Written by
Eugene Field |
Of all the opry-houses then obtaining in the West
The one which Milton Tootle owned was, by all odds, the best;
Milt, being rich, was much too proud to run the thing alone,
So he hired an "acting manager," a gruff old man named Krone--
A stern, commanding man with piercing eyes and flowing beard,
And his voice assumed a thunderous tone when Jack and I appeared;
He said that Julius Caesar had been billed a week or so,
And would have to have some armies by the time he reached St. Jo!
O happy days, when Tragedy still winged an upward flight,
When actors wore tin helmets and cambric robes at night!
O happy days, when sounded in the public's rapturous ears
The creak of pasteboard armor and the clash of wooden spears!
O happy times for Jack and me and that one other supe
That then and there did constitute the noblest Roman's troop!
With togas, battle axes, shields, we made a dazzling show,
When we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!
We wheeled and filed and double-quicked wherever Brutus led,
The folks applauding what we did as much as what he said;
'T was work, indeed; yet Jack and I were willing to allow
'T was easier following Brutus than following father's plough;
And at each burst of cheering, our valor would increase--
We tramped a thousand miles that night, at fifty cents apiece!
For love of Art--not lust for gold--consumed us years ago,
When we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!
To-day, while walking in the Square, Jack Langrish says to me:
"My friend, the drama nowadays ain't what it used to be!
These farces and these comedies--how feebly they compare
With that mantle of the tragic art which Forrest used to wear!
My soul is warped with bitterness to think that you and I--
Co-heirs to immortality in seasons long gone by--
Now draw a paltry stipend from a Boston comic show,
We, who were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!"
And so we talked and so we mused upon the whims of Fate
That had degraded Tragedy from its old, supreme estate;
And duly, at the Morton bar, we stigmatized the age
As sinfully subversive of the interests of the Stage!
For Jack and I were actors in the halcyon, palmy days
Long, long before the Hoyt school of farce became the craze;
Yet, as I now recall it, it was twenty years ago
That we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!
We were by birth descended from a race of farmer kings
Who had done eternal battle with grasshoppers and things;
But the Kansas farms grew tedious--we pined for that delight
We read of in the Clipper in the barber's shop by night!
We would be actors--Jack and I--and so we stole away
From our native spot, Wathena, one dull September day,
And started for Missouri--ah, little did we know
We were going to train as soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!
Our army numbered three in all--Marc Antony's was four;
Our army hankered after fame, but Marc's was after gore!
And when we reached Philippi, at the outset we were met
With an inartistic gusto I can never quite forget.
For Antony's overwhelming force of thumpers seemed to be
Resolved to do "them Kansas jays"--and that meant Jack and me!
My lips were sealed but that it seems quite proper you should know
That Rome was nowhere in it at Philippi in St. Jo!
I've known the slow-consuming grief and ostentatious pain
Accruing from McKean Buchanan's melancholy Dane;
Away out West I've witnessed Bandmann's peerless hardihood,
With Arthur Cambridge have I wrought where walking was not good;
In every phase of horror have I bravely borne my part,
And even on my uppers have I proudly stood for Art!
And, after all my suffering, it were not hard to show
That I got my allopathic dose with Brutus at St. Jo!
That army fell upon me in a most bewildering rage
And scattered me and mine upon that histrionic stage;
My toga rent, my helmet gone and smashed to smithereens,
They picked me up and hove me through whole centuries of scenes!
I sailed through Christian eras and mediæval gloom
And fell from Arden forest into Juliet's painted tomb!
Oh, yes, I travelled far and fast that night, and I can show
The scars of honest wounds I got with Brutus in St. Jo!
Ah me, old Davenport is gone, of fickle fame forgot,
And Barrett sleeps forever in a much neglected spot;
Fred Warde, the papers tell me, in far woolly western lands
Still flaunts the banner of high Tragic Art at one-night stands;
And Jack and I, in Charley Hoyt's Bostonian dramas wreak
Our vengeance on creation at some eensty dolls per week.
By which you see that public taste has fallen mighty low
Since we fought as Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!
|
Written by
Philip Larkin |
This empty street, this sky to blandness scoured,
This air, a little indistinct with autumn
Like a reflection, constitute the present --
A time traditionally soured,
A time unrecommended by event.
But equally they make up something else:
This is the furthest future childhood saw
Between long houses, under travelling skies,
Heard in contending bells --
An air lambent with adult enterprise,
And on another day will be the past,
A valley cropped by fat neglected chances
That we insensately forbore to fleece.
On this we blame our last
Threadbare perspectives, seasonal decrease.
|
Written by
Thomas Hardy |
Moments the mightiest pass calendared,
And when the Absolute
In backward Time outgave the deedful word
Whereby all life is stirred:
"Let one be born and throned whose mould shall constitute
The norm of every royal-reckoned attribute,"
No mortal knew or heard.
But in due days the purposed Life outshone -
Serene, sagacious, free;
--Her waxing seasons bloomed with deeds well done,
And the world's heart was won . . .
Yet may the deed of hers most bright in eyes to be
Lie hid from ours--as in the All-One's thought lay she -
Till ripening years have run.
|
Written by
William Butler Yeats |
What if I bade you leave
The cavern of the mind?
There's better exercise
In the sunlight and wind.
I never bade you go
To Moscow or to Rome.
Renounce that drudgery,
Call the Muses home.
Seek those images
That constitute the wild,
The lion and the virgin,
The harlot and the child.
Find in middle air
An eagle on the wing,
Recognise the five
That make the Muses sing.
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
Best Gains -- must have the Losses' Test --
To constitute them -- Gains --
|
Written by
T Wignesan |
Words uttered in a subdued voice in order to constitute a dedication,
Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem :Palabras dichas en voz baja para
formar una dedicatoria
(To Ruth, so young, from another age)
(It’s quite probable that this poem commemorates and addresses Bousono’s
wife, Ruth, and as such the interest in the poem must underlie the intimate and/or
private candidness of tone, rather than the less than pretentious art form. T.
Wignesan)
I
This isn’t exactly wine that you and I drain to the last drop
with such slowness at this hour,
the neat truth. It’s not wine,
it’s love.
In any case, it’s not a question of an awaited
celebration, a noisy fiesta,
raised on gold.
It’s not a canticle of the mountains.
It’s only a whistling sound : flower, less than this :
whisper, lacking in weight.
II
And all this began some time back. We joined hands
very hurriedly to be able to remain by ourselves, alone,
both jointly and separately in order to walk on the neverending
pathway
interminably.
And in this manner, we move forward together on the
pathway
tenaciously. The same direction, the self-same golden instant
and despite it all, you walked without being in doubt,
always very far away, far behind, lost in the distance,
in the brightness, diminshed, yet wanting me,
in another station where flowers burgeoned,
in another time and in another pure space.
And from the secluded spot in the woods, from the sandy
indignity
of mature lateness, from where I contemplated
your eagerness to be ahead of time,
I saw you slow down, once and all over again,
without raising your head in your remote garden,
though being held back, obstinate-
ly,
and so unjustly !
pluck in joy
roses for me.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
Here, where the Daisies fit my Head
'Tis easiest to lie
And every Grass that plays outside
Is sorry, some, for me.
Where I am not afraid to go
I may confide my Flower --
Who was not Enemy of Me
Will gentle be, to Her.
Nor separate, Herself and Me
By Distances become --
A single Bloom we constitute
Departed, or at Home --
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
SONNET XXXVIII. L' oro e le perle, e i fior vermigli e i bianchi. HE INVEIGHS AGAINST LAURA'S MIRROR, BECAUSE IT MAKES HER FORGET HIM. Those golden tresses, teeth of pearly white,Those cheeks' fair roses blooming to decay,Do in their beauty to my soul conveyThe poison'd arrows from my aching sight.Thus sad and briefly must my days take flight,For life with woe not long on earth will stay;But more I blame that mirror's flattering sway,Which thou hast wearied with thy self-delight.Its power my bosom's sovereign too hath still'd,Who pray'd thee in my suit—now he is mute,Since thou art captured by thyself alone:Death's seeds it hath within my heart instill'd,For Lethe's stream its form doth constitute,And makes thee lose each image but thine own. Wollaston. The gold and pearls, the lily and the roseWhich weak and dry in winter wont to be,Are rank and poisonous arrow-shafts to me,As my sore-stricken bosom aptly shows:Thus all my days now sadly shortly close,For seldom with great grief long years agree;But in that fatal glass most blame I see,That weary with your oft self-liking grows.[Pg 48]It on my lord placed silence, when my suitHe would have urged, but, seeing your desireEnd in yourself alone, he soon was mute.'Twas fashion'd in hell's wave and o'er its fire,And tinted in eternal Lethe: thenceThe spring and secret of my death commence. Macgregor.
|