Written by
Sylvia Plath |
It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,
The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,
The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness.
Yet these shapes float
Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet.
From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous
With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble.
They sing
Of a world more full and clear
Than can be.
Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening
Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony
Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege.
You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,
Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge
Also of high windows.
Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence.
At the source
Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting
Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.
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Written by
Emile Verhaeren |
Everything that lives about us in the fragile and gentle light, frail grasses, tender branches, hollyhocks, and the shadow that brushes them lightly by, and the wind that knots them, and the singing and hopping birds that swarm riotously in the sun like clusters of jewels,— everything that lives in the fine ruddy garden loves us artlessly, and we—we love everything.
We worship the lilies we see growing; and the tall sunflowers, brighter than the Nadir— circles surrounded by petals of flames—burn our souls through their glow.
The simplest flowers, the phlox and the lilac, grow along the walls among the feverfew, to be nearer to our footsteps; and the involuntary weeds in the turf over which we have passed open their eyes wet with dew.
And we live thus with the flowers and the grass, simple and pure, glowing and exalted, lost in our love, like the sheaves in the gold of the corn, and proudly allowing the imperious summer to pierce our bodies, our hearts and our two wills with its full brightness.
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Written by
Emile Verhaeren |
Shining in dim transparence, the whole of infinity lies
Behind the veil that the finger of radiant winter weaves
And down on us falls the foliage of stars in glittering sheaves;
From out the depths of the forest, the forest obscure of the skies,
The wingèd sea with her shadowy floods as of dappled silk
Speeds, 'neath the golden fires, her pale immensity o'er;
And diamond-rayed, the moonlight, shining along the shore,
Bathes the brow of the headlands in radiance as soft as milk.
Yonder there flow, untwining and twining their loops anew!
The mighty, silvery rivers, through the translucent night;
And a glint as of wondrous acids sparkles with magic light
the cup that the lake outstretches towards the mountains blue.
Everywhere light seems breaking forth into flower and star,
Whether on shore in stillness, or wavering on the deep.
The islands are nests where silence inviolate doth deep;
An ardent nimbus hovers o'er yon horizons far.
See, from Nadir to Zenith one aureole doth reach!
Of yore, the souls exalted by faith's high mysteries
Saw, in the domination of those star-clouded skies,
Jehovah's hand resplendent and heard His silent speech.
But now the eyes that scan them no longer may there aspire
To we some god self-banished—not so, but the intricate
Tangle of marvellous problems, the messengers that wait
On Measureless Force, and veil her, there on her couch of fire.
O cauldrons of life, where matter, adown the eternal day,
Pours herself fruitful, seething through paths of scattering flame!
O flux of worlds and reflux to other worlds the same!
Unending oscillation betwixt newer and for aye!
Tumults consumed in whirlpools of speed and sound and light—
Violence we nought may reck of!—and yet there falls from thence
The vast, unbroken silence, mysterious and intense
That makes the peace, the calmness and beauty of the night!
O spheres of flame and golden, always more far and high;
Abyss to abyss still floating, onward from shade to shade!
So far, so high, all reck'ning the wisdom of man has made,
Before those giddy numbers must shrink in his hands and die!
Shining in dim transparence, the whole of infinity lies
Behind the veils that the finger of radiant winter weaves;
And down on us falls the foliage of star in glittering sheaves,
From out the depths of the forest, the forest obscure of the skies.
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Written by
Elinor Wylie |
If we must cheat ourselves with any dream,
Then let it be a dream of nobleness:
Since it is necessary to express
Gall from black grapes--to sew an endless seam
With a rusty needle--chase a spurious gleam
Narrowing to the nothing through the less--
Since life's no better than a bitter guess,
And love's a stranger--let us change the theme.
Let us at least pretend--it may be true--
That we can close our lips on poisonous
Dark wine diluted by the Stygean wave;
And let me dream sublimity in you,
And courage, liberal for the two of us:
Let us at least pretend we can be brave.
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