Written by
John Ashbery |
Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks
Can't withstand it. The sky shudders from one horizon
To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness.
Then Apollo quietly told him: "Leave it all on earth.
Your lute, what point? Why pick at a dull pavan few care to
Follow, except a few birds of dusty feather,
Not vivid performances of the past." But why not?
All other things must change too.
The seasons are no longer what they once were,
But it is the nature of things to be seen only once,
As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting along
Somehow. That's where Orpheus made his mistake.
Of course Eurydice vanished into the shade;
She would have even if he hadn't turned around.
No use standing there like a gray stone toga as the whole wheel
Of recorded history flashes past, struck dumb, unable to
utter an intelligent
Comment on the most thought-provoking element in its train.
Only love stays on the brain, and something these people,
These other ones, call life. Singing accurately
So that the notes mount straight up out of the well of
Dim noon and rival the tiny, sparkling yellow flowers
Growing around the brink of the quarry, encapsulizes
The different weights of the things.
But it isn't enough
To just go on singing. Orpheus realized this
And didn't mind so much about his reward being in heaven
After the Bacchantes had torn him apart, driven
Half out of their minds by his music, what it was doing to them.
Some say it was for his treatment of Eurydice.
But probably the music had more to do with it, and
The way music passes, emblematic
Of life and how you cannot isolate a note of it
And say it is good or bad. You must
Wait till it's over. "The end crowns all,"
Meaning also that the "tableau"
Is wrong. For although memories, of a season, for example,
Melt into a single snapshot, one cannot guard, treasure
That stalled moment. It too is flowing, fleeting;
It is a picture of flowing, scenery, though living, mortal,
Over which an abstract action is laid out in blunt,
Harsh strokes. And to ask more than this
Is to become the tossing reeds of that slow,
Powerful stream, the trailing grasses
Playfully tugged at, but to participate in the action
No more than this. Then in the lowering gentian sky
Electric twitches are faintly apparent first, then burst forth
Into a shower of fixed, cream-colored flares. The horses
Have each seen a share of the truth, though each thinks,
"I'm a maverick. Nothing of this is happening to me,
Though I can understand the language of birds, and
The itinerary of the lights caught in the storm is
fully apparent to me.
Their jousting ends in music much
As trees move more easily in the wind after a summer storm
And is happening in lacy shadows of shore-trees, now,
day after day."
But how late to be regretting all this, even
Bearing in mind that regrets are always late, too late!
To which Orpheus, a bluish cloud with white contours,
Replies that these are of course not regrets at all,
Merely a careful, scholarly setting down of
Unquestioned facts, a record of pebbles along the way.
And no matter how all this disappeared,
Or got where it was going, it is no longer
Material for a poem. Its subject
Matters too much, and not enough, standing there helplessly
While the poem streaked by, its tail afire, a bad
Comet screaming hate and disaster, but so turned inward
That the meaning, good or other, can never
Become known. The singer thinks
Constructively, builds up his chant in progressive stages
Like a skyscraper, but at the last minute turns away.
The song is engulfed in an instant in blackness
Which must in turn flood the whole continent
With blackness, for it cannot see. The singer
Must then pass out of sight, not even relieved
Of the evil burthen of the words. Stellification
Is for the few, and comes about much later
When all record of these people and their lives
Has disappeared into libraries, onto microfilm.
A few are still interested in them. "But what about
So-and-so?" is still asked on occasion. But they lie
Frozen and out of touch until an arbitrary chorus
Speaks of a totally different incident with a similar name
In whose tale are hidden syllables
Of what happened so long before that
In some small town, one different summer.
|
Written by
Andrew Marvell |
Quisnam adeo, mortale genus, praecordia versat:
Heu Palmae, Laurique furor, vel simplicis Herbae!
Arbor ut indomitos ornet vix una labores;
Tempora nec foliis praecingat tota maglignis.
Dum simud implexi, tranquillae ad ferta Quiaetis,
Omnigeni coeunt Flores, integraque Sylva.
Alma Quies, teneo te! & te Germana Quietis
Simplicitas! Vos ergo diu per Templa, per urbes,
Quaesivi, Regum perque alta Palatia frustra.
Sed vos Hotrorum per opaca siluentia longe
Celarant Plantae virides, & concolor Umbra.
O! mibi si vestros liceat violasse recessus.
Erranti, lasso, & vitae melioris anhelo,
Municipem servate novum, votoque potitum,
Frondosae Cives optate in florea Regna.
Me quoque, vos Musae, &, te conscie testor Apollo,
Non Armenta juvant hominum, Circique boatus,
Mugitusve Fori; sed me Penetralia veris,
Horroresque trahunt muti, & Consortia sola.
Virgineae quem non suspendit Gratia formae?
Quam candore Nives vincentum, Ostrumque rubore,
Vestra tamen viridis superet (me judice) Virtus.
Nec foliis certare Comae, nec Brachia ramis,
Nec possint tremulos voces aequare susurros.
Ah quoties saevos vidi (quis credat?) Amantes
Sculpentes Dominae potiori in cortice nomen?
Nec puduit truncis inscribere vulnera sacris.
Ast Ego, si vestras unquam temeravero stirpes,
Nulla Neaera, Chloe, Faustina, Corynna, legetur:
In proprio sed quaeque libro signabitur Arbos.
O charae Platanus, Cyparissus, Populus, Ulnus!
Hic Amor, exutis crepidatus inambulat alis,
Enerves arcus & stridula tela reponens,
Invertitque faces, nec se cupit usque timeri;
Aut experrectus jacet, indormitque pharetrae;
Non auditurus quanquam Cytherea vocarit;
Nequitias referuut nec somnia vana priores.
Laetantur Superi, defervescente Tyranno,
Et licet experti toties Nymphasque Deasque,
Arbore nunc melius potiuntur quisque cupita.
Jupiter annosam, neglecta conjuge, Quercum
Deperit; baud alia doluit sic pellice. Juno.
Lemniacum temerant vestigia nulla Cubile,
Nic Veneris Mavors meminit si Fraxinus adsit.
Formosae pressit Daphnes vestigia Phaebus
Ut fieret Laurus; sed nil quaesiverat ultra.
Capripes & peteret quod Pan Syringa fugacem,
Hoc erat ut Calamum posset reperire Sonorum.
Note: Desunt multa. Nec tu, Opisex horti, grato sine carmine abibis:
Qui brevibus plantis, & laeto flore, notasti
Crescentes horas, atque intervalla diei.
Sol ibi candidior fragrantia Signa pererrat;
Proque truci Tauro, stricto pro forcipe Cancri,
Securis violaeque rosaeque allabitur umbris.
Sedula quin & Apis, mellito intenta labori,
Horologo sua pensa thymo Signare videtur.
Temporis O suaves lapsus! O Otia sana!
O Herbis dignae numerari & Floribus Horae!
|
Written by
Oliver Wendell Holmes |
I
ENCHANTER of Erin, whose magic has bound us,
Thy wand for one moment we fondly would claim,
Entranced while it summons the phantoms around us
That blush into life at the sound of thy name.
The tell-tales of memory wake from their slumbers,--
I hear the old song with its tender refrain,
What passion lies hid in those honey-voiced numbers!
What perfume of youth in each exquisite strain!
The home ot my childhood comes back as a vision,--
Hark! Hark! A soft chord from its song~haunted room,--
'T is a morning of May, when the air is Elysian,--
The syringa in bud and the lilac in bloom,--
We are clustered around the "Clementi" piano,--
There were six of us then,-- there are two of us now,--
She is singing-- the girl with the silver soprano--
How "The Lord of the Valley" was false to his vow;
"Let Erin remember" the echoes are calling;
Through "The Vale of Avoca" the waters are rolled;
"The Exile" laments while the night~dews are falling;
"The Morning of Life" dawns again as of old.
But ah! those warm love-songs of fresh adolescence!
Around us such raptures celestial they flung
That it seemed as if Paradise breathed its quintessence
Through the seraph-toned lips of the maiden that sung!
Long hushed are the chords that my boyhood enchanted
As when the smooth wave by the angel was stirred,
Yet still with their music is memory haunted,
And oft in my dreams are their melodies heard.
I feel like the priest to his altar returning,--
The crowd that was kneeling no longer is there,
The flame has died down, but the brands are still burning,
And sandal and cinnamon sweeten the air.
II
The veil for her bridal young Summer is weaving
In her azure-domed hall with its tapestried floor,
And Spring the last tear-drop of May-dew is leaving
On the daisy of Burns and the shamrock of Moore.
How like, how unlike, as we view them together,
The song of the minstrels whose record we scan,--
One fresh as the breeze blowing over the heather,
One sweet as the breath from an odalisque's fan!
Ah, passion can glow mid a palace's splendor;
The cage does not alter the song of ths bird;
And the curtain of silk has known whispers as tender
As ever the blossoming hawthorn has heard.
No fear lest the step of the soft-slippered Graces
Should fright the young Loves from their warm little nest,
For the heart of a queen, under jewels and laces,
Beats time with the pulse in the peasant girl's breast!
Thrice welcome each gift of kind Nature's bestowing!
Her fountain heeds little the goblet we hold;
Alike, when its musical waters are flowing,
The shell from the seaside, the chalice of gold.
The twins of the lyre to her voices had listened;
Both laid their best gifts upon Liberty's shrine;
For Coila's loved minstrel the holly~wreath glistened;
For Erin's the rose and the myrtle entwine.
And while the fresh blossoms of summer are braided
For the sea-girdled, stream-silvered, lake-jewelled isle,
While her mantle of verdure is woven unfaded,
While Shannon and Liffey shall dimple and smile,
The land where the staff of Saint Patrick was planted,
Where the shamrock grows green from the cliffs to the shore,
The land of fair maidens and heroes undaunted,
Shall wreathe her bright harp with the garlands of Moore!
|
Written by
D. H. Lawrence |
When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,
They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water;
And the sight of their white play among the grass
Is like a little robin’s song, winsome,
Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower
For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.
I long for the baby to wander hither to me
Like a wind-shadow wandering over the water,
So that she can stand on my knee
With her little bare feet in my hands,
Cool like syringa buds,
Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.
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