Written by
Sylvia Plath |
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
Edwin Arlington Robinson |
The man Flammonde, from God knows where,
With firm address and foreign air
With news of nations in his talk
And something royal in his walk,
With glint of iron in his eyes,
But never doubt, nor yet surprise,
Appeared, adn stayed, and held his head
As one by kings accredited.
Erect, with his alert repose
About him, and about his clothes,
He pictured all tradition hears
Of what we owe to fifty years.
His cleansing heritage of taste
Paraded neither want nor waste;
And what he needed for his fee
To live, he borrowed graciously.
He never told us what he was,
Or what mischance, or other cause,
Had banished him from better days
To play the Prince of Castaways.
Meanwhile he played surpassing well
A part, for most, unplayable;
In fine, one pauses, half afraid
To say for certain that he played.
For that, one may as well forego
Conviction as to yes or no;
Nor can I say just how intense
Would then have been the difference
To several, who, having striven
In vain to get what he was given,
Would see the stranger taken on
By friends not easy to be won.
Moreover many a malcontent
He soothed, and found munificent;
His courtesy beguiled and foiled
Suspicion that his years were soiled;
His mien distinguished any crowd,
His credit strengthened when he bowed;
And women, young and old, were fond
Of looking at the man Flammond.
There was a woman in our town
On whom the fashion was to frown;
But while our talk renewed the tinge
Of a long-faded scarlet fringe,
The man Flammonde saw none of that,
And what he saw we wondered at--
That none of us, in her distress,
Could hide or find our littleness.
There was a boy that all agreed
had shut within him the rare seed
Of learning.
We could understand,
But none of us could lift a hand.
The man Flammonde appraised the youth,
And told a few of us the truth;
And thereby, for a little gold,
A flowered future was unrolled.
There were two citizens who fought
For years and years, and over nought;
They made life awkward for their friends,
And shortened their own dividends.
The man Flammonde said what was wrong
Should be made right; nor was it long
Before they were again in line
And had each other in to dine.
And these I mention are but four
Of many out of many more.
So much for them.
But what of him--
So firm in every look and limb?
What small satanic sort of kink
Was in his brain? What broken link
Withheld hom from the destinies
That came so near to being his?
What was he, when we came to sift
His meaning, and to note the drift
Of incommunicable ways
That make us ponder while we praise?
Why was it that his charm revealed
Somehow the surface of a shield?
What was it that we never caught?
What was he, and what was he not?
How much it was of him we met
We cannot ever know; nor yet
Shall all he gave us quite attone
For what was his, and his alone;
Nor need we now, since he knew best,
Nourish an ethical unrest:
Rarely at once will nature give
The power to be Flammonde and live.
We cannot know how much we learn
From those who never will return,
Until a flash of unforseen
Remembrance falls on what has been.
We've each a darkening hill to climb;
And this is why, from time to time
In Tilbury Town, we look beyond
Horizons for the man Flammonde.
|
Written by
Andrew Barton Paterson |
I'd reckon his weight as eight-stun-eight,
And his height as five-foot-two,
With a face as plain as an eight-day clock
And a walk as brisk as a bantam-cock --
Game as a bantam, too,
Hard and wiry and full of steam,
That's the boss of the English Team,
Reverend Mullineux!
Makes no row when the game gets rough --
None of your "Strike me blue!"
"Yous wants smacking across the snout!"
Plays like a gentleman out-and-out --
Same as he ought to do.
"Kindly remove from off my face!"
That's the way that he states his case,
Reverend Mullineux.
Kick! He can kick like an army mule --
Run like a kangaroo!
Hard to get by as a lawyer-plant,
Tackles his man like a bull-dog ant --
Fetches hom over too!
Didn't the public cheer and shout
Watchin' him chuckin' big blokes about,
Reverend Mullineux!
Scrimmage was packed on his prostrate form,
Somehow the ball got through --
Who was it tackled our big half-back,
Flinging him down like an empty sack,
Right on our goal-line too?
Who but the man that we thought was dead,
Down with a score of 'em on his head,
Reverend Mullineux.
|