Written by
Galway Kinnell |
I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks are very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.
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Written by
Emily Dickinson |
Within my Garden, rides a Bird
Upon a single Wheel --
Whose spokes a dizzy Music make
As 'twere a travelling Mill --
He never stops, but slackens
Above the Ripest Rose --
Partakes without alighting
And praises as he goes,
Till every spice is tasted --
And then his Fairy Gig
Reels in remoter atmospheres --
And I rejoin my Dog,
And He and I, perplex us
If positive, 'twere we --
Or bore the Garden in the Brain
This Curiosity --
But He, the best Logician,
Refers my clumsy eye --
To just vibrating Blossoms!
An Exquisite Reply!
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Written by
Rg Gregory |
there are eyes that refuse to exist
in the fresh air - they are invented
by the lies of paint or make their mark
in a memory that had a truth
to feed on but only by distortion
right now they sell a dream
i'd like to see the back of - they come
with a whole body rippling me apart
disturbing me with echoes of a flesh
so many layers down the light derides it
why can't i grasp it now
this love's reverberation of a sound
that tunes me deeper than my marrow
but runs from me when wanted to be real
(today's a dried pool whispering of an ocean)
the eyes (unreal or not) persist
life is at base such unreality - it stirs
surfaces through pretences who i am
each a wash of wish (its listless traces
the febrile flickings of a tight core's ends)
i'm struggling now for safety
want something from these diadems
this old light scores in me - these eyes
cradling me as i look through them
(won't let me go and i can't let them)
beyond love they cup aloneness
they're your eyes but my at-one-ment
(more to sing of than i can fathom)
sensing them calmly's the ripest pain
these eyes so poignant they daren't exist
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Written by
Lucy Maud Montgomery |
Shut from the clamor of the street
By an old wall with lichen grown,
It holds apart from jar and fret
A peace and beauty all its own.
The freshness of the springtime rains
And dews of morning linger here;
It holds the glow of summer noons
And ripest twilights of the year.
Above its bloom the evening stars
Look down at closing of the day,
And in its sweet and shady walks
Winds spent with roaming love to stray,
Upgathering to themselves the breath
Of wide-blown roses white and red,
The spice of musk and lavender
Along its winding alleys shed.
Outside are shadeless, troubled streets
And souls that quest for gold and gain,
Lips that have long forgot to smile
And hearts that burn and ache with pain.
But here is all the sweet of dreams,
The grace of prayer, the boon of rest,
The spirit of old songs and loves
Dwells in this garden blossom-blest.
Here would I linger for a space,
And walk herein with memory;
The world will pass me as it may
And hope will minister to me.
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Written by
Victor Hugo |
("Ho, guerriers! je suis né dans le pays des Gaules.")
{V., March 11, 1825.}
Ho, warriors! I was reared in the land of the Gauls;
O'er the Rhine my ancestors came bounding like balls
Of the snow at the Pole, where, a babe, I was bathed
Ere in bear and in walrus-skin I was enswathed.
Then my father was strong, whom the years lowly bow,—
A bison could wallow in the grooves of his brow.
He is weak, very old—he can scarcely uptear
A young pine-tree for staff since his legs cease to bear;
But here's to replace him!—I can toy with his axe;
As I sit on the hill my feet swing in the flax,
And my knee caps the boulders and troubles the trees.
How they shiver, yea, quake if I happen to sneeze!
I was still but a springald when, cleaving the Alps,
I brushed snowy periwigs off granitic scalps,
And my head, o'er the pinnacles, stopped the fleet clouds,
Where I captured the eagles and caged them by crowds.
There were tempests! I blew them back into their source!
And put out their lightnings! More than once in a course,
Through the ocean I went wading after the whale,
And stirred up the bottom as did never a gale.
Fond of rambling, I hunted the shark 'long the beach,
And no osprey in ether soared out of my reach;
And the bear that I pinched 'twixt my finger and thumb,
Like the lynx and the wolf, perished harmless and dumb.
But these pleasures of childhood have lost all their zest;
It is warfare and carnage that now I love best:
The sounds that I wish to awaken and hear
Are the cheers raised by courage, the shrieks due to fear;
When the riot of flames, ruin, smoke, steel and blood,
Announces an army rolls along as a flood,
Which I follow, to harry the clamorous ranks,
Sharp-goading the laggards and pressing the flanks,
Till, a thresher 'mid ripest of corn, up I stand
With an oak for a flail in my unflagging hand.
Rise the groans! rise the screams! on my feet fall vain tears
As the roar of my laughter redoubles their fears.
I am naked. At armor of steel I should joke—
True, I'm helmed—a brass pot you could draw with ten yoke.
I look for no ladder to invade the king's hall—
I stride o'er the ramparts, and down the walls fall,
Till choked are the ditches with the stones, dead and quick,
Whilst the flagstaff I use 'midst my teeth as a pick.
Oh, when cometh my turn to succumb like my prey,
May brave men my body snatch away from th' array
Of the crows—may they heap on the rocks till they loom
Like a mountain, befitting a colossus' tomb!
Foreign Quarterly Review (adapted)
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Written by
Victor Hugo |
("N'ai-je pas pour toi, belle juive.")
{XII., Oct. 27, 1828.}
To please you, Jewess, jewel!
I have thinned my harem out!
Must every flirting of your fan
Presage a dying shout?
Grace for the damsels tender
Who have fear to hear your laugh,
For seldom gladness gilds your lips
But blood you mean to quaff.
In jealousy so zealous,
Never was there woman worse;
You'd have no roses but those grown
Above some buried corse.
Am I not pinioned firmly?
Why be angered if the door
Repulses fifty suing maids
Who vainly there implore?
Let them live on—to envy
My own empress of the world,
To whom all Stamboul like a dog
Lies at the slippers curled.
To you my heroes lower
Those scarred ensigns none have cowed;
To you their turbans are depressed
That elsewhere march so proud.
To you Bassora offers
Her respect, and Trebizonde
Her carpets richly wrought, and spice
And gems, of which you're fond.
To you the Cyprus temples
Dare not bar or close the doors;
For you the mighty Danube sends
The choicest of its stores.
Fear you the Grecian maidens,
Pallid lilies of the isles?
Or the scorching-eyed sand-rover
From Baalbec's massy piles?
Compared with yours, oh, daughter
Of King Solomon the grand,
What are round ebon bosoms,
High brows from Hellas' strand?
You're neither blanched nor blackened,
For your tint of olive's clear;
Yours are lips of ripest cherry,
You are straight as Arab spear.
Hence, launch no longer lightning
On these paltry slaves of ours.
Why should your flow of tears be matched
By their mean life-blood showers?
Think only of our banquets
Brought and served by charming girls,
For beauties sultans must adorn
As dagger-hilts the pearls.
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Written by
James Whitcomb Riley |
The ripest peach is highest on the tree --
And so her love, beyond the reach of me,
Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes, bow
Her heart down to me where I worship now!
She looms aloft where every eye may see
The ripest peach is highest on the tree.
Such fruitage as her love I know, alas!
I may not reach here from the orchard grass.
I drink the sunshine showered past her lips
As roses drain the dewdrop as it drips.
The ripest peach is highest on the tree,
And so mine eyes gaze upward eagerly.
Why -- why do I not turn away in wrath
And pluck some heart here hanging in my path? --
Love's lower boughs bend with them -- but, ah me!
The ripest peach is highest on the tree!
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Written by
Gerard Manley Hopkins |
The dappled die-away
Cheek and wimpled lip,
The gold-wisp, the airy-grey
Eye, all in fellowship—
This, all this beauty blooming,
This, all this freshness fuming,
Give God while worth consuming.
Both thought and thew now bolder
And told by Nature: Tower;
Head, heart, hand, heel, and shoulder
That beat and breathe in power—
This pride of prime's enjoyment
Take as for tool, not toy meant
And hold at Christ's employment.
The vault and scope and schooling
And mastery in the mind,
In silk-ash kept from cooling,
And ripest under rind—
What life half lifts the latch of,
What hell stalks towards the snatch of,
Your offering, with despatch, of!
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