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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE | 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. | Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun | Renaissance | Love |
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE | 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. | Sonnet 146: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, | Renaissance | Love |
EN JONSON | 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. | Still to be neat, still to be dressed | Renaissance | Love |
JOHN DONNE | 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. | The Sun Rising | Renaissance | Love |
THOMAS CAMPION | 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. | There Is A Garden In Her Face | Renaissance | Love |
SIR THOMAS WYATT | 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. | They Flee From Me | Renaissance | Love |
THOMAS CAMPION | 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. | Thrice Toss These Oaken Ashes | Renaissance | Love |
SIR THOMAS WYATT | 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. | Unstable Dream | Renaissance | Love |
JOHN DONNE | 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. | A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning | Renaissance | Love |
JOHN DONNE | 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. | A Valediction: of Weeping | Renaissance | Love |
SIR THOMAS WYATT | 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. | What Needeth these Threat'ning Words | Renaissance | Love |
SIR THOMAS WYATT | 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. | What should I Say | Renaissance | Love |
THOMAS CAMPION | 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. | When Thou Must Home to Shades of Underground | Renaissance | Love |
SIR THOMAS WYATT | 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. | Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind | Renaissance | Love |
SIR THOMAS WYATT | 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. | Ye Old Mule | Renaissance | Love |
EDGAR LEE MASTERS | 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? | Harold Arnett | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
EDGAR LEE MASTERS | 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? | Knowlt Hoheimer | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
EDGAR LEE MASTERS | 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. | Nellie Clark | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS | 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. | Lapis Lazuli | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS | 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? | No Second Troy | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
FORD MADOX FORD | 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! | In October 1914 [Antwerp] | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
IVOR GURNEY | 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. | Ballad of the Three Spectres | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
IVOR GURNEY | 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. | I Saw England July Night | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
IVOR GURNEY | 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. | Servitude | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
IVOR GURNEY | 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. | Song [Only the wanderer] | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
IVOR GURNEY | 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. | Strange Service | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
IVOR GURNEY | 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. | To His Love | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
IVOR GURNEY | 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. | To the Poet Before Battle | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
IVOR GURNEY | 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. | To the Prussians of England | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
CARL SANDBURG | 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. | Doors | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
EZRA POUND | Ezra Pound, "Canto I" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. | Canto I | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
EZRA POUND | Ezra Pound, "Canto III" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. | Canto III | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
EZRA POUND | Ezra Pound, "Canto IV" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. | Canto IV | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
EZRA POUND | Ezra Pound, "Canto LXXXI" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. | Canto LXXXI | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
EZRA POUND | Ezra Pound, "Canto XLV " from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. | Canto XLV | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
EZRA POUND | Ezra Pound, "Canto XXXVI" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. | Canto XXXVI | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
EDGAR LEE MASTERS | 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. | In Memory of Bryan Lathrop | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
ELINOR WYLIE | 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. | Full Moon | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
GEORGE SANTAYANA | 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. | Before a Statue of Achilles | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
LOUISE BOGAN | 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. | Cassandra | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
KENNETH SLESSOR | Kenneth Slessor, In A/C with Ghosts from Selected Poems, published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia. Used by permission. | In A/C with Ghosts | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
LOUISE BOGAN | 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. | Medusa | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
GEORGE SANTAYANA | 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. | There may be Chaos still around the World | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
EZRA POUND | 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. | Three Cantos | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
HART CRANE | 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. | At Melvilles Tomb | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
D. H. LAWRENCE | 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. | The Bride | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
HART CRANE | 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. | For The Marriage of Faustus and Helen | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
HUGH MACDIARMID | Hugh MacDiarmid, Gairmscoile from Selected Poetry. Copyright 1992 by Alan Riach and Michael Grieve. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. | Gairmscoile | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
E. E. CUMMINGS | 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 | [in Just-] | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
LOUIS UNTERMEYER | 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. | Magic | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
WALLACE STEVENS | 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. | A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
MARJORIE PICKTHALL | 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. | The Wife | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
CARL SANDBURG | 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. | Momus | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
RICHARD ALDINGTON | 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. | To a Greek Marble | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
RICHARD ALDINGTON | 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. | null | Modern | Mythology & Folklore |
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE | 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 | The Lady | Modern | Nature |
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE | 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 | Ocean of Earth | Modern | Nature |
WALLACE STEVENS | 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. | Of Mere Being | Modern | Nature |
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS | 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. | A Dialogue of Self and Soul | Modern | Nature |
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS | 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. | Byzantium | Modern | Nature |
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS | 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. | The Everlasting Voices | Modern | Nature |
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS | 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. | The Fish | Modern | Nature |
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS | 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. | On a Political Prisoner | Modern | Nature |
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS | 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. | The Sad Shepherd | Modern | Nature |
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS | 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. | The Song of the Happy Shepherd | Modern | Nature |
WALLACE STEVENS | 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. | The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain | Modern | Nature |
IVOR GURNEY | 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. | Song [Only the wanderer] | Modern | Nature |
IVOR GURNEY | 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. | To His Love | Modern | Nature |
SAMUEL GREENBERG | 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. | Conduct | Modern | Nature |
SAMUEL GREENBERG | 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. | East Rivers Charm | Modern | Nature |
SAMUEL GREENBERG | 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. | The Glass Bubbles | Modern | Nature |
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS | 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. | The Song of Wandering Aengus | Modern | Nature |
STEPHEN SPENDER | Stephen Spender, The Truly Great from Collected Poems 1928-1953. Copyright 1955 by Stephen Spender. Reprinted by permission of Ed Victor Ltd. | The Truly Great | Modern | Nature |
EZRA POUND | Ezra Pound, "Canto IV" from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1993 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. | Canto IV | Modern | Nature |
WALLACE STEVENS | 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. | Fabliau of Florida | Modern | Nature |
WALLACE STEVENS | 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. | Indian River | Modern | Nature |
WALLACE STEVENS | 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. | Infanta Marina | Modern | Nature |
WALLACE STEVENS | 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. | Nomad Exquisite | Modern | Nature |
EDITH SITWELL | from Coterie, 1919 | At the Fair | Modern | Nature |
EDITH SITWELL | from Coterie, 1919 | What the Goose-Girl Said About the Dean | Modern | Nature |
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR | 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? | Night of Love | Modern | Nature |
CARL SANDBURG | 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. | Buffalo Dusk | Modern | Nature |
CARL SANDBURG | 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. | Wilderness | Modern | Nature |
CARL SANDBURG | 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. | Sea-Wash | Modern | Nature |
SARA TEASDALE | 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. | Winter Stars | Modern | Nature |
MINA LOY | 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. | The Song of the Nightingale is Like the Scent of Syringa | Modern | Nature |
MARIANNE MOORE | 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? | Black Earth | Modern | Nature |
MARIANNE MOORE | 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. | A Graveyard | Modern | Nature |
ELINOR WYLIE | 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. | Full Moon | Modern | Nature |
ELINOR WYLIE | 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. | Wild Peaches | Modern | Nature |
ASIL BUNTING | Basil Bunting, 13. Fearful Symmetry from Complete Poems, edited by Richard Caddel. Reprinted with the permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd., www.bloodaxebooks.com. | from Fearful Symmetry | Modern | Nature |
WALLACE STEVENS | 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. | The Snow Man | Modern | Nature |
WALLACE STEVENS | "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. | Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself | Modern | Nature |
MICHAEL ANANIA | Michael Anania, Afternoons from Selected Poems. Copyright 1994 by Michael Anania. Used by permission of Asphodel Press/Acorn Alliance. | Afternoons | Modern | Nature |
HART CRANE | 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. | The Air Plant | Modern | Nature |
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH | 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. | Ancestral | Modern | Nature |
HART CRANE | 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 | from The Bridge: Quaker Hill | Modern | Nature |
HART CRANE | 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. | from The Bridge: Southern Cross | Modern | Nature |
ASIL BUNTING | Basil Bunting, Briggflatts (Part 1) from Complete Poems, edited by Richard Caddel. Reprinted with the permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd., www.bloodaxebooks.com. | from Briggflatts: An Autobiography | Modern | Nature |
GEORGE SANTAYANA | 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? | Cape Cod | Modern | Nature |