Best Famous Drying Up Poems

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Written by Sandra Cisneros | Cloud If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. -Thich Nhat Hanh Before you became a cloud, you were an ocean, roiled and murmuring like a mouth. You were the shadows of a cloud cross- ing over a field of tulips. You were the tears of a man who cried into a plaid handkerchief. You were the sky without a hat. Your heart puffed and flowered like sheets drying on a line. And when you were a tree, you listened to the trees and the tree things trees told you. You were the wind in the wheels of a red bicycle. You were the spidery Mariatattooed on the hairless arm of a boy in dowtown Houston. You were the rain rolling off the waxy leaves of a magnolia tree. A lock of straw-colored hair wedged between the mottled pages of a Victor Hugo novel. A crescent of soap. A spider the color of a fingernail. The black nets beneath the sea of olive trees. A skein of blue wool. A tea saucer wrapped in newspaper. An empty cracker tin. A bowl of blueber- ries in heavy cream. White wine in a green-stemmed glass. And when you opened your wings to wind, across the punched- tin sky above a prison courtyard, those condemned to death and those condemned to life watched how smooth and sweet a white cloud glides.

Written by Margaret Atwood | Bored All those times I was bored out of my mind. Holding the log while he sawed it. Holding the string while he measured, boards, distances between things, or pounded stakes into the ground for rows and rows of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored) weeded. Or sat in the back of the car, or sat still in boats, sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel he drove, steered, paddled. It wasn't even boredom, it was looking, looking hard and up close at the small details. Myopia. The worn gunwales, the intricate twill of the seat cover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granular pink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fans of dry moss, the blackish and then the graying bristles on the back of his neck. Sometimes he would whistle, sometimes I would. The boring rhythm of doing things over and over, carrying the wood, drying the dishes. Such minutiae. It's what the animals spend most of their time at, ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels, shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointed such things out, and I would look at the whorled texture of his square finger, earth under the nail. Why do I remember it as sunnier all the time then, although it more often rained, and more birdsong? I could hardly wait to get the hell out of there to anywhere else. Perhaps though boredom is happier. It is for dogs or groundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored. Now I would know too much. Now I would know.

Written by Yehuda Amichai | Do Not Accept Do not accept these rains that come too late. Better to linger. Make your pain An image of the desert. Say it's said And do not look to the west. Refuse To surrender. Try this year too To live alone in the long summer, Eat your drying bread, refrain From tears. And do not learn from Experience. Take as an example my youth, My return late at night, what has been written In the rain of yesteryear. It makes no difference Now. See your events as my events. Everything will be as before: Abraham will again Be Abram. Sarah will be Sarai. trans. Benjamin & Barbara Harshav

Written by Robert William Service | The Ballad Of Caseys Billy-Goat You've heard of "Casey at The Bat," And "Casey's Tabble Dote"; But now it's time To write a rhyme Of "Casey's Billy-goat." Pat Casey had a billy-goat he gave the name of Shamus, Because it was (the neighbours said) a national disgrace. And sure enough that animal was eminently famous For masticating every rag of laundry round the place. For shirts to skirts prodigiously it proved its powers of chewing; The question of digestion seemed to matter not at all; But you'll agree, I think with me, its limit of misdoing Was reached the day it swallowed Missis Rooney's ould red shawl. Now Missis Annie Rooney was a winsome widow women, And many a bouncing boy had sought to make her change her name; And living just across the way 'twas surely only human A lonesome man like Casey should be wishfully the same. So every Sunday, shaved and shined, he'd make the fine occasion To call upon the lady, and she'd take his and coat; And supping tea it seemed that she might yield to his persuasion, But alas! he hadn't counted on that devastating goat. For Shamus loved his master with a deep and dumb devotion, And everywhere that Casey went that goat would want to go; And though I cannot analyze a quadruped's emotion, They said the baste was jealous, and I reckon it was so. For every time that Casey went to call on Missis Rooney, Beside the gate the goat would wait with woefulness intense; Until one day it chanced that they were fast becoming spooney, When Shamus spied that ould red shawl a-flutter on the fence. Now Missis Rooney loved that shawl beyond all rhyme or reason, And maybe 'twas an heirloom or a cherished souvenir; For judging by the way she wore it season after season, I might have been as precious as a product of Cashmere. So Shamus strolled towards it, and no doubt the colour pleased him, For he biffed it and he sniffed it, as most any goat might do; Then his melancholy vanished as a sense of hunger seized him, And he wagged his tail with rapture as he started in to chew. "Begorrah! you're a daisy," said the doting Mister Casey to the blushing Widow Rooney as they parted at the door. "Wid yer tinderness an' tazin' sure ye've set me heart a-blazin', And I dread the day I'll nivver see me Anniw anny more." "Go on now wid yer blarney," said the widow softly sighing; And she went to pull his whiskers, when dismay her bosom smote. . . . Her ould red shawl! 'Twas missin' where she'd left it bravely drying - Then she saw it disappearing - down the neck of Casey's goat. Fiercely flamed her Irish temper, "Look!" says she, "The thavin' divvle! Sure he's made me shawl his supper. Well, I hope it's to his taste; But excuse me, Mister Casey, if I seem to be oncivil, For I'll nivver wed a man wid such a misbegotten baste." So she slammed the door and left him in a state of consternation, And he couldn't understand it, till he saw that grinning goat: Then with eloquence he cussed it, and his final fulmination Was a poem of profanity impossible to quote. So blasting goats and petticoats and feeling downright sinful, Despairfully he wandered in to Shinnigan's shebeen; And straightway he proceeded to absorb a might skinful Of the deadliest variety of Shinnigan's potheen. And when he started homeward it was in the early morning, But Shamus followed faithfully, a yard behind his back; Then Casey slipped and stumbled, and without the slightest warning like a lump of lead he tumbled - right across the railroad track. And there he lay, serenely, and defied the powers to budge him, Reposing like a baby, with his head upon the rail; But Shamus seemed unhappy, and from time to time would nudge him, Though his prods to protestation were without the least avail. Then to that goatish mind, maybe, a sense of fell disaster Came stealing like a spectre in the dim and dreary dawn; For his bleat of warning blended with the snoring of his master In a chorus of calamity - but Casey slumbered on. Yet oh, that goat was troubled, for his efforts were redoubled; Now he tugged at Casey's whisker, now he nibbled at his ear; Now he shook him by the shoulder, and with fear become bolder, He bellowed like a fog-horn, but the sleeper did not hear. Then up and down the railway line he scampered for assistance; But anxiously he hurried back and sought with tug and strain To pull his master off the track . . . when sudden! in the distance He heard the roar and rumble of the fast approaching train. Did Shamus faint and falter? No, he stood there stark and splendid. True, his tummy was distended, but he gave his horns a toss. By them his goathood's honour would be gallantly defended, And if their valour failed him - he would perish with his boss So dauntlessly he lowered his head, and ever clearer, clearer, He heard the throb and thunder of the Continental Mail. He would face the mighty monster. It was coming nearer, nearer; He would fight it, he would smite it, but he'd never show his tail. Can you see that hirsute hero, standing there in tragic glory? Can you hear the Pullman porters shrieking horror to the sky? No, you can't; because my story has no end so grim and gory, For Shamus did not perish and his master did not die. At this very present moment Casey swaggers hale and hearty, And Shamus strolls beside him with a bright bell at his throat; While recent Missis Rooney is the gayest of the party, For now she's Missis Casey and she's crazy for that goat. You're wondering what happened? Well, you know that truth is stranger Than the wildest brand of fiction, so Ill tell you without shame. . . . There was Shamus and his master in the face of awful danger, And the giant locomotive dashing down in smoke and flame. . . . What power on earth could save them? Yet a golden inspiration To gods and goats alike may come, so in that brutish brain A thought was born - the ould red shawl. . . . Then rearing with elation, Like lightning Shamus threw it up - AND FLAGGED AND STOPPED THE TRAIN.

Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Ballad of Dead Friends As we the withered ferns By the roadway lying, Time, the jester, spurns All our prayers and prying -- All our tears and sighing, Sorrow, change, and woe -- All our where-and-whying For friends that come and go. Life awakes and burns, Age and death defying, Till at last it learns All but Love is dying; Love's the trade we're plying, God has willed it so; Shrouds are what we're buying For friends that come and go. Man forever yearns For the thing that's flying. Everywhere he turns, Men to dust are drying, -- Dust that wanders, eying (With eyes that hardly glow) New faces, dimly spying For friends that come and go. ENVOY And thus we all are nighing The truth we fear to know: Death will end our crying For friends that come and go.

Written by Elizabeth Bishop | Florida The state with the prettiest name, the state that floats in brackish water, held together by mangrave roots that bear while living oysters in clusters, and when dead strew white swamps with skeletons, dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass. The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white, and unseen hysterical birds who rush up the scale every time in a tantrum. Tanagers embarrassed by their flashiness, and pelicans whose delight it is to clown; who coast for fun on the strong tidal currents in and out among the mangrove islands and stand on the sand-bars drying their damp gold wings on sun-lit evenings. Enormous turtles, helpless and mild, die and leave their barnacled shells on the beaches, and their large white skulls with round eye-sockets twice the size of a man's. The palm trees clatter in the stiff breeze like the bills of the pelicans. The tropical rain comes down to freshen the tide-looped strings of fading shells: Job's Tear, the Chinese Alphabet, the scarce Junonia, parti-colored pectins and Ladies' Ears, arranged as on a gray rag of rotted calico, the buried Indian Princess's skirt; with these the monotonous, endless, sagging coast-line is delicately ornamented. Thirty or more buzzards are drifting down, down, down, over something they have spotted in the swamp, in circles like stirred-up flakes of sediment sinking through water. Smoke from woods-fires filters fine blue solvents. On stumps and dead trees the charring is like black velvet. The mosquitoes go hunting to the tune of their ferocious obbligatos. After dark, the fireflies map the heavens in the marsh until the moon rises. Cold white, not bright, the moonlight is coarse-meshed, and the careless, corrupt state is all black specks too far apart, and ugly whites; the poorest post-card of itself. After dark, the pools seem to have slipped away. The alligator, who has five distinct calls: friendliness, love, mating, war, and a warning-- whimpers and speaks in the throat of the Indian Princess.

Written by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot | The Fire Sermon The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; 180 Departed, have left no addresses. Line 161 ALRIGHT. This spelling occurs also in the Hogarth Press edition— Editor. By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . . Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. A rat crept softly through the vegetation Dragging its slimy belly on the bank While I was fishing in the dull canal On a winter evening round behind the gashouse 190 Musing upon the king my brother's wreck And on the king my father's death before him. White bodies naked on the low damp ground And bones cast in a little low dry garret, Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year. But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter 200 They wash their feet in soda water Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole! Twit twit twit Jug jug jug jug jug jug So rudely forc'd. Tereu Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter noon Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants 210 C.i.f. London: documents at sight, Asked me in demotic French To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel Followed by a weekend at the Metropole. At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives 220 Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins. Out of the window perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays, On the divan are piled (at night her bed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest— I too awaited the expected guest. 230 He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; 240 His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . . She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover; 250 Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over." When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone. "This music crept by me upon the waters" And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street. O City city, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 260 The pleasant whining of a mandoline And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls Of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold. The river sweats Oil and tar The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails 270 Wide To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash Drifting logs Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of Dogs. Weialala leia Wallala leialala Elizabeth and Leicester Beating oars 280 The stern was formed A gilded shell Red and gold The brisk swell Rippled both shores Southwest wind Carried down stream The peal of bells White towers Weialala leia 290 Wallala leialala "Trams and dusty trees. Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe." "My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart Under my feet. After the event He wept. He promised 'a new start'. I made no comment. What should I resent?" "On Margate Sands. 300 I can connect Nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands. My people humble people who expect Nothing." la la To Carthage then I came Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou pluckest me out O Lord Thou pluckest 310 burning

Written by Seamus Heaney | Keeping Going The piper coming from far away is you With a whitewash brush for a sporran Wobbling round you, a kitchen chair Upside down on your shoulder, your right arm Pretending to tuck the bag beneath your elbow, Your pop-eyes and big cheeks nearly bursting With laughter, but keeping the drone going on Interminably, between catches of breath. * The whitewash brush. An old blanched skirted thing On the back of the byre door, biding its time Until spring airs spelled lime in a work-bucket And a potstick to mix it in with water. Those smells brought tears to the eyes, we inhaled A kind of greeny burning and thought of brimstone. But the slop of the actual job Of brushing walls, the watery grey Being lashed on in broad swatches, then drying out Whiter and whiter, all that worked like magic. Where had we come from, what was this kingdom We knew we'd been restored to? Our shadows Moved on the wall and a tar border glittered The full length of the house, a black divide Like a freshly opened, pungent, reeking trench. * Piss at the gable, the dead will congregate. But separately. The women after dark, Hunkering there a moment before bedtime, The only time the soul was let alone, The only time that face and body calmed In the eye of heaven. Buttermilk and urine, The pantry, the housed beasts, the listening bedroom. We were all together there in a foretime, In a knowledge that might not translate beyond Those wind-heaved midnights we still cannot be sure Happened or not. It smelled of hill-fort clay And cattle dung. When the thorn tree was cut down You broke your arm. I shared the dread When a strange bird perched for days on the byre roof. * That scene, with Macbeth helpless and desperate In his nightmare--when he meets the hags agains And sees the apparitions in the pot-- I felt at home with that one all right. Hearth, Steam and ululation, the smoky hair Curtaining a cheek. 'Don't go near bad boys In that college that you're bound for. Do you hear me? Do you hear me speaking to you? Don't forget!' And then the postick quickening the gruel, The steam crown swirled, everything intimate And fear-swathed brightening for a moment, Then going dull and fatal and away. * Grey matter like gruel flecked with blood In spatters on the whitewash. A clean spot Where his head had been, other stains subsumed In the parched wall he leant his back against That morning like any other morning, Part-time reservist, toting his lunch-box. A car came slow down Castle Street, made the halt, Crossed the Diamond, slowed again and stopped Level with him, although it was not his lift. And then he saw an ordinary face For what it was and a gun in his own face. His right leg was hooked back, his sole and heel Against the wall, his right knee propped up steady, So he never moved, just pushed with all his might Against himself, then fell past the tarred strip, Feeding the gutter with his copious blood. * My dear brother, you have good stamina. You stay on where it happens. Your big tractor Pulls up at the Diamond, you wave at people, You shout and laugh about the revs, you keep old roads open by driving on the new ones. You called the piper's sporrans whitewash brushes And then dressed up and marched us through the kitchen, But you cannot make the dead walk or right wrong. I see you at the end of your tether sometimes, In the milking parlour, holding yourself up Between two cows until your turn goes past, Then coming to in the smell of dung again And wondering, is this all? As it was In the beginning, is now and shall be? Then rubbing your eyes and seeing our old brush Up on the byre door, and keeping going.

Written by Rafael Guillen | El Cafetal I came with the rising sun and I've brought nothing but two eyes, all I have, simply two eyes, for the harvest of grief that's hidden in this jungle like the coffee shrubs. Fewer, but they fling themselves upwards, untouchable, are the trees that invidiously shut out the light from this overwhelming indigence. With my machete I go through the paths of the cafetal. Intricate paths where the tamags lies in wait, sunk in the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics, the carnal luxury that gleams in the eyes of the Creole overseer; sinuous paths between junipers and avocados where human thought, cowed since before the white man, has never found any other light than the well of Quich; blind; drowning in itself. Picking berries, the guanacos hope only for a snort to free them from the cafetal. Through the humid shade beneath the giant ceibas, Indian women in all colors crawl like ants, one behind the other, with the load balanced on a waking sleep. They don't exist. They've never been born and still they are dying daily, rubbed raw, turned to wet earth with the plantation, hunkered for days in the road to watch over the man eternally blasted on booze, as good as dead from one rain to the next, under the shrubs of the cafetal. The population has disappeared into the coffee bean, and a tide of white lightning seeps in to cover them. I stretch out a hand, pluck the red berry, submit it to the test of water, scrub it, wait for the fermentation of the sweet pulp to release the bean. How many centuries, now? How much misery does it cost to become a man? How much mourning? With a few strokes of the rake, the stripped bean dries in the sun. It crackles, and I feel it under my feet. Eternal drying shed of the cafetal! Backwash of consciousness, soul sown with corn-mush and corn cobs, blood stained with the black native dye. Man below. Above, the volcanos. Guatemala throws me to my knees while every afternoon, with rain and thunder, Tohil the Powerful lashes this newly-arrived back. Lamentation is the vegetal murmur, tender of the cafetal. Glossary: Cafetal: a coffee plantation tamag?s: a venomous serpent guanaco: a pack animal, used insultingly to indicate the native laborers ceiba: a tall tropical hardwood tree

Written by Robert Browning | The Englishman In Italy (PIANO DI SORRENTO.) Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one, Sit here by my side, On my knees put up both little feet! I was sure, if I tried, I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco; Now, open your eyes— Let me keep you amused till he vanish In black from the skies, With telling my memories over As you tell your beads; All the memories plucked at Sorrento —The flowers, or the weeds, Time for rain! for your long hot dry Autumn Had net-worked with brown The white skin of each grape on the bunches, Marked like a quail's crown, Those creatures you make such account of, Whose heads,—specked with white Over brown like a great spider's back, As I told you last night,— Your mother bites off for her supper; Red-ripe as could be. Pomegranates were chapping and splitting In halves on the tree: And betwixt the loose walls of great flintstone, Or in the thick dust On the path, or straight out of the rock side, Wherever could thrust Some burnt sprig of bold hardy rock-flower Its yellow face up, For the prize were great butterflies fighting, Some five for one cup. So, I guessed, ere I got up this morning, What change was in store, By the quick rustle-down of the quail-nets Which woke me before I could open my shutter, made fast With a bough and a stone, And look through the twisted dead vine-twigs, Sole lattice that's known! Quick and sharp rang the rings down the net-poles, While, busy beneath, Your priest and his brother tugged at them, The rain in their teeth: And out upon all the flat house-roofs Where split figs lay drying, The girls took the frails under cover: Nor use seemed in trying To get out the boats and go fishing, For, under the cliff, Fierce the black water frothed o'er the blind-rock No seeing our skiff Arrive about noon from Amalfi, —Our fisher arrive, And pitch down his basket before us, All trembling alive With pink and grey jellies, your sea-fruit, —You touch the strange lumps, And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner Of horns and of humps. Which only the fisher looks grave at, While round him like imps Cling screaming the children as naked And brown as his shrimps; Himself too as bare to the middle— —You see round his neck The string and its brass coin suspended, That saves him from wreck. But today not a boat reached Salerno, So back to a man Came our friends, with whose help in the vineyards Grape-harvest began: In the vat, half-way up in our house-side, Like blood the juice spins, While your brother all bare-legged is dancing Till breathless he grins Dead-beaten, in effort on effort To keep the grapes under, Since still when he seems all but master, In pours the fresh plunder From girls who keep coming and going With basket on shoulder, And eyes shut against the rain's driving, Your girls that are older,— For under the hedges of aloe, And where, on its bed Of the orchard's black mould, the love-apple Lies pulpy and red, All the young ones are kneeling and filling Their laps with the snails Tempted out by this first rainy weather,— Your best of regales, As tonight will be proved to my sorrow, When, supping in state, We shall feast our grape-gleaners (two dozen, Three over one plate) With lasagne so tempting to swallow In slippery ropes, And gourds fried in great purple slices, That colour of popes. Meantime, see the grape-bunch they've brought you,— The rain-water slips O'er the heavy blue bloom on each globe Which the wasp to your lips Still follows with fretful persistence— Nay, taste, while awake, This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball, That peels, flake by flake, Like an onion's, each smoother and whiter; Next, sip this weak wine From the thin green glass flask, with its stopper, A leaf of the vine,— And end with the prickly-pear's red flesh That leaves through its juice The stony black seeds on your pearl-teeth ...Scirocco is loose! Hark! the quick, whistling pelt of the olives Which, thick in one's track, Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them, Though not yet half black! How the old twisted olive trunks shudder! The medlars let fall Their hard fruit, and the brittle great fig-trees Snap off, figs and all,— For here comes the whole of the tempest No refuge, but creep Back again to my side and my shoulder, And listen or sleep. O how will your country show next week When all the vine-boughs Have been stripped of their foliage to pasture The mules and the cows? Last eve, I rode over the mountains; Your brother, my guide, Soon left me, to feast on the myrtles That offered, each side, Their fruit-balls, black, glossy and luscious,— Or strip from the sorbs A treasure, so rosy and wondrous, Of hairy gold orbs! But my mule picked his sure, sober path out, Just stopping to neigh When he recognized down in the valley His mates on their way With the faggots, and barrels of water; And soon we emerged From the plain, where the woods could scarce follow And still as we urged Our way, the woods wondered, and left us, As up still we trudged Though the wild path grew wilder each instant, And place was e'en grudged 'Mid the rock-chasms, and piles of loose stones (Like the loose broken teeth Of some monster, which climbed there to die From the ocean beneath) Place was grudged to the silver-grey fume-weed That clung to the path, And dark rosemary, ever a-dying, That, 'spite the wind's wrath, So loves the salt rock's face to seaward,— And lentisks as staunch To the stone where they root and bear berries,— And... what shows a branch Coral-coloured, transparent, with circlets Of pale seagreen leaves— Over all trod my mule with the caution Of gleaners o'er sheaves, Still, foot after foot like a lady— So, round after round, He climbed to the top of Calvano, And God's own profound Was above me, and round me the mountains, And under, the sea, And within me, my heart to bear witness What was and shall be! Oh Heaven, and the terrible crystal! No rampart excludes Your eye from the life to be lived In the blue solitudes! Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement! Still moving with you— For, ever some new head and breast of them Thrusts into view To observe the intruder—you see it If quickly you turn And, before they escape you, surprise them— They grudge you should learn How the soft plains they look on, lean over, And love (they pretend) -Cower beneath them; the flat sea-pine crouches The wild fruit-trees bend, E'en the myrtle-leaves curl, shrink and shut— All is silent and grave— 'Tis a sensual and timorous beauty— How fair, but a slave! So, I turned to the sea,—and there slumbered As greenly as ever Those isles of the siren, your Galli; No ages can sever The Three, nor enable their sister To join them,—half-way On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses— No farther today; Though the small one, just launched in the wave, Watches breast-high and steady From under the rock, her bold sister Swum half-way already. Fortu, shall we sail there together And see from the sides Quite new rocks show their faces—new haunts Where the siren abides? Shall we sail round and round them, close over The rocks, though unseen, That ruffle the grey glassy water To glorious green? Then scramble from splinter to splinter, Reach land and explore, On the largest, the strange square black turret With never a door, Just a loop to admit the quick lizards; Then, stand there and hear The birds' quiet singing, that tells us What life is, so clear! The secret they sang to Ulysses, When, ages ago, He heard and he knew this life's secret, I hear and I know! Ah, see! The sun breaks o'er Calvano— He strikes the great gloom And flutters it o'er the mount's summit In airy gold fume! All is over! Look out, see the gipsy, Our tinker and smith, Has arrived, set up bellows and forge, And down-squatted forthwith To his hammering, under the wall there; One eye keeps aloof The urchins that itch to be putting His jews'-harps to proof, While the other, through locks of curled wire, Is watching how sleek Shines the hog, come to share in the windfalls —An abbot's own cheek! All is over! Wake up and come out now, And down let us go, And see the fine things got in order At Church for the show Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening; Tomorrow's the Feast Of the Rosary's Virgin, by no means Of Virgins the least— As you'll hear in the off-hand discourse Which (all nature, no art) The Dominican brother, these three weeks, Was getting by heart. Not a post nor a pillar but's dizened With red and blue papers; All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar A-blaze with long tapers; But the great masterpiece is the scaffold Rigged glorious to hold All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers And trumpeters bold, Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber, Who, when the priest's hoarse, Will strike us up something that's brisk For the feast's second course. And then will the flaxen-wigged Image Be carried in pomp Through the plain, while in gallant procession The priests mean to stomp. And all round the glad church lie old bottles With gunpowder stopped, Which will be, when the Image re-enters, Religiously popped. And at night from the crest of Calvano Great bonfires will hang, On the plain will the trumpets join chorus, And more poppers bang! At all events, come—to the garden, As far as the wall, See me tap with a hoe on the plaster Till out there shall fall A scorpion with wide angry nippers! ..."Such trifles"—you say? Fortu, in my England at home, Men meet gravely today And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws Is righteous and wise —If 'tis proper, Scirocco should vanish In black from the skies!