Written by
Philip Larkin |
What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;
Why aren't they screaming?
At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see.
It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here.
Next time you can't pretend
There'll be anything else.
And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone.
Their looks show that they're for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines -
How can they ignore it?
Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside you head, and people in them, acting
People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,
The blown bush at the window, or the sun's
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening.
That is where they live:
Not here and now, but where all happened once.
This is why they give
An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here.
For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is.
This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground.
Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out.
|
Written by
John Keats |
Happy is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent;
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me,
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging;
Yet do I often warmly burn to see
Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.
|
Written by
Edith Wharton |
I
Immense, august, like some Titanic bloom,
The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core,
Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or,
Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom,
And stamened with keen flamelets that illume
The pale high-alter.
On the prayer-worn floor,
By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore,
A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb,
The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea--
For these alone the finials fret the skies,
The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free,
While from the triple portals, with grave eyes,
Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity,
The cloud of witnesses still testifies.
II
The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatise
The western floor.
The aisles are mute and cold.
A rigid fetich in her robe of gold,
The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes,
Enthroned beneath her votive canopies,
Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold.
The rest is solitude; the church, grown old,
Stands stark and grey beneath the burning skies.
Well-nigh again its mighty framework grows
To be a part of nature's self, withdrawn
From hot humanity's impatient woes;
The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn,
And in the east one giant window shows
The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn.
|
Written by
Amy Lowell |
Holy Mother of God, Merciful Mary.
Hear
me! I am very weary.
I have come
from a village miles away, all day I have been coming, and I ache
for such
far roaming.
I cannot walk as light as I used, and my
thoughts grow confused.
I am heavier than I was.
Mary Mother, you know the cause!
Beautiful Holy Lady, take my shame away from me! Let
this fear
be only seeming, let it be that I am dreaming.
For months
I have hoped
it was so, now I am afraid I know.
Lady, why should this
be shame,
just because I haven't got his name.
He loved me, yes,
Lady, he did,
and he couldn't keep it hid.
We meant to marry.
Why
did he die?
That day when they told me he had gone down in the avalanche, and
could not
be found until the snow melted in Spring, I did nothing.
I
could not cry.
Why should he die? Why should he die and his child live? His
little child
alive in me, for my comfort.
No, Good God, for my misery! I
cannot face
the shame, to be a mother, and not married, and the poor child to
be reviled
for having no father.
Merciful Mother, Holy Virgin, take
away this sin I did.
Let the baby not be.
Only take the stigma off of me!
I have told no one but you, Holy Mary.
My mother would
call me "whore",
and spit upon me; the priest would have me repent, and have
the rest of my life spent in a convent.
I am no whore,
no bad woman,
he loved me, and we were to be married.
I carried him
always in my heart,
what did it matter if I gave him the least part of me too? You
were a virgin,
Holy Mother, but you had a son, you know there are times when a
woman
must give all.
There is some call to give and hold back
nothing.
I swear I obeyed God then, and this child who lives in me is the
sign.
What am I saying? He is dead, my beautiful, strong man! I
shall never
feel him caress me again.
This is the only baby I shall
have.
Oh, Holy Virgin, protect my baby! My little, helpless
baby!
He will look like his father, and he will be as fast a runner and
as good
a shot.
Not that he shall be no scholar neither.
He
shall go to school
in winter, and learn to read and write, and my father will teach
him to carve,
so that he can make the little horses, and cows, and chamois,
out of white wood.
Oh, No! No! No! How
can I think such things,
I am not good.
My father will have nothing to do with
my boy,
I shall be an outcast thing.
Oh, Mother of our Lord God,
be merciful,
take away my shame! Let my body be as it was before he
came.
No little baby for me to keep underneath my heart for those long
months.
To live for and to get comfort from.
I cannot go home
and tell my mother.
She is so hard and righteous.
She never loved my father,
and we were born
for duty, not for love.
I cannot face it.
Holy
Mother, take my baby away!
Take away my little baby! I don't want it, I can't bear
it!
And I shall have nothing, nothing! Just be known as a
good girl.
Have other men want to marry me, whom I could not touch, after having
known
my man.
Known the length and breadth of his beautiful
white body,
and the depth of his love, on the high Summer Alp, with the moon
above,
and the pine-needles all shiny in the light of it.
He
is gone, my man,
I shall never hear him or feel him again, but I could not touch
another.
I would rather lie under the snow with my own man in my arms!
So I shall live on and on.
Just a good woman.
With
nothing to warm my heart
where he lay, and where he left his baby for me to care for.
I
shall not be
quite human, I think.
Merely a stone-dead creature.
They
will respect me.
What do I care for respect! You didn't care for people's
tongues
when you were carrying our Lord Jesus.
God had my man
give me my baby,
when He knew that He was going to take him away.
His
lips will comfort me,
his hands will soothe me.
All day I will work at my lace-making,
and all night I will keep him warm by my side and pray the blessed
Angels
to cover him with their wings.
Dear Mother, what is it
that sings?
I hear voices singing, and lovely silver trumpets through it all.
They
seem
just on the other side of the wall.
Let me keep my baby,
Holy Mother.
He is only a poor lace-maker's baby, with a stain upon him,
but give me strength to bring him up to be a man.
|
Written by
Henrik Ibsen |
IN summer dusk the valley lies
With far-flung shadow veil;
A cloud-sea laps the precipice
Before the evening gale:
The welter of the cloud-waves grey
Cuts off from keenest sight
The glacier, looking out by day
O'er all the district, far away,
And crowned with golden light.
But o'er the smouldering cloud-wrack's flow,
Where gold and amber kiss,
Stands up the archipelago,
A home of shining peace.
The mountain eagle seems to sail
A ship far seen at even;
And over all a serried pale
Of peaks, like giants ranked in mail,
Fronts westward threatening heaven.
But look, a steading nestles, close
Beneath the ice-fields bound,
Where purple cliffs and glittering snows
The quiet home surround.
Here place and people seem to be
A world apart, alone; --
Cut off from men by spate and scree
It has a heaven more broad, more free,
A sunshine all its own.
Look: mute the saeter-maiden stays,
Half shadow, half aflame;
The deep, still vision of her gaze
Was never word to name.
She names it not herself, nor knows
What goal my be its will;
While cow-bells chime and alp-horn blows
It bears her where the sunset glows,
Or, maybe, further still.
Too brief, thy life on highland wolds
Where close the glaciers jut;
Too soon the snowstorm's cloak enfolds
Stone byre and pine-log hut.
Then wilt thou ply with hearth ablaze
The winter's well-worn tasks; --
But spin thy wool with cheerful face:
One sunset in the mountain pays
For all their winter asks.
|
Written by
Sidney Lanier |
I.
The storm that snapped our fate's one ship in twain
Hath blown my half o' the wreck from thine apart.
O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main
To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart.
I ask my God if e'en in His sweet place,
Where, by one waving of a wistful wing,
My soul could straightway tremble face to face
With thee, with thee, across the stellar ring --
Yea, where thine absence I could ne'er bewail
Longer than lasts that little blank of bliss
When lips draw back, with recent pressure pale,
To round and redden for another kiss --
Would not my lonesome heart still sigh for thee
What time the drear kiss-intervals must be?
II.
So do the mottled formulas of Sense
Glide snakewise through our dreams of Aftertime;
So errors breed in reeds and grasses dense
That bank our singing rivulets of rhyme.
By Sense rule Space and Time; but in God's Land
Their intervals are not, save such as lie
Betwixt successive tones in concords bland
Whose loving distance makes the harmony.
Ah, there shall never come 'twixt me and thee
Gross dissonances of the mile, the year;
But in the multichords of ecstasy
Our souls shall mingle, yet be featured clear,
And absence, wrought to intervals divine,
Shall part, yet link, thy nature's tone and mine.
III.
Look down the shining peaks of all my days
Base-hidden in the valleys of deep night,
So shalt thou see the heights and depths of praise
My love would render unto love's delight;
For I would make each day an Alp sublime
Of passionate snow, white-hot yet icy-clear,
-- One crystal of the true-loves of all time
Spiring the world's prismatic atmosphere;
And I would make each night an awful vale
Deep as thy soul, obscure as modesty,
With every star in heaven trembling pale
O'er sweet profounds where only Love can see.
Oh, runs not thus the lesson thou hast taught? --
When life's all love, 'tis life: aught else, 'tis naught.
IV.
Let no man say, `He at his lady's feet
Lays worship that to Heaven alone belongs;
Yea, swings the incense that for God is meet
In flippant censers of light lover's songs.
'
Who says it, knows not God, nor love, nor thee;
For love is large as is yon heavenly dome:
In love's great blue, each passion is full free
To fly his favorite flight and build his home.
Did e'er a lark with skyward-pointing beak
Stab by mischance a level-flying dove?
Wife-love flies level, his dear mate to seek:
God-love darts straight into the skies above.
Crossing, the windage of each other's wings
But speeds them both upon their journeyings.
|
Written by
Vachel Lindsay |
In Springfield, Illinois
IT is portentious, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house, pacing up and down.
Or by his homestead, or by shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat, and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint, great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us:--as in times before!
And we who toss or lie awake for long
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
His head is bowed.
He thinks on men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come:--the shining hope of Europe free:
The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain.
And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
CANZONE XI.
[R] Mai non vo' più cantar, com' io soleva.
ENIGMAS.
Never more shall I sing, as I have sung:
For still she heeded not; and I was scorn'd:
So e'en in loveliest spots is trouble found.
Unceasingly to sigh is no relief.
Already on the Alp snow gathers round:
Already day is near; and I awake.
An affable and modest air is sweet;
And in a lovely lady that she be
Noble and dignified, not proud and cold,
Well pleases it to find.
Love o'er his empire rules without a sword.
He who has miss'd his way let him turn back:
Who has no home the heath must be his bed:
Who lost or has not gold,
Will sate his thirst at the clear crystal spring.
I trusted in Saint Peter, not so now;
Let him who can my meaning understand.
A harsh rule is a heavy weight to bear.
[Pg 100]I melt but where I must, and stand alone.
I think of him who falling died in Po;
Already thence the thrush has pass'd the brook
Come, see if I say sooth! No more for me.
A rock amid the waters is no joke,
Nor birdlime on the twig.
Enough my grief
When a superfluous pride
In a fair lady many virtues hides.
There is who answereth without a call;
There is who, though entreated, fails and flies:
There is who melts 'neath ice:
There is who day and night desires his death.
Love who loves you, is an old proverb now.
Well know I what I say.
But let it pass;
'Tis meet, at their own cost, that men should learn.
A modest lady wearies her best friend.
Good figs are little known.
To me it seems
Wise to eschew things hazardous and high;
In any country one may be at ease.
Infinite hope below kills hope above;
And I at times e'en thus have been the talk.
My brief life that remains
There is who'll spurn not if to Him devote.
I place my trust in Him who rules the world,
And who his followers shelters in the wood,
That with his pitying crook
Me will He guide with his own flock to feed.
Haply not every one who reads discerns;
Some set the snare at times who take no spoil;
Who strains too much may break the bow in twain.
Let not the law be lame when suitors watch.
To be at ease we many a mile descend.
To-day's great marvel is to-morrow's scorn.
A veil'd and virgin loveliness is best.
Blessed the key which pass'd within my heart,
And, quickening my dull spirit, set it free
From its old heavy chain,
And from my bosom banish'd many a sigh.
Where most I suffer'd once she suffers now;
Her equal sorrows mitigate my grief;
[Pg 101]Thanks, then, to Love that I
Feel it no more, though he is still the same!
In silence words that wary are and wise;
The voice which drives from me all other care;
And the dark prison which that fair light hides:
As midnight on our hills the violets;
And the wild beasts within the walls who dwell;
The kind demeanour and the dear reserve;
And from two founts one stream which flow'd in peace
Where I desire, collected where I would.
Love and sore jealousy have seized my heart,
And the fair face whose guides
Conduct me by a plainer, shorter way
To my one hope, where all my torments end.
O treasured bliss, and all from thee which flows
Of peace, of war, or truce,
Never abandon me while life is left!
At my past loss I weep by turns and smile,
Because my faith is fix'd in what I hear.
The present I enjoy and better wait;
Silent, I count the years, yet crave their end,
And in a lovely bough I nestle so
That e'en her stern repulse I thank and praise,
Which has at length o'ercome my firm desire,
And inly shown me, I had been the talk,
And pointed at by hand: all this it quench'd.
So much am I urged on,
Needs must I own, thou wert not bold enough.
Who pierced me in my side she heals the wound,
For whom in heart more than in ink I write;
Who quickens me or kills,
And in one instant freezes me or fires.
Anon.
|
Written by
Herman Melville |
(November, 1863)
A kindling impulse seized the host
Inspired by heaven's elastic air;
Their hearts outran their General's plan,
Though Grant commanded there -
Grant, who without reserve can dare;
And, "Well, go on and do your will,"
He said, and measured the mountain then:
So master-riders fling the rein -
But you must know your men.
On yester-morn in grayish mist,
Armies like ghosts on hills had fought,
And rolled from the cloud their thunders loud
The Cumberlands far had caught:
Today the sunlit steeps are sought.
Grant stood on cliffs whence all was plain,
And smoked as one who feels no cares;
But mastered nervousness intense,
Alone such calmness wears.
The summit-cannon plunge their flame
Sheer down the primal wall,
But up and up each linking troop
In stretching festoons crawl -
Nor fire a shot.
Such men appal
The foe, though brave.
He, from the brink,
Looks far along the breadth of slope,
And sees two miles of dark dots creep,
And knows they mean the cope.
He sees them creep.
Yet here and there
Half hid 'mid leafless groves they go;
As men who ply through traceries high
Of turreted marbles show -
So dwindle these to eyes below.
But fronting shot and flanking shell
Sliver and rive the inwoven ways;
High tops of oaks and high hearts fall,
But never the climbing stays.
Near and more near; till now the flags
Run like a catching flame;
And one flares highest, to peril nighest -
He means to make a name:
Salvos! they give him his fame.
The staff is caught, and next the rush,
And then the leap where death has led;
Flag answered flag along the crest,
And swarms of rebels fled.
But some who gained the envied Alp,
And -eager, ardent, earnest there -
Dropped into Death's wide-open arms,
Quelled on the wing like eagles struck in air -
Forever they slumber young and fair,
The smile upon them as they died;
Their end attained, that end a height:
Life was to these a dream fulfilled,
And death a starry night.
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
CANZONE IV.
Si è debile il filo a cui s' attene.
HE GRIEVES IN ABSENCE FROM LAURA.
The thread on which my weary life depends
So fragile is and weak,
If none kind succour lends,
Soon 'neath the painful burden will it break;
Since doom'd to take my sad farewell of her,
In whom begins and ends
My bliss, one hope, to stir
My sinking spirit from its black despair,
Whispers, "Though lost awhile
That form so dear and fair,
Sad soul! the trial bear,
For thee e'en yet the sun may brightly shine,
And days more happy smile,
Once more the lost loved treasure may be thine.
"
This thought awhile sustains me, but again
To fail me and forsake in worse excess of pain.
Time flies apace: the silent hours and swift
So urge his journey on,
Short span to me is left
Even to think how quick to death I run;
Scarce, in the orient heaven, yon mountain crest
Smiles in the sun's first ray,
When, in the adverse west,
His long round run, we see his light decay
[Pg 41]So small of life the space,
So frail and clogg'd with woe,
To mortal man below,
That, when I find me from that beauteous face
Thus torn by fate's decree,
Unable at a wish with her to be,
So poor the profit that old comforts give,
I know not how I brook in such a state to live.
Each place offends, save where alone I see
Those eyes so sweet and bright,
Which still shall bear the key
Of the soft thoughts I hide from other sight;
And, though hard exile harder weighs on me,
Whatever mood betide,
I ask no theme beside,
For all is hateful that I since have seen.
What rivers and what heights,
What shores and seas between
Me rise and those twin lights,
Which made the storm and blackness of my days
One beautiful serene,
To which tormented Memory still strays:
Free as my life then pass'd from every care,
So hard and heavy seems my present lot to bear.
Alas! self-parleying thus, I but renew
The warm wish in my mind,
Which first within it grew
The day I left my better half behind:
If by long absence love is quench'd, then who
Guides me to the old bait,
Whence all my sorrows date?
Why rather not my lips in silence seal'd?
By finest crystal ne'er
Were hidden tints reveal'd
So faithfully and fair,
As my sad spirit naked lays and bare
Its every secret part,
And the wild sweetness thrilling in my heart,
Through eyes which, restlessly, o'erfraught with tears,
Seek her whose sight alone with instant gladness cheers.
[Pg 42]Strange pleasure!—yet so often that within
The human heart to reign
Is found—to woo and win
Each new brief toy that men most sigh to gain:
And I am one from sadness who relief
So draw, as if it still
My study were to fill
These eyes with softness, and this heart with grief:
As weighs with me in chief
Nay rather with sole force,
The language and the light
Of those dear eyes to urge me on that course,
So where its fullest source
Long sorrow finds, I fix my often sight,
And thus my heart and eyes like sufferers be,
Which in love's path have been twin pioneers to me.
The golden tresses which should make, I ween,
The sun with envy pine;
And the sweet look serene,
Where love's own rays so bright and burning shine,
That, ere its time, they make my strength decline,
Each wise and truthful word,
Rare in the world, which late
She smiling gave, no more are seen or heard.
But this of all my fate
Is hardest to endure,
That here I am denied
The gentle greeting, angel-like and pure,
Which still to virtue's side
Inclined my heart with modest magic lure;
So that, in sooth, I nothing hope again
Of comfort more than this, how best to bear my pain.
And—with fit ecstacy my loss to mourn—
The soft hand's snowy charm,
The finely-rounded arm,
The winning ways, by turns, that quiet scorn,
Chaste anger, proud humility adorn,
The fair young breast that shrined
Intellect pure and high,
Are now all hid the rugged Alp behind.
My trust were vain to try
And see her ere I die,
[Pg 43]For, though awhile he dare
Such dreams indulge, Hope ne'er can constant be,
But falls back in despair
Her, whom Heaven honours, there again to see,
Where virtue, courtesy in her best mix,
And where so oft I pray my future home to fix.
My Song! if thou shalt see,
Our common lady in that dear retreat,
We both may hope that she
Will stretch to thee her fair and fav'ring hand,
Whence I so far am bann'd;
—Touch, touch it not, but, reverent at her feet,
Tell her I will be there with earliest speed,
A man of flesh and blood, or else a spirit freed.
Macgregor.
|