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Best Famous Condition Poems

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Written by Anna Akhmatova | Create an image from this poem

Requiem

 Not under foreign skies
 Nor under foreign wings protected -
 I shared all this with my own people
 There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
[1961] INSTEAD OF A PREFACE During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in Leningrad.
One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me, her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in her life heard my name.
Jolted out of the torpor characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear (everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe this?' And I answered - 'I can.
' It was then that something like a smile slid across what had previously been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957.
Leningrad] DEDICATION Mountains fall before this grief, A mighty river stops its flow, But prison doors stay firmly bolted Shutting off the convict burrows And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone, Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this, We are everywhere the same, listening To the scrape and turn of hateful keys And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass, Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed, We'd meet - the dead, lifeless; the sun, Lower every day; the Neva, mistier: But hope still sings forever in the distance.
The verdict.
Immediately a flood of tears, Followed by a total isolation, As if a beating heart is painfully ripped out, or, Thumped, she lies there brutally laid out, But she still manages to walk, hesitantly, alone.
Where are you, my unwilling friends, Captives of my two satanic years? What miracle do you see in a Siberian blizzard? What shimmering mirage around the circle of the moon? I send each one of you my salutation, and farewell.
[March 1940] INTRODUCTION [PRELUDE] It happened like this when only the dead Were smiling, glad of their release, That Leningrad hung around its prisons Like a worthless emblem, flapping its piece.
Shrill and sharp, the steam-whistles sang Short songs of farewell To the ranks of convicted, demented by suffering, As they, in regiments, walked along - Stars of death stood over us As innocent Russia squirmed Under the blood-spattered boots and tyres Of the black marias.
I You were taken away at dawn.
I followed you As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God.
.
.
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold sweat On your brow - I will never forget this; I will gather To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy (1) Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers.
[1935.
Autumn.
Moscow] II Silent flows the river Don A yellow moon looks quietly on Swanking about, with cap askew It sees through the window a shadow of you Gravely ill, all alone The moon sees a woman lying at home Her son is in jail, her husband is dead Say a prayer for her instead.
III It isn't me, someone else is suffering.
I couldn't.
Not like this.
Everything that has happened, Cover it with a black cloth, Then let the torches be removed.
.
.
Night.
IV Giggling, poking fun, everyone's darling, The carefree sinner of Tsarskoye Selo (2) If only you could have foreseen What life would do with you - That you would stand, parcel in hand, Beneath the Crosses (3), three hundredth in line, Burning the new year's ice With your hot tears.
Back and forth the prison poplar sways With not a sound - how many innocent Blameless lives are being taken away.
.
.
[1938] V For seventeen months I have been screaming, Calling you home.
I've thrown myself at the feet of butchers For you, my son and my horror.
Everything has become muddled forever - I can no longer distinguish Who is an animal, who a person, and how long The wait can be for an execution.
There are now only dusty flowers, The chinking of the thurible, Tracks from somewhere into nowhere And, staring me in the face And threatening me with swift annihilation, An enormous star.
[1939] VI Weeks fly lightly by.
Even so, I cannot understand what has arisen, How, my son, into your prison White nights stare so brilliantly.
Now once more they burn, Eyes that focus like a hawk, And, upon your cross, the talk Is again of death.
[1939.
Spring] VII THE VERDICT The word landed with a stony thud Onto my still-beating breast.
Nevermind, I was prepared, I will manage with the rest.
I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again.
.
.
But how.
The hot summer rustles Like a carnival outside my window; I have long had this premonition Of a bright day and a deserted house.
[22 June 1939.
Summer.
Fontannyi Dom (4)] VIII TO DEATH You will come anyway - so why not now? I wait for you; things have become too hard.
I have turned out the lights and opened the door For you, so simple and so wonderful.
Assume whatever shape you wish.
Burst in Like a shell of noxious gas.
Creep up on me Like a practised bandit with a heavy weapon.
Poison me, if you want, with a typhoid exhalation, Or, with a simple tale prepared by you (And known by all to the point of nausea), take me Before the commander of the blue caps and let me glimpse The house administrator's terrified white face.
I don't care anymore.
The river Yenisey Swirls on.
The Pole star blazes.
The blue sparks of those much-loved eyes Close over and cover the final horror.
[19 August 1939.
Fontannyi Dom] IX Madness with its wings Has covered half my soul It feeds me fiery wine And lures me into the abyss.
That's when I understood While listening to my alien delirium That I must hand the victory To it.
However much I nag However much I beg It will not let me take One single thing away: Not my son's frightening eyes - A suffering set in stone, Or prison visiting hours Or days that end in storms Nor the sweet coolness of a hand The anxious shade of lime trees Nor the light distant sound Of final comforting words.
[14 May 1940.
Fontannyi Dom] X CRUCIFIXION Weep not for me, mother.
I am alive in my grave.
1.
A choir of angels glorified the greatest hour, The heavens melted into flames.
To his father he said, 'Why hast thou forsaken me!' But to his mother, 'Weep not for me.
.
.
' [1940.
Fontannyi Dom] 2.
Magdalena smote herself and wept, The favourite disciple turned to stone, But there, where the mother stood silent, Not one person dared to look.
[1943.
Tashkent] EPILOGUE 1.
I have learned how faces fall, How terror can escape from lowered eyes, How suffering can etch cruel pages Of cuneiform-like marks upon the cheeks.
I know how dark or ash-blond strands of hair Can suddenly turn white.
I've learned to recognise The fading smiles upon submissive lips, The trembling fear inside a hollow laugh.
That's why I pray not for myself But all of you who stood there with me Through fiercest cold and scorching July heat Under a towering, completely blind red wall.
2.
The hour has come to remember the dead.
I see you, I hear you, I feel you: The one who resisted the long drag to the open window; The one who could no longer feel the kick of familiar soil beneath her feet; The one who, with a sudden flick of her head, replied, 'I arrive here as if I've come home!' I'd like to name you all by name, but the list Has been removed and there is nowhere else to look.
So, I have woven you this wide shroud out of the humble words I overheard you use.
Everywhere, forever and always, I will never forget one single thing.
Even in new grief.
Even if they clamp shut my tormented mouth Through which one hundred million people scream; That's how I wish them to remember me when I am dead On the eve of my remembrance day.
If someone someday in this country Decides to raise a memorial to me, I give my consent to this festivity But only on this condition - do not build it By the sea where I was born, I have severed my last ties with the sea; Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed stump Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me; Build it here where I stood for three hundred hours And no-one slid open the bolt.
Listen, even in blissful death I fear That I will forget the Black Marias, Forget how hatefully the door slammed and an old woman Howled like a wounded beast.
Let the thawing ice flow like tears From my immovable bronze eyelids And let the prison dove coo in the distance While ships sail quietly along the river.
[March 1940.
Fontannyi Dom] FOOTNOTES 1 An elite guard which rose up in rebellion against Peter the Great in 1698.
Most were either executed or exiled.
2 The imperial summer residence outside St Petersburg where Ahmatova spent her early years.
3 A prison complex in central Leningrad near the Finland Station, called The Crosses because of the shape of two of the buildings.
4 The Leningrad house in which Ahmatova lived.


Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Dialogue Between Ghost And Priest

 In the rectory garden on his evening walk
Paced brisk Father Shawn.
A cold day, a sodden one it was In black November.
After a sliding rain Dew stood in chill sweat on each stalk, Each thorn; spiring from wet earth, a blue haze Hung caught in dark-webbed branches like a fabulous heron.
Hauled sudden from solitude, Hair prickling on his head, Father Shawn perceived a ghost Shaping itself from that mist.
'How now,' Father Shawn crisply addressed the ghost Wavering there, gauze-edged, smelling of woodsmoke, 'What manner of business are you on? From your blue pallor, I'd say you inhabited the frozen waste Of hell, and not the fiery part.
Yet to judge by that dazzled look, That noble mien, perhaps you've late quitted heaven?' In voice furred with frost, Ghost said to priest: 'Neither of those countries do I frequent: Earth is my haunt.
' 'Come, come,' Father Shawn gave an impatient shrug, 'I don't ask you to spin some ridiculous fable Of gilded harps or gnawing fire: simply tell After your life's end, what just epilogue God ordained to follow up your days.
Is it such trouble To satisfy the questions of a curious old fool?' 'In life, love gnawed my skin To this white bone; What love did then, love does now: Gnaws me through.
' 'What love,' asked Father Shawn, 'but too great love Of flawed earth-flesh could cause this sorry pass? Some damned condition you are in: Thinking never to have left the world, you grieve As though alive, shriveling in torment thus To atone as shade for sin that lured blind man.
' 'The day of doom Is not yest come.
Until that time A crock of dust is my dear hom.
' 'Fond phantom,' cried shocked Father Shawn, 'Can there be such stubbornness-- A soul grown feverish, clutching its dead body-tree Like a last storm-crossed leaf? Best get you gone To judgment in a higher court of grace.
Repent, depart, before God's trump-crack splits the sky.
' From that pale mist Ghost swore to priest: 'There sits no higher court Than man's red heart.
'
Written by Robert Frost | Create an image from this poem

A Servant to Servants

 I didn't make you know how glad I was 
To have you come and camp here on our land.
I promised myself to get down some day And see the way you lived, but I don't know! With a houseful of hungry men to feed I guess you'd find.
.
.
.
It seems to me I can't express my feelings any more Than I can raise my voice or want to lift My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to).
Did ever you feel so? I hope you never.
It's got so I don't even know for sure Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything.
There's nothing but a voice-like left inside That seems to tell me how I ought to feel, And would feel if I wasn't all gone wrong.
You take the lake.
I look and look at it.
I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water.
I stand and make myself repeat out loud The advantages it has, so long and narrow, Like a deep piece of some old running river Cut short off at both ends.
It lies five miles Straight away through the mountain notch From the sink window where I wash the plates, And all our storms come up toward the house, Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter and whiter.
It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuit To step outdoors and take the water dazzle A sunny morning, or take the rising wind About my face and body and through my wrapper, When a storm threatened from the Dragon's Den, And a cold chill shivered across the lake.
I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water, Our Willoughby! How did you hear of it? I expect, though, everyone's heard of it.
In a book about ferns? Listen to that! You let things more like feathers regulate Your going and coming.
And you like it here? I can see how you might.
But I don't know! It would be different if more people came, For then there would be business.
As it is, The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them, Sometimes we don't.
We've a good piece of shore That ought to be worth something, and may yet.
But I don't count on it as much as Len.
He looks on the bright side of everything, Including me.
He thinks I'll be all right With doctoring.
But it's not medicine-- Lowe is the only doctor's dared to say so-- It's rest I want--there, I have said it out-- From cooking meals for hungry hired men And washing dishes after them--from doing Things over and over that just won't stay done.
By good rights I ought not to have so much Put on me, but there seems no other way.
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.
He says the best way out is always through.
And I agree to that, or in so far As that I can see no way out but through-- Leastways for me--and then they'll be convinced.
It's not that Len don't want the best for me.
It was his plan our moving over in Beside the lake from where that day I showed you We used to live--ten miles from anywhere.
We didn't change without some sacrifice, But Len went at it to make up the loss.
His work's a man's, of course, from sun to sun, But he works when he works as hard as I do-- Though there's small profit in comparisons.
(Women and men will make them all the same.
) But work ain't all.
Len undertakes too much.
He's into everything in town.
This year It's highways, and he's got too many men Around him to look after that make waste.
They take advantage of him shamefully, And proud, too, of themselves for doing so.
We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings, Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk While I fry their bacon.
Much they care! No more put out in what they do or say Than if I wasn't in the room at all.
Coming and going all the time, they are: I don't learn what their names are, let alone Their characters, or whether they are safe To have inside the house with doors unlocked.
I'm not afraid of them, though, if they're not Afraid of me.
There's two can play at that.
I have my fancies: it runs in the family.
My father's brother wasn't right.
They kept him Locked up for years back there at the old farm.
I've been away once--yes, I've been away.
The State Asylum.
I was prejudiced; I wouldn't have sent anyone of mine there; You know the old idea--the only asylum Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford, Rather than send their folks to such a place, Kept them at home; and it does seem more human.
But it's not so: the place is the asylum.
There they have every means proper to do with, And you aren't darkening other people's lives-- Worse than no good to them, and they no good To you in your condition; you can't know Affection or the want of it in that state.
I've heard too much of the old-fashioned way.
My father's brother, he went mad quite young.
Some thought he had been bitten by a dog, Because his violence took on the form Of carrying his pillow in his teeth; But it's more likely he was crossed in love, Or so the story goes.
It was some girl.
Anyway all he talked about was love.
They soon saw he would do someone a mischief If he wa'n't kept strict watch of, and it ended In father's building him a sort of cage, Or room within a room, of hickory poles, Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling,-- A narrow passage all the way around.
Anything they put in for furniture He'd tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on.
So they made the place comfortable with straw, Like a beast's stall, to ease their consciences.
Of course they had to feed him without dishes.
They tried to keep him clothed, but he paraded With his clothes on his arm--all of his clothes.
Cruel--it sounds.
I 'spose they did the best They knew.
And just when he was at the height, Father and mother married, and mother came, A bride, to help take care of such a creature, And accommodate her young life to his.
That was what marrying father meant to her.
She had to lie and hear love things made dreadful By his shouts in the night.
He'd shout and shout Until the strength was shouted out of him, And his voice died down slowly from exhaustion.
He'd pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string, And let them go and make them twang until His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow.
And then he'd crow as if he thought that child's play-- The only fun he had.
I've heard them say, though, They found a way to put a stop to it.
He was before my time--I never saw him; But the pen stayed exactly as it was There in the upper chamber in the ell, A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter.
I often think of the smooth hickory bars.
It got so I would say--you know, half fooling-- "It's time I took my turn upstairs in jail"-- Just as you will till it becomes a habit.
No wonder I was glad to get away.
Mind you, I waited till Len said the word.
I didn't want the blame if things went wrong.
I was glad though, no end, when we moved out, And I looked to be happy, and I was, As I said, for a while--but I don't know! Somehow the change wore out like a prescription.
And there's more to it than just window-views And living by a lake.
I'm past such help-- Unless Len took the notion, which he won't, And I won't ask him--it's not sure enough.
I 'spose I've got to go the road I'm going: Other folks have to, and why shouldn't I? I almost think if I could do like you, Drop everything and live out on the ground-- But it might be, come night, I shouldn't like it, Or a long rain.
I should soon get enough, And be glad of a good roof overhead.
I've lain awake thinking of you, I'll warrant, More than you have yourself, some of these nights.
The wonder was the tents weren't snatched away From over you as you lay in your beds.
I haven't courage for a risk like that.
Bless you, of course, you're keeping me from work, But the thing of it is, I need to be kept.
There's work enough to do--there's always that; But behind's behind.
The worst that you can do Is set me back a little more behind.
I sha'n't catch up in this world, anyway.
I'd rather you'd not go unless you must.
Written by John Ashbery | Create an image from this poem

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland Fling Terrace.
He promised he'd get me out of this one, That mean old cartoonist, but just look what he's Done to me now! I scarce dare approach me mug's attenuated Reflection in yon hubcap, so jaundiced, so déconfit Are its lineaments--fun, no doubt, for some quack phrenologist's Fern-clogged waiting room, but hardly what you'd call Companionable.
But everything is getting choked to the point of Silence.
Just now a magnetic storm hung in the swatch of sky Over the Fudds' garage, reducing it--drastically-- To the aura of a plumbago-blue log cabin on A Gadsden Purchase commemorative cover.
Suddenly all is Loathing.
I don't want to go back inside any more.
You meet Enough vague people on this emerald traffic-island--no, Not people, comings and goings, more: mutterings, splatterings, The bizarrely but effectively equipped infantries of happy-go-nutty Vegetal jacqueries, plumed, pointed at the little White cardboard castle over the mill run.
"Up The lazy river, how happy we could be?" How will it end? That geranium glow Over Anaheim's had the riot act read to it by the Etna-size firecracker that exploded last minute into A carte du Tendre in whose lower right-hand corner (Hard by the jock-itch sand-trap that skirts The asparagus patch of algolagnic nuits blanches) Amadis Is cozening the Princesse de Cleves into a midnight micturition spree On the Tamigi with the Wallets (Walt, Blossom, and little Sleezix) on a lamé barge "borrowed" from Ollie Of the Movies' dread mistress of the robes.
Wait! I have an announcement! This wide, tepidly meandering, Civilized Lethe (one can barely make out the maypoles And châlets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore) leads to Tophet, that Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin Of a borborygmic giant who even now Is rolling over on us in his sleep.
Farewell bocages, Tanneries, water-meadows.
The allegory comes unsnarled Too soon; a shower of pecky acajou harpoons is About all there is to be noted between tornadoes.
I have Only my intermittent life in your thoughts to live Which is like thinking in another language.
Everything Depends on whether somebody reminds you of me.
That this is a fabulation, and that those "other times" Are in fact the silences of the soul, picked out in Diamonds on stygian velvet, matters less than it should.
Prodigies of timing may be arranged to convince them We live in one dimension, they in ours.
While I Abroad through all the coasts of dark destruction seek Deliverance for us all, think in that language: its Grammar, though tortured, offers pavillions At each new parting of the ways.
Pastel Ambulances scoop up the quick and hie them to hospitals.
"It's all bits and pieces, spangles, patches, really; nothing Stands alone.
What happened to creative evolution?" Sighed Aglavaine.
Then to her Sélysette: "If his Achievement is only to end up less boring than the others, What's keeping us here? Why not leave at once? I have to stay here while they sit in there, Laugh, drink, have fine time.
In my day One lay under the tough green leaves, Pretending not to notice how they bled into The sky's aqua, the wafted-away no-color of regions supposed Not to concern us.
And so we too Came where the others came: nights of physical endurance, Or if, by day, our behavior was anarchically Correct, at least by New Brutalism standards, all then Grew taciturn by previous agreement.
We were spirited Away en bateau, under cover of fudge dark.
It's not the incomplete importunes, but the spookiness Of the finished product.
True, to ask less were folly, yet If he is the result of himself, how much the better For him we ought to be! And how little, finally, We take this into account! Is the puckered garance satin Of a case that once held a brace of dueling pistols our Only acknowledging of that color? I like not this, Methinks, yet this disappointing sequel to ourselves Has been applauded in London and St.
Petersburg.
Somewhere Ravens pray for us.
" The storm finished brewing.
And thus She questioned all who came in at the great gate, but none She found who ever heard of Amadis, Nor of stern Aureng-Zebe, his first love.
Some They were to whom this mattered not a jot: since all By definition is completeness (so In utter darkness they reasoned), why not Accept it as it pleases to reveal itself? As when Low skyscrapers from lower-hanging clouds reveal A turret there, an art-deco escarpment here, and last perhaps The pattern that may carry the sense, but Stays hidden in the mysteries of pagination.
Not what we see but how we see it matters; all's Alike, the same, and we greet him who announces The change as we would greet the change itself.
All life is but a figment; conversely, the tiny Tome that slips from your hand is not perhaps the Missing link in this invisible picnic whose leverage Shrouds our sense of it.
Therefore bivouac we On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by Veiled scruples, worn conundrums.
Morning is Impermanent.
Grab sex things, swing up Over the horizon like a boy On a fishing expedition.
No one really knows Or cares whether this is the whole of which parts Were vouchsafed--once--but to be ambling on's The tradition more than the safekeeping of it.
This mulch for Play keeps them interested and busy while the big, Vaguer stuff can decide what it wants--what maps, what Model cities, how much waste space.
Life, our Life anyway, is between.
We don't mind Or notice any more that the sky is green, a parrot One, but have our earnest where it chances on us, Disingenuous, intrigued, inviting more, Always invoking the echo, a summer's day.
Written by Sir Walter Raleigh | Create an image from this poem

The Lie

 Go, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
Say to the court, it glows And shines like rotten wood; Say to the church, it shows What's good, and doth no good: If church and court reply, Then give them both the lie.
Tell potentates, they live Acting by others' action; Not loved unless they give, Not strong but by a faction.
If potentates reply, Give potentates the lie.
Tell men of high condition, That manage the estate, Their purpose is ambition, Their practice only hate: And if they once reply, Then give them all the lie.
Tell them that brave it most, They beg for more by spending, Who, in their greatest cost, Seek nothing but commending.
And if they make reply, Then give them all the lie.
Tell zeal it wants devotion; Tell love it is but lust; Tell time it is but motion; Tell flesh it is but dust: And wish them not reply, For thou must give the lie.
Tell age it daily wasteth; Tell honour how it alters; Tell beauty how she blasteth; Tell favour how it falters: And as they shall reply, Give every one the lie.
Tell wit how much it wrangles In tickle points of niceness; Tell wisdom she entangles Herself in overwiseness: And when they do reply, Straight give them both the lie.
Tell physic of her boldness; Tell skill it is pretension; Tell charity of coldness; Tell law it is contention: And as they do reply, So give them still the lie.
Tell fortune of her blindness; Tell nature of decay; Tell friendship of unkindness; Tell justice of delay: And if they will reply, Then give them all the lie.
Tell arts they have no soundness, But vary by esteeming; Tell schools they want profoundness, And stand too much on seeming: If arts and schools reply, Give arts and schools the lie.
Tell faith it's fled the city; Tell how the country erreth; Tell manhood shakes off pity And virtue least preferreth: And if they do reply, Spare not to give the lie.
So when thou hast, as I Commanded thee, done blabbing— Although to give the lie Deserves no less than stabbing— Stab at thee he that will, No stab the soul can kill.


Written by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot | Create an image from this poem

Little Gidding

We shall not cease from exploration 
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half heard, in the stillness Between the two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always-- A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of things shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.
Little Gidding V, Four Quartets.
-- T.
S.
Eliot (1943)
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

My Suicide

 I've often wondered why
Old chaps who choose to die
In evil passes,
Before themselves they slay,
Invariably they
Take off their glasses?

As I strolled by the Castle cliff
An oldish chap I set my eyes on,
Who stood so singularly stiff
And stark against the blue horizon;
A poet fashioning a sonnet,
I thought - how rapt he labours on it!

And then I blinked and stood astare,
And questioned at my sight condition,
For I was seeing empty air -
He must have been an apparition.
Amazed I gazed .
.
.
no one was there: My sanity roused my suspicion.
I strode to where I saw him stand So solitary in the sun - Nothing! just empty sew and land, no smallest sign of anyone.
While down below I heard the roar Of waves, five hundred feet or more.
I had been drinking, I confess; There was confusion in my brain, And I was feeling more or less The fumes of overnight champagne.
So standing on that dizzy shelf: "You saw no one," I told myself.
"No need to call the local law, For after all its not your business.
You just imagined what you saw .
.
.
" Then I was seized with sudden dizziness: For at my feet, beyond denying, A pair of spectacles were lying.
And so I simply let them lie, And sped from that accursed spot.
No lover of the police am I, And sooner would be drunk than not.
"I'll scram," said I, "and leave the locals To find and trace them dam bi-focals.
"
Written by Henry Van Dyke | Create an image from this poem

The Vain King

 In robes of Tyrian blue the King was drest,
A jewelled collar shone upon his breast,
A giant ruby glittered in his crown -----
Lord of rich lands and many a splendid town.
In him the glories of an ancient line Of sober kings, who ruled by right divine, Were centred; and to him with loyal awe The people looked for leadership and law.
Ten thousand knights, the safeguard of the land, Lay like a single sword within his hand; A hundred courts, with power of life and death, Proclaimed decrees justice by his breath; And all the sacred growths that men had known Of order and of rule upheld his throne.
Proud was the King: yet not with such a heart As fits a man to play a royal part.
Not his the pride that honours as a trust The right to rule, the duty to be just: Not his the dignity that bends to bear The monarch's yoke, the master's load of care, And labours like the peasant at his gate, To serve the people and protect the State.
Another pride was his, and other joys: To him the crown and sceptre were but toys, With which he played at glory's idle game, To please himself and win the wreaths of fame.
The throne his fathers held from age to age Built for King Martin to diplay at will, His mighty strength and universal skill.
No conscious child, that, spoiled with praising, tries At every step to win admiring eyes, ---- No favourite mountebank, whose acting draws From gaping crowds loud thunder of applause, Was vainer than the King: his only thirst Was to be hailed, in every race, the first.
When tournament was held, in knightly guise The King would ride the lists and win the prize; When music charmed the court, with golden lyre The King would take the stage and lead the choir; In hunting, his the lance to slay the boar; In hawking, see his falcon highest soar; In painting, he would wield the master's brush; In high debate, -----"the King is speaking! Hush!" Thus, with a restless heart, in every field He sought renown, and found his subjects yield As if he were a demi-god revealed.
But while he played the petty games of life His kingdom fell a prey to inward strife; Corruption through the court unheeded crept, And on the seat of honour justice slept.
The strong trod down the weak; the helpless poor Groaned under burdens grievous to endure.
The nation's wealth was spent in vain display, And weakness wore the nation's heart away.
Yet think not Earth is blind to human woes --- Man has more friends and helpers than he knows; And when a patient people are oppressed, The land that bore them feels it in her breast.
Spirits of field and flood, of heath and hill, Are grieved and angry at the spreading ill; The trees complain together in the night, Voices of wrath are heard along the height, And secret vows are sworn, by stream and strand, To bring the tyrant low and liberate the land.
But little recked the pampered King of these; He heard no voice but such as praise and please.
Flattered and fooled, victor in every sport, One day he wandered idly with his court Beside the river, seeking to devise New ways to show his skill to wondering eyes.
There in the stream a patient fisher stood, And cast his line across the rippling flood.
His silver spoil lay near him on the green: "Such fish," the courtiers cried, "were never seen!" "Three salmon larger than a cloth-yard shaft--- "This man must be the master of his craft!" "An easy art!" the jealous King replied: "Myself could learn it better, if I tried, "And catch a hundred larger fish a week--- "Wilt thou accept the challenge, fellow? Speak!" The fisher turned, came near, and bent his knee: "'Tis not for kings to strive with such as me; "Yet if the King commands it, I obey.
"But one condition of the strife I pray: "The fisherman who brings the least to land "Shall do whate'er the other may command.
" Loud laughed the King: "A foolish fisher thou! "For I shall win and rule thee then as now.
" So to Prince John, a sober soul, sedate And slow, King Martin left the helm of state, While to the novel game with eager zest He all his time and all his powers addrest.
Sure such a sight was never seen before! For robed and crowned the monarch trod the shore; His golden hooks were decked with feathers fine, His jewelled reel ran out a silken line.
With kingly strokes he flogged the crystal stream, Far-off the salmon saw his tackle gleam; Careless of kings, they eyed with calm disdain The gaudy lure, and Martin fished in vain.
On Friday, when the week was almost spent, He scanned his empty creel with discontent, Called for a net, and cast it far and wide, And drew --- a thousand minnows from the tide! Then came the fisher to conclude the match, And at the monarch's feet spread out his catch --- A hundred salmon, greater than before --- "I win!" he cried: "the King must pay the score.
" Then Martin, angry, threw his tackle down: "Rather than lose this game I'd lose me crown!" "Nay, thou has lost them both," the fisher said; And as he spoke a wondrous light was shed Around his form; he dropped his garments mean, And in his place the River-god was seen.
"Thy vanity hast brought thee in my power, "And thou shalt pay the forfeit at this hour: "For thou hast shown thyself a royal fool, "Too proud to angle, and too vain to rule.
"Eager to win in every trivial strife, --- "Go! Thou shalt fish for minnows all thy life!" Wrathful, the King the scornful sentence heard; He strove to answer, but he only chirr-r-ed: His Tyrian robe was changed to wings of blue, His crown became a crest, --- away he flew! And still, along the reaches of the stream, The vain King-fisher flits, an azure gleam, --- You see his ruby crest, you hear his jealous scream.
Written by Adrienne Rich | Create an image from this poem

Integrity

 the quality of being complete; unbroken condition; entirety
~ Webster
A wild patience has taken me this far

as if I had to bring to shore
a boat with a spasmodic outboard motor
old sweaters, nets, spray-mottled books
tossed in the prow
some kind of sun burning my shoulder-blades.
Splashing the oarlocks.
Burning through.
Your fore-arms can get scalded, licked with pain in a sun blotted like unspoken anger behind a casual mist.
The length of daylight this far north, in this forty-ninth year of my life is critical.
The light is critical: of me, of this long-dreamed, involuntary landing on the arm of an inland sea.
The glitter of the shoal depleting into shadow I recognize: the stand of pines violet-black really, green in the old postcard but really I have nothing but myself to go by; nothing stands in the realm of pure necessity except what my hands can hold.
Nothing but myself?.
.
.
.
My selves.
After so long, this answer.
As if I had always known I steer the boat in, simply.
The motor dying on the pebbles cicadas taking up the hum dropped in the silence.
Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me as angels, not polarities.
Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius to spin and weave in the same action from her own body, anywhere -- even from a broken web.
The cabin in the stand of pines is still for sale.
I know this.
Know the print of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked the door, then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis back on the trellis for no one's sake except its own.
I know the chart nailed to the wallboards the icy kettle squatting on the burner.
The hands that hammered in those nails emptied that kettle one last time are these two hands and they have caught the baby leaping from between trembling legs and they have worked the vacuum aspirator and stroked the sweated temples and steered the boat there through this hot misblotted sunlight, critical light imperceptibly scalding the skin these hands will also salve.
Written by Katherine Philips | Create an image from this poem

The World

 Wee falsely think it due unto our friends,
That we should grieve for their too early ends:
He that surveys the world with serious eys,
And stripps Her from her grosse and weak disguise,
Shall find 'tis injury to mourn their fate;
He only dy's untimely who dy's Late.
For if 'twere told to children in the womb, To what a stage of mischief they must come Could they foresee with how much toile and sweat Men court that Guilded nothing, being Great; What paines they take not to be what they seem, Rating their blisse by others false esteem, And sacrificing their content, to be Guilty of grave and serious Vanity; How each condition hath its proper Thorns, And what one man admires, another Scorns; How frequently their happiness they misse, And so farre from agreeing what it is, That the same Person we can hardly find, Who is an houre together in a mind; Sure they would beg a period of their breath, And what we call their birth would count their Death.
Mankind is mad; for none can live alone Because their joys stand by comparison: And yet they quarrell at Society, And strive to kill they know not whom, nor why, We all live by mistake, delight in Dreames, Lost to ourselves, and dwelling in extreames; Rejecting what we have, though ne're so good, And prizing what we never understood.
compar'd to our boystrous inconstancy Tempests are calme, and discords harmony.
Hence we reverse the world, and yet do find The God that made can hardly please our mind.
We live by chance, and slip into Events; Have all of Beasts except their Innocence.
The soule, which no man's pow'r can reach, a thing That makes each women Man, each man a King.
Doth so much loose, and from its height so fall, That some content to have no Soule at all.
"Tis either not observ'd, or at the best By passion fought withall, by sin deprest.
Freedome of will (god's image) is forgot; And if we know it, we improve it not.
Our thoughts, thou nothing can be more our own, Are still unguided, verry seldom known.
Time 'scapes our hands as water in a Sieve, We come to dy ere we begin to Live.
Truth, the most suitable and noble Prize, Food of our spirits, yet neglected ly's.
Errours and shaddows ar our choice, and we Ow our perdition to our Own decree.
If we search Truth, we make it more obscure; And when it shines, we can't the Light endure; For most men who plod on, and eat, and drink, Have nothing less their business then to think; And those few that enquire, how small a share Of Truth they fine! how dark their notions are! That serious evenness that calmes the Brest, And in a Tempest can bestow a rest, We either not attempt, or elce [sic] decline, By every triffle snatch'd from our design.
(Others he must in his deceits involve, Who is not true unto his own resolve.
) We govern not our selves, but loose the reins, Courting our bondage to a thousand chains; And with as man slaverys content, As there are Tyrants ready to Torment, We live upon a Rack, extended still To one extreme, or both, but always ill.
For since our fortune is not understood, We suffer less from bad then from the good.
The sting is better drest and longer lasts, As surfeits are more dangerous than fasts.
And to compleat the misery to us, We see extreames are still contiguous.
And as we run so fast from what we hate, Like Squibs on ropes, to know no middle state; So (outward storms strengthen'd by us) we find Our fortune as disordred as our mind.
But that's excus'd by this, it doth its part; A treacherous world befits a treacherous heart.
All ill's our own; the outward storms we loath Receive from us their birth, or sting, or both; And that our Vanity be past a doubt, 'Tis one new vanity to find it out.
Happy are they to whom god gives a Grave, And from themselves as from his wrath doeth save.
'Tis good not to be born; but if we must, The next good is, soone to return to Dust: When th'uncag'd soule, fled to Eternity, Shall rest and live, and sing, and love, and See.
Here we but crawle and grope, and play and cry; Are first our own, then others Enemy: But there shall be defac'd both stain and score, For time, and Death, and sin shall be no more.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things