Written by
Sylvia Plath |
The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.
Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.
He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
|
Written by
Robert Frost |
Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain
In Dalton that would someday make his fortune.
There'd been some Boston people out to see it:
And experts said that deep down in the mountain
The mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows.
He'd like to take me there and show it to me.
"I'll tell you what you show me.
You remember
You said you knew the place where once, on Kinsman,
The early Mormons made a settlement
And built a stone baptismal font outdoors—
But Smith, or someone, called them off the mountain
To go West to a worse fight with the desert.
You said you'd seen the stone baptismal font.
Well, take me there.
"
Someday I will.
"
"Today.
"
"Huh, that old bathtub, what is that to see?
Let's talk about it.
"
"Let's go see the place.
"
'To shut you up I'll tell you what I'll do:
I'll find that fountain if it takes all summer,
And both of our united strengths, to do it.
"
"You've lost it, then?"
"Not so but I can find it.
No doubt it's grown up some to woods around it.
The mountain may have shifted since I saw it
In eighty-five.
"
"As long ago as that?"
"If I remember rightly, it had sprung
A leak and emptied then.
And forty years
Can do a good deal to bad masonry.
You won't see any Mormon swimming in it.
But you have said it, and we're off to find it.
Old as I am, I'm going to let myself
Be dragged by you all over everywhere——"
"I thought you were a guide.
”
"I am a guide,
And that's why I can't decently refuse you.
"
We made a day of it out of the world,
Ascending to descend to reascend.
The old man seriously took his bearings,
And spoke his doubts in every open place.
We came out on a look-off where we faced
A cliff, and on the cliff a bottle painted,
Or stained by vegetation from above,
A likeness to surprise the thrilly tourist.
"Well, if I haven't brought you to the fountain,
At least I've brought you to the famous Bottle.
"
"I won't accept the substitute.
It's empty.
”
"So's everything.
"
"I want my fountain.
"
"I guess you'd find the fountain just as empty.
And anyway this tells me where I am.
”
"Hadn't you long suspected where you were?"
"You mean miles from that Mormon settlement?
Look here, you treat your guide with due respect
If you don't want to spend the night outdoors.
I vow we must be near the place from where
The two converging slides, the avalanches,
On Marshall, look like donkey's ears.
We may as well see that and save the day.
"
"Don't donkey's ears suggest we shake our own?"
"For God's sake, aren't you fond of viewing nature?
You don't like nature.
All you like is books.
What signify a donkey's cars and bottle,
However natural? Give you your books!
Well then, right here is where I show you books.
Come straight down off this mountain just as fast
As we can fall and keep a-bouncing on our feet.
It's hell for knees unless done hell-for-leather.
"
Be ready, I thought, for almost anything.
We struck a road I didn't recognize,
But welcomed for the chance to lave my shoes
In dust once more.
We followed this a mile,
Perhaps, to where it ended at a house
I didn't know was there.
It was the kind
To bring me to for broad-board paneling.
I never saw so good a house deserted.
"Excuse me if I ask you in a window
That happens to be broken, Davis said.
"The outside doors as yet have held against us.
I want to introduce you to the people
Who used to live here.
They were Robinsons.
You must have heard of Clara Robinson,
The poetess who wrote the book of verses
And had it published.
It was all about
The posies on her inner windowsill,
And the birds on her outer windowsill,
And how she tended both, or had them tended:
She never tended anything herself.
She was 'shut in' for life.
She lived her whole
Life long in bed, and wrote her things in bed.
I'll show You how she had her sills extended
To entertain the birds and hold the flowers.
Our business first's up attic with her books.
"
We trod uncomfortably on crunching glass
Through a house stripped of everything
Except, it seemed, the poetess's poems.
Books, I should say!—-if books are what is needed.
A whole edition in a packing case
That, overflowing like a horn of plenty,
Or like the poetess's heart of love,
Had spilled them near the window, toward the light
Where driven rain had wet and swollen them.
Enough to stock a village library—
Unfortunately all of one kind, though.
They bad been brought home from some publisher
And taken thus into the family.
Boys and bad hunters had known what to do
With stone and lead to unprotected glass:
Shatter it inward on the unswept floors.
How had the tender verse escaped their outrage?
By being invisible for what it was,
Or else by some remoteness that defied them
To find out what to do to hurt a poem.
Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book,
To send it sailing out the attic window
Till it caught wind and, opening out its covers,
Tried to improve on sailing like a tile
By flying like a bird (silent in flight,
But all the burden of its body song),
Only to tumble like a stricken bird,
And lie in stones and bushes unretrieved.
Books were not thrown irreverently about.
They simply lay where someone now and then,
Having tried one, had dropped it at his feet
And left it lying where it fell rejected.
Here were all those the poetess's life
Had been too short to sell or give away.
"Take one," Old Davis bade me graciously.
"Why not take two or three?"
"Take all you want.
"
Good-looking books like that.
" He picked one fresh
In virgin wrapper from deep in the box,
And stroked it with a horny-handed kindness.
He read in one and I read in another,
Both either looking for or finding something.
The attic wasps went missing by like bullets.
I was soon satisfied for the time being.
All the way home I kept remembering
The small book in my pocket.
It was there.
The poetess had sighed, I knew, in heaven
At having eased her heart of one more copy—
Legitimately.
My demand upon her,
Though slight, was a demand.
She felt the tug.
In time she would be rid of all her books.
|
Written by
Henry Van Dyke |
I
IN EXCELSIS
Two dwellings, Peace, are thine.
One is the mountain-height,
Uplifted in the loneliness of light
Beyond the realm of shadows,--fine,
And far, and clear,--where advent of the night
Means only glorious nearness of the stars,
And dawn, unhindered, breaks above the bars
That long the lower world in twilight keep.
Thou sleepest not, and hast no need of sleep,
For all thy cares and fears have dropped away;
The night's fatigue, the fever-fret of day,
Are far below thee; and earth's weary wars,
In vain expense of passion, pass
Before thy sight like visions in a glass,
Or like the wrinkles of the storm that creep
Across the sea and leave no trace
Of trouble on that immemorial face,--
So brief appear the conflicts, and so slight
The wounds men give, the things for which they fight.
Here hangs a fortress on the distant steep,--
A lichen clinging to the rock:
There sails a fleet upon the deep,--
A wandering flock
Of snow-winged gulls: and yonder, in the plain,
A marble palace shines,--a grain
Of mica glittering in the rain.
Beneath thy feet the clouds are rolled
By voiceless winds: and far between
The rolling clouds new shores and peaks are seen,
In shimmering robes of green and gold,
And faint aerial hue
That silent fades into the silent blue.
Thou, from thy mountain-hold,
All day, in tranquil wisdom, looking down
On distant scenes of human toil and strife,
All night, with eyes aware of loftier life,
Uplooking to the sky, where stars are sown,
Dost watch the everlasting fields grow white
Unto the harvest of the sons of light,
And welcome to thy dwelling-place sublime
The few strong souls that dare to climb
The slippery crags and find thee on the height.
II
DE PROFUNDIS
But in the depth thou hast another home,
For hearts less daring, or more frail.
Thou dwellest also in the shadowy vale;
And pilgrim-souls that roam
With weary feet o'er hill and dale,
Bearing the burden and the heat
Of toilful days,
Turn from the dusty ways
To find thee in thy green and still retreat.
Here is no vision wide outspread
Before the lonely and exalted seat
Of all-embracing knowledge.
Here, instead,
A little garden, and a sheltered nook,
With outlooks brief and sweet
Across the meadows, and along the brook,--
A little stream that little knows
Of the great sea towards which it gladly flows,--
A little field that bears a little wheat
To make a portion of earth's daily bread.
The vast cloud-armies overhead
Are marshalled, and the wild wind blows
Its trumpet, but thou canst not tell
Whence the storm comes nor where it goes.
Nor dost thou greatly care, since all is well;
Thy daily task is done,
And though a lowly one,
Thou gavest it of thy best,
And art content to rest
In patience till its slow reward is won.
Not far thou lookest, but thy sight is clear;
Not much thou knowest, but thy faith is dear;
For life is love, and love is always near.
Here friendship lights the fire, and every heart,
Sure of itself and sure of all the rest,
Dares to be true, and gladly takes its part
In open converse, bringing forth its best:
Here is Sweet music, melting every chain
Of lassitude and pain:
And here, at last, is sleep, the gift of gifts,
The tender nurse, who lifts
The soul grown weary of the waking world,
And lays it, with its thoughts all furled,
Its fears forgotten, and its passions still,
On the deep bosom of the Eternal Will.
|
Written by
Sharon Olds |
When I got to his marker, I sat on it,
like sitting on the edge of someone's bed
and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite.
I took some tears from my jaw and neck
and started to wash a corner of his stone.
Then a black and amber ant
ran out onto the granite, and off it,
and another ant hauled a dead
ant onto the stone, leaving it, and not coming back.
Ants ran down into the grooves of his name
and dates, down into the oval track of the
first name's O, middle name's O,
the short O of his last name,
and down into the hyphen between
his birth and death--little trough of his life.
Soft bugs appeared on my shoes,
like grains of pollen, I let them move on me,
I rinsed a dark fleck of mica,
and down inside the engraved letters
the first dots of lichen were appearing
like stars in early evening.
I saw the speedwell on the ground with its horns,
the coiled ferns, copper-beech blossoms, each
petal like that disc of matter which
swayed, on the last day, on his tongue.
Tamarack, Western hemlock,
manzanita, water birch
with its scored bark,
I put my arms around a trunk and squeezed it,
then I lay down on my father's grave.
The sun shone down on me, the powerful
ants walked on me.
When I woke,
my cheek was crumbly, yellowish
with a mustard plaster of earth.
Only
at the last minute did I think of his body
actually under me, the can of
bone, ash, soft as a goosedown
pillow that bursts in bed with the lovers.
When I kissed his stone it was not enough,
when I licked it my tongue went dry a moment, I
ate his dust, I tasted my dirt host.
|
Written by
Amy Lowell |
The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane
and looked out
at the bright sunshiny morning.
The cobble-stones of
the square
glistened like mica.
In the trees, a breeze danced and
pranced,
and shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown
water
of the canal.
Down stream slowly drifted a long string
of galliots
piled with crimson cheeses.
The little boy thought they
looked as if
they were roc's eggs, blocks of big ruby eggs.
He said,
"Oh!" with delight,
and pressed against the window with all his might.
The golden cock on the top of the `Stadhuis' gleamed.
His
beak was open
like a pair of scissors and a narrow piece of blue sky was wedged
in it.
"Cock-a-doodle-do," cried the little boy.
"Can't you
hear me
through the window, Gold Cocky? Cock-a-doodle-do! You
should crow
when you see the eggs of your cousin, the great roc.
" But
the golden cock
stood stock still, with his fine tail blowing in the wind.
He could not understand the little boy, for he said "Cocorico"
when he said anything.
But he was hung in the air to
swing, not to sing.
His eyes glittered to the bright West wind, and the crimson cheeses
drifted away down the canal.
It was very dull there in the big room.
Outside in the
square, the wind
was playing tag with some fallen leaves.
A man passed,
with a dogcart
beside him full of smart, new milkcans.
They rattled
out a gay tune:
"Tiddity-tum-ti-ti.
Have some milk for your tea.
Cream
for your coffee
to drink to-night, thick, and smooth, and sweet, and white,"
and the man's sabots beat an accompaniment: "Plop! trop!
milk for your tea.
Plop! trop! drink it to-night.
" It was very pleasant
out there,
but it was lonely here in the big room.
The little boy
gulped at a tear.
It was ***** how dull all his toys were.
They were so
still.
Nothing was still in the square.
If he took his eyes
away a moment
it had changed.
The milkman had disappeared round the
corner,
there was only an old woman with a basket of green stuff on her
head,
picking her way over the shiny stones.
But the wind pulled
the leaves
in the basket this way and that, and displayed them to beautiful
advantage.
The sun patted them condescendingly on their flat surfaces, and
they seemed
sprinkled with silver.
The little boy sighed as he looked
at his disordered
toys on the floor.
They were motionless, and their colours
were dull.
The dark wainscoting absorbed the sun.
There was none
left for toys.
The square was quite empty now.
Only the wind ran round
and round it,
spinning.
Away over in the corner where a street opened
into the square,
the wind had stopped.
Stopped running, that is, for it
never
stopped spinning.
It whirred, and whirled, and gyrated,
and turned.
It burned like a great coloured sun.
It hummed, and buzzed,
and sparked,
and darted.
There were flashes of blue, and long smearing
lines of saffron,
and quick jabs of green.
And over it all was a sheen
like a myriad
cut diamonds.
Round and round it went, the huge wind-wheel,
and the little boy's head reeled with watching it.
The
whole square
was filled with its rays, blazing and leaping round after one another,
faster and faster.
The little boy could not speak, he
could only gaze,
staring in amaze.
The wind-wheel was coming down the square.
Nearer and
nearer it came,
a great disk of spinning flame.
It was opposite the window
now,
and the little boy could see it plainly, but it was something more
than the wind which he saw.
A man was carrying a huge
fan-shaped frame
on his shoulder, and stuck in it were many little painted paper
windmills,
each one scurrying round in the breeze.
They were bright
and beautiful,
and the sight was one to please anybody, and how much more a little
boy
who had only stupid, motionless toys to enjoy.
The little boy clapped his hands, and his eyes danced and whizzed,
for the circling windmills made him dizzy.
Closer and
closer
came the windmill man, and held up his big fan to the little boy
in the window of the Ambassador's house.
Only a pane
of glass
between the boy and the windmills.
They slid round before
his eyes
in rapidly revolving splendour.
There were wheels and
wheels of colours --
big, little, thick, thin -- all one clear, perfect spin.
The
windmill vendor
dipped and raised them again, and the little boy's face was glued
to the window-pane.
Oh! What a glorious, wonderful
plaything!
Rings and rings of windy colour always moving! How had
any one ever preferred
those other toys which never stirred.
"Nursie, come quickly.
Look!
I want a windmill.
See! It is never still.
You
will buy me one, won't you?
I want that silver one, with the big ring of blue.
"
So a servant was sent to buy that one: silver, ringed
with blue,
and smartly it twirled about in the servant's hands as he stood
a moment
to pay the vendor.
Then he entered the house, and in
another minute
he was standing in the nursery door, with some crumpled paper on
the end
of a stick which he held out to the little boy.
"But
I wanted a windmill
which went round," cried the little boy.
"That is the
one you asked for,
Master Charles," Nursie was a bit impatient, she had mending to
do.
"See, it is silver, and here is the blue.
" "But it is
only a blue streak,"
sobbed the little boy.
"I wanted a blue ring, and this
silver
doesn't sparkle.
" "Well, Master Charles, that is what
you wanted,
now run away and play with it, for I am very busy.
"
The little boy hid his tears against the friendly window-pane.
On
the floor
lay the motionless, crumpled bit of paper on the end of its stick.
But far away across the square was the windmill vendor, with his
big wheel
of whirring splendour.
It spun round in a blaze like
a whirling rainbow,
and the sun gleamed upon it, and the wind whipped it, until it seemed
a maze of spattering diamonds.
"Cocorico!" crowed the
golden cock
on the top of the `Stadhuis'.
"That is something worth
crowing for.
"
But the little boy did not hear him, he was sobbing over the crumpled
bit of paper on the floor.
|
Written by
Emile Verhaeren |
Opening the mists on a sudden through,
An Avenue!
Then, all one ferment of varied gold,
With foam of plumes where the chamfrom bends
Round his horse's head, that no bit doth hold,
St. George descends!
The diamond-rayed caparison,
Makes of his flight one declining path
From Heaven's pity down upon
Our waiting earth.
Hero and Lord
Of the joyous, helpful virtues all.
Sonorous, pure and crystalline!
Let his radiance fall
On my heart nocturnal and make it shine
In the wheeling aureole of his sword!
Let the wind's soft silvern whispers sound
And ring his coat of mail around,
His battle-spurs amid the fight!
—He—the St. George—who shines so bright
And comes, 'mid the wailings of my desire.
To seize and lift my poor hands higher
Toward his dauntless valour's fire!
Like a cry great with faith, to God
His lance St. George upraised doth hold;
Crossing athwart my glance he trod.
As 'twere one tumult of haggard gold.
The chrism's glow on his forehead shone,
The great St. George of duty high!
Beautiful by his heart, and by
Himself alone!
Ring, all my voices of hope, ring on!
Ring forth in me
Beneath fresh boughs of greenery,
Down radiant pathways, full of sun;
Ye glints of silvery mica, be
Bright joy amid my stones—and ye
White pebbles that the waters strew.
Open your eyes in my brooklets, through
The watery lids that cover you;
Landscape of gushing springs and sun,
With gold that quivers on misty blue,
Landscape that dwells in me, hold thou
The mirror now
To the fiery flights, that flaming roll,
Of the great St. George toward my soul!
'Gainst the black Dragon's teeth and claws,
Against the armour of leprous sores,
The miracle and sword is he;
On his breast-plate burneth Charity,
And his gentleness sends hurtling back.
In dire defeat, the Instinct black.
Fires flecked with gold, that flashing turn,
Whirlwinds of stars, those glories meet,
About his galloping horse's feet.
Deep into my remembrance burn
Their lightnings fleet!
He comes, a fair ambassador,
From white lands built with marble o'er.
Where grows, in glades beside the sea,
Upon the tree
Of goodness, fragrant gentleness.
That haven, too, he knows no less
Where wondrous ships rock, calm and still.
That freights of sleeping angels fill;
And those vast evenings, when below
Upon the water, 'mid the skies'
Reflected eyes.
Islands flash sudden forth and glow.
That kingdom fair
Whereof the Virgin ariseth Queen,
Its lowly, ardent joy is he;
And his flaming sword in the ambient air
Vibrates like an ostensory—
The suddenly flashing St. George! behold,
He strikes through my soul like a fire of gold!
He knows from what far wanderings
I come: what mists obscure my brain;
What dagger marks have deeply scarred
My thought, and with black crosses marred:
With what spent force, what anger vain.
What petty scorn of better things,
—Yea, and with what a mask I came,
Folly upon the lees of shame!
A coward was I; the world I fled
To hide my head
Within a huge and futile Me;
I builded, beneath domes of Night,
The blocks of marble, gold be-starred,
Of a hostile science, endlessly
Towards a height
By oracles of blackness barred.
For Death alone is Queen of night.
And human effort is brightest born
Only at dawn.
With opening flowers would prayer fain bloom,
And their sweet lips hold the same perfume.
The sunbeams shimmering white that fall
On pearly water, are for all
Like a caress
Upon our life: the dawn unfolds
A counsel fair of trustfulness;
And whoso hearkens thereto is saved
From his slough, where never a sin was laved.
St. George in radiant armour came
Speeding along in leaps of flame
'Mid the sweet morning, through my soul.
Young, beautiful by faith was he;
He leaned the lower down toward me
Even as I the lowlier knelt;
Like some pure, golden cordial
In secret felt.
He filled me with his soaring strength,
And with sweet fear most tenderly.
Before that vision's dignity,
Into his pale, proud hand at length
I cast the blood my pain had spent.
Then, laying upon me as he went
A charge of valour, and the sign
Of the cross on my brow from his lance divine,
He sped upon his shining road
Straight, with my heart, towards his God.
|