Written by
Richard Aldington |
I
The bitterness. the misery, the wretchedness of childhood
Put me out of love with God.
I can't believe in God's goodness;
I can believe
In many avenging gods.
Most of all I believe
In gods of bitter dullness,
Cruel local gods
Who scared my childhood.
II
I've seen people put
A chrysalis in a match-box,
"To see," they told me, "what sort of moth would come."
But when it broke its shell
It slipped and stumbled and fell about its prison
And tried to climb to the light
For space to dry its wings.
That's how I was.
Somebody found my chrysalis
And shut it in a match-box.
My shrivelled wings were beaten,
Shed their colours in dusty scales
Before the box was opened
For the moth to fly.
III
I hate that town;
I hate the town I lived in when I was little;
I hate to think of it.
There wre always clouds, smoke, rain
In that dingly little valley.
It rained; it always rained.
I think I never saw the sun until I was nine --
And then it was too late;
Everything's too late after the first seven years.
The long street we lived in
Was duller than a drain
And nearly as dingy.
There were the big College
And the pseudo-Gothic town-hall.
There were the sordid provincial shops --
The grocer's, and the shops for women,
The shop where I bought transfers,
And the piano and gramaphone shop
Where I used to stand
Staring at the huge shiny pianos and at the pictures
Of a white dog looking into a gramaphone.
How dull and greasy and grey and sordid it was!
On wet days -- it was always wet --
I used to kneel on a chair
And look at it from the window.
The dirty yellow trams
Dragged noisily along
With a clatter of wheels and bells
And a humming of wires overhead.
They threw up the filthy rain-water from the hollow lines
And then the water ran back
Full of brownish foam bubbles.
There was nothing else to see --
It was all so dull --
Except a few grey legs under shiny black umbrellas
Running along the grey shiny pavements;
Sometimes there was a waggon
Whose horses made a strange loud hollow sound
With their hoofs
Through the silent rain.
And there was a grey museum
Full of dead birds and dead insects and dead animals
And a few relics of the Romans -- dead also.
There was a sea-front,
A long asphalt walk with a bleak road beside it,
Three piers, a row of houses,
And a salt dirty smell from the little harbour.
I was like a moth --
Like one of those grey Emperor moths
Which flutter through the vines at Capri.
And that damned little town was my match-box,
Against whose sides I beat and beat
Until my wings were torn and faded, and dingy
As that damned little town.
IV
At school it was just as dull as that dull High Street.
The front was dull;
The High Street and the other street were dull --
And there was a public park, I remember,
And that was damned dull, too,
With its beds of geraniums no one was allowed to pick,
And its clipped lawns you weren't allowed to walk on,
And the gold-fish pond you mustn't paddle in,
And the gate made out of a whale's jaw-bones,
And the swings, which were for "Board-School children,"
And its gravel paths.
And on Sundays they rang the bells,
From Baptist and Evangelical and Catholic churches.
They had a Salvation Army.
I was taken to a High Church;
The parson's name was Mowbray,
"Which is a good name but he thinks too much of it --"
That's what I heard people say.
I took a little black book
To that cold, grey, damp, smelling church,
And I had to sit on a hard bench,
Wriggle off it to kneel down when they sang psalms
And wriggle off it to kneel down when they prayed,
And then there was nothing to do
Except to play trains with the hymn-books.
There was nothing to see,
Nothing to do,
Nothing to play with,
Except that in an empty room upstairs
There was a large tin box
Containing reproductions of the Magna Charta,
Of the Declaration of Independence
And of a letter from Raleigh after the Armada.
There were also several packets of stamps,
Yellow and blue Guatemala parrots,
Blue stags and red baboons and birds from Sarawak,
Indians and Men-of-war
From the United States,
And the green and red portraits
Of King Francobello
Of Italy.
V
I don't believe in God.
I do believe in avenging gods
Who plague us for sins we never sinned
But who avenge us.
That's why I'll never have a child,
Never shut up a chrysalis in a match-box
For the moth to spoil and crush its brght colours,
Beating its wings against the dingy prison-wall.
|
Written by
Delmore Schwartz |
Is the spider a monster in miniature?
His web is a cruel stair, to be sure,
Designed artfully, cunningly placed,
A delicate trap, carefully spun
To bind the fly (innocent or unaware)
In a net as strong as a chain or a gun.
There are far more spiders than the man in the street
supposes
And the philosopher-king imagines, let alone knows!
There are six hundred kinds of spiders and each one
Differs in kind and in unkindness.
In variety of behavior spiders are unrivalled:
The fat garden spider sits motionless, amidst or at the heart
Of the orb of its web: other kinds run,
Scuttling across the floor, falling into bathtubs,
Trapped in the path of its own wrath, by overconfidence
drowned and undone.
Other kinds - more and more kinds under the stars and
the sun -
Are carnivores: all are relentless, ruthless
Enemies of insects. Their methods of getting food
Are unconventional, numerous, various and sometimes
hilarious:
Some spiders spin webs as beautiful
As Japanese drawings, intricate as clocks, strong as rocks:
Others construct traps which consist only
Of two sticky and tricky threads. Yet this ambush is enough
To bind and chain a crawling ant for long
enough:
The famished spider feels the vibration
Which transforms patience into sensation and satiation.
The handsome wolf spider moves suddenly freely and relies
Upon lightning suddenness, stealth and surprise,
Possessing accurate eyes, pouncing upon his victim with the
speed of surmise.
Courtship is dangerous: there are just as many elaborate
and endless techniques and varieties
As characterize the wooing of more analytic, more
introspective beings: Sometimes the male
Arrives with the gift of a freshly caught fly.
Sometimes he ties down the female, when she is frail,
With deft strokes and quick maneuvres and threads of silk:
But courtship and wooing, whatever their form, are
informed
By extreme caution, prudence, and calculation,
For the female spider, lazier and fiercer than the male
suitor,
May make a meal of him if she does not feel in the same
mood, or if her appetite
Consumes her far more than the revelation of love's
consummation.
Here among spiders, as in the higher forms of nature,
The male runs a terrifying risk when he goes seeking for
the bounty of beautiful Alma Magna Mater:
Yet clearly and truly he must seek and find his mate and
match like every other living creature!
|
Written by
Robert Burns |
FINTRY, my stay in wordly strife,
Friend o’ my muse, friend o’ my life,
Are ye as idle’s I am?
Come then, wi’ uncouth kintra fleg,
O’er Pegasus I’ll fling my leg,
And ye shall see me try him.
But where shall I go rin a ride,
That I may splatter nane beside?
I wad na be uncivil:
In manhood’s various paths and ways
There’s aye some doytin’ body strays,
And I ride like the devil.
Thus I break aff wi’ a’ my birr,
And down yon dark, deep alley spur,
Where Theologics daunder:
Alas! curst wi’ eternal fogs,
And damn’d in everlasting bogs,
As sure’s the creed I’ll blunder!
I’ll stain a band, or jaup a gown,
Or rin my reckless, guilty crown
Against the haly door:
Sair do I rue my luckless fate,
When, as the Muse an’ Deil wad hae’t,
I rade that road before.
Suppose I take a spurt, and mix
Amang the wilds o’ Politics—
Electors and elected,
Where dogs at Court (sad sons of bitches!)
Septennially a madness touches,
Till all the land’s infected.
All hail! Drumlanrig’s haughty Grace,
Discarded remnant of a race
Once godlike-great in story;
Thy forbears’ virtues all contrasted,
The very name of Douglas blasted,
Thine that inverted glory!
Hate, envy, oft the Douglas bore,
But thou hast superadded more,
And sunk them in contempt;
Follies and crimes have stain’d the name,
But, Queensberry, thine the virgin claim,
From aught that’s good exempt!
I’ll sing the zeal Drumlanrig bears,
Who left the all-important cares
Of princes, and their darlings:
And, bent on winning borough touns,
Came shaking hands wi’ wabster-loons,
And kissing barefit carlins.
Combustion thro’ our boroughs rode,
Whistling his roaring pack abroad
Of mad unmuzzled lions;
As Queensberry blue and buff unfurl’d,
And Westerha’ and Hopetoun hurled
To every Whig defiance.
But cautious Queensberry left the war,
Th’ unmanner’d dust might soil his star,
Besides, he hated bleeding:
But left behind him heroes bright,
Heroes in C&æsarean fight,
Or Ciceronian pleading.
O for a throat like huge Mons-Meg,
To muster o’er each ardent Whig
Beneath Drumlanrig’s banners;
Heroes and heroines commix,
All in the field of politics,
To win immortal honours.
M’Murdo and his lovely spouse,
(Th’ enamour’d laurels kiss her brows!)
Led on the Loves and Graces:
She won each gaping burgess’ heart,
While he, sub rosa, played his part
Amang their wives and lasses.
Craigdarroch led a light-arm’d core,
Tropes, metaphors, and figures pour,
Like Hecla streaming thunder:
Glenriddel, skill’d in rusty coins,
Blew up each Tory’s dark designs,
And bared the treason under.
In either wing two champions fought;
Redoubted Staig, who set at nought
The wildest savage Tory;
And Welsh who ne’er yet flinch’d his ground,
High-wav’d his magnum-bonum round
With Cyclopeian fury.
Miller brought up th’ artillery ranks,
The many-pounders of the Banks,
Resistless desolation!
While Maxwelton, that baron bold,
’Mid Lawson’s port entrench’d his hold,
And threaten’d worse damnation.
To these what Tory hosts oppos’d
With these what Tory warriors clos’d
Surpasses my descriving;
Squadrons, extended long and large,
With furious speed rush to the charge,
Like furious devils driving.
What verse can sing, what prose narrate,
The butcher deeds of bloody Fate,
Amid this mighty tulyie!
Grim Horror girn’d, pale Terror roar’d,
As Murder at his thrapple shor’d,
And Hell mix’d in the brulyie.
As Highland craigs by thunder cleft,
When lightnings fire the stormy lift,
Hurl down with crashing rattle;
As flames among a hundred woods,
As headlong foam from a hundred floods,
Such is the rage of Battle.
The stubborn Tories dare to die;
As soon the rooted oaks would fly
Before th’ approaching fellers:
The Whigs come on like Ocean’s roar,
When all his wintry billows pour
Against the Buchan Bullers.
Lo, from the shades of Death’s deep night,
Departed Whigs enjoy the fight,
And think on former daring:
The muffled murtherer of Charles
The Magna Charter flag unfurls,
All deadly gules its bearing.
Nor wanting ghosts of Tory fame;
Bold Scrimgeour follows gallant Graham;
Auld Covenanters shiver—
Forgive! forgive! much-wrong’d Montrose!
Now Death and Hell engulph thy foes,
Thou liv’st on high for ever.
Still o’er the field the combat burns,
The Tories, Whigs, give way by turns;
But Fate the word has spoken:
For woman’s wit and strength o’man,
Alas! can do but what they can;
The Tory ranks are broken.
O that my een were flowing burns!
My voice, a lioness that mourns
Her darling cubs’ undoing!
That I might greet, that I might cry,
While Tories fall, while Tories fly,
And furious Whigs pursuing!
What Whig but melts for good Sir James,
Dear to his country, by the names,
Friend, Patron, Benefactor!
Not Pulteney’s wealth can Pulteney save;
And Hopetoun falls, the generous, brave;
And Stewart, bold as Hector.
Thou, Pitt, shalt rue this overthrow,
And Thurlow growl a curse of woe,
And Melville melt in wailing:
Now Fox and Sheridan rejoice,
And Burke shall sing, “O Prince, arise!
Thy power is all-prevailing!”
For your poor friend, the Bard, afar
He only hears and sees the war,
A cool spectator purely!
So, when the storm the forest rends,
The robin in the hedge descends,
And sober chirps securely.
Now, for my friends’ and brethren’s sakes,
And for my dear-lov’d Land o’ Cakes,
I pray with holy fire:
Lord, send a rough-shod troop o’ Hell
O’er a’ wad Scotland buy or sell,
To grind them in the mire!
|
Written by
Ogden Nash |
Now when I have a cold
I am careful with my cold,
I consult a physician
And I do as I am told.
I muffle up my torso
In woolly woolly garb,
And I quaff great flagons
Of sodium bicarb.
I munch on aspirin,
I lunch on water,
And I wouldn’t dream of osculating
Anybody’s daughter,
And to anybody’s son
I wouldn’t say howdy,
For I am a sufferer
Magna cum laude.
I don’t like germs,
But I’ll keep the germs I’ve got.
Will I take a chance of spreading them?
Definitely not.
I sneeze out the window
And I cough up the flue,
And I live like a hermit
Till the germs get through.
And because I’m considerate,
Because I’m wary,
I am treated by my friends
Like Typhoid Mary.
Now when you have a cold
You are careless with your cold,
You are cocky as a gangster
Who has just been paroled.
You ignore your physician,
You eat steaks and oxtails,
You stuff yourself with starches,
You drink lots of cocktails,
And you claim that gargling
Is a time of waste,
And you won’t take soda
For you don’t like the taste,
And you prowl around parties
Full of selfish bliss,
And greet your hostess
With a genial kiss.
You convert yourself
Into a deadly missle,
You exhale Hello’s
Like a steamboat wistle.
You sneeze in the subway
And you cough at dances,
And let everybody else
Take their own good chances.
You’re a bronchial boor,
A bacterial blighter,
And you get more invitations
Than a gossip writer.
Yes, your throat is froggy,
And your eyes are swimmy,
And you hand is clammy,
And you nose is brimmy,
But you woo my girls
And their hearts you jimmy
While I sit here
With the cold you gimmy.
|
Written by
Vachel Lindsay |
(Being a Chant of the American Soap-Box and the Russian Revolution.)
O market square, O slattern place,
Is glory in your slack disgrace?
Plump quack doctors sell their pills,
Gentle grafters sell brass watches,
Silly anarchists yell their ills.
Shall we be as weird as these?
In the breezes nod and wheeze?
Heaven's mass is sung,
Tomorrow's mass is sung
In a spirit tongue
By wind and dust and birds,
The high mass of liberty,
While wave the banners red:
Sung round the soap-box,
A mass for soldiers dead.
When you leave your faction in the once-loved hall,
Like a true American tongue-lash them all,
Stand then on the corner under starry skies
And get you a gang of the worn and the wise.
The soldiers of the Lord may be squeaky when they rally,
The soldiers of the Lord are a ***** little army,
But the soldiers of the Lord, before the year is through,
Will gather the whole nation, recruit all creation,
To smite the hosts abhorred, and all the heavens renew —
Enforcing with the bayonet the thing the ages teach —
Free speech!
Free speech!
Down with the Prussians, and all their works.
Down with the Turks.
Down with every army that fights against the soap-box,
The Pericles, Socrates, Diogenes soap-box,
The old Elijah, Jeremiah, John-the-Baptist soap-box,
The Rousseau, Mirabeau, Danton soap-box,
The Karl Marx, Henry George, Woodrow Wilson soap-box.
We will make the wide earth safe for the soap-box,
The everlasting foe of beastliness and tyranny,
Platform of liberty: — Magna Charta liberty,
Andrew Jackson liberty, bleeding Kansas liberty,
New-born Russian liberty: —
Battleship of thought,
The round world over,
Loved by the red-hearted,
Loved by the broken-hearted,
Fair young Amazon or proud tough rover,
Loved by the lion,
Loved by the lion,
Loved by the lion,
Feared by the fox.
The Russian Revolution is the world revolution.
Death at the bedstead of every Kaiser knocks.
The Hohenzollern army shall be felled like the ox.
The fatal hour is striking in all the doomsday clocks.
The while, by freedom's alchemy
Beauty is born.
Ring every sleigh-bell, ring every church bell,
Blow the clear trumpet, and listen for the answer: —
The blast from the sky of the Gabriel horn.
Hail the Russian picture around the little box: —
Exiles,
Troops in files,
Generals in uniform,
Mujiks in their smocks,
And holy maiden soldiers who have cut away their locks.
All the peoples and the nations in processions mad and great,
Are rolling through the Russian Soul as through a city gate: —
As though it were a street of stars that paves the shadowy deep.
And mighty Tolstoi leads the van along the stairway steep.
But now the people shout:
"Hail to Kerensky,
He hurled the tyrants out."
And this my song is made for Kerensky,
Prophet of the world-wide intolerable hope,
There on the soap-box, seasoned, dauntless,
There amid the Russian celestial kaleidoscope,
Flags of liberty, rags and battlesmoke.
Moscow and Chicago!
Come let us praise battling Kerensky,
Bravo! Bravo!
Comrade Kerensky the thunderstorm and rainbow!
Comrade Kerensky, Bravo, Bravo!
|
Written by
Marriott Edgar |
I'll tell of the Magna Charter
As were signed at the Barons' command
On Runningmead Island in t' middle of t' Thames
By King John, as were known as "Lack Land."
Some say it were wrong of the Barons
Their will on the King so to thrust,
But you'll see if you look at both sides of the case
That they had to do something, or bust.
For John, from the moment they crowned him,
Started acting so cunning and sly,
Being King, of course, he couldn't do wrong,
But, by gum, he'd a proper good try.
He squandered the ratepayers' money,
All their cattle and corn did he take,
'Til there wasn't a morsel of bread in the land,
And folk had to manage on cake.
The way he behaved to young Arthur
Went to show as his feelings was bad;
He tried to get Hubert to poke out his eyes,
Which is no way to treat a young lad.
It were all right him being a tyrant
To vassals and folks of that class,
But he tried on his tricks with the Barons an' all,
And that's where he made a 'faux pas'.
He started bombarding their castles,
And burning them over their head,
'Til there wasn't enough castles left to go round,
And they had to sleep six in a bed.
So they went to the King in a body,
And their spokesman, Fitzwalter by name,
He opened the 'ole in his 'elmet and said,
Conciliatory like, " What's the game?"
The King starts to shilly and shally,
He sits and he haws and he hums,
'Til the Barons in rage started gnashing their teeth,
And them with no teeth gnashed their gums
Said Fitz, through the 'ole in his 'elmet,
"It was you as put us in this plight."
And the King having nothing to say to this, murmured
"Leave your address and I'll write".
This angered the gallant Fitzwalter;
He stamped on the floor with his foot,
And were starting to give John a rare ticking off,
When the 'ole in his 'elmet fell shut.
"We'll get him a Magna Charter,"
Said Fitz when his face he had freed;
Said the Barons "That's right and if one's not enough,
Get a couple and happen they'll breed.''
So they set about making a Charter,
When at finish they'd got it drawn up,
It looked like a paper on cattle disease,
Or the entries for t' Waterloo Cup.
Next day, King John, all unsuspecting,
And having the afternoon free,
To Runningmead Island had taken a boat,
And were having some shrimps for his tea.
He'd just pulled the 'ead off a big 'un,
And were pinching its tail with his thumb,
When up came a barge load of Barons, who said,
"We thought you'd be here so we've come"
When they told him they'd brought Magna Charter,
The King seemed to go kind of limp,
But minding his manners he took off his hat
And said " Thanks very much, have a shrimp."
" You'd best sign at once," said Fitzwalter,
" If you don't, I'll tell thee for a start
The next coronation will happen quite soon,
And you won't be there to take part."
So they spread Charter out on t' tea table,
And John signed his name like a lamb,
His writing in places was sticky and thick
Through dipping his pen in the jam.
And it's through that there Magna Charter,
As were signed by the Barons of old,
That in England to-day we can do what we like,
So long as we do what we're told.
|
Written by
Robert Burns |
THOU, Liberty, thou art my theme;
Not such as idle poets dream,
Who trick thee up a heathen goddess
That a fantastic cap and rod has;
Such stale conceits are poor and silly;
I paint thee out, a Highland filly,
A sturdy, stubborn, handsome dapple,
As sleek’s a mouse, as round’s an apple,
That when thou pleasest canst do wonders;
But when thy luckless rider blunders,
Or if thy fancy should demur there,
Wilt break thy neck ere thou go further.
These things premised, I sing a Fox,
Was caught among his native rocks,
And to a dirty kennel chained,
How he his liberty regained.
Glenriddell! Whig without a stain,
A Whig in principle and grain,
Could’st thou enslave a free-born creature,
A native denizen of Nature?
How could’st thou, with a heart so good,
(A better ne’er was sluiced with blood!)
Nail a poor devil to a tree,
That ne’er did harm to thine or thee?
The staunchest Whig Glenriddell was,
Quite frantic in his country’s cause;
And oft was Reynard’s prison passing,
And with his brother-Whigs canvassing
The Rights of Men, the Powers of Women,
With all the dignity of Freemen.
Sir Reynard daily heard debates
Of Princes’, Kings’, and Nations’ fates,
With many rueful, bloody stories
Of Tyrants, Jacobites, and Tories:
From liberty how angels fell,
That now are galley-slaves in hell;
How Nimrod first the trade began
Of binding Slavery’s chains on Man;
How fell Semiramis—G—d d-mn her!
Did first, with sacrilegious hammer,
(All ills till then were trivial matters)
For Man dethron’d forge hen-peck fetters;
How Xerxes, that abandoned Tory,
Thought cutting throats was reaping glory,
Until the stubborn Whigs of Sparta
Taught him great Nature’s Magna Charta;
How mighty Rome her fiat hurl’d
Resistless o’er a bowing world,
And, kinder than they did desire,
Polish’d mankind with sword and fire;
With much, too tedious to relate,
Of ancient and of modern date,
But ending still, how Billy Pitt
(Unlucky boy!) with wicked wit,
Has gagg’d old Britain, drain’d her coffer,
As butchers bind and bleed a heifer,
Thus wily Reynard by degrees,
In kennel listening at his ease,
Suck’d in a mighty stock of knowledge,
As much as some folks at a College;
Knew Britain’s rights and constitution,
Her aggrandisement, diminution,
How fortune wrought us good from evil;
Let no man, then, despise the Devil,
As who should say, ‘I never can need him,’
Since we to scoundrels owe our freedom.
|
Written by
Amy Lowell |
First Movement
Thin-voiced, nasal pipes
Drawing sound out and out
Until it is a screeching thread,
Sharp and cutting, sharp and cutting,
It hurts.
Whee-e-e!
Bump! Bump! Tong-ti-bump!
There are drums here,
Banging,
And wooden shoes beating the round, grey stones
Of the market-place.
Whee-e-e!
Sabots slapping the worn, old stones,
And a shaking and cracking of dancing bones;
Clumsy and hard they are,
And uneven,
Losing half a beat
Because the stones are slippery.
Bump-e-ty-tong! Whee-e-e! Tong!
The thin Spring leaves
Shake to the banging of shoes.
Shoes beat, slap,
Shuffle, rap,
And the nasal pipes squeal with their pigs' voices,
Little pigs' voices
Weaving among the dancers,
A fine white thread
Linking up the dancers.
Bang! Bump! Tong!
Petticoats,
Stockings,
Sabots,
Delirium flapping its thigh-bones;
Red, blue, yellow,
Drunkenness steaming in colours;
Red, yellow, blue,
Colours and flesh weaving together,
In and out, with the dance,
Coarse stuffs and hot flesh weaving together.
Pigs' cries white and tenuous,
White and painful,
White and --
Bump!
Tong!
Second Movement
Pale violin music whiffs across the moon,
A pale smoke of violin music blows over the moon,
Cherry petals fall and flutter,
And the white Pierrot,
Wreathed in the smoke of the violins,
Splashed with cherry petals falling, falling,
Claws a grave for himself in the fresh earth
With his finger-nails.
Third Movement
An organ growls in the heavy roof-groins of a church,
It wheezes and coughs.
The nave is blue with incense,
Writhing, twisting,
Snaking over the heads of the chanting priests.
`Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine';
The priests whine their bastard Latin
And the censers swing and click.
The priests walk endlessly
Round and round,
Droning their Latin
Off the key.
The organ crashes out in a flaring chord,
And the priests hitch their chant up half a tone.
`Dies illa, dies irae,
Calamitatis et miseriae,
Dies magna et amara valde.'
A wind rattles the leaded windows.
The little pear-shaped candle flames leap and flutter,
`Dies illa, dies irae;'
The swaying smoke drifts over the altar,
`Calamitatis et miseriae;'
The shuffling priests sprinkle holy water,
`Dies magna et amara valde;'
And there is a stark stillness in the midst of them
Stretched upon a bier.
His ears are stone to the organ,
His eyes are flint to the candles,
His body is ice to the water.
Chant, priests,
Whine, shuffle, genuflect,
He will always be as rigid as he is now
Until he crumbles away in a dust heap.
`Lacrymosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus *****reus.'
Above the grey pillars the roof is in darkness.
|
Written by
Delmore Schwartz |
(With much help from Robert Good, William Shakespeare,
John Milton, and little Catherine Schwartz)
Shall I compare her to a summer play?
She is too clever, too devious, too subtle, too dark:
Her lies are rare, but then she paves the way
Beyond the summer's sway, within the jejune park
Where all souls' aspiration to true nobility
Obliges Statues in the Frieze of Death
And when this pantomime and Panama of Panorama Fails,
"I'll never speak to you agayne" -- or waste her panting breath.
When I but think of how her years are spent
Deadening that one talent which -- for woman is --
Death or paralysis, denied: nature's intent
That each girl be a mother -- whether or not she is
Or has become a lawful wife or bride
-- 0 Alma Magna Mater, deathless the living death of pride.
|
Written by
Coventry Patmore |
Here, in this little Bay,
Full of tumultuous life and great repose,
Where, twice a day,
The purposeless, gay ocean comes and goes,
Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,
I sit me down.
For want of me the world's course will not fail:
When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great, and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not.
|