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Best Famous Starred Poems

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Written by Aleister Crowley | Create an image from this poem

The Wizard Way

 [Dedicated to General J.
C.
F.
Fuller] Velvet soft the night-star glowed Over the untrodden road, Through the giant glades of yew Where its ray fell light as dew Lighting up the shimmering veil Maiden pure and aery frail That the spiders wove to hide Blushes of the sylvan bride Earth, that trembled with delight At the male caress of Night.
Velvet soft the wizard trod To the Sabbath of his God.
With his naked feet he made Starry blossoms in the glade, Softly, softly, as he went To the sombre sacrament, Stealthy stepping to the tryst In his gown of amethyst.
Earlier yet his soul had come To the Hill of Martyrdom, Where the charred and crooked stake Like a black envenomed snake By the hangman's hands is thrust Through the wet and writhing dust, Never black and never dried Heart's blood of a suicide.
He had plucked the hazel rod From the rude and goatish god, Even as the curved moon's waning ray Stolen from the King of Day.
He had learnt the elvish sign; Given the Token of the Nine: Once to rave, and once to revel, Once to bow before the devil, Once to swing the thurible, Once to kiss the goat of hell, Once to dance the aspen spring, Once to croak, and once to sing, Once to oil the savoury thighs Of the witch with sea-green eyes With the unguents magical.
Oh the honey and the gall Of that black enchanter's lips As he croons to the eclipse Mingling that most puissant spell Of the giant gods of hell With the four ingredients Of the evil elements; Ambergris from golden spar, Musk of ox from Mongol jar, Civet from a box of jade, Mixed with fat of many a maid Slain by the inchauntments cold Of the witches wild and old.
He had crucified a toad In the basilisk abode, Muttering the Runes averse Mad with many a mocking curse.
He had traced the serpent sigil In his ghastly virgin vigil.
Sursum cor! the elfin hill, Where the wind blows deadly chill From the world that wails beneath Death's black throat and lipless teeth.
There he had stood - his bosom bare - Tracing Life upon the Air With the crook and with the flail Lashing forward on the gale, Till its blade that wavereth Like the flickering of Death Sank before his subtle fence To the starless sea of sense.
Now at last the man is come Haply to his halidom.
Surely as he waves his rod In a circle on the sod Springs the emerald chaste and clean From the duller paler green.
Surely in the circle millions Of immaculate pavilions Flash upon the trembling turf Like the sea-stars in the surf - Millions of bejewelled tents For the warrior sacraments.
Vaster, vaster, vaster, vaster, Grows the stature of the master; All the ringed encampment vies With the infinite galaxies.
In the midst a cubic stone With the Devil set thereon; Hath a lamb's virginal throat; Hath the body of a stoat; Hath the buttocks of a goat; Hath the sanguine face and rod Of a goddess and a god! Spell by spell and pace by pace! Mystic flashes swing and trace Velvet soft the sigils stepped By the silver-starred adept.
Back and front, and to and fro, Soul and body sway and flow In vertiginous caresses To imponderable recesses, Till at last the spell is woven, And the faery veil is cloven That was Sequence, Space, and Stress Of the soul-sick consciousness.
"Give thy body to the beasts! Give thy spirit to the priests! Break in twain the hazel rod On the virgin lips of God! Tear the Rosy Cross asunder! Shatter the black bolt of thunder! Suck the swart ensanguine kiss Of the resolute abyss!" Wonder-weft the wizard heard This intolerable word.
Smote the blasting hazel rod On the scarlet lips of God; Trampled Cross and rosy core; Brake the thunder-tool of Thor; Meek and holy acolyte Of the priestly hells of spite, Sleek and shameless catamite Of the beasts that prowl the night! Like a star that streams from heaven Through the virgin airs light-riven, From the lift there shot and fell An admirable miracle.
Carved minute and clean, a key Of purest lapis-lazuli More blue than the blind sky that aches (Wreathed with the stars, her torturing snakes), For the dead god's kiss that never wakes; Shot with golden specks of fire Like a virgin with desire.
Look, the levers! fern-frail fronds Of fantastic diamonds, Glimmering with ethereal azure In each exquisite embrasure.
On the shaft the letters laced, As if dryads lunar-chaste With the satyrs were embraced, Spelled the secret of the key: Sic pervenias.
And he Went his wizard way, inweaving Dreams of things beyond believing.
When he will, the weary world Of the senses closely curled Like a serpent round his heart Shakes herself and stands apart.
So the heart's blood flames, expanding, Strenuous, urgent, and commanding; And the key unlocks the door Where his love lives evermore.
She is of the faery blood; All smaragdine flows its flood.
Glowing in the amber sky To ensorcelled porphyry She hath eyes of glittering flake Like a cold grey water-snake.
She hath naked breasts of amber Jetting wine in her bed-chamber, Whereof whoso stoops and drinks Rees the riddle of the Sphinx.
She hath naked limbs of amber Whereupon her children clamber.
She hath five navels rosy-red From the five wounds of God that bled; Each wound that mothered her still bleeding, And on that blood her babes are feeding.
Oh! like a rose-winged pelican She hath bred blessed babes to Pan! Oh! like a lion-hued nightingale She hath torn her breast on thorns to avail The barren rose-tree to renew Her life with that disastrous dew, Building the rose o' the world alight With music out of the pale moonlight! O She is like the river of blood That broke from the lips of the bastard god, When he saw the sacred mother smile On the ibis that flew up the foam of Nile Bearing the limbs unblessed, unborn, That the lurking beast of Nile had torn! So (for the world is weary) I These dreadful souls of sense lay by.
I sacrifice these impure shoon To the cold ray of the waning moon.
I take the forked hazel staff, And the rose of no terrene graff, And the lamp of no olive oil With heart's blood that alone may boil.
With naked breast and feet unshod I follow the wizard way to God.
Wherever he leads my foot shall follow; Over the height, into the hollow, Up to the caves of pure cold breath, Down to the deeps of foul hot death, Across the seas, through the fires, Past the palace of desires; Where he will, whether he will or no, If I go, I care not whither I go.
For in me is the taint of the faery blood.
Fast, fast its emerald flood Leaps within me, violent rude Like a bestial faun's beatitude.
In me the faery blood runs hard: My sires were a druid, a devil, a bard, A beast, a wizard, a snake and a satyr; For - as my mother said - what does it matter? She was a fay, pure of the faery; Queen Morgan's daughter by an aery Demon that came to Orkney once To pay the Beetle his orisons.
So, it is I that writhe with the twitch Of the faery blood, and the wizard itch To attain a matter one may not utter Rather than sink in the greasy splutter Of Britons munching their bread and butter; Ailing boys and coarse-grained girls Grown to sloppy women and brutal churls.
So, I am off with staff in hand To the endless light of the nameless land.
Darkness spreads its sombre streams, Blotting out the elfin dreams.
I might haply be afraid, Were it not the Feather-maid Leads me softly by the hand, Whispers me to understand.
Now (when through the world of weeping Light at last starrily creeping Steals upon my babe-new sight, Light - O light that is not light!) On my mouth the lips of her Like a stone on my sepulchre Seal my speech with ecstasy, Till a babe is born of me That is silent more than I; For its inarticulate cry Hushes as its mouth is pressed To the pearl, her honey breast; While its breath divinely ripples The rose-petals of her nipples, And the jetted milk he laps From the soft delicious paps, Sweeter than the bee-sweet showers In the chalice of the flowers, More intoxicating than All the purple grapes of Pan.
Ah! my proper lips are stilled.
Only, all the world is filled With the Echo, that drips over Like the honey from the clover.
Passion, penitence, and pain Seek their mother's womb again, And are born the triple treasure, Peace and purity and pleasure.
- Hush, my child, and come aloft Where the stars are velvet soft!


Written by J R R Tolkien | Create an image from this poem

Cat

 The fat cat on the mat
may seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
for him, or cream;
but he free, maybe,
walks in thought
unbowed, proud, where loud
roared and fought
his kin, lean and slim,
or deep in den
in the East feasted on beasts
and tender men.
The giant lion with iron claw in paw, and huge ruthless tooth in gory jaw; the pard dark-starred, fleet upon feet, that oft soft from aloft leaps upon his meat where woods loom in gloom -- far now they be, fierce and free, and tamed is he; but fat cat on the mat kept as a pet he does not forget.
Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Create an image from this poem

Celestial Love

 Higher far,
Upward, into the pure realm,
Over sun or star,
Over the flickering Dæmon film,
Thou must mount for love,—
Into vision which all form
In one only form dissolves;
In a region where the wheel,
On which all beings ride,
Visibly revolves;
Where the starred eternal worm
Girds the world with bound and term;
Where unlike things are like,
When good and ill,
And joy and moan,
Melt into one.
There Past, Present, Future, shoot Triple blossoms from one root Substances at base divided In their summits are united, There the holy Essence rolls, One through separated souls, And the sunny &Aelig;on sleeps Folding nature in its deeps, And every fair and every good Known in part or known impure To men below, In their archetypes endure.
The race of gods, Or those we erring own, Are shadows flitting up and down In the still abodes.
The circles of that sea are laws, Which publish and which hide the Cause.
Pray for a beam Out of that sphere Thee to guide and to redeem.
O what a load Of care and toil By lying Use bestowed, From his shoulders falls, who sees The true astronomy, The period of peace! Counsel which the ages kept, Shall the well-born soul accept.
As the overhanging trees Fill the lake with images, As garment draws the garment's hem Men their fortunes bring with them; By right or wrong, Lands and goods go to the strong; Property will brutely draw Still to the proprietor, Silver to silver creep and wind, And kind to kind, Nor less the eternal poles Of tendency distribute souls.
There need no vows to bind Whom not each other seek but find.
They give and take no pledge or oath, Nature is the bond of both.
No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns, Their noble meanings are their pawns.
Plain and cold is their address, Power have they for tenderness, And so thoroughly is known Each others' purpose by his own, They can parley without meeting, Need is none of forms of greeting, They can well communicate In their innermost estate; When each the other shall avoid, Shall each by each be most enjoyed.
Not with scarfs or perfumed gloves Do these celebrate their loves, Not by jewels, feasts, and savors, Not by ribbons or by favors, But by the sun-spark on the sea, And the cloud-shadow on the lea, The soothing lapse of morn to mirk, And the cheerful round of work.
Their cords of love so public are, They intertwine the farthest star.
The throbbing sea, the quaking earth, Yield sympathy and signs of mirth; Is none so high, so mean is none, But feels and seals this union.
Even the tell Furies are appeased, The good applaud, the lost are eased.
Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond, Bound for the just, but not beyond; Not glad, as the low-loving herd, Of self in others still preferred, But they have heartily designed The benefit of broad mankind.
And they serve men austerely, After their own genius, clearly, Without a false humility; For this is love's nobility, Not to scatter bread and gold, Goods and raiment bought and sold, But to hold fast his simple sense, And speak the speech of innocence, And with hand, and body, and blood, To make his bosom-counsel good: For he that feeds men, serveth few, He serves all, who dares be true.
Written by John Greenleaf Whittier | Create an image from this poem

The Sycamores

 In the outskirts of the village 
On the river's winding shores 
Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
Stand the ancient sycamores.
One long century hath been numbered, And another half-way told Since the rustic Irish gleeman Broke for them the virgin mould.
Deftly set to Celtic music At his violin's sound they grew, Through the moonlit eves of summer, Making Amphion's fable true.
Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant! Pass in erkin green along With thy eyes brim full of laughter, And thy mouth as full of song.
Pioneer of Erin's outcasts With his fiddle and his pack- Little dreamed the village Saxons Of the myriads at his back.
How he wrought with spade and fiddle, Delved by day and sang by night, With a hand that never wearied And a heart forever light,--- Still the gay tradition mingles With a record grave and drear Like the rollic air of Cluny With the solemn march of Mear.
When the box-tree, white with blossoms, Made the sweet May woodlands glad, And the Aronia by the river Lighted up the swarming shad, And the bulging nets swept shoreward With their silver-sided haul, Midst the shouts of dripping fishers, He was merriest of them all.
When, among the jovial huskers Love stole in at Labor's side With the lusty airs of England Soft his Celtic measures vied.
Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake And the merry fair's carouse; Of the wild Red Fox of Erin And the Woman of Three Cows, By the blazing hearths of winter Pleasant seemed his simple tales, Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends And the mountain myths of Wales.
How the souls in Purgatory Scrambled up from fate forlorn On St.
Keven's sackcloth ladder Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.
Of the fiddler who at Tara Played all night to ghosts of kings; Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies Dancing in their moorland rings! Jolliest of our birds of singing Best he loved the Bob-o-link.
"Hush!" he'd say, "the tipsy fairies! Hear the little folks in drink!" Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle, Singing through the ancient town, Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant Hath Tradtion handed down.
Not a stone his grave discloses; But if yet his spirit walks Tis beneath the trees he planted And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks.
Green memorials of the gleeman! Linking still the river-shores, With their shadows cast by sunset Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores! When the Father of his Country Through the north-land riding came And the roofs were starred with banners, And the steeples rang acclaim,--- When each war-scarred Continental Leaving smithy, mill,.
and farm, Waved his rusted sword in welcome, And shot off his old king's-arm,--- Slowly passed that august Presence Down the thronged and shouting street; Village girls as white as angels Scattering flowers around his feet.
Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow Deepest fell, his rein he drew: On his stately head, uncovered, Cool and soft the west-wind blew.
And he stood up in his stirrups, Looking up and looking down On the hills of Gold and Silver Rimming round the little town,--- On the river, full of sunshine, To the lap of greenest vales Winding down from wooded headlands, Willow-skirted, white with sails.
And he said, the landscape sweeping Slowly with his ungloved hand "I have seen no prospect fairer In this goodly Eastern land.
" Then the bugles of his escort Stirred to life the cavalcade: And that head, so bare and stately Vanished down the depths of shade.
Ever since, in town and farm-house, Life has had its ebb and flow; Thrice hath passed the human harvest To its garner green and low.
But the trees the gleeman planted, Through the changes, changeless stand; As the marble calm of Tadmor Mocks the deserts shifting sand.
Still the level moon at rising Silvers o'er each stately shaft; Still beneath them, half in shadow, Singing, glides the pleasure craft; Still beneath them, arm-enfolded, Love and Youth together stray; While, as heart to heart beats faster, More and more their feet delay.
Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar, On the open hillside justice wrought, Singing, as he drew his stitches, Songs his German masters taught.
Singing, with his gray hair floating Round a rosy ample face,--- Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen Stitch and hammer in his place.
All the pastoral lanes so grassy Now are Traffic's dusty streets; From the village, grown a city, Fast the rural grace retreats.
But, still green and tall and stately, On the river's winding shores, Stand the occidental plane-trees, Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores.
Written by Gregory Corso | Create an image from this poem

Destiny

 1856 

Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass, 
Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells, 
And martial strains, the full-voiced pæan swells.
The air is starred with flags, the chanted mass Throngs all the churches, yet the broad streets swarm With glad-eyed groups who chatter, laugh, and pass, In holiday confusion, class with class.
And over all the spring, the sun-floods warm! In the Imperial palace that March morn, The beautiful young mother lay and smiled; For by her side just breathed the Prince, her child, Heir to an empire, to the purple born, Crowned with the Titan's name that stirs the heart Like a blown clarion--one more Bonaparte.
1879 Born to the purple, lying stark and dead, Transfixed with poisoned spears, beneath the sun Of brazen Africa! Thy grave is one, Fore-fated youth (on whom were visited Follies and sins not thine), whereat the world, Heartless howe'er it be, will pause to sing A dirge, to breathe a sigh, a wreath to fling Of rosemary and rue with bay-leaves curled.
Enmeshed in toils ambitious, not thine own, Immortal, loved boy-Prince, thou tak'st thy stand With early doomed Don Carlos, hand in hand With mild-browed Arthur, Geoffrey's murdered son.
Louis the Dauphin lifts his thorn-ringed head, And welcomes thee, his brother, 'mongst the dead.


Written by Robinson Jeffers | Create an image from this poem

Contemplation Of The Sword

 Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel, formerly used to kill men, but here In the sense of a symbol.
The sword: that is: the storms and counter-storms of general destruction; killing of men, Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or less intentional, of children and women; Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice, the innocent air Perverted into assasin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement, mass-tourture, frustration of all hopes That starred man's forhead.
Tyranny for freedom, horror for happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the sacred stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the treacheries And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this thing comes near us again I am finding it hard To praise you with a whole heart.
I know what pain is, but pain can shine.
I know what death is, I have sometimes Longed for it.
But cruelty and slavery and degredation, pestilence, filth, the pitifulness Of men like hurt little birds and animals .
.
.
if you were only Waves beating rock, the wind and the iron-cored earth, With what a heart I could praise your beauty.
You will not repent, nor cancel life, nor free man from anguish For many ages to come.
You are the one that tortures himself to discover himself: I am One that watches you and discovers you, and praises you in little parables, idyl or tragedy, beautiful Intolerable God.
The sword: that is: I have two sons whom I love.
They are twins, they were born in nineteen sixteen, which seemed to us a dark year Of a great war, and they are now of the age That war prefers.
The first-born is like his mother, he is so beautiful That persons I hardly know have stopped me on the street to speak of the grave beauty of the boy's face.
The second-born has strength for his beauty; when he strips for swimming the hero shoulders and wrestler loins Make him seem clothed.
The sword: that is: loathsome disfigurements, blindness, mutilation, locked lips of boys Too proud to scream.
Reason will not decide at last: the sword will decide.
Written by Aleister Crowley | Create an image from this poem

The Garden of Janus

 I

The cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome Whose gladiators shock and shun As the blue night devours them, crested comb Of sleep's dead sea That eats the shores of life, rings round eternity! II So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched; My brain's afloat with ecstasy of shame.
That tearing pain is gone, enriched By his life-spasm; but he being gone, the same Myself is gone Sucked by the dragon down below death's horizon.
III I woke from this.
I lay upon the lawn; They had thrown roses on the moss With all their thorns; we came there at the dawn, My lord and I; God sailed across The sky in's galleon of amber, drawn By singing winds While we wove garlands of the flowers of our minds.
IV All day my lover deigned to murder me, Linking his kisses in a chain About my neck; demon-embroidery! Bruises like far-ff mountains stain The valley of my body of ivory! Then last came sleep.
I wake, and he is gone; what should I do but weep? V Nay, for I wept enough --- more sacred tears! --- When first he pinned me, gripped My flesh, and as a stallion that rears, Sprang, hero-thewed and satyr-lipped; Crushed, as a grape between his teeth, my fears; Sucked out my life And stamped me with the shame, the monstrous word of wife.
VI I will not weep; nay, I will follow him Perchance he is not far, Bathing his limbs in some delicious dim Depth, where the evening star May kiss his mouth, or by the black sky's rim He makes his prayer To the great serpent that is coiled in rapture there.
VII I rose to seek him.
First my footsteps faint Pressed the starred moss; but soon I wandered, like some sweet sequestered saint, Into the wood, my mind.
The moon Was staggered by the trees; with fierce constraint Hardly one ray Pierced to the ragged earth about their roots that lay.
VIII I wandered, crying on my Lord.
I wandered Eagerly seeking everywhere.
The stories of life that on my lips he squandered Grew into shrill cries of despair, Until the dryads frightened and dumfoundered Fled into space --- Like to a demon-king's was grown my maiden face! XI At last I came unto the well, my soul In that still glass, I saw no sign Of him, and yet --- what visions there uproll To cloud that mirror-soul of mine? Above my head there screams a flying scroll Whose word burnt through My being as when stars drop in black disastrous dew.
X For in that scroll was written how the globe Of space became; of how the light Broke in that space and wrapped it in a robe Of glory; of how One most white Withdrew that Whole, and hid it in the lobe Of his right Ear, So that the Universe one dewdrop did appear.
IX Yea! and the end revealed a word, a spell, An incantation, a device Whereby the Eye of the Most Terrible Wakes from its wilderness of ice To flame, whereby the very core of hell Bursts from its rind, Sweeping the world away into the blank of mind.
XII So then I saw my fault; I plunged within The well, and brake the images That I had made, as I must make - Men spin The webs that snare them - while the knee Bend to the tyrant God - or unto Sin The lecher sunder! Ah! came that undulant light from over or from under? XIII It matters not.
Come, change! come, Woe! Come, mask! Drive Light, Life, Love into the deep! In vain we labour at the loathsome task Not knowing if we wake or sleep; But in the end we lift the plumed casque Of the dead warrior; Find no chaste corpse therein, but a soft-smiling whore.
XIV Then I returned into myself, and took All in my arms, God's universe: Crushed its black juice out, while His anger shook His dumbness pregnant with a curse.
I made me ink, and in a little book I wrote one word That God himself, the adder of Thought, had never heard.
XV It detonated.
Nature, God, mankind Like sulphur, nitre, charcoal, once Blended, in one annihilation blind Were rent into a myriad of suns.
Yea! all the mighty fabric of a Mind Stood in the abyss, Belching a Law for "That" more awful than for "This.
" XVI Vain was the toil.
So then I left the wood And came unto the still black sea, That oily monster of beatitude! ('Hath "Thee" for "Me," and "Me" for "Thee!") There as I stood, a mask of solitude Hiding a face Wried as a satyr's, rolled that ocean into space.
XVII Then did I build an altar on the shore Of oyster-shells, and ringed it round With star-fish.
Thither a green flame I bore Of phosphor foam, and strewed the ground With dew-drops, children of my wand, whose core Was trembling steel Electric that made spin the universal Wheel.
XVIII With that a goat came running from the cave That lurked below the tall white cliff.
Thy name! cried I.
The answer that gave Was but one tempest-whisper - "If!" Ah, then! his tongue to his black palate clave; For on soul's curtain Is written this one certainty that naught is certain! XIX So then I caught that goat up in a kiss.
And cried Io Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan! Then all this body's wealth of ambergris, (Narcissus-scented flesh of man!) I burnt before him in the sacrifice; For he was sure - Being the Doubt of Things, the one thing to endure! XX Wherefore, when madness took him at the end, He, doubt-goat, slew the goat of doubt; And that which inward did for ever tend Came at the last to have come out; And I who had the World and God to friend Found all three foes! Drowned in that sea of changes, vacancies, and woes! XXI Yet all that Sea was swallowed up therein; So they were not, and it was not.
As who should sweat his soul out through the skin And find (sad fool!) he had begot All that without him that he had left in, And in himself All he had taken out thereof, a mocking elf! XXII But now that all was gone, great Pan appeared.
Him then I strove to woo, to win, Kissing his curled lips, playing with his beard, Setting his brain a-shake, a-spin, By that strong wand, and muttering of the weird That only I Knew of all souls alive or dead beneath the sky.
XXIII So still I conquered, and the vision passed.
Yet still was beaten, for I knew Myself was He, Himself, the first and last; And as an unicorn drinks dew From under oak-leaves, so my strength was cast Into the mire; For all I did was dream, and all I dreamt desire.
XXIV More; in this journey I had clean forgotten The quest, my lover.
But the tomb Of all these thoughts, the rancid and the rotten, Proved in the end to be my womb Wherein my Lord and lover had begotten A little child To drive me, laughing lion, into the wanton wild! XXV This child hath not one hair upon his head, But he hath wings instead of ears.
No eyes hath he, but all his light is shed Within him on the ordered sphere Of nature that he hideth; and in stead Of mouth he hath One minute point of jet; silence, the lightning path! XXVI Also his nostrils are shut up; for he Hath not the need of any breath; Nor can the curtain of eternity Cover that head with life or death.
So all his body, a slim almond-tree, Knoweth no bough Nor branch nor twig nor bud, from never until now.
XXVII This thought I bred within my bowels, I am.
I am in him, as he in me; And like a satyr ravishing a lamb So either seems, or as the sea Swallows the whale that swallows it, the ram Beats its own head Upon the city walls, that fall as it falls dead.
XXVIII Come, let me back unto the lilied lawn! Pile me the roses and the thorns, Upon this bed from which he hath withdrawn! He may return.
A million morns May follow that first dire daemonic dawn When he did split My spirit with his lightnings and enveloped it! XXIX So I am stretched out naked to the knife, My whole soul twitching with the stress Of the expected yet surprising strife, A martyrdom of blessedness.
Though Death came, I could kiss him into life; Though Life came, I Could kiss him into death, and yet nor live nor die! *** Yet I that am the babe, the sire, the dam, Am also none of these at all; For now that cosmic chaos of I AM Bursts like a bubble.
Mystical The night comes down, a soaring wedge of flame Woven therein To be a sign to them who yet have never been.
XXXI The universe I measured with my rod.
The blacks were balanced with the whites; Satan dropped down even as up soared God; Whores prayed and danced with anchorites.
So in my book the even matched the odd: No word I wrote Therein, but sealed it with the signet of the goat.
XXXII This also I seal up.
Read thou herein Whose eyes are blind! Thou may'st behold Within the wheel (that alway seems to spin All ways) a point of static gold.
Then may'st thou out therewith, and fit it in That extreme spher Whose boundless farness makes it infinitely near.
Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Electra On Azalea Path

 The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard
Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard.
It was good for twenty years, that wintering -- As if you never existed, as if I came God-fathered into the world from my mother's belly: Her wide bed wore the stain of divinity.
I had nothing to do with guilt or anything When I wormed back under my mother's heart.
Small as a doll in my dress of innocence I lay dreaming your epic, image by image.
Nobody died or withered on that stage.
Everything took place in a durable whiteness.
The day I woke, I woke on Churchyard Hill.
I found your name, I found your bones and all Enlisted in a cramped necropolis your speckled stone skewed by an iron fence.
In this charity ward, this poorhouse, where the dead Crowd foot to foot, head to head, no flower Breaks the soil.
This is Azalea path.
A field of burdock opens to the south.
Six feet of yellow gravel cover you.
The artificial red sage does not stir In the basket of plastic evergreens they put At the headstone next to yours, nor does it rot, Although the rains dissolve a bloody dye: The ersatz petals drip, and they drip red.
Another kind of redness bothers me: The day your slack sail drank my sister's breath The flat sea purpled like that evil cloth My mother unrolled at your last homecoming.
I borrow the silts of an old tragedy.
The truth is, one late October, at my birth-cry A scorpion stung its head, an ill-starred thing; My mother dreamed you face down in the sea.
The stony actors poise and pause for breath.
I brought my love to bear, and then you died.
It was the gangrene ate you to the bone My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind? I am the ghost of an infamous suicide, My own blue razor rusting at my throat.
O pardon the one who knocks for pardon at Your gate, father -- your hound-*****, daughter, friend.
It was my love that did us both to death.
Written by Les Murray | Create an image from this poem

Performance

 I starred that night, I shone:
I was footwork and firework in one,

a rocket that wriggled up and shot
darkness with a parasol of brilliants
and a peewee descant on a flung bit;
I was blusters of glitter-bombs expanding
to mantle and aurora from a crown,
I was fouéttes, falls of blazing paint,
para-flares spot-welding cloudy heaven,
loose gold off fierce toeholds of white,
a finale red-tongued as a haka leap:
that too was a butt of all right!

As usual after any triumph, I was
of course, inconsolable.
Written by Robert Frost | Create an image from this poem

Provide Provide

 The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag,
Was once the beauty Abishag,

The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good For you to doubt the likelihood.
Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late, Make up your mind to die in state.
Make the whole stock exchange your own! If need be occupy a throne, Where nobody can call you crone.
Some have relied on what they knew; Others on simply being true.
What worked for them might work for you.
No memory of having starred Atones for later disregard, Or keeps the end from being hard.
Better to go down dignified With boughten friendship at your side Than none at all.
Provide, provide!