Written by
John Keats |
THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time
Sylvan historian who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 5
Of deities or mortals or of both
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 10
Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore ye soft pipes play on;
Not to the sensual ear but more endear'd
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth beneath the trees thou canst not leave 15
Thy song nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover never never canst thou kiss
Though winning near the goal¡ªyet do not grieve;
She cannot fade though thou hast not thy bliss
For ever wilt thou love and she be fair! 20
Ah happy happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And happy melodist unweari¨¨d
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy happy love! 25
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd
For ever panting and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd
A burning forehead and a parching tongue. 30
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar O mysterious priest
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore 35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel
Is emptied of its folk this pious morn?
And little town thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate can e'er return. 40
O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 45
When old age shall this generation waste
Thou shalt remain in midst of other woe
Than ours a friend to man to whom thou say'st
'Beauty is truth truth beauty ¡ªthat is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.' 50
|
Written by
Philip Levine |
You pull over to the shoulder
of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
where you were going
in such a hurry. The valley is burned
out, the oaks
dream day and night of rain
that never comes.
At noon or just before noon
the short shadows
are gray and hold what little
life survives.
In the still heat the engine
clicks, although
the real heat is hours ahead.
You get out and step
cautiously over a low wire
fence and begin
the climb up the yellowed hill.
A hundred feet
ahead the trunks of two
fallen oaks
rust; something passes over
them, a lizard
perhaps or a trick of sight.
The next tree
you pass is unfamiliar,
the trunk dark,
as black as an olive's; the low
branches stab
out, gnarled and dull: a carob
or a Joshua tree.
A sudden flaring-up ahead,
a black-winged
bird rises from nowhere,
white patches
underneath its wings, and is gone.
You hear your own
breath catching in your ears,
a roaring, a sea
sound that goes on and on
until you lean
forward to place both hands
-- fingers spread --
into the bleached grasses
and let your knees
slowly down. Your breath slows
and you know
you're back in central
California
on your way to San Francisco
or the coastal towns
with their damp sea breezes
you haven't
even a hint of. But first
you must cross
the Pacheco Pass. People
expect you, and yet
you remain, still leaning forward
into the grasses
that if you could hear them
would tell you
all you need to know about
the life ahead.
. . .
Out of a sense of modesty
or to avoid the truth
I've been writing in the second
person, but in truth
it was I, not you, who pulled
the green Ford
over to the side of the road
and decided to get
up that last hill to look
back at the valley
he'd come to call home.
I can't believe
that man, only thirty-two,
less than half
my age, could be the person
fashioning these lines.
That was late July of '60.
I had heard
all about magpies, how they
snooped and meddled
in the affairs of others, not
birds so much
as people. If you dared
to remove a wedding
ring as you washed away
the stickiness of love
or the cherished odors of another
man or woman,
as you turned away
from the mirror
having admired your new-found
potency -- humming
"My Funny Valentine" or
"Body and Soul" --
to reach for a rough towel
or some garment
on which to dry yourself,
he would enter
the open window behind you
that gave gratefully
onto the fields and the roads
bathed in dawn --
he, the magpie -- and snatch
up the ring
in his hard beak and shoulder
his way back
into the currents of the world
on his way
to the only person who could
change your life:
a king or a bride or an old woman
asleep on her porch.
. . .
Can you believe the bird
stood beside you
just long enough, though far
smaller than you
but fearless in a way
a man or woman
could never be? An apparition
with two dark
and urgent eyes and motions
so quick and precise
they were barely motions at all?
When he was gone
you turned, alarmed by the rustling
of oily feathers
and the curious pungency,
and were sure
you'd heard him say the words
that could explain
the meaning of blond grasses
burning on a hillside
beneath the hands of a man
in the middle of
his life caught in the posture
of prayer. I'd
heard that a magpie could talk,
so I waited
for the words, knowing without
the least doubt
what he'd do, for up ahead
an old woman
waited on her wide front porch.
My children
behind her house played
in a silted pond
poking sticks at the slow
carp that flashed
in the fallen sunlight. You
are thirty-two
only once in your life, and though
July comes
too quickly, you pray for
the overbearing
heat to pass. It does, and
the year turns
before it holds still for
even a moment.
Beyond the last carob
or Joshua tree
the magpie flashes his sudden
wings; a second
flames and vanishes into the pale
blue air.
July 23, 1960.
I lean down
closer to hear the burned grasses
whisper all I
need to know. The words rise
around me, separate
and finite. A yellow dust
rises and stops
caught in the noon's driving light.
Three ants pass
across the back of my reddened
right hand.
Everything is speaking or singing.
We're still here.
|
Written by
Howard Nemerov |
I
My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.
Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible
Bow down before it, as in Joseph's dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.
II
A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare's Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler's Law,
As from the whole, inseperably, the lives,
The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its form
Nor hope to know it. May the fathers he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.
|
Written by
Anne Kingsmill Finch |
[Silvia] Pretty Nymph! within this Shade,
Whilst the Flocks to rest are laid,
Whilst the World dissolves in Heat,
Take this cool, and flow'ry Seat:
And with pleasing Talk awhile
Let us two the Time beguile;
Tho' thou here no Shepherd see,
To encline his humble Knee,
Or with melancholy Lays
Sing thy dangerous Beauty's Praise.
[Dorinda] Nymph! with thee I here wou'd stay,
But have heard, that on this Day,
Near those Beeches, scarce in view,
All the Swains some Mirth pursue:
To whose meeting now I haste.
Solitude do's Life but waste.
[Silvia] Prithee, but a Moment stay.
[Dorinda] No! my Chaplet wou'd decay;
Ev'ry drooping Flow'r wou'd mourn,
And wrong the Face, they shou'd adorn.
[Silvia] I can tell thee, tho' so Fair,
And dress'd with all that rural Care,
Most of the admiring Swains
Will be absent from the Plains.
Gay Sylvander in the Dance
Meeting with a shrew'd Mischance,
To his Cabin's now confin'd
By Mopsus, who the Strain did bind:
Damon through the Woods do's stray,
Where his Kids have lost their way:
Young Narcissus iv'ry Brow
Rac'd by a malicious Bough,
Keeps the girlish Boy from sight,
Till Time shall do his Beauty right.
[Dorinda] Where's Alexis?
[Silvia] –He, alas!
Lies extended on the Grass;
Tears his Garland, raves, despairs,
Mirth and Harmony forswears;
Since he was this Morning shown,
That Delia must not be his Own.
[Dorinda] Foolish Swain! such Love to place.
[Silvia] On any but Dorinda's Face.
[Dorinda] Hasty Nymph! I said not so.
[Silvia] No–but I thy Meaning know.
Ev'ry Shepherd thou wou'd'st have
Not thy Lover, but thy Slave;
To encrease thy captive Train,
Never to be lov'd again.
But, since all are now away,
Prithee, but a Moment stay.
[Dorinda] No; the Strangers, from the Vale,
Sure will not this Meeting fail;
Graceful one, the other Fair.
He too, with the pensive Air,
Told me, ere he came this way
He was wont to look more Gay.
[Silvia] See! how Pride thy Heart inclines
To think, for Thee that Shepherd pines;
When those Words, that reach'd thy Ear,
Chloe was design'd to hear;
Chloe, who did near thee stand,
And his more speaking Looks command.
[Dorinda] Now thy Envy makes me smile.
That indeed were worth his while:
Chloe next thyself decay'd,
And no more a courted Maid.
[Silvia] Next myself! Young Nymph, forbear.
Still the Swains allow me Fair,
Tho' not what I was that Day,
When Colon bore the Prize away;
When–
[Dorinda] –Oh, hold! that Tale will last,
Till all the Evening Sports are past;
Till no Streak of Light is seen,
Nor Footstep prints the flow'ry Green.
What thou wert, I need not know,
What I am, must haste to show.
Only this I now discern
From the things, thou'd'st have me learn,
That Woman-kind's peculiar Joys
From past, or present Beauties rise.
|
Written by
G K Chesterton |
The Devil is a gentleman and askes you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself and shoved it on the shelf;
But the devil is a gentleman, and doesn't brag himself.
O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place in What'hitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse forever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that's played behind its door,
Where the fool remains forever and April comes no more,
Where the splendor of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:
And that is the Blue Devil, that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't keep his word
|
Written by
Barry Tebb |
You were the one I wanted most to know
So like yet unlike, like fire and snow,
The casual voice, the sharp invective,
The barbed wit, the lapsed Irish Protestant
Who never gave a ****, crossed the palms
Of the great and good with coins hot with contempt
For the fakers and the tricksters whose poetry
Deftly bent to fashion’s latest slant.
You wrote from the heart, feelings on your sleeve,
But feelings are all a master poet needs:
You broke all the taboos, whores and fags and booze,
While I sighed over books and began to snooze
Until your voice broke through the haze
Of a quarter century’s sleep. “Wake up you git
And bloody write!” I did and never stopped
And like you told the truth about how bad poetry
Rots the soul and slapped a New Gen face or two
And kicked some arses in painful places,
And so like you, got omitted from the posh anthologies
Where Penguin and Picador fill the pages
With the boring poetasters you went for in your rages,
Ex-friends like Harrison who missed you out.
You never could see the envy in their enmity.
Longley was the worst, a hypocrite to boot,
All you said about him never did come out;
I’ve tried myself to nail others of that ilk
Hither and thither they slide and slither
And crawl out of the muck white as brides’
Fat with OBE’s, sinecures and sighs
And Collected Poems no one buys.
Yet ‘Mainstrem’, your last but one collection,
I had to wait months for, the last borrower
Kept it for two years and likely I’ll do the same
Your poetry’s like no other, no one could tame
Your roaring fury or your searing pain.
You bared your soul in a most unfashionable way
But everything in me says your verse will stay,
Your love for your fourth and final wife,
The last chance marriage that went right
The children you loved so much but knew
You wouldn’t live to see grown up, so caught
Their growing pains and joys with a painter’s eye
And lyric skill as fine as Wordsworth’s best
they drank her welcome to his heritage
of grey, grey-green, wet earth and shapes of stone.
Who weds a landscape will not die alone.
Those you castigated never forgave.
Omitted you as casually as passing an unmarked grave,
Armitage, I name you, a blackguard and a knave,
Who knows no more of poetry than McGonagall the brave,
Yet tops the list of Faber’s ‘Best Poets of Our Age’.
Longley gave you just ten lines in ‘Irish Poets Now’
Most missed you out entirely for the troubles you gave
Accusing like Zola those poetic whores
Who sold themselves to fashion when time after time
Your passions brought you to your knees, lashing
At those poetasters when their puffed-up slime
Won the medals and the prizes time after time
And got them all the limelight while your books
Were quietly ignored, the better you wrote,
The fewer got bought.
Belatedly I found a poem of yours ‘Leeds 2’
In ‘Flashpoint’, a paint-stained worn out
School anthology from 1962. Out of the blue
I wrote to you but the letter came back ‘Gone away
N.F.A.’ then I tried again and had a marvellous letter back
Full of stories of the great and good and all their private sins,
You knew where the bodies were buried.
Who put the knife in, who slept with who
For what reward. They never could shut you up
Or put you in a pen or pay you off and then came
Morley, Hulse and Kennedy’s ‘New Poetry’
Which did more damage to the course of poetry
Than anything I’ve read - poets unembarrassed
By the need to know more than what’s politically
White as snow. Constantine and Jackie Kay
And Hoffman with the right connections.
Sweeney and O’Brien bleeding in all the politically
Sensitive places, Peter Reading lifting
Horror headlines from the Sun to make a splash.
Sansom and Maxwell, Jamie and Greenlaw.
Proving lack of talent is no barrier to fame
If you lick the right arses and say how nice they taste.
Crawling up the ladder, declaring **** is grace.
A talented drunken public servant
Has the world’s ear and hates me.
He ought to be in prison for misuse
Of public funds and bigotry;
But there’s some sparkle in his poetry.
You never flinched in the attack
But gave the devils their due:
The ‘Honest Ulsterman’ you founded
Lost its honesty the day you withdrew
But floundered on, publicly sighed and
Ungraciously expired as soon as you died.
You went with fallen women, smoked and sang and boozed,
Loved your many children, wrote poetry
As good as Yeats but the ignominy you had to bear
Bred an immortality impossible to share.
You showed us your own peccadilloes,
Your early lust for fame, but you learned
The cost of suffering, love and talent winning through,
Your best books your last, just two, like the letters
You wrote before your life was through.
The meeting you wanted could never happen:
I didn’t know about the stroke
That stilled your tongue and pen
But if you passed your mantle on to me
I’ll try and take up where you left off,
Give praise where praise is due
And blast the living daylights from those writers who
Betray the sacred art of making poetry true
To suffering and love, to passion and remorse
And try to steer a flimsy world upon a saner course.
|
Written by
Vernon Scannell |
The appetite which leads him to her bed
Is not unlike the lust of boys for cake
Except he knows that after he has fed
He'll suffer more than simple belly-ache.
He'll groan to think what others have to pay
As price for his obsessive need to know
That he's a champion still, though slightly grey,
And both his skill and gameness clearly show.
And after this quick non-decision bout,
As he in his dark corner gasping lies,
He'll hear derision like a distant shout
While kisses press like pennies on his eyes.
|
Written by
Robert Penn Warren |
Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true.
And the line where the incoming swell from the sunset Pacific
First leans and staggers to break will tell all you need to know
About submarine geography, and your father's death rattle
Provides all biographical data required for the Who's Who of the dead.
I cannot recall what I started to tell you, but at least
I can say how night-long I have lain under the stars and
Heard mountains moan in their sleep.By daylight,
They remember nothing, and go about their lawful occasions
Of not going anywhere except in slow disintegration.At night
They remember, however, that there is something they cannot remember.
So moan.Theirs is the perfected pain of conscience that
Of forgetting the crime, and I hope you have not suffered it.I have.
I do not recall what had burdened my tongue, but urge you
To think on the slug's white belly, how sick-slick and soft,
On the hairiness of stars, silver, silver, while the silence
Blows like wind by, and on the sea's virgin bosom unveiled
To give suck to the wavering serpent of the moon; and,
In the distance, in plaza, piazza, place, platz, and square,
Boot heels, like history being born, on cobbles bang.
Everything seems an echo of something else.
And when, by the hair, the headsman held up the head
Of Mary of Scots, the lips kept on moving,
But without sound.The lips,
They were trying to say something very important.
But I had forgotten to mention an upland
Of wind-tortured stone white in darkness, and tall, but when
No wind, mist gathers, and once on the Sarré at midnight,
I watched the sheep huddling.Their eyes
Stared into nothingness.In that mist-diffused light their eyes
Were stupid and round like the eyes of fat fish in muddy water,
Or of a scholar who has lost faith in his calling.
Their jaws did not move.Shreds
Of dry grass, gray in the gray mist-light, hung
From the side of a jaw, unmoving.
You would think that nothing would ever again happen.
That may be a way to love God.
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
The overfaithful sword returns the user
His heart's desire at price of his heart's blood.
The clamour of the arrogant accuser
Wastes that one hour we needed to make good.
This was foretold of old at our outgoing;
This we accepted who have squandered, knowing,
The strength and glory of our reputations,
At the day's need, as it were dross, to guard
The tender and new-dedicate foundations
Against the sea we fear -- not man's award.
They that dig foundations deep,
Fit for realms to rise upon,
Little honour do they reap
Of their generation,
Any more than mountains gain
Stature till we reach the plain.
With noveil before their face
Such as shroud or sceptre lend --
Daily in the market-place,
Of one height to foe and friend --
They must cheapen self to find
Ends uncheapened for mankind.
Through the night when hirelings rest,
Sleepless they arise, alone,
The unsleeping arch to test
And the o'er-trusted corner-stone,
'Gainst the need, they know, that lies
Hid behind the centuries.
Not by lust of praise or show
Not by Peace herself betrayed --
Peace herself must they forego
Till that peace be fitly made;
And in single strength uphold
Wearier hands and hearts acold.
On the stage their act hath framed
For thy sports, O Liberty!
Doubted are they, and defamed
By the tongues their act set free,
While they quicken, tend and raise
Power that must their power displace.
Lesser men feign greater goals,
Failing whereof they may sit
Scholarly to judge the souls
That go down into the pit,
And, despite its certain clay,
Heave a new world towards the day.
These at labour make no sign,
More than planets, tides or years
Which discover God's design,
Not our hopes and not our fears;
Nor in aught they gain or lose
Seek a triumph or excuse.
For, so the Ark be borne to Zion, who
Heeds how they perished or were paid that bore it?
For, so the Shrine abide, what shame -- what pride --
If we, the priests, were bound or crowned before it?
|
Written by
Robert Burns |
WHEN Nature her great master-piece design’d,
And fram’d her last, best work, the human mind,
Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,
She form’d of various parts the various Man.
Then first she calls the useful many forth;
Plain plodding Industry, and sober Worth:
Thence peasants, farmers, native sons of earth,
And merchandise’ whole genus take their birth:
Each prudent cit a warm existence finds,
And all mechanics’ many-apron’d kinds.
Some other rarer sorts are wanted yet,
The lead and buoy are needful to the net:
The caput mortuum of gross desires
Makes a material for mere knights and squires;
The martial phosphorus is taught to flow,
She kneads the lumpish philosophic dough,
Then marks th’ unyielding mass with grave designs,
Law, physic, politics, and deep divines;
Last, she sublimes th’ Aurora of the poles,
The flashing elements of female souls.
The order’d system fair before her stood,
Nature, well pleas’d, pronounc’d it very good;
But ere she gave creating labour o’er,
Half-jest, she tried one curious labour more.
Some spumy, fiery, ignis fatuus matter,
Such as the slightest breath of air might scatter;
With arch-alacrity and conscious glee,
(Nature may have her whim as well as we,
Her Hogarth-art perhaps she meant to show it),
She forms the thing and christens it—a Poet:
Creature, tho’ oft the prey of care and sorrow,
When blest to-day, unmindful of to-morrow;
A being form’d t’ amuse his graver friends,
Admir’d and prais’d-and there the homage ends;
A mortal quite unfit for Fortune’s strife,
Yet oft the sport of all the ills of life;
Prone to enjoy each pleasure riches give,
Yet haply wanting wherewithal to live;
Longing to wipe each tear, to heal each groan,
Yet frequent all unheeded in his own.
But honest Nature is not quite a Turk,
She laugh’d at first, then felt for her poor work:
Pitying the propless climber of mankind,
She cast about a standard tree to find;
And, to support his helpless woodbine state,
Attach’d him to the generous, truly great:
A title, and the only one I claim,
To lay strong hold for help on bounteous Graham.
Pity the tuneful Muses’ hapless train,
Weak, timid landsmen on life’s stormy main!
Their hearts no selfish stern absorbent stuff,
That never gives—tho’ humbly takes enough;
The little fate allows, they share as soon,
Unlike sage proverb’d Wisdom’s hard-wrung boon:
The world were blest did bliss on them depend,
Ah, that “the friendly e’er should want a friend!”
Let Prudence number o’er each sturdy son,
Who life and wisdom at one race begun,
Who feel by reason and who give by rule,
(Instinct’s a brute, and sentiment a fool!)
Who make poor “will do” wait upon “I should”—
We own they’re prudent, but who feels they’re good?
Ye wise ones hence! ye hurt the social eye!
God’s image rudely etch’d on base alloy!
But come ye who the godlike pleasure know,
Heaven’s attribute distinguished—to bestow!
Whose arms of love would grasp the human race:
Come thou who giv’st with all a courtier’s grace;
FRIEND OF MY LIFE, true patron of my rhymes!
Prop of my dearest hopes for future times.
Why shrinks my soul half blushing, half afraid,
Backward, abash’d to ask thy friendly aid?
I know my need, I know thy giving hand,
I crave thy friendship at thy kind command;
But there are such who court the tuneful Nine—
Heavens! should the branded character be mine!
Whose verse in manhood’s pride sublimely flows,
Yet vilest reptiles in their begging prose.
Mark, how their lofty independent spirit
Soars on the spurning wing of injured merit!
Seek not the proofs in private life to find
Pity the best of words should be but wind!
So, to heaven’s gates the lark’s shrill song ascends,
But grovelling on the earth the carol ends.
In all the clam’rous cry of starving want,
They dun Benevolence with shameless front;
Oblige them, patronise their tinsel lays—
They persecute you all your future days!
Ere my poor soul such deep damnation stain,
My horny fist assume the plough again,
The pie-bald jacket let me patch once more,
On eighteenpence a week I’ve liv’d before.
Tho’, thanks to Heaven, I dare even that last shift,
I trust, meantime, my boon is in thy gift:
That, plac’d by thee upon the wish’d-for height,
Where, man and nature fairer in her sight,
My Muse may imp her wing for some sublimer flight.
|