Written by
John Keats |
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees 5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more
And still more later flowers for the bees
Until they think warm days will never cease 10
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 15
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep
Drowsed with the fume of poppies while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twin¨¨d flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook; 20
Or by a cider-press with patient look
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay where are they?
Think not of them thou hast thy music too ¡ª
While barr¨¨d clouds bloom the soft-dying day 25
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
|
Written by
John Keats |
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
|
Written by
Elizabeth Bishop |
I
A washing hangs upon the line,
but it's not mine.
None of the things that I can see
belong to me.
The neighbors got a radio with an aerial;
we got a little portable.
They got a lot of closet space;
we got a suitcase.
I say, "Le Roy, just how much are we owing?
Something I can't comprehend,
the more we got the more we spend...."
He only answers, "Let's get going."
Le Roy, you're earning too much money now.
I sit and look at our backyard
and find it very hard.
What have we got for all his dollars and cents?
--A pile of bottles by the fence.
He's faithful and he's kind
but he sure has an inquiring mind.
He's seen a lot; he's bound to see the rest,
and if I protest
Le Roy answers with a frown,
"Darling, when I earns I spends.
The world is wide; it still extends....
I'm going to get a job in the next town."
Le Roy, you're earning too much money now.
II
The time has come to call a halt;
and so it ends.
He's gone off with his other friends.
He needn't try to make amends,
this occasion's all his fault.
Through rain and dark I see his face
across the street at Flossie's place.
He's drinking in the warm pink glow
to th' accompaniment of the piccolo.*
The time has come to call a halt.
I met him walking with Varella
and hit him twice with my umbrella.
Perhaps that occasion was my fault,
but the time has come to call a halt.
Go drink your wine and go get tight.
Let the piccolo play.
I'm sick of all your fussing anyway.
Now I'm pursuing my own way.
I'm leaving on the bus tonight.
Far down the highway wet and black
I'll ride and ride and not come back.
I'm going to go and take the bus
and find someone monogamous.
The time has come to call a halt.
I've borrowed fifteen dollars fare
and it will take me anywhere.
For this occasion's all his fault.
The time has come to call a halt.
*Jukebox
III
Lullaby.
Adult and child
sink to their rest.
At sea the big ship sinks and dies,
lead in its breast.
Lullaby.
Let mations rage,
let nations fall.
The shadow of the crib makes an enormous cage
upon the wall.
Lullaby.
Sleep on and on,
war's over soon.
Drop the silly, harmless toy,
pick up the moon.
Lullaby.
If they should say
you have no sense,
don't you mind them; it won't make
much difference.
Lullaby.
Adult and child
sink to their rest.
At sea the big ship sinks and dies,
lead in its breast.
IV
What's that shining in the leaves,
the shadowy leaves,
like tears when somebody grieves,
shining, shining in the leaves?
Is it dew or is it tears,
dew or tears,
hanging there for years and years
like a heavy dew of tears?
Then that dew begins to fall,
roll down and fall,
Maybe it's not tears at all.
See it, see it roll and fall.
Hear it falling on the ground,
hear, all around.
That is not a tearful sound,
beating, beating on the ground.
See it lying there like seeds,
like black seeds.
see it taking root like weeds,
faster, faster than the weeds,
all the shining seeds take root,
conspiring root,
and what curious flower or fruit
will grow from that conspiring root?
fruit or flower? It is a face.
Yes, a face.
In that dark and dreary place
each seed grows into a face.
Like an army in a dream
the faces seem,
darker, darker, like a dream.
They're too real to be a dream.
|
Written by
William Butler Yeats |
The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
But a raving autumn shears
Blossom from the summer's wreath;
The older is condemned to death,
Pardoned, drags out lonely years
Conspiring among the ignorant.
I know not what the younger dreams -
Some vague Utopia - and she seems,
When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
An image of such politics.
Many a time I think to seek
One or the other out and speak
Of that old Georgian mansion, mix
pictures of the mind, recall
That table and the talk of youth,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
Dear shadows, now you know it all,
All the folly of a fight
With a common wrong or right.
The innocent and the beautiful.
Have no enemy but time;
Arise and bid me strike a match
And strike another till time catch;
Should the conflagration climb,
Run till all the sages know.
We the great gazebo built,
They convicted us of guilt;
Bid me strike a match and blow.
|
Written by
Howard Nemerov |
On the long shore, lit by the moon
To show them properly alone,
Two lovers suddenly embraced
So that their shadows were as one.
The ordinary night was graced
For them by the swift tide of blood
That silently they took at flood,
And for a little time they prized
Themselves emparadised.
Then, as if shaken by stage-fright
Beneath the hard moon's bony light,
They stood together on the sand
Embarrassed in each other's sight
But still conspiring hand in hand,
Until they saw, there underfoot,
As though the world had found them out,
The goose fish turning up, though dead,
His hugely grinning head.
There in the china light he lay,
Most ancient and corrupt and grey.
They hesitated at his smile,
Wondering what it seemed to say
To lovers who a little while
Before had thought to understand,
By violence upon the sand,
The only way that could be known
To make a world their own.
It was a wide and moony grin
Together peaceful and obscene;
They knew not what he would express,
So finished a comedian
He might mean failure or success,
But took it for an emblem of
Their sudden, new and guilty love
To be observed by, when they kissed,
That rigid optimist.
So he became their patriarch,
Dreadfully mild in the half-dark.
His throat that the sand seemed to choke,
His picket teeth, these left their mark
But never did explain the joke
That so amused him, lying there
While the moon went down to disappear
Along the still and tilted track
That bears the zodiac.
|
Written by
Anne Kingsmill Finch |
Silvia, let's from the Crowd retire;
For, What to you and me
(Who but each other do desire)
Is all that here we see?
Apart we'll live, tho' not alone;
For, who alone can call
Those, who in Desarts live with One,
If in that One they've All?
The World a vast Meander is,
Where Hearts confus'dly stray;
Where Few do hit, whilst Thousands miss
The happy mutual Way:
Where Hands are by stern Parents ty'd,
Who oft, in Cupid's Scorn,
Do for the widow'd State provide,
Before that Love is born:
Where some too soon themselves misplace;
Then in Another find
The only Temper, Wit, or Face,
That cou'd affect their Mind.
Others (but oh! avert that Fate!)
A well-chose Object change:
Fly, Silvia, fly, ere 'tis too late;
Fall'n Nature's prone to range.
And, tho' in heat of Love we swear
More than perform we can;
No Goddess, You, but Woman are,
And I no more than Man.
Th' impatient Silvia heard thus long;
Then with a Smile reply'd;
Those Bands cou'd ne'er be very strong,
Which Accidents divide.
Who e'er was mov'd yet to go down,
By such o'er-cautious Fear;
Or for one Lover left the Town,
Who might have Numbers here?
Your Heart, 'tis true, is worth them all,
And still preferr'd the first;
But since confess'd so apt to fall,
'Tis good to fear the worst.
In ancient History we meet
A flying Nymph betray'd;
Who, had she kept in fruitful Crete,
New Conquest might have made.
And sure, as on the Beach she stood,
To view the parting Sails;
She curs'd her self, more than the Flood,
Or the conspiring Gales.
False Theseus, since thy Vows are broke,
May following Nymphs beware:
Methinks I hear how thus she spoke,
And will not trust too far.
In Love, in Play, in Trade, in War
They best themselves acquit,
Who, tho' their Int'rests shipwreckt are,
Keep unreprov'd their Wit.
|
Written by
Robert Herrick |
Ah, Posthumus! our years hence fly
And leave no sound: nor piety,
Or prayers, or vow
Can keep the wrinkle from the brow;
But we must on,
As fate does lead or draw us; none,
None, Posthumus, could e'er decline
The doom of cruel Proserpine.
The pleasing wife, the house, the ground
Must all be left, no one plant found
To follow thee,
Save only the curst cypress-tree!
--A merry mind
Looks forward, scorns what's left behind;
Let's live, my Wickes, then, while we may,
And here enjoy our holiday.
We've seen the past best times, and these
Will ne'er return; we see the seas,
And moons to wane,
But they fill up their ebbs again;
But vanish'd man,
Like to a lily lost, ne'er can,
Ne'er can repullulate, or bring
His days to see a second spring.
But on we must, and thither tend,
Where Ancus and rich Tullus blend
Their sacred seed;
Thus has infernal Jove decreed;
We must be made,
Ere long a song, ere long a shade.
Why then, since life to us is short,
Let's make it full up by our sport.
Crown we our heads with roses then,
And 'noint with Tyrian balm; for when
We two are dead,
The world with us is buried.
Then live we free
As is the air, and let us be
Our own fair wind, and mark each one
Day with the white and lucky stone.
We are not poor, although we have
No roofs of cedar, nor our brave
Baiae, nor keep
Account of such a flock of sheep;
Nor bullocks fed
To lard the shambles; barbels bred
To kiss our hands; nor do we wish
For Pollio's lampreys in our dish.
If we can meet, and so confer,
Both by a shining salt-cellar,
And have our roof,
Although not arch'd, yet weather-proof,
And cieling free,
From that cheap candle-baudery;
We'll eat our bean with that full mirth
As we were lords of all the earth.
Well, then, on what seas we are tost,
Our comfort is, we can't be lost.
Let the winds drive
Our bark, yet she will keep alive
Amidst the deeps;
'Tis constancy, my Wickes, which keeps
The pinnace up; which, though she errs
I' th' seas, she saves her passengers.
Say, we must part; sweet mercy bless
Us both i' th' sea, camp, wilderness!
Can we so far
Stray, to become less circular
Than we are now?
No, no, that self-same heart, that vow
Which made us one, shall ne'er undo,
Or ravel so, to make us two.
Live in thy peace; as for myself,
When I am bruised on the shelf
Of time, and show
My locks behung with frost and snow;
When with the rheum,
The cough, the pthisic, I consume
Unto an almost nothing; then,
The ages fled, I'll call again,
And with a tear compare these last
Lame and bad times with those are past,
While Baucis by,
My old lean wife, shall kiss it dry;
And so we'll sit
By th' fire, foretelling snow and slit
And weather by our aches, grown
Now old enough to be our own
True calendars, as puss's ear
Wash'd o'er 's, to tell what change is near;
Then to assuage
The gripings of the chine by age,
I'll call my young
Iulus to sing such a song
I made upon my Julia's breast,
And of her blush at such a feast.
Then shall he read that flower of mine
Enclosed within a crystal shrine;
A primrose next;
A piece then of a higher text;
For to beget
In me a more transcendant heat,
Than that insinuating fire
Which crept into each aged sire
When the fair Helen from her eyes
Shot forth her loving sorceries;
At which I'll rear
Mine aged limbs above my chair;
And hearing it,
Flutter and crow, as in a fit
Of fresh concupiscence, and cry,
'No lust there's like to Poetry.'
Thus frantic, crazy man, God wot,
I'll call to mind things half-forgot;
And oft between
Repeat the times that I have seen;
Thus ripe with tears,
And twisting my Iulus' hairs,
Doting, I'll weep and say, 'In truth,
Baucis, these were my sins of youth.'
Then next I'Il cause my hopeful lad,
If a wild apple can be had,
To crown the hearth;
Lar thus conspiring with our mirth;
Then to infuse
Our browner ale into the cruse;
Which, sweetly spiced, we'll first carouse
Unto the Genius of the house.
Then the next health to friends of mine.
Loving the brave Burgundian wine,
High sons of pith,
Whose fortunes I have frolick'd with;
Such as could well
Bear up the magic bough and spell;
And dancing 'bout the mystic Thyrse,
Give up the just applause to verse;
To those, and then again to thee,
We'll drink, my Wickes, until we be
Plump as the cherry,
Though not so fresh, yet full as merry
As the cricket,
The untamed heifer, or the pricket,
Until our tongues shall tell our ears,
We're younger by a score of years.
Thus, till we see the fire less shine
From th' embers than the kitling's eyne,
We'll still sit up,
Sphering about the wassail cup,
To all those times
Which gave me honour for my rhymes;
The coal once spent, we'll then to bed,
Far more than night bewearied.
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
"Below the Mill Dam" --Traffics and Discoveries
Thrones, Powers, Dominions, Peoples, Kings,
Are changing 'neath our hand.
Our fathers also see these things
But they do not understand.
By--they are by with mirth and tears,
Wit or the works of Desire-
Cushioned about on the kindly years
Between the wall and the fire.
The grapes are pressed, the corn is shocked--
Standeth no more to glean;
For the Gates of Love and Learning locked
When they went out between.
All lore our Lady Venus bares,
Signalled it was or told
By the dear lips long given to theirs
And longer to the mould.
All Profit, all Device, all Truth,
Written it was or said
By the mighty men of their mighty youth,
Which is mighty being dead.
The film that floats before their eyes
The Temple's Veil they call;
And the dust that on the Shewbread lies
Is holy over all.
Warn them of seas that slip our yoke,
Of slow-conspiring stars-
The ancient Front of Things unbroke
But heavy with new wars?
By--they are by with mirth and tears,
Wit or the waste of Desire-
Cushioned about on the kindly years
Between the wall and the fire!
|
Written by
Isaac Watts |
My God, how many are my fears!
How fast my foes increase!
Conspiring my eternal death,
They break my present peace.
The lying tempter would persuade
There's no relief from heaven;
And all my swelling sins appear
Too big to be forgiven.
But thou, my glory and my strength,
Shall on the tempter tread,
Shall silence all my threat'ning guilt,
And raise my drooping head.
I cried, and from his holy hill
He bowed a list'ning ear;
I called my Father, and my God,
And He subdued my fear.
He shed soft slumbers on mine eyes,
In spite of all my foes;
I woke, and wondered at the grace
That guarded my repose.
What through the hosts of death and hell
All armed against me stood,
Terrors no more shall shake my soul;
My refuge is my God.
Arise O Lord, fulfill thy grace,
While I thy glory sing;
My God has broke the serpent's teeth,
And death has lost his sting.
Salvation to the Lord belongs;
His arm alone can save:
Blessings attend thy people here,
And reach beyond the grave.
|
Written by
Isaac Watts |
Doubts and fears suppressed.
My God, how many are my fears!
How fast my foes increase!
Conspiring my eternal death,
They break my present peace.
The lying tempter would persuade
There's no relief in heav'n;
And all my swelling sins appear
Too big to be forgiv'n.
But thou, my glory and my strength,
Shalt on the tempter tread,
Shalt silence all my threatening guilt,
And raise my drooping head.
[I cried, and from his holy lull
He bowed a listening ear;
I called my Father, and my God,
And he subdued my fear.
He shed soft slumbers on mine eyes,
In spite of all my foes;
I woke, and wondered at the grace
That guarded my repose.]
What though the hosts of death and hell
All armed against me stood,
Terrors no more shall shake my soul;
My refuge is my God.
Arise, O Lord, fulfil thy grace,
While I thy glory sing;
My God has broke the serpent's teeth,
And death has lost his sting.
Salvation to the Lord belongs;
His arm alone can save:
Blessings attend thy people here,
And reach beyond the grave.
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