Written by
Emily Dickinson |
Because that you are going
And never coming back
And I, however absolute,
May overlook your Track --
Because that Death is final,
However first it be,
This instant be suspended
Above Mortality --
Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate
Eternity, Presumption
The instant I perceive
That you, who were Existence
Yourself forgot to live --
The "Life that is" will then have been
A thing I never knew --
As Paradise fictitious
Until the Realm of you --
The "Life that is to be," to me,
A Residence too plain
Unless in my Redeemer's Face
I recognize your own --
Of Immortality who doubts
He may exchange with me
Curtailed by your obscuring Face
Of everything but He --
Of Heaven and Hell I also yield
The Right to reprehend
To whoso would commute this Face
For his less priceless Friend.
If "God is Love" as he admits
We think that me must be
Because he is a "jealous God"
He tells us certainly
If "All is possible with" him
As he besides concedes
He will refund us finally
Our confiscated Gods --
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
Color -- Caste -- Denomination --
These -- are Time's Affair --
Death's diviner Classifying
Does not know they are --
As in sleep -- All Hue forgotten --
Tenets -- put behind --
Death's large -- Democratic fingers
Rub away the Brand --
If Circassian -- He is careless --
If He put away
Chrysalis of Blonde -- or Umber --
Equal Butterfly --
They emerge from His Obscuring --
What Death -- knows so well --
Our minuter intuitions --
Deem unplausible --
|
Written by
Richard Hugo |
Dear Condor: Much thanks for that telephonic support
from North Carolina when I suddenly went ape
in the Iowa tulips.
Lord, but I'm ashamed.
I was afraid, it seemed, according to the doctor
of impending success, winning some poetry prizes
or getting a wet kiss.
The more popular I got,
the softer the soft cry in my head: Don't believe them.
You were never good.
Then I broke and proved it.
Ten successive days I alienated women
I liked best.
I told a coed why her poems were bad
(they weren't) and didn't understand a word I said.
Really warped.
The phrase "I'll be all right"
came out too many unsolicited times.
I'm o.
k.
now.
I'm back at the primal source of poems: wind, sea
and rain, the market and the salmon.
Speaking
of the market, they're having a vital election here.
Save the market? Tear it down? The forces of evil
maintain they're trying to save it too, obscuring,
of course, the issue.
The forces of righteousness,
me and my friends, are praying for a storm, one
of those grim dark rolling southwest downpours
that will leave the electorate sane.
I'm the last poet
to teach the Roethke chair under Heilman.
He's retiring after 23 years.
Most of the old gang
is gone.
Sol Katz is aging.
Who isn't? It's close now
to the end of summer and would you believe it
I've ignored the Blue Moon.
I did go to White Center,
you know, my home town, and the people there,
many are the same, but also aging, balking, remarkably
polite and calm.
A man whose name escapes me
said he thinks he had known me, the boy who went alone
to Longfellow Creek and who laughed and cried
for no reason.
The city is huge, maybe three quarters
of a million and lots of crime.
They are indicting
the former chief of police.
Sorry to be so rambling.
I eat lunch with J.
Hillis Miller, brilliant and nice
as they come, in the faculty club, overlooking the lake,
much of it now filled in.
And I tour old haunts,
been twice to Kapowsin.
One trout.
One perch.
One poem.
Take care, oh wisest of condors.
Love.
Dick.
Thanks again.
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
SONNET CLXXXVI.
Liete e pensose, accompagnate e sole.
NOT FINDING HER WITH HER FRIENDS, HE ASKS THEM WHY SHE IS ABSENT.
P.
Pensive and glad, accompanied, alone,
Ladies who cheat the time with converse gay,
Where does my life, where does my death delay?
Why not with you her form, as usual, shown?
L.
Glad are we her rare lustre to have known,
And sad from her dear company to stay,
Which jealousy and envy keep away
O'er other's bliss, as their own ill who moan.
P.
Who lovers can restrain, or give them law?
L.
No one the soul, harshness and rage the frame;
As erst in us, this now in her appears.
As oft the face, betrays the heart, we saw
Clouds that, obscuring her high beauty, came,
And in her eyes the dewy trace of tears.
Macgregor.
|
Written by
Edwin Arlington Robinson |
You that in vain would front the coming order
With eyes that meet forlornly what they must,
And only with a furtive recognition
See dust where there is dust,—
Be sure you like it always in your faces,
Obscuring your best graces,
Blinding your speech and sight,
Before you seek again your dusty places
Where the old wrong seems right.
Longer ago than cave-men had their changes
Our fathers may have slain a son o two,
Discouraging a further dialectic
Regarding what was new;
And after their unstudied admonition
Occasional contrition
For their old-fashioned ways
May have reduced their doubts, and in addition
Softened their final days.
Farther away than feet shall ever travel.
Are the vague towers of our unbuilded State;
But there are mightier things than we to lead us,
That will not let us wait.
And we go on with none to tell us whether
Or not we’ve each a tether
Determining how fast or how far we go;
And it is well, since we must go together,
That we are not to know.
If the old wrong and all its injured glamour
Haunts you by day and gives your night no peace,
You may as well, agreeably and serenely,
Give the new wrong its lease;
For should you nourish a too fervid yearning
For what is not returning,
The vicious and unfused ingredient
May give you qualms—and one or two concerning
The last of your content.
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
SONNET ***.
Orso, e' non furon mai fiumi nè stagni.
HE COMPLAINS OF THE VEIL AND HAND OF LAURA, THAT THEY DEPRIVE HIM OF THE SIGHT OF HER EYES.
Orso, my friend, was never stream, nor lake,
Nor sea in whose broad lap all rivers fall,
Nor shadow of high hill, or wood, or wall,
Nor heaven-obscuring clouds which torrents make,
Nor other obstacles my grief so wake,
Whatever most that lovely face may pall,
As hiding the bright eyes which me enthrall,
That veil which bids my heart "Now burn or break,"
And, whether by humility or pride,
Their glance, extinguishing mine every joy,
Conducts me prematurely to my tomb:
Also my soul by one fair hand is tried,
Cunning and careful ever to annoy,
'Gainst my poor eyes a rock that has become.
Macgregor.
|
Written by
George William Russell |
HER mist of primroses within her breast
Twilight hath folded up, and o’er the west,
Seeking remoter valleys long hath gone,
Not yet hath come her sister of the dawn.
Silence and coolness now the earth enfold,
Jewels of glittering green, long mists of gold,
Hazes of nebulous silver veil the height,
And shake in tremors through the shadowy night.
Heard through the stillness, as in whispered words,
The wandering God-guided wings of birds
Ruffle the dark.
The little lives that lie
Deep hid in grass join in a long-drawn sigh
More softly still; and unheard through the blue
The falling of innumerable dew,
Lifts with grey fingers all the leaves that lay
Burned in the heat of the consuming day.
The lawns and lakes lie in this night of love,
Admitted to the majesty above.
Earth with the starry company hath part;
The waters hold all heaven within their heart,
And glimmer o’er with wave-lips everywhere
Lifted to meet the angel lips of air.
The many homes of men shine near and far,
Peace-laden as the tender evening star,
The late home-coming folk anticipate
Their rest beyond the passing of the gate,
And tread with sleep-filled hearts and drowsy feet.
Oh, far away and wonderful and sweet
All this, all this.
But far too many things
Obscuring, as a cloud of seraph wings
Blinding the seeker for the Lord behind,
I fall away in weariness of mind.
And think how far apart are I and you,
Beloved, from those spirit children who
Felt but one single Being long ago,
Whispering in gentleness and leaning low
Out of its majesty, as child to child.
I think upon it all with heart grown wild.
Hearing no voice, howe’er my spirit broods,
No whisper from the dense infinitudes,
This world of myriad things whose distance awes.
Ah me; how innocent our childhood was!
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