Written by
Walt Whitman |
1
SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest;
I withdraw from the still woods I loved;
I will not go now on the pastures to walk;
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea;
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.
O how can it be that the ground does not sicken?
How can you be alive, you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you?
Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead?
Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations;
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day—or perhaps I am deceiv’d;
I will run a furrow with my plough—I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it
up
underneath;
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
2
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person—Yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noislessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs,
The new-born of animals appear—the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the
mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk—the lilacs bloom in the door-yards;
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.
What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after
me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever.
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard—that melons, grapes,
peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.
3
Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of
diseas’d
corpses,
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
A Counterfeit -- a Plated Person --
I would not be --
Whatever strata of Iniquity
My Nature underlie --
Truth is good Health -- and Safety, and the Sky.
How meagre, what an Exile -- is a Lie,
And Vocal -- when we die --
|
Written by
Ezra Pound |
"Vocat aestus in umbram"
Nemesianus Es.
IV.
E.
P.
Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense.
Wrong from the start --
No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait:
"Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie
Caught in the unstopped ear;
Giving the rocks small lee-way
The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.
His true Penelope was Flaubert,
He fished by obstinate isles;
Observed the elegance of Circe's hair
Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.
Unaffected by "the march of events",
He passed from men's memory in l'an trentiesme
De son eage; the case presents
No adjunct to the Muses' diadem.
II.
The age demanded an image
Of its accelerated grimace,
Something for the modern stage,
Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;
Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries
Of the inward gaze;
Better mendacities
Than the classics in paraphrase!
The "age demanded" chiefly a mould in plaster,
Made with no loss of time,
A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster
Or the "sculpture" of rhyme.
III.
The tea-rose, tea-gown, etc.
Supplants the mousseline of Cos,
The pianola "replaces"
Sappho's barbitos.
Christ follows Dionysus,
Phallic and ambrosial
Made way for macerations;
Caliban casts out Ariel.
All things are a flowing,
Sage Heracleitus says;
But a tawdry cheapness
Shall reign throughout our days.
Even the Christian beauty
Defects -- after Samothrace;
We see to kalon
Decreed in the market place.
Faun's flesh is not to us,
Nor the saint's vision.
We have the press for wafer;
Franchise for circumcision.
All men, in law, are equals.
Free of Peisistratus,
We choose a knave or an eunuch
To rule over us.
A bright Apollo,
tin andra, tin eroa, tina theon,
What god, man, or hero
Shall I place a tin wreath upon?
IV.
These fought, in any case,
and some believing, pro domo, in any case .
.
Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later .
.
.
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor" .
.
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.
Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;
fortitude as never before
frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.
V.
There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old ***** gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization.
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,
For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.
Yeux Glauques
Gladstone was still respected,
When John Ruskin produced
"Kings Treasuries"; Swinburne
And Rossetti still abused.
Fœtid Buchanan lifted up his voice
When that faun's head of hers
Became a pastime for
Painters and adulterers.
The Burne-Jones cartons
Have preserved her eyes;
Still, at the Tate, they teach
Cophetua to rhapsodize;
Thin like brook-water,
With a vacant gaze.
The English Rubaiyat was still-born
In those days.
The thin, clear gaze, the same
Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin'd face,
Questing and passive .
.
.
.
"Ah, poor Jenny's case" .
.
.
Bewildered that a world
Shows no surprise
At her last maquero's
Adulteries.
"Siena Mi Fe', Disfecemi Maremma"
Among the pickled fœtuses and bottled bones,
Engaged in perfecting the catalogue,
I found the last scion of the
Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.
For two hours he talked of Gallifet;
Of Dowson; of the Rhymers' Club;
Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died
By falling from a high stool in a pub .
.
.
But showed no trace of alcohol
At the autopsy, privately performed --
Tissue preserved -- the pure mind
Arose toward Newman as the whiskey warmed.
Dowson found harlots cheaper than hotels;
Headlam for uplift; Image impartially imbued
With raptures for Bacchus, Terpsichore and the Church.
So spoke the author of "The Dorian Mood",
M.
Verog, out of step with the decade,
Detached from his contemporaries,
Neglected by the young,
Because of these reveries.
Brennbaum.
The sky-like limpid eyes,
The circular infant's face,
The stiffness from spats to collar
Never relaxing into grace;
The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years,
Showed only when the daylight fell
Level across the face
Of Brennbaum "The Impeccable".
Mr.
Nixon
In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht
Mr.
Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer
Dangers of delay.
"Consider
Carefully the reviewer.
"I was as poor as you are;
"When I began I got, of course,
"Advance on royalties, fifty at first", said Mr.
Nixon,
"Follow me, and take a column,
"Even if you have to work free.
"Butter reviewers.
From fifty to three hundred
"I rose in eighteen months;
"The hardest nut I had to crack
"Was Dr.
Dundas.
"I never mentioned a man but with the view
"Of selling my own works.
"The tip's a good one, as for literature
"It gives no man a sinecure.
"
And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece.
And give up verse, my boy,
There's nothing in it.
"
* * *
Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me:
Don't kick against the pricks,
Accept opinion.
The "Nineties" tried your game
And died, there's nothing in it.
X.
Beneath the sagging roof
The stylist has taken shelter,
Unpaid, uncelebrated,
At last from the world's welter
Nature receives him,
With a placid and uneducated mistress
He exercises his talents
And the soil meets his distress.
The haven from sophistications and contentions
Leaks through its thatch;
He offers succulent cooking;
The door has a creaking latch.
XI.
"Conservatrix of Milésien"
Habits of mind and feeling,
Possibly.
But in Ealing
With the most bank-clerkly of Englishmen?
No, "Milésian" is an exaggeration.
No instinct has survived in her
Older than those her grandmother
Told her would fit her station.
XII.
"Daphne with her thighs in bark
Stretches toward me her leafy hands", --
Subjectively.
In the stuffed-satin drawing-room
I await The Lady Valentine's commands,
Knowing my coat has never been
Of precisely the fashion
To stimulate, in her,
A durable passion;
Doubtful, somewhat, of the value
Of well-gowned approbation
Of literary effort,
But never of The Lady Valentine's vocation:
Poetry, her border of ideas,
The edge, uncertain, but a means of blending
With other strata
Where the lower and higher have ending;
A hook to catch the Lady Jane's attention,
A modulation toward the theatre,
Also, in the case of revolution,
A possible friend and comforter.
* * *
Conduct, on the other hand, the soul
"Which the highest cultures have nourished"
To Fleet St.
where
Dr.
Johnson flourished;
Beside this thoroughfare
The sale of half-hose has
Long since superseded the cultivation
Of Pierian roses.
|
Written by
Walt Whitman |
THERE was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many
years, or
stretching cycles of years.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of
the
phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal,
and
the
cow’s calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious
liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him.
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the
garden,
And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries,
and
the
commonest weeds by the road;
And the old drunkard staggering home from the out-house of the tavern, whence he had
lately
risen,
And the school-mistress that pass’d on her way to the school,
And the friendly boys that pass’d—and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheek’d girls—and the barefoot ***** boy and girl,
And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.
His own parents,
He that had father’d him, and she that had conceiv’d him in her womb, and
birth’d
him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave him afterward every day—they became part of him.
The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table;
The mother with mild words—clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her
person
and
clothes as she walks by;
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger’d, unjust;
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture—the yearning and swelling
heart,
Affection that will not be gainsay’d—the sense of what is real—the thought
if,
after
all, it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time—the curious whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets—if they are not flashes and specks, what
are
they?
The streets themselves, and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows,
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves—the huge crossing at the ferries,
The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset—the river between,
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three
miles
off,
The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide—the little boat
slack-tow’d
astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away solitary by
itself—the
spread of purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud;
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will
always go
forth
every day.
|
Written by
Walt Whitman |
I MET a Seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean Eidólons.
Put in thy chants, said he,
No more the puzzling hour, nor day—nor segments, parts, put in,
Put first before the rest, as light for all, and entrance-song of all, That of
Eidólons.
Ever the dim beginning;
Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle;
Ever the summit, and the merge at last, (to surely start again,) Eidólons!
Eidólons!
Ever the mutable!
Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering;
Ever the ateliers, the factories divine, Issuing Eidólons!
Lo! I or you!
Or woman, man, or State, known or unknown,
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build, But really build Eidólons.
The ostent evanescent;
The substance of an artist’s mood, or savan’s studies long,
Or warrior’s, martyr’s, hero’s toils, To fashion his Eidólon.
Of every human life,
(The units gather’d, posted—not a thought, emotion, deed, left out;)
The whole, or large or small, summ’d, added up, In its Eidólon.
The old, old urge;
Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo! newer, higher pinnacles;
From Science and the Modern still impell’d, The old, old urge, Eidólons.
The present, now and here,
America’s busy, teeming, intricate whirl,
Of aggregate and segregate, for only thence releasing, To-day’s Eidólons.
These, with the past,
Of vanish’d lands—of all the reigns of kings across the sea,
Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors’ voyages, Joining Eidólons.
Densities, growth, façades,
Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,
Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave, Eidólons everlasting.
Exaltè, rapt, extatic,
The visible but their womb of birth,
Of orbic tendencies to shape, and shape, and shape, The mighty Earth-Eidólon.
All space, all time,
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,
Swelling, collapsing, ending—serving their longer, shorter use,) Fill’d with
Eidólons only.
The noiseless myriads!
The infinite oceans where the rivers empty!
The separate, countless free identities, like eyesight; The true realities,
Eidólons.
Not this the World,
Nor these the Universes—they the Universes,
Purport and end—ever the permanent life of life, Eidólons, Eidólons.
Beyond thy lectures, learn’d professor,
Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope, observer keen—beyond all mathematics,
Beyond the doctor’s surgery, anatomy—beyond the chemist with his chemistry, The
entities of entities, Eidólons.
Unfix’d, yet fix’d;
Ever shall be—ever have been, and are,
Sweeping the present to the infinite future, Eidólons, Eidólons,
Eidólons.
The prophet and the bard,
Shall yet maintain themselves—in higher stages yet,
Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy—interpret yet to them, God, and
Eidólons.
And thee, My Soul!
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations!
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet, Thy mates, Eidólons.
Thy Body permanent,
The Body lurking there within thy Body,
The only purport of the Form thou art—the real I myself, An image, an
Eidólon.
Thy very songs, not in thy songs;
No special strains to sing—none for itself;
But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating, A round, full-orb’d
Eidólon.
|
Written by
Gary Snyder |
Smokey the Bear Sutra
Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,
the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite
Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements
and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,
the flying beings, and the sitting beings -- even grasses,
to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a
seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning
Enlightenment on the planet Earth.
"In some future time, there will be a continent called
America. It will have great centers of power called
such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur,
Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels
such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon
The human race in that era will get into troubles all over
its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of
its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature."
"The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings
of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth.
My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and
granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that
future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure
the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger:
and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it."
And he showed himself in his true form of
SMOKEY THE BEAR
•A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and
watchful.
•Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless
attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;
•His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display -- indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;
•Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a
civilization that claims to save but often destroys;
•Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the West, symbolic of the forces that guard the Wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the True Path of man on earth: all true paths lead through mountains --
•With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of
those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;
•Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;
•Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs; smashing the worms of capitalism and
totalitarianism;
•Indicating the Task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes;
master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten
trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.
Wrathful but Calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will
Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or
slander him,
HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.
Thus his great Mantra:
Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana
Sphataya hum traka ham nam
"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND
BE THIS RAGING FURY DESTROYED"
And he will protect those who love woods and rivers,
Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick
people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:
And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television,
or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL:
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out
with his vajra-shovel.
•Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.
•Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
•Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
•Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
•Will always have ripe blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.
•AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT.
thus have we heard.
|
Written by
Andrew Marvell |
Cernis ut Eio descendat Gemmula Roris,
Inque Rosas roseo transfluat orta sinu.
Sollicita Flores stant ambitione supini,
Et certant foliis pellicuisse suis.
Illa tamen patriae lustrans fastigia Sphaerae,
Negligit hospitii limina picta novi.
Inque sui nitido conclusa voluminis orbe,
Exprimit aetherei qua licet Orbis aquas.
En ut odoratum spernat generosior Ostrum,
Vixque premat casto mollia strata pede.
Suspicit at longis distantem obtutibus Axem,
Inde & languenti lumine pendet amans,
Tristis, & in liquidum mutata dolore dolorem,
Marcet, uti roseis Lachryma fusa Genis.
Ut pavet, & motum tremit irrequieta Cubile,
Et quoties Zephyro fluctuat Aura, fugit .
Qualis inexpertam subeat formido Puellam,
Sicubi nocte redit incomitata domum.
Sic & in horridulas agitatur Gutta procellas,
Dum prae virgineo cuncta pudore timet.
Donec oberrantem Radio clemente vaporet,
Inq; jubar reducem Sol genitale trahat.
Talis, in humano si possit flore videri,
Exul ubi longas Mens agit usq; moras;
Haec quoque natalis meditans convivia Coeli,
Evertit Calices, purpureosque Thoros.
Fontis stilla sacri, Lucis scintilla perennis,
Non capitur Tyria veste, vapore Sabae.
Tota sed in proprii secedens luminis Arcem,
Colligit in Gyros se sinuosa breves.
Magnorumque sequens animo convexa Deorum,
Sydereum parvo fingit in Orbe Globum.
Quam bene in aversae modulum contracta figurae
Oppositum Mundo claudit ubiq; latus.
Sed bibit in speculum radios ornata rotundum;
Et circumfuso splendet aperta Die.
Qua Superos spectat rutilans, obscurior infra;
Caetera dedignans, ardet amore Poli.
Subsilit, hinc agili Poscens discedere motu,
Undique coelesti cincta soluta Viae.
Totaque in aereos extenditur orbita cursus;
Hinc punctim carpens, mobile stringit iter.
Haud aliter Mensis exundans Manna beatis
Deserto jacuit Stilla gelata Solo:
Stilla gelata Solo, sed Solibus hausta benignis,
Ad sua qua cecidit purior Aftra redit.
|