Written by
Sylvia Plath |
Lady, your room is lousy with flowers.
When you kick me out, that's what I'll remember,
Me, sitting here bored as a loepard
In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps,
Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding
And the white china flying fish from Italy.
I forget you, hearing the cut flowers
Sipping their liquids from assorted pots,
Pitchers and Coronation goblets
Like Monday drunkards. The milky berries
Bow down, a local constellation,
Toward their admirers in the tabletop:
Mobs of eyeballs looking up.
Are those petals of leaves you've paried with them ---
Those green-striped ovals of silver tissue?
The red geraniums I know.
Friends, friends. They stink of armpits
And the invovled maladies of autumn,
Musky as a lovebed the morning after.
My nostrils prickle with nostalgia.
Henna hags:cloth of your cloth.
They tow old water thick as fog.
The roses in the Toby jug
Gave up the ghost last night. High time.
Their yellow corsets were ready to split.
You snored, and I heard the petals unlatch,
Tapping and ticking like nervous fingers.
You should have junked them before they died.
Daybreak discovered the bureau lid
Littered with Chinese hands. Now I'm stared at
By chrysanthemums the size
Of Holofernes' head, dipped in the same
Magenta as this fubsy sofa.
In the mirror their doubles back them up.
Listen: your tenant mice
Are rattling the cracker packets. Fine flour
Muffles their bird feet: they whistle for joy.
And you doze on, nose to the wall.
This mizzle fits me like a sad jacket.
How did we make it up to your attic?
You handed me gin in a glass bud vase.
We slept like stones. Lady, what am I doing
With a lung full of dust and a tongue of wood,
Knee-deep in the cold swamped by flowers?
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Written by
Robert Burns |
HAS auld Kilmarnock seen the deil?
Or great Mackinlay 1 thrawn his heel?
Or Robertson 2 again grown weel,
To preach an’ read?
“Na’ waur than a’! cries ilka chiel,
“Tam Samson’s dead!”
Kilmarnock lang may grunt an’ grane,
An’ sigh, an’ sab, an’ greet her lane,
An’ cleed her bairns, man, wife, an’ wean,
In mourning weed;
To Death she’s dearly pay’d the kane—
Tam Samson’s dead!
The Brethren, o’ the mystic level
May hing their head in woefu’ bevel,
While by their nose the tears will revel,
Like ony bead;
Death’s gien the Lodge an unco devel;
Tam Samson’s dead!
When Winter muffles up his cloak,
And binds the mire like a rock;
When to the loughs the curlers flock,
Wi’ gleesome speed,
Wha will they station at the “cock?”
Tam Samson’s dead!
When Winter muffles up his cloak,
He was the king o’ a’ the core,
To guard, or draw, or wick a bore,
Or up the rink like Jehu roar,
In time o’ need;
But now he lags on Death’s “hog-score”—
Tam Samson’s dead!
Now safe the stately sawmont sail,
And trouts bedropp’d wi’ crimson hail,
And eels, weel-ken’d for souple tail,
And geds for greed,
Since, dark in Death’s fish-creel, we wail
Tam Samson’s dead!
Rejoice, ye birring paitricks a’;
Ye cootie muircocks, crousely craw;
Ye maukins, cock your fud fu’ braw
Withouten dread;
Your mortal fae is now awa;
Tam Samson’s dead!
That woefu’ morn be ever mourn’d,
Saw him in shooting graith adorn’d,
While pointers round impatient burn’d,
Frae couples free’d;
But och! he gaed and ne’er return’d!
Tam Samson’s dead!
In vain auld age his body batters,
In vain the gout his ancles fetters,
In vain the burns cam down like waters,
An acre braid!
Now ev’ry auld wife, greetin, clatters
“Tam Samson’s dead!”
Owre mony a weary hag he limpit,
An’ aye the tither shot he thumpit,
Till coward Death behind him jumpit,
Wi’ deadly feid;
Now he proclaims wi’ tout o’ trumpet,
“Tam Samson’s dead!”
When at his heart he felt the dagger,
He reel’d his wonted bottle-swagger,
But yet he drew the mortal trigger,
Wi’ weel-aimed heed;
“L—d, five!” he cry’d, an’ owre did stagger—
Tam Samson’s dead!
Ilk hoary hunter mourn’d a brither;
Ilk sportsman youth bemoan’d a father;
Yon auld gray stane, amang the heather,
Marks out his head;
Whare Burns has wrote, in rhyming blether,
“Tam Samson’s dead!”
There, low he lies, in lasting rest;
Perhaps upon his mould’ring breast
Some spitefu’ muirfowl bigs her nest
To hatch an’ breed:
Alas! nae mair he’ll them molest!
Tam Samson’s dead!
When August winds the heather wave,
And sportsmen wander by yon grave,
Three volleys let his memory crave,
O’ pouther an’ lead,
Till Echo answer frae her cave,
“Tam Samson’s dead!”
Heav’n rest his saul whare’er he be!
Is th’ wish o’ mony mae than me:
He had twa fauts, or maybe three,
Yet what remead?
Ae social, honest man want we:
Tam Samson’s dead!
THE EPITAPHTam Samson’s weel-worn clay here lies
Ye canting zealots, spare him!
If honest worth in Heaven rise,
Ye’ll mend or ye win near him.
PER CONTRAGo, Fame, an’ canter like a filly
Thro’ a’ the streets an’ neuks o’ Killie; 3
Tell ev’ry social honest billie
To cease his grievin’;
For, yet unskaithed by Death’s gleg gullie.
Tam Samson’s leevin’!
Note 1. A certain preacher, a great favourite with the million. Vide “The Ordination.” stanza ii.—R. B. [back]
Note 2. Another preacher, an equal favourite with the few, who was at that time ailing. For him see also “The Ordination,” stanza ix.—R. B. [back]
Note 3. Kilmarnock.—R. B. [back]
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Written by
D. H. Lawrence |
I
=A Snowy Day in School=
All the slow school hours, round the irregular hum of the class,
Have pressed immeasurable spaces of hoarse silence
Muffling my mind, as snow muffles the sounds that pass
Down the soiled street. We have pattered the lessons ceaselessly--
But the faces of the boys, in the brooding, yellow light
Have shone for me like a crowded constellation of stars,
Like full-blown flowers dimly shaking at the night,
Like floating froth on an ebbing shore in the moon.
Out of each star, dark, strange beams that disquiet:
In the open depths of each flower, dark restless drops:
Twin bubbles, shadow-full of mystery and challenge in the foam's
whispering riot:
--How can I answer the challenge of so many eyes!
The thick snow is crumpled on the roof, it plunges down
Awfully. Must I call back those hundred eyes?--A voice
Wakes from the hum, faltering about a noun--
My question! My God, I must break from this hoarse silence
That rustles beyond the stars to me.--There,
I have startled a hundred eyes, and I must look
Them an answer back. It is more than I can bear.
The snow descends as if the dull sky shook
In flakes of shadow down; and through the gap
Between the ruddy schools sweeps one black rook.
The rough snowball in the playground stands huge and still
With fair flakes settling down on it.--Beyond, the town
Is lost in the shadowed silence the skies distil.
And all things are possessed by silence, and they can brood
Wrapped up in the sky's dim space of hoarse silence
Earnestly--and oh for me this class is a bitter rood.
II
=The Best of School=
The blinds are drawn because of the sun,
And the boys and the room in a colourless gloom
Of under-water float: bright ripples run
Across the walls as the blinds are blown
To let the sunlight in; and I,
As I sit on the beach of the class alone,
Watch the boys in their summer blouses,
As they write, their round heads busily bowed:
And one after another rouses
And lifts his face and looks at me,
And my eyes meet his very quietly,
Then he turns again to his work, with glee.
With glee he turns, with a little glad
Ecstasy of work he turns from me,
An ecstasy surely sweet to be had.
And very sweet while the sunlight waves
In the fresh of the morning, it is to be
A teacher of these young boys, my slaves
Only as swallows are slaves to the eaves
They build upon, as mice are slaves
To the man who threshes and sows the sheaves.
Oh, sweet it is
To feel the lads' looks light on me,
Then back in a swift, bright flutter to work,
As birds who are stealing turn and flee.
Touch after touch I feel on me
As their eyes glance at me for the grain
Of rigour they taste delightedly.
And all the class,
As tendrils reached out yearningly
Slowly rotate till they touch the tree
That they cleave unto, that they leap along
Up to their lives--so they to me.
So do they cleave and cling to me,
So I lead them up, so do they twine
Me up, caress and clothe with free
Fine foliage of lives this life of mine;
The lowest stem of this life of mine,
The old hard stem of my life
That bears aloft towards rarer skies
My top of life, that buds on high
Amid the high wind's enterprise.
They all do clothe my ungrowing life
With a rich, a thrilled young clasp of life;
A clutch of attachment, like parenthood,
Mounts up to my heart, and I find it good.
And I lift my head upon the troubled tangled world, and though the pain
Of living my life were doubled, I still have this to comfort and
sustain,
I have such swarming sense of lives at the base of me, such sense of
lives
Clustering upon me, reaching up, as each after the other strives
To follow my life aloft to the fine wild air of life and the storm of
thought,
And though I scarcely see the boys, or know that they are there,
distraught
As I am with living my life in earnestness, still progressively and
alone,
Though they cling, forgotten the most part, not companions, scarcely
known
To me--yet still because of the sense of their closeness clinging
densely to me,
And slowly fingering up my stem and following all tinily
The way that I have gone and now am leading, they are dear to me.
They keep me assured, and when my soul feels lonely,
All mistrustful of thrusting its shoots where only
I alone am living, then it keeps
Me comforted to feel the warmth that creeps
Up dimly from their striving; it heartens my strife:
And when my heart is chill with loneliness,
Then comforts it the creeping tenderness
Of all the strays of life that climb my life.
III
=Afternoon in School=
THE LAST LESSON
When will the bell ring, and end this weariness?
How long have they tugged the leash, and strained apart
My pack of unruly hounds: I cannot start
Them again on a quarry of knowledge they hate to hunt,
I can haul them and urge them no more.
No more can I endure to bear the brunt
Of the books that lie out on the desks: a full three score
Of several insults of blotted page and scrawl
Of slovenly work that they have offered me.
I am sick, and tired more than any thrall
Upon the woodstacks working weariedly.
And shall I take
The last dear fuel and heap it on my soul
Till I rouse my will like a fire to consume
Their dross of indifference, and burn the scroll
Of their insults in punishment?--I will not!
I will not waste myself to embers for them,
Not all for them shall the fires of my life be hot,
For myself a heap of ashes of weariness, till sleep
Shall have raked the embers clear: I will keep
Some of my strength for myself, for if I should sell
It all for them, I should hate them--
--I will sit and wait for the bell.
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