Written by
Victor Hugo |
("Le parfum d'un lis.")
{Bk. V. xiii.}
The lily's perfume pure, fame's crown of light,
The latest murmur of departing day,
Fond friendship's plaint, that melts at piteous sight,
The mystic farewell of each hour at flight,
The kiss which beauty grants with coy delay,—
The sevenfold scarf that parting storms bestow
As trophy to the proud, triumphant sun;
The thrilling accent of a voice we know,
The love-enthralled maiden's secret vow,
An infant's dream, ere life's first sands be run,—
The chant of distant choirs, the morning's sigh,
Which erst inspired the fabled Memnon's frame,—
The melodies that, hummed, so trembling die,—
The sweetest gems that 'mid thought's treasures lie,
Have naught of sweetness that can match HER NAME!
Low be its utterance, like a prayer divine,
Yet in each warbled song be heard the sound;
Be it the light in darksome fanes to shine,
The sacred word which at some hidden shrine,
The selfsame voice forever makes resound!
O friends! ere yet, in living strains of flame,
My muse, bewildered in her circlings wide,
With names the vaunting lips of pride proclaim,
Shall dare to blend the one, the purer name,
Which love a treasure in my breast doth hide,—
Must the wild lay my faithful harp can sing,
Be like the hymns which mortals, kneeling, hear;
To solemn harmonies attuned the string,
As, music show'ring from his viewless wing,
On heavenly airs some angel hovered near.
CAROLINE BOWLES (MRS. SOUTHEY)
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Written by
Marvin Bell |
In a wilderness, in some orchestral swing
through trees, with a wind playing all the high notes,
and the prospect of a string bass inside the wood,
I, or someone like me, had a kind of vision.
As the person on the ground moved, bursting halos
topped first one tree, then another and another,
till the work of sight was forced to go lower
into a dark lair of fallen logs and fungi.
His was the wordless death of words, worse
for he remembered exactly where the words were
on his tongue, and before that how they fell
effortlessly from the brainpan behind his eyes.
But the music continued and the valley of forest floor
became itself an interval in a natural melody
attuned to the wind, embedded in the bass of boughs,
the tenor of branches, the percussion of twigs.
He, or someone like him, laughed at first,
dismissing what had happened as the incandescence
of youthful metabolism, as the slight fermentation
of the last of the wine, or as each excuse of love.
Learning then the constancy of music and of mind,
now he takes seriously that visionary wood
where he saw his being and his future underfoot
and someone like me listening for a resolution.
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Written by
Howard Nemerov |
Who can remember back to the first poets,
The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus?
No one has remembered that far back
Or now considers, among the artifacts,
And bones and cantilevered inference
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets,
So lofty and disdainful of renown
They left us not a name to know them by.
They were the ones that in whatever tongue
Worded the world, that were the first to say
Star, water, stone, that said the visible
And made it bring invisibles to view
In wind and time and change, and in the mind
Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world
And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers
Of the city into the astonished sky.
They were the first great listeners, attuned
To interval, relationship, and scale,
The first to say above, beneath, beyond,
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine,
Who having uttered vanished from the world
Leaving no memory but the marvelous
Magical elements, the breathing shapes
And stops of breath we build our Babels of.
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Written by
Emma Lazarus |
Not while the fever of the blood is strong,
The heart throbs loud, the eyes are veiled, no less
With passion than with tears, the Muse shall bless
The poet-sould to help and soothe with song.
Not then she bids his trembling lips express
The aching gladness, the voluptuous pain.
Life is his poem then; flesh, sense, and brain
One full-stringed lyre attuned to happiness.
But when the dream is done, the pulses fail,
The day's illusion, with the day's sun set,
He, lonely in the twilight, sees the pale
Divine Consoler, featured like Regret,
Enter and clasp his hand and kiss his brow.
Then his lips ope to sing--as mine do now.
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Written by
Philip Levine |
The doctor fingers my bruise.
"Magnificent," he says, "black
at the edges and purple
cored." Seated, he spies for clues,
gingerly probing the slack
flesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull
for air, losing the battle.
Faced by his aged diploma,
the heavy head of the X-
ray, and the iron saddle,
I grow lonely. He finds my
secrets common and my sex
neither objectionable
nor lovely, though he is on
the hunt for significance.
The shelved cutlery twinkles
behind glass, and I am on
the way out, "an instance
of the succumbed through extreme
fantasy." He is alarmed
at last, and would raise me, but
I am floorward in a dream
of lowered trousers, unarmed
and weakly fighting to shut
the window of my drawers.
There are others in the room,
voices of women above
white oxfords; and the old floor,
the friendly linoleum,
departs. I whisper, "my love,"
and am safe, tabled, sniffing
spirits of ammonia
in the land of my fellows.
"Open house!" my openings
sing: pores, nose, anus let go
their charges, a shameless flow
into the outer world;
and the ceiling, equipped with
intelligence, surveys my
produce. The doctor is thrilled
by my display, for he is half
the slave of necessity;
I, enormous in my need,
justify his sciences.
"We have alternatives," he
says, "Removal..." (And my blood
whitens as on their dull trays
the tubes dance. I must study
the dark bellows of the gas
machine, the painless maker.)
"...and learning to live with it."
Oh, but I am learning fast
to live with any pain, ache,
growth to keep myself intact;
and in imagination
I hug my bruise like an old
Pooh Bear, already attuned
to its moods. "Oh, my dark one,
tell of the coming of cold
and of Kings, ancient and ruined."
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Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
To the Heavens above us
O look and behold
The Planets that love us
All harnessed in gold!
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?
All thought, all desires,
That are under the sun,
Are one with their fires,
As we also are one:
All matter, all spirit,
All fashion, all frame,
Receive and inherit
Their strength from the same.
(Oh, man that deniest
All power save thine own,
Their power in the highest
Is mightily shown.
Not less in the lowest
That power is made clear.
Oh, man, if thou knowest,
What treasure is here!)
Earth quakes in her throes
And we wonder for why!
But the blind planet knows
When her ruler is nigh;
And, attuned since Creation
To perfect accord,
She thrills in her station
And yearns to her Lord.
The waters have risen,
The springs are unbound--
The floods break their prison,
And ravin around.
No rampart withstands 'em,
Their fury will last,
Till the Sign that commands 'em
Sinks low or swings past.
Through abysses unproven
And gulfs beyond thought,
Our portion is woven,
Our burden is brought.
Yet They that prepare it,
Whose Nature we share,
Make us who must bear it
Well able to bear.
Though terrors o'ertake us
We'll not be afraid.
No power can unmake us
Save that which has made.
Nor yet beyond reason
Or hope shall we fall--
All things have their season,
And Mercy crowns all!
Then, doubt not, ye fearful--
The Eternal is King--
Up, heart, and be cheerful,
And lustily sing:--
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?
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Written by
George William Russell |
HOW often have I said,
“We may not grieve for the immortal dead.”
And now, poor blenchèd heart,
Thy ruddy hues all tremulous depart.
Why be with fate at strife
Because one passes on from death to life,
Who may no more delay
Rapt from our strange and pitiful dream away
By one with ancient claim
Who robes her with the spirit like a flame.
Not lost this high belief—
Oh, passionate heart, what is thy cause for grief?
Is this thy sorrow now,
She in eternal beauty may not bow
Thy troubles to efface
As in old time a head with gentle grace
All tenderly laid by thine
Taught thee the nearness of the love divine.
Her joys no more for thee
Than the impartial laughter of the sea,
Her beauty no more fair
For thee alone, but starry, everywhere.
Her pity dropped for you
No more than heaven above with healing dew
Favours one home of men—
Ah! grieve not; she becomes herself again,
And passed beyond thy sight
She roams along the thought-swept fields of light,
Moving in dreams until
She finds again the root of ancient will,
The old heroic love
That emptied once the heavenly courts above.
The angels heard from earth
A mournful cry which shattered all their mirth,
Raised by a senseless rout
Warring in chaos with discordant shout,
And that the pain might cease
They grew rebellious in the Master’s peace;
And falling downward then
The angelic lights were crucified in men;
Leaving so radiant spheres
For earth’s dim twilight ever wet with tears
That through those shadows dim
Might breathe the lovely music brought from Him.
And now my grief I see
Was but that ancient shadow part of me,
Not yet attuned to good,
Still blind and senseless in its warring mood,
I turn from it and climb
To the heroic spirit of the prime,
The light that well foreknew
All the dark ways that it must journey through.
Yet seeing still a gain,
A distant glory o’er the hills of pain,
Through all that chaos wild
A breath as gentle as a little child,
Through earth transformed, divine,
The Christ-soul of the universe to shine.
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Written by
Rg Gregory |
in the shadow
of the flower
is the sting
the bee driven by need
uses its painful gift
to keep its sense of beauty
in proportion
it does its job with
a thoughtless dedication
its honeyed world
excites no inner space
bees are not poets
who wade through words
with too much brain
around their ankles
each itching bee-part
is attuned
to a cosmic web
each buzz miraculous
flowers put powder
on their private parts
to call the bees in
it seems a good game
much fumbling and the bee
goes home to mother
rewards ripple outwards
to many dripping tongues
bees hate anything
that gets in the way
the bee-world is exclusive
aliens - keep out
bees live on a knife-edge
between honey
and a ripped-out sting
violation propels them
in the shadow
of the nectar
is the horror
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Written by
Lucy Maud Montgomery |
Through the pungent hours of the afternoon,
On the autumn slopes we have lightly wandered
Where the sunshine lay in a golden swoon
And the lingering year all its sweetness squandered.
Oh, it was blithesome to roam at will
Over the crest of each westering hill,
Over those dreamy, enchanted lands
Where the trees held to us their friendly hands!
Winds in the pine boughs softly crooned,
Or in the grasses complained most sweetly,
With all the music of earth attuned
In this dear ripe time that must pass so fleetly:
Golden rod as we idled by
Held its torches of flame on high,
And the asters beckoned along our way
Like fair fine ladies in silk array.
We passed by woods where the day aside
Knelt like a pensive nun and tender,
We looked on valleys of purple pride
Where she reigned a queen in her misty splendor;
But out on the hills she was wild and free,
A comrade to wander right gipsily,
Luring us on over waste and wold
With the charm of a message half sung, half told,
And now, when far in the shining west
She has dropped her flowers on the sunset meadow,
We turn away from our witching quest
To the kindly starshine and gathering shadow;
Filled to the lips of our souls are we
With the beauty given so lavishly,
And hand in hand with the night we come
Back to the light and the hearth of home.
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Written by
John Williams |
The blatant horns blare strident sound;
Delighted, you laugh and seize
My passive arm, but I have found
Content in the harmonies.
They sound, are silent; please or annoy,
Are not clever, cruel, or coy
Like human qualities.
See agile fingers in frantic flight
Along the smoking row
Of piano keys cut from ebony night
And from the sullied snow
Of the city. Look love, listen love, tell me--
Where does the music come from really,
Where does it really go?
Planets are tensed to a single chord
Of absolute harmony
Sounding from a cosmic keyboard,
Unheard by you and me;
Yet we re attuned; who understands
That can see the judgment-hands
Poised above the keys.
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