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Best Famous Apollo Poems

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Written by Joyce Kilmer | Create an image from this poem

In Memory

 I
Serene and beautiful and very wise,
Most erudite in curious Grecian lore,
You lay and read your learned books, and bore
A weight of unshed tears and silent sighs.
The song within your heart could never rise Until love bade it spread its wings and soar.
Nor could you look on Beauty's face before A poet's burning mouth had touched your eyes.
Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder; Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder; It is a linnet's fluting after rain.
Love's voice is through your song; above and under And in each note to echo and remain.
II Because Mankind is glad and brave and young, Full of gay flames that white and scarlet glow, All joys and passions that Mankind may know By you were nobly felt and nobly sung.
Because Mankind's heart every day is wrung By Fate's wild hands that twist and tear it so, Therefore you echoed Man's undying woe, A harp Aeolian on Life's branches hung.
So did the ghosts of toiling children hover About the piteous portals of your mind; Your eyes, that looked on glory, could discover The angry scar to which the world was blind: And it was grief that made Mankind your lover, And it was grief that made you love Mankind.
III Before Christ left the Citadel of Light, To tread the dreadful way of human birth, His shadow sometimes fell upon the earth And those who saw it wept with joy and fright.
"Thou art Apollo, than the sun more bright!" They cried.
"Our music is of little worth, But thrill our blood with thy creative mirth Thou god of song, thou lord of lyric might!" O singing pilgrim! who could love and follow Your lover Christ, through even love's despair, You knew within the cypress-darkened hollow The feet that on the mountain are so fair.
For it was Christ that was your own Apollo, And thorns were in the laurel on your hair.


Written by Vachel Lindsay | Create an image from this poem

How a Little Girl Danced

 DEDICATED TO LUCY BATES

(Being a reminiscence of certain private theatricals.
) Oh, cabaret dancer, I know a dancer, Whose eyes have not looked on the feasts that are vain.
I know a dancer, I know a dancer, Whose soul has no bond with the beasts of the plain: Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer, With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain.
Oh, thrice-painted dancer, vaudeville dancer, Sad in your spangles, with soul all astrain, I know a dancer, I know a dancer, Whose laughter and weeping are spiritual gain, A pure-hearted, high-hearted maiden evangel, With strength the dark cynical earth to disdain.
Flowers of bright Broadway, you of the chorus, Who sing in the hope of forgetting your pain: I turn to a sister of Sainted Cecilia, A white bird escaping the earth's tangled skein:— The music of God is her innermost brooding, The whispering angels her footsteps sustain.
Oh, proud Russian dancer: praise for your dancing.
No clean human passion my rhyme would arraign.
You dance for Apollo with noble devotion, A high cleansing revel to make the heart sane.
But Judith the dancer prays to a spirit More white than Apollo and all of his train.
I know a dancer who finds the true Godhead, Who bends o'er a brazier in Heaven's clear plain.
I know a dancer, I know a dancer, Who lifts us toward peace, from this earth that is vain: Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer, With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain.
Written by Robert Browning | Create an image from this poem

A Grammarians Funeral

 SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF
LEARNING IN EUROPE.
Let us begin and carry up this corpse, Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes Each in its tether Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, Cared-for till cock-crow: Look out if yonder be not day again Rimming the rock-row! That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought, Rarer, intenser, Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, Chafes in the censer.
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop; Seek we sepulture On a tall mountain, citied to the top, Crowded with culture! All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; Clouds overcome it; No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's Circling its summit.
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: Wait ye the warning? Our low life was the level's and the night's; He's for the morning.
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 'Ware the beholders! This is our master, famous calm and dead, Borne on our shoulders.
Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, Safe from the weather! He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric Apollo! Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note Winter would follow? Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! Cramped and diminished, Moaned he, ``New measures, other feet anon! ``My dance is finished?'' No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side, Make for the city!) He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride Over men's pity; Left play for work, and grappled with the world Bent on escaping: ``What's in the scroll,'' quoth he, ``thou keepest furled? ``Show me their shaping, ``Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,--- ``Give!''---So, he gowned him, Straight got by heart that hook to its last page: Learned, we found him.
Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, Accents uncertain: ``Time to taste life,'' another would have said, ``Up with the curtain!'' This man said rather, ``Actual life comes next? ``Patience a moment! ``Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, ``Still there's the comment.
``Let me know all! Prate not of most or least, ``Painful or easy! ``Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, ``Ay, nor feel queasy.
'' Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it.
Image the whole, then execute the parts--- Fancy the fabric Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, Ere mortar dab brick! (Here's the town-gate reached: there's the market-place Gaping before us.
) Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace (Hearten our chorus!) That before living he'd learn how to live--- No end to learning: Earn the means first---God surely will contrive Use for our earning.
Others mistrust and say, ``But time escapes: ``Live now or never!'' He said, ``What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! ``Man has Forever.
'' Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head _Calculus_ racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: _Tussis_ attacked him.
``Now, master, take a little rest!''---not he! (Caution redoubled, Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) Not a whit troubled Back to his studies, fresher than at first, Fierce as a dragon He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) Sucked at the flagon.
Oh, if we draw a circle premature, Heedless of far gain, Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure Bad is our bargain! Was it not great? did not he throw on God, (He loves the burthen)--- God's task to make the heavenly period Perfect the earthen? Did not he magnify the mind, show clear Just what it all meant? He would not discount life, as fools do here, Paid by instalment.
He ventured neck or nothing---heaven's success Found, or earth's failure: ``Wilt thou trust death or not?'' He answered ``Yes: ``Hence with life's pale lure!'' That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding nine to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit.
That, has the world here---should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him.
So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled _Hoti's_ business---let it be!--- Properly based _Oun_--- Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic _De_, Dead from the waist down.
Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered race, Swallows and curlews! Here's the top-peak; the multitude below Live, for they can, there: This man decided not to Live but Know--- Bury this man there? Here---here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send! Lofty designs must close in like effects Loftily lying, Leave him---still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying.
Written by Charles Baudelaire | Create an image from this poem

I Love The Naked Ages Long Ago

 I love the naked ages long ago 
When statues were gilded by Apollo, 
When men and women of agility 
Could play without lies and anxiety, 
And the sky lovingly caressed their spines, 
As it exercised its noble machine.
Fertile Cybele, mother of nature, then, Would not place on her daughters a burden, But, she-wolf sharing her heart with the people, Would feed creation from her brown nipples.
Men, elegant and strong, would have the right To be proud to have beauty named their king; Virgin fruit free of blemish and cracking, Whose flesh smooth and firm would summon a bite! The Poet today, when he would convey This native grandeur, would not be swept away By man free and woman natural, But would feel darkness envelop his soul Before this black tableau full of loathing.
O malformed monsters crying for clothing! O ludicrous heads! Torsos needing disguise! O poor writhing bodies of every wrong size, Children that the god of the Useful swaths In the language of bronze and brass! And women, alas! You shadow your heredity, You gnaw nourishment from debauchery, A virgin holds maternal lechery And all the horrors of fecundity! We have, it is true, corrupt nations, Beauty unknown to the radiant ancients: Faces that gnaw through the heart's cankers, And talk with the cool beauty of languor; But these inventions of our backward muses Are never hindered in their morbid uses Of the old for profound homage to youth, —To the young saint, the sweet air, the simple truth, To the eye as limpid as the water current, To spread out over all, insouciant Like the blue sky, the birds and the flowers, Its perfumes, its songs and its sweet fervors.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

A Code of Morals

 Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.
And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair; So Cupid and Apollo linked , per heliograph, the pair.
At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise -- At e'en, the dying sunset bore her busband's homilies.
He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold, As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old; But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs) That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.
'Twas General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the way, When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.
They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt -- So stopped to take the message down -- and this is whay they learnt -- "Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice.
The General swore.
"Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before? "'My Love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!' "Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountaintop?" The artless Aide-de-camp was mute; the gilded Staff were still, As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill; For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband's warning ran: -- "Don't dance or ride with General Bangs -- a most immoral man.
" [At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise -- But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.
] With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife Some interesting details of the General's private life.
The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining Staff were still, And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill.
And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not): -- "I think we've tapped a private line.
Hi! Threes about there! Trot!" All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know By word or act official who read off that helio.
But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man.
"


Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Create an image from this poem

Drinking Song

 INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER

Come, old friend! sit down and listen!
From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!

Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,
Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.
Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow; Ivy crowns that brow supernal As the forehead of Apollo, And possessing youth eternal.
Round about him, fair Bacchantes, Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses, Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's Vineyards, sing delirious verses.
Thus he won, through all the nations, Bloodless victories, and the farmer Bore, as trophies and oblations, Vines for banners, ploughs for armor.
Judged by no o'erzealous rigor, Much this mystic throng expresses: Bacchus was the type of vigor, And Silenus of excesses.
These are ancient ethnic revels, Of a faith long since forsaken; Now the Satyrs, changed to devils, Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken.
Now to rivulets from the mountains Point the rods of fortune-tellers; Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,-- Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.
Claudius, though he sang of flagons And huge tankards filled with Rhenish, From that fiery blood of dragons Never would his own replenish.
Even Redi, though he chaunted Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys, Never drank the wine he vaunted In his dithyrambic sallies.
Then with water fill the pitcher Wreathed about with classic fables; Ne'er Falernian threw a richer Light upon Lucullus' tables.
Come, old friend, sit down and listen As it passes thus between us, How its wavelets laugh and glisten In the head of old Silenus!
Written by Ezra Pound | Create an image from this poem

Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I)

 "Vocat aestus in umbram" 
Nemesianus Es.
IV.
E.
P.
Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre For three years, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime" In the old sense.
Wrong from the start -- No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born In a half savage country, out of date; Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn; Capaneus; trout for factitious bait: "Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie Caught in the unstopped ear; Giving the rocks small lee-way The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.
His true Penelope was Flaubert, He fished by obstinate isles; Observed the elegance of Circe's hair Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.
Unaffected by "the march of events", He passed from men's memory in l'an trentiesme De son eage; the case presents No adjunct to the Muses' diadem.
II.
The age demanded an image Of its accelerated grimace, Something for the modern stage, Not, at any rate, an Attic grace; Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries Of the inward gaze; Better mendacities Than the classics in paraphrase! The "age demanded" chiefly a mould in plaster, Made with no loss of time, A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster Or the "sculpture" of rhyme.
III.
The tea-rose, tea-gown, etc.
Supplants the mousseline of Cos, The pianola "replaces" Sappho's barbitos.
Christ follows Dionysus, Phallic and ambrosial Made way for macerations; Caliban casts out Ariel.
All things are a flowing, Sage Heracleitus says; But a tawdry cheapness Shall reign throughout our days.
Even the Christian beauty Defects -- after Samothrace; We see to kalon Decreed in the market place.
Faun's flesh is not to us, Nor the saint's vision.
We have the press for wafer; Franchise for circumcision.
All men, in law, are equals.
Free of Peisistratus, We choose a knave or an eunuch To rule over us.
A bright Apollo, tin andra, tin eroa, tina theon, What god, man, or hero Shall I place a tin wreath upon? IV.
These fought, in any case, and some believing, pro domo, in any case .
.
Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later .
.
.
some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor" .
.
walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy; usury age-old and age-thick and liars in public places.
Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood, Fair cheeks, and fine bodies; fortitude as never before frankness as never before, disillusions as never told in the old days, hysterias, trench confessions, laughter out of dead bellies.
V.
There died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old ***** gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization.
Charm, smiling at the good mouth, Quick eyes gone under earth's lid, For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books.
Yeux Glauques Gladstone was still respected, When John Ruskin produced "Kings Treasuries"; Swinburne And Rossetti still abused.
Fœtid Buchanan lifted up his voice When that faun's head of hers Became a pastime for Painters and adulterers.
The Burne-Jones cartons Have preserved her eyes; Still, at the Tate, they teach Cophetua to rhapsodize; Thin like brook-water, With a vacant gaze.
The English Rubaiyat was still-born In those days.
The thin, clear gaze, the same Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin'd face, Questing and passive .
.
.
.
"Ah, poor Jenny's case" .
.
.
Bewildered that a world Shows no surprise At her last maquero's Adulteries.
"Siena Mi Fe', Disfecemi Maremma" Among the pickled fœtuses and bottled bones, Engaged in perfecting the catalogue, I found the last scion of the Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.
For two hours he talked of Gallifet; Of Dowson; of the Rhymers' Club; Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died By falling from a high stool in a pub .
.
.
But showed no trace of alcohol At the autopsy, privately performed -- Tissue preserved -- the pure mind Arose toward Newman as the whiskey warmed.
Dowson found harlots cheaper than hotels; Headlam for uplift; Image impartially imbued With raptures for Bacchus, Terpsichore and the Church.
So spoke the author of "The Dorian Mood", M.
Verog, out of step with the decade, Detached from his contemporaries, Neglected by the young, Because of these reveries.
Brennbaum.
The sky-like limpid eyes, The circular infant's face, The stiffness from spats to collar Never relaxing into grace; The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years, Showed only when the daylight fell Level across the face Of Brennbaum "The Impeccable".
Mr.
Nixon In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht Mr.
Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer Dangers of delay.
"Consider Carefully the reviewer.
"I was as poor as you are; "When I began I got, of course, "Advance on royalties, fifty at first", said Mr.
Nixon, "Follow me, and take a column, "Even if you have to work free.
"Butter reviewers.
From fifty to three hundred "I rose in eighteen months; "The hardest nut I had to crack "Was Dr.
Dundas.
"I never mentioned a man but with the view "Of selling my own works.
"The tip's a good one, as for literature "It gives no man a sinecure.
" And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece.
And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it.
" * * * Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me: Don't kick against the pricks, Accept opinion.
The "Nineties" tried your game And died, there's nothing in it.
X.
Beneath the sagging roof The stylist has taken shelter, Unpaid, uncelebrated, At last from the world's welter Nature receives him, With a placid and uneducated mistress He exercises his talents And the soil meets his distress.
The haven from sophistications and contentions Leaks through its thatch; He offers succulent cooking; The door has a creaking latch.
XI.
"Conservatrix of Milésien" Habits of mind and feeling, Possibly.
But in Ealing With the most bank-clerkly of Englishmen? No, "Milésian" is an exaggeration.
No instinct has survived in her Older than those her grandmother Told her would fit her station.
XII.
"Daphne with her thighs in bark Stretches toward me her leafy hands", -- Subjectively.
In the stuffed-satin drawing-room I await The Lady Valentine's commands, Knowing my coat has never been Of precisely the fashion To stimulate, in her, A durable passion; Doubtful, somewhat, of the value Of well-gowned approbation Of literary effort, But never of The Lady Valentine's vocation: Poetry, her border of ideas, The edge, uncertain, but a means of blending With other strata Where the lower and higher have ending; A hook to catch the Lady Jane's attention, A modulation toward the theatre, Also, in the case of revolution, A possible friend and comforter.
* * * Conduct, on the other hand, the soul "Which the highest cultures have nourished" To Fleet St.
where Dr.
Johnson flourished; Beside this thoroughfare The sale of half-hose has Long since superseded the cultivation Of Pierian roses.
Written by Friedrich von Schiller | Create an image from this poem

The Gods Of Greece

 Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the world--a world how lovely then!--
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Ah, flourished then your service of delight!
How different, oh, how different, in the day
When thy sweet fanes with many a wreath were bright,
O Venus Amathusia!

Then, through a veil of dreams
Woven by song, truth's youthful beauty glowed,
And life's redundant and rejoicing streams
Gave to the soulless, soul--where'r they flowed
Man gifted nature with divinity
To lift and link her to the breast of love;
All things betrayed to the initiate eye
The track of gods above!

Where lifeless--fixed afar,
A flaming ball to our dull sense is given,
Phoebus Apollo, in his golden car,
In silent glory swept the fields of heaven!
On yonder hill the Oread was adored,
In yonder tree the Dryad held her home;
And from her urn the gentle Naiad poured
The wavelet's silver foam.
Yon bay, chaste Daphne wreathed, Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell, Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed, And through those groves wailed the sweet Philomel, The tears of Ceres swelled in yonder rill-- Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne; And, for her lost Adonis, yonder hill Heard Cytherea mourn!-- Heaven's shapes were charmed unto The mortal race of old Deucalion; Pyrrha's fair daughter, humanly to woo, Came down, in shepherd-guise, Latona's son Between men, heroes, gods, harmonious then Love wove sweet links and sympathies divine; Blest Amathusia, heroes, gods, and men, Equals before thy shrine! Not to that culture gay, Stern self-denial, or sharp penance wan! Well might each heart be happy in that day-- For gods, the happy ones, were kin to man! The beautiful alone the holy there! No pleasure shamed the gods of that young race; So that the chaste Camoenae favoring were, And the subduing grace! A palace every shrine; Your sports heroic;--yours the crown Of contests hallowed to a power divine, As rushed the chariots thundering to renown.
Fair round the altar where the incense breathed, Moved your melodious dance inspired; and fair Above victorious brows, the garland wreathed Sweet leaves round odorous hair! The lively Thyrsus-swinger, And the wild car the exulting panthers bore, Announced the presence of the rapture-bringer-- Bounded the Satyr and blithe Faun before; And Maenads, as the frenzy stung the soul, Hymned in their maddening dance, the glorious wine-- As ever beckoned to the lusty bowl The ruddy host divine! Before the bed of death No ghastly spectre stood--but from the porch Of life, the lip--one kiss inhaled the breath, And the mute graceful genius lowered a torch.
The judgment-balance of the realms below, A judge, himself of mortal lineage, held; The very furies at the Thracian's woe, Were moved and music-spelled.
In the Elysian grove The shades renewed the pleasures life held dear: The faithful spouse rejoined remembered love, And rushed along the meads the charioteer; There Linus poured the old accustomed strain; Admetus there Alcestis still could greet; his Friend there once more Orestes could regain, His arrows--Philoctetes! More glorious than the meeds That in their strife with labor nerved the brave, To the great doer of renowned deeds The Hebe and the heaven the Thunderer gave.
Before the rescued rescuer [10] of the dead, Bowed down the silent and immortal host; And the twain stars [11] their guiding lustre shed, On the bark tempest-tossed! Art thou, fair world, no more? Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face; Ah, only on the minstrel's magic shore, Can we the footstep of sweet fable trace! The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life; Vainly we search the earth of gods bereft; Where once the warm and living shapes were rife, Shadows alone are left! Cold, from the north, has gone Over the flowers the blast that killed their May; And, to enrich the worship of the one, A universe of gods must pass away! Mourning, I search on yonder starry steeps, But thee no more, Selene, there I see! And through the woods I call, and o'er the deeps, And--Echo answers me! Deaf to the joys she gives-- Blind to the pomp of which she is possessed-- Unconscious of the spiritual power that lives Around, and rules her--by our bliss unblessed-- Dull to the art that colors or creates, Like the dead timepiece, godless nature creeps Her plodding round, and, by the leaden weights, The slavish motion keeps.
To-morrow to receive New life, she digs her proper grave to-day; And icy moons with weary sameness weave From their own light their fulness and decay.
Home to the poet's land the gods are flown, Light use in them that later world discerns, Which, the diviner leading-strings outgrown, On its own axle turns.
Home! and with them are gone The hues they gazed on and the tones they heard; Life's beauty and life's melody:--alone Broods o'er the desolate void, the lifeless word; Yet rescued from time's deluge, still they throng Unseen the Pindus they were wont to cherish: All, that which gains immortal life in song, To mortal life must perish!
Written by Louise Gluck | Create an image from this poem

The Garden

 How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes;
And their uncessant Labours see
Crown'd from some single Herb or Tree,
Whose short and narrow verged Shade
Does prudently their Toyles upbraid;
While all Flow'rs and all Trees do close
To weave the Garlands of repose.
Fair quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence thy Sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busie Companies of Men.
Your sacred Plants, if here below, Only among the Plants will grow.
Society is all but rude, To this delicious Solitude.
No white nor red was ever seen So am'rous as this lovely green.
Fond Lovers, cruel as their Flame, Cut in these Trees their Mistress name.
Little, Alas, they know, or heed, How far these Beauties Hers exceed! Fair Trees! where s'eer you barkes I wound, No Name shall but your own be found.
When we have run our Passions heat, Love hither makes his best retreat.
The Gods, that mortal Beauty chase, The Gods, that mortal Beauty chase, Apollo hunted Daphne so, Only that She might Laurel grow.
And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a Nymph, but for a Reed.
What wond'rous Life in this I lead! Ripe Apples drop about my head; The Luscious Clusters of the Vine Upon my Mouth do crush their Wine; The Nectaren, and curious Peach, Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on Melons, as I pass, Insnar'd with Flow'rs, I fall on Grass.
Mean while the Mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness: The Mind, that Ocean where each kind Does streight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other Worlds, and other Seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green Thought in a green Shade.
Here at the Fountains sliding foot, Or at some Fruit-tress mossy root, Casting the Bodies Vest aside, My Soul into the boughs does glide: There like a Bird it sits, and sings, Then whets, and combs its silver Wings; And, till prepar'd for longer flight, Waves in its Plumes the various Light.
Such was that happy Garden-state, While Man there walk'd without a Mate: After a Place so pure, and sweet, What other Help could yet be meet! But 'twas beyond a Mortal's share To wander solitary there: Two Paradises 'twere in one To live in Paradise alone.
How well the skilful Gardner drew Of flow'rs and herbes this Dial new; Where from above the milder Sun Does through a fragrant Zodiack run; And, as it works, th' industrious Bee Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholsome Hours Be reckon'd but with herbs and flow'rs!
Written by John Ashbery | Create an image from this poem

Syringa

 Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky.
Of course, Eurydice was a part Of this.
Then one day, everything changed.
He rends Rocks into fissures with lament.
Gullies, hummocks Can't withstand it.
The sky shudders from one horizon To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness.
Then Apollo quietly told him: "Leave it all on earth.
Your lute, what point? Why pick at a dull pavan few care to Follow, except a few birds of dusty feather, Not vivid performances of the past.
" But why not? All other things must change too.
The seasons are no longer what they once were, But it is the nature of things to be seen only once, As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting along Somehow.
That's where Orpheus made his mistake.
Of course Eurydice vanished into the shade; She would have even if he hadn't turned around.
No use standing there like a gray stone toga as the whole wheel Of recorded history flashes past, struck dumb, unable to utter an intelligent Comment on the most thought-provoking element in its train.
Only love stays on the brain, and something these people, These other ones, call life.
Singing accurately So that the notes mount straight up out of the well of Dim noon and rival the tiny, sparkling yellow flowers Growing around the brink of the quarry, encapsulizes The different weights of the things.
But it isn't enough To just go on singing.
Orpheus realized this And didn't mind so much about his reward being in heaven After the Bacchantes had torn him apart, driven Half out of their minds by his music, what it was doing to them.
Some say it was for his treatment of Eurydice.
But probably the music had more to do with it, and The way music passes, emblematic Of life and how you cannot isolate a note of it And say it is good or bad.
You must Wait till it's over.
"The end crowns all," Meaning also that the "tableau" Is wrong.
For although memories, of a season, for example, Melt into a single snapshot, one cannot guard, treasure That stalled moment.
It too is flowing, fleeting; It is a picture of flowing, scenery, though living, mortal, Over which an abstract action is laid out in blunt, Harsh strokes.
And to ask more than this Is to become the tossing reeds of that slow, Powerful stream, the trailing grasses Playfully tugged at, but to participate in the action No more than this.
Then in the lowering gentian sky Electric twitches are faintly apparent first, then burst forth Into a shower of fixed, cream-colored flares.
The horses Have each seen a share of the truth, though each thinks, "I'm a maverick.
Nothing of this is happening to me, Though I can understand the language of birds, and The itinerary of the lights caught in the storm is fully apparent to me.
Their jousting ends in music much As trees move more easily in the wind after a summer storm And is happening in lacy shadows of shore-trees, now, day after day.
" But how late to be regretting all this, even Bearing in mind that regrets are always late, too late! To which Orpheus, a bluish cloud with white contours, Replies that these are of course not regrets at all, Merely a careful, scholarly setting down of Unquestioned facts, a record of pebbles along the way.
And no matter how all this disappeared, Or got where it was going, it is no longer Material for a poem.
Its subject Matters too much, and not enough, standing there helplessly While the poem streaked by, its tail afire, a bad Comet screaming hate and disaster, but so turned inward That the meaning, good or other, can never Become known.
The singer thinks Constructively, builds up his chant in progressive stages Like a skyscraper, but at the last minute turns away.
The song is engulfed in an instant in blackness Which must in turn flood the whole continent With blackness, for it cannot see.
The singer Must then pass out of sight, not even relieved Of the evil burthen of the words.
Stellification Is for the few, and comes about much later When all record of these people and their lives Has disappeared into libraries, onto microfilm.
A few are still interested in them.
"But what about So-and-so?" is still asked on occasion.
But they lie Frozen and out of touch until an arbitrary chorus Speaks of a totally different incident with a similar name In whose tale are hidden syllables Of what happened so long before that In some small town, one different summer.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things