Written by
Emily Dickinson |
'Tis whiter than an Indian Pipe --
'Tis dimmer than a Lace --
No stature has it, like a Fog
When you approach the place --
Nor any voice imply it here
Or intimate it there
A spirit -- how doth it accost --
What function hat the Air?
This limitless Hyperbole
Each one of us shall be --
'Tis Drama -- if Hypothesis
It be not Tragedy --
|
Written by
C S Lewis |
Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there's always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we're going,
We can never go astray.
To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.
Ask not if it's god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.
Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature's simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
'Goodness = what comes next.'
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.
Oh then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be).
|
Written by
Edwin Arlington Robinson |
“Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it?
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that?
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother,
We might believe they made a noise…. What are you—driving at!”
“Well, be glad that you can hear them, and be glad they are so near us,—
For I have heard the stars of heaven, and they were nearer still.
All within an hour it is that I have heard them calling,
And though I pray for them to cease, I know they never will;
For their music on my heart, though you may freeze it, will fall always,
Like summer snow that never melts upon a mountain-top.
Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead—the children—singing?
Do you hear the children singing?… God, will you make them stop!”
“And what now in His holy name have you to do with mountains?
We’re back to town again, my dear, and we’ve a dance tonight.
Frozen hearts and falling music? Snow and stars, and—what the devil!
Say it over to me slowly, and be sure you have it right.”
“God knows if I be right or wrong in saying what I tell you,
Or if I know the meaning any more of what I say.
All I know is, it will kill me if I try to keep it hidden—
Well, I met him…. Yes, I met him, and I talked with him—today.”
“You met him? Did you meet the ghost of someone you had poisoned,
Long ago, before I knew you for the woman that you are?
Take a chair; and don’t begin your stories always in the middle.
Was he man, or was he demon? Anyhow, you’ve gone too far
To go back, and I’m your servant. I’m the lord, but you’re the master.
Now go on with what you know, for I’m excited.”
“Do you mean—
Do you mean to make me try to think that you know less than I do?”
“I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a scene.
Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of heaven
Were to swing or to stay bolted from now on for evermore.”
“Do you conceive, with all your smooth contempt of every feeling,
Of hiding what you know and what you must have known before?
Is it worth a woman’s torture to stand here and have you smiling,
With only your poor fetish of possession on your side?
No thing but one is wholly sure, and that’s not one to scare me;
When I meet it I may say to God at last that I have tried.
And yet, for all I know, or all I dare believe, my trials
Henceforward will be more for you to bear than are your own;
And you must give me keys of yours to rooms I have not entered.
Do you see me on your threshold all my life, and there alone?
Will you tell me where you see me in your fancy—when it leads you
Far enough beyond the moment for a glance at the abyss?”
“Will you tell me what intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense
You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you—this?
Look around you and be sorry you’re not living in an attic,
With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent.
I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters;
And I grant, if you insist, that I’ve a guess at what you meant.”
“Have I told you, then, for nothing, that I met him? Are you trying
To be merry while you try to make me hate you?”
“Think again,
My dear, before you tell me, in a language unbecoming
To a lady, what you plan to tell me next. If I complain,
If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you mention—
Or imply, to be precise—you may believe, or you may not,
That I’m a trifle more aware of what he wants than you are.
But I shouldn’t throw that at you. Make believe that I forgot.
Make believe that he’s a genius, if you like,—but in the meantime
Don’t go back to rocking-horses. There, there, there, now.”
“Make believe!
When you see me standing helpless on a plank above a whirlpool,
Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say it? Make believe?
How much more am I to say or do for you before I tell you
That I met him! What’s to follow now may be for you to choose.
Do you hear me? Won’t you listen? It’s an easy thing to listen….”
“And it’s easy to be crazy when there’s everything to lose.”
“If at last you have a notion that I mean what I am saying,
Do I seem to tell you nothing when I tell you I shall try?
If you save me, and I lose him—I don’t know—it won’t much matter.
I dare say that I’ve lied enough, but now I do not lie.”
“Do you fancy me the one man who has waited and said nothing
While a wife has dragged an old infatuation from a tomb?
Give the thing a little air and it will vanish into ashes.
There you are—piff! presto!”
“When I came into this room,
It seemed as if I saw the place, and you there at your table,
As you are now at this moment, for the last time in my life;
And I told myself before I came to find you, ‘I shall tell him,
If I can, what I have learned of him since I became his wife.’
And if you say, as I’ve no doubt you will before I finish,
That you have tried unceasingly, with all your might and main,
To teach me, knowing more than I of what it was I needed,
Don’t think, with all you may have thought, that you have tried in vain;
For you have taught me more than hides in all the shelves of knowledge
Of how little you found that’s in me and was in me all along.
I believed, if I intruded nothing on you that I cared for,
I’d be half as much as horses,—and it seems that I was wrong;
I believed there was enough of earth in me, with all my nonsense
Over things that made you sleepy, to keep something still awake;
But you taught me soon to read my book, and God knows I have read it—
Ages longer than an angel would have read it for your sake.
I have said that you must open other doors than I have entered,
But I wondered while I said it if I might not be obscure.
Is there anything in all your pedigrees and inventories
With a value more elusive than a dollar’s? Are you sure
That if I starve another year for you I shall be stronger
To endure another like it—and another—till I’m dead?”
“Has your tame cat sold a picture?—or more likely had a windfall?
Or for God’s sake, what’s broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head?
A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing
Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won’t….
What the devil are you saying! Make believe you never said it,
And I’ll say I never heard it…. Oh, you…. If you….”
“If I don’t?”
“There are men who say there’s reason hidden somewhere in a woman,
But I doubt if God himself remembers where the key was hung.”
“He may not; for they say that even God himself is growing.
I wonder if He makes believe that He is growing young;
I wonder if He makes believe that women who are giving
All they have in holy loathing to a stranger all their lives
Are the wise ones who build houses in the Bible….”
“Stop—you devil!”
“…Or that souls are any whiter when their bodies are called wives.
If a dollar’s worth of gold will hoop the walls of hell together,
Why need heaven be such a ruin of a place that never was?
And if at last I lied my starving soul away to nothing,
Are you sure you might not miss it? Have you come to such a pass
That you would have me longer in your arms if you discovered
That I made you into someone else…. Oh!…Well, there are worse ways.
But why aim it at my feet—unless you fear you may be sorry….
There are many days ahead of you.”
“I do not see those days.”
“I can see them. Granted even I am wrong, there are the children.
And are they to praise their father for his insight if we die?
Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead—the children—singing?
Do you hear them? Do you hear the children?”
“Damn the children!”
“Why?
What have they done?…Well, then,—do it…. Do it now, and have it over.”
“Oh, you devil!…Oh, you….”
“No, I’m not a devil, I’m a prophet—
One who sees the end already of so much that one end more
Would have now the small importance of one other small illusion,
Which in turn would have a welcome where the rest have gone before.
But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little farther
For the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere still in sight.
Furthermore, you must remember those two hundred invitations
For the dancing after dinner. We shall have to shine tonight.
We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of merry spectres,
On the grave of all the lies that we shall never have to tell;
We shall dance among the ruins of the tomb of our endurance,
And I have not a doubt that we shall do it very well.
There!—I’m glad you’ve put it back; for I don’t like it. Shut the drawer now.
No—no—don’t cancel anything. I’ll dance until I drop.
I can’t walk yet, but I’m going to…. Go away somewhere, and leave me….
Oh, you children! Oh, you children!…God, will they never stop!”
|
Written by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
I feel no small reluctance in venturing to give to the public a
work of the character of that indicated by the title-page to the
present volume; for, difficult as it must always be to render satisfactorily
into one's own tongue the writings of the bards of other lands,
the responsibility assumed by the translator is immeasurably increased
when he attempts to transfer the thoughts of those great men, who
have lived for all the world and for all ages, from the language
in which they were originally clothed, to one to which they may
as yet have been strangers. Preeminently is this the case with Goethe,
the most masterly of all the master minds of modern times, whose
name is already inscribed on the tablets of immortality, and whose
fame already extends over the earth, although as yet only in its
infancy. Scarcely have two decades passed away since he ceased to
dwell among men, yet he now stands before us, not as a mere individual,
like those whom the world is wont to call great, but as a type,
as an emblem--the recognised emblem and representative of the human
mind in its present stage of culture and advancement.
Among the infinitely varied effusions of Goethe's pen, perhaps
there are none which are of as general interest as his Poems, which
breathe the very spirit of Nature, and embody the real music of
the feelings. In Germany, they are universally known, and are considered
as the most delightful of his works. Yet in this country, this kindred
country, sprung from the same stem, and so strongly resembling her
sister in so many points, they are nearly unknown. Almost the only
poetical work of the greatest Poet that the world has seen for ages,
that is really and generally read in England, is Faust, the translations
of which are almost endless; while no single person has as yet appeared
to attempt to give, in an English dress, in any collective or systematic
manner, those smaller productions of the genius of Goethe which
it is the object of the present volume to lay before the reader,
whose indulgence is requested for its many imperfections. In addition
to the beauty of the language in which the Poet has given utterance
to his thoughts, there is a depth of meaning in those thoughts which
is not easily discoverable at first sight, and the translator incurs
great risk of overlooking it, and of giving a prosaic effect to
that which in the original contains the very essence of poetry.
It is probably this difficulty that has deterred others from undertaking
the task I have set myself, and in which I do not pretend to do
more than attempt to give an idea of the minstrelsy of one so unrivalled,
by as truthful an interpretation of it as lies in my power.
The principles which have guided me on the present occasion are
the same as those followed in the translation of Schiller's complete
Poems that was published by me in 1851, namely, as literal a rendering
of the original as is consistent with good English, and also a very
strict adherence to the metre of the original. Although translators
usually allow themselves great license in both these points, it
appears to me that by so doing they of necessity destroy the very
soul of the work they profess to translate. In fact, it is not a
translation, but a paraphrase that they give. It may perhaps be
thought that the present translations go almost to the other extreme,
and that a rendering of metre, line for line, and word for word,
makes it impossible to preserve the poetry of the original both
in substance and in sound. But experience has convinced me that
it is not so, and that great fidelity is even the most essential
element of success, whether in translating poetry or prose. It was
therefore very satisfactory to me to find that the principle laid
down by me to myself in translating Schiller met with the very general,
if not universal, approval of the reader. At the same time, I have
endeavoured to profit in the case of this, the younger born of the
two attempts made by me to transplant the muse of Germany to the
shores of Britain, by the criticisms, whether friendly or hostile,
that have been evoked or provoked by the appearance of its elder
brother.
As already mentioned, the latter contained the whole of the Poems
of Schiller. It is impossible, in anything like the same compass,
to give all the writings of Goethe comprised under the general title
of Gedichte, or poems. They contain between 30,000 and 40,000 verses,
exclusive of his plays. and similar works. Very many of these would
be absolutely without interest to the English reader,--such as those
having only a local application, those addressed to individuals,
and so on. Others again, from their extreme length, could only be
published in separate volumes. But the impossibility of giving all
need form no obstacle to giving as much as possible; and it so happens
that the real interest of Goethe's Poems centres in those classes
of them which are not too diffuse to run any risk when translated
of offending the reader by their too great number. Those by far
the more generally admired are the Songs and Ballads, which are
about 150 in number, and the whole of which are contained in this
volume (with the exception of one or two of the former, which have
been, on consideration, left out by me owing to their trifling and
uninteresting nature). The same may be said of the Odes, Sonnets,
Miscellaneous Poems, &c.
In addition to those portions of Goethe's poetical works which
are given in this complete form, specimens of the different other
classes of them, such as the Epigrams, Elegies, &c., are added,
as well as a collection of the various Songs found in his Plays,
making a total number of about 400 Poems, embraced in the present
volume.
A sketch of the life of Goethe is prefixed, in order that the
reader may have before him both the Poet himself and the Poet's
offspring, and that he may see that the two are but one--that Goethe
lives in his works, that his works lived in him.
The dates of the different Poems are appended throughout, that
of the first publication being given, when that of the composition
is unknown. The order of arrangement adopted is that of the authorized
German editions. As Goethe would never arrange them himself in the
chronological order of their composition, it has become impossible
to do so, now that he is dead. The plan adopted in the present volume
would therefore seem to be the best, as it facilitates reference
to the original. The circumstances attending or giving rise to the
production of any of the Poems will be found specified in those
cases in which they have been ascertained by me.
Having said thus much by way of explanation, I now leave the book
to speak for itself, and to testify to its own character. Whether
viewed with a charitable eye by the kindly reader, who will make
due allowance for the difficulties attending its execution, or received
by the critic, who will judge of it only by its own merits, with
the unfriendly welcome which it very probably deserves, I trust
that I shall at least be pardoned for making an attempt, a failure
in which does not necessarily imply disgrace, and which, by leading
the way, may perhaps become the means of inducing some abler and
more worthy (but not more earnest) labourer to enter upon the same
field, the riches of which will remain unaltered and undiminished
in value, even although they may be for the moment tarnished by
the hands of the less skilful workman who first endeavours to transplant
them to a foreign soil.
|
Written by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
I
'But where do you go?' said the lady, while both sat under the yew,
And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.
II
'Because I fear you,' he answered;--'because you are far too fair,
And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your golfd-coloured hair.'
III
'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone,
And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.'
IV
'Yet farewell so,' he answered; --'the sunstroke's fatal at times.
I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop rings still from the limes.
V
'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason. You smell a rose through a fence:
If two should smell it what matter? who grumbles, and where's the pretense?
VI
'But I,' he replied, 'have promised another, when love was free,
To love her alone, alone, who alone from afar loves me.'
VII
'Why, that,' she said, 'is no reason. Love's always free I am told.
Will you vow to be safe from the headache on Tuesday, and think it will hold?
VIII
'But you,' he replied, 'have a daughter, a young child, who was laid
In your lap to be pure; so I leave you: the angels would make me afraid."
IX
'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason. The angels keep out of the way;
And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you should please me and stay.'
X
At which he rose up in his anger,--'Why now, you no longer are fair!
Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and hateful, I swear.'
XI
At which she laughed out in her scorn: 'These men! Oh these men overnice,
Who are shocked if a colour not virtuous is frankly put on by a vice.'
XII
Her eyes blazed upon him--'And you! You bring us your vices so near
That we smell them! You think in our presence a thought 'twould defame us to hear!
XIII
'What reason had you, and what right,--I appel to your soul from my life,--
To find me so fair as a woman? Why, sir, I am pure, and a wife.
XIV
'Is the day-star too fair up above you? It burns you not. Dare you imply
I brushed you more close than the star does, when Walter had set me as high?
XV
'If a man finds a woman too fair, he means simply adapted too much
To use unlawful and fatal. The praise! --shall I thank you for such?
XVI
'Too fair?--not unless you misuse us! and surely if, once in a while,
You attain to it, straightaway you call us no longer too fair, but too vile.
XVII
'A moment,--I pray your attention!--I have a poor word in my head
I must utter, though womanly custom would set it down better unsaid.
XVIII
'You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring.
You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter! I've broken the thing.
XIX
'You did me the honour, perhaps, to be moved at my side now and then
In the senses--a vice, I have heard, which is common to beasts and some men.
XX
'Love's a virtue for heroes!--as white as the snow on high hills,
And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures, and fulfils.
XXI
'I love my Walter profoundly,--you, Maude, though you faltered a week,
For the sake of . . . what is it--an eyebrow? or, less still, a mole on the cheek?
XXII
'And since, when all's said, you're too noble to stoop to the frivolous cant
About crimes irresistable, virtues that swindle, betray and supplant.
XXIII
'I determined to prove to yourself that, whate'er you might dream or avow
By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than you have now.
XXIV
'There! Look me full in the face!--in the face. Understand, if you can,
That the eyes of such women as I am are clean as the palm of a man.
XXV
'Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you a scar--
You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women we are.
XXVI
'You wronged me: but then I considered . . . there's Walter! And so at the end
I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the hand of a friend.
XXVII
'Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, friend of my Walter, be mine!
Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask him to dine.'
|
Written by
Robert Burns |
HOW wisdom and Folly meet, mix, and unite,
How Virtue and Vice blend their black and their white,
How Genius, th’ illustrious father of fiction,
Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction,
I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle,
I care not, not I—let the Critics go whistle!
But now for a Patron whose name and whose glory,
At once may illustrate and honour my story.
Thou first of our orators, first of our wits;
Yet whose parts and acquirements seem just lucky hits;
With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong,
No man with the half of ’em e’er could go wrong;
With passions so potent, and fancies so bright,
No man with the half of ’em e’er could go right;
A sorry, poor, misbegot son of the Muses,
For using thy name, offers fifty excuses.
Good L—d, what is Man! for as simple he looks,
Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks;
With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil,
All in all he’s a problem must puzzle the devil.
On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labours,
That, like th’ old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours:
Mankind are his show-box—a friend, would you know him?
Pull the string, Ruling Passion the picture will show him,
What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system,
One trifling particular, Truth, should have miss’d him;
For, spite of his fine theoretic positions,
Mankind is a science defies definitions.
Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe,
And think human nature they truly describe;
Have you found this, or t’other? There’s more in the wind;
As by one drunken fellow his comrades you’ll find.
But such is the flaw, or the depth of the plan,
In the make of that wonderful creature called Man,
No two virtues, whatever relation they claim.
Nor even two different shades of the same,
Though like as was ever twin brother to brother,
Possessing the one shall imply you’ve the other.
But truce with abstraction, and truce with a Muse
Whose rhymes you’ll perhaps, Sir, ne’er deign to peruse:
Will you leave your justings, your jars, and your quarrels,
Contending with Billy for proud-nodding laurels?
My much-honour’d Patron, believe your poor poet,
Your courage, much more than your prudence, you show it:
In vain with Squire Billy for laurels you struggle:
He’ll have them by fair trade, if not, he will smuggle:
Not cabinets even of kings would conceal ’em,
He’d up the back stairs, and by G—, he would steal ’em,
Then feats like Squire Billy’s you ne’er can achieve ’em;
It is not, out-do him—the task is, out-thieve him!
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
Said I: "See yon vast heaven shine,--
What earthly sight diviner?
Before such radiant Design
Why doubt Designer?"
Said he: "Design is just a thought
In human cerebration,
And meaningless if Man is not
Part of creation.
"But grant Design,--we may imply
The job took toil aplenty;
Then why one sole designer, why
Not ten or twenty.
"But should there be one Source supreme
Of matter and of motion,
Why mould it like our man-machine
For daft devotion?"
Said I: "You may be right or wrong,
I'll seek not to discover . . .
I listen to yon starry song,--
Still, still God's lover."
|
Written by
Robert Herrick |
Be not proud, but now incline
Your soft ear to discipline;
You have changes in your life,
Sometimes peace, and sometimes strife;
You have ebbs of face and flows,
As your health or comes or goes;
You have hopes, and doubts, and fears,
Numberless as are your hairs;
You have pulses that do beat
High, and passions less of heat;
You are young, but must be old:--
And, to these, ye must be told,
Time, ere long, will come and plow
Loathed furrows in your brow:
And the dimness of your eye
Will no other thing imply,
But you must die
As well as I.
|
Written by
Bret Harte |
Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.
Ah Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny,
In regard to the same,
What that name might imply;
But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.
It was August the third,
And quite soft was the skies;
Which it might be inferred
That Ah Sin was likewise;
Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.
Which we had a small game,
And Ah Sin took a hand:
It was Euchre. The same
He did not understand;
But he smiled as he sat by the table,
With a smile that was childlike and bland.
20Yet the cards they were stocked
In a way that I grieve,
And my feelings were shocked
At the state of Nye’s sleeve,
Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
And the same with intent to deceive.
But the hands that were played
By that heathen Chinee,
And the points that he made,
Were quite frightful to see,—
Till at last he put down a right bower,
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me!
Then I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, “Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,”—
And he went for that heathen Chinee.
In the scene that ensued
I did not take a hand,
But the floor it was strewed
Like the leaves on the strand
With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,
In the game “he did not understand.”
In his sleeves, which were long,
He had twenty-four packs,—
Which was coming it strong,
Yet I state but the facts;
21And we found on his nails, which were taper,
What is frequent in tapers,—that’s wax.
Which is why I remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,—
Which the same I am free to maintain.
|