Written by
Walt Whitman |
AMERICA always!
Always our own feuillage!
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
Mexico!
Always soft-breath’d Cuba!
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
drain’d
by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the eighty-third year of These States—the three and a half millions of
square
miles;
The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main—the thirty
thousand
miles of
river navigation,
The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings—Always
these,
and
more, branching forth into numberless branches;
Always the free range and diversity! always the continent of Democracy!
Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers, Kanada, the snows;
Always these compact lands—lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge
oval
lakes;
Always the West, with strong native persons—the increasing density there—the
habitans,
friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders;
All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all times,
All characters, movements, growths—a few noticed, myriads unnoticed,
Through Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things gathering;
On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up;
Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and
Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware;
In their northerly wilds, beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks, the hills—or
lapping
the
Saginaw waters to drink;
In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the water, rocking
silently;
In farmers’ barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done—they rest
standing—they are too tired;
Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs play around;
The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail’d—the farthest polar sea, ripply,
crystalline, open, beyond the floes;
White drift spooning ahead, where the ship in the tempest dashes;
On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike midnight together;
In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding—the howl of the wolf, the scream
of the
panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk;
In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake—in summer visible through the
clear
waters, the great trout swimming;
In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating
slowly,
high
beyond the tree tops,
Below, the red cedar, festoon’d with tylandria—the pines and cypresses, growing
out
of the
white sand that spreads far and flat;
Rude boats descending the big Pedee—climbing plants, parasites, with color’d
flowers
and
berries, enveloping huge trees,
The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind;
The camp of Georgia wagoners, just after dark—the supper-fires, and the cooking and
eating
by
whites and *******,
Thirty or forty great wagons—the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs,
The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees—the
flames—with
the
black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling and rising;
Southern fishermen fishing—the sounds and inlets of North Carolina’s
coast—the
shad-fishery and the herring-fishery—the large sweep-seines—the windlasses on
shore
work’d by horses—the clearing, curing, and packing-houses;
Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in the
trees—There
are the turpentine works,
There are the ******* at work, in good health—the ground in all directions is
cover’d
with
pine straw:
—In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the
furnace-blaze, or
at the corn-shucking;
In Virginia, the planter’s son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcom’d
and
kiss’d by the aged mulatto nurse;
On rivers, boatmen safely moor’d at night-fall, in their boats, under shelter of high
banks,
Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the
gunwale,
smoking and talking;
Late in the afternoon, the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal
Swamp—there are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the
cypress
tree,
and the juniper tree;
—Northward, young men of Mannahatta—the target company from an excursion
returning
home at
evening—the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women;
Children at play—or on his father’s lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips
move! how
he smiles in his sleep!)
The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi—he ascends a
knoll
and
sweeps his eye around;
California life—the miner, bearded, dress’d in his rude costume—the stanch
California
friendship—the sweet air—the graves one, in passing, meets, solitary, just
aside the
horsepath;
Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the *****-cabins—drivers driving mules or oxen
before
rude
carts—cotton bales piled on banks and wharves;
Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal
hemispheres—one
Love,
one Dilation or Pride;
—In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines—the calumet, the
pipe
of
good-will, arbitration, and indorsement,
The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth,
The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations,
The setting out of the war-party—the long and stealthy march,
The single-file—the swinging hatchets—the surprise and slaughter of enemies;
—All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of These States—reminiscences,
all
institutions,
All These States, compact—Every square mile of These States, without excepting a
particle—you also—me also,
Me pleas’d, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok’s fields,
Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling between each
other,
ascending high in the air;
The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the fall traveler southward, but
returning
northward early in the spring;
The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as
they
loiter to browse by the road-side;
The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San
Francisco,
The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan;
—Evening—me in my room—the setting sun,
The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended,
balancing
in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows
in
specks
on the opposite wall, where the shine is;
The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners;
Males, females, immigrants, combinations—the copiousness—the individuality of
The
States,
each for itself—the money-makers;
Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces—the windlass, lever, pulley—All
certainties,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity,
In space, the sporades, the scatter’d islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the
lands, my
lands;
O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I become a part of that,
whatever it
is;
Southward there, I screaming, with wings slowly flapping, with the myriads of gulls
wintering
along
the coasts of Florida—or in Louisiana, with pelicans breeding;
Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the
Brazos, the
Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchawan, or the Osage, I with the spring waters
laughing
and
skipping and running;
Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I, with parties of snowy herons
wading in
the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants;
Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill,
for
amusement—And I triumphantly twittering;
The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves—the body
of
the
flock feed—the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from
time
to
time reliev’d by other sentinels—And I feeding and taking turns with the rest;
In Kanadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, corner’d by hunters, rising
desperately on
his
hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives—And I,
plunging
at the
hunters, corner’d and desperate;
In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen
working in
the
shops,
And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof—and no less in myself than the whole of
the
Mannahatta in itself,
Singing the song of These, my ever united lands—my body no more inevitably united,
part to
part, and made one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united, and made ONE
IDENTITY;
Nativities, climates, the grass of the great Pastoral Plains;
Cities, labors, death, animals, products, war, good and evil—these me,
These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to America, how can
I do
less
than pass the clew of the union of them, to afford the like to you?
Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be eligible as I am?
How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the
incomparable
feuillage of These States?
|
Written by
Ted Hughes |
The tractor stands frozen - an agony
To think of.
All night
Snow packed its open entrails.
Now a head-pincering gale,
A spill of molten ice, smoking snow,
Pours into its steel.
At white heat of numbness it stands
In the aimed hosing of ground-level fieriness.
It defied flesh and won't start.
Hands are like wounds already
Inside armour gloves, and feet are unbelievable
As if the toe-nails were all just torn off.
I stare at it in hatred.
Beyond it
The copse hisses - capitulates miserably
In the fleeing, failing light.
Starlings,
A dirtier sleetier snow, blow smokily, unendingly, over
Towards plantations Eastward.
All the time the tractor is sinking
Through the degrees, deepening
Into its hell of ice.
The starting lever
Cracks its action, like a snapping knuckle.
The battery is alive - but like a lamb
Trying to nudge its solid-frozen mother -
While the seat claims my buttock-bones, bites
With the space-cold of earth, which it has joined
In one solid lump.
I squirt commercial sure-fire
Down the black throat - it just coughs.
It ridicules me - a trap of iron stupidity
I've stepped into.
I drive the battery
As if I were hammering and hammering
The frozen arrangement to pieces with a hammer
And it jabbers laughing pain-crying mockingly
Into happy life.
And stands
Shuddering itself full of heat, seeming to enlarge slowly
Like a demon demonstrating
A more-than-usually-complete materialization -
Suddenly it jerks from its solidarity
With the concrete, and lurches towards a stanchion
Bursting with superhuman well-being and abandon
Shouting Where Where?
Worse iron is waiting.
Power-lift kneels
Levers awake imprisoned deadweight,
Shackle-pins bedded in cast-iron cow-****.
The blind and vibrating condemned obedience
Of iron to the cruelty of iron,
Wheels screeched out of their night-locks -
Fingers
Among the tormented
Tonnage and burning of iron
Eyes
Weeping in the wind of chloroform
And the tractor, streaming with sweat,
Raging and trembling and rejoicing.
|
Written by
Barry Tebb |
(To Paul Sykes, author of 'Sweet Agony')
He demolished five doors at a sitting
And topped it off with an outsize window
One Christmas afternoon, when drunk;
Sober he smiled like an angel, bowed,
Kissed ladies’ hands and courtesy
Was his middle name.
She tried to pass for thirty at fifty-six,
Called him "My Sweet piglet" and laid out
Dainty doylies for his teatime treats; always
She wore black from toe to top and especially
Underneath, her hair dyed black, stuck up in a
Bun, her lipstick caked and smeared, drawling
From the corner of her mouth like a
Thirties gangsters’ moll, her true ambition.
"Kill him, kill him, the bastard!" she’d scream
As all Wakefield watched, "It’s Grotty,
Grotty’s at it again!" as pubs and clubs
Banned them, singly or together and they
Moved lodgings yet again, landlords and
Landladies left reeling behind broken doors.
Blood-smeared walls covered with a shiny
Patina of carefully applied deceits! "It was
The cat, the kids, them druggies, lads from
Football", anyone, anywhere but him and her.
Once I heard them fight, "Barry, Barry, get
The police," she thumped my door, double
Five-lever mortice locked against them,
"Call t’ police ‘e’s murderin’ me!" I went
And calmed her down, pathetic in black
Underwear and he, suddenly sober, sorry,
Muttering, "Elaine, Elaine, it were only fun,
Give me a kiss, just one.
"
Was this her fourth or fifth husband, I’d
Lost count and so had she, each one she said
Was worse than the last, they’d all pulled her
Down, one put her through a Dorothy Perkins
Plate-glass window in Wakefield’s midnight,
Leaving her strewn amongst the furs and
Bridal gowns, blood everywhere, such perfection
Of evidence they nearly let her bleed to death
Getting all the photographs.
Rumour flew and grew around her, finally
They said it was all in a book one ‘husband’
Wrote in prison, how she’d had a great house,
Been a brothel madame, had servants even.
For years I chased that book, "Lynch," they
Told me, "It’s by Paul Lynch" but it wasn’t,
Then finally, "I remember, Sykes, they allus
Called him Sykesy" and so it was, Sweet Agony,
Written in prison by one Paul Sykes, her most
Famous inamorato, amateur boxing champion
Of all England, twenty years inside, fly-pitcher
Supreme, king of spielers; how she hated you
For beating her, getting it all down on paper,
Even making money for doing it, "That bastard
Cheated me, writing lying filth about me and
I never saw a penny!" she’d mutter, side-mouthed,
To her pals.
But that book, that bloody book, was no pub myth,
It even won an Arthur Koestler Literary Award
And is compulsive reading; hardly, as a poet,
My cup of tea but I couldn’t put it down.
Paul Sykes, I salute you, immortaliser of Elaine,
Your book became and is my sweetest pain.
|
Written by
Amy Lowell |
Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls,
Slant lines of black rain
In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings.
Below,
Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal,
The street.
And over it, umbrellas,
Black polished dots
Struck to white
An instant,
Stream in two flat lines
Slipping past each other with the smoothness of oil.
Like a four-sided wedge
The Custom House Tower
Pokes at the low, flat sky,
Pushing it farther and farther up,
Lifting it away from the house-tops,
Lifting it in one piece as though it were a sheet of tin,
With the lever of its apex.
The cross-hatchings of rain cut the Tower obliquely,
Scratching lines of black wire across it,
Mutilating its perpendicular grey surface
With the sharp precision of tools.
The city is rigid with straight lines and angles,
A chequered table of blacks and greys.
Oblong blocks of flatness
Crawl by with low-geared engines,
And pass to short upright squares
Shrinking with distance.
A steamer in the basin blows its whistle,
And the sound shoots across the rain hatchings,
A narrow, level bar of steel.
Hard cubes of lemon
Superimpose themselves upon the fronts of buildings
As the windows light up.
But the lemon cubes are edged with angles
Upon which they cannot impinge.
Up, straight, down, straight -- square.
Crumpled grey-white papers
Blow along the side-walks,
Contorted, horrible,
Without curves.
A horse steps in a puddle,
And white, glaring water spurts up
In stiff, outflaring lines,
Like the rattling stems of reeds.
The city is heraldic with angles,
A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable
And countercoloured bends of rain
Hung over a four-square civilization.
When a street lamp comes out,
I gaze at it for fully thirty seconds
To rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance of its globe.
|
Written by
Frank Bidart |
What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll
see each other again,--
.
.
.
and again reach the VEIN
in which we loved each other .
.
It existed.
It existed.
There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--
.
.
.
for, like the detectives (the Ritz Brothers)
in The Gorilla,
once we'd been battered by the gorilla
we searched the walls, the intricately carved
impenetrable paneling
for a button, lever, latch
that unlocks a secret door that
reveals at last the secret chambers,
CORRIDORS within WALLS,
(the disenthralling, necessary, dreamed structure
beneath the structure we see,)
that is the HOUSE within the HOUSE .
.
.
There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--
.
.
.
there were (for example) months when I seemed only
to displease, frustrate,
disappoint you--; then, something triggered
a drunk lasting for days, and as you
slowly and shakily sobered up,
sick, throbbing with remorse and self-loathing,
insight like ashes: clung
to; useless; hated .
.
.
This was the viewing of the power of the waters
while the waters were asleep:--
secrets, histories of loves, betrayals, double-binds
not fit (you thought) for the light of day .
.
.
There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--
.
.
.
for, there at times at night, still we
inhabit the secret place together .
.
.
Is this wisdom, or self-pity?--
The love I've known is the love of
two people staring
not at each other, but in the same direction.
|
Written by
Oliver Wendell Holmes |
DEVOUTEST of my Sunday friends,
The patient Organ-blower bends;
I see his figure sink and rise,
(Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!)
A moment lost, the next half seen,
His head above the scanty screen,
Still measuring out his deep salaams
Through quavering hymns and panting psalms.
No priest that prays in gilded stole,
To save a rich man's mortgaged soul;
No sister, fresh from holy vows,
So humbly stoops, so meekly bows;
His large obeisance puts to shame
The proudest genuflecting dame,
Whose Easter bonnet low descends
With all the grace devotion lends.
O brother with the supple spine,
How much we owe those bows of thine!
Without thine arm to lend the breeze,
How vain the finger on the keys!
Though all unmatched the player's skill,
Those thousand throats were dumb and still:
Another's art may shape the tone,
The breath that fills it is thine own.
Six days the silent Memnon waits
Behind his temple's folded gates;
But when the seventh day's sunshine falls
Through rainbowed windows on the walls,
He breathes, he sings, he shouts, he fills
The quivering air with rapturous thrills;
The roof resounds, the pillars shake,
And all the slumbering echoes wake!
The Preacher from the Bible-text
With weary words my soul has vexed
(Some stranger, fumbling far astray
To find the lesson for the day);
He tells us truths too plainly true,
And reads the service all askew,--
Why, why the-- mischief-- can't he look
Beforehand in the service-book?
But thou, with decent mien and face,
Art always ready in thy place;
Thy strenuous blast, whate'er the tune,
As steady as the strong monsoon;
Thy only dread a leathery creak,
Or small residual extra squeak,
To send along the shadowy aisles
A sunlit wave of dimpled smiles.
Not all the preaching, O my friend,
Comes from the church's pulpit end!
Not all that bend the knee and bow
Yield service half so true as thou!
One simple task performed aright,
With slender skill, but all thy might,
Where honest labor does its best,
And leaves the player all the rest.
This many-diapasoned maze,
Through which the breath of being strays,
Whose music makes our earth divine,
Has work for mortal hands like mine.
My duty lies before me.
Lo,
The lever there! Take hold and blow!
And He whose hand is on the keys
Will play the tune as He shall please.
|
Written by
Henry Lawson |
So you're writing for a paper? Well, it's nothing very new
To be writing yards of drivel for a tidy little screw;
You are young and educated, and a clever chap you are,
But you'll never run a paper like the CAMBAROORA STAR.
Though in point of education I am nothing but a dunce,
I myself -- you mayn't believe it -- helped to run a paper once
With a chap on Cambaroora, by the name of Charlie Brown,
And I'll tell you all about it if you'll take the story down.
On a golden day in summer, when the sunrays were aslant,
Brown arrived in Cambaroora with a little printing plant
And his worldly goods and chattels -- rather damaged on the way --
And a weary-looking woman who was following the dray.
He had bought an empty humpy, and, instead of getting tight,
Why, the diggers heard him working like a lunatic all night:
And next day a sign of canvas, writ in characters of tar,
Claimed the humpy as the office of the CAMBAROORA STAR.
Well, I cannot read, that's honest, but I had a digger friend
Who would read the paper to me from the title to the end;
And the STAR contained a leader running thieves and spielers down,
With a slap against claim-jumping, and a poem made by Brown.
Once I showed it to a critic, and he said 'twas very fine,
Though he wasn't long in finding glaring faults in every line;
But it was a song of Freedom -- all the clever critic said
Couldn't stop that song from ringing, ringing, ringing in my head.
So I went where Brown was working in his little hut hard by:
`My old mate has been a-reading of your writings, Brown,' said I --
`I have studied on your leader, I agree with what you say,
You have struck the bed-rock certain, and there ain't no get-away;
Your paper's just the thumper for a young and growing land,
And your principles is honest, Brown; I want to shake your hand,
And if there's any lumping in connection with the STAR,
Well, I'll find the time to do it, and I'll help you -- there you are!'
Brown was every inch a digger (bronzed and bearded in the South),
But there seemed a kind of weakness round the corners of his mouth
When he took the hand I gave him; and he gripped it like a vice,
While he tried his best to thank me, and he stuttered once or twice.
But there wasn't need for talking -- we'd the same old loves and hates,
And we understood each other -- Charlie Brown and I were mates.
So we worked a little `paddock' on a place they called the `Bar',
And we sank a shaft together, and at night we worked the STAR.
Charlie thought and did his writing when his work was done at night,
And the missus used to `set' it near as quick as he could write.
Well, I didn't shirk my promise, and I helped the thing, I guess,
For at night I worked the lever of the crazy printing-press;
Brown himself would do the feeding, and the missus used to `fly' --
She is flying with the angels, if there's justice up on high,
For she died on Cambaroora when the STAR began to go,
And was buried like the diggers buried diggers long ago.
.
.
.
.
.
Lord, that press! It was a jumper -- we could seldom get it right,
And were lucky if we averaged a hundred in the night.
Many nights we'd sit together in the windy hut and fold,
And I helped the thing a little when I struck a patch of gold;
And we battled for the diggers as the papers seldom do,
Though when the diggers errored, why, we touched the diggers too.
Yet the paper took the fancy of that roaring mining town,
And the diggers sent a nugget with their sympathy to Brown.
Oft I sat and smoked beside him in the listening hours of night,
When the shadows from the corners seemed to gather round the light --
When his weary, aching fingers, closing stiffly round the pen,
Wrote defiant truth in language that could touch the hearts of men --
Wrote until his eyelids shuddered -- wrote until the East was grey:
Wrote the stern and awful lessons that were taught him in his day;
And they knew that he was honest, and they read his smallest par,
For I think the diggers' Bible was the CAMBAROORA STAR.
Diggers then had little mercy for the loafer and the scamp --
If there wasn't law and order, there was justice in the camp;
And the manly independence that is found where diggers are
Had a sentinel to guard it in the CAMBAROORA STAR.
There was strife about the Chinamen, who came in days of old
Like a swarm of thieves and loafers when the diggers found the gold --
Like the sneaking fortune-hunters who are always found behind,
And who only shepherd diggers till they track them to the `find'.
Charlie wrote a slinging leader, calling on his digger mates,
And he said: `We think that Chinkies are as bad as syndicates.
What's the good of holding meetings where you only talk and swear?
Get a move upon the Chinkies when you've got an hour to spare.
'
It was nine o'clock next morning when the Chows began to swarm,
But they weren't so long in going, for the diggers' blood was warm.
Then the diggers held a meeting, and they shouted: `Hip hoorar!
Give three ringing cheers, my hearties, for the CAMBAROORA STAR.
'
But the Cambaroora petered, and the diggers' sun went down,
And another sort of people came and settled in the town;
The reefing was conducted by a syndicate or two,
And they changed the name to `Queensville', for their blood was very blue.
They wanted Brown to help them put the feathers in their nests,
But his leaders went like thunder for their vested interests,
And he fought for right and justice and he raved about the dawn
Of the reign of Man and Reason till his ads.
were all withdrawn.
He was offered shares for nothing in the richest of the mines,
And he could have made a fortune had he run on other lines;
They abused him for his leaders, and they parodied his rhymes,
And they told him that his paper was a mile behind the times.
`Let the times alone,' said Charlie, `they're all right, you needn't fret;
For I started long before them, and they haven't caught me yet.
But,' says he to me, `they're coming, and they're not so very far --
Though I left the times behind me they are following the STAR.
`Let them do their worst,' said Charlie, `but I'll never drop the reins
While a single scrap of paper or an ounce of ink remains:
I've another truth to tell them, though they tread me in the dirt,
And I'll print another issue if I print it on my shirt.
'
So we fought the battle bravely, and we did our very best
Just to make the final issue quite as lively as the rest.
And the swells in Cambaroora talked of feathers and of tar
When they read the final issue of the CAMBAROORA STAR.
Gold is stronger than the tongue is -- gold is stronger than the pen:
They'd have squirmed in Cambaroora had I found a nugget then;
But in vain we scraped together every penny we could get,
For they fixed us with their boycott, and the plant was seized for debt.
'Twas a storekeeper who did it, and he sealed the paper's doom,
Though we gave him ads.
for nothing when the STAR began to boom:
'Twas a paltry bill for tucker, and the crawling, sneaking clown
Sold the debt for twice its value to the men who hated Brown.
I was digging up the river, and I swam the flooded bend
With a little cash and comfort for my literary friend.
Brown was sitting sad and lonely with his head bowed in despair,
While a single tallow candle threw a flicker on his hair,
And the gusty wind that whistled through the crannies of the door
Stirred the scattered files of paper that were lying on the floor.
Charlie took my hand in silence -- and by-and-by he said:
`Tom, old mate, we did our damnedest, but the brave old STAR is dead.
'
.
.
.
.
.
Then he stood up on a sudden, with a face as pale as death,
And he gripped my hand a moment, while he seemed to fight for breath:
`Tom, old friend,' he said, `I'm going, and I'm ready to -- to start,
For I know that there is something -- something crooked with my heart.
Tom, my first child died.
I loved her even better than the pen --
Tom -- and while the STAR was dying, why, I felt like I did THEN.
.
.
.
.
.
Listen! Like the distant thunder of the rollers on the bar --
Listen, Tom! I hear the -- diggers -- shouting: `Bully for the STAR!''
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
Now the New Year, reviving last Year's Debt,
The Thoughtful Fisher casteth wide his Net;
So I with begging Dish and ready Tongue
Assail all Men for all that I can get.
Imports indeed are gone with all their Dues --
Lo! Salt a Lever that I dare not use,
Nor may I ask the Tillers in Bengal --
Surely my Kith and Kin will not refuse!
Pay -- and I promise by the Dust of Spring,
Retrenchment.
If my promises can bring
Comfort, Ye have Them now a thousandfold --
By Allah! I will promise Anything!
Indeed, indeed, Retrenchment oft before
I sore -- but did I mean it when I swore?
And then, and then, We wandered to the Hills,
And so the Little Less became Much More.
Whether a Boileaugunge or Babylon,
I know not how the wretched Thing is done,
The Items of Receipt grow surely small;
The Items of Expense mount one by one.
I cannot help it.
What have I to do
With One and Five, or Four, or Three, or Two?
Let Scribes spit Blood and Sulphur as they please,
Or Statesmen call me foolish -- Heed not you.
Behold, I promise -- Anything You will.
Behold, I greet you with an empty Till --
Ah! Fellow-Sinners, of your Charity
Seek not the Reason of the Dearth, but fill.
For if I sinned and fell, where lies the Gain
Of Knowledge? Would it ease you of your Pain
To know the tangled Threads of Revenue,
I ravel deeper in a hopeless Skein?
"Who hath not Prudence" -- what was it I said,
Of Her who paints her Eyes and tires Her Head,
And gibes and mocks and People in the Street,
And fawns upon them for Her thriftless Bread?
Accursed is She of Eve's daughters -- She
Hath cast off Prudence, and Her End shall be
Destruction .
.
.
Brethren, of your Bounty
Some portion of your daily Bread to Me.
|
Written by
Dylan Thomas |
I
All all and all the dry worlds lever,
Stage of the ice, the solid ocean,
All from the oil, the pound of lava.
City of spring, the governed flower,
Turns in the earth that turns the ashen
Towns around on a wheel of fire.
How now my flesh, my naked fellow,
Dug of the sea, the glanded morrow,
Worm in the scalp, the staked and fallow.
All all and all, the corpse's lover,
Skinny as sin, the foaming marrow,
All of the flesh, the dry worlds lever.
II
Fear not the waking world, my mortal,
Fear not the flat, synthetic blood,
Nor the heart in the ribbing metal.
Fear not the tread, the seeded milling,
The trigger and scythe, the bridal blade,
Nor the flint in the lover's mauling.
Man of my flesh, the jawbone riven,
Know now the flesh's lock and vice,
And the cage for the scythe-eyed raver.
Know, O my bone, the jointed lever,
Fear not the screws that turn the voice,
And the face to the driven lover.
III
All all and all the dry worlds couple,
Ghost with her ghost, contagious man
With the womb of his shapeless people.
All that shapes from the caul and suckle,
Stroke of mechanical flesh on mine,
Square in these worlds the mortal circle.
Flower, flower the people's fusion,
O light in zenith, the coupled bud,
And the flame in the flesh's vision.
Out of the sea, the drive of oil,
Socket and grave, the brassy blood,
Flower, flower, all all and all.
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,
We were melted in the furnace and the pit--
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,
And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:
And now, if you will set us to our task,
We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!
We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive,
We can print and plough and weave and heat and light,
We can run and race and swim and fly and dive,
We can see and hear and count and read and write!
Would you call a friend from half across the world?
If you'll let us have his name and town and state,
You shall see and hear your cracking question hurled
Across the arch of heaven while you wait.
Has he answered? Does he need you at his side-
You can start this very evening if you choose
And take the Western Ocean in the stride
O seventy thousand horses and some screws!
The boat-express is waiting your command!
You will find the Mauritania at the quay,
Till her captain turns the lever 'neath his hand,
And the monstrouos nine-decked city goes to sea.
Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head
And lay their new-cut forests at your feet?
Do you want to turn a river in its bed,
Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat?
Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down
From the never-failing cisterns of the snows,
To work the mills and tramways in your town,
And irrigate your orchards as it flows?
It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills!
Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake,
As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills,
And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake.
But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings-
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!--
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth--except The Gods!
Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,
It will vanish and the stars will shine again,
Because, for all our power and weight and size,
We are nothing more than children of your brain!
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