Written by
Charles Baudelaire |
Nature is a temple where the living pillars
Let go sometimes a blurred speech—
A Forest of symbols passes through a man's reach
And observes him with a familiar regard.
Like the distant echoes that mingle and confound
In a unity of darkness and quiet
Deep as the night, clear as daylight
The perfumes, the colors, the sounds correspond.
The perfume is as fresh as the flesh of an infant
Sweet as an oboe, green as a prairie
—And the others, corrupt, rich and triumphant
Enlightened by the things of infinity,
Like amber, musk, benzoin and incense
That sing, transporting the soul and sense.
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Written by
Robert William Service |
Mumsie and Dad are raven dark
And I am lily blonde.
''Tis strange,' I once heard nurse remark,
'You do not correspond.'
And yet they claim me as their own,
Born of their flesh and bone.
To doubt their parenthood I dread,
But now to girlhood grown,
The thought is haunting in my head
That I am not their own:
If so, my radiant bloom of youth
Would wither in the truth.
'Twould give me anguish deep to know
A fondling babe was I;
And that a maid in wedless woe
Left me to live or die:
I'd rather Mother lied and lied
To save my pride.
I love them both and they love me;
I am their all, they say.
Yet though the sweetest home have we,
To know I'm theirs I pray.
If not, please dear ones, never tell . . .
The truth would be of hell.
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Written by
Barry Tebb |
I
Living in a land
Where only the dying correspond
I am borne on the wings of love
II
I cannot join in a poem
The interstices of clouds
I watched a lapwing
Hover in the air
Glide in an arc
Veer from the sheer cliff
III
Who shall I meet
On this journey to eternity?
Alone and yet not alone
The dust of immortality
Lies in strangers’ eyes
Girls in all the beauty
Of their youth, old men with sticks
No one afraid of anyone
‘No strangers here
Just friends we have yet to meet
IV
‘Angels Fine English Lace’
This was the post office
In the time of the Brontes
Here the famous manuscripts
Were posted.
V
Perhaps I’ll meet on the pebbled road
Michael Haslam in elfin form
Shape-shifter or leprechaun
VI
One of a gang of Keighley girls
Going clubbing in Leeds put her arms
Round my neck and sang “Won’t you be my lover?”
Eternities beyond Winnicott’s ‘spontaneous gesture’.
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Written by
Gerard Manley Hopkins |
I remember a house where all were good
To me, God knows, deserving no such thing:
Comforting smell breathed at very entering,
Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.
That cordial air made those kind people a hood
All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing
Will, or mild nights the new morsels of spring:
Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should.
Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,
All the air things wear that build this world of Wales;
Only the inmate does not correspond:
God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales,
Complete thy creature dear O where it fails,
Being mighty a master, being a father and fond.
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