Written by
Anonymous |
Wild and fearful in his cavern
Hid the naked troglodyte,
And the homeless nomad wandered
Laying waste the fertile plain.
Menacing with spear and arrow
In the woods the hunter strayed .
.
.
Woe to all poor wreteches stranded
On those cruel and hostile shores!
From the peak of high Olympus
Came the mother Ceres down,
Seeeking in those savage regions
Her lost daughter Prosperine.
But the Goddess found no refuge,
Found no kindly welcome there,
And no temple bearing witness
To the worship of the gods.
From the fields and from the vineyards
Came no fruit to deck the feasts,
Only flesh of blood-stained victims
Smouldered on the alter-fires,
And where'er the grieving goddess
Turns her melancholy gaze,
Sunk in vilest degradation
Man his loathsomeness displays.
Would he purge his soul from vileness
And attain to light and worth,
He must turn and cling forever
To his ancient Mother Earth.
Joy everlasting fostereth
The soul of all creation,
It is her secret ferment fires
The cup of life with flame.
'Tis at her beck the grass hath turned
Each blade toward the light
and solar systems have evolved
From chaos and dark night,
Filling the realms of boundless space
Beyond the sage's sight.
At bounteous nature's kindly breast,
All things that breath drink Joy,
And bird and beasts and creaping things
All follow where she leads.
Her gifts to man are friends in need,
The wreath, the foaming must,
To angels -- visions of God's throne,
To insects -- sensual lust.
|
Written by
William Butler Yeats |
I.
Ancestral Houses
Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.
Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not Sung
Had he not found it certain beyond dreams
That out of life's own self-delight had sprung
The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems
As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung
Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams,
And not a fountain, were the symbol which
Shadows the inherited glory of the rich.
Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
Called architect and artist in, that they,
Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone
The sweetness that all longed for night and day,
The gentleness none there had ever known;
But when the master's buried mice can play.
And maybe the great-grandson of that house,
For all its bronze and marble, 's but a mouse.
O what if gardens where the peacock strays
With delicate feet upon old terraces,
Or else all Juno from an urn displays
Before the indifferent garden deities;
O what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways
Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease
And Childhood a delight for every sense,
But take our greatness with our violence?
What if the glory of escutcheoned doors,
And buildings that a haughtier age designed,
The pacing to and fro on polished floors
Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined
With famous portraits of our ancestors;
What if those things the greatest of mankind
Consider most to magnify, or to bless,
But take our greatness with our bitterness?
II.
My House
An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower,
A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall,
An acre of stony ground,
Where the symbolic rose can break in flower,
Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable,
The sound of the rain or sound
Of every wind that blows;
The stilted water-hen
Crossing Stream again
Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows;
A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone,
A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth,
A candle and written page.
Il Penseroso's Platonist toiled on
In some like chamber, shadowing forth
How the daemonic rage
Imagined everything.
Benighted travellers
From markets and from fairs
Have seen his midnight candle glimmering.
Two men have founded here.
A man-at-arms
Gathered a score of horse and spent his days
In this tumultuous spot,
Where through long wars and sudden night alarms
His dwinding score and he seemed castaways
Forgetting and forgot;
And I, that after me
My bodily heirs may find,
To exalt a lonely mind,
Befitting emblems of adversity.
III.
My Table
Two heavy trestles, and a board
Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword,
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralise
My days out of their aimlessness.
A bit of an embroidered dress
Covers its wooden sheath.
Chaucer had not drawn breath
When it was forged.
In Sato's house,
Curved like new moon, moon-luminous
It lay five hundred years.
Yet if no change appears
No moon; only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art.
Our learned men have urged
That when and where 'twas forged
A marvellous accomplishment,
In painting or in pottery, went
From father unto son
And through the centuries ran
And seemed unchanging like the sword.
Soul's beauty being most adored,
Men and their business took
Me soul's unchanging look;
For the most rich inheritor,
Knowing that none could pass Heaven's door,
That loved inferior art,
Had such an aching heart
That he, although a country's talk
For silken clothes and stately walk.
Had waking wits; it seemed
Juno's peacock screamed.
IV.
My Descendants
Having inherited a vigorous mind
From my old fathers, I must nourish dreams
And leave a woman and a man behind
As vigorous of mind, and yet it seems
Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
And there's but common greenness after that.
And what if my descendants lose the flower
Through natural declension of the soul,
Through too much business with the passing hour,
Through too much play, or marriage with a fool?
May this laborious stair and this stark tower
Become a roofless min that the owl
May build in the cracked masonry and cry
Her desolation to the desolate sky.
The primum Mobile that fashioned us
Has made the very owls in circles move;
And I, that count myself most prosperous,
Seeing that love and friendship are enough,
For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house
And decked and altered it for a girl's love,
And know whatever flourish and decline
These stones remain their monument and mine.
V.
The Road at My Door
An affable Irregular,
A heavily-built Falstaffian man,
Comes cracking jokes of civil war
As though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.
A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in national uniform,
Stand at my door, and I complain
Of the foul weather, hail and rain,
A pear-tree broken by the storm.
I count those feathered balls of soot
The moor-hen guides upon the stream.
To silence the envy in my thought;
And turn towards my chamber, caught
In the cold snows of a dream.
VI.
The Stare's Nest by My Window
The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the state.
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in he empty house of the stare.
A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More Substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
VII.
I see Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's
Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness
I climb to the tower-top and lean upon broken stone,
A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all,
Valley, river, and elms, under the light of a moon
That seems unlike itself, that seems unchangeable,
A glittering sword out of the east.
A puff of wind
And those white glimmering fragments of the mist sweep by.
Frenzies bewilder, reveries perturb the mind;
Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind's eye.
'Vengeance upon the murderers,' the cry goes up,
'Vengeance for Jacques Molay.
' In cloud-pale rags, or in lace,
The rage-driven, rage-tormented, and rage-hungry troop,
Trooper belabouring trooper, biting at arm or at face,
Plunges towards nothing, arms and fingers spreading wide
For the embrace of nothing; and I, my wits astray
Because of all that senseless tumult, all but cried
For vengeance on the murderers of Jacques Molay.
Their legs long, delicate and slender, aquamarine their eyes,
Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs.
The ladies close their musing eyes.
No prophecies,
Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs,
Have closed the ladies' eyes, their minds are but a pool
Where even longing drowns under its own excess;
Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full
Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.
The cloud-pale unicorns, the eyes of aquamarine,
The quivering half-closed eyelids, the rags of cloud or of lace,
Or eyes that rage has brightened, arms it has made lean,
Give place to an indifferent multitude, give place
To brazen hawks.
Nor self-delighting reverie,
Nor hate of what's to come, nor pity for what's gone,
Nothing but grip of claw, and the eye's complacency,
The innumerable clanging wings that have put out the moon.
I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair
Wonder how many times I could have proved my worth
In something that all others understand or share;
But O! ambitious heart, had such a proof drawn forth
A company of friends, a conscience set at ease,
It had but made us pine the more.
The abstract joy,
The half-read wisdom of daemonic images,
Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy.
|
Written by
Friedrich von Schiller |
Honor to woman! To her it is given
To garden the earth with the roses of heaven!
All blessed, she linketh the loves in their choir
In the veil of the graces her beauty concealing,
She tends on each altar that's hallowed to feeling,
And keeps ever-living the fire!
From the bounds of truth careering,
Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps,
With each hasty impulse veering
Down to passion's troubled deeps.
And his heart, contented never,
Greeds to grapple with the far,
Chasing his own dream forever,
On through many a distant star!
But woman with looks that can charm and enchain,
Lureth back at her beck the wild truant again,
By the spell of her presence beguiled--
In the home of the mother her modest abode,
And modest the manners by Nature bestowed
On Nature's most exquisite child!
Bruised and worn, but fiercely breasting,
Foe to foe, the angry strife;
Man, the wild one, never resting,
Roams along the troubled life;
What he planneth, still pursuing;
Vainly as the Hydra bleeds,
Crest the severed crest renewing--
Wish to withered wish succeeds.
But woman at peace with all being, reposes,
And seeks from the moment to gather the roses--
Whose sweets to her culture belong.
Ah! richer than he, though his soul reigneth o'er
The mighty dominion of genius and lore,
And the infinite circle of song.
Strong, and proud, and self-depending,
Man's cold bosom beats alone;
Heart with heart divinely blending,
In the love that gods have known,
Soul's sweet interchange of feeling,
Melting tears--he never knows,
Each hard sense the hard one steeling,
Arms against a world of foes.
Alive, as the wind-harp, how lightly soever
If wooed by the zephyr, to music will quiver,
Is woman to hope and to fear;
All, tender one! still at the shadow of grieving,
How quiver the chords--how thy bosom is heaving--
How trembles thy glance through the tear!
Man's dominion, war and labor;
Might to right the statue gave;
Laws are in the Scythian's sabre;
Where the Mede reigned--see the slave!
Peace and meekness grimly routing,
Prowls the war-lust, rude and wild;
Eris rages, hoarsely shouting,
Where the vanished graces smiled.
But woman, the soft one, persuasively prayeth--
Of the life that she charmeth, the sceptre she swayeth;
She lulls, as she looks from above,
The discord whose bell for its victims is gaping,
And blending awhile the forever escaping,
Whispers hate to the image of love!
|
Written by
Barry Tebb |
THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART
1
The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days
Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two
Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you?
I am the mad poet first love
You never got over
You are my blue-eyed
Madonna virgin bride
I shall carve ‘MG loves BT’
On the bark of every
Wind-bent tree in
East End Park
2
The park itself will blossom
And grow in chiaroscuro
The Victorian postcard’s view
Of avenue upon avenue
With palms and pagodas
Lakes and waterfalls and
A fountain from Versailles.
3
You shall be my queen
In the Kingdom of Deira
Land of many rivers
Aire the greatest
Isara the strong one
Robed in stillness
Wide, deep and dark.
4
In Middleton Woods
Margaret and I played
Truth or dare
She bared her breasts
To the watching stars.
5
“Milk, milk,
Lemonade, round
The corner
Chocolate spread”
Nancy chanted at
Ten in the binyard
Touching her ****,
Her ****, her bum,
Margaret joined in
Chanting in unison.
6
The skipping rope
Turned faster
And faster, slapping
The hot pavement,
Margaret skipped
In rhythm, never
Missing a beat,
Lifting the pleat
Of her skirt
Whirling and twirling.
7
Giggling and red
Margaret said
In a whisper
“When we were
Playing at Nancy’s
She pushed a spill
Of paper up her
You-know-what
She said she’d
Let you watch
If you wanted.
”
8
Margaret, this Saturday morning in June
There is a queue at the ‘Princess’ for
The matin?e, down the alley by the blank
Concrete of the cinema’s side I hide
With you, we are counting our picture
Money, I am counting the stars in your
Hair, bound with a cheap plastic comb.
9
You have no idea of my need for you
A lifetime long, every wrong decision
I made betrayed my need; forty years on
Hear my song and take my hand and move
Us to the house of love where we belong.
10
Margaret we sat in the cinema dark
Warm with the promise of a secret kiss
The wall lights glowed amber on the
Crumbling plaster, we looked with longing
At the love seats empty in the circle,
Vowing we would share one.
11
There is shouting and echoes
Of wild splashing from York
Road baths; forty years on
It stirs my memory and
Will not be gone.
12
The ghosts of tramtracks
Light up lanes
To nowhere
In Leeds Ten.
Every road
Leads nowhere
In Leeds Nine.
Motorways have cut
The city’s heart
In two; Margaret,
Our home lies buried
Under sixteen feet
Of stone.
13
Our families moved
And we were lost
I was not there to hear
The whispered secret
Of your first period.
14
God is courage’s infinite ground
Tillich said; God, give me enough
To stand another week without her
Every day gets longer, every sleep
Less deep.
15
Why can’t I find you,
Touch you,
Bind your straw-gold hair
The colour of lank
February grass?
16
Under the stone canopy
Of the Grand Arcade
I pass Europa Nightclub;
In black designer glass
I watch the faces pass
But none is like your’s,
No voice, no eyes,
No smile at all
Like your’s.
17
From Kirkstall Lock
The rhubarb crop
To Knostrop’s forcing sheds
The roots ploughed up
Arranged in beds
Of perfect darkness
Where the buds burst
With a pip, rich pink
Stalks and yellow leaves
Hand-picked by
Candle-light to
Keep the colour right
So every night the
Rhubarb train
Could go from Leeds
To Covent Garden.
18
The smell of Saturday morning
Is the smell of freedom
How the bounds may grow
Slowly slowly as I go.
“Rag-bone rag-bone
White donkey stone”
Auntie Nellie scoured
Her door step, polished
The brass knocker
Till I saw my face
Bunched like a fist
Complete with goggles
Grinning like a monkey
In a mile of mirrors.
19
Every door step had a stop
A half-stone iron weight
To hold it back and every
Step was edged with donkey
Stone in yellow or white
From the ragman or the potman
With his covered cart jingling
Jangling as it jerked hundreds
Of cups on hooks pint and
Half pint mugs and stacks of
Willow-patterned plates
From Burmantofts.
20
We heard him a mile off
Nights in summer when
He trundled round the
Corner over the cobbles
Jamming the wood brake
Blocks whoaing the horses
With their gleaming brasses
And our mams were always
Waiting where he stopped.
21
Double summer-time made
The nights go on for ever
And no-one cared any more
How long we played what
Or where and we were left
Alone and that’s all I wanted
Then or now to be left alone
Never to be called in from
The Hollows never to be
Called from Margaret.
22
City of back-to-backs
From Armley Heights
Laid out in rows
Like trees or grass
I watch you pass.
23
The Aire is slow and almost
Still
In the Bridgefield
The Joshua Tetley clock
Over the Atkinson Grimshaw
Print
Is stopped at nineteen fifty
Four
The year I left.
24
Grimshaw’s home was
Half a mile away
In Knostrop Hall
Margaret and I
Climbed the ruined
Walls her hair was
Blowing in the wind
Her eyes were stars
In the green night
Her hands were holding
My hands.
25
Half a century later
I look out over Leeds Nine
What little’s left is broken
Or changed Saturday night
Is silent and empty
The paths over the Hollows
Deserted the bell
Of St.
Hilda’s still.
26
On a single bush
The yellow roses blush
Pink in the amber light
Night settles on the
Fewstons and the Copperfields
No mothers’ voices calling us.
Lilac and velvet clover
Grew all over the Hollows
It was all the luck
We knew and when we left
Our luck went too.
27
Solid black
Velvet basalt
Polished jet
Millstone grit
Leeds Town Hall
Built with it
Soaks up the fog
Is sealed with smog
Battered buttressed
Blackened plinths
White lions’ paws
Were soft their
Smiles like your’s.
28
Narrow lanes, steep inclines,
Steps, blank walls, tight
And secret openings’
The lanes are your hips
The inclines the lines
Of your thighs, the steps
Your breasts, blank walls
Your buttocks, tight and
Secret openings your
Taut vagina’s lips.
29
There is a keening and a honing
And a winnowing in the wind
I am the surge and flow
In Winwaed’s water the last breath
Of Elmete’s King.
I am Penda crossing the Aire
Camping at Killingbeck
Conquered by Aethalwald
Ruler of Deira.
30
Life is a bird hovering
In the Hall of the King
Between darkness and darkness flickering
The stone of Scone at last lifted
And borne on the wind, Dunedin, take it
Hold it hard and fast its light
Is leaping it is freedom’s
Touchstone and firestone.
31
Eir, Ayer or Aire
I’ll still be there
Your wanderings off course
Old Ea, Old Eye, Dead Eye
Make no difference to me.
Eg-an island - is Aire’s
True source, names
Not places matter
With the risings
Of a river
Ea land-by-water
I’ll make my own way
Free, going down river
To the far-off sea.
32
Poetry is my business, my affair.
My cri-de-coeur, jongleur
Of Mercia and Elmete, Margaret,
Open your door I am heaping
Imbroglios of stars on the floor
Meet me by the Office Lock
At midnight or by the Town Hall Clock.
33
Nennius nine times have I knocked
On the door of your grave, nine times
More have I made Pilgrimage to Elmete’s
Wood where long I lay by beck and bank
Waiting for your tongue to flame
With Pentecostal fire.
34
Margaret you rode in the hollow of my hand
In the harp of my heart, searching for you
I wandered in Kirkgate Market’s midnight
Down avenues of shuttered stalls, our secrets
Kept through all the years.
From the Imperial on Beeston Hill
I watch the city spill glass towers
Of light over the horizon’s rim.
35
The railyard’s straights
Are buckled plates
Red bricks for aggregate
All lost like me
Ledsham and Ledston
Both belong to Leeds
But Ledston Luck
Is where Aire leads.
36
Held of the Crown
By seven thanes
In Saxon times
‘In regione Loidis’
Baeda scripsit
Leeds, Leeds,
You answer
All my needs.
37
A horse shoe stuck for luck
Behind a basement window:
Margaret, now we’ll see
What truth there is
In dreams and poetry!
I am at one with everyone
There is poetry
Falling from the air
And you have put it there.
38
The sign for John Eaton Street
Is planted in the back garden
Of the transport caf? between
The strands of a wire mesh fence
Straddling the cobbles of a street
That is no more, a washing line
And an abandoned caravan.
39
‘This open land to let’
Is what you get on the Hollows
Thousands of half-burned tyres
The rusty barrel of a Trumix lorry
Concrete slabs, foxgloves and condoms,
The Go-Kart Arena’s signboards,
Half the wall of Ellerby Lane School.
40
There is a mermaid singing
On East Street on an IBM poster
Her hair is lack-lustre
Her breasts are facing the camera
Her tail is like a worn-out brush.
Chimney stacks
Blind black walls
Of factories
Grimy glass
Flickering firelight
In black-leaded grates.
41
Hunslet de Ledes
Hop-scotch, hide and seek,
Bogies-on-wheels
Not one tree in Hunslet
Except in the cemetery
The lake filled in
For fifty years,
The bluebell has rung
Its last perfumed peal.
42
I couldn’t play out on Sunday
Mam and dad thought us a cut
Above the rest, it was another
Test I failed, keeping me and
Margaret apart was like the Aztecs
Tearing the heart from the living flesh.
43
Father, your office job
Didn’t save you
From the drugs
They never gave you.
44
Isaiah, my son,
You made it back
From Balliol to Beeston
At a run via the
Playing fields of Eton.
There is a keening and a honing
And a winnowing in the wind
Winwaed’s water with red bluid blent.
|
Written by
Matthew Arnold |
A wanderer is man from his birth.
He was born in a ship
On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and joy
He spreads out his arms to the light,
Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.
As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
Whether he wakes,
Where the snowy mountainous pass,
Echoing the screams of the eagles,
Hems in its gorges the bed
Of the new-born clear-flowing stream;
Whether he first sees light
Where the river in gleaming rings
Sluggishly winds through the plain;
Whether in sound of the swallowing sea—
As is the world on the banks,
So is the mind of the man.
Vainly does each, as he glides,
Fable and dream
Of the lands which the river of Time
Had left ere he woke on its breast,
Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.
Only the tract where he sails
He wots of; only the thoughts,
Raised by the objects he passes, are his.
Who can see the green earth any more
As she was by the sources of Time?
Who imagines her fields as they lay
In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?
Who thinks as they thought,
The tribes who then roamed on her breast,
Her vigorous, primitive sons?
What girl
Now reads in her bosom as clear
As Rebekah read, when she sate
At eve by the palm-shaded well?
Who guards in her breast
As deep, as pellucid a spring
Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure?
What bard,
At the height of his vision, can deem
Of God, of the world, of the soul,
With a plainness as near,
As flashing as Moses felt
When he lay in the night by his flock
On the starlit Arabian waste?
Can rise and obey
The beck of the Spirit like him?
This tract which the river of Time
Now flows through with us, is the plain.
Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.
Bordered by cities and hoarse
With a thousand cries is its stream.
And we on its breast, our minds
Are confused as the cries which we hear,
Changing and shot as the sights which we see.
And we say that repose has fled
For ever the course of the river of Time.
That cities will crowd to its edge
In a blacker, incessanter line;
That the din will be more on its banks,
Denser the trade on its stream,
Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead;
That never will those on its breast
See an ennobling sight,
Drink of the feeling of quiet again.
But what was before us we know not,
And we know not what shall succeed.
Haply, the river of Time—
As it grows, as the towns on its marge
Fling their wavering lights
On a wider, statlier stream—
May acquire, if not the calm
Of its early mountainous shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.
And the width of the waters, the hush
Of the grey expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with foam
As it draws to the Ocean, amy strike
Peace to the soul of the man on its breast—
As the pale waste widens around him,
As the banks fade dimmer away,
As the stars come out, and the night-wind
Brings up the stream
Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.
|
Written by
Christina Rossetti |
Out of the church she followed them
With a lofty step and mien:
His bride was like a village maid,
Maude Clare was like a queen.
“Son Thomas, ” his lady mother said,
With smiles, almost with tears:
“May Nell and you but live as true
As we have done for years;
“Your father thirty years ago
Had just your tale to tell;
But he was not so pale as you,
Nor I so pale as Nell.
”
My lord was pale with inward strife,
And Nell was pale with pride;
My lord gazed long on pale Maude Clare
Or ever he kissed the bride.
“Lo, I have brought my gift, my lord,
Have brought my gift, ” she said:
To bless the hearth, to bless the board,
To bless the marriage-bed.
“Here’s my half of the golden chain
You wore about your neck,
That day we waded ankle-deep
For lilies in the beck:
“Here’s my half of the faded leaves
We plucked from the budding bough,
With feet amongst the lily leaves, -
The lilies are budding now.
”
He strove to match her scorn with scorn,
He faltered in his place:
“Lady, ” he said, - “Maude Clare, ” he said, -
“Maude Clare, ” – and hid his face.
She turn’d to Nell: “My Lady Nell,
I have a gift for you;
Though, were it fruit, the blooms were gone,
Or, were it flowers, the dew.
“Take my share of a fickle heart,
Mine of a paltry love:
Take it or leave it as you will,
I wash my hands thereof.
”
“And what you leave, ” said Nell, “I’ll take,
And what you spurn, I’ll wear;
For he’s my lord for better and worse,
And him I love Maude Clare.
“Yea, though you’re taller by the head,
More wise and much more fair:
I’ll love him till he loves me best,
Me best of all Maude Clare.
|
Written by
Henry Lawson |
He'd been for years in Sydney "a-acting of the goat",
His name was Joseph Swallow, "the Great Australian Pote",
In spite of all the stories and sketches that he wrote.
And so his friends held meetings (Oh, narrow souls were theirs!)
To advertise their little selves and Joseph's own affairs.
They got up a collection for Joseph unawares.
They looked up his connections and rivals by the score –
The wife who had divorced him some twenty years before,
And several politicians he'd made feel very sore.
They sent him down to Coolan, a long train ride from here,
Because of his grey hairs and "pomes" and painted blondes – and beer.
(I mean to say the painted blondes would always give him beer.
)
(They loved him for his eyes were dark, and you must not condemn
The love for opposites that mark the everlasting fem.
Besides, he "made up" little bits of poetry for them.
)
They sent him "for his own sake", but not for that alone –
A poet's sins are public; his sorrows are his own.
And poets' friends have skins like hides, and mostly hearts of stone.
They said "We'll send some money and you must use your pen.
"So long," they said.
"Adoo!" they said.
"And don't come back again.
Well, stay at least a twelve-month – we might be dead by then.
"
Two greybeards down at Coolan – familiar grins they had –
They took delivery of the goods, and also of the bad.
(Some bread and meat had come by train – Joe Swallow was the bad.
)
They'd met him shearing west o' Bourke in some forgotten year.
They introduced him to the town and pints of Wagga beer.
(And Wagga pints are very good –- I wish I had some here.
)
It was the Busy Bee Hotel where no one worked at all,
Except perhaps to cook the grub and clean the rooms and "hall".
The usual half-wit yardman worked at each one's beck and call.
'Twas "Drink it down!" and "Fillemup!" and "If the pub goes dry,
There's one just two-mile down the road, and more in Gundagai" –
Where married folk by accident get poison in the pie.
The train comes in at eight o'clock – or half-past, I forget,
And when the dinner table at the Busy Bee was set,
Upon the long verandah stool the beards were wagging yet.
They talked of where they hadn't been and what they hadn't won;
They talked of mostly everything that's known beneath the sun.
The things they didn't talk about were big things they had done.
They talked of what they called to mind, and couldn't call to mind;
They talked of men who saw too far and people who were "blind".
Tradition says that Joe's grey beard wagged not so far behind.
They got a horse and sulky and a riding horse as well,
And after three o'clock they left the Busy Bee Hotel –
In case two missuses should send from homes where they did dwell.
No barber bides in Coolan, no baker bakes the bread;
And every local industry, save rabbitin', is dead –
And choppin' wood.
The women do all that, be it said.
(I'll add a line and mention that two-up goes ahead.
)
The shadows from the sinking sun were long by hill and scrub;
The two-up school had just begun, in spite of beer and grub;
But three greybeards were wagging yet down at the Two-mile pub.
A full, round, placid summer moon was floating in the sky;
They took a demijohn of beer, in case they should go dry;
And three greybeards went wagging down the road to Gundagai.
At Gundagai next morning (which poets call "th' morn")
The greybeards sought a doctor – a friend of the forlorn –
Whose name is as an angel's who sometimes blows a horn.
And Doctor Gabriel fixed 'em up, but 'twas not in the bar.
It wasn't rum or whisky, nor yet was it Three Star.
'Twas mixed up in a chemist's shop, and swifter stuff by far.
They went out to the backyard (to make my meaning plain);
The doctor's stuff wrought mightily, but by no means in vain.
Then they could eat their breakfasts and drink their beer again.
They made a bond between the three, as rock against the wave,
That they'd go to the barber's shop and each have a clean shave,
To show the people how they looked when they were young and brave.
They had the shave and bought three suits (and startling suits in sooth),
And three white shirts and three red ties (to tell the awful truth),
To show the people how they looked in their hilarious youth.
They burnt their old clothes in the yard, and their old hats as well;
The publican kicked up a row because they made a smell.
They put on bran'-new "larstin'-sides" – and, oh, they looked a yell!
Next morning, or the next (or next), from demon-haunted beds,
And very far from feeling like what sporting men call "peds",
The three rode back without their beards, with "boxers" on their heads!
They tried to get Joe lodgings at the Busy Bee in vain;
They did not take him to their homes, they took him to the train;
They sent him back to Sydney till grey beards grew again.
They sent him back to Sydney to keep away a year;
Because of shaven beards and wives they thought him safer here.
And so he cut his friends and stuck to powdered blondes and beer.
Until the finish came at last, as 'twill to any "bloke";
But in Joe's case it chanced to be a paralytic stroke;
The soft heart of a powdered blonde was, as she put it, "broke".
She sought Joe in the hospital and took the choicest food;
She went there very modestly and in a chastened mood,
And timid and respectful-like – because she was no good.
She sat the death-watch out alone on the verandah dim;
And after all was past and gone she dried her eyes abrim,
And sought the head-nurse timidly, and asked "May I see him?"
And then she went back to her bar, where she'd not been for weeks,
To practise there her barmaid's smile and mend and patch the streaks
The only real tears for Joe had left upon her cheeks
|
Written by
Sir Thomas Wyatt |
Madam, withouten many words
Once I am sure ye will or no .
.
.
And if ye will, then leave your bourds
And use your wit and show it so,
And with a beck ye shall me call;
And if of one that burneth alway
Ye have any pity at all,
Answer him fair with & {.
} or nay.
If it be &, {.
} I shall be fain;
If it be nay, friends as before;
Ye shall another man obtain,
And I mine own and yours no more.
|
Written by
Jean Ingelow |
.
An empty sky, a world of heather,
Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom;
We two among them wading together,
Shaking out honey, treading perfume.
Crowds of bees are giddy with clover,
Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet,
Crowds of larks at their matins hang over,
Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.
Flusheth the rise with her purple favor,
Gloweth the cleft with her golden ring,
'Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,
Lightly settle, and sleepily swing.
We two walk till the purple dieth
And short dry grass under foot is brown.
But one little streak at a distance lieth
Green like a ribbon to prank the down.
II.
Over the grass we stepped unto it,
And God He knoweth how blithe we were!
Never a voice to bid us eschew it:
Hey the green ribbon that showed so fair!
Hey the green ribbon! we kneeled beside it,
We parted the grasses dewy and sheen;
Drop over drop there filtered and slided
A tiny bright beck that trickled between.
Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sang to us,
Light was our talk as of faëry bells—
Faëry wedding-bells faintly rung to us
Down in their fortunate parallels.
Hand in hand, while the sun peered over,
We lapped the grass on that youngling spring;
Swept back its rushes, smoothed its clover,
And said, "Let us follow it westering."
III.
A dappled sky, a world of meadows,
Circling above us the black rooks fly
Forward, backward; lo, their dark shadows
Flit on the blossoming tapestry—
Flit on the beck, for her long grass parteth
As hair from a maid's bright eyes blown back;
And, lo, the sun like a lover darteth
His flattering smile on her wayward track.
Sing on! we sing in the glorious weather
Till one steps over the tiny strand,
So narrow, in sooth, that still together
On either brink we go hand in hand.
The beck grows wider, the hands must sever.
On either margin, our songs all done,
We move apart, while she singeth ever,
Taking the course of the stooping sun.
He prays, "Come over"—I may not follow;
I cry, "Return"—but he cannot come:
We speak, we laugh, but with voices hollow;
Our hands are hanging, our hearts are numb.
IV.
A breathing sigh, a sigh for answer,
A little talking of outward things
The careless beck is a merry dancer,
Keeping sweet time to the air she sings.
A little pain when the beck grows wider;
"Cross to me now—for her wavelets swell."
"I may not cross,"—and the voice beside her
Faintly reacheth, though heeded well.
No backward path; ah! no returning;
No second crossing that ripple's flow:
"Come to me now, for the west is burning;
Come ere it darkens;"—"Ah, no! ah, no!"
Then cries of pain, and arms outreaching—
The beck grows wider and swift and deep:
Passionate words as of one beseeching—
The loud beck drowns them; we walk, and weep.
V.
A yellow moon in splendor drooping,
A tired queen with her state oppressed,
Low by rushes and swordgrass stooping,
Lies she soft on the waves at rest.
The desert heavens have felt her sadness;
Her earth will weep her some dewy tears;
The wild beck ends her tune of gladness,
And goeth stilly as soul that fears.
We two walk on in our grassy places
On either marge of the moonlit flood,
With the moon's own sadness in our faces,
Where joy is withered, blossom and bud.
VI.
A shady freshness, chafers whirring,
A little piping of leaf-hid birds;
A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring,
A cloud to the eastward snowy as curds.
Bare grassy slopes, where kids are tethered
Round valleys like nests all ferny-lined;
Round hills, with fluttering tree-tops feathered,
Swell high in their freckled robes behind.
A rose-flush tender, a thrill, a quiver,
When golden gleams to the tree-tops glide;
A flashing edge for the milk-white river,
The beck, a river—with still sleek tide.
Broad and white, and polished as silver,
On she goes under fruit-laden trees;
Sunk in leafage cooeth the culver,
And 'plaineth of love's disloyalties.
Glitters the dew and shines the river,
Up comes the lily and dries her bell;
But two are walking apart forever,
And wave their hands for a mute farewell.
VII.
A braver swell, a swifter sliding;
The river hasteth, her banks recede:
Wing-like sails on her bosom gliding
Bear down the lily and drown the reed.
Stately prows are rising and bowing
(Shouts of mariners winnow the air),
And level sands for banks endowing
The tiny green ribbon that showed so fair.
While, O my heart! as white sails shiver,
And crowds are passing, and banks stretch wide
How hard to follow, with lips that quiver,
That moving speck on the far-off side!
Farther, farther—I see it—know it—
My eyes brim over, it melts away:
Only my heart to my heart shall show it
As I walk desolate day by day.
VII.
And yet I know past all doubting, truly—
A knowledge greater than grief can dim—
I know, as he loved, he will love me duly—
Yea better—e'en better than I love him.
And as I walk by the vast calm river,
The awful river so dread to see,
I say, "Thy breadth and thy depth forever
Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me."
|
Written by
Alfred Lord Tennyson |
Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaäy?
Proputty, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'em saäy.
Proputty, proputty, proputty--Sam, thou's an ass for thy paaïns:
Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs, nor in all thy braaïns.
Woä--theer's a craw to pluck wi' tha, Sam; yon 's parson's 'ouse--
Dosn't thou knaw that a man mun be eäther a man or a mouse?
Time to think on it then; for thou'll be twenty to weeäk.
Proputty, proputty--woä then, woä--let ma 'ear mysén speäk.
Me an' thy muther, Sammy, 'as been a'talkin' o' thee;
Thou's beän talkin' to muther, an' she beän a tellin' it me.
Thou'll not marry for munny--thou's sweet upo' parson's lass--
Noä--thou 'll marry for luvv--an' we boäth of us thinks tha an ass.
Seeä'd her todaäy goä by--Saäint's-daäy--they was ringing the bells.
She's a beauty, thou thinks--an' soä is scoors o' gells,
Them as 'as munny an' all--wot's a beauty?--the flower as blaws.
But proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, proputty graws.
Do'ant be stunt; taäke time.
I knaws what maäkes tha sa mad.
Warn't I craäzed fur the lasses mysén when I wur a lad?
But I knaw'd a Quaäker feller as often 'as towd ma this:
"Doänt thou marry for munny, but goä wheer munny is!"
An' I went wheer munny war; an' thy muther coom to 'and,
Wi' lots o' munny laaïd by, an' a nicetish bit o' land.
Maäybe she warn't a beauty--I niver giv it a thowt--
But warn't she as good to cuddle an' kiss as a lass as 'ant nowt?
Parson's lass 'ant nowt, an' she weänt 'a nowt when 'e 's deäd,
Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, and addle her breäd.
Why? for 'e 's nobbut a curate, an' weänt niver get hissén clear,
An' 'e maäde the bed as 'e ligs on afoor 'e coom'd to the shere.
An' thin 'e coom'd to the parish wi' lots o' Varsity debt,
Stook to his taäil thy did, an' 'e 'ant got shut on 'em yet.
An' 'e ligs on 'is back i' the grip, wi' noän to lend 'im a shuvv,
Woorse nor a far-welter'd yowe: fur, Sammy, 'e married for luvv.
Luvv? what's luvv? thou can luvv thy lass an' 'er munny too,
Maäkin' 'em goä togither, as they've good right to do.
Couldn I luvv thy muther by cause 'o 'er munny laaïd by?
Naäy--fur I luvv'd 'er a vast sight moor fur it: reäson why.
Ay, an' thy muther says thou wants to marry the lass,
Cooms of a gentleman burn: an' we boäth on us thinks tha an ass.
Woä then, proputty, wiltha?--an ass as near as mays nowt--
Woä then, wiltha? dangtha!--the bees is as fell as owt.
Breäk me a bit o' the esh for his 'eäd, lad, out o' the fence!
Gentleman burn! what's gentleman burn? is it shillins an' pence?
Proputty, proputty's ivrything 'ere, an', Sammy, I'm blest
If it isn't the saäme oop yonder, fur them as 'as it 's the best.
Tis'n them as 'as munny as breaks into 'ouses an' steäls,
Them as 'as coats to their backs an' taäkes their regular meäls,
Noä, but it 's them as niver knaws wheer a meäl's to be 'ad.
Taäke my word for it Sammy, the poor in a loomp is bad.
Them or thir feythers, tha sees, mun 'a beän a laäzy lot,
Fur work mun 'a gone to the gittin' whiniver munny was got.
Feyther 'ad ammost nowt; leastways 'is munny was 'id.
But 'e tued an' moil'd issén dead, an' 'e died a good un, 'e did.
Looök thou theer wheer Wrigglesby beck cooms out by the 'ill!
Feyther run oop to the farm, an' I runs oop to the mill;
An' I 'll run oop to the brig, an' that thou 'll live to see;
And if thou marries a good un I 'll leäve the land to thee.
Thim's my noätions, Sammy, wheerby I means to stick;
But if thou marries a bad un, I 'll leäve the land to Dick.
--
Coom oop, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'im saäy--
Proputty, proputty, proputty--canter an' canter awaäy.
|