragged rigmaroles; Along the pavement my footsoles Trod warily on living coals. Shouldering the thoughts I loathed, In their corrupt disguises clothed, Morality I could not tear From my ribs, to leave them bare Ivory in silver air. There I walked, and there I raged; The spiritual savage caged Within my skeleton, raged afresh To feel, behind a carnal mesh, The clean bones crying in the flesh.
Mythology & Folklore
I Behoild Pelides with his yellow hair, Proud child of Thetis, hero loved of Jove; Above the frowning of his brows of wove A crown of gold, well combed, with Spartan care. Who might have seen him, sullen, great, and fair, As with the wrongful world he proudly strove, And by high deeds his wilder passion shrove, Mastering love, resentment, and despair. He knew his end, and Phoebus arrow sure He braved for fame immortal and a friend, Despising life; and we, who know our end, Know that in our decay he shall endure And all our childrens hearts to grief inure, With whose first bitter battles his shall blend. II Who brought thee forth, immortal vision, who In Phthia or in Tempe brought thee forth? Out of the sunlight and the sapful earth What god the simples of thy spirit drew? A goddess rose from the green waves, and threw Her arms about a king, to give thee birth; A centaur, patron of thy boyish mirth, Over the meadows in thy footsteps flew. Now Thessaly forgets thee, and the deep Thy keeled bark furrowed answers not thy prayer; But far away new generations keep Thy laurels fresh; where branching Isis hems The lawns of Oxford round about, or where Enchanted Eton sits by pleasant Thames. III I gaze on thee as Phidias of old Or Polyclitus gazed, when first he saw These hard and shining limbs, without a flaw, And cast his wonder in heroic mould. Unhappy me who only may behold, Nor make immutable and fix in awe A fair immortal form no worm shall gnaw, A tempered mind whose faith was never told! The godlike mien, the lions lock and eye, The well-knit sinew, utter a brave heart Better than many words that part by part Spell in strange symbols what serene and whole In nature lives, nor can in marble die. The perfect body itself the soul.
Mythology & Folklore
Louise Bogan, Cassandra from The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968. Copyright 1968 by Louise Bogan. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, http://us.macmillan.com/fsg. All rights reserved.
Mythology & Folklore
Kenneth Slessor, In A/C with Ghosts from Selected Poems, published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia. Used by permission.
Mythology & Folklore
I had come to the house, in a cave of trees, Facing a sheer sky. Everything moved,a bell hung ready to strike, Sun and reflection wheeled by. When the bare eyes were before me And the hissing hair, Held up at a window, seen through a door. The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead Formed in the air. This is a dead scene forever now. Nothing will ever stir. The end will never brighten it more than this, Nor the rain blur. The water will always fall, and will not fall, And the tipped bell make no sound. The grass will always be growing for hay Deep on the ground. And I shall stand here like a shadow Under the great balanced day, My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind, And does not drift away.
Mythology & Folklore
There may be chaos still around the world, This little world that in my thinking lies; For mine own bosom is the paradise Where all my lifes fair visions are unfurled. Within my natures shell I slumber curled, Unmindful of the changing outer skies, Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies, Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled. I heed them not; or if the subtle night Haunt me with deities I never saw, I soon mine eyelids drowsy curtain draw To hide their myriad faces from my sight. They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw.
Mythology & Folklore
Canto III appeared in the July, 1917 issue of Poetry. Originally part of what scholars call the "Ur-Cantos," this version of Canto III was later edited by Pound to become Canto I of his collected Cantos. The section that eventually became Canto I is highlighted in blue in the poem below. THE EDITORS III Another's a half-cracked fellowJohn Heydon, Worker of miracles, dealer in levitation, In thoughts upon pure form, in alchemy, Seer of pretty visions ("servant of God and secretary of nature"); Full of plaintive charm, like Botticelli's, With half-transparent forms, lacking the vigor of gods. Thus Heydon, in a trance, at Bulverton, Had such a sight: Decked all in green, with sleeves of yellow silk Slit to the elbow, slashed with various purples. Her eyes were green as glass, her foot was leaf-like. She was adorned with choicest emeralds, And promised him the way of holy wisdom. "Pretty green bank," began the half-lost poem. Take the old way, say I met John Heydon, Sought out the place, Lay on the bank, was "plunged deep in swevyn;" And saw the companyLayamon, Chaucer Pass each in his appropriate robes; Conversed with each, observed the varying fashion. And then comes Heydon. "I have seen John Heydon." Let us hear John Heydon! "Omniformis Omnis intellectus est"thus he begins, by spouting half of Psellus. (Then comes a note, my assiduous commentator: Not Psellus De Daemonibus, but Porphyry's Chances, In the thirteenth chapter, that "every intellect is omni-form.") Magnifico Lorenzo used the dodge, Says that he met Ficino In some Wordsworthian, false-pastoral manner, And that they walked along, stopped at a well-head, And heard deep platitudes about contentment From some old codger with an endless beard. "A daemon is not a particular intellect, But is a substance differed from intellect," Breaks in Ficino, "Placed in the latitude or locus of souls" That's out of Proclus, take your pick of them. Valla, more earth and sounder rhetoric Prefacing praise to his Pope Nicholas: "A man of parts, skilled in the subtlest sciences; A patron of the arts, of poetry; and of a fine discernment." Then comes a catalogue, his jewels of conversation. No, you've not read your Elegantiae A dull book?shook the church. The prefaces, cut clear and hard: "Know then the Roman speech, a sacrament," Spread for the nations, eucharist of wisdom, Bread of the liberal arts. Ha! Sir Blancatz, Sordello would have your heart to give to all the princes; Valla, the heart of Rome, Sustaining speech, set out before the people. "Nec bonus Christianus ac bonus Tullianus." Marius, Du Bellay, wept for the buildings, Baldassar Castiglione saw Raphael "Lead back the soul into its dead, waste dwelling," Corpore laniato; and Lorenzo Valla, "Broken in middle life? bent to submission? Took a fat living from the Papacy" (That's in Villari, but Burckhardt's statement is different) "More than the Roman city, the Roman speech" (Holds fast its part among the ever-living). "Not by the eagles only was Rome measured." "Wherever the Roman speech was, there was Rome," Wherever the speech crept, there was mastery Spoke with the law's voice while your Greek, logicians... More Greeks than one! Doughty's "divine Homeros" Came before sophistry. Justinopolitan Uncatalogued Andreas Divus, Gave him in Latin, 1538 in my edition, the rest uncertain, Caught up his cadence, word and syllable: "Down to the ships we went, set mast and sail, Black keel and beasts for bloody sacrifice, Weeping we went." I've strained my ear for -ensa, -ombra, and -ensa And cracked my wit on delicate canzoni Here's but rough meaning: "And then went down to the ship, set keel to breakers, Forth on the godly sea; We set up mast and sail on the swarthy ship, Sheep bore we aboard her, and our bodies also Heavy with weeping. And winds from sternward Bore us out onward with bellying canvas Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess. Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller. Thus with stretched sail We went over sea till day's end: Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean. Came we then to the bounds of deepest water, To the Kimmerian lands and peopled cities Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever With glitter of sun-rays, Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven, Swartest night stretched over wretched men there. Thither we in that ship, unladed sheep there, The ocean flowing backward, came we through to the place Aforesaid by Circe. Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus, And drawing sword from my hip I dug the ell-square pitkin, poured we libations unto each the dead, First mead and then sweet wine, Water mixed with white flour. Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death's-heads As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best, For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods. Sheep, to Tiresias only, Black, and a bell sheep; Dark blood flowed in the fosse. Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead Of brides, of youths, and of many passing old, Virgins tender, souls stained with recent tears, Many men mauled with bronze lance-heads, Battle spoil, bearing yet dreary arms: These many crowded about me, With shouting, pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts; Slaughtered the herdssheep slain of bronze, Poured ointment, cried to the gods, To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine. Unsheathed the narrow steel, I sat to keep off the impetuous, impotent dead Till I should hear Tiresias. But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor, Unburied, cast on the wide earth Limbs that we left in the house of Circe, Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other, Pitiful spiritand I cried in hurried speech: 'Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast? Cam'st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?' And he in heavy speech: 'Ill fate and abundant wine! I slept in Circe's ingle, Going down the long ladder unguarded, I fell against the buttress, Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus. But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied! Heap up mine arms, be tomb by the sea-board, and inscribed, A man of no fortune and with a name to come; And set my oar up, that I swung 'mid fellows.' Came then another ghost, whom I beat off, Anticlea, And then Tiresias, Theban, Holding his golden wand, knew me and spoke first: 'Man of ill hour, why come a second time, Leaving the sunlight, facing the sunless dead and this joyless region? Stand from the fosse, move back, leave me my bloody bever, And I will speak you true speeches.' "And I stepped back, Sheathing the yellow sword. Dark blood he drank then And spoke: 'Lustrous Odysseus, shalt Return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas, Lose all companions.' Foretold me the ways and the signs. Came then Anticlea, to whom I answered: 'Fate drives me on through these deeps; I sought Tiresias.' I told her news of Troy, and thrice her shadow Faded in my embrace. Then had I news of many faded women Tyro, Alcmena, Chloris Heard out their tales by that dark fosse, and sailed By sirens and thence outward and away, And unto Circe buried Elpenor's corpse." Lie quiet, Divus. In Officina Wechli, Paris, M. D. three X's, Eight, with Aldus on the Frogs, And a certain Cretan's Hymni Deorum: (The thin clear Tuscan stuff Gives way before the florid mellow phrase.) Take we the Goddess, Venus: Venerandam, Aurean coronam habentem, pulchram, Cypri munimenta sortita est, maritime, Light on the foam, breathed on by zephyrs, And air-tending hours. Mirthful, orichalci, with golden Girdles and breast bands. Thou with dark eye-lids, Bearing the golden bough of Argicida.
Mythology & Folklore
Hart Crane, At Melvilles Tomb from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane by Hart Crane, edited by Marc SImon. Copyright 1933, 1958, 1966 by Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright 1986 by Marc Simon. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing.
Mythology & Folklore
My love looks like a girl to-night, But she is old. The plaits that lie along her pillow Are not gold, But threaded with filigree silver, And uncanny cold. She looks like a young maiden, since her brow Is smooth and fair, Her cheeks are very smooth, her eyes are closed. She sleeps a rare Still winsome sleep, so still, and so composed. Nay, but she sleeps like a bride, and dreams her dreams Of perfect things. She lies at last, the darling, in the shape of her dream, And her dead mouth sings By its shape, like the thrushes in clear evenings.
Mythology & Folklore
I The mind has shown itself at times Too much the baked and labeled dough Divided by accepted multitudes. Across the stacked partitions of the day Across the memoranda, baseball scores, The stenographic smiles and stock quotations Smutty wings flash out equivocations. The mind is brushed by sparrow wings; Numbers, rebuffed by asphalt, crowd The margins of the day, accent the curbs, Convoying divers dawns on every corner To druggist, barber and tobacconist, Until the graduate opacities of evening Take them away as suddenly to somewhere Virginal perhaps, less fragmentary, cool. There is the world dimensional for those untwisted by the love of things irreconcilable ... And yet, suppose some evening I forgot The fare and transfer, yet got by that way Without recall,lost yet poised in traffic. Then I might find your eyes across an aisle, Still flickering with those prefigurations Prodigal, yet uncontested now, Half-riant before the jerky window frame. There is some way, I think, to touch Those hands of yours that count the nights Stippled with pink and green advertisements. And now, before its arteries turn dark I would have you meet this bartered blood. Imminent in his dream, none better knows The white wafer cheek of love, or offers words Lightly as moonlight on the eaves meets snow. Reflective conversion of all things At your deep blush, when ecstasies thread The limbs and belly, when rainbows spread Impinging on the throat and sides ... Inevitable, the body of the world Weeps in inventive dust for the hiatus That winks above it, bluet in your breasts. The earth may glide diaphanous to death; But if I lift my arms it is to bend To you who turned away once, Helen, knowing The press of troubled hands, too alternate With steel and soil to hold you endlessly. I meet you, therefore, in that eventual flame You found in final chains, no captive then Beyond their million brittle, bloodshot eyes; White, through white cities passed on to assume That world which comes to each of us alone. Accept a lone eye riveted to your plane, Bent axle of devotion along companion ways That beat, continuous, to hourless days One inconspicuous, glowing orb of praise. II Brazen hypnotics glitter here; Glee shifts from foot to foot, Magnetic to their tremulo. This crashing opera bouffe, Blest excursion! this ricochet From roof to roof Know, Olympians, we are breathless While nigger cupids scour the stars! A thousand light shrugs balance us Through snarling hails of melody. White shadows slip across the floor Splayed like cards from a loose hand; Rhythmic ellipses lead into canters Until somewhere a rooster banters. Greet naivelyyet intrepidly New soothings, new amazements That cornets introduce at every turn And you may fall downstairs with me With perfect grace and equanimity. Or, plaintively scud past shores Where, by strange harmonic laws All relatives, serene and cool, Sit rocked in patent armchairs. O,I have known metallic paradises Where cuckoos clucked to finches Above the deft catastrophes of drums. While titters hailed the groans of death Beneath gyrating awnings I have seen The incunabula of the divine grotesque. This music has a reassuring way. The siren of the springs of guilty song Let us take her on the incandescent wax Striated with nuances, nervosities That we are heir to: she is still so young, We cannot frown upon her as she smiles, Dipping here in this cultivated storm Among slim skaters of the gardened skies. III Capped arbiter of beauty in this street That narrows darkly into motor dawn, You, here beside me, delicate ambassador Of intricate slain numbers that arise In whispers, naked of steel; religious gunman! Who faithfully, yourself, will fall too soon, And in other ways than as the wind settles On the sixteen thrifty bridges of the city: Let us unbind our throats of fear and pity. We even, Who drove speediest destruction In corymbulous formations of mechanics, Who hurried the hill breezes, spouting malice Plangent over meadows, and looked down On rifts of torn and empty houses Like old women with teeth unjubilant That waited faintly, briefly and in vain: We know, eternal gunman, our flesh remembers The tensile boughs, the nimble blue plateaus, The mounted, yielding cities of the air! That saddled sky that shook down vertical Repeated play of fireno hypogeum Of wave or rock was good against one hour. We did not ask for that, but have survived, And will persist to speak again before All stubble streets that have not curved To memory, or known the ominous lifted arm That lowers down the arc of Helens brow To saturate with blessing and dismay. A goose, tobacco and cologne Three winged and gold-shod prophecies of heaven, The lavish heart shall always have to leaven And spread with bells and voices, and atone The abating shadows of our conscript dust. Anchises navel, dripping of the sea, The hands Erasmus dipped in gleaming tides, Gathered the voltage of blown blood and vine; Delve upward for the new and scattered wine, O brother-thief of time, that we recall. Laugh out the meager penance of their days Who dare not share with us the breath released, The substance drilled and spent beyond repair For golden, or the shadow of gold hair. Distinctly praise the years, whose volatile Blamed bleeding hands extend and thresh the height The imagination spans beyond despair, Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer.
Mythology & Folklore
Hugh MacDiarmid, Gairmscoile from Selected Poetry. Copyright 1992 by Alan Riach and Michael Grieve. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Mythology & Folklore
in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old balloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and it's spring and the goat-footed balloonMan whistles far and wee
Mythology & Folklore
We passed old farmer Boothby in the field. Rugged and straight he stood; his body steeled With stubbornness and age. We met his eyes That never flinched or turned to compromise, And Luck, he cried, good luck!and waved an arm, Knotted and sailor-like, such as no farm In all of Maine could boast of; and away He turned again to pitch his new-cut hay... We walked on leisurely until a bend Showed him once more, now working toward the end Of one great path; wearing his eighty years Like banners lifted in a wind of cheers. Then we turned off abruptlytook the road Cutting the village, the one with the commanding View of the river. And we strode More briskly now to the long pier that showed Where the frail boats were kept at Indian Landing. In the canoe we stepped; our paddles dipped Leisurely downwards, and the slim bark slipped More on than in the water. Smoothly then We shot its nose against the rippling current, Feeling the rising rivers half-deterrent Pull on the paddle as we turned the blade To keep from swerving round; while we delayed To watch the curious wave-eaten locks; Or pass, with lazy turns, the picnic-rocks.... Blue eels flew under us, and fishes darted A thousand ways; the once broad channel shrunk. And over us the wise and noble-hearted Twilight leaned down; the sunset mists were parted, And we, with thoughts on tiptoe, slunk Down the green, twisting alleys of the Kennebunk, Motionless in the meadows The trees, the rocks, the cows... And quiet dripped from the shadows Like rain from heavy boughs. The tree-toads started ringing Their ceaseless silver bells; A land-locked breeze came swinging Its censer of earthy smells. The rivers tiny canon Stretched into dusky lands; Like a dark and silent companion Evening held out her hands. Hushed were the dawns bravados; Loud noon was a silenced cry And quiet slipped from the shadows As stars slip out of the sky... It must have been an hour more, or later, When, tramping homeward through the piney wood, We felt the years fly back; the brotherhood Of forests took usand we saw the satyr! There in a pool, up to his neck, he stood And grinned to see us stare, incredulous Too startled to remember fear or flight. Feeling the menace in the crafty night, We turned to runwhen lo, he called to us! Using our very names he called. We drew With creaking courage down the avenue Of birches till we saw, with clearing sight, (No longer through a tricky, pale-green light) Familiar turns and shrubs, the friendly path, And Farmer Boothby in his woodland bath! The woods became his background; every tree Seemed part of him, and stood erect, and shared The beauty of that gnarled serenity; The quiet vigor of age that smiled and squared Its shoulders against Time ... And even night Flowed in and out of him, as though content With such a native element; Happy to move about a spirit quite As old, as placid and as confident... Sideways we turned. Still glistening and unclad He leaped up on the bank, light as a lad, His body in the moonlight dripping stars... We went on homeward, through the pasture-bars.
Mythology & Folklore
Wallace Stevens, A Rabbit as the King of Ghosts from Collected Poems. Copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens and copyright renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Mythology & Folklore
Living, I had no might To make you hear, Now, in the inmost night, I am so near No whisper, falling light, Divides us, dear. Living, I had no claim On your great hours. Now the thin candle-flame, The closing flowers, Wed summer with my name, And these are ours. Your shadow on the dust, Strength, and a cry, Delight, despair, mistrust, All these am I. Dawn, and the far hills thrust To a far sky. Living, I had no skill To stay your tread, Now all that was my will Silence has said. We are one for good and ill Since I am dead.
Mythology & Folklore
Momus is the name men give your face, The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland, Where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray Against horizons purple, silent. Yes, Momus, Men have flung your face in bronze To gaze in gargoyle downward on a street-whirl of folk. They were artists did this, shaped your sad mouth, Gave you a tall forehead slanted with calm, broad wisdom; All your lips to the corners and your cheeks to the high bones Thrown over and through with a smile that forever wishes and wishes, purple, silent, fled from all the iron things of life, evaded like a sought bandit, gone into dreams, by God. I wonder, Momus, Whether shadows of the dead sit somewhere and look with deep laughter On men who play in terrible earnest the old, known, solemn repetitions of history. A droning monotone soft as sea laughter hovers from your kindliness of bronze, You give me the human ease of a mountain peak, purple, silent; Granite shoulders heaving above the earth curves, Careless eye-witness of the spawning tides of men and women Swarming always in a drift of millions to the dust of toil, the salt of tears, And blood drops of undiminishing war.
Mythology & Folklore
Potuia, potuia White grave goddess, Pity my sadness, O silence of Paros. I am not of these about thy feet, These garments and decorum; I am thy brother, Thy lover of aforetime crying to thee, And thou hearest me not. I have whispered thee in thy solitudes Of our loves in Phrygia, The far ecstasy of burning noons When the fragile pipes Ceased in the cypress shade, And the brown fingers of the shepherd Moved over slim shoulders; And only the cicada sang. I have told thee of the hills And the lisp of reeds And the sun upon thy breasts, And thou hearest me not, Potuia, potuia Thou hearest me not.
Mythology & Folklore
The ancient songs Pass deathward mournfully. Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths, Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings Symbols of ancient songs Mournfully passing Down to the great white surges, Watched of none - - Save the frail sea-birds And the lithe pale girls, Daughters of Okeanos. And the songs pass From the green land Which lies upon the waves as a leaf On the flowers of hyacinth; And they pass from the waters, The manifold winds and the dim moon, And they come, Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk, To the quiet level lands That she keeps for us all, That she wrought for us all for sleep In the silver days of the earth's dawning Proserpine, daughter of Zeus. And we turn from the Kuprian's breasts, And we turn from thee, Phoibos Apollon, And we turn from the music of old And the hills that we loved and the meads, And we turn from the fiery day, And the lips that were over-sweet; For silently Brushing the fields with red-shod feet, With purple robe Searing the flowers as with a sudden flame, Death, Thou hast come upon us. And of all the ancient songs Passing to the swallow-blue halls By the dark streams of Persephone, This only remains: That in the end we turn to thee, Death, That we turn to thee, singing One last song. O Death, Thou art an healing wind That blowest over white flowers A-tremble with dew; Thou art a wind flowing Over long leagues of lonely sea; Thou art the dusk and the fragrance; Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling; Thou art the pale peace of one Satiate with old desires; Thou art the silence of beauty, And we look no more for the morning; We yearn no more for the sun, Since with thy white hands, Death, Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets, The slim colorless poppies Which in thy garden alone Softly thou gatherest. And silently; And with slow feet approaching; And with bowed head and unlit eyes, We kneel before thee: And thou, leaning towards us, Caressingly layest upon us Flowers from thy thin cold hands, And, smiling as a chaste woman Knowing love in her heart, Thou sealest our eyes And the illimitable quietude Comes gently upon us.
Mythology & Folklore
Knock knock He has closed his door The gardens lilies have started to rot So who is the corpse being carried from the house You just knocked on his door And trot trot Trot goes little lady mouse Translated from the French
Nature
I have built a house in the middle of the Ocean Its windows are the rivers flowing from my eyes Octopi are crawling all over where the walls are Hear their triple hearts beat and their beaks peck against the windowpanes House of dampness House of burning Seasons fastness Season singing The airplanes are laying eggs Watch out for the dropping of the anchor Watch out for the shooting black ichor It would be good if you were to come from the sky The skys honeysuckle is climbing The earthly octopi are throbbing And so very many of us have become our own gravediggers Pale octopi of the chalky waves O octopi with pale beaks Around the house is this ocean that you know well And is never still Translated from the French
Nature
Wallace Stevens, "Of Mere Being" from The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play. Copyright 1967, 1969, 1971 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Nature
W. B. Yeats, A Dialogue of Self and Soul from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright 1933 by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed 1961 by Georgie Yeats. Reprinted with the permission of A. P. Watt, Ltd. on behalf of Michael Yeats.
Nature
W. B. Yeats, Byzantium from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright 1933 by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed 1961 by Georgie Yeats. Reprinted with the permission of A. P. Watt, Ltd. on behalf of Michael Yeats.
Nature
O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more; Have you not heard that our hearts are old, That you call in birds, in wind on the hill, In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore? O sweet everlasting Voices, be still.
Nature
Although you hide in the ebb and flow Of the pale tide when the moon has set, The people of coming days will know About the casting out of my net, And how you have leaped times out of mind Over the little silver cords, And think that you were hard and unkind, And blame you with many bitter words.
Nature
She that but little patience knew, From childhood on, had now so much A grey gull lost its fear and flew Down to her cell and there alit, And there endured her fingers' touch And from her fingers ate its bit. Did she in touching that lone wing Recall the years before her mind Became a bitter, an abstract thing, Her thought some popular enmity: Blind and leader of the blind Drinking the foul ditch where they lie? When long ago I saw her ride Under Ben Bulben to the meet, The beauty of her country-side With all youth's lonely wildness stirred, She seemed to have grown clean and sweet Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird: Sea-borne, or balanced in the air When first it sprang out of the nest Upon some lofty rock to stare Upon the cloudy canopy, While under its storm-beaten breast Cried out the hollows of the sea.
Nature
There was a man whom Sorrow named his friend, And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming, Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming And humming sands, where windy surges wend: And he called loudly to the stars to bend From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they Among themselves laugh on and sing alway: And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend Cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story! The sea swept on and cried her old cry still, Rolling along in dreams from hill to hill. He fled the persecution of her glory And, in a far-off, gentle valley stopping, Cried all his story to the dewdrops glistening. But naught they heard, for they are always listening, The dewdrops, for the sound of their own dropping. And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend Sought once again the shore, and found a shell, And thought, I will my heavy story tell Till my own words, re-echoing, shall send Their sadness through a hollow, pearly heart; And my own tale again for me shall sing, And my own whispering words be comforting, And lo! my ancient burden may depart. Then he sang softly nigh the pearly rim; But the sad dweller by the sea-ways lone Changed all he sang to inarticulate moan Among her wildering whirls, forgetting him.
Nature
The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy; Yet still she turns her restless head: But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good. Where are now the warring kings, Word be-mockers? By the Rood Where are now the warring kings? An idle word is now their glory, By the stammering schoolboy said, Reading some entangled story: The kings of the old time are dead; The wandering earth herself may be Only a sudden flaming word, In clanging space a moment heard, Troubling the endless reverie. Then nowise worship dusty deeds, Nor seek, for this is also sooth, To hunger fiercely after truth, Lest all thy toiling only breeds New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth Saving in thine own heart. Seek, then, No learning from the starry men, Who follow with the optic glass The whirling ways of stars that pass Seek, then, for this is also sooth, No word of theirs the cold star-bane Has cloven and rent their hearts in twain, And dead is all their human truth. Go gather by the humming sea Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell, And to its lips thy story tell, And they thy comforters will be, Rewarding in melodious guile Thy fretful words a little while, Till they shall singing fade in ruth And die a pearly brotherhood; For words alone are certain good: Sing, then, for this is also sooth. I must be gone: there is a grave Where daffodil and lily wave, And I would please the hapless faun, Buried under the sleepy ground, With mirthful songs before the dawn. His shouting days with mirth were crowned; And still I dream he treads the lawn, Walking ghostly in the dew, Pierced by my glad singing through, My songs of old earth's dreamy youth: But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou! For fair are poppies on the brow: Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.
Nature
Wallace Stevens, "The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain" from The Collected Poems. Copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
Nature
Only the wanderer Knows England's graces, Or can anew see clear Familiar faces. And who loves joy as he That dwells in shadows? Do not forget me quite, O Severn meadows.
Nature
He's gone, and all our plans Are useless indeed. We'll walk no more on Cotswold Where the sheep feed Quietly and take no heed. His body that was so quick Is not as you Knew it, on Severn river Under the blue Driving our small boat through. You would not know him now ... But still he died Nobly, so cover him over With violets of pride Purple from Severn side. Cover him, cover him soon! And with thick-set Masses of memoried flowers Hide that red wet Thing I must somehow forget.
Nature
By a peninsula the painter sat and Sketched the uneven valley groves. The apostle gave alms to the Meek. The volcano burst In fusive sulphur and hurled Rocks and ore into the air Heavens sudden change at The drawing tempestuous, Darkening shade of dense clouded hues. The wanderer soon chose His spot of rest; they bore the Chosen hero upon their shoulders, Whom they strangely admired, as The beach-tide summer of people desired.
Nature
Is this the river East I heard? Where the ferries, tugs and sailboats stirred And the reaching wharves from the inner land Ourstretched, like the harmless receiving hand And the silvery tinge that sparkles aloud Like the brilliant white demons, which a tide has towed From the rays of the morning sun Which it doth ceaselessly shine upon. But look at the depth of the drippling tide The dripples, reripples like the locusts astride; As the boat turns upon the silvery spread It leavesstrangea shadow dead. And the very charms from the reflective river And from the stacks of the floating boat There seemeth the quality neer to dissever Like the ruffles from the mystified smoke.
Nature
The motion of gathering loops of water Must either burst or remain in a moment. The violet colors through the glass Throw up little swellings that appear And spatter as soon as another strikes And is born; so pure are they of colored Hues, that we feel the absent strength Of its power. When they begin they gather Like sand on the beach: each bubble Contains a complete eye of water.
Nature
I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
Nature
Stephen Spender, The Truly Great from Collected Poems 1928-1953. Copyright 1955 by Stephen Spender. Reprinted by permission of Ed Victor Ltd.
Nature
Ezra Pound, "Canto IV" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Nature
Barque of phosphor On the palmy beach, Move outward into heaven, Into the alabasters And night blues. Foam and cloud are one. Sultry moon-monsters Are dissolving. Fill your black hull With white moonlight. There will never be an end To this droning of the surf.
Nature
The trade-wind jingles the rings in the nets around the racks by the docks on Indian River. It is the same jingle of the water among roots under the banks of the palmettoes, It is the same jingle of the red-bird breasting the orange-treesout of the cedars. Yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu, nor on the nunnery beaches.
Nature
Her terrace was the sand And the palms and the twilight. She made of the motions of her wrist The grandiose gestures Of her thought. The rumpling of the plumes Of this creature of the evening Came to be sleights of sails Over the sea. And thus she roamed In the roamings of her fan, Partaking of the sea, And of the evening, As they flowed around And uttered their subsiding sound.
Nature
As the immense dew of Florida Brings forth The big-finned palm And green vine angering for life, As the immense dew of Florida Brings forth hymn and hymn From the beholder, Beholding all these green sides And gold sides of green sides, And blessed mornings, Meet for the eye of the young alligator, And lightning colors So, in me, come flinging Forms, flames, and the flakes of flames.
Nature
from Coterie, 1919
Nature
from Coterie, 1919
Nature
The moon has left the sky, love, The stars are hiding now, And frowning on the world, love, Night bares her sable brow. The snow is on the ground, love, And cold and keen the air is. Im singing here to you, love; Youre dreaming there in Paris. But this is Natures law, love, Though just it may not seem, That men should wake to sing, love; While maidens sleep and dream. Them care may not molest, love, Nor stir them from their slumbers, Though midnight find the swain, love. Still halting oer his numbers. I watch the rosy dawn, love, Come stealing up the east, While all things round rejoice, love, That Night her reign has ceased. The lark will soon be heard, love, And on his way be winging; When Natures poets, wake, love, Why should a man be singing?
Nature
The buffaloes are gone. And those who saw the buffaloes are gone. Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk, Those who saw the buffaloes are gone. And the buffaloes are gone.
Nature
There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of bloodI keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go. There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross. There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sunI got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go. There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis. There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoots hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waitingI keep the baboon because the wilderness says so. There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishesAnd I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness. O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heartand I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-WhereFor I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.
Nature
The sea-wash never ends. The sea-wash repeats, repeats. Only old songs? Is that all the sea knows? Only the old strong songs? Is that all? The sea-wash repeats, repeats.
Nature
I went out at night alone; The young blood flowing beyond the sea Seemed to have drenched my spirits wings I bore my sorrow heavily. But when I lifted up my head From shadows shaken on the snow, I saw Orion in the east Burn steadily as long ago. From windows in my fathers house, Dreaming my dreams on winter nights, I watched Orion as a girl Above another citys lights. Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too, The worlds heart breaks beneath its wars, All things are changed, save in the east The faithful beauty of the stars.
Nature
Mina Loy, The Song of the Nightingale is Like the Scent of Syringa from Lunar Baedeker and Times-Tables (Highlands, NC: Jonathan Williams Publisher, 1958). Copyright 1958 by Mina Loy. Reprinted with the permission of Roger L. Conover for the Estate of Mina Loy.
Nature
Openly, yes, With the naturalness Of the hippopotamus or the alligator When it climbs out on the bank to experience the Sun, I do these Things which I do, which please No one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub- Merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object In view was a Renaissance; shall I say The contrary? The sediment of the river which Encrusts my joints, makes me very gray but I am used To it, it may Remain there; do away With it and I am myself done away with, for the Patina of circumstance can but enrich what was There to begin With. This elephant skin Which I inhabit, fibered over like the shell of The coco-nut, this piece of black glass through which no light Can filtercut Into checkers by rut Upon rut of unpreventable experience It is a manual for the peanut-tongued and the Hairy toed. Black But beautiful, my back Is full of the history of power. Of power? What Is powerful and what is not? My soul shall never Be cut into By a wooden spear; through- Out childhood to the present time, the unity of Life and death has been expressed by the circumference Described by my Trunk; nevertheless, I Perceive feats of strength to be inexplicable after All; and I am on my guard; external poise, it Has its centre Well nurturedwe know Wherein pride, but spiritual poise, it has its centre where ? My ears are sensitized to more than the sound of The wind. I see And I hear, unlike the Wandlike body of which one hears so much, which was made To see and not to see; to hear and not to hear, That tree trunk without Roots, accustomed to shout Its own thoughts to itself like a shell, maintained intact By who knows what strange pressure of the atmosphere; that Spiritual Brother to the coral Plant, absorbed into which, the equable sapphire light Becomes a nebulous green. The I of each is to The I of each, A kind of fretful speech Which sets a limit on itself; the elephant is? Black earth preceded by a tendril? It is to that Phenomenon The above formation, Translucent like the atmospherea cortex merely That on which darts cannot strike decisively the first Time, a substance Needful as an instance Of the indestructibility of matter; it Has looked at the electricity and at the earth- Quake and is still Here; the name means thick. Will Depth be depth, thick skin be thick, to one who can see no Beautiful element of unreason under it?
Nature
Man, looking into the sea taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have it to yourself it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing but you cannot stand in the middle of this: the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave. The firs stand in a processioneach with an emerald turkey-foot at the top reserved as their contours, saying nothing; repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea; the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look. There are others besides you who have worn that look whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer investigate them for their bones have not lasted; men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are desecrating a grave, and row quickly awaythe blades of the oars moving together like the feet of water-spiders as if there were no such thing as death. The wrinkles progress upon themselves in a phalanxbeautiful under networks of foam, and fade breathlessly while the sea rustles in and out of the seaweed; the birds swim through the air at top speed, emitting cat-calls as heretofore the tortoise-shell scourges about the feet of the cliffs, in motion beneath them and the ocean, under the pulsation of light-houses and noise of bell-buoys, advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which dropped things are bound to sink in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor consciousness.
Nature
My bands of silk and miniver Momently grew heavier; The black gauze was beggarly thin; The ermine muffled mouth and chin; I could not suck the moonlight in. Harlequin in lozenges Of love and hate, I walked in these Striped and ragged rigmaroles; Along the pavement my footsoles Trod warily on living coals. Shouldering the thoughts I loathed, In their corrupt disguises clothed, Morality I could not tear From my ribs, to leave them bare Ivory in silver air. There I walked, and there I raged; The spiritual savage caged Within my skeleton, raged afresh To feel, behind a carnal mesh, The clean bones crying in the flesh.
Nature
1 When the world turns completely upside down You say well emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; Well live among wild peach trees, miles from town, Youll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternuts dark gold color. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, Well swim in milk and honey till we drown. The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong; All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot. 2 The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. The misted early mornings will be cold; The little puddles will be roofed with glass. The sun, which burns from copper into brass, Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass. Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winters over. By February you may find the skins Of garter snakes and water moccasins Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear. 3 When April pours the colors of a shell Upon the hills, when every little creek Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell, When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbirds beak, We shall live well we shall live very well. The months between the cherries and the peaches Are brimming cornucopias which spill Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black; Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches Well trample bright persimmons, while you kill Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback. 4 Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones Theres something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. Theres something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, A thread of water, churned to milky spate Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; That spring, briefer than apple-blossoms breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.
Nature
Basil Bunting, 13. Fearful Symmetry from Complete Poems, edited by Richard Caddel. Reprinted with the permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd., www.bloodaxebooks.com.
Nature
Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man" from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. Copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Nature
"Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself", from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Nature
Michael Anania, Afternoons from Selected Poems. Copyright 1994 by Michael Anania. Used by permission of Asphodel Press/Acorn Alliance.
Nature
Hart Crane, "The Air Plant" from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane, edited by Marc Simon. Copyright 1933, 1958, 1966 by Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright 1986 by Marc Simon. Used by permission of Publishing Corporation.
Nature
Archibald MacLeish, Ancestral from Collected Poems 1917-1982. Copyright 1985 by The Estate of Archibald MacLeish. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Nature
Perspective never withers from their eyes; They keep that docile edict of the Spring That blends March with August Antarctic skies: These are but cows that see no other thing Than grass and snow, and their own inner being Through the rich halo that they do not trouble Even to cast upon the seasons fleeting Though they should thin and die on last years stubble. And they are awkward, ponderous and uncoy . . . While we who press the cider mill, regarding them We, who with pledges taste the bright annoy Of friendships acid wine, retarding phlegm, Shifting reprisals (til who shall tell us when The jest is too sharp to be kindly?) boast Much of our store of faith in other men Who would, ourselves, stalk down the merriest ghost. Above them old Mizzentop, palatial white Hostelryfloor by floor to cinquefoil dormer Portholes the ceilings stack their stoic height. Long tiers of windows staring out toward former Facesloose panes crown the hill and gleam At sunset with a silent, cobwebbed patience . . . See them, like eyes that still uphold some dream Through mapled vistas, cancelled reservations! High from the central cupola, they say Ones glance could cross the borders of three states; But I have seen deaths stare in slow survey From four horizons that no one relates . . . Weekenders avid of their turf-won scores, Here three hours from the semaphores, the Czars Of golf, by twos and threes in plaid plusfours Alight with sticks abristle and cigars. This was the Promised Land, and still it is To the persuasive suburban land agent In bootleg roadhouses where the gin fizz Bubbles in time to Hollywoods new love-nest pageant. Fresh from the radio in the old Meeting House (Now the New Avalon Hotel) volcanoes roar A welcome to highsteppers that no mouse Who saw the Friends there ever heard before. What cunning neighbors history has in fine! The woodlouse mortgages the ancient deal Table that Powitzky buys for only nine- Ty-five at Adams auction,eats the seal, The spinster polish of antiquity . . . Who holds the lease on time and on disgrace? What eats the pattern with ubiquity? Where are my kinsmen and the patriarch race? The resigned factions of the dead preside. Dead rangers bled their comfort on the snow; But I must ask slain Iroquois to guide Me farther than scalped Yankees knew to go: Shoulder the curse of sundered parentage, Wait for the postman driving from Birch Hill With birthright by blackmail, the arrant page That unfolds a new destiny to fill . . . . So, must we from the hawks far stemming view, Must we descend as worms eye to construe Our love of all we touch, and take it to the Gate As humbly as a guest who knows himself too late, His news already told? Yes, while the heart is wrung, Ariseyes, take this sheaf of dust upon your tongue! In one last angelus lift throbbing throat Listen, transmuting silence with that stilly note Of pain that Emily, that Isadora knew! While high from dim elm-chancels hung with dew, That triple-noted clause of moonlight Yes, whip-poor-will, unhusks the heart of fright, Breaks us and saves, yes, breaks the heart, yet yields That patience that is armour and that shields Love from despairwhen love forsees the end Leaf after autumnal leaf break off, descend descend
Nature
I wanted you, nameless Woman of the South, No wraith, but utterlyas still more alone The Southern Cross takes night And lifts her girdles from her, one by one High, cool, wide from the slowly smoldering fire Of lower heavens, vaporous scars! Eve! Magdalene! or Mary, you? Whatever callfalls vainly on the wave. O simian Venus, homeless Eve, Unwedded, stumbling gardenless to grieve Windswept guitars on lonely decks forever; Finally to answer all within one grave! And this long wake of phosphor, iridescent Furrow of all our traveltrailed derision! Eyes crumble at its kiss. Its long-drawn spell Incites a yell. Slid on that backward vision The mind is churned to spittle, whispering hell. I wanted you . . . The embers of the Cross Climbed by aslant and huddling aromatically. It is blood to remember; it is fire To stammer back . . . It is Godyour namelessness. And the wash All night the water combed you with black Insolence. You crept out simmering, accomplished. Water rattled that stinging coil, your Rehearsed hairdocile, alas, from many arms. Yes, Evewraith of my unloved seed! The Cross, a phantom, buckleddropped below the dawn. Light drowned the lithic trillions of your spawn.
Nature
Basil Bunting, Briggflatts (Part 1) from Complete Poems, edited by Richard Caddel. Reprinted with the permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd., www.bloodaxebooks.com.
Nature
The low sandy beach and the thin scrub pine, The wide reach of bay and the long sky line, O, I am sick for home! The salt, salt smell of the thick sea air, And the smooth round stones that the ebbtides wear, When will the good ship come? The wretched stumps all charred and burned, And the deep soft rut where the cartwheel turned, Why is the world so old? The lapping wave, and the broad gray sky Where the cawing crows and the slow gulls fly, Where are the dead untold? The thin, slant willows by the flooded bog, The huge stranded hulk and the floating log, Sorrow with life began! And among the dark pines, and along the flat shore, O the wind, and the wind, for evermore! What will become of man?
Nature