Written by
Derek Walcott |
There are so many islands!
As many islands as the stars at night
on that branched tree from which meteors are shaken
like falling fruit around the schooner Flight.
But things must fall,and so it always was,
on one hand Venus,on the other Mars;
fall,and are one,just as this earth is one
island in archipelagoes of stars.
My first friend was the sea.
Now,is my last.
I stop talking now.
I work,then I read,
cotching under a lantern hooked to the mast.
I try to forget what happiness was,
and when that don't work,I study the stars.
Sometimes is just me,and the soft-scissored foam
as the deck turn white and the moon open
a cloud like a door,and the light over me
is a road in white moonlight taking me home.
Shabine sang to you from the depths of the sea.
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Written by
Philip Larkin |
Morning, a glass door, flashes
Gold names off the new city,
Whose white shelves and domes travel
The slow sky all day.
I land to stay here;
And the windows flock open
And the curtains fly out like doves
And a past dries in a wind.
Now let me lie down, under
A wide-branched indifference,
Shovel-faces like pennies
Down the back of the mind,
Find voices coined to
An argot of motor-horns,
And let the cluttered-up houses
Keep their thick lives to themselves.
For this ignorance of me
Seems a kind of innocence.
Fast enough I shall wound it:
Let me breathe till then
Its milk-aired Eden,
Till my own life impound it-
Slow-falling; grey-veil-hung; a theft,
A style of dying only.
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Written by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
I would build a cloudy House
For my thoughts to live in;
When for earth too fancy-loose
And too low for Heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream aloud---
I build it bright to see,---
I build it on the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.
Cloud-walls of the morning's grey,
Faced with amber column,---
Crowned with crimson cupola
From a sunset solemn!
May mists, for the casements, fetch,
Pale and glimmering;
With a sunbeam hid in each,
And a smell of spring.
Build the entrance high and proud,
Darkening and then brightening,---
If a riven thunder-cloud,
Veined by the lightning.
Use one with an iris-stain,
For the door within;
Turning to a sound like rain,
As I enter in.
Build a spacious hall thereby:
Boldly, never fearing.
Use the blue place of the sky,
Which the wind is clearing;
Branched with corridors sublime,
Flecked with winding stairs---
Such as children wish to climb,
Following their own prayers.
In the mutest of the house,
I will have my chamber:
Silence at the door shall use
Evening's light of amber,
Solemnising every mood,
Softemng in degree,---
Turning sadness into good,
As I turn the key.
Be my chamber tapestried
With the showers of summer,
Close, but soundless,---glorified
When the sunbeams come here;
Wandering harpers, harping on
Waters stringed for such,---
Drawing colours, for a tune,
With a vibrant touch.
Bring a shadow green and still
From the chestnut forest,
Bring a purple from the hill,
When the heat is sorest;
Spread them out from wall to wall,
Carpet-wove around,---
Whereupon the foot shall fall
In light instead of sound.
Bring the fantasque cloudlets home
From the noontide zenith
Ranged, for sculptures, round the room,---
Named as Fancy weeneth:
Some be Junos, without eyes;
Naiads, without sources
Some be birds of paradise,---
Some, Olympian horses.
Bring the dews the birds shake off,
Waking in the hedges,---
Those too, perfumed for a proof,
From the lilies' edges:
From our England's field and moor,
Bring them calm and white in;
Whence to form a mirror pure,
For Love's self-delighting.
Bring a grey cloud from the east,
Where the lark is singing;
Something of the song at least,
Unlost in the bringing:
That shall be a morning chair,
Poet-dream may sit in,
When it leans out on the air,
Unrhymed and unwritten.
Bring the red cloud from the sun
While he sinketh, catch it.
That shall be a couch,---with one
Sidelong star to watch it,---
Fit for poet's finest Thought,
At the curfew-sounding,--- ;
Things unseen being nearer brought
Than the seen, around him.
Poet's thought,----not poet's sigh!
'Las, they come together!
Cloudy walls divide and fly,
As in April weather!
Cupola and column proud,
Structure bright to see---
Gone---except that moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee!
Let them! Wipe such visionings
From the Fancy's cartel---
Love secures some fairer things
Dowered with his immortal.
The sun may darken,---heaven be bowed---
But still, unchanged shall be,---
Here in my soul,---that moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with THEE!
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Written by
Laurie Lee |
The girl's far treble, muted to the heat,
calls like a fainting bird across the fields
to where her flock lies panting for her voice,
their black horns buried deep in marigolds.
They climb awake, like drowsy butterflies,
and press their red flanks through the tall branched grass,
and as they go their wandering tongues embrace
the vacant summer mirrored in their eyes.
Led to the limestone shadows of a barn
they snuff their past embalmed in the hay,
while her cool hand, cupped to the udder's fount,
distils the brimming harvest of their day.
Look what a cloudy cream the earth gives out,
fat juice of buttercups and meadow-rye;
the girl dreams milk within her body's field
and hears, far off, her muted children cry.
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Written by
Heather McHugh |
The dog has shrunk between the brake and clutch.
His shaking shakes a two-ton truck.
From a God
so furious, he cannot hide his hide.
Outside,
in the world at large, black hours are being
pearled and shafted.
A tree stands out
spectacularly branched; the mind's eye
grows alert.
This thing can hurt.
It had us once, it's having volts
of big idea again—about
thirteen a minute.
Do we need
to know more? Are we sure?
Just wait—a brain this insecure
may need another bolt be driven in it.
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Written by
Elinor Wylie |
I lie here thinking of you:—
the stain of love
is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow
it eats into the leaves,
smears with saffron
the horned branched the lean
heavily
against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light
only a honey-thick stain
that drips from leaf to leaf
and limb to limb
spoiling the colors
of the whole world—
you far off there under
the wine-red selvage of the west!
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Written by
Michael Drayton |
I pray thee leave, love me no more,
Call home the heart you gave me.
I but in vain that saint adore
That can, but will not, save me:
These poor half-kisses kill me quite;
Was ever man thus served?
Amidst an ocean of delight
For pleasure to be starved.
Show me no more those snowy breasts
With azure riverets branched,
Where whilst mine eye with plenty feasts,
Yet is my thirst not stanched.
O Tantalus, thy pains ne'er tell,
By me thou art prevented:
'Tis nothing to be plagued in hell,
But thus in heaven tormented.
Clip me no more in those dear arms,
Nor thy life's comfort call me;
O, these are but too powerful charms,
And do but more enthral me.
But see how patient I am grown,
In all this coil about thee;
Come, nice thing, let my heart alone,
I cannot live without thee!
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Written by
Lam Quang My |
We swear – take not forbidden fruit
But still want paradise!
We pass our wondering years on earth
But knowing naught of life!
We miss the clod beneath our feet
While thought is flying high.
We thought – the heart turned into stone
But still will cry through nights!
Our gain is but a gift to all
But still we count our loss.
We know - life is the branched tree
Yet walk the traveled paths…
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Written by
William Strode |
Though after Death, Thanks lessen into Praise,
And Worthies be not crown'd with gold, but bayes;
Shall we not thank? To praise Thee all agree;
We Debtors must out doe it, heartily.
Deserved Nobility of True Descent,
Though not so old in Thee grew Ancient:
We number not the Tree of Branched Birth,
But genealogie of Vertue, spreading forth
To many Births in value.
Piety,
True Valour, Bounty, Meeknesse, Modesty,
These noble off-springs swell Thy Name as much,
As Richards, Edwards, three, foure, twenty such:
For in thy Person's linage surnam'd are
The great, the good, the wise, the just, the faire.
One of these stiles innobles a whole stemme;
If all be found in One, what race like him!
Long stayres of birth, unlesse they likewise grow
To higher vertue, must descend more low.
When water comes through numerous veins of lead,
'Tis water still; Thy blood, from One pipe's head,
Grew Aqua-vit? streight, with spirits fill'd,
As not traduc'd, but rais'd, sublim'd, distill'd.
Nobility farre spread, I may behold,
Like the expanded skie, or dissolv'd gold,
Much rarified; I see't contracted here
Into a starre, the strength of all the spheare;
Extracted like the Elixir from the mine,
And highten'd so that 'tis too soone divine.
Divinity continues not beneath;
Alas nor He; but though He passe by death,
He that for many liv'd, gaines many lives
After hee's dead: Each friend and servant strives
To give him breath in praise; this Hospital,
That Prison, Colledge, Church, must needs recall
To mind their Patron; whose rich legacies
In forreigne lands, and under other skies
To them assign'd, shew that his heart did even
In France love England, as in England Heaven:
Heav'n well perceiv'd this double pious love,
Both to his Country here, and that above:
Therefore the day, that saw Him landed here,
Hath seen him landed in his Haven there;
The selfe-same day (but two yeares interpos'd)
Saw Sun and Him round shining twice & clos'd.
No Citizen so covetous could be
Of getting wealth, as of bestowing, He;
His Body and Estate went as they came,
Stript of Appendix Both, and left the same
But in th' Originall; Necessity
Devested one, the other Charity.
It cost him more to clothe his soule in death,
Than e're to cloth his flesh for short-liv'd breath;
And whereas Lawes exact from Niggards dead
A Portion for the Poore, they now are said
To moderate His Bounty; never such
Was known but once, that men should give too much:
A Tabernacle then was built, and now
The like in heav'n is purchas'd: Learn you how;
Partly by building Men, and partly by
Erecting walls, by new-found Chymistry,
Turning of Gold to Stones.
Our Christ-Church Pile,
Great Henrie's Monument, shall grow awhile
With Bayning's Treasure; who a way hath took.
Like those at Westminster, to fill a nook
'Mongst beds of Kings.
Thus speak, speak while we may
For Stones will speak when We are hush'd in Clay.
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