Written by
Rg Gregory |
professor piebald
(the oldest man in the home) was meek
at the same time ribald
he clothed his matter (so to speak)
in latin and (was it) greek
it caused no great offence
to nobody did it make sense
to make a rude joke
in languages nobody spoke
once he'd changed the word agenda
at a home's committee meeting to pudenda
this sort of thing was tolerated by the other
inmates (except his younger brother -
a dustman all his life
who'd robbed the professor of his wife
and treated him now with disdainful anger
but to everyone piebald was a stranger)
well agenda/pudenda hardly ranked as humour
but there was rumour
piebald was said to have his eye on
nelly (frail and pretty in a feathery fashion
the sort perhaps to rouse a meek man's passion)
she wouldn't talk to him without a tie on
one such occasion burst the bubble
he spoke (no tie on) she demurred
refusing one further word
and so the trouble
piebald went white all over
muttered about being her lover
then shouted in a rage
(nelly whispered be your age)
i - two headed janus -
now pingo your anus
(less janus - i should have thought - than mars)
and pinched the dear frail lady on the ****
who died a second then exploded
swung a punch so loaded
poor old piebald eared it to the floor
the other old ones in the room
(more excited now than when the flowers came out in bloom)
were rushing pushing to the door
the brother stood across the fallen man
in total icy disdain
you academic lily-livered piss of a gnat
he hissed - and spat
into the piebald twitching face
drew back a pace
when wham - a seething body like a flung cat
lifted upwards into space
the younger brother was butted in the belly
(who staggered back hit head and made a dying fall
leaving a small red zigzag down the wall)
then this sizzling flesh-ball
fell on fluttering nelly
tore at her skirt
ripped other clothes apart
began kissing her fervently on her agenda
te amo te amo te amo te amo
(repeating it as though
it was the finest latin phrase he'd learned by heart)
crying abasing himself to her most wanted gender
she more dazed than hurt
clutching the virgin fragments of her skirt
a simpering victim in the rising clamour
old people now outraged beyond controlling
through the swing doors pushing tumbling rolling
armed with saucepans pokers knives
playing the greatest game in all their lives
attacked without compunction
the frenzied lover at his unction
a poker struck him once across the head
and professor piebald
once meek but ribald
dropped down undoubtedly dead
and even when the horror had subsided
and the arms of justice with their maker were abided
nelly stood rocking in her room
weeping for the heart-ache in her womb
that till then had hardly ever fluttered
and (only occasionally) muttered
if you have your eye on
me - my dear man - put your tie on
the home itself was closed a few days after
the house is riddled still by ribald laughter
|
Written by
Siegfried Sassoon |
October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud
Of outraged men.
Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
Along the westering furnace flaring red.
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.
|
Written by
John Greenleaf Whittier |
Is this the land our fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the soil whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?
Are we the sons by whom are borne
The mantles which the dead have worn?
And shall we crouch above these graves,
With craven soul and fettered lip?
Yoke in with marked and branded slaves,
And tremble at the driver's whip?
Bend to the earth our pliant knees,
And speak but as our masters please?
Shall outraged Nature cease to feel?
Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow?
Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel,
The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's blow,
Turn back the spirit roused to save
The Truth, our Country, and the slave?
Of human skulls that shrine was made,
Round which the priests of Mexico
Before their loathsome idol prayed;
Is Freedom's altar fashioned so?
And must we yield to Freedom's God,
As offering meet, the *****'s blood?
Shall tongue be mute, when deeds are wrought
Which well might shame extremest hell?
Shall freemem lock the indignant thought?
Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell?
Shall Honor bleed?- shall Truth succumb?
Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb?
No; by each spot of haunted ground,
Where Freedom weeps her children's fall;
By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's mound;
By Griswold's stained and shattered wall;
By Warren's ghost, by Langdon's shade;
By all the memories of our dead!
By their enlarging souls, which burst
The bands and fetters round them set;
By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed
Within our inmost bosoms, yet,
By all above, around, below,
Be ours the indignant answer,- No!
No; guided by our country's laws,
For truth, and right, and suffering man,
Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause,
As Christians may, as freemen can!
Still pouring on unwilling ears
That truth oppression only fears.
What! shall we guard our neighbor still,
While woman shrieks beneath his rod,
And while he trampels down at will
The image of a common God?
Shall watch and ward be round him set,
Of Northern nerve and bayonet?
And shall we know and share with him
The danger and the growing shame?
And see our Freedom's light grow dim,
Which should have filled the world with flame?
And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn,
A world's reproach around us burn?
Is't not enough that this is borne?
And asks our haughty neighbor more?
Must fetters which his slaves have worn
Clank round the Yankee farmer's door?
Must he be told, beside his plough,
What he must speak, and when, and how?
Must he be told his freedom stands
On Slavery's dark foundations strong;
On breaking hearts and fettered hands,
On robbery, and crime, and wrong?
That all his fathers taught is vain,-
That Freedom's emblem is the chain?
Its life, its soul, from slavery drawn!
False, foul, profane! Go, teach as well
Of holy Truth from Falsehood born!
Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell!
Of Virtue in the arms of Vice!
Of Demons planting Paradise!
Rail on, then, brethren of the South,
Ye shall not hear the truth the less;
No seal is on the Yankee's mouth,
No fetter on the Yankee's press!
From our Green Mountains to the sea,
One voice shall thunder, We are free!
|
Written by
Kahlil Gibran |
Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, "Speak to us of Crime and Punishment.
"
And he answered saying:
It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind,
That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself.
And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed.
Like the ocean is your god-self;
It remains for ever undefiled.
And like the ether it lifts but the winged.
Even like the sun is your god-self;
It knows not the ways of the mole nor seeks it the holes of the serpent.
But your god-self does not dwell alone in your being.
Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man,
But a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening.
And of the man in you would I now speak.
For it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime.
Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.
Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self.
You are the way and the wayfarers.
And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone.
Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.
And this also, though the word lie heavy upon your hearts:
The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder,
And the robbed is not blameless in being robbed.
The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked,
And the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.
Yea, the guilty is oftentimes the victim of the injured,
And still more often the condemned is the burden-bearer for the guiltless and unblamed.
You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked;
For they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together.
And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also.
If any of you would bring judgment the unfaithful wife,
Let him also weight the heart of her husband in scales, and measure his soul with measurements.
And let him who would lash the offender look unto the spirit of the offended.
And if any of you would punish in the name of righteousness and lay the ax unto the evil tree, let him see to its roots;
And verily he will find the roots of the good and the bad, the fruitful and the fruitless, all entwined together in the silent heart of the earth.
And you judges who would be just,
What judgment pronounce you upon him who though honest in the flesh yet is a thief in spirit?
What penalty lay you upon him who slays in the flesh yet is himself slain in the spirit?
And how prosecute you him who in action is a deceiver and an oppressor,
Yet who also is aggrieved and outraged?
And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?
Is not remorse the justice which is administered by that very law which you would fain serve?
Yet you cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor lift it from the heart of the guilty.
Unbidden shall it call in the night, that men may wake and gaze upon themselves.
And you who would understand justice, how shall you unless you look upon all deeds in the fullness of light?
Only then shall you know that the erect and the fallen are but one man standing in twilight between the night of his pigmy-self and the day of his god-self,
And that the corner-stone of the temple is not higher than the lowest stone in its foundation.
|
Written by
John Greenleaf Whittier |
O Mother Earth! upon thy lap
Thy weary ones receiving,
And o'er them, silent as a dream,
Thy grassy mantle weaving,
Fold softly in thy long embrace
That heart so worn and broken,
And cool its pulse of fire beneath
Thy shadows old and oaken.
Shut out from him the bitter word
And serpent hiss of scorning;
Nor let the storms of yesterday
Disturb his quiet morning.
Breathe over him forgetfulness
Of all save deeds of kindness,
And, save to smiles of grateful eyes,
Press down his lids in blindness.
There, where with living ear and eye
He heard Potomac's flowing,
And, through his tall ancestral trees,
Saw autumn's sunset glowing,
He sleeps, still looking to the west,
Beneath the dark wood shadow,
As if he still would see the sun
Sink down on wave and meadow.
Bard, Sage, and Tribune! in himself
All moods of mind contrasting, -
The tenderest wail of human woe,
The scorn like lightning blasting;
The pathos which from rival eyes
Unwilling tears could summon,
The stinging taunt, the fiery burst
Of hatred scarcely human!
Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower,
From lips of life-long sadness;
Clear picturings of majestic thought
Upon a ground of madness;
And over all Romance and Song
A classic beauty throwing,
And laurelled Clio at his side
Her storied pages showing.
All parties feared him: each in turn
Beheld its schemes disjointed,
As right or left his fatal glance
And spectral finger pointed.
Sworn foe of Cant, he smote it down
With trenchant wit unsparing,
And, mocking, rent with ruthless hand
The robe Pretence was wearing.
Too honest or too proud to feign
A love he never cherished,
Beyond Virginia's border line
His patriotism perished.
While others hailed in distant skies
Our eagle's dusky pinion,
He only saw the mountain bird
Stoop o'er his Old Dominion!
Still through each change of fortune strange
Racked nerve, and brain all burning,
His loving faith in Mother-land
Knew never shade of turning;
By Britain's lakes, by Neva's tide,
Whatever sky was o'er him,
He heard her rivers' rushing sound,
Her blue peaks rose before him.
He held his slaves, yet made withal
No false and vain pretences,
Nor paid a lying priest to seek
For Scriptural defences.
His harshest words of proud rebuke,
His bitterest taunt and scorning,
Fell fire-like on the Northern brow
That bent to him in fawning.
He held his slaves; yet kept the while
His reverence for the Human;
In the dark vassals of his will
He saw but Man and Woman!
No hunter of God's outraged poor
His Roanoke valley entered;
No trader in the souls of men
Across his threshold ventured.
And when the old and wearied man
Lay down for his last sleeping,
And at his side, a slave no more,
His brother-man stood weeping,
His latest thought, his latest breath,
To Freedom's duty giving,
With failing tongue and trembling hand
The dying blest the living.
Oh, never bore his ancient State
A truer son or braver!
None trampling with a calmer scorn
On foreign hate or favor.
He knew her faults, yet never stooped
His proud and manly feeling
To poor excuses of the wrong
Or meanness of concealing.
But none beheld with clearer eye
The plague-spot o'er her spreading
None heard more sure the steps of Doom
Along her future treading.
For her as for himself he spake,
When, his gaunt frame upbracing,
He traced with dying hand 'Remorse!'
And perished in the tracing.
As from the grave where Henry sleeps,
From Vernon's weeping willow,
And from the grassy pall which hides
The Sage of Monticello,
So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone
Of Randolph's lowly dwelling,
Virginia! o'er thy land of slaves
A warning voice is swelling!
And hark! from thy deserted fields
Are sadder warnings spoken,
From quenched hearths, where thy exiled sons
Their household gods have broken.
The curse is on thee, - wolves for men,
And briers for corn-sheaves giving!
Oh, more than all thy dead renown
Were now one hero living!
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
CANZONE VI.
Spirto gentil che quelle membra reggi.
TO RIENZI, BESEECHING HIM TO RESTORE TO ROME HER ANCIENT LIBERTY.
Spirit heroic! who with fire divine
Kindlest those limbs, awhile which pilgrim hold
On earth a Chieftain, gracious, wise, and bold;
Since, rightly, now the rod of state is thine
Rome and her wandering children to confine,
And yet reclaim her to the old good way:
To thee I speak, for elsewhere not a ray
Of virtue can I find, extinct below,
Nor one who feels of evil deeds the shame.
Why Italy still waits, and what her aim
I know not, callous to her proper woe,
Indolent, aged, slow,
Still will she sleep? Is none to rouse her found?
Oh! that my wakening hands were through her tresses wound.
So grievous is the spell, the trance so deep,
Loud though we call, my hope is faint that e'er
She yet will waken from her heavy sleep:
But not, methinks, without some better end
Was this our Rome entrusted to thy care,
Who surest may revive and best defend.
Fearlessly then upon that reverend head,
'Mid her dishevell'd locks, thy fingers spread,
And lift at length the sluggard from the dust;
I, day and night, who her prostration mourn,
For this, in thee, have fix'd my certain trust,
[Pg 55]That, if her sons yet turn.
And their eyes ever to true honour raise.
The glory is reserved for thy illustrious days!
Her ancient walls, which still with fear and love
The world admires, whene'er it calls to mind
The days of Eld, and turns to look behind;
Her hoar and cavern'd monuments above
The dust of men, whose fame, until the world
In dissolution sink, can never fail;
Her all, that in one ruin now lies hurl'd,
Hopes to have heal'd by thee its every ail.
O faithful Brutus! noble Scipios dead!
To you what triumph, where ye now are blest,
If of our worthy choice the fame have spread:
And how his laurell'd crest,
Will old Fabricius rear, with joy elate,
That his own Rome again shall beauteous be and great!
And, if for things of earth its care Heaven show,
The souls who dwell above in joy and peace,
And their mere mortal frames have left below,
Implore thee this long civil strife may cease,
Which kills all confidence, nips every good,
Which bars the way to many a roof, where men
Once holy, hospitable lived, the den
Of fearless rapine now and frequent blood,
Whose doors to virtue only are denied.
While beneath plunder'd Saints, in outraged fanes
Plots Faction, and Revenge the altar stains;
And, contrast sad and wide,
The very bells which sweetly wont to fling
Summons to prayer and praise now Battle's tocsin ring!
Pale weeping women, and a friendless crowd
Of tender years, infirm and desolate Age,
Which hates itself and its superfluous days,
With each blest order to religion vow'd,
Whom works of love through lives of want engage,
To thee for help their hands and voices raise;
While our poor panic-stricken land displays
The thousand wounds which now so mar her frame,
That e'en from foes compassion they command;
Or more if Christendom thy care may claim.
Lo! God's own house on fire, while not a hand
[Pg 56]Moves to subdue the flame:
—Heal thou these wounds, this feverish tumult end,
And on the holy work Heaven's blessing shall descend!
Often against our marble Column high
Wolf, Lion, Bear, proud Eagle, and base Snake
Even to their own injury insult shower;
Lifts against thee and theirs her mournful cry,
The noble Dame who calls thee here to break
Away the evil weeds which will not flower.
A thousand years and more! and gallant men
There fix'd her seat in beauty and in power;
The breed of patriot hearts has fail'd since then!
And, in their stead, upstart and haughty now,
A race, which ne'er to her in reverence bends,
Her husband, father thou!
Like care from thee and counsel she attends,
As o'er his other works the Sire of all extends.
'Tis seldom e'en that with our fairest scheme
Some adverse fortune will not mix, and mar
With instant ill ambition's noblest dreams;
But thou, once ta'en thy path, so walk that I
May pardon her past faults, great as they are,
If now at least she give herself the lie.
For never, in all memory, as to thee,
To mortal man so sure and straight the way
Of everlasting honour open lay,
For thine the power and will, if right I see,
To lift our empire to its old proud state.
Let this thy glory be!
They succour'd her when young, and strong, and great,
He, in her weak old age, warded the stroke of Fate.
Forth on thy way! my Song, and, where the bold
Tarpeian lifts his brow, shouldst thou behold,
Of others' weal more thoughtful than his own,
The chief, by general Italy revered,
Tell him from me, to whom he is but known
As one to Virtue and by Fame endear'd,
Till stamp'd upon his heart the sad truth be,
That, day by day to thee,
With suppliant attitude and streaming eyes,
For justice and relief our seven-hill'd city cries.
Macgregor.
|
Written by
Edwin Arlington Robinson |
Friendless and faint, with martyred steps and slow,
Faint for the flesh, but for the spirit free,
Stung by the mob that came to see the show,
The Master toiled along to Calvary;
We gibed him, as he went, with houndish glee,
Till his dimmed eyes for us did overflow;
We cursed his vengeless hands thrice wretchedly, --
And this was nineteen hundred years ago.
But after nineteen hundred years the shame
Still clings, and we have not made good the loss
That outraged faith has entered in his name.
Ah, when shall come love's courage to be strong!
Tell me, O Lord -- tell me, O Lord, how long
Are we to keep Christ writhing on the cross!
|
Written by
Rg Gregory |
all is still on this starless night
the mountain waits
quiescent as a cat
smoothing crag and chasm
to a white fur
then against the black sky
puffs of snow
flutter from a jutting cliff
into obscurity
a drumroll utters
from the mountain's throat
and stops
reprehended by a silence so intense
that even night
seems shallow in its presence
high up a front of snow
crumples and cascades down
plashing from rock to rock
spawning further falls
echoing itself to dotage
in the sharp hills
and again the wound of silence
bleeds about the mountain
again the grumbling drumroll
a giant peak
staggering with ice
suddenly sags
and booming like a cry
sprawls into a gully
tumbles blind with spray
lurches bounces
dizzily jazzing downwards
in the outraged night
now it roars and crashes
through the squawking snow
lunges smashes
into crest and crag
devours ridges
pitches over cliffs
bursts tremendously through gaps
now booms and rebooms
thunders and rethunders
as in its rapid shapes
it plunges wildly down
rifts instantly appear
and craters fill - crags snap off
like fingers - boulders fly
and down and down
within its own created
turmoil of demented spray
still accumulating speed
this daft fantastic mass
white-hot with bitter rage
thrashes seethes explodes
until
before some obdurate cliff face
or deep in a ravine
it hurls itself at last
indifferently to death
and then there is this silence
too hurt too solid a thing to bear
beside the foaming mountain
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
The God of Scribes looked down and saw
The bitter band of seven,
Who had outraged his holy law
And lost their hope of Heaven:
Came Villon, petty thief and pimp,
And obscene Baudelaire,
And Byron with his letcher limp,
And Poe with starry stare.
And Wilde who lived his hell on earth,
And Burns, the baudy bard,
And Francis Thompson, from his birth
Malevolently starred.
.
.
.
As like a line of livid ghosts
They started to paradise,
The galaxy of Heaven's hosts
Looked down in soft surmise.
Said God: "You bastards of my love,
You are my chosen sons;
Come, I will set you high above
These merely holy ones.
Your sins you've paid in gall and grief,
So to these radiant skies,
Seducer, drunkard, dopester, thief,
Immortally arise.
I am your Father, fond and just,
And all your folly see;
Your beastiality and lust
I also know in me.
You did the task I gave to you .
.
.
Arise and sit beside
My Son, the best beloved, who
Was also crucified.
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
SONNET CCXXII.
In tale Stella duo begli occhi vidi.
THE BEAUTY OF LAURA IS PEERLESS.
In one fair star I saw two brilliant eyes,
With sweetness, modesty, so glistening o'er,
That soon those graceful nests of Love before
My worn heart learnt all others to despise:
Equall'd not her whoever won the prize
In ages gone on any foreign shore;
Not she to Greece whose wondrous beauty bore
Unnumber'd ills, to Troy death's anguish'd cries:
Not the fair Roman, who, with ruthless blade
Piercing her chaste and outraged bosom, fled
Dishonour worse than death, like charms display'd;
Such excellence should brightest glory shed
On Nature, as on me supreme delight,
But, ah! too lately come, too soon it takes its flight.
Macgregor.
|