Written by
John Greenleaf Whittier |
Up the streets of Aberdeen,
By the kirk and college green,
Rode the Laird of Ury;
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.
Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving-girl,
Prompt to please her master;
And the begging carlin, late
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
Cursed him as he passed her.
Yet, with calm and stately mien,
Up the streets of Aberdeen
Came he slowly riding;
And, to all he saw and heard,
Answering not with bitter word,
Turning not for chiding.
Came a troop with broad swords swinging,
Bits and bridles sharply ringing,
Loose and free and forward;
Quoth the foremost, 'Ride him down!
Push him! prick him! through the town
Drive the Quaker coward!'
But from out the thickening crowd
Cried a sudden voice and loud:
'Barclay! Ho! a Barclay!
And the old man at his side
Saw a comrade, battle tried,
Scarred and sunburned darkly,
Who with ready weapon bare,
Fronting to the troopers there,
Cried aloud: 'God save us,
Call ye coward him who stood
Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood,
With the brave Gustavus?'
'Nay, I do not need thy sword,
Comrade mine,' said Ury's lord.
'Put it up, I pray thee:
Passive to His holy will,
Trust I in my Master still,
Even though He slay me.
'Pledges of thy love and faith,
Proved on many a field of death,
Not by me are needed.'
Marvelled much that henchman bold,
That his laird, so stout of old,
Now so meekly pleaded.
'Woe's the day!' he sadly said,
With a slowly shaking head,
And a look of pity;
'Ury's honest lord reviled,
Mock of knave and sport of child,
In his own good city!
'Speak the word, and, master mine,
As we charged on Tilly's line,
And his Walloon lancers,
Smiting through their midst we'll teach
Civil look and decent speech
To these boyish prancers!'
'Marvel not, mine ancient friend,
Like beginning, like the end,'
Quoth the Laird of Ury;
'Is the sinful servant more
Than his gracious Lord who bore
Bonds and stripes in Jewry?
'Give me joy that in his name
I can bear, with patient frame,
All these vain ones offer;
While for them He suffereth long,
Shall I answer wrong with wrong,
Scoffing with the scoffer?
'Happier I, with loss of all,
Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,
With few friends to greet me,
Than when reeve and squire were seen,
Riding our from Aberdeen,
With bared heads to meet me.
'When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,
Blessed me as I passed her door;
And the snooded daughter,
Through her casement glancing down,
Smiled on him who bore renown
From red fields of slaughter.
'Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,
Hard the old friend's falling off,
Hard to learn forgiving;
But the Lord His own rewards,
And His love with theirs accords,
Warm and fresh and living.
'Through this dark and stormy night
Faith beholds a feeble light
Up the blackness streaking;
Knowing God's own time is best,
In a patient hope I rest
For the full day-breaking!'
So the Laird of Ury said,
Turning slow his horse's head
Towards the Tolbooth prison,
Where, through iron gates, he heard
Poor disciples of thee Word
Preach of Christ arisen!
Not in vain, Confessor old,
Unto us the tale is told
Of thy day of trial;
Every age on him who strays
From its broad and beaten ways
Pours its seven-fold vial.
Happy he whose inward ear
Angel comfortings can hear,
O'er the rabble's laughter;
And while Hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern
Of the good hereafter.
Knowing this, that never yet
Share of Truth was vainly set
In the world's wide fallow;
After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead
Reap the harvests yellow.
Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,
Must the moral pioneer
From the Future borrow;
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
And, on midnight's sky of rain,
Paint the golden morrow!
|
Written by
Paul Laurence Dunbar |
There's a fabulous story
Full of splendor and glory,
That Arabian legends transcends;
Of the wealth without measure,
The coffers of treasure,
At the place where the rainbow ends.
Oh, many have sought it,
And all would have bought it,
With the blood we so recklessly spend;
But none has uncovered,
The gold, nor discovered
The spot at the rainbow's end.
They have sought it in battle,
And e'en where the rattle
Of dice with man's blasphemy blends;
But howe'er persuasive,
It still proves evasive,
This place where the rainbow ends.
I own for my pleasure,
I yearn not for treasure,
Though gold has a power it lends;
And I have a notion,
To find without motion,
The place where the rainbow ends.
The pot may hold pottage,
The place be a cottage,
That a humble contentment defends,
Only joy fills its coffer,
But spite of the scoffer,
There's the place where the rainbow ends.
Where care shall be quiet,
[Pg 247]And love shall run riot,
And I shall find wealth in my friends;
Then truce to the story,
Of riches and glory;
There's the place where the rainbow ends.
|
Written by
T Wignesan |
for Léon Vanier*
(The texts I use for my translations are from: Yves-Alain Favre, Ed. Paul Verlaine: Œuvres Poétiques Complètes. Paris: Robert Laffont,1992, XCIX-939p.)
Some few in all this Paris:
We live off pride, yet flat broke we’re
Even if with the bottle a bit too free
We drink above all fresh water
Being very sparing when taken with hunger.
With other fine fare and wines of high-estate
Likewise with beauty: sour-tempered never.
We are the writers of good taste.
Phoebé when all the cats gray be
Highly sharpened to a point much harsher
Our bodies nourrished by glory
Hell licks its lips and in ambush does cower
And with his dart Phoebus pierces us ever
The night cradling us through dreamy waste
Strewn with seeds of peach beds over.
We are the writers of good taste.
A good many of the best minds rally
Holding high Man’s standard: toffee-nosed scoffer
And Lemerre* retains with success poetry’s destiny.
More than one poet then helter-skelter
Sought to join the rest through the narrow fissure;
But Vanier at the very end made haste
The only lucky one to assume the rôle of Fisher*.
We are the writers of good taste.
ENVOI
Even if our stock exchange tends to dither
Princes hold sway: gentle folk and the divining caste.
Whatever one might say or pours forth the preacher,
We are the writers of good taste.
*One of Verlaine’s publishers who first published his near-collected works at 19, quai Saint-Michel, Paris-V.
* Alphonse Lemerre (1838-1912) , one of Verlaine’s publishers at 47, Passage Choiseul, Paris, where from 1866 onwards the Parnassians met regularly.
*Vanier first specialised in articles for fishing as a sport.
© T. Wignesan – Paris,2013
|
Written by
Adam Lindsay Gordon |
OH, gaily sings the bird! and the wattle-boughs are stirred
And rustled by the scented breath of Spring;
Oh, the dreary wistful longing! Oh, the faces that are thronging!
Oh, the voices that are vaguely whispering!
Oh, tell me, father mine, ere the good ship crossed the brine,
On the gangway one mute handgrip we exchanged,
Do you, past the grave, employ, for your stubborn reckless boy,
Those petitions that in life were ne’er estranged?
Oh, tell me, sister dear—parting word and parting tear
Never passed between us: let me bear the blame—
Are you living, girl, or dead? bitter tears since then I’ve shed
For the lips that lisped with mine a mother’s name.
Oh, tell me, ancient friend, ever ready to defend
In our boyhood, at the base of life’s long hill,
Are you waking yet or sleeping? Have you left this vale of weeping,
Or do you, like your comrade, linger still?
Oh, whisper, buried love, is there rest and peace above?—
There is little hope or comfort here below;
On your sweet face lies the mould, and your bed is strait and cold—
Near the harbour where the sea-tides ebb and flow.
All silent—they are dumb—and the breezes go and come
With an apathy that mocks at man’s distress;
Laugh, scoffer, while you may! I could bow me down and pray
For an answer that might stay my bitterness.
Oh, harshly screams the bird, and the wattle-bloom is stirred;
There’s a sullen weird-like whisper in the bough:
‘Aye, kneel and pray and weep, but HIS BELOVED SLEEP
CAN NEVER BE DISTURBED BY SUCH AS THOU!’
|
Written by
Isaac Watts |
Surprising deliverance.
When God restored our captive state,
Joy was our song, and grace our theme;
The grace beyond our hopes so great
That joy appeared a painted dream.
The scoffer owns thy hand, and pays
Unwilling honors to thy name;
While we with pleasure shout thy praise,
With cheerful notes thy love proclaim.
When we review our dismal fears,
'Twas hard to think they'd vanish so;
With God we left our flowing tears,
He makes our joys like rivers flow.
The man that in his furrowed field
His scattered seed with sadness leaves,
Will shout to see the harvest yield
A welcome load of joyful sheaves.
|
Written by
Isaac Watts |
Self-examination; or, Evidences of grace.
Judge me, O Lord, and prove my ways,
And try my reins, and try my heart
My faith upon thy promise stays,
Nor from thy law my feet depart.
I hate to walk, I hate to sit,
With men of vanity and lies
The scoffer and the hypocrite
Are the abhorrence of mine eyes.
Amongst thy saints will I appear
With frauds well washed in innocence;
But when I stand before thy bar,
The blood of Christ is my defence.
I love thy habitation, Lord,
The temple where thine honors dwell;
There shall I hear thine holy word,
And there thy works of wonder tell.
Let not my soul be joined at last
With men of treachery and blood,
Since I my days on earth have passed
Among the saints, and near my God.
|
Written by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
WHEN through the nations stalks contagion wild,
We from them cautiously should steal away.
E'en I have oft with ling'ring and delay
Shunn'd many an influence, not to be defil'd.
And e'en though Amor oft my hours beguil'd,
At length with him preferr'd I not to play,
And so, too, with the wretched sons of clay,
When four and three-lined verses they compil'd.
But punishment pursues the scoffer straight,
As if by serpent-torch of furies led
From bill to vale, from land to sea to fly.
I hear the genie's laughter at my fate;
Yet do I find all power of thinking fled
In sonnet-rage and love's fierce ecstasy.
1807-8.
|
Written by
Paul Laurence Dunbar |
Long time ago, we two set out,
My soul and I.
I know not why,
For all our way was dim with doubt.
I know not where
We two may fare:
Though still with every changing weather,
We wander, groping on together.
We do not love, we are not friends,
My soul and I.
He lives a lie;
Untruth lines every way he wends.
A scoffer he
[Pg 120]Who jeers at me:
And so, my comrade and my brother,
We wander on and hate each other.
Ay, there be taverns and to spare,
Beside the road;
But some strange goad
Lets me not stop to taste their fare.
Knew I the goal
Toward which my soul
And I made way, hope made life fragrant:
But no. We wander, aimless, vagrant!
|
Written by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
ONE Spring-morning bright and fair,
Roam'd a shepherdess and sang;
Young and beauteous, free from care,
Through the fields her clear notes rang:
So, Ia, Ia! le ralla, &c.
Of his lambs some two or three
Thyrsis offer'd for a kiss;
First she eyed him roguishly,
Then for answer sang but this:
So, Ia, Ia! le ralla, &c.
Ribbons did the next one offer,
And the third, his heart so true
But, as with the lambs, the scoffer
Laugh'd at heart and ribbons too,--
Still 'twas Ia! le ralla, &c.
1791.
|
Written by
Paul Laurence Dunbar |
One night in my room, still and beamless,
With will and with thought in eclipse,
I rested in sleep that was dreamless;
When softly there fell on my lips
A touch, as of lips that were pressing
Mine own with the message of bliss—
A sudden, soft, fleeting caressing,
A breath like a maiden's first kiss.
I woke-and the scoffer may doubt me—
I peered in surprise through the gloom;
But nothing and none were about me,
And I was alone in my room.
Perhaps 't was the wind that caressed me
And touched me with dew-laden breath;
Or, maybe, close-sweeping, there passed me
The low-winging Angel of Death.
Some sceptic may choose to disdain it,
Or one feign to read it aright;
Or wisdom may seek to explain it—
This mystical kiss in the night.
But rather let fancy thus clear it:
That, thinking of me here alone,
The miles were made naught, and, in spirit,
[Pg 110]Thy lips, love, were laid on mine own.
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