Written by
G K Chesterton |
Under what withering leprous light
The very grass as hair is grey,
Grass in the cracks of the paven courts
Of gods we graved but yesterday.
Senate, republic, empire, all
We leaned our backs on like a wall
And blessed as stron as strong and blamed as stolid--
Can it be these that waver and fall?
And what is this like a ghost returning,
A dream grown strong in the strong daylight?
The all-forsaken, the unforgotten,
The ever-behind and out of sight.
We turned our backs and our blind flesh felt it
Growing and growing, a tower in height.
Ah, not alone the evil splendour
And not the insolent arms alone
Break with the ramrod, stiff and brittle,
The sceptre of the nordic throne;
But things of manlier renown
Reel in the wreck of throne and crown,
With tyrannous tyranny, tyrannous loyalty
Tyrannous liberty, all gone down.
(There is never a crack in the ivory tower
Or a hinge to groan in the house of gold
Or a leaf of the rose in the wind to wither
And she grows young as the world grows old.
A Woman clothed with the sun returning
to clothe the sun when the sun is cold.)
Ah, who had guessed that in a moment
Great Liberty that loosed the tribes,
the Republic of the young men's battles
Grew stale and stank of old men's bribes;
And where we watched her smile in power
A statue like a starry tower
the stone face sneers as in a nightmare
Down on a world that worms devour.
(Archaic incredible dead dawns breaking
Deep in the deserts and waste and wealds,
Where the dead cry aloud on Our Lady of Victories,
Queen of the Eagles, aloft on the shields,
And the sun is gone up on the Thundering Legion
On the roads of Rome to the Battlefields.)
Ah, who had known who had not seen
How soft and sudden on the fame
Of my most noble English ships
The sunset light of Carthage came
And the thing I never had dreamed could be
In the house of my fathers came to me
Through the sea-wall cloven, the cloud and dark,
A voice divided, a doubtful sea.
(The light is bright on the Tower of David,
The evening glows with the morning star
In the skies turned back and the days returning
She walks so near who had wandered far
And in the heart of the swords, the seven times wounded,
Was never wearied as our hearts are.)
How swift as with a fall of snow
New things grow hoary with the light.
We watch the wrinkles crawl like snakes
On the new image in our sight.
The lines that sprang up taut and bold
Sag like primordial monsters old,
Sink in the bas-reliers of fossil
And the slow earth swallows them, fold on fold,
But light are the feet on the hills of the morning
Of the lambs that leap up to the Bride of the Sun,
And swift are the birds as the butterflies flashing
And sudden as laughter the rivulets run
And sudden for ever as summer lightning
the light is bright on the world begun.
Thou wilt not break as we have broken
The towers we reared to rival Thee.
More true to England than the English
More just to freedom than the free.
O trumpet of the intolerant truth
Thou art more full of grace and ruth
For the hopes of th world than the world that made them,
The world that murdered the loves of our youth.
Thou art more kind to our dreams, Our Mother,
Than the wise that wove us the dreams for shade.
God if more good to the gods that mocked Him
Than men are good to the gods they made.
Tenderer with toys than a boy grown brutal,
Breaking the puppets with which he played.
What are the flowers the garden guards not
And how but here should dreams return?
And how on hearths made cold with ruin
the wide wind-scattered ashes burn--
What is the home of the heart set free,
And where is the nesting of liberty,
And where from the world shall the world take shelter
And man be matter, and not with Thee?
Wisdom is set in her throne of thunder,
The Mirror of Justice blinds the day--
Where are the towers that are not of the City,
Trophies and trumpetings, where are they?
Where over the maze of the world returning
The bye-ways bend to the King's highway.
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Written by
Delmira Agustini |
Spanish Yo te diré los sueños de mi vidaEn lo más hondo de la noche azul…Mi alma desnuda temblará en tus manos,Sobre tus hombros pesará mi cruz.Las cumbres de la vida son tan solas,Tan solas y tan frías! Y encerréMis ansias en mí misma, y toda enteraComo una torre de marfil me alcé.Hoy abriré a tu alma el gran misterio;Tu alma es capaz de penetrar en mí.En el silencio hay vértigos de abismo:Yo vacilaba, me sostengo en ti.Muero de ensueños; beberé en tus fuentesPuras y frescas la verdad, yo séQue está en el fondo magno de tu pechoEl manantial que vencerá mi sed.Y sé que en nuestras vidas se produjoEl milagro inefable del reflejo…En el silencio de la noche mi almaLlega a la tuya como a un gran espejo.Imagina el amor que habré soñadoEn la tumba glacial de mi silencio!Más grande que la vida, más que el sueño,Bajo el azur sin fin se sintió preso.Imagina mi amor, amor que quiereVida imposible, vida sobrehumana,Tú que sabes si pesan, si consumenAlma y sueños de Olimpo en carne humana.Y cuando frente al alma que sentiaPoco el azur para bañar sus alas,Como un gran horizonte aurisoladoO una playa de luz se abrió tu alma:Imagina! Estrecha vivo, radianteEl Imposible! La ilusión vivida!Bendije a Dios, al sol, la flor, el aire,La vida toda porque tú eras vida!Si con angustia yo compré esta dicha,Bendito el llanto que manchó mis ojos!¡Todas las llagas del pasado ríenAl sol naciente por sus labios rojos!¡Ah! tú sabrás mi amor, mas vamos lejosA través de la noche florecida;Acá lo humano asusta, acá se oye,Se ve, se siente sin cesar la vida.Vamos más lejos en la noche, vamosDonde ni un eco repercuta en mí,Como una flor nocturna allá en la sombraY abriré dulcemente para ti. EnglishI will tell you the dreams of my lifeOn this deepest of blue nights.In your hands my soul will tremble,On your shoulders my cross will rest.The summits of life are lonely,So lonely and so cold! I lockedMy yearnings inside, and all resideIn the ivory tower I raised.Today I will reveal a great mystery;Your soul has the power to penetrate me.In silence are vertigos of the abyss:I hesitate, I am sustained in you.I die of dreams; I will drink truth,Pure and cool, from your springs.I know in the well of your breastIs a fountain that vanquishes my thirst.And I know that in our lives, thisIs the inexpressible miracle of reflection…In the silence, my soul arrives at yoursAs to a magnificent mirror.Imagine the love I dreamedIn the glacial tomb of silence!Larger than life, larger than dream,A love imprisoned beneath an azure without end.Imagine my love, love which desiresImpossible life, superhuman life,You who know how it burdens and consumes,Dreams of Olympus bound by human flesh.And when met with a soul which foundA bit of azure to bathe its wings,Like a great, golden sun, or a shoreMade of light, your soul opened:Imagine! To embrace the Impossible!Radiant! The lived illusion!Blessed be God, the sun, the flower, the air,And all of life, because you are life!If I bought this happiness with my anguish,Bless the weeping that stains my eyes!All the ulcers of the past laughAt the sun rising from red lips!Ah you will know, My Love,We will travel far across the flowery night;There what is human frightens, there you can hear it,See it, feel it, life without end.We go further into night, we goWhere in me not an echo reverberates,Like a nocturnal flower in the shade,I will open sweetly for you.
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Written by
G K Chesterton |
When God turned back eternity and was young,
Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
(As under the low arch the land is bright)
Peered through you, gate of heaven--and saw the earth.
Or shutting out his shining skies awhile
Built you about him for a house of gold
To see in pictured walls his storied world
Return upon him as a tale is told.
Or found his mirror there; the only glass
That would not break with that unbearable light
Till in a corner of the high dark house
God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night.
Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In that strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face.
Or young on your strong knees and lifted up
Wisdom cried out, whose voice is in the street,
And more than twilight of twiformed cherubim
Made of his throne indeed a mercy-seat.
Or risen from play at your pale raiment's hem
God, grown adventurous from all time's repose,
Or your tall body climbed the ivory tower
And kissed upon your mouth the mystic rose.
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Written by
Joyce Kilmer |
(For the Rev. Charles L. O'Donnell, C. S. C.)
The garden of God is a radiant place,
And every flower has a holy face:
Our Lady like a lily bends above the cloudy sod,
But Saint Michael is the thorn on the rosebush of God.
David is the song upon God's lips,
And Our Lady is the goblet that He sips:
And Gabriel's the breath of His command,
But Saint Michael is the sword in God's right hand.
The Ivory Tower is fair to see,
And may her walls encompass me!
But when the Devil comes with the thunder of his might,
Saint Michael, show me how to fight!
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Written by
Walter de la Mare |
The last of last words spoken is, Good-bye -
The last dismantled flower in the weed-grown hedge,
The last thin rumour of a feeble bell far ringing,
The last blind rat to spurn the mildewed rye.
A hardening darkness glasses the haunted eye,
Shines into nothing the watcher's burnt-out candle,
Wreathes into scentless nothing the wasting incense,
Faints in the outer silence the hunting-cry.
Love of its muted music breathes no sigh,
Thought in her ivory tower gropes in her spinning,
Toss on in vain the whispering trees of Eden,
Last of all last words spoken is, Good-bye.
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Written by
Alan Seeger |
I fancied, while you stood conversing there,
Superb, in every attitude a queen,
Her ermine thus Boadicea bare,
So moved amid the multitude Faustine.
My life, whose whole religion Beauty is,
Be charged with sin if ever before yours
A lesser feeling crossed my mind than his
Who owning grandeur marvels and adores.
Nay, rather in my dream-world's ivory tower
I made your image the high pearly sill,
And mounting there in many a wistful hour,
Burdened with love, I trembled and was still,
Seeing discovered from that azure height
Remote, untrod horizons of delight.
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Written by
Stevie Smith |
Nobody knows what I feel about Freddy
I cannot make anyone understand
I love him sub specie aet ernitaties
I love him out of hand.
I don't love him so much in the restaurants that's a fact
To get him hobnob with my old pub chums needs too much tact
He don't love them and they don't love him
In the pub lub lights they say Freddy very dim.
But get him alone on the open saltings
Where the sea licks up to the fen
He is his and my own heart's best
World without end ahem.
People who say we ought to get married ought to get smacked:
Why should we do it when we can't afford it and have
ourselves whacked?
Thank you kind friends and relations thank you,
We do very well as we do.
Oh what do I care for the pub lub lights
And the friends I love so well-
There's more in the way I feel about Freddy
Than a friend cal tell.
But all the same I don't care much for his meelyoo I mean
I don't anheimate mich in the ha-ha well-off suburban scene
Where men are few and hearts go tumptytum
In the tennis club lub lights poet very dumb.
But there never was a boy like Freddy
For a haystack's ivory tower of bliss
Where speaking sub specie humanitatis
Freddy and me can kiss.
Exhiled from his meelyoo
Exhiled from mine
There's all Tom Tiddler's time pocket
For his love and mine.
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