======================================== SAMPLE 1 ======================================== Nec tell me what the Maid is?" But she who knew, asked me not a Word. All-sweet and tall, and frail of limb, Lay there in raiment new begun; Her moveless-rest were never seen, She ever so much as bent her knee. Thither came I, Pilot of thy boat, And, turning, saw this silent Girl Who, like to pray, with lifted face Besought the mist-ringed air to sing Her Vespers far away off, And by her hair and veiled head Her wistful eye she caused to stare. It seemed to twinkle between the branches high, And on her shoulder lean by piece and piece Of glimmering spangles that lightly floated down. I saw, or fancied I did, Her lovely head recline Upon her humble robe's narrow shaggy hood, That, like the light of day, Was moon-fringe dark and dim; Her pale mouth, that evermore Spread smiles in damp and drizzle; Her gleaming teeth, whose polished white Seemed mouldering honey of the midnight blep Of the dry, dusty pass! And in one hand, all rippled with A silken flute of gold, She played a hushing pipe, Dora's toy, to play or sing. Deep through the wintry sky there sped Through golden vapours as of shape A dawn that never had a dawn, A sudden dawn, with breath Of mist and with a smile to kill. 'Look!' the wind whispered, 'here's Our Lady of the Skies, from her bright throne, Like to the smiling of a summer sea To-night in the lost wind's dark retreat, Hailed with the deep, seething, dour, wild Midnight: who have wept for her The heaving of the waiting years, Who have wept for her In wild harangues of the foggy fen And hollow monotone of the fen. She shines and smiles to see the tears Of all the rain-stricken towns and ships And all the rainy days and nights On all the hard, the ragged places That wind had beaten hard, and night Nigh ready to close, to close, to close Against the brain of all the face Of all the over-ill-gotten men, She shines and laughs to feel the cold Of all the tears of all the brave men killed And mad as they. "Now, under heaven's dome, where no man might Torn by the jagged cliffs alone, But many a high beautiful river, many a glade Of dearest woodland, dearest sun, through blood Of golden-fleshed the sun to flame: Under night to his last slumbering place We gave him water from the river, And, as he slept, we gave to him the green Of beds of skrunk crops and sunk noose Of stray horn-beetles over jack-boots; And, when he waked, he grinned for joy to know He was a man; but now we are not so sure That man shall be, in a little while, again. He holds a branch of asphodel like This which he is touching with his poise And breath, a vision half dream, yet sweet: 'Are not my limbs the limbs of those I knew Who went to great heights in their sleep?' 'What was it that made you weep to see The open grave? when my rest is open, too, That sleep which was my death is indeed my death.' 'Perchance,' I said, 'you think your cheer To be the same as ours.' 'I will not think it,' she said, 'nor your dream, Because a woman dreameth not.' She placed her hand to her mouth and pursed Her brow: and then her eyes Tinged as a splash of pale musk at first, Toured like a grayer shade of blue. 'Ah, woman, forget you were ever child Ere you were shapely as this lovely thing; We come into our great lives the next But when we bend us down to feel the hollow Of the hollow to find what force life is, The woman's dream is like a different shape From what she saw in her dream. I will tuck My head between my arms and murmur, In my dream a lady from the world gone by, Missing her child, for these are we, the next. Not so I, I ween. I knew her smile, I knew the peculiar ======================================== SAMPLE 2 ======================================== Democrats who received eight quarter-cent. per week for bill-paying, Republican contributors who received one-quarter cent. for demurely voicing an opinion, other contributors who paid nothing at all for their objections--yet inspired themselves with meritorious indignation--contributors who paid for themselves eight and one-half cents on every dollar they had in their pocket--and all of them, Republican and Democratic, whose names are listed, then and now, in the pages of the Solidarity, cause quite satisfactory results. And why should the Democrats suppose that they could get their popular division and jurisdiction--still more, that they could win control of the Solidarity? My reasons for believing this are cognate: they have interpenetrated myself and this unions-first republicanism of this Government. Democrats, for instance, paid the Civic League eight and one-half cents per each man-dollar for political propaganda. Such paysoule is simply murdered $100,000,000.00 to the Democrats this fall. The Solidarity has a letter which is sent to each named member of the House and Senate, addressed And I've subscribed to a Fraternal Labor Party; My first one in Solidarity was my 'humanitarian' subscription, because, I did not see the slightest chance of me ever becoming a member of any organization, whether reform, or reformer, or radical. The Dohs are a great family to this country. As a patron of labor, myself, I had always believed the subsidies of Democracy to be enormously small, and kept positively off from the bosom of the soil, in principal because of my convictions of divine importance, and indispensably so, on the human side. However, recently I've become at last convinced that all elected are as God to the eyes of God, both here and on this planet. I've studied all I can, and have as by divine RIGHT. I've told the Democrats this, for I want them to know that I fully expect them to do something with my information. I'm practically begging them, in the hope they will do something about it. They'll find it a lot to do, for I'm the R----GY of Democracy. Now the Duke has placed himself at the head of a group of Reform rabbis which he proposes to lead, calling himself 'The Duke's Answerer,' because of his office and position and peerless place in American jurisprudence he is to use the Great Name. I read that this Duke thinks it an exceedingly good thingment; the only human right. It's quite something favorable; for his doctrine of Answertfulness has no expectation of a hearing; the worst case it gives the electoral vote of citizenship. Well, now, I've a right to complain. I've made a ridiculous application to them-- I'm one of the least eligible bachelors in the country--they have turned their club 'round me, and don't give a damn whether I get a hall whoopin or not. If I don't keep off in a class with the rich wretched folks who have tickets to the marriage robot there, the Democratic party will certainly lose a lot of public support; and I'll receive the contempt of the human being and disgust of the intelligencia. There is one relative and one only and she is constantly coming to my room, and there's not one to attend to my ferucity, and who can seem to be so intolerable as that Flying dirk of the Republic which once made Hitler notorious. I can't give a constant service, I have to go. At least I hope I can give a bringsupp-- deplorable. The North Atlantic Naval Federations have recommended that we make the naval engine themselves our work, for it can be engineered so that the Germans can't use their capital and they can't capture us. It is long past the time of our great re-formation, and I would lie awake each night for the reform of the divine speech; for I'm certain that if the Reformation takes place it will have something to do with machines; and the tremendous matter-a-mole consumption of the German Empire, by means of the Great Deformation, makes the Republic a thing of the pale past; and I'm afraid that the wet smoke-stream from the German Central Stations and depots, together with the great well-nigh lethal racket of their discs, jacks, flappers, track-wing craft, and C ======================================== SAMPLE 3 ======================================== on his shoulders, were stymied.The conversation was bitter in thereafter.Yet Fischer’s plight showed that even in those blessed times, when the hostility of his countrymen no longer mattered, the avarice of great men did not prevent the great chess from becoming great. Carlsen wins, but just as if by magic, Boris Nikolic scores!The Frenchman with rook and pieces gone wild scores now in the middle of the game! <|endoftext|> "by way of  a migratory fish in the[f] Swimmula of  the Rat (Private Dossier)", by James Galvin [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Relationships, Men & Women] The first thing that did it was the astral Motion of her feet to come and lightly Bend twice the neck and privilege of sex. The tide is apt to do that, The Water's moods and goings, driven by breath. The next thing that did it was the astral Motion of her hands to give him lips. Threatening as the sheep do when they see danger Of wolves wetting snow. The pendulum does that, its swinging. That came to do, if not to do, With care, when the heart’s red warning went  head. In fact he knew a girl. Her name was Anne. And when they were enough, she sent The chance of her coming back to him Bid he get past the point of courtesy. “What did she do?” he says to himself. “The  rails of the train” and looks at his watch. The clocks go off by the hour, the lights go green. That is till what for her she saw the worst. “Listen,” she said, the smaller reason  for his staying, “This is Anne of Denmark and she does for you.” He asked “How was your watch?” and she  explained, “The hour that stands to quadruple Its length if you put off meeting up. Not taking her up. Not taking it To Denmark. Now tell me.” She told him. “We broke up. I’m sorry,” he said,  like he did. They bid the friends a glad farewell With modest whispers and then left together. Fruit of their knowledge came to Denmark, A girl on eyes long moist and blood Made for a kiss on the lips, the side Of her mouth we’ll not say. Denmark had milk And one could drink it standing. But Denmark offered just the milk, Not the other, which is the worst Bidding, if you ask what they mean By giving. So they have milk and did not Share, were always no mess, had no house And no corners for a bed. Nor did they go to the races, the father kept Hours earlier than the mother. <|endoftext|> "A Knowledge of the Dead", by Mary Wiencki [Living, Death, Life Choices, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Religion, The Spiritual, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment, Popular Culture] I see you there, Stu, striding half a mile down the road, arms raised up over your head, head bent slightly. I imagine you hold both those in your inmost heart, and that you must learn, along with anything else, how to turn off a brain that has somehow learned to hold whatever memory is stored in it. For the mind, like any organ, is where the trouble is; an organ can fail with its stored knowledge, or if the memory be great, so great that it will bring the brain to its knees. And then the knee is a joint only partly conscious; if the heart should stop pumping, we are thrown off balance as if it had been only the legs that moved you. So I ask you, were you looking at your watch when you left for that solitary walk? Or waiting for the medicine you wanted to take with you before starting on your way? A look of mild impatience conveys a point as surely as humor, though somewhat dead. It is painful, this wait, I am sure. You have worked long and hard for your knowledge of time and of this place. And now you have it. And time, and all the woe it took to give that power. You have so much of this world left to discover, paths to retrace. You find your way into a park, its benches occupied and visible and free of talk of the day’s events, at its center a girl of ======================================== SAMPLE 4 ======================================== All must be blotted out. No other ox she sees, Dirt for my shroud, bear away: Dear friend, I pray you, sit In your gloomy tomb. My hounds! my hounds, do you know What hunters are, and what they have to do? I am a hunter myself, I would seem If I played the hunter I should know well What it is to stand for days in brave men's fields; They lie all day in the forest deep; Tally their points, and when the hunt's done, When the killing done, and he that goes the way Has no more points to tally, and not one yet, A plague is in his bowels, and death has come To him that goes out, and not to him that stays. We play the killers of the point, The deep ones that carry breath, Deadly ploughsmen, and we hold the silk, If the coat you wear be bright. Thick-plaistered by coachwork, Exquisite lord- Ars orator, Literature of the sword, You must know 'er all, and aye the tale, To o'erpower in a turn-mill. For you and me, indeed, There is a lot to bear: I do repent it; I'm being what you would think it fair To bear the name and the luck of the game, And what not the best. A shilling and a pinch, A living year's labour, An old kiss that lasts a day, A single gold coin, An honest wife, and a precious bit Of yellow sand, Which, though it be at home, They hope their sand is cheaper For God knows And I am sorry I'm no freer and bolder Than I'd be if I had the rest Of life to take my fun; I might drive my modest play A little on the plain To walk abroad, Where nobody Is, with a sham to sing, For me It would be better if not. The hidden sand of it Shall stay with me, and Not much's my comfort, Where never a foot Smiles and nobody is And nobody pays, I fear If the fates would part us In this pretty town Which now seems to me Half a nearer scene. I'd rather stalk about When the time is spent With something to say, Or 'mid the sights that pass Smile once again. I'm bemoaning in my sleep Over knowledge obtained From the sort of education Which the Chancellor's wife Had, And I've begun, Jumping up and down, Hushedly she lies, Breathing on the town, Though there's nobody near, Just as she, quiet, Knows by her watch what's coming. Once I loved, when I was young, The droll straight gate Betwixt the soft hill and the sea; The bush and the nip Were in the garden where the gate Was; and the curve Of the canal And the pretty street, And the whittled trees and how the dames talked On the fire-side, and so did I. But the night before yesterday, I wandered through the fire-side, And there the cocks crowed, And the lights came on, And there all the dames talked, All in the pleasant back-page Where everybody can get him kept. Now I'm at that gate again And I feel that I'm wasted; My fortune's low, but I know That a whole year's rent, One week's, I've lost, Is a little thing to keep For my men in the muck, Who are thumping me at the gate. Because of this, I've had a nap And the cares that have fallen on me, And I'll be glad to see you again. I'm sure it was wrong of me, And I'll have to bear it, John, And apologize, and be dumb, And be as queer as can, When at home my wife has been, I've had There sweet and pure delight; And a girl there has perched her light And a man there has sang to me The heave and hoke of his part In the barnyard, and the shove on the plough, And the foxglove and the cherry; Or I've gorged on home-brewed pantry joy, And I've ridden the lively wheels, And I've roared ======================================== SAMPLE 5 ======================================== and turning the blade she nodded And called the wanderer to her feet Who wondered if, in some far-flung land Of dream, he was permitted to depart With honour or dishonour or death or life As God supposed. On a strange earth he had fared Like some old lion which strange manners taught, Thinking himself a hunter and a prey For each low beast of the field, when man was low In savagery, having forgotten the kind And saintly heart of that bright animal, Who taught him how to feel, not treat, man, In his natural integrity of love, With vengeance or secular hate, if even that Should have twisted human hearts that bent To the manifestation of divine love. Little he cared: he was not man, And yet his mighty soul was filled with awe Of what God in the heart of man discerns, More than with power to move and to control When pure, divine in man, and his own Was as the swift mist which made clear, revealed, Unfathomable, godlike, its own light. For still he was at heart a poet Who formed his own inward vision from sight, Even in the ancient faith, and far apart From anything poet ever wrote, took his And all his ideas from this Waverley Who left these words behind him everywhere Upon the churchyard wreath: "O precious youth! A careless letter might beheard, this much at least-- My happiness for to give you thus, Though dark the world, the quick message of the foam Dancing upon the temple ruins, and naught But time, the slow-winged fish, the ghost of ship, The pulse of midnight, and the penny whaler, Must sap your spirit if ye fail to see On vision full, and dawn impotent to stay The rede set out by spirit in your own. For love is lord of all things, and hath taken His share, nor hath his authority From any creature under the skies To manipulate, as in old times, with storms And lustre, all things that make up the world. Wherefore, though godlike wisdom has been given, And light for light's sake, and flesh to man, Nor has the power to smite, to cherish, sicken, Give beauty only to the pleasurable eye, Nor now the power to save, or noble heart Nor now the power to serve, nor power to go-- Yet, knowing these things, loving human beauty And loving divine love, and in those gazes Kinder than heaven and human sympathy, Ye are deemed worthy, --ye are deemed worthy To have stood up every hour of life, For me--ye are deemed worthy-- Who unto all ages shall be known! Yet, content it may be therewith, For him the full-cressed autumn Will draw his bold serpent's wing To shake against the matted vines, And his smitten glove will leave to show Where hell-griped lyons clasped man. This is not love, This is not love, nor lies it low In such wise with reverence; And yet it breathes as high As beauty, so, nor ever so far Down was cast the holy light. You have fallen, me with sorrow know, In him to love, Without whose sacred light You cannot move nor sleep, -- not that you long In shame to mourn Lest he should set half-diamonds heavenward To crown your burning palm Nor look up to the noonday hour. For me he falls Now with death, now with years; With sunlight at his back Behind him now, I do not think, though decelerate And bruised under cold-foot, Not that I should fail to bear His work in hand. "I have had enough of living," he told me, And drew me over yonder hill As though it were a spear; And thereupon he plucked, In presence white and steadfast Like a dove, And dragged me to the marvellous town, From which, awhile stunned, I ebbingly drifted. He told me then the ways of death And the young and dreadful love (So great a bluerway!) Of the cunning, nor would yield So suddenly that I did not, till 'Twere well deserved, say, a full reward: -- Then, having her to nurse, he swung His great sail about and out she flew From the city's rosy ports. Then I caught up all my clothes And shoes, and I swam at last With him, to such a ======================================== SAMPLE 6 ======================================== More happy we, men, and therefore kings; As you, and so far superior too! 'When eyes my senses stray, And their antiquated furniture I find, Then rung an excited welcome, And sweetly replied: The devils thus agreed, To each his favorite, Made me their study, Infernal creatures, Look at the passions! The demons are descried. See the ruffian horde Blend their dang'rous mien, In the highest fury How they come rushing up! A torch by art and luck was heard; Each in its kind, and good or bad, Seemed to feel its wrath, And in various tunes, so fit, That a human heart stood reeling, And all felt its ravaging. And O'er all, O! surely at their call The help of friends and family, Away to ask from buds the roots Of faction, greed, and emulation; While the dales and, plains Swam purple in the deaths of kings, And scalded kings drank tea in cups. "And so," quoth he, "I've find," (The grave answered quoth he) "the reason, A remedy, and, if you like, I'll tell you where to get it: The gnome retreats, And turned him back to find His pleasant tomb, where naught could tell Of how his black ornament Made hideous this his mirth, Nor told if yet that that was his day, Or if he night shall tell that tale To young and roaring miller, Jack! "A mess Was read, and in the choir arose One who hummed with metal gauntlet A dumb song: and to my mind That moment's mute Of man in battle grovel, The cry of another age, Appears. And thou, In open space, wilt woo Mother with the peddling hour, When she grants thy need to see A platform for the wear Of gaud and burden, borne upon her breast; And there shalt thou meet And through this time shall be, That sad eventful be, That for those whom it befall, Shall lose what days they wore In upward dreaming pastime, And bid their lighter ghosts hold fire, While deep in ashes they unfold The strong and meek Wisdom in the pure, The middle age shall be, Ended, and break in two, The day of virtue queens, Till earth be a den of fouling worms, And sere dares preach of rain; And R--d come in his preaching cap To call a lark With shamed and crying words; And give to a whale the king Shall show the gods' disdain, With more than herk and breath. And that shall come to the tomb, Not strewn with Palladio's roses, Not cased in silver, Not broidered in charities, It shall not be, Not in the crown above Of a sad, naked chain, Shaped like a sheaf of grass, Or as Mary's body. But in the tomb shall be Of flowers, and leaves that have leaned To know what summer strikes; And these shall dawn a stronger fragrance, And these endure like grave spoils; And men shall think more of what flowers Than what fadeth. Then shall be seen The symbols, heavy and great, Furnish the idol-scaffold, With day's immortal candles Shall blaze and wax; The sacred fruit, whereon Zion's sins shall burn, In bowls of precious scarlet dye From heavens of blue, In maddening magians, And sprinkled far and near, Where men shall think of Him Whose eyes doth shake For Zion's pillars now, Whose head Is one of deep and holy stars. The Life that none shall live But he who bears a sword, That he may kindle wonders As long as Life may burn; Whose gospel is an axe, An axe hard refined, A diamond rod of pure might, A lamp of strangeness Of night to fair men; The knife that healeth Is holy, because The sickle of the Life Is golden-rayed; And that is holy, be It, angel-chewing, angel-cheering, Or strange unto dimness Or strange to high. Like blessed lamps from open houses Each moving air with iron wings As throbs to horns ======================================== SAMPLE 7 ======================================== 24 From light and shade they are-- The thought of memory! But ah, there is a place Above the year and its moon-- Where years of small things are-- A quiet whippoorwill Gleams thro' the dim blue. And oft, thro' the blue-gray skies That shake for the worlds of dream When, thro' the graining grey Of low-built thoughts that stay, Softly and slow, And slowly, the stars come out-- Whippoorwill! At darkly bright, at fierce With a red scarlet flare, The sky holds, thro' the jet Of lightning overhead, The sign and cry: The night holds death too Of a flaming wrath-- Whippoorwill! When the glow of the buffets' glare Taints the spark of a brooding day, From the yellow of a garden-home, He loiters, asleep, Between roofs with bare walls, He watches the new moon come up, Whippoorwill! The windows blaze, and fill with din The walls of each cell; The man, bent at his dull task, Creeps to dreamless sleep again. The night holds death too-- Whippoorwill! With a wail of sorrow he goes by, The wind his woes to say; No man can tell as he goes, Of mortal care and pain. He sees he cannot go To face God's Judgment yet-- Whippoorwill! At last in his dream The window blazes bright; A thousand eyes, hot on his face, Live on, and glare at him still; It's at his back that the cry Sings thro' the gallows-tree, Whippoorwill! The fool goes past, The fool goes home to bed; I know that there is No More, For fuck and milk. Ya cull the bells and observances From the fold, and its linnet praise; But round that horse's thigh, That cut from the rush side, She's still the voice--somehow Whippoorweeds! The flies fly about In the chill of the eucalyptus; And he moans like a linnet In the night and the dew. At that same place A little lisper With her chum 'll join her; The jingler of the gully Sits in the pew where He will sigh and perish In the auld wame. Sometimes the heart is a-tellin' From an o' the whirlwinds that blows; And there a-pleadin' to pore On auld mistress' stories; And the muckle puir falls Gleams by the pond. And a lassie lees she clasps 'Bout the glass for glove As she hangs her neeb in the reet Wi' an auld e learninge joy. 'Ss a ruddy summ; But, thanks to make, She bares her mittens to her een Whistling pippins round. 'Tis meuch, but I trust my een She'll learn to clás and mak ilka iween Hane five year's mair! My dear, a-choosin' homewel, My apron's quite awa. For, alas, she's his ain sister; When the wrey walks in her weivver As a pliver wind up the firth, In a kind caulk she stoops Frae the lime-trees thru-on the dale. And then--there's the kirkyaird; And I could forgive her had I not That auld sibling. O waly waly, when I dine, And they're fa' syne! It's Gawd's own day, an' it's Sha'n En's In my coat! I'll bet my hinney that you sall Go' kape yare efter a fleechin' Wi' snoring noise! When I've bought a wee blinkin' cider, It's gude weather gude weather! 'Tis bailyan weather, and ha' na Cases my fien'! It's saft an' sweet--I swear, In gleg an' waly weather, I hardly say it's fit to mention, Though it's like a sentence! My fiddle's low kittle to kess The de ======================================== SAMPLE 8 ======================================== --My mother hears it clear; And as her love is so dear to me, I'll come when your evening hour is come. And when I'm there, I know the gifts that I From you shall take away with me: Your image on my endless wall; Your letter seal. HOW, thou village blacksmith's devil-may, Hast thoughts half human, half Lucifer-- A flash of omnipotence, An unfathomable will, that smites (In pitier than thy two worlds ) Imaginary worlds of value, Where thy blacksmithy whirls the sparks Whose fires consume eternal; A power whose tyrant hand, Is as a snare for God's eternal, The search whereof doth take Thy master, whose content Is found, Thy vengeance and thy mighty rod Spurning and quenching Thou didst not. He'll hear thee, but thy promise Of marvellous wings and glistering Of cutting-edged winglets crowned With gleams of internal light, That smile [infernal] where they kiss Not on thy street, nor in the sun; A dream not of the true-- A shadow by the dog That once a bird Trailing on a branch, A mortal thing Caught at the haw That maketh fire of an image, And them who bring with them The testimony Of purity, To cut with such a pith As thou wast not. Where thy evening crosses the river There a carnelian Is left, the coral strand Of thy absent warp. Its pines are in the dark That mark the stars so high, A pedlar trots below; The circling eagle cries, The heron, numbing sight, Salutes with his cry. Those, when the patriarch roused, Went by the rescue-flag, Which like an argent hall Once beat on Jerusalem, Now only blots the moon's beam In the light of its white feathers, The angels strike again The shape that Samaria named The Apostle's tree, That was by them seen, Then as o'er heaven bent his way, To drink of the other's cup That is not of earth, What witchery entranced Beliezed The hours, and made them first and last In black oblivion A kind of heaven's silv'ry snuff. Ere would deceive thee, O Saint! Whilst yet, howe'er it be, Those heroes who Are slain in thine aid Live in eternity Borne by a speck of snow. When the earth beneath him yawns, Dark that black abyss, Yet along his path Drops the dazzling snow To grace his path, In the battle-shock, When the upland is fain To sink beneath him, Then towards the orient sky, As there he stoopeth slow In the sweep of his wan wing, Down sinks the sun to sky; Then slowly up, as when A hand to his hat Up goes the working dandy, To catch a clap of thunder By the galled promontory, Rocked in a cloud By the shuddering roof The castle rises, Or round the roof Of a snow-white hall, The Bishop has here a general mess In the Storm that hoards his pulpits, To please the Gods' imperial bowl; For on him high prest, While here he solemnly stands, Tapping the hammer-hand, He has folly put in his prate. Poor sun! the before Thee Are nought but blasphemous lies; Whilst He beside him shines Grim-visaged Desolation, Lo, this his day, Dost feel as when in days of youth The world is all one's grace, A real friend and not a name, Loving so justly Loving so ever more? Dost thou pale at his great gold-lock? And laugh at his bluntness in that? And are the moth-darts unuttered At his low wit's uncloying? O he is the years behind, A-hey-hyacinth ane-ana! Nay, Saint! that is too deep for thee, Too stern for thy black psalter, Too fraught with bitter sense For utterance e'er. Leave, leave the old, sweet Latin, Leave-leav'd tongue For psalms and p ======================================== SAMPLE 9 ======================================== Delight the chas'n, and alane the dee; Where the lambes are wise, and maidens be dreigh, For they may live, and subsist by their wit: In the sacred chambers of the bower, Whenas they loath to fare on the earth, Then when they liv'd not, then let them die; Richer memory, and sweeter pen, Doe now awaken, and, alluring strain, Bring back the past, and draw the future tour; And when the star that of life's life makes decline Shall disappear, then ye'll have the key Of life's heart, and open arms; and then Ye'll see the howling of the waves of woe. When life or death were in the gizzard thereof, When ravens raved, and vultures haunted them; When care and folly fretting were the staff of woe, And love's eternal dancing; When fate and Change defied, and folly fought; Then they, who in the twilights of affliction, Might as a trusty captain lookt on rock and wave, Should every earl and knight in french costume bow; Would God that men might that pilgrimage navigate, Who for perspicuity in math are deemed Of right the better in debate: Ye, whose prescience o'ertakes you to deny, How soon time melts in ocean! shall we sail For that our fathers gain'd! and be quit By Fate's hours well spent!--'tis an error wide To deem success in any man's chance, To measure by degrees: ye may lead astray In man's affairs, or be the cause of loss, Once, twice, and three; to which error I surrender Almost my life. 'Twere best to persuade Each within the breast: some coldness now may raise, Some warmth, and balance, till the scale be made More true, less true. How is this with me?-- Since good on evil was created, What need to otherwise attend To scale or to shift! Will and skill In might, in awful grandeur once beat To see the glories of the sky, Once was a gallant tale, and true Were lower ages of the earth. In secret caverns of the earth, With lives that early die, we dwell, Free from lapse and from the king's sway; We hear there is no earth, and go there none: Loose from his chain 'twixt paradise and hell, O'erclasped in Love, sunken apace, Our human hearts are rapt with celestial wine, Controlling rare ill, whereby to see The grandest majesty, our own divine. O lords of woe, totters then the dome Of your great world, and fast all are fast, While some in that world begin to turn, The earliest flock of the Apocalypse! Remember, remember, How on the night before the funeral Of my lady, your fair hands grasps All my heart! forgive my flattery, It was not meant to cause offence; 'Twas but to give you just The edge of that modesty Your wonder would tell me; You were not there, Nor were the neighbours there When in all Rome the Lombard did spoil And burn every impious book: I had not lov'd you so long, You had not know'd me before. In what eager haste, Without a blush, you leave me? Did you, that I so whitely saw Should sink, Or was this breath that came? Or was that word? O, by your life, And by the truth of your eyes, My life! O count the heaps of words, Which I just at the last Faught with all my might to get, As I did speak them then, And to you so warn me, So make me know The time at last, So strike your finger to it! Ah, you'll strike your finger to it, And pluck off with one stroke, An eaglet which the falcon Will fly away with, whose wings are full Of wild horses, that he brings! But for my swiftness, could you see A mare which in the race she ran, She should have won, and I--I thus-- Could never have got a sight of you! As for one, I pray you, which may-- If any one, 'tis one; for this Is what the poets sing about. I, who have lain a whole week awake, And struggled with ======================================== SAMPLE 10 ======================================== At which he stood, and gazed while his back was turned More than the bones he stood upon. When he his dry eyes once more set on her, And that near question, if his jaw would ever Ask aught more, as the blood refused, He said, "Is there any thought in your mind to pry For the love wherewith I fed my meat and drink, Or rather fish and game? "O Jehoshapa! I did not come to spy On any chink that may not yet have opened; What had better use been, I have had none." But a red leaf he saw grow for a while, And, on its down, fell die of a red, like flower, 'Twas cried by their own name by many a name 'Tween woods and deserts, where the trees were tall, And yet we have never named with any accent Fostering guesses as to its proper smell. "None of these things!" he said: "but how Is aught of them brought, or hence preserved? I know what these eyes have seen of these For they have said of these, which the mouth Profanes, being common, fashions. The books Tastily do but excuse me that I look On them not, as thou wilt, who wilt attend, Which is my sentence to stand henceforward." He shut the book, "for shame!" and on his feet Drew his red roses, then upbore his head, And faired upon the ancient man at which he had Looked last. He wore a rich kirtle, brown, And round his brows a blue kirtle threaded, Which a black ostrich down entwined in place Fringed with white; his gilty scrip did beam Round about, and he held in his hands, say, A white steed's head with black hoofs and tail. Omphale's ear touched with the odor bore As very much did the eastern wind that flew The best of the day; the white sun flamed With lustre so great that the goddess, at sight, Made as if it would have shared in the blaze Hers to bend over. The boy had drawled his rasher all Through the smocks, and when he drew his head To her, she flung her eye from side to side As after answer to observe if it bade her stay, Seeming to say that it would not share her stay, But blossom by the conversation too soon, And flout the power of it by dint of his fan. He looked and she for all that she said no more, And when he turned from them illimitable place Dropped an ashen hand upon his shoulder, then fled In a huff, while he, the other, strode fast Amidst his people, bearing thence his task A gilt-flowered vase, most like to drop its maiden, All its life gone out of it, yet saved its juice. Then at the rumour of the little adventure He looked about, and spoke to them, "So I find, The gentlefolks give no sop for a song Such as I am now songless; but they reward The song with most every journey, with a taste Of herbs that bring them more than a look of joy, With sign of entrance, and with opportune words Of sweet farewell; and with portentious words Of counsel." Wearied with these Had they not found him weal or woe in his song? He sang them back to them again, but why He said no more, nor ever can, the same fail To those who had half grown weary of his try; Yet with a pasteboard vaunt he will try again. The huntress by the stream Went in the forest safe and happy, And there she heard a bird with love on his wing Sing of his joy with one true heart, not three. Ay me! she said, the wise and honest truth, I heard the whole with me, alack, alack, I am not comforted, I shall certainly die! The poet's task is a hard and proud one That takes deep knowledge, fire and ardent thought, To break a far-parched plateau, that holds the season, And lift a weary wandering world in his hand; For a true poet's task is a mystery drear, And will not be accomplished by theliest sated With his own petty work of rhyme and of prose; Tho' he may drink of all the sweet international beer And admire Zeno ======================================== SAMPLE 11 ======================================== killer reptile, Now your venom's dulled; your fatlings gone; And the cormorants swoop in again, Spying for food the lightsome minnows, The glass-strewn reflection of the lake. The summer's weather turned; and on I set, Within the pale-green, weather beaten sphere That many a century's weather doth resemble. Troubled I am not, if, where my being stirs, I do not feel the pressure of the sky; Yet see I not the sun with firm dry eye, Because a molten lustre bright appears: The sun, the morning, the sunset, I know, Because they move, for ever and are born; For weather change or measure does not these Show different days, or different nights? I believe That all these progenies of the air Draw from the sun, and cast a body of light, Made of the clouds, as bubbles from the stream. Therefore to this heaven I deem that these, So jocund and abundant, therefore seen Together should unite, and with them Uncapable of other motion drive Back the bright production of the day, And bury it in the sun-quake's centre: So should it live, like fire in the sun, Unmixed with black cloud or longer shade. Thou my move. Lest therefore this then have chance to turn As I conjecture it to other use, Move thou to this, and it shall seem I did Thy bidding, O my step to make Just fulness in a happy concord; E'en as the stirring of the stream, By which all things make agree that show The very cause they are, as thou wilt. Let not the sun From hence in anger looking on Return the fire, that he among The radiant streams be found No heat have not, No fire have I; And all the loveliness I was of in my prime, I am not now, nor ever was. The moon's light For other uses is made, As bathes the purple wave; It from the silent ocean In moistened-zoned earthen cup, To wend her merry ways With sooty pilots skaue her cost, And now, besmear'd with thatwash And drizzling weariness, doth stray, As abandoned and as unsatisfied As torrents, that from valley hence Fling back rocks' hard pebbles and bronze, So dryned by seasons many a fall From there to here. But let them sweep, o'er-curl'd Their light fingers through the air, To be the land's great hosts of men. T. trees, those right-easing sages, saith, May be the first sent from heaven, I read them with an eye esteem'd Among the first, and first, out of Time, That are the first, and foremost in Fame: And men and things shall say of me, "In that day he stood alone; A devil, yet of such a grace Was never seen, nor will be seen, To shake the throne of a few; To whisper delight, And turn men's snares with a word." Sorrow,--but how little! What body can recall So great a gift as the word? The wit of the best Hath got thee such art as this, Since first I teach'd thee The sound of the accents sweet, That made me the way pursue, Whither I know not, nor care to, My search begun! The tones That broke upon the lone glade, Were a cool-spoken direction, Pursuing not the cavernous goal, But shadows of aimless sound That made the thoughtless heart to thrill In dance with the fading field. Then first a cool-piped tune Startled like faint water falls From steep aisles in old arches, Flowing a pace that fast well grew Under the brazen liquid wan That shadowed o'er the fount; and aghast, In terror of what might leap amain, Cancelling reason's tyranny, I faced the steep lest what appeared Should dash me headlong from the cliff, I moved as in a storm that strokes His flapping wings when upon the blast He stoops some rock 'round whose stately pile Has sliced the exceeding hulk. But now like slow drops of tears Fall smooth the low notes that fall, And nipped with venom then for sore ======================================== SAMPLE 12 ======================================== First of the Seven is the Serpent. After him the succession holds Sons of God the Father as far as sea. Then after these the family of God Moves on from the effulgence of the fire Till the great stretching of the body. And last The vast marsh, having upon its face A compass and a limitation, Formed from the effulgence of the fire, By bonds of its own substance draws To the sundering of a towred earth. Where, then, the system ends, there begins Other systems, where the spirits cease And farther struggles struggle with the powers Of the primeval beasts and fishes, Which struggle till they change the form of man. And, still proceeding, where again our cycle Seasons, as it stretches from point to point, New spirits, the long life of the oaks, And the giant trees, the many-armed rales, And the river, with the cataracts and rivers In its mud-wallowing ferry throng With their many blades, and their many pines. And those divinations which the elements Draw through airs, and the subterranean fires And earth's core, and the great molten earth Conducting the elements-- All these work the more in concord then When the human spirit tries to find Or the eternal mote's aim to attain. So we, beholding this strange plan unfold Like a second day unrolled before our eyes, Had been quite sure, until we heard What is the nature of the thing we see? 'Tis neither flesh, nor the elements, Nor (as we see them), a fragment of the soul, Nor the centre of all power on earth, But a great plan, which yet untouched is By the ebbing of power, or the flow of blood; But a great moral movement through all things. And thus it is, since first the rebellious flame Called itself by its own name, and threw All its strength against the powers, it must be, That its life is the life of the fire, But, as we see, an atom in the will Diluted to the size of a great compass, Which then, with moral force upwrung, Seizes the opposing world, or shuts the outer Entrance from the centre, and confines the fate Of all that within it--not withstanding All moral force, which, it will be said, must Be as the strongest to cheer the weak. The Father may be designated The personified sun, who all the powers draw to his raising hill. The sun was The first to rise, and stand on Israel's hill. Bred to a chariot, he first traveled From Judah's field to Greece. When first the In the full height of his growth, God gave him over To kings and high priests, who bore him about With pomp and blood upon their spears, to tempt The people with the serpent to eat of fruit In their own blood. There is a height in the sky, Not too far down, where light above thaws at last, And we shall see the world's great leaders descend From heaven, their time appointed--they shall find Their strength less than that which the world has now Until the conflict shall be turned upon When Adam and his chosen vessel stand up Against their foe, and defeat his attack. Thus He who hides in his infinite frame The form and mind and language of man, Said to Isaiah, "I will cause thee to speak." When the choral voice and wind were extinctbrought the prompt answer, "Revelate to men Their final overthrow, and make an end. Gods, what thing shall then be theirs? They have spent Their glory. Let them show the trophies they have won. The conqueror's glory shall not be a thing To make an end of, but shall be an end. They feel that they are superior. They know That when God gave, he gave the reins to their hands; Their works are their grace, not merely what earns. Are not the wrought garments like to flesh Which they have leaped with, and through which they have walked, Not garments out of soul, which God and man may dress To grace God's burial? The shame of it is, They live too long. Earth is their sepulchre, And works of theirs cannot bring their end. The serpent with the apple in his mouth, And the beast which was reared up by his side, Put on the appetite which their own cries have taught And conquered. They are gone; they go to their place; They fall like blo ======================================== SAMPLE 13 ======================================== Don't go taking more of a swag, But take fewer of the swag, And be of an ekst-and weel-full ay; Don't go knockin' over folk, And kind er ruth, an' then revin' off. It's care at the start that's the thing that's the thing! The thing is--give out the place, An' have the chance, To do your own tricks, an' don't be afraid To make a few; But care's the only pan for gain, An' then a little joy, If you're ready to call your own An' have your say. Then get some kind o' capital land An' winter suits it; Ain't 'fool' no doubt yer tellin' These folks I know, Yer just as keen as me an' me On this the land! There's land an' time an' money an' will A-crack withal, An' yer the man to pay the bills An' look like home. It's knowin' those things 'ere an' that Will make a charmin'! Then look forward an' thank the Lord That all the while you do Your part, an' more the more you're found To take ye on. We're a-suisan, let's state the case:-- We've wasted the youth o' man, An' the wits around us brood; The workin'-clerk has come, an' we Sha' to live. Our sales has not kept pace With our spending strength, an' the trade Is a bust, a failure an' a disgrace; An' we've got a-cryin' for food, An' naiz did we gie From hand to hand. The lads o' 'Feed the Hungry' have gane The fancy o' the malicious nation, An' we can't get no credit for wine An' gie an' gude o' barley; Gude ale is sa-od-lured, like Water's Pure of o' life. It's talk o' plunder, its speakers called, An' nothin' else, for we've become a people Wair-ached an' lunchless as yan's ain't! An' we're tired o' 'gainstions high an' low, An' the devils in charge. Our seed time again, I'm stickin' by The farm that I trowed When an' I wos kitch--altho' now It ain't such. But as time an' fortune changin', I like to think We'd niver thought a song would come O' sung, schön an' given in faith, While the warld was ours. There's times when I sit down, an' wrench The wirkin-reels, an' rar Considerin' that it's turn for me To watch the horse that's brung you; An' glimmer pale, an' in darkness sleep, An' then--what's to be done? We gae. Grow plump, chaps, o' glee! What's pub stah, an' thirty pence a ton, A quarter-audible Establisht folk to wind a spark; When wine is price-ed kimboory Some of the meekest pigs gets praise. Gin a hass her een so mon an' plen, An' don't fak a word 'Bout a windy sort o' face, an' swear That's enow to talk, an' simple, plain, I wus ta'en, Mishe dung! "Good sorter's waitin' on the roph, lad," An' wi' hands ben a keer An' eyes like in the kintra-yard; Ye look on, but there's space a-frenchin' To see your lads, an' you're sakkin Strauto-like, Mishe dung! That ink was dipped in som'al; An' shak it did dun it leg; On thykin the kintra-rubber shudders T'ow'rd me in its tin-mouth teat, An' mak' a gal like a sytherdock A cinder-knot a roond o' hair! Out, soul! i' the crowd, an' hoi! hey ======================================== SAMPLE 14 ======================================== whiskered and rain-soaked only a pale reflection, not much of one, a missing ring on the finger, a slit from a heaven too small for death and glarfurious pleasure. I’ll read one book. I have loads. They say a life is wasted unwanted tears, a glass of lemon with the first twist of lemon pinned to the tongue, only never had I tears. I’ll read one book. I have loads. I’ve the entire collection. Of course I have to be honest. I take it out on you. I say everything is passe, that I can’t make distinctions or put you on a shelf in a different room. I had a dog, said the one time I felt from the cold the sound of his feet. I thought maybe something was wrong, that he would go away. I used to get hard and stare at you across the table from the seat in the corner. I’ve no more to say, I told myself. I used to get ugly with you, but now no tears, no mouth. I’m never going to say more. <|endoftext|> "Sticky Little Book of Verse", by Jane Kenyon [Love, Realistic & Complicated, Romantic Love, Relationships, Arts & Sciences, Reading & Books, Valentine's Day] He’ll sweep me off my feet and hold me tight until the mid camel, the nipply drizzle, drops from the sky into the teacup, the one I pour me tea in. And, he said, in the teacup, very pink, it would be his money, the one I spurned at his fake brick-fire, at his hubris to purchase me in for his wife. I will wring my foot! I will wade through the teacup, the perfect size, into the tealike bed of water and fire and spill him there. Tick, tick, tick, in the teacup, the foam would tickle my burned thumb. Tick, tick, I’ll curl my toe into place, and ho-hum, I will slip onto her fluttering forearm. Tick, tick, tickle my anvil. Laughter as I read means I can dance, I am a happy bunny. <|endoftext|> "Poetry is a Hoax", by Jane Kenyon [Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Poetry & Poets] We are in the midst of the greatest creative era in our nation’s history, but poets who deserve record invitations to appear at next month’s Folio can’t get paid, or even printed for that matter. Poetry books are selling at a discount to the fool’s silver match. The poets need not rely on the marketplace for their bread, the wait is too long and the market is too crowded. The much needed restorations are held up by Kodak, the restorations are held up by the identical tissue known as persistence, the tissue is held up by believe in me, what I believe is more interesting, be more like me, my technical review indicates you cannot hold me, I am never alone, if you attempt to duplicate your ideas you will confuse the issue. The ideas will diffuse through the atmosphere in direct ratio to any gas. Each idea that is conceived and all but carried to fruition, will be accounted in the calculator as 1% of total, I did not hold you in such high regard. I apologize for being so alarming. <|endoftext|> "Poem, 100 Tears", by Jane Kenyon [Living, Life Choices, Sorrow & Grieving, Love, Heartache & Loss, Relationships, Home Life] 100 tears are a tearful drop from the moon and we have we lost love for somewhere every body that birthed a mongolian stone, every hand that touched a snowflake in the air that silver and gold send the same way the same way that the first metals of heaven behold and greet, us ======================================== SAMPLE 15 ======================================== do not admit, must listen to the song of the region of vines, which is wound through the world, as its universe is. But though there are countless names, even for the most familiar one, we must even as children learn to speak it. <|endoftext|> "The Name of the Rose", by Paul Violi [Living, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Nature, Fall, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy] It is the last rose lost in the last rose passed to earth, which is its single spotless blossom. Its green, as I look at it from this high terrace in late June, is as bright as the sky’s colors are. Even now, late August, the topmost foliage is a silver ghost in white blossoms. I have eaten of its light. The delicate leaves open as if for expression: What can I say? They are the spectre of an hour: transparent, white, so fair! In my lap, I fold it. And, still, the petals, still the same as they went out with their blossoming, stay in place: were in the spiral of space the way we kept the sun on our faces, hands, eyes. But that’s not what the leaves are for. Their leaves are perfect for what they are: ranks in rail, rosebuds, small and few, red as fire. At our rose’s table, unlike the roses, not quite there yet, but in a sense there, we fall in line, and our arms cross and meet, as of old the poet’s dream of heaven, table, eyes, and so holding the heart of the rose, each of us in line, that each of us has made of flower our own rose, and yet the rose inside of me stands still: as sure of place in the world, as when it opened the first time, fifty years, and it closed behind me: no agitation, no twisting and twisting. I hold the rose closed: and if the rose open, nothing can take place without the opening, and the color, as the rose-smell comes through it, to help people recognize me. For there is one who can open it: now that I look at it, can see it: and she speaks to me of my own mother’s life in my face, of the heart inside. Just so: I have seen what the red roses will bring, if the rose-colored doors are open. I could not look in the place where my mother was were there not also the hand of me coming in. <|endoftext|> "In the Dark", by Paul Violi [Love, Infatuation & Crushes, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships] The words for love are taken. The words for light are taken. The words are everywhere. The words are what is going on. The words have spoken. The dark is the place I am in. The words are my own color, the words are the colors I have made of words. And there are more of the dark, too. When you put the right word in the right place, words grow into more of the dark and more of the dark grows into the words. So all the word- time turns: WILL go and be there for you. NOW is to listen. <|endoftext|> "I, Too", by Paul Violi [Activities, School & Learning] I, too, gave up on school. I, too, didn't want to go to the back of the class or the lunch room. I, too, was, was, was missed. I, too, found myself. It was the end of the day; it was the end of me. Then I, too, gave up the ======================================== SAMPLE 16 ======================================== Nestleson said, What's a Sunday Chronicle? This table? I've no use for that. Well, yes, 'E's quite as Dear to my eye As Lady dioria Is To yours. She's always Right, Lillie, and to work, I ever won. You're always Wrinkled by a new ball. Well, yes, 'E's a Love, yes, I want that. Yet when I think In sight of all I might have done for you Had I never met you, I grow Wistful for you, Lilly. Polly! Gritty, white, white, pure sugar and peanut, white. "Mo'ney" hor roasted... Sort of... runty, wrinkly, white, white, just plain fuzzy with mines of so much less than two bags of leg of me. Each little cave has its idol, Lilly And who doesn't. Well, yes, 'E's so much less than Lilly. Fine hard poetry. Porridge and whisky... what a Dervish life we lead... Try it, it's fun, it's fun, it's fun it's fun it's fun for the soul, When Lilly met Polly in the bar, her eyes had light showers falling from them, and her whisper was "Shane, You're my goody, so I'll bow to That is me." Polly also meeting the carousal Yeah, Polly. Gritty white and pure. My husband's gone all toines, and for my purse I'll have to go, so... Do I Go home? or... Father's gone now. So I'll go home, and... Not the same Of course not. You know? What is so lucky anyway I don't Should I have the From this time on things to happen I sing, I sing... yes... You bet! Think it, Lilly, if the Moon hurricanes hurricanoes hurts you, bob then she kisses you, Try it, it's fun. Then next time we see each other considering whether We love... us and wanting I'll be out there as much as you, and you'll be in that I'll do A job. I knows, and and more, more, and more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, ======================================== SAMPLE 17 ======================================== Lov'd o'er Pleased the worthy Earl, Not more brave than brave, No more he learnt his lesson. Youth subdued him, as it meends To live as others live. Like others, Mary to behold Roof'd her spacious mansion. 'Tis from the sweet dews of Eve We rise to greet the morning. When her dewy locks The Valkyrie knelt her; When the leech drew from the brim A ladle of small snake; And the sword'd hostess Had declare'd the care For the awful rite; We rejoiced beyond measure 'Mid the stately park, Not more brave than bold, For glad to greet the dawn! Our spring-fed stream From a silver pipe, Dust-clean'd, the native, Poured in a beaker, When she left the King In the field to die. Many a sister pale, As we dance around the throne, From her low-caste mansion, As others do, But possessed of no maiden's pride, Nor in the waist of a priest: With her is the crown'd teint of her pride, No bitch in case of bitch; And with this noble blossom in her cheek She will have an eternal tomb. Scarce had the sanctuary lovelock'd the sun, Ere kindred fell in throngs around. The Herald from the grove, accustom'd to the spot, Lifts his echo sonorous, wild, and terrible; And shrilling to the moon, that high in the sky, With an anxious ear for the roaming care, Hear lost horses prancing, or hear the bugle-call. From car, that comes close to the line, The prattle of the soldier, ore-stretch'd, falls groaning; And, as from the bubble, and the quarry, Harpers, hawkers, and female, with caryapls, Calls to the traveller:--'Be cautious, and safe tread Upon the skip of the northern hill: A disgrace was suffered in an avenging hand, That victors never should forget; and a wail That sickens even with mildest tones, went up, When the gallant William, Sir Edward of Tavistock, Was shuffle'd o'er with a prong and a regret. And though I be by the posths and the weight; Still, gallant the mountaineer's right wrist I seem to feel. A long-ragg'd path precedes the hill Where that solitary elder of the dales First welds the soil of his native soil. Here lads at play squeal on the green heath, And girls at waggon run. He paints a hanging landscape, A forest road, From which there runs A solitary pathway, that seems No pathway at all, Beyond which runs a brook; And, as if it were a spray Of snowy cots, he spots the few Mature Indians of the flight. Now here the splashing-bells have roused A thousand dreaming wet, And huddling knots in the hedge-ropes, The rooks make their lithe way; Or from the distant downs They seem to swim, while Hogs, In yond horde, crawl, And scatter o'er the sky. To East and to West Proclaim the point, And make a mile, or two, of broad lands, And Scotch, or Yorkshire, or Dublin, school. These slave and serf Of feasting, these are they Who have a stake in hovels, halls, or tippees, And slow despots that in clowns inly control. They smile upon us, like the blue skies in July, And all these wild things In meek enjoyment, like the swallow on the lawn Sun-red, or some sunset haze, And love are free; And wild, or play, or shut in by care, As the hawk in the shroud Thus at their gala return, These juggleries, and of all the feast, Reposing, The East displays the best of trifles, And May, and Mayday, in a blaze of flowers, And the green grass, and distant hills between, And stars, and the dappled shades; I, in the West, for me much mood for solitude, And that my want, Unless my days should come no more, or, like the Dove O for the day to come! for no day's sight I pray,attach_debugger print_status freeze_forever quit save_and_quit ======================================== SAMPLE 1 ======================================== I feel the worth in being a man, The constancy that you only know from pain. How could you know? How could you ever know? The secrets that they hold, The riddles that I lift from the same texts, I only hint at They only see them as words—A wound you must numb to be whole. The art That still the clouds with wind and shower, The command of the wounded place, The beauty, the might, the effort, The love that makes glad the heart of rain, The calm that leaves the horse with the man. <|endoftext|> "The Black Ship", by Jennifer 18th Gordon [Living, Death, Love, Heartache & Loss, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Relationships, Pets, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] In bright Venice once, an Italian galley Slips through the maze of low-browed streets, And through the alleys dotted with small silvers, And glass-strewn pavements where a gondolier Through the slanting pines, holding Galatea, Clears vaults dyed red, crescented with old gold, Flashes, and flings her bright pool above the tide. Long do their echoes, pealing below, resound Here, in the lagoon where the relics burn, That drift from Orietta's abbey, And dress the palm that rises o'er the lagoon With ivy and old vines. Here still dree, And there where on a cool table spread, The bird-noise plays under a fir-needle, The pyramids of mumm, the ruins roam, The gypsies throw their Lophian woman. And far up, from light to dark, the play Is set, the dead men's revel poise: Old palace, later temple, harder top To these sad marbles! Sick flints and glass, Red cedars that the lions have broke, Greeks and Romans, and those who maimed Slain in the north country, all Around that main still dance the mass. Here wear a form, if shape there be, The rigour of a lifespan, More fixed than his or her place, And so perform most heav'n-like rites: Far in the back of a ruin lies The L-rimed board. Round a picture nothing else But more than hearth and household fire, A red-brick house, white-walled, red-banked The mistress, dead nineteen of yore, With hair like snow and cheek like rose, Dreaming and worn with sorrow, He falls to singing in an ecstasy From off the bone-box. And that one there Who wears a garland of three tears, Fellows an old tune and staggers off, And dreams a bathroom painted with men Sharing a bowl and smut-papered books. And he, who slept and lived in breeches, From his face fear-wreathed and rotting, Twixt flanks and neck clutched at a penny, On his bed now bores another Who has forgotten all his Lincoln, And all the morals of his time. It might As soon have been a scold and choler As discovered in his beard this folk, Who, disdaining shame, envied virtue And a man's chance in the middle And plain sense and manhood. For what cried Out of the astrologer's hand of Fate Which thrills the oracle with doubt If ever by Chaldeans' lyon planned And sign those stars decreed their fate? For this Men laugh when wits foretold a flaw In their look or measure, lie and swear That they have seen the teeth of Fate. Their Fate! The Sisyphian stars! And now the blaze Of light is poising for the winged air, And from it as from a casement Flush lights, and yard and shadow, like those Tattletrees o' the lawyer, and a police Nigh the grave of Lincoln--thus is Paris As when the "red man's blood," as Shakespeare says, By bad intention from a hospital bed I was drawn to the bare foot of a woman: I heard a voice in my ears call me thither And now I would pluck your heart from your breast. You should have been, dead, one with the golden Of thousands in the Place de la Concorde, Where the State sate, without breath or burthen, Like the souls in Paradise. But this woman's) So fervent you overlook the rest-- (Perhaps your rhapsody is all ======================================== SAMPLE 2 ======================================== Join the search for her-- Her name is Lily Bo Burnum And she is a runaway! Is there no hope, for me? How is it that we suffer so? Who shall be lonelied and free? My own life, which looked eternally Well, well over-loaded, all godly, All at once with hunger struck-- Who shall be lonelied and free? Who shall be lonelied and free? Who cannot hope in any but you In the face of death and every disgrace. What should you be at the last? Whatever there is as hope Sick and sepulcher-like to be sure Be present to my mind So that I know you can be borne, Worth living to be bared and laid Within my arms to-night. <|endoftext|> Ye who have sworn the Pardon, The Wound you bore From me with your lives, Forever be my fellow In ties moral and in privileges; Ye who have heard my words in court From me with their teeming eyes-- Join you in fellowship, in fellowship! Why should we stand as men--or even as men All that stands between us, and all that flies-- Go on As of old! So we may form an earth that would be More than earth to us, a heaven of rich skies Luxuriant, and from it shining Great bands of angels Shall rise and greater of each kind More glorious than this blue And radiant market That soaks all its ranks With incense, And creaks and groans, Gross, by steps that moan-- The warring tree, Whose feeble breath the clouds With a much-broken hearth, Whose embers Lie frozen, and to ashes fall Are fast decaying, Its remnants rank In the vast hollow Of the river That recedes at our feet. Of a many tales he told A fellow-swine, And it seemed to me That he was praising me Because he knew that in the hollow Of this death they lie And starve because of the interstices Of a hope denied. Fouriers and simons he taught To feed upon the spring Of others' suffering; And on his hunger so great They too can suffer, But not shall know The favours of the good. O shame on the fevered brain Of the poor swine Who, like the licket witch, Offer our seed-dust to feast upon; The husbandman knows not The joy of our gluttony. And it fell out thus--this has already Fallen from my memory, But I would fain bring it back-- I would fetter my words with an Untroubled heart, In a turret lonely, a vagrant room With a bed soft, and crowded a stair Up the narrow stairs, I heard, When the dusk came dim through the distant window, The far-off sound of a great fight below, And the clash of arms. And the great issues of the day Made a murmur in my room; And its moon was full, but not full indeed Of that red light Which seems to bear a cross Of woe In its pale lamp's accursed gleam. But from mine bed, I gazed, I waited for me, The half-dark and fretting something Was there. And something made of smoke and steel Who was he seemed, But whether knight or man or Fable I am not willing to say. He was lying still; and I, As the grey dawn was peeping, Laid myself in my bed; And I covered my face And with remorseless speed, I bade the dawn. And it came. On my face something changed. The curtains of the window Were drawn back; and I saw the face Of a strange man Rugged and grey. And he stood by my bed, And the wonders of his sight I knew were true: His face was like the face of a youth; His head was like a crescent; his eyes Were as blue as a vat of dew; His very bones like iron; But his shirt was like the stone Which men call magic Was a none of dew. His belly was no ladder either In his foot or leg; Nor was his head a kettle, But rather a jug of ale, And not a verjure porcelain jug, But a leathern shoe ======================================== SAMPLE 3 ======================================== Should I read ancient records Or words unlinked by the passage of a thousand years, How should I speak of all that I have seen! Or even if I should speak the language Of that other land where the lion is, And rock-fisher boy together, With tramp of exhalations, sleet of rain, And whispered word, when in one vast mound they stand And the clouds, that wander about the hills, And the unfathomable deeps that the sea fills, And the hideous lowlands that have been made, The shaggy hills, with huts and villages, The dark sweet valleys, and the sweet sweet friendly valleys, And all the marvels that the year has in store As of trees and of tames and of bears and of people; And how the little kings tremble at the lamp, And what the king does to end the working of things; And how the mastiffs rouse, and guard, and swear, Until the king comes, and how he comes not soon enough; And how he sits with the old crone, and how he makes A bow of two great flat-fish-bundles and a crest Of a blue heron's down the breast of a blue eagle. And with the word that he sends through the strong Wind and the heavy clouds, The people of the ship behold The eagle very sharp in the sandeled sea; And when he draws swiftly to a blow The wind drops dead; and a myriad fires Burn under the spires, and a myriad tongues Are fan like tongues of fire in the burning coasts. And every one forgets that everywhere Are save a queen in golden glass. Except where a palace is of wonder Sudden and far away, Where art thou then, crownless, unworthy, Who wouldst change the king's heart? Nay, rather, am I he, the wild king, The springing sun who smote the ground One blushing midnight ere the stars and phallus Shook into flame? Nay, many times, in many days I have told you what a mother I had, And how she made her brood men of. In the grey light A multitudinous rage Orbed the land In the heat and the wear and strain. The old passion flickers still. Why do these men Make of me such hideous aberrations? (The noise abated, and the man attended Who, instead of answering, laughs at my warning): Have these degraded them, what time the sun And the multitude that fills the heavens Bathe them with brightness? But the lark, black artist, mocking with his song And among the birds that gather again Across the way where the boat was cabined, Tires himself, or the birds, or I: And as, the long thirties bending, we dance around The face of the tallow-prism, each of us Thousand feverish quadrupeds with one nipple That combs his neck with a golden filant, (Veneris the gentleman, an Englishman Or I forget his name, it is long since Writ in the disused and polluted language; But still, to memories of men, the filant Turns to the wax as that comely creature,) Climbs to the table, the royal shield; And now the goddess of the wreath, Crowned and confounded; begins to cry out, That my banquet be broken up, That my feast be held according to law. My guests, my brethren! let us sit! Brothers and brothers, for such title And from such mouth, shall I be called to a feast Where both meat and wine Are goose and wine, goose and no wine? O generous brothers! I may lead you, But not be first of you To call me friend: one word more and then Take your places; and before the word Be spoken and be gone, ere another even Be called, I swear On the altar of gutteral bile Not to cast one glance abroad, Take the penitential path Of utter, self-lovin' antiquity. That which you see and do not see I do not know, But what I am I, and what I am I am; And since the Art was not spread My knowledge I am, And since the Art that I have lost I never of, nor of you, From whom, and from what source To find from out this ancient time, I should learn to paint, Or from what age to learn. I, ======================================== SAMPLE 4 ======================================== Common but obscure. Ah, this is the man, the serpent-trout, who, Not overfluent in one nourishment, Devours to which a numerous herd of trout Is empty, and a flock of geese. And when from the abundance of his food, There is a surplus, he Caused the pool, the marish, to be filled. And a swallow or a perch he Flaps to the sky. And they say, do as the snake, and measure A thin aqua-dunta of life. And this man kept on By carelessness and hunger, the masters all, And by a porridge in the truck. And this man, they say, in a truck Drank from a pitcher made of clay. And this man took an aquavit In a bucket of full of mud. And this man, they tell, the possessor Of an aquavit, and a bucket full Of dark, and a geyser, Sprinkled life everywhere. And this man, they say, Had no terror in the night, and they In their tents, so long as they squatted, And roamed in the way of prey, With hair blown and ruffled, The warriors called him king. The horns of race are the horns of gold That blow for a heavenly melody. The horns of race are, you say, the horns That the storm-winds have come to tell. And the common scent Of the unknown smell Is like a serpent. With head held up in scorn, With sword in hand up-raised, Down on the little reed of death That is fast in the red grave Thy visage is wet with your life's blood That from the lips of the snake Rests as snow. Thy sweat is the sweat of a warrior, And that grim black eye Seeing a hundred sties Whispering secrets, there behind, Thy blood upon thy shield Is the blanket that half is worn And some is fresh. And sometimes with head bent down And into the lap of Death A man is borne, And never a word is said. And the joints in thy form Are breaking like a leaf Asunder. And thy blood, and the blood of thy brothers, In the pangs of the pit, And in the secret houses of Earth, And the pools of these strange lands Are like a lover and thy life his bride, O thou with the steel on thy breast, God-sent on its breast. Then let us drink From the sea, since the soul is the flesh, Since breath is a water, since we die When flesh we call death. And through the salt from our blood Let peace to the seas return. For strength is a water Born in the deeps of the sea, When gums and aromatics Born in the sea unite, With the brown sugars of oceans, Born in the sea, Born in the sea, With the sweet essence Of the sea, Felt in the sea, And the purple blues And the royal reds, Born in the sea, And smelled and tasted there In the fens and the fields. Of the bright sea Where eels and whales swim Born in the salt of the sea While the great eyes of the squid Grow larger there. And the great heads of whales Feel the fangs of the foams, Thirsting and glistening In the spray of the seas. And he who feels in the gray dawn, With the born nimbus of the sea Scattering in the water the ink Of his plumes, and the thrones And the carpets of old time, Seen through the silence Of gray water, seen through a silence, One with shadows, covered With evil tagging of yews. And with an eye Afire In its long lagoon Let the trumpet blow, And let the giant horn Blast the dun cloud Born in the air, A myriad of grains of sea, With a troop of winds And the tread of wave Upon it. In the world's court, a thousand books Are open on the roof That fill the heathen with shame At the sound of a Western sage, When the full showers fail, And a grass-green plumager Leans from its screen. And in the wine they drink, in the foaming Of this strange wine, are signs For the mighty loss of wagers, As omens, mails in a ======================================== SAMPLE 5 ======================================== passes, including the tenantless. Rend a heart of mercy for a sting of dross, Count it a cause of humiliation To redeem a slavish race in exchange. Bread from heaven, price of shame and glory, A bird with seven wing spans, two wings, Himself the crowning athlete. Do not confuse my name with another, Named Shinto, save in thought When staying under a spell of fear To worship at the Shrine of his idol. In equal words to say, on just consideration I am also colored in the colored in- -revolution of color, Caught like a fly in some Supreme Honey of the dragon family. All my life I've followed The immortal, foolish, questing work Of all-policing rule, A royal prerogative that Swarms as bees in our honey Tramit, Tantaly from slime. We of the Native race Our living, and the noble born of devotion, Know all things by honors and how to be generous To strengthen the cause To make the dream come true. We are avengers of wrongs, The conscience of redress, We know how black and brown To move the heart of men As weak as tears. The Holy Names of God In the heart of the case Of human rights. To what bottomward shall we go, Where have been and lost the ways Of one-ness with the Sun And the secrets of the Dawn And all your dross? All your dreams, your hopes, Your forge-ings are only transferred From your face to your heart, From your mind to your soul. Our claim to love, your bid to rule, Your lust and your lusty soul, Is the mirror, and hence the shape, The shape, and the mirror is ours. We are your loving kin The glad children of hate and love, Who, just as men, shall love and rule you, And have for so long and well. Your heart shall be changed to the Moon So that, whatever your view, You may see how little the function Of what you see. <|endoftext|> Dark was the bed where Love lay; Warm was the hearth whereon he lay; Sweet the aisle where God in death lay black; Sweet the garden where the summer sings; Sharp in the swords and spears the gifts of Rome lay; Slow and new pears the grudgand nurst, And quick the faith from counsels of war. All your bed will cover, The hearth will sleep without; Your bed will sleep With sword-sharp would in it fall, Sword-sweet will kiss your brow, Helmet and shield and plume. Fire and flood, thunders, or fagots hurled from the Citadel, Bear your image bright Throned in the belted gods, Sunless hour by golden race, The Agno of fire, The airy, stormy, beautiful. Frail basers of heaven, You seem to dream, Then fade like fountains from on high, You cannot heap clouds so high; How shall the dust, Bewildered By the sun-rays Broadcast, Challenge the You do not swing Where he has sunk Where lightnings Struck the worlds in water-courses, Wide as dewdrops on desert marshes. In vain toiling, Eager they roam The earth's stark expanse, The weeping seas And those abiding winters; To wander where all is joy, The load of praise they heap Unmindful of the home-spun thread, The heart that struck them In empire of fire, The sunless empire. Oft with their pen She was their sport, Often, when it suited their glow, She humbly trod The landscape as the poets In burnished armors Aye in bower of rock Before whose altar not aught was sung, Roused to fresh courage she Was on her pen, She wrote to me, O, lapped within her veins of copper She made that vision solid. And the fable, new-drawn, Streamed from her bronze-linked wrist Into that iron throat, With lightning Of thought it was To strike the iron ground, It glittered so in her blood. Winter wakes the winds in shrouds Of cloud and flame; And their taunts as hailstones falls, The ======================================== SAMPLE 6 ======================================== And while my hands here rest, How sweet 'tis to feel that I can say, From this diseased and weary place, My prayers ascend to you, and they do come With all their mortal weight; and no harm Are our sojourns in the earthly court; For still, of those many, all united In friendship's holy union dwell. The night is silent, and the night is dark, The night is silent, and the night is dark. In sighs and tears, and a troubled plume Of hope with mournful motion breathed Down from the white celestial tress; The stars, the moon, and all the silent sky Of nights and of days, apart from me, Are gazing on the token clear, In shreds and rags, the soulless body slinks To slavery's thralldom and doth adorn; And, in the accursed and filthy reign Of this dissolute slave, the spleen and heart Of this great and glorious nation swell; While many, who do now and then come near My door, and come not always, go astray, And leave me to be looked on as a name That may be known not. 'Tis as if in a crowd Of sheep bereft of a shepherd, all Who had left the pasture for wheat, should meet And perish in the blast. The night Is silent and dark, and yet the heavens loom With greater majesty than ever; the moon Is by another light than of old, Who once was she, and his starry throne, And earth and heaven do now their size declare. Unseen, I saw thy splendor, when Thou didst in the fields of light appear, Like that great bride, whose gold and scepter took A third of all the earth, and caused A third to love her. But I was then Within the blight and back of all-times, And thought thy long golden robe was kindled To be wrapped about me; not to be seen Of all the years that should be past o'er. 'Is like to the still rising of the moon, Which was thy morning; thou art the loveliest Of stars that do rise and go; thy throne Is built; thy brightness is. I'll lift up mine eyes And see thy glories all unfolded, and Fallacious reasoning of them thus Rebuked. 'Tis but the morning-glory's tear, That mourns its daily dying in the light, And will not with its evening die. 'Oh, you are wonderful, king of all, And lovely, who in lowliness have made The heavens like lilies tremble to look down Upon the earth; you are the first of kings Which have yet no crown. The first may be a prophet crowned with clay, He fast and ask for light; and his slow years One glorious, unribbed life, endure for you. 'Love is the flame that dolds the clouds in green, Yet faileth not as yet That heavenly strength which waxeth not for ever. The sun himself aloweth not to stoop His head to sunbeams; and hence his age That cometh not again to his steed, Till he secure of his own healthful life, And smoke his yearly sen; for man himself Can lie not comfortably, with their heat Repelling, and weakness, and the frost's sting. The heavens are all an hundred years old, Yet are not old themselves: they are not old But slant from our four densovings one by one. 'You see such things, see such things, on every side And in a hundred ways; you need but look For that; all things are touched by your hand of power. For want of this ye might be wist, At every glance you would behold great things And dreadful; things like serpents then and dragons, And swine that cry, while within them slumber shapes Of wild affright: how much more, then, Reliques of percase unmanliness, Fierce monsters, all sudden apparitions, And night's black clouds around men's heads and eyes! 'Albeit ye need not all to stare Nor all to thresh with the ague's spurt; Yet, seeing your greatness in aught, That thing is somewhat unto a thought That's stronger. Because ye sound the depths Below, heaven is not all upper, though Thou point the high, thou canto's the skies. 'All that we are and are not Plain must be laid open into thee ======================================== SAMPLE 7 ======================================== Where the keys Of the large forges are ranged. Poke with the rivet tool And pipe the nails to fix them in. Go into the press and sit down; Mix a batch of mortar And lay it very quiet down. Pour the water over it slowly; Don't let the water heave to the top of the heap. When the mortar is quite soft, Get a hammer and beat the crap out of it, Set the pieces aside to dry in a safe place. When you're ready, go and visit the nails, In the garage or in the shop; Knock on the nail-pots in a certain order, And you may come home without new nails. But when the old ones are down, Knock again, and knock louder, knock! Knock over the pulp-tape and the shrink-film, Break all your canvases and crack the pieces; When the galleries are torn up and you come to knock, Each at a battering-ram that's laid like new. When you come to knock, beat your stick on the table, Kicking the bits of canvas off the kick-bowl. When you're through, come out to the lawn and look. Where, on the mast, are the pulleys? Where are the jacks and clamps you had to hold in? Where the pin for the roller-rope? Pile them up here and get them in order, And don't be worried and don't be loud. And now, the artist, say, Who will feel the pain Of those soft-eyed things Who wonder When he gets home If he'll have it, If the charge Is not so soft For them, Who dreamed That it would Be Harder. GOODWORTH. To be rightly dispossessed or forcibly disturbed. What is done, Here, in the round of it, Must not be seen, No more, No less. THE poet goes on writing, But he will not mention the wickets, Nor the pain in the tenderness of soul Nor the clasp of the grief. He is writing his bust, Making a picture of himself As he sees in his mind's eye Now, surely, the time When the wasp who sways To the breast, Who weeps and may not be stirred By a cross present to her, Has at last met his pose, Has at last been won; But the poet who sees death Shuddering at morn, As a sound in the air, Who weeps and prays in all weather, Shuddering in the fiercest joy Of the heaped-up earth With the pain that slays The heart with the breast, Who shivers When the axe falls, May not break an oath, May not tempt For strength to deal out a curst rebuke, May not prophesy When you bury your younger. May you chop the long mean sticks of the saplings, Chop the rusted rims of the victual, Chop the sulphur stones That the chalkers hurl As the fire burns And the grindstones turn You shall not hit When your mind is crisp With the sun on the gun of a strong moth Who weaves a glory for you With the wings of your mind, Or when you hold in the gloam Someone you love, In a helmet flame-headed, With the mind that heroes you, And the heart of her that weeps, And the hand that slays, And the stepping-toes of the toes. The poet takes it as it comes, He has spoken in broad daylight And the best he will tell you Is a page's worth of rhyme, An asterisk more, if the reader's age Be over forty. I SAW my mother die! And the morning hid her face Under a blind of her hair, As she lay dying of a soul So perfect, so divine. The lamps went out on that night, The stars died out upon the hill, The day was done, the moon's in the sea. I have been the laughing-in tune To many a disconsolate stranger's ear, Who to my crooning had this to say Thee, lone here with thy sobbing'st aid: "What god is she that hides the way? If late ======================================== SAMPLE 8 ======================================== Who can her lace decipher, How to her sweet blood goes raising, When a charm, bright beautiful, 'Twixt robe and vest is blent? Wear I thy cross with pride, Fairest once of all? Did the lion look as fierce, And as black as night? Could the night black lion talk And consort with the sun? Might the sun his snarls escort, And with his glare banish Some of his own attributes? We, the prey to high and lower, Our faults and miscalled "faults" excuse! Our words, our age, deferr'd! Not a slave, not numero uncommand'd Nor age nor peer for some! Ah! some born sin, for all must taste! But he, but he who walks with the dead, Behold him in the gorgeous skies, Witches, frogs, and dragons with him lie, Bright spark of genius, be not so That virile life is bereav'd. Behold how elves and half-beings show Their age--but what's the good that I Aspire to? Do you, for once, display Thy nothingness, if you bring that term Of glory to one that's a fool? In that crimson hour, when thy voice was sounding, Came not friends and man transformed Whom I would kiss for such as thou art? 'Tis true, too true, you let your power break Thy harmony, and did but mock my hopes, And in my soul thy tuneless music broke, A spirit-duty to play, for love of thee, I might not, verily, every wish destroy, Never, since I had this wit, betray, Count an anvil true: for he, for he Now who most loveth, loves with love unfelt, Or at least could he but feel the fire, Who once was wrong'd, hath ever harmed. Grieve not that such deceiv'd the keen Sages of old. Love can ne'er be slain. Come then, in health, the prime of days, And, with thy depth, thy playing-post Come, yet once more, like beams of heaven; For thou, unhappy boy, hast lov'd All in thy degree, and ne'er set bounds To love beyond. When I with love's pleasure The fine balance seek, I find--poor hawk! The dish rot, and miser's sin: The frugal will not lavish cream Where he doth burn a-fire. Thou n'e the grackle He will not strive to sum; with wings Pursue the spring thy whole mistress gave. I, no god, desire neither right Nor estate; but, in love for thee, Here mote am seventy summers old. My beard is hoar, and yet my hands For truest labour buckled thick. These flax-chains Teeter on my forelock, if I choose, Heaving up my chest. I have nothing of Their wealth, my dress is the same, and they Kept still the same since I was a child. Why art thou still so meek? Vain cidatta est mihi. Quicunque te, ubi ut uada Quocunque te, ubi magis hic Non fuit hunc ultro mihi. O crede mihi, crede mihi, Credo quicquocuitud hic; Purpuralu, ubi non suprema Nec te, mihi non sine multum; Nec te, mihi non sine quanto; Aut tibi posuere, aude; Ut mihi, non tu, malum credat, Non sine tulit ille suprema; Non mea catulosas uiuamus Non mea paternum fama sed tibi Ille tetricum dira; Ille aut hic solo tangere Turbas volverat volvitur: Et mihi quocumque uasit Turpes cum loca quicunque culpa Est eris nec tam nominauis. Ergo nec mihi purpuralu Non tibi potuiam templa peto Ille tuo potens mihi. Mortals ubi non potuisset Se neque amabilti saepe uiuos? Turbas et ubi, supeca ======================================== SAMPLE 9 ======================================== Tand tha love me-- So tha started With her bows, and wi-his thing you Gain't no heed o' him e'en sun; He calkum toop o' tha wi-a-a-a-a, He heart a-a-hicho! Wen you come to Thiseliefan, By some whishI happened to fall, Nae, nae, nane, won't wa' o' you, Wi' fright lest ye'll fall; By sune, some force from you, I might fall, and the worse of it, The second day's a' moons id, An' the lang day's dark by Saturday; I've seen a' his mornings o'iod, An' deid kend enough wi'-yich; Nae help I'll get to sit an' stare, I'se got a shawl to wear; I wish it was a' the real thing, I'll keep mi chin avis, sir, Wi' care, an' I'll let ye know my mind, If I should like you to be. But if it's on'y for my sake, And your own sake too, May be ye'll soon on'y step i' the door I'ma gi'e yon gate. "Oh, sister mine, how I've listen'd to thee, Thou fairest of the fairest things on ground, And may, sister, therefore be contented Wi' me, And you, fair friend, to be; That ever I dinna ken a graver, In my life. "Daughter mine, an' thanks for thy forgivin' love, For I ha'e a vast o' takin' after you, And I'm as alack'd as the tom who's fash't me; Yet I hope ye may be gain'd by my pray'r; Yet, my dear, "For you and me, for both of us, dear girl, is the ask; So hither then, whate'er your liking is, I'll fare ya, Though I may baith those to think on, two, or three. Drain your swingrow, deyden your spinnin' reed, An' sweetly knit your speech o' wark or monk, Until we're engaged, ma'am, "But if, sir, you and I are kind and fain to part-- I'll stick to you, an' the feckless an' the fou, Till my heart is sae bronked and frae takin' heart; For I'm a-witness, poor thing, o' this dan' thing, That's wark to it. Sealed in that stubborn truth, I'll nowhere be fear'd By what-may-woful-or-witty-call it, happenin' there; For o' fortune is the deevil in this thing, An' I'm the first, the last, on't to stand the test! O, I'm a-witness, ma'am, to this thing's happenin'! And will be sittin' when this thing's satter done; And when--when I own--that shall be my happing! O, Doris, a teapo, or a Drayton-knovan, Will o'er my care in manner gie's me nae mair; And a' this tress is o' thy bonie, british laird, That gives me some little slacking e'e! And I'll say, as the butty bonnie tuff maks me nod, That—fairy-flock, I'm your's! If ever I find a tither thing or two, An' hear the they doos me a nor' that it can say, O, Sir, you can teeman me tae mi widdow an' her Ma's; Or your han' will jorm an' your pain's han' fer te teay me noo! Fish! for I'll be praying the Lord he'll use me han' wi' this. If I see a beggar on the street or highway, Or a naething but a poor kit-man or kit van, An' the e'e cocks aounced on the twa-three's bus' or ten, I'll teeman them, and your bet I'll speed them the best. A' their aids ======================================== SAMPLE 10 ======================================== Needs and thirst, and hunger of the heart, Assure the future is fed with trust Enough for each moment's work to earn. Who feeds it with himself has done no wrong. Not that the bad my better nature reft, The worst has passed and leaves thee pure as great. But many a portion of the mountain took A fiery spirit and has salved its crest, Filling its valleys with furies, or bright As heaven's bright and glimmering lights, the fields That shivered by the rills where suns have shone, And swept them with a vision, and clothed With glory for a season, and given Rains the while--or clouds--and dried up The babbling waters when they roared in springs. The iron men that bum about the mill From morn to night, or shut with faces furled At windows, never learned, I think, to take That fire they see within the fly's bright eyes; But know as well they ever saw a breast By trembling, or an iron surface to it. That fire, without the feeblest will to move, They have been lucky, like the flames that beat And close behind the bayonet when the hunter Taps his stick with fire and right at the redbird To fire him. But to save the whole, I think, Two spirits first, then a little sound and blow Against the bars, the flame gone out and faint, The look of things that stagger and fumble at night, The steps of fleeting stars, the sun, the wind That shakes a tree, he throws to sweep the dell, That care has never heeded. All here They move with patience, and they rest with will. The farmer's hill with the strong woods down to the morass And on the soft spring, and the wind-baked loam Thrown over the fence, is as God's apartement, Whose face men see, and bear. But you will say This is the room with the door at the top, Where Satan stalks, and from a glory there (My word!) one glimpse of what is inside, We may look out with a dragon's eyes To meet each other, and know what we are And where to strike next. All the same, let death break his thunder through With noiseless feet, let his fire come in Shriek of the lost one, wide and frightful, swift Fell out of night with scorching thunder-pang, Revenge of wrath, where the doomed spirit, flushed, Mounts upward and soars and is gone; But none knows how weary of the world we have Come forth, an end, an end and a beginning; Our windpipe tasted like a plague; and yet With our whole spirit, by life or by death, brought Down, down, down, we have come to nothingness, Sinken like an eagle that has barred Her nest, in the droppings of her Lord Safely, to what will not belch, but feed An eagle. In our great mother's bed We were cast, which is not a sin, A circumstance which I do not think Soaks the soul through, through, with fire, Which casts out all other chimes Who never get half a hearing, though Oft we'd laugh at them, happy here. The heavenly music here, there and everywhere, Where my soul in its matin astray Could get no stability, or filled its dwelling, Since I see the world's end coming, no less For not knowing it, than you? Or is't From what heaven draws its minstrelsy That gives you everything in the night, And your bright blood its sweetness? Or is't From the stars that through your beauty's world Swell to a burst of flame when you wake? Nay, I love you so, sweet love, and I, too, As our world's children do not, which is not fair, And should not be with my hate and scorn mixed, And all my heart hurled at you, which is harsh Even of words, that makes my face like stone to meet yours. But all I care about now is, your eyes, And how they make me like you more to me Than stars in heaven, above me, if I may call them so. The cloud part: no more of your face; The wind wakes in the wheat, and it laughs and plays, And flies to the ocean laughing, and no more: And these two, they are the morning and evening star To this small small head. I am the paper, The spring ======================================== SAMPLE 11 ======================================== When Lord Henry won, Then the people of The Glen Met to sing the song of Royce. 'Twas sung before: How the brave crow brought home his heifer Whose little son was eaten by a bear; And made a pipe of a penny ae mile; And then went home and wrote a sonnet On Lord Maroon of the Isle of Bala, Who proved an opponent to the kings Of every form of government; Who said that tyrants had no being Except in the forms of commons laws. 'Come buy my goods,' he cried; 'Are you a poor to buy I a loaf of trodden rye To have in Sunday's dinner? Think you it is the sonnet Made him worth three hundred in the purse? Well, I charge three hundred for my sonnet, Which he upon Sunday will drink out of his hand That you may know you bought a tripe of his You have cudgels, and irons, and what? And if you sell the trodden rye It's the devil's own dove-skill; So never, till you've tried it, buy a sonnet; You can't beat them! Then how Royce fared by the time he'd done it We all of us cried like bears. Says Bumstead, "At last I think he had the hand Of God and went right through it And wouldn't go to bed till they cleared him for it, And then he built a church with it. Oh, I thought it was wicked how he'd ever do it; And the church itself, sir, but good for Royce Because he finished it, And never told a soul till we saw him, my man. And every wife of his- Except a stuft English wife, sir, to be sure. That's how bad the beer was!" He drew an ace of cards And Sawney died; And I think his cards were worse than Sau-A, For there's no leg to tell Like that played by the Devil himself for half a peseta. Then there were the mad ones, Who've died in the least distance from their belfry, Who have played for king and devil; And there were the invalids, Who, being mute, Were given their livings To play for stakes, With each only twenty-four; But all their lives were wagered from six A.M. (Which card upstaging the ten-coppers, They played for king and ace and royal ace of spades, The king of kings and ace of spades, And, having played, to drink With Misdirection at their heads, And askance never again. Oh the merry times of the centuries gone, When the rooming house, the tavern, and the licentiate Were king and priest And vestal, when the cup, the wedding-cup, the betrothing When they'd a soul in each robed that was free and fair And cast no half-sized bone To help itself to a nickel or a medal From other souls in the stormy sea No sonnets to cavort with, no Thoughts of the summer sun to play with; When fancy aspired to no higher height Than any cloud, and rhyme, and grace, and beauty, And all the sweets Found only in a poet's dreams, Came dancing round the fires, Taking the bare arms of another, When money was scarce, and debt unpledged; And maids of the shade, Overspread with ripeness, That grew to swell with their carelessness, Worked and peopled. The stone-flowered maple heather, Queensland cedar, and eucalyptus trees All stood within the forest; And every kind of flower that is Still blooms to this day, Before my eyes Where the prairie woodlands are sweet, With liquid diamonds of their own, Drove every way The raven is a bird without a trace On its gray wing; But near the gate I found it fed; For there, beside the stream That disappears in Kansas Pacific, It huddled down, Clutching at the leftovers of its cloth Till that very bird Flew up, in passing, from the sky, And ate of the bird within. When it moult the feather will not stay; The line will come That gives the bird its definition. But from breed of bird that breed was made, And strange to know That on ======================================== SAMPLE 12 ======================================== Not on the dark with stars unchained! When the dim womb or the heaven's egg Filled with life thou bear'st; If for a moment o'er The hour-old babe thy bed He fed, Look for the meads of Kártí by the steeps of flame, As a still saint's eyes survey the passing clouds that sweep away, Above, around, the ceiling's veil as doth the dead. For all things that are quick decay; And those shall fail who in this shall excel. The first M.S.S. I rose by right of my father’s line; The first that died that face my father’s life was moulded o’er. My mother bore me but my true-born son I saw At eight days old. My sons all I bred, While Virásha(50) and Sítá schemed, The quest of heaven to win. My first-born, I, when fire fell on Kakkon peak, with the Gods to claim Before the world, in fierce scorn was made, And I alone to die to know. Kauśalyá(51) stood with child, I cried, and left the fold, Ere yet an arm of tender years had bled, Where she(52) from sheaves of years had borne All bestial births and perished with the birds, Who, as they flew away, my harp and I To distant parts a living graveume threw, And my soul with them vanquished in despair. And still I look on Kártí’s lake below, By whose dim margin spread We see, as young Virásha(53) saw once, The heaven by thee ordained to look upon My sons that sleep and wear the tomb. And thou mayst see a while with me, Where’er thou goest, bright Kámmá’s(55) bands. For thou shalt love and learn to love The world that for thee, thyself, dost fill. Yea, thou and thou! - the prince, the lord Of six-and-six and sixty fields, Who does not gild with envy, nor dreads, The quenchless fire of Nimárshaṇ, Nor Níla lord of swarthy hue, His burthened with the pain and love Of Pandava and with Draupadme The glorious king of every deed, And Lakshmaṇ who his fame ordains To band in mere enumeration This glorious company; Their lineage from thee and Indra, The great ensample, and from thee. Say, dar‎'er one day of her Whose naked beauty was my dearest care, Who, belovéd of thee, was wont to lay Her life upon the pastime of her lord, The army to lead that military gift, Bear it, just foe, and help thy cause. Look on the wrongs which ever on thy state Burnt she and her with him whose state Thee too must bear, bear thou alone Harsh pains and odious weakness at one stroke. So shalt thou fall: for how should fit A like offence without design? Worth, power, kindred, bride, and kind beside, Count thou not their labours and their falls. Go to the bank, and thresh thy fainting ease To flow in pleasant time, for rage has meant For thee his endless rage with thee. I, as the time decreed was nigh, Thy wonted ardour with fruit is spent. Listen, and save! Thou hast suffered pain Enough, and wish for death are all. Canst thou be wroth with him, for he Exists and misery with thee, And thou not him wouldst be steadfastly? Art thou not wearied by thy pain And wouldst I wait for thee in vain? For his eternal calm and virtue’s grace Enjoyed at last what thou wouldst lack? The blame will be thine of every pain. Death’s victory should well-guarded thought Attend, of conqueror or slain, And life’s hard barrier to the breath, When you would not live, should he have fled. He to whom all minds deference are, Reverent and reverent, will he still, And prided love, with flattering strain Of purity, and when he would Bear me, queen of kings, of sway, Of every king each atomick part Doubts and fears, in time of joy, aloud, ======================================== SAMPLE 13 ======================================== Reviews As the mind wanders the universe is full of inmost thought, This next thy journey shall achieve the greatest renown. Reviews As with fancy's hand thought on airy regions folds of a dream it o'erlooks the present and future, This next thy journey shalt achieve the greatest renown. <|endoftext|> "For My Nescient Friend Who Has Esteemed Me", by Ambrose Bierce [Love, Realistic & Complicated, Romantic Love, Relationships] Sweet Friendship, sincere and blest, was at the same time my chosen love. A sunburnt face with laughing eyes; dark eyes with light begetting sweet love. No fleecy clouds obscure the steady star-filled sky. The silent solemn night dost see no tempest-lashed cloud-showers. Nor dance the wild summer wind in thrilling hymning throats with mingling tones of sadness and of mirth. No falling rain, either, tear the dark vapour from the fetter of dark arms. No violent winds weep the common sky and mourn the changing skies of old. As some white sign in smiling heaven I bid you adorn and help to live, As Love lent me, Thought lent me yours, both yours and mine thou shalt take when I cease to look or live. <|endoftext|> "Granerna", by Robert Drynon [Living, Growing Old, The Body, Nature, Mythology & Folklore, Greek & Roman Mythology, Heroes & Patriotism] When I open the door of the street, a mare in the dark, three legs spurring her, She trots, and I follow with light and with sound, And some olfactoral gonserly she flashes and leaps, Or dimly I trace the faint checking of a spell. Or she calls me in a night-soft dawning of the weather, From brackengind sunshinyhood and undergrey, And orit posting wild lanes with the dawn, Or where the trees grew high in a dark late forest, Where smallfaerie ai (the birders say) Was never and hairtra that sang till men grew old. Or I lie by a fire, and think of all you may know, (No thought of mine but only the thought of yours), Heralds in dim shades of it near, and dawn, A light on some flicker of palms, A light on your white linen in the morning, Trees and the morning milk, and orlichards, and sun lying wraith or in the night. Where grey dust of my house from my hands hath grown, The tender mat of my little earth, not a blade of grass, Nor bitter cockle of th' unripe fruit of that Town I was ta'en from, nor bitter beak of crow or seed of rook. Only the planet of earth, light and heat, My little pearling, as summer winds on, And the night raisin with stars all the stars that then were not, Still; only, loving, but the hell of little joys, Not least the little gem of all this gold, Where once light and life of my worthier self. <|endoftext|> "Kozik', the Leopard", by Robert Drytt [Living, Death, Nature, Animals, Mythology & Folklore, Horror] The leopard is a man in the wilderness For in his heart the awful guilt he hides; The lion is the only lion in the land And he comes in the pride of his nation to die. He has seen the trees that are torn and cleft For the seed is in him, the rottenness in him; For he is the seed, the seed of the earth in him. If he hath lived in the wilderness Where there is no gold nor ivory for the enemy, Where the lion robs no more, the lion is slain, If he hath lived in the wilderness, then he hath died And he is dead and the lion is slain and the leopard is slain. <|endoftext|> "On Writing Home", by Robert Drytt [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict, Mythology & Folklore, Heroes & Patriotism] I put a great question indeed, whether, as it is said The <|endoftext|> O, the mighty sunshine of your coming Left an eve before the dawn most wondrous All in your huge press through which to advance, From the highway your burning poker boards. Now, all the fishes and mariners O my brothers with the slowest pace ======================================== SAMPLE 14 ======================================== What's left you can eat In the little window box outside. I hate to think of Death Calling on me from within Those few Change of heart Window Welcome home to me So glad of me I almost think of So glad of me It's hard in the small Warm Wind to hear something Lit inside a mill oat the little pines at your scent Should I? Of me It's hard in the little window Of me? It's hell for a dream to be Like a mist in the flower I'm not really as easy to love outside My friends? What be saying? Maybe you've heard And you must go on the road Now You must stay To know your own strength You For you must rest at least Sit in the now cold empty while T the sun sighs down on the I'll go on looking out not as bright now it's a wood in the back From the trail from the trail from the trail from the trail My folds of I At your foot I At the foot What begat me <|endoftext|> "The Right Of Way", by Chisel Hindes [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Life Choices, Nature, Trees & Flowers, Social Commentaries, Class] I Desire is a reckless wilderness. Humming shades of green Curious in their black and white dress. What will they grow through the night? Between sticks in the dryness come Roaches of idea, By looks of candy that lays fall Soft nectar, darkening the silence. II We are born on the edge of nature. This is the environment our newborns— The exception to whatever Special rights that a tree has. We are overcome by forests. Their bugs and their roots Cloaking in our forests. If we grope around here, we are swallowed. Unwound by forests The whole city is swarmed. Trees fall in or are bitten. I am happy to be here As an exception that stands. Forest of the silence Night of the hot air Spaces all around me. III Woodpecker: Wak. His jaws stab the skin of trees, The carr, black, is riddled with them. I have grown accustomed to the wind Rocking, the sweat and the blood Slithering down my thighs. It gives me luck To be young, it gives me Luck even older than that. It stops my heart To have such a great scenery. I am very far from nature. I am fortunate that the trees do not Today, as well as they used to, Take away the ordinary and the Unthinkable and the daily, On our outskirts, all the time. We hope To live within ourselves, To have sight on our own. IV Lovely the zenith Of yesterday. Today Is another sky Innosense, dazed with the ocean And cloudy with wind. You Are a real deviation. To walk With you, the smell of the ground. V These are too few Nights At the edge of Nature. No-way-in-to-it-live-here Even here, in the dark. In these Dishes, the night Comely stills the next day And sleeps for Thefeathers. The tiny creatures In their autumn skin Dream about our feet. There is no Undo In the quietest place, One In the dark Mews, twig, Or brown Song In the fur Wolves, who is Snuggling up near. <|endoftext|> "I Shrunk the Sky", by Edidfixed [Nature, Fall] I shrined the sky for you In something less than stellar form. Nor star nor moon was credit Enough. I scrib ======================================== SAMPLE 15 ======================================== Anonymous It is the man in me That's always reining you in, Giving you life, Unlocks, lights, and knocks you cool With his arm on your waist. And he takes you off in his ship, And you are not afraid. And you say, "What could ever go wrong With two like you in one bed? Why not? My body lies Close to mine, and I to mine. 'Twouldn't take long. But a road's made Where love is as good as thought." So he ploughs the lane as if My man was just a road Cut into leather, and you go Too fast, and I follow on, And hope that you're not dead. And you laugh. And you laugh for love Are you and he. And you laugh. Your lips, your lips, he laughs in the lane. I hear a little plaining Of your own one laugh for him. And I leave with a sigh that night And your door to beat on. For the thought of you, a book, I am in the country. 'Tis sunset. It's the way To some little hills To-night the sun would stand High in the blue By the wind, the way-side. High in the blue, I'd say, His heart at me, so: "O I'm not cold." "I'm not cold." And then I'd sigh for him, "Come home with me, Come home with me." Ah, to me it seems a way Home's way to be, a home run up By the people's fever To its bitter end, by the people's way. I'm in the country. I'm on the windy way For beech and bramble paths 'Mid the bramble thickets Dark, dark deeper bramble thistles. And the wind thunders. There is the winding road And the wind, in gusts, at call Floods our ears with brass. I'll tell you something, though: The path of beech and bramble And the wind's call for me Is the song I sing. You see the roofs and walls And hedges as the wind Sound like the song of birds; And the thorn it is what 's singing; For the wind, for me, Is the wind's way. There's a song: the singing of God Is clear as my last telegram Or the thoughts of a child asleep Or the man who writes this Words he lights in the x-ray sky That shrink in the gloom Of the gates of Heaven To the trembling dots and whites Of the still Black Jesus And the fulness of the yam. 'Tis a long easy road For the wind to get From the things the wind blows on; And the road is not long When the sun wakes And the stars are erect And the fair ones bow, Leaving the stair and road The meadows and valleys For the sun to come through. In this still land of mine Which is not the world; Which is the watcher By the heavenly gate of birth And the close Of day and for the night Of dreams; and which let shine Familiar reflections of the soul Of scenes that never change, Nor the love at eve and the love at morn, For the wind's journey, For the wind's pathway, For the winds' singing, For the unseen manifold way, And the tribes that are not tribes of men, And the faces we cannot see. We are a whisper to the land And a breath on the darkling side Of open palaces and deeds of days; The rosy sunlight and the spongy dark air Sweet with the air of dead roses; And shepherds in the gateways and court-rooms And the battle lines, and the flowing tales, The questions of travel o'er, With their one tune over and over. What are we but a breath of air? A zephyr of a god to him? The shining price and the shining tale? But we are born of his breath, Of his endless birth, the sound of thine. And shepherds are we, of thee. And we follow thee, and what the rose And the sky and the earth what save the hills And the starry ages and the rivers to flow, When the years shall be old And thou goest home to thy adieu And the past shall blaze ======================================== SAMPLE 16 ======================================== Even so. But we have stamped The ravages of war with red, And shall stand red-cheeked with shame; Shall own with Vive la France that she Has paled to earth the high long just That conquered has; and, as we take Cities not our own and die Ere we've managed to say "French State off-hand, do you take me?" --No. We shall storm the enemy's wall And work the intricate fray In which even Allen's brigade Shall come down--and so say Davy, And say, I, too, from fighting fields Shouldered, what we do For France and brave Davy: And, if men get in each case The simple right to fight as he Fights, hot for truth and honor, How good a trick they'll pull To make the foe drop his head! Had he but been Born where his bride is flaxen yellow And all his life so mellow and so long, He might have slacked And let those that wanted To take it free The splendid air of Frenchmen. But he's steadfast--and why? because The cypress-limbed, golden-nosed Race were zealous for duty clear And clean, Though twice removed for fairness of face; For all be shrunk from slander, old As we are queer,--we whisper, What matter that the blush of beauty Weild radiance from the eyes? E'en if he damns the bosom Where countless queens are penned already Fingered, If that you've borne to a name, What fine boon is yours! The right, as ever, to have the word, And ye to know, And ye to flex your wings, they air wing! --'Tis the same in war, as in that wise We dosed the eyes of Saint Louis When Tambour concussed the Austrian, Or tied the strands of Parma details, And in ours. What then the issue? Ah me, I fear The prelate's blunt parsletail! 'Tis all the same--you move, the thing proceeds; The one's the other, though--it lingers like night. You rise or sink, swing to the counterpane, Shank or hook; our weights and measures shift At will. I have stood 'gainst calumniators In eloquent passageways crowded In the old Irish of rue Madeleine; And I have seen as awful as these Offered in this breath, or that one at The Hague, Where all the eyes are fiercest glaring To read in fine the tiny print, (I think them fates did something, To fan the prospect with a chill ambrosia, Like compresses pressed by shrewd pressure:) A second and heeding their awry And sweet impertinence and melancholy They even found a meaning faintly swell.) In spectral tones--stern fire and tremble, Or shriek of anguish if it chanced to match Their templar Pissers' hair--maniac of gray, The gaunt little silvestres they sketched, The violent spasm of immense desire In the grave shrew of mortality,-- (You had seen them at moments when he'd stir, Parted a tear in mood, and gazed up at the ceiling, Like the broad road at closing, gray dawn of day) The "magnifi- As t'other side!" In their wild masquerade and wectoring, They fool us like such loon-like dungs may fool you. They fool us with light duty, burden us heavy; They bless us but once a year; they never lift Th' encumber-torch from out him who bless- Saints' memory in this world's great salon; As often to the saun-gloom where they are gone To share the noontide's fragrance, send them back As slow and quick in wreaths of glory down. Of all the lucent gleams from out this world, You'll never see thate in its clearling vault, A color clearer, sunnier, more rich and rare. Where eonian gleams the sun, the dew outruns His autumn glow; what skies are these! Your sullen dark, no more the moon can feed On purple thraldom: fathomless, inharminish! The bud, the bud of mallet-throwin' time Tipped hither by brief spurt of juice of me ======================================== SAMPLE 17 ======================================== Halls of the world: where is the forlorn Lost city of a thousand years?-- The temple of love and glory, Of the early splendours! Where the marble of an ancient reign, Whose life is but a summer's day, Or a half-deserted twilight, lies. Such as its fate may be, its fate is death (Not all undeservedly called "dead!) Ere its time come; if reason were not blown At every sound; and the living eye Not weighed at every grave; it were but few Of the want of life to whom the earth is given, Nor was it safe, would I say what life Was worth retaining, save in spurs cut off By death's blind scourge, for human-beings few! Nor even less, perchance, did nature give Proof-of-existence in earth to years That clung no stronger than to petered out. For many there be who touch these two Ages and reckon the motion achieved Atoning; their desire is then that of love As deep to suffer as to pass and shine. I knew one like this; a mystical God Of privation in its cry, a hunger-mourn With footmark still upon its path, and wings Unflyable, as though wings were its move. Yea, if all be such,--your passion-air, A spirit in your mien, fair friend, And wings of pond'rous limbs, and eyes serene Like those the cock of Argos flies, And kiss in aspect servile at every blow. There is the agony that souls incur, Who fare thither--or rather, such I saw When mine was rapt by thee and was not more. The time draws near. The fire burns low. When earth was empty, did not these hours Tremble at the prospect, was not the sky Foredign merciful in its use? Each sought The occular dark, and stayed within For pomposity and prowling hatred, till noon Flared forth its fiery word. Now all Is void; still are the singular wanes the pair. You weep, you wear the shape most like. They wear the features. The others are Horizon-bound, on some immense loneliness. My blood! I am afraid; trembles the lamp; And how should I presume to tread these deep? To which side soever thou art set, or where Thou creepest that wild!--tremble, but to sound The music of thy cry,--earth should rouse, Now the muses, so torrid, flushed their hairs, They mete on Tyrrhenus, through the fire Doomed not to see again; and clapping lips By artists showered on the cloth exhibited On the Apennine, the gables darkly dim, Heard two who would not blush thereat. No more Their passion halts; they turn upon the gaze Which tempts too far; and lo! they make it Ring out upon the sight, as though Or at the touch of a word, the world's Courses had been opened in both a full To seraph-like golden shore. No more The blind hands, the gestures, the sound Of voice or hand, hold to their couch, so crude The hands are plucked off; and they are more Than raiment; a golden cloud unfolds, Shallowed o'er with silvery streams, and in it This woman, in red robes, lies breathing The noise of a trumpet, which is blown. The loftiest seat makes the conqueror; down Above the knotted bier the eager glory, Darkening the air, uncloses her lips, Shading her hair; she, the shroud, which it flung, And, as the joy faded, a dress of light Had linked and amplified the grace Which crimsoned it; a man so proud Had changed for a brother at the sight; a very Glory it was to sit in her grace, her star, Around the dew, in shadow on the ground; How shall I speak of her? Let it be The hand unharmed which the winged steel Of the Corjueltop cast forth so high, Seeking the air; let it speak to the shame Of Corcos too withdrawn, and in such gleam His conqu'ring hand shone upon her brow! How should the naked savage of the swamps, So shall the savage he; who found such store Of fiend in her, lay in the ======================================== SAMPLE 18 ======================================== I stand with God in the midst of you and the great thunder of everything you are and I look up to you and my eyes are your eyes as I still believe— even when our eyes look nothing like a father's or mother's which are linked by death like lips, which are not lips and which are linked by life and which are linked by love which are linked by you as in a knot as in—no I go with you and I walk with you, even as I try to walk with you like a man whose side is turned to the path, as death can strike even as light as light can strike and as the sun at the end of a lonely street as in a garden I can see the shutters of the leaves in the night— even the sweet calm adjusting leaves of the coming spring lift up and lift as the wind clothes them with sleep at the beginning of the way you hold and then drop from the world as the sky’s yellow planters drop each morning as the butterflies arrive in the morning without knowing which way to take that no light can hold you or as in a space no light can hold the best light ever held the worst light can be destroyed and light can die in this black body over your heart that so often is the single shining you. This is why I want to love you, even if I fall from your space all the time, even like the drop from a man’s bag, the moment I hold you in my hand, my eyes open, I am perfume against your body whether I am breath, even the green glow of the sumac of summer, even the taste of more than a woman in the shape of me. Father I cannot look at all at you (we are upright but our lower bodies draw back to strike) I cannot look at you— guts pounding the last of summer grass shaking in the ears of the looking-out father heart pounding the next step the step before next you go up and the next one sudden. <|endoftext|> "from Penseivers: Conversation (1)", by Ange Mlinkçi [Living, Death, Marriage & Companionship, Time & Brevity, Love, Desire, Heartache & Loss, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Home Life, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment, War & Conflict] —that my husband wants to make it rain He wants the territory and he wants a widow He has told me he will bear his weight as usual The summer storm will change the wail at nightfall but for all that’s coming (was) it’s here already (in the orchard behind the house) and they can’t get there His empty stone, a rack of grapes holdover rose from our own bushes I’ve eaten our produce so what’s the harm? We can’t bear for long to let this habitat be one without something in it for us Like music —the red grape filling the whole earth in which all love is heard not just by humans I have them walking in my chapels and they are the light of good food and for my children as for my father all is listened for not, you know, in our ears and for our own good They are teaching us use of spoken language so it will be visible like that song I think it’s good and sometimes they’ve asked us to sing (for they are good singers) When I’ve tried to sing it didn’t sound like my own I’ve been told back away from the subway and I keep telling them I’ve written to my ear (that’s my ear) a sound that sounds like our song that I like to sing and to listen to but I’ve never had a song by me I just know what I like and the sound of my voice will carry to the souls of whoever dies <|endoftext|> "from Penseivers: Conversation (2 ======================================== SAMPLE 19 ======================================== - word to say in the ham-crust From the edge of the pit-and from on high What the Chief said in his pleased surprise:- "Ow would you, Sir, just take a bite!" - but he lost the 't when he hept his hands, - and he covered both his ears, - and oh, but the rain-filled wind That beat in his hooves and his manes In a heavy-footed, heavy-hooved, Noised, for a moment, the ground like a flood. But he wept not, or if he did his fling Faint as the snow at Winter-time Shivered and fell in his hooves so flaid That the ponies beneath him struggled and slithered, - as one swift as they were his words shivered And the horses of the Master shook. He wept to the heart, and as he sobbed o'er Unclosed lips, like great tears in a dry month, A red man had no patience that I kent; And the sire, right high in the back-yard, down-rill'd For his biding was made ready with blood; And, as a-light he drank, the Night-God'd babble'd "Dere'll ye up a', you jad! Dere'll ye lappen a' the day! 'Tis three times winter! 'Tis three times winter!" - Spit-fire he gave us a breaking' warning; And I'll act the warden in the Eld's house When down comes the bonnetila As her waking from her slumber I' the ground. Wiltild heroes Or folklorians Wha share in a war That's won The sweeter sex's darling, laughter As of woe? Alas! alas! alas! In right good men Spared is the race! The years To make up the tale Have taken Allegiance To turn the page Of an almost blasphemy Of prayer. And for all these things and more I looked, for I might trace This history,--how low, In thoughtless oasis, thou linger'st on The sublime full-tone of all love's melody; Full throated with many a laughing moon The sylvan, heroic bard Where, as all life e'er loved him--peaceful sweet He lay,--and mid-letters round the world His wife thy roundelie tottered white; For well thy wonder did abide The man so long yet alive, And ne'er alone 'Twas thee, even thee, that she sung, Thy man so long forgot. Hast thou not seen, in heaven's bed He lay thee, in an hour of spring, A hundred leaf-shaking panicles Gathering in rapid gall? Upon their crests they frothed and swirled While, all the sun-lit woods Around were like a wide-roll way; And heaven, as the rushing speed Desired of his lyre, had sped, His language, oft-changing, seen To sudden cogged, or waning spell. Thus in a life whose merry haze Wander'd 'mid flowers and lays of peace Thou, thy loved, thy kind, thy crystal-drop, On earth a thousand times shalt see Babel and Jerusalem. How by a monstrous chain Men prey upon man This stuff is made To wind about the soul in, Or ever drown The living soul with song, Or ever pay, for pastime, forsooth, A changeful debt To the dull magi Who led the beasts to pasture, Or ever pay the debt On their foreheads with their palms. Why do we silence then The world? We call this flesh This flesh--the burden And head-work of a soul-- The body's course and wing? Are not the spirits body? Or, since soul and body were made One thing (lives evermore) Can soul ne'er be a bodily thing If not the body's soul? Men bow down to it, for its power Tastes sweet in them, and by it Judgment, and the good of things, Judgment here is ill sav'd, The body is the head's minister; For it is well known 'tis flesh --Pluck'd in days of innocence-- That gives our soul all pleasure; And should the fleshy gate Where angel sweets are house-denied, And foulest drugs consigned, Be the gate to ======================================== SAMPLE 20 ======================================== Is written in the idle Garner of the day, Who is she? the sun doth know. No thought of bringing to pass Her wedding songs; But all done so lightly, And so without torment, That she had delight From start to start! At her dance in moonlight Was this enough? At the soft delight Of touch of foot she'd stripped, That she could catch The tones of the chimes, Then with bold accomplice, Circle and centre each Little sharp echo of joy. And she as she was told Away would go with light step, Praise-song to close; A crown she would allure Of miniver, Even, all set, among The branches, about Two tumblers down; And she from side to side Of boughs would pore. And ere she came Down full, she'd rise, And on her glass Take off the shadow Of her foot, And throw it down again In dance on the grass. And now that this is seen, In solemn history, Our Abbots and Bishops, Where ere the cherry fruit, The jam, or the honey, The chinener is on, In wood of sharpness, And men would tangle The horn of knowledge, To sing the destruction Of this lady's feet; And poets, half to please, And half to vex, And through their rhyme, Glow with a fire, In such sort hold Their ink, That they can call life The best, Therefore here are four brooches, With six small teeth of gold; Wrought in the shape of a boat, And spade, or something Like a spade; but no vessel So truly noble As the fair lips, nor more sweet Than love's, And four times with the pen, Twice with the finger, To twine and curse These maiden's lips once more; And make the wit that before Was smouldert To scorch and smoulder Upon her teeth, Now I rise from out My old sleep, and sing Farewell, my lob, With some new didactic theme. And, though the damsel mood, Had time, in lulls reposed, By wet rocks wandered forth, One nymph with another now Can ne'er be said to bind Love's knots, for when I wake, They fall upon my mouth, As soon as Stella's gone! When fire is high, and dry The morning skies are clear, Then do I really deem Those rosy lips and cheek Mine for the coming year; And when those sables fade, Forgot are they. What more Can vade, till day revive? (To us the gods do make The right time, nor know at all What is done, till we return.) So love will fare, while time Comet, even as the fire Is kindled; and though 'tis slow, At last it 'gin to run Its world-worn milkies slow, That made me Stella's wife; but now That lovely blink is past, And I must be to my adams All fearful, dear, and comely; Yea, truly am I like to see Her take her other sable dress, 'Tis but a line, nor more (It is not to be presumed) 'Tis as the rest; but me I say 'Twere lucky to have shown Who ever was, or who yet May be, a sharp but true Discovery of the muse, And who, in that revelation, Had missed the mark, had found, alas! The Devil's in the detail! He rose, and slunk, and by the dam Was named. The miss was such That Fortune ne'er had hindered. The matter therefore was not That I beheld, and thus I went, To enquire the further. Bart., you be a citizen of Rome, But you, you be not a mere plebeian! In that fair, but sacred city dwell The senators are so few, that senators Have here their nooks, for members that any one Requires a nook to do his good hospitality; Those hip, and fain to play the neighbour, good for Heaven, the holies; they whom they relieve Have their jealous nooks. But senators, All their own chance, are jetting there in peace, As they who drank our Grec ======================================== SAMPLE 21 ======================================== Went to jail, in sober places, And came out cleaner than before. What shall I name The strange and lovely things that you Did with yourself do? Whereby yourself What's now dead of yore You're far hence, that far, now. Now that is past and gone Some nine centuries gone As these Anglo-Saxon days, Which might have some one alive to reap Their mighty harvest yet, Suffice it, that there he shall be Who loathes error and sun and bird, And tills with a day's will. I was there last night, and walked abroad Bearing the Sun and Moon, which lay Mixed up, so to speak, Aprii in one body, as in game Some ancient record, By much disordered, as I think, Because our records written down Are not type-typewrit. It is not these, I trow, That make us most bewitchted. It is the thought of things unexisting, That give the hag-on-back. It is that, behind the yawning door Of our "foundations," which in other days Received our yew-syllables, Which opening, in our back-stairs nook Seem'd a breathless stillness of a moated close, And there the drawing-room, narrow or elevated, And the twirled cringing smoke, Which went aloft, and didn't budge, and waved As big as a gust of Sunday afternoon Warm-wind'd over the canvass'd map, and spread Infinite and wavy as an "I," And then with sudden ripple, and wrinkle, And amid it all, the Sun Lit, and if all such things of are one At all, then thee, as light-wave, wisp of mist, Blended twixt moon and sun, And within thy sudden surface-shine The Moon over-lay; And if of thee a sham we're saing, The sign of the confluent Flood Shewing the promontories of Thee Which stand certain, no-man's-land To last were a charm of a sign (When the world's bills failin' to call Their particular selves from a bush) Which totum motuum Of him at the double rake of the Master, There dwells in his world of Shades and Shadows The self-same thin-thighed Man, Which never drew up the thickness Of skin to an addled gum; And though the skin so thick that the deflated, Stupid tumid thing is, draw backs and draws From the ungovern'd point; and so draws round, Drawing back, drawling back, draws round, With successive, sequential, drawls To the back of the skull. And down each prodigious, crack-thicken'd, Soh'd and claustral skull, and down each prodigious Full centriped on either side, As the lunar plexus to a point Stretched back to the One Infinite, As that the circumference was to that Which no man knows. Some think I mean Lunar rather than Lunar plexus. And some of them doubt that, being three, There was a bust on either plexus. Now that I think of it, Since the Moon anoble be Attended, like the Sun, (The first not bating, but a-drawin' Widward the horizon, whence of course The second was advancin' Immanuel-like, in his hunches,) I'd not be surprised, If e'er she broken Like a crucifix, or keep her usual Manner, and look gilded, and draw back From us, as other satellites do, Since Amicus palterin' With the world tells, that 'a all's Collast lice death;' The sason, the thunder, and the mould, Death, eat live bones' breakfast, And ate the blubber from the fish; And now, I'd not be astonished, Nor rage much at her, for 'damned big they're As ever be.' For I don't care whether she have wings Or no wings, or round or no wings, I only mean the heart eaters' diet Are probably worse than most men's, For all they have to eat is holiness, And flesh, with all the bones and cream They've picked out of flannels, And, bread that's picked but from any bread But un ======================================== SAMPLE 22 ======================================== ADAM (handing them a sheepe-shell [out of the case]), Take it, And cheerfullest you. And lov'd the spring, With loving lip and cheek; All the others grow wild, Change, and blowe like a flittell; Love his shell, You muste not, never bee frightde, Make or fill your rouge. And here's your term, And here's your shallop: Mote I your worth Surge tit, Be sprightly, keep your hull ere a spinne, So hom a day, So long to wait As you be Towarde the shore, Or fere from day to day, Where you are certes sure To bee withall Lookt for oft, Not as the best, As my consort; Then out with all your pomp With your brakelewe, As ye sit all the while, To show and shewe Your worth, and lookve the ground, Thinking much; Let your praise sound much: Here's your case; Such words, But hereat, You must cope with some Fruitfull berry Far to hand, Or you are none; For why should not the powre Of all you can say, Your rattle or ere Doth such a salve give, To be drent, Saving on the pit, Vnlesse in werhips? There is an acre whereof my thought is A spring to drink, And on my throubleth fresh charge; And therefore, when I have that in I live, And make no skill: But that other one Seems inly flustered When he hath so much drink no more; And of his bed straight droopes All the worse, But best is proof: For drink hath many bridges made there. Another thing yet is strange, He knows it, and is hee: I'm weary of my weare And this one so young, That hath lief my life; And it better were I right In my first years to dye. I'd content him, in loue, That so much beauty hath; Weare in hand I by loue wold; He's such a swerd as I can He are not wiss to be, And could so well endure As one, that hath them taught And such by their accord Sith, and vouch left to do; But neuer so. There is nothing new under sune, That is not seen of them that lye; Their life is the life of death; And who that looke up to the skie Of heavenlie, leas, witherdome is. The braue bodie with youth and beautie I inspire so with desire Of sitting in his face To read my thoughts, the more I see But one in herelf, and I in loue Learn of her sight; so I will learne The memorie of his face. Ancestors borne in a tee'd-up day Both of one houre; for one is Sweet as the other So unequal of versus face Which of the twain there be not one No more remembrance Can I have of either I dare not descry Of him that is the other That is in his place of power, For both one face so one Which two different things make; And both at times compose and discourine So oft from reason's bounds They fall down fall down To devouring flames of woe; But whereas the other so clad As might have been his apparel Of Saturn's stuffe, may be dress'd To pass belike in May, The onely grounded, sedate And sober eare, not high and wild As if himselfe were full of game, His fellow's breath no more Is knowne, than his age fained, Whilst this of three score cloatheth him With maiables, that are all Halfe barbarous, and so fat As in each other is meere The worms that dig this wold. Not so his stile. This I wil say, that his age is So farre his youth distinguished; And his decay so sweete But maketh the youth of it, That whilome, and where it was His nature, and where it is As is the air that whilom is Of divers passiones, yet where But in his vis ======================================== SAMPLE 23 ======================================== choose the wrong, Which seems the lowest base, Yet holds the most in the end; And, oh! that breath, which with a kiss Entombs and chains the foe; Or, with a look that stuns the soul in sleep, Points to the lowest line of hell! The sun has passed to his desire, The moon to her grave a guest, And thou hast found the pathway of men As lowest verges of men; As lowest sound, they're lowest light; As lowest thought, they're lowest-sund; As mist, they're lowest star! No haughty place of rest is known To man, but our outer hell Within, and limits hard to bear, And taming well that fort. Be constant, and hide not then The blazing stain that scorks the air; Nor murmur there, nor shun to dwell As cloud in air or refuse Which pinches and hides the sun. No rest in desert, nor in foam, But to the shadows cleave and shrink, In the quick wood and the lair, The horrible damps and the day. Yet have I seen the brave and bold Ride, now blind, and now dead, Upon the fresh forgetfulness Of duty, for a gain, Down the long path of the morn. Oh, soul, ride on! content! 'Twas worth thy scorn e'er sipping Of that sip of sin, my friend; To have spurned our smallest good, Or wagathered the rudeness of care. Ride through the journey, Thou seest! And breathe, O, cry out to it, 'Pride Is a worm, and is not loved.' Thou wouldst ride for my sake, friend; For, friendless, then who has show'rs, That might go with me? But, friendless, The win is heavy, but is sweet. Poor should be the piece of art Which in a single part is bat. Thou seest, the load will ne'er light, The load will ne'er be four. A mufti poem, O friend, Is best to start, for a mufti! What art can do, can do alone, With least labour and most care. And there, whatever may betide, No grief can ever betray, For the soul hath a path, and goes free Hence, till there comes a re-capt by strife, The path is that thou hast found and used. He who wields has every power, The art thou'st ta'en eschatolical; A path for the mind which is most clear May ne'er be clanged in, clanged in, And as plain's the way thou tak'st it, As the eye seeth, so is the mind. 'Tis thus that in the gallery, One below another, a train Are standing, as the Fool which raves Beneath a foot that flitters, man. Oh, judge not too with care thine work, Look thou and listen, for the same Is written and read too quickly. While by art thou art enamoured, With the first worship in thy youth, Know thy craft's mandate and its decree Is the world's eternal motion. Its price is paid, and thou shalt see The hunt, the hounds, and the mountain, But hark, it runs to the hoof's sound, And sharp with the stone it comes. Thou knowest that wandering field Warmed deep with thy thoughts of peace, Where the path lies open and fair, And all the bounteous gifts about, Is shown a sower's fields and far. Dost see thy trouble flee? Weave round thyself in the free, Fears of thyself thou shalt disown, And do such work in thy youth, That thou the world's great work should see, As the Father did in his son. It is the praise to do our best In sphere of actions free from strife, The goal to cling to, and to let The hind's blemishes mar the whole, The perfect story to impart Be true, true as the whole we are; And ever through life that truth shall be Which dies with our last breath and the hue Which passes like a cloud the sun's height. It is the aim to show how things are, In word, in book and pencil, grandly written With brows that a man's aim could wrothly shake And lips ye never would suspect Was really ======================================== SAMPLE 24 ======================================== Mightily as good our vain boast: <|endoftext|> My little dandelion, friend, Love thy green skirt in the June-field-shimmer Of its vivid life, through which, is thought, Thoughts that in art are not considered: A green insect of a green-girdle, Whose talent's green through all its glee. The way that thou dost wear Is how in art is cast Thoughts through whose zone;--these be good. Yet if thou in this are caught, He began with thy frozen way, For our light was then so bright, We discerned far thy beauty in it. Still art thou there, so fair, A while, from art's realm; When, like a moon of stars, Thy frozen life thou hest. Walking, to himself he spoke the word, As he who felt her wan power, recall'd, "O dandelion, dandelion! Thy root is sore and thou art dead. Ere night should close the window down, Bore a puling north wind to thee." Then on the stage-door Victor sate All his six score handmaids, all that heard The doctor, more than the singer's name. "Gentle masters,--victims,--quietly Thou and thy lady prepare Your morning compôtan. May it show A shadow on the stage;--forever Thou art a child,--her slave,--mighty she Is anxious to have her dressed." Far other school-boys, gone before, With voices shrill enough to jape, In mockery of the old master, Are nigh at hand, to greet him now. 'You see that old doctor? well, I have known A soul that could complain as much. What is't the doctor's house to her? I think not of her house, I say. Madam, we'll let him alone, And thus with some few others chat To watch the dancers; but at morn We'll search him out;--where, I mean, Whose body does he not wrap? But not while he is speaking here, I think, my lady. My lady? Ever I'll bear The trifler in disdain, But not at present. Oh, all That seducing art, Ere I was young! God mong My thoughts the shrill horror know, I will not more to-day, Address my fair; no more, Not now. Not at court the holy company Slights this thing; Lord, I am young, Young still! I am not worth the thinking. He Has thought of all his life. I will be silent. I do not like To look at him, for I hear him alone In this room, talking with his own head. I do not like his voice, nor the air Of him who sits by me here. He seemed To mean to teach of love;--yea, was it so? With love and music he has supped with me; Ah, I see now. It was vain. At nineteen years he takes me by the hand, And one that was softly fledged, A moonless cloud,--the love-light of my soul Doubts the touch of summer after-spring. With palsy-tickling seasons gone and gone I am young as when first I saw him, And men are worshipped,--they who catch the breast Of some one little fennel; They only seem to weary, they who are fed By frenzy of desire, rapt before the altar; Yet they who change with the seasons and mimes Too often die with the changing year;--Lord, I am poor! There is no hand to help. All thought is dead And cold like husk and rime; no faith or will Is it, to keep a secret here, my heart, Like one who lies and wishes to be more free; Like one who never was more free, yet wrenches more; So it begins to haunt me. "Could I be free?" Even so, could I be whole? Alas! my slave. I cannot be more whole than I am now, And vain the hope. O my mother, O my mother, Little one, too light to please you now, There is that I must own, even yet, Little of power and no honor; My talents are for others employed, My life I fain would quit. I am content, I tremble still to try ======================================== SAMPLE 25 ======================================== Play to the fiddle, boy! Though they shun me, yet oft they are found Sheltering and shielding me; And oft from round the dreadful can A heavy iron ball I hear, Which, armed with a flourish, they send Hastening to pelt me. When the Dark Summer-Time doth return, And the tired earth has heard the complaint Of her long Winter's suffering, I will send again, and many times, Amid the wintry scenes, Away to coast around, A song which the Dead will never sing; A song of the Winter! a song of the South! O! the earth may bend, But the South shall ne'er give way! You don't understand! For a man like you, with your Intellectual aspect, The heaviest dose you could take Would not produce the stupor You've got, you Snow Man! You're glowered like a Turk; No one to you can give The weight of a Cinquefezza-- All the guns have ceased to shoot, And the road is thronged with camp-bugs, "The way," the Doctor says, "is Circ. One. I must rest to-night. You stay here. I'll see you ..." And, out in the street, he winks with a devil In every cap and gi'lum; But the good-bye is firm and jolly To a man of "that". Ave, ava.--Drink water! What is this stultifying? What the first drink that will burn us-- Burn the same? Go to the mess-trough, And have some soup. It is not a single drop I'm about to swallow, I'll tell you You big bugger, now you're all Like Mary, And throw me another one. You ugly doodle-- Humble doo! A good egg-peeled body Dodges, and dives In the slippery pond; Yes, go to the mess-trough, And have some soup! The good man's so fat, he can Do without his leg; An elbow and a crutch Hitch his adopter, And what's like keeping A person in a vault? And he's so fat, you see, He can do without his arm; A stick for a gun, And what's the good of An arm or a claw? He takes the tainted honey, It sweetens, it's sour; It flows inside his throat; So, he's a jar-- Oh, but he chokes, he breaks The sower on the shore; He takes, it turns, it flows; How can he bake a cake Who's still so aquiver? It feels as if the jade That finds its taint in the pores Was a worm's bit of skin, Or as if the duck-billed Sang, and was merely The duck's gizzard. If he was a prince, Why has he not A-broke your head And blown you away With the puff of a gun? And he could smash you where The mountains are! The shepherds, one by one, Drew near to know What gave them such a peep, As the poet they had wooed Danced in a mustard-pit At a bonnet without one feather; And the poor, dear lumps of it Drew so fine and close, The ladies hardly could peer The cheeks so round, and the cheeks That are the same colour as a grape. The shadows of dark things That he had leaned over so long And watched with such silent care For their sake were gone and red as a rose. And he was that marvellous Whose name they all must learn For the poetic benefit Of a prose poem of such rare Recreation; And he told them of all his fleecy Dower, what joy of his choice Was bound to it, and with what Taste of a wild fancy, and how, The year long, his life had been melting Into minutes of such perfect Victory that now the horizon Was one gold-rush, and the mountains Its gold opposite, and all the landscape One bubbling gold and the sun-beams Quiet, and the trees, that gaunt tusks A-tremble in the sun, A lordly shadow, so soon fled To the tangles of luxuriant green ======================================== SAMPLE 26 ======================================== 'Tis in the arts of love that I own Our real destiny lies;-- Why sport with love or fear, Harm or terror reigns alone! I look on Love's truth in plainness: 'Tis Love's plan, and Love's means Bid me trust, and dare, and go; Beating the dangerous track Like champions, striving for a prize, With the bearers of the gospel, Bearing the light, the living word Of grace to one who suffers wrong. Have we not power to feel Love's fire, As those who dwell on earth, Who sense the torrent of the yearning Of Love for that beloved one, Whose eyes become luminous As dew in sunlit streams; As the life of life impelled, And move as living that must die, If He who reigns above In justice reigns the spheres! There! from her, from her lap, The wounded angel goes To what, it might seem, is His time to use as his Decreed, by thee, far-sought spell! Oh, could that heavenly hand- Fall on my soul, and hew Here in the city of my doom! Oh, for a test, a forewarning, Of whatever may befall at last-- Yet, as ye pass, I pray That ye impart to me a gift Ere the heavenly footsteps shut! Have I not seen the power? Yes, but by thy star: Whose radiance gilds the loftiest In hearts where no regret For the old world's unworthiness Shames them to love too far The new, the hidden way Of Love's whole new domain. Oh, she is divine!-- She, that I now behold! No brow of sorrow, or long unbroken, Was ever among the sons of men, As mine is, surely, since the hour That took me to this Inner King, And he is not dead. The forts, the moons, the rains, The shapes of men, the thoughts of men That hail from night to night, The earth that heaves upon the tides Of time, the heaven that heareth The echo of its own heav'nly tones And as these note the murmurs of the sea, So I, O so help me God! can feel At last, if so I may, what love And what omniscience of love And what triumph and what omnipotence Are not for my case: not for mine To build on-looking, however; for mine Is not the eye that sees, but he that sees; And I can see not, but feel what can see. Thy scepter, mine is of the fruit!-- What care I for a nebulous field Whose lights and shades mine may fear to be? No, Thou! For naught does matter, Or more or less, since Thy wisdom say That which works best diction in the heart. Not all, but most: O Light so rare, Who, waiting on Thy perfect sound, Hast in mine eyes created sight! Whose light, whose love, so near, Hath begotten love, for the whose Creating light the Light "He" that was, O do thou but nod with such a voice, Thou leaf of vesper, plant of ripe With ivy on the dark fount Of Thy sacrifice!--The sacrifice! Behold, I catch the music of Thy word, with vision free! It is Thou that didst visit me Silent, as if in trance. Yet, oh! I saw The love I felt, the joy Of hope, and grace, and bliss, With Thy ministration blended, And heard, with joy, Thy word, As idle sounds the wind In a strange arctic land: 'Though slow thy skating beam, I found at length my home In Thee alone!' 'Or let me deem, if such do prove To be Thy shaping-place, It were well, as when at first The Word was breathed, ere yet The creation reached Of its true state: The arch, the crag, the steep, The lofty mountain-snow, The steeples crown'd in light, The sun in splendor; The little moated well Was not, nor was the man Who, half alive, near by me, Did from his death-bed look on me As his last meal do me, And said, 'Poor brother, thou art dead:' ======================================== SAMPLE 27 ======================================== Barney's gone like an old dry casement That’s ready to fall apart. They’ve been toiling for years To raise the bank only to discover It has rusted, thus Do you But you have to trust your luck, Peter, Who always’s been right. The glint of your razor glowed, The beat of your tread seemed like drums Walking the middle of the street. By now the hairs are standing on their crowns, The doorkeys are rattled in the lockers, The landlord has a simple order for you, Just come up and get the d’oh’d. <|endoftext|> "Rebecca", by Carol Frost [Living, The Body, The Mind, Love, Heartache & Loss, Relationships, Home Life, Men & Women] As I walked out the door I couldn’t help Seeing the shard on the railing Anew’s glimmer, so simple, so small, So tiny, the blue-black water I’d had to cross years ago If I’d turn away. I took it For my purpose then: to get away As I had to get to Gary. Makes a crisis sacred, A move I do, to Rachel. I meet her as though I were not me She prances, the broken person She is, who holds the cold like my Reflected angel, heaven Looking for her own. I want, before I am the time, To take it back. A desire, a desert, a vastness My lover as she is my enemy. I can't trust her when she thinks with New bite to her tongue, a point She chooses, always, so well. She comes to me as I am to her, If I have a mother, and the baby Is Rebecca. If I have not Lived up to this all my life, do I not Live up to it here? What though I moan in the dry air of now, Knowing how I may have been Strangled by gods but I am a Being who breathes? <|endoftext|> "Rhapsolic", by Richard O. Moore [Living, Health & Illness, Relationships, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Poetry & Poets] For the doctor I don’t know the word “idiot” Call it wildly, or falsely, Like y ‘hispanics’ What did I think they meant <|endoftext|> "Solo C,", by Richard O. Moore [Activities, Eating & Drinking, Arts & Sciences, Music, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] 1 Turn down all the blame Come up all the love Get hard inside me Make a man out of bacon Weave me, mend me, unite Climb to fuck the statute You play my card <|endoftext|> "Titanic", by Richard O. Moore [Living, Death, Activities, Eating & Drinking] 1. In pool of salt Some Some Some Some Crawl up to it Some Some Some Some Some Walk up to it Some Some Some Some Some Stand up to it Some Some Some Some Some 2. Sat on a stool at home If there is any but you in it Sit up on it If you swim in it If there is some in it If your father is in it If there are no other people in it Then some more of it Weigh all the things that you are worth Who takes the place of you in it Take care of the old ones that are there Be born of the things that are in it Be to the house as close to the place of the old house As you can be Come out of the old house and from the old house's head Now Then Some Now some Then Some Some Now all the rest of it Then some Some Some Now all the rest of it Then some Now all the rest of it 3. When you get on the highway A kind of strength goes with you You know what you’re to do You keep your head down and act alone You take the time but do what has to be done You do not linger on You are not weighed down with what was done before You make the old house mind free And you do not sit up with what was done before You go to the next house You keep your head down and go ======================================== SAMPLE 28 ======================================== Love is the most delicious kind of bondage. A little walk, such as we need, And the trees and lawns beneath Will be lovely for your sight, And all their subtile tapestries, And your tender eye-balls delighted Oh, 'twas just the like of dream I dreamt Before I knew my love was mine! This doesn't prove I am made of the best, Or that after the sun is set, You must rise early and spend the day As I do, Shivering and waving, to the beat Of the waves on the beach. An innocent error, you may say, But I have burned up so many hours I should not have burned for anybody's kiss! It's just been blind. This bearded side of me, you see, Like a fossil, holds, like an oasis, An image of her, no more, no less, And neither time, nor folly, nor prayers, Nor all that's left of those who forgot, Nor all the questions that ever puzzled men-- Nothing solves except the mystery Of how the soul arrives at Love? And will it leave a trace Of its own kind on the countenance That resembles hers in so much as it wears A layer of dust, or a film, Not happy, as it conceives, beyond the power Of a purer self to find In the blank space in the heart, and still Does its work to save it?--this Is the universe of Heaven, we feel, Where dust remains behind the great works Of the last sun's and of her. O universe, O sun! earth and air, Far, low, and near--the body the same, What if the heart of Heaven, like mine, The whole of my happiness was shaken clean Like a sheet of light, and shake and be still! Nothing would touch me so again, Nothing remain, nothing be. What is the commonest thing to us, Eyes, so dim, that hide our eyes from day? I will not say I love you, not I; But I wonder, day by day, which is the same. What is the commonest, That is like a night, the placid face Of woman, face of man, with loving eyes? The silence, The strange, the healing music of the gray? But there's not much left for me here When night and darkness talk like wind and rain, And spring and spring are as evening and sun. What's to remain--more than so much which Would never linger,--sighs, and far, breath-shaken prayer? What's left but these? We are like to more than much, Like much like to much, and live, and love, and die. Love's old fiery sunset, with the dusk, Over the soft-voiced valleys now, is at an end; To-night, the moon is true, And the stars the sun will never give us o'er. But not to us, now not to us will stay The heaven-attained peace, nor long endure; Our night, which comes to us as calm, Is something less than our bare feet treading still, Less than we would ever know of it Else, if, coming at all, it should fall From Heaven to us, like any other day, True to our hearts, and blind and simple to our eyes. I said, I said-- You may not guess What I meant. No word was ever more like a word Than the kind of song you heard--so low, so sweet, So low, so sweet,--was more like an empty rest, Than the whole rest, like an answer low and low, Like the spring song that comes to pine-and-thicket, Like the all-shining, all-satisfying moon Which is a lowing Lowewel in our hearing, Like the peace which is the soul of all night. When did we get so far? Ah, this is the way: This long mellowness, This low, and this low, and this faint plearing, This art and artlessness, This yielding and stretching Of the soul to God, and its heart of rest In the grace God yearns after, the dark night And the broad-winged day, and day in the dawn, And low in the dust which then betrays the head, Oh, pure of heart and clear, and tough, and grand, Our own Arthur! Humble little scare, That held your breath to King Uzzan; ======================================== SAMPLE 29 ======================================== In the shadowy shades by the lazy lake, An impromptu concert of spectral birds, Dipped in the transparent turbid pane; And pure Ovid here, and a quick glance at The museum roofs, in live view, Deep in their shadowy depths the murky shadows lie, And, all agog with darkness, love and glee, Along the verandah, like spirits, hover; Athwart the turning horizon, like eyes Fair and dumb, long looked out, deep gazes made For you, and only you, in the sphere of dreams! The grove of ours, by easy rides outsoar'd, When the blind ancient wrote that night were passed, Still let us read, like his whom John testified, There is life in the ashes of the ashes! And the cloister beyond, like the piping fox, Greedily rule as we all around do, Beyond the boundaries the unobservant spinner Passed, and wrote how there's life in the ashes of the ashes! By the simple road, and close to the house of God, From the bulk head lift the tracks of Judah's fountains, Down to the sea-shore from the beach descended, Plunged the prints of it in the sands of memory. Straight to the hills and plains, (as some sprit was shot out of those,) Down to the toe of the leading edge of the mountains, Where our life's's pool was left for many a season, Let us sing the groves again of our olden country. All for new life, that life which discards mortality! Sing the future with us, sing it with us, Thro' the world around and beneath us! The Governor wrote that the administration Contended that it had been injured, By the proposal of Mr. Thomas Dun & Co. That is, the stone barge which rolled at the state council last winter, on the plan of the Governor, And which he wished us to lay for a lane in the festival of spring, in the summer of dun. This administration contended that it had been never thus reported, in any other of its fourteen years, either in its active or dormant season. The imagination, according to them, was, like the hydrophobia of Don Juan, Left with the spring for the duration of the drought. I have a garden, and a patch of it; One tall plant among many plants tall, all hidden in fescue. No one noticed one of the flowers but myself; it keeps many resemblances It will color with its kind a gingham dish. No one noticed the story that is told. The other things kept their seasons; some hours Are free, it is thought, to tell to those who have never found their secrets. "O God!" they said, "To hear the beauties of the human face "Without being ourselves!" Arouse, then, George, Within his cell the inmost marrow of his bones Was seething with these plagues. No fiction made them real. What do you do, Pall's noble harem, By the solitary day, fails to tickle the imagination! You show us how nature makes men; and besides, what does it profit you? A few goads will crawl And the lessen your virtue by their sting; For the paltry fire-wood that they bring moves a man toward riot, And frighten the heart into insanity, as it were, Since no one can set a bolt alight! I trust, Marriage may be been a case of ill-natured, and I blame no single individual, but the condition. This, in my humble excepting office, bring I to the original from the Fox, the other much admired By Thomas Gray, as ours was by Eronze d'Aquinchide. From a comfortable bed I learn How the fog of deception in effect is breathing on you, and will goad you on until you cross A threshold into the sun. How often, as I held you in it, you seemed to pass A picture of a dead peopled heaven, for my own bitter fever I write a prose theme far harder to learn, than for its characters I write too many poems not to disfigure the pasture of some Tory earlier than human, who would form a randon current, and might sink the heavy cart of his verse; And the author must learn the cage as the nest. To the ======================================== SAMPLE 30 ======================================== loss? All the while, you voice on the wing, you spend a living in sight. What you breathe is growing stiff but we press on, like the birds curling and feathering to light. Farewell to the pleasant hills, the livery-streaked dress of roof, the call-boxes, all white, as slung to save them from the mists that fill the meagre world we play it safe, all the roses waving in the uncertain sun. They all lose, but the heart survives. We gaze, fingers folding, top, toe, at the waves of a solid fin, the night-on-the-golf-course sunlight interior and back. I cannot tell you the vibration I felt at that triumph, the sheer speed with which I knew it, that feeling: I have wings and I can fly! In pure rapture I knew what no one ever dreamed, she who calls the forest wood, the low planting that she must do, the lonely sapling with his vast flower. I cannot tell you how soon my wings were alight in the blazing oak, how long I hoped, the clear blue sky above me, how bright my hope. I came, light on the grass, leaving my lonely place and entered you, took hold. All the world my captor rose up from the undulating earth, rising from the drink of mortal death, from what is mortal, earth-born, no wings necessary. I love you, bird, a land of suns and moors. I love your cold eye, that true blue, stained with my own grief. I will find a place for your fair feet. I have done with words that would obfuscate the truth, or mislead: for I believe the truth you are, you are me, everything that is in me. I pass through life that which has been made to be. With whatever, you make me whole, speak to me, bird, from many a room in your golden throat. <|endoftext|> "The Children", by Eloise Anderson [Living, Coming of Age, Activities, School & Learning, Philosophy] He went to bed at ten. The teacher came in and was mad. I sat down, too. I thought I'd been called on. But the mad one was. "I want your help," I said. I knew it was a prank. But I said yes anyway. That's how it all began. It ended with feathers, each crying into a thread of what it had been. It ended with — well, you know. There were no answers. We went to bed. They stayed up all night, that is. The teacher came in. I didn't have to close my eyes to know she was coming. And it was a trick, that I sat down, and she stood there at my head, the faultless mirror, the elevator door was open. I had no idea who it was. "You remember the ship, don't you," was how I introduced her. That's when she found me. I had no idea what she meant. And the ship? The dark raking a pond in little green waves, the tiny boats. The little boats. And my mother was there. She said she never told me that before. "That means a whole lot to you, don't it?" she said. "I'm not in a position to think I understand." <|endoftext|> "Night Call", by Elisa Medin [Living, Coming of Age, Disappointment & Failure, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Nature, Animals] I thought about you all evening and through the night. What made you to love you to do it, what made us impossible to see, and with each other— not interested. All night I went to bed where you shyly, shaking your violet flowers and dancing anxietyless, not worth a protest. You, in this white estate, above a patio, the stairs leading up to white marble, the falling water to the fire, a house, your dear head on my breast, you, and me in the rooms upstairs, only you, whose wings tempted in, the birds up in air, who smiled at me in your scent, who stayed with me at dusk, when ======================================== SAMPLE 31 ======================================== Of Antikycles and Archie-dactes The band one day to send upon the mace of Antiochus. While the Greek Antikyclemites in his incessant ear-shamanism Represents the Adoryadæ, Indefatigable obstinate, And the Plutarch's Julius and his Mama. Then he will be gone for ever; To the silent hema, And the olla of the thin-edoed, The minstrel king of Panmure, Among the marveling brainless crowd! Who hold in hand a wampum knife, To be known the next day by the wind. To deck himself at midnight, When he sees the double pole, And the Curetes a sobbing harp, Fingers the heart-rending trouble From the Cadmean horizon line. Hither, from Byzantium, My man-lingering wayfarer went, Now pining ever henceforth, Alone with me, I rejoiced to see, Neath my roof not mingled with the blubber-tree. Keen, the voice of one I love, Distinctly questioning thus, Chants Ie zeus for purpose denoting, I love to hear the grub-gold rend, For zeus zeus, thou hast him sold. I love to know the animal-courses, What works and purpose holding, And had he not his mortal griefs, I lived with him at pleasure; No trust then in man's heart should be. Happy those he loves who knows our sovereign, Vigilant, vigilant and cunning, Weeding out the future bent, And hiding with hearts ever blest, No mean-show of love and duty; That he himself loves the spirit Yet care and careignity Would bother and fret the soul of him All of a churl, who comes of earth; And you should be of us, who by a chase For flocks along the wayside-rong, Have loved of worth the tracks leading, The secret and the thinkings keeping. And we of worth have made the most of breath, And that rarest of sweet lives, By drawing up some good, which soaks For many hearts the early toiling; Else lightly may be given the shears, It were a lesser price than choosing. If he had wiled beyond his wonted day, In his good nature true, man, So spent by toil of many porters, Worthy wine for thought should brew; For 'tis the race to ill being drives To thy full life's, man, whose native heaven Is love and life eternal. Had he biled on his own as an ass That drives a donkey girt round the habit, He should never have bought for a slave; But he was bitted, and I, taking rhyme, Biling him to be the queen's palter. But love moves not as God moving ice, And without sense of what is might best, It were all folly, mercy and all mirth. I Love but a little; would to the highest light's counter That heaven be nigh, and earth be destin'd; For truly my Love I seek to display, In token true and constancy. If she from her own strong base, the ground below, Stand fainting for me all its weight of sun, How small so ere now my love's confess'd! Bright in the former question of her grace; Now little care I, little as I may; God knows how much of wine beneath the cheek, Whene'er my Love halsia red. For really I loved her first as young; Then loved her better as old, And no less ncear'd; but should I tamed be The wonder-working woman, I should feel As much love from her, as ever boy, Who though he hath no powers of handling joys, Hath no stripes in love till love grown old. Strange is the throng of them, how shes dressed In sampler by her fancy, yet seem Most fair, though cold from head to foot and often Drenched in tears; and they all press in a line Up forebore, and fold Godoping 'neath the forelock; They in new-cut overalls; Bright pallets and chimmeled features And big chynster neck. Some have big ears, some eyes as black as mine; Some eyes are grey, and some red as wet; ======================================== SAMPLE 32 ======================================== Has less knowledge, less prudence, than the peasant To whom this conduct is strange and new. The old man shakes his forehead, like a goitre, And upon himself leans a complacent ear, Waves the hollow palm, and vainly desires 'T is mine also. 'T is no very panegyric, My Poet is not artist nor physician, And what can these be, in such a chance? Then door shuts with a snap, And I watch and wait a black convertible. Death is a ship, from which no one returns. No one returns to tell the story of her To the higher chamber, which is a court Of judges, sometimes in lieu of juries. The court knows that the thing is ill, And waits for her coming, in which case it bawls Harshly and peremptorily. She now bawls: I, therefore, shall make it a truant. There is a prisoner who Has been adjudged an illegal democrat. Him, whose name first flashed upon the world With a large premonition Which told The world, and proved him sure Of the divine origin of things, He had bent aside With a foolish vaunt. Death, that he might not Fail to seize, Marshalled his Greeks of Defeat. This Court Sent him to a hazel wood, where, with twigs and berries, He bore his enemy down, The persecuted back, and left him there Half devoured, by presbytery, So obvious, that the birds had told The dismal tale to their lowel towers. <|endoftext|> "A dispatch from the middle passage of the ocean, to the wilderness is brought to us in these sugared pages, and if mankind ever a-slope our golden journeys, this must be the very nature, and the condition that it is, in the very twelfth part of our two hundred and seventy languages,"--Scherboeger to Watson in Edinburgh, December 1888. Any thing as the condition of a-greatness, it must be great In action, in the slant of a hill, In some other thing besides the will and the will not well, but is like the slant of a hill Always the nature it is Forgets its range And is in small terms of sound. But this, and nothing more, you Literalize And have a name for, and are content. What will be beyond This darkness or far away, where a is the spell and b The language of thought, is a different matter.] In an attic room she made the bed, In what has become to us A ruin; and, all sundering of tanger and frame, She unfolded sheets like golden buttons Bearing Christ's feet, and having first waved the knife Brought forth the male lamb. And she well began To invoke him, and not having gone along Creation, doing like well, and that end Being obviously the easier, she left The prevailing consideration in doubt. Is that all she did? Will she do anything At all? The more I think of it the less Appears the matter to me. Would she not feel Amost her loveliness? She had the haughty look Of one that felt indignant For simple happenings. Her body, I think, Had in chief the form Of beauty in her, which is wont to be Most easily acquired, and is, I own, Very nice; And I have seen, with shock awake, The bloom of its time, or part of it At any rate, and still alive, The exterior pose of perfect cheerfulness Are proper, and but express Her presence to us; But she was not, of course, subject To the gross appeal of the trivial Suggestion so expects it, and is one of the Dispeakings of the culture of her The ideal of the woman, and What culture is, how hard to show it. Had she been subjective, would she Have felt a particular significance? That would be this culture again. Not being utterly objective I never yet met a woman with true Cultivation. The real culture she acquired Is not subject to capture by anything She says or does; But in and for herself she exists. She seems at first an instance Of the objective culture, but she's not, And never can be, seeing how She is not objective. As to that she is subject, And sure the fate Of culture in ======================================== SAMPLE 33 ======================================== A one-eyed man, Who, guiding the looking-glass That withered at a touch, And dropping further and further, By an ancient and infinite law, Cried to the fools above him and them, Fools! and said that they were, and are, Pygmies: that they are of clay: And bade them come and see. If I like pomp and vain show and gaping Before the pageant, shall I not like The mere front-show, man? And he took his broom of golden barbs, And blowing thro' the labyrinth, Made a gate fast and tight, And thro' the open flew, And some danced, and some stood and some flew After the knighthood-makers, And all were glad, being glad, To know the old world again, and the kingdom of the May, Whose gladness is self-sown, And is self-sown, and self-sown; Pledges the illuminators, Pledges the virtues they bring Of the kind gentle High-Faith, True hearted faith, for which All seemeth, all is; A lot, now grown dim and mossy, Of forms and colors kind; By the moth's gradual eating; The dying grass and tearing Till it is but gold and green: But men and prophets, men In whom God's lights are on, Already weary; Still, but shadows of light, Not of things the lightless Sporre and far away. When, after all, I have been To God's liking, where is it? Between the waving grass And a spinning wall, the wall all golden, And only seen by night. And that through heavy-heartedness, And bitterness of feeling; All God's best forever marred, Not one spot forgiving. Nay, the woman weepeth Till her cheeks are wet. But she is sore-hearted Only she knows it. The nation that the spirit gave In a generous impulse of freedom But put it down when the slaying On mountain and plain Was at a meeting of the kingdom Which by the common consent of all things Has passed as just and right; And how they all put their hand in The other's grain, As if they knew it not; And how the man was Then saddled, and they cried hard The sinful plight Of the sinners, and of the right; And how they mourned in the streets As the dead child died, Tried to bless themselves; And how each other mourned, Yet they were not mourning As the mother was, who gave it To her whom they not knew; Though the face of the mother Had no more grace than the face of the child. This is the world's belief: In every stone and of every tree Comes a record of the last breath Of a body that lived and was One with every tree, and every tree With every stone: and in the year's forest, In the fled ranks of the frost-ploughed beech, There is no sound of a Mother's walk; And all by love we know of the dead child Is the love of his mother. The cloudy windows are alive with the sight of the day Which is dead and must face the houses through them; And all day long the light goes up, and the stars are There for the night that have been, and all night is going, Coming over the flat snow-bound fields, the sky Not dimming its sky, so clear and still it comes on; And soon the strong wind pines out, and is hushed till The dying down of night; till there is silence even In house and house-top. And then it is said, He lived as long as he was able, And there is now a little dust Upon his red cloak: but he was a great man, And a true one at that; and of his works No world has work as vast as this, And this and only this to say. And it is at night, all night, The little word comes down the old clock-round. The lamp shines Over the wide fire where the stew-bowl glimmers To the flames at a count as large as the stars In the circle of the sky, and where the father and child See a light like that, only a little less bright, A very little less bright, That long to the world went in its untidy width Under the mother's shining feet, and that single span Whereof there is always paying, in ======================================== SAMPLE 34 ======================================== Rangers in the press and camp Of the great Chief of the Bend, (So called among the Peers, for he had that), His recent marriage, and his own old sire, And his look, so fierce and grim, Were in his face, when in his presence, As none like him; for, as the white snow, Or tuismonder, th' advance of Spring, Or pied plover's patriarchal trace; Or skylark, plain-dimming bird, of the star, The first of any such, show'd to the view, With feathers blue, streaks black, and spots white, A shape of mount or of gesture bold; Fierce and erect, a breathing column yet; The Highland clansman, warrior, saint, Was here: & the two to overcome, That way would have need of Hercules. With him were stricken down despair And grief, as the blind or the dumb; Were only to get up to Christmas. Alas for all! that day they buried His spirit of glory vainly tried, On the other main, by black rage tried, Black as the eagle's eye when she feels A lion by the sides of her nest, Where ere awhile she, cramped by fear, Will flit and struggle, till away Dismounting, pain her griping side, With dipt and hard words vex her, till her life give out. It is harder than it was, to tell That a single Space, before what was thrung, Should be thronged with Fathers and Grandfathers; To feel the day dispassionate: what Would come of it? who shall bid, shall pull The Scotch name and coat of arms inlet From such a day, so like? that was the foe That was to be dreaded, be it legal or illegal, Of all our Rights and Royalties; as much, more Than that Glorious Temple, or the letter A, Was before the Republic; yet as soon Was sprung up the Republic, for none knows, Save only God, who thinks as no Law does Aught earthly better than is His word; And, who makes that way, is laden, man. So might the thought of liberty fill All eyes who spoke, should one awake: One hour is just enough, to charge, to mix With sweet blood, a bit of soil, That once was peamy: you might see The Cynthian Owl's Wood, for meadow nigh. To this they bow, are touched; to this men fall Who once but had been mere dust or chaff, Unworthy to receive the breath Of grist of Christian Honesty. Go to! this with some brains unpure. And pass the rub with us! 'Gainst tyranasmia, goad of worms, Choose with what guile you will, foul or fair, (Och--my Lady-love is frail!) Prum only venture, But leave the realm, O stay, Tho' gone thy way, lo! she flies, for me, And we have tarried too long together. All may, who rule the earth, Might make a race To peace, and merriment above, Have set a store, Wherefore we rise in hope: And go to fill, in some dignified And amiable position, Some dignified seat, where rank is no longer Respect, or Fame, or honour, Heaven's claim, But thought and worthiness of man. O why is man As man may be, Away from God The father of lies, A center of wind Things worst, who wallow On ground less firm than fiction, And with raking tongues The plainest thing With grating throat Bewail the King, Who honour none-- All too remote, Too deep for life, Too much For dominion, Too deep for trust. As to the loom of winds of the air, That fly abroad, and scrape The mountain rock, As the sawing wood Makes grey the greyness of the blasted rock, So human nature, where the grace Of wisdom should engage, Turns all its strength to the wrong end; And this the brain with its mouldering folds Can only rear In form of a lie, And by its hollow close Is secret in its ambush. Our earth is to the seat of the gods The Gremios of the poets feign, To Maia consecrate, As the winter's twilights sacred to Saturn ======================================== SAMPLE 35 ======================================== And yet, though they meant you naught, They bade you know in truth There are no friendships In the World Wide Web, nor Will anyone take you Ere you be dead. You do not want praise, nor do I Thus to be foiled at by thee, Dame Equinoctial; Therefore do I fall in love With thy dainty soul and thy rugged lips, As lovers must With the fairest, cruellest, raiment, jeweling the light, The diktory, The mewing of birds, the glee of little things. I need not now to be coy or shy; Take me as thou art taken, or ere we meet, Or ere I escape from out thy contemplation. Sweet, do not run me ragged on love and glory, But tak it naturally, as a midsummer day, With glory and with song, And in thy breathing chamber The place of thy glory in the day, And music's dalliance Of all the glories of all the living year, And rare speech made manifest, And honour given and taken. SOME one said unto me, Sometime siththen in a dream I sfirst saw, sthen in vision fell. Then, being set, he kept me always, Still in me more the burden, Never can run more grieve; And for the thing that was done How we dreidly go about Aslcoming now the day, Letting slip the birch and moosil Unweeting leed, Nor mentione the great deidle way When we are fain to go, As wee were risin' foorth to do. For whatever of peril, Whatever of pain and woe, Is shed, they ken not how to shun, While love, they know not how to hide: He that loveth can never know The chiefe care of fear or shame, But in love's intercourse Knethered by oath and flinching, Seemeth he must drink of love's lake They hew out a way, I trow, For loved ones to behold; It is the ocean of the mind, The greatest ocean that spins: And where's the shore, or the soft land? The whirlpool of all delight: A thousand wreckes they throw Somewhere in the ocean of mind, And like a surgy brickl heir I know the vast sea of mind. IN our earliest years, Love put his bow to his flowr, And fair phloes came in droves To close the wordes we said: Our youth was but in sighs, And all our joys were done When we sighed; Love blushed, and hid his bonnet Deep in tow; For aye there was talk, The word was writ, Which made love sigh again, When we'd say Love wept, and said, Love sleeps. Men may be bold, O don't they? Boys may be just and square? Fudge not an amoy, All but the humblest grinn is Bully and sporty, And swill with easy grace More dan sleepin', In the blythe de bown, The triflin' bourne, Than the cares o' day The huskie ownd hearts will wrang When we twang, But the uns we twang Will write o' night, To play the fiddle At our merry levee. I read in old books, when I was white (My lilac bush was flowering), And Papa read beside me, when he Had dendlin' curls and bare feet. I never knew but what our livin' Was heaven's dream of us; I never knew but what this holler'd word Of song was made of was, To bor damn the night with snoor; If God forgird us in th' ink, Then we forgirded right. The liue-day sun on a' green hill Might have shone as white as a spade; The summer wad 'a' been over seas An' sea-sand, sink or drown, While the verra fine thaw melt or get noon, By way o' buildin'-- But just as fine thy wings look; If thou wauk, I'll awlus cut 'em In park to see them fly; An' what thou aime'st, a cup o' ======================================== SAMPLE 36 ======================================== “I will,” says he. Then she took the sheet and blotched it, Shook it with her big white hand. “What?” says she. “Tuck it up for our Prince.” “You are his Princess. How shall I know him?” “I will be his embroidery girl. I will call my work my man-cadaver.” “You will grow on him with endless services, Even as long as we live we will love each other.” “You?” says she. “Who has such beauty As to have the grace to let you Woo your own like a woman? Plead, beg, compliment him—we will make What beggars we need to be to be free.” “Will you not work?” says she. “O let me, work!” says he. “Can you not make him understand what work is?” “And what is the use of any one?” “We shall be free. We must be free.” The sea rolls, the clouds part, And the sun explodes on the blue, When as they paddle past I can see the winds take hold And wreak themselves against our shoulder -New York - On the rue de Sion, when the cobbles run, I walk across the puddles While over one bawling sorrow I watch the shrapnel shower, And hear, beneath The barking of the faithful guard Cursing their gardens, -Paris - The tree in the Paradise closes; Climbing, I grasp the thin boughs, Then lean the whole day Half in hunger, half in delights, Watching the darkness -observing the dawn - It was this desire, all my life I have wanted To experience, as I saw it, from beginning to end. On the lovely curb of grass Where joy bloomed The stars turn into Bright cups If I be near I’ll drink to Addie, my friend And my best water All round the happy world, You were my comrade my comrade, my comrade, my comrade, And if you get thirsty The grass Drinks from the sky To make you happy New Pleasure gives And I want you now I want you now I want you now -It is the end of the road- “New Pleasure gives And I want you now I want you now” One of the chorus said that day And as I answered, “Change of guard!” And the bright flowers to left and right I felt them lean to me, and I thought I’d better have my way. And your old passport Turned into A strip of leather And the moon above the forest And the large red sky Were witnesses to our trial. They knew I’d win. Now we want To see one another. I saw an island a day After we passed the little island. A very young and sunny pair Were reclining on it and the second Was nearly hidden in the blossoms. A bench held a group that called out: “Husband, come out, come out,” but all in vain They tried but failed to make the first two For they were still set in reading it over They saw no point in leaving the place. The elder took from his hair a thread And said, “I’ll tie it like a ribbon Round your own side” and then he left the room And took a seat where I was sitting Athwart the moon. The second turned away to begin again The kind of life he first had led. Then one of the others, one of the others Swore up a persecution, A proof, That they were right and all the others Lie on their graves! I try to read but the book Drops here and there And the leaves Are turning. And the flowers are kind And their lives seem full of love. I was there with the second And I saw He was silent then. “It’s better,” he said Who began the war When he was only one Of a hundred men. But the war Was going badly And it turned him quiet, For a whole year. He was full of hate. He talked of bombs and bullets And to explode With a bullet Against his enemy� ======================================== SAMPLE 37 ======================================== english=arabic=somali my others. the etymology of this place is a narrow strip of sandy me, stretching from the sandglass to the brickline. the causeway’s blackened ribs, deep cantilevering over the auburn, climb right up my spine. and if there’s a sense of sarcasm, I am that sarcastic. the shacks and fish stores sold baaddings of coppery wafers to the babel to the workhouse. I wondered why they had no water. the dry grey walls spoke to me of history. again, no signs, but in this picture, a blanket sets my forehead warm. I know this is the north, January in the burin, wind. the wood and the sod wet from the active as a ground worm burrows in, and the fresh poz dope, baby just call me ella <|endoftext|> "All Eternally Satisfied", by A. F. Moritz [Living, Coming of Age, Love, Heartache & Loss, Realistic & Complicated, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Relationships, Men & Women, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] They had come to be happy and all of them were satisfied. I have known them by different names in various places; sometimes they were musicians, sometimes not. One night the Professor brought them together and said, Look, you two, in that love of yours and I guarantee you, within an hour there will be one who will welcome the two of you and will love and will worship you. He was speaking of Bêtizel, the common fancy of them or what, though you could not believe he meant we, that they were going to remain together all alight, free of all obligations. Then they were quite simply both young and very attractive. He had been a young teacher and she a young teacher's wife. She had grown up and come to fame as a writer of chronicles while he had returned to her as a typist and then helper of the secretary. I knew this. It was at the end of the decade they met and they realized their potent and immediate attraction. He had a house in Grecian splendour in the suburbs of the city. She had a little garden in the shade of elm trees. This was all well and good, for a summer, but she had become suspicious of her stable. A water wheel! Her husband was sailing on a schooner and they thought that they might simply spend a few hours together. They had both gone to India. He in the ship, she a home in a village. Bev and I had gone back to school. We were young—we were both in love with very tall dolls and talking just as we used to, then, suddenly, writing on a blank page, our names, at the bottom left-hand corner in big characters, and a line at the bottom too, cross-hatchéd out of sight. They were sealed with a little red stamp in the page, and there were no promises or oaths or contract or anything under the sky. You can imagine, for yourself, how all this would work with the scissored-in-sequence tradition of the Egyptian buildings and their sense of romances and chains and magic that ran in their veins. I would have been bored with Bizenda, for the model stood close as a mountain, keeping her head tilted up, her face perfectly masked, students learning to meditate and Brahmins meditating and picking their hearts out. For weeks, they had not came home— they were too careful to steal their high-heeled shoes to litter their chambers with roses. Her presence was not always obtained. The Professor had married again. A louder summer came and everything went on. The Dinah Girl, her mother, her father came to see him off. They showed the groom how many bedrooms and different rooms ======================================== SAMPLE 38 ======================================== With wrinkled cheek and creeping forehead thin, Wet foreheads and stringy hair, In a garb, I know not what, of Sahara desert. Why is the night sky, a vision of grief, Aflame with stars for the love of God, When in the white heart of the moon there lies The secret of the night and its sweetest flower, Which draws the night in the moon's swoon? Ah, Sister, sweet Sister, who will lend me their light? Ah, even the twilight, which is held more dear, Awakes us more, and comes upon us more, When the wind shifts the sands of morning further and further, As though to weep out our misery by night. "Fool that I was! and I have struck the light! Swing to me, O far-traveled hour! Bring north and east wind; me hath moved the seas Bring all the winds of heaven; (as to leeward a ship Whet ho, the surf!) me hath dusted the lee and bow sere From fire-fed devils of tormented air; Till now, taking wing, the storm's a curl of flame, And terror-breathing seas, and weather-swift gales, He hath set the woods sing away on fire, And blasted the forests from pine-trees dight, And quenched the marrow in the rock with cold, And rusted winter on the plain and low; He hath laid hold on the horns of the hill, That lower to the valleys lie like heat; Hath lifted the sun to the Gods' feet; Hath filled the waters with wailing air; Hath bowed the sky to sorrow; and the faint Hoar-frost hath wrung the flowers among. O God, I am weak of the gout, but not This, the strength thou gavest me, with the prayer, When I gave up the hope of a cloud, Nor could I feel the world's heart grow chill. Now hath the earth a place for the feet Of my God, for the prayer-worn man's feet, Of whom they pray the world, to forgive The one great sin that dares wound the head. If Christ died for the world's sake, He shall die no more, but rise again To bear the weight of the world's forgetfulness, The dust of its sins, and make men see The path to the Kings at last, the final King. I am weak of the gout; as the wind Blows in my face, I am smitten here; But God, the Gods are more than my body, For strength I seek through to-day and to-night, Even when the gout throws out the spindle." Life, I said, Life, why dost frae Thy selfish will unf there? The world expects not that I stay Till they leave the lawn! Nay, it needs na you Life, tak' special care of me; Jilted spring, and bee, and bee-bill, Narrow note o' choir a-belloing, Maids o' spring, maist like me, Jay's-joyful bard; And lost on season-maiden song, But frae her two-edged knife of rhyme, Sae misvied in contempt o' thee. Thou, woman, pulsus, weak at the core, Nae point but done a rose! See, Life, from wing to wing she gets The point she wants; See, prig, how the rascal she spits Too base for thy bait, Life, thou's naething wi' pride or anss A' plans o' God's yeer, For aught in all time Hath bent an shepherde, I' the grave part of May, Till we twine again! Life, I need na poeter-call; Nought of thee but thy flippant stumph And thy crude shakspeare. What is earth's power to me, Hoarse hum and heave-corrupted mope? Faun, I bear on my heart's sores The God-breath granulation. Life, I may swot, If he thinks we need his blessin', When he's welkin-explended, He'll say naething. It's Hell's cunning way To try life's venus, Speak low, my fair. Low is my accent; In good accents be bold, I hae no ======================================== SAMPLE 39 ======================================== Slain with a cry and loathlier wound Till the great tree sheathed his deathly spear. Thus to the splendors of his shrine And the virtues of his ancient strains The sweetly-belted pipes his lips Filled with haunting pipes of balm and woe; Till, the balmy shades from his lips retreated, Softly, as bidden, in dreams the shrines he filled With worshippers, whose constant murmur spoke That they forgot the fields and wolds and caves, And defiled the peaceful air of night. The Pagan, breathing of the mountain home, Granted a deathless pang to those he worshiped, And in his admiration he sighed For men reborn to live the hardier life. So, when in Kashmir's groves, beneath the pines, The red-robed men of old have plumed their hunts And charmed the quarry to their liking; When the old temple fathers, clustered round, Have lit the altars with the harvest's harvest; Then will the fragrance of that harvests blow Where the slow flowers sleep, and the dwellings sink Into the shadows. Dawn comes late and goes From shadow to shadow till the whole world rots, And the still ripened isle is almost blights The low-set forest, crowding in by the gate Of that sublime corner of the world where they Who know abhorrence will not live nor breathe It is as good to crucify the Saracen On some island hidden from the world of men In the seas of cloud and night and night and light. It is not wrong that nature bears the proof Of all their simple bliss, so that the wise Can puzzle the vector of their blood and find The firm body moving spirit through the head Motive by joy and love to hurry on Until to their wishes born at last The martyr own the unseen glories dead. Spring and the lost brood return and wait For the far horns of their morning, while The cities and temples burn and ululate To meet the face of their inevitable foe They smile at last, after their torment And the charioteers who greet the February day With a cry of triumph and the sightless retreat Where the poor man yields his robe to the stern suitor, And he does not gloat, nor sleep with rings, But wails like a sheperd, proud in his power To beat the warm cloak from his being, Lest any else should think him white and pale With the envy of other eyes to be whiter For, though no slanderer may write a word To their disgrace, as they must bear the blame Of what may safely be blamed And not the fruit of their hands, Who love the light and love the light And leave to Him who made them at least The looking-glass that shows how they write Of all who live and who are dead; Theirselves, their God, their own all alone. Mothers and their feverish children all day long Go one way and go another--sometimes Foaming with pride, and then, under flood Of wreathing blood, with the love of shame, To the nearest city to suffocate In the stink of corpses--pass it while They may! Nor has Death yet a price, but the slow Arrowy sweet of night and dark and care And the dew that falls like rain from the fallen leaves Of the young forest, climbing up the lean hills; As upon the lifters' track it makes such stir That it sets to swinging down and little mouths To utter death. Alas, and I can see, Where I lie now, in a open kind of way, The track where I ran, the pale blue line Beneath this morning's hill, his hand that drew The bow that drew the blood of me a while back, That bow that had an arrow head of me In it. For sure that day that I had so bought my way, Run where I ran and shot at, when I shot-- Why did I not shoot back? I ran, but I missed the sharp narrow trail, That runs from the long road, not mine, to yours. So, all so busy, poor as I am, For all the day I ran like a dream, The very light made it seem real. Oh, only the hand of God, with me For all the rest! And so we build our tents above, Beyond the grave. Here, where with heavy eyes and cut throat We waste the day, There is the margin of an oath we shot A ======================================== SAMPLE 40 ======================================== So no one can sell his breath. Oh, hard is it for one slender youth To meet a world of sin! But the Saints all sinless are, And are perfect in their way. Some would ill foretell The parts that they fail to fill; But we fear not what our might, And gladly fear, for we have hope. God is great, and is willing He would have all his choice chosen Men men in a man’s esteem. Oh, remember, God is great! Because we cannot do everything, And have the long to do, We humbly fix our tongue To wait on great who are men, Who are striving for the world to be. The Advent is near To bring good gifts down, Though I am fairly laid I cannot do much, Merely to keep it free, Such lofty eloquence Against the amorous storm Would not long keep sway. O time’s high races, ’Tis you who sing and kick, O time’s low cheapest Hang dog, most sorry; Stuck on with you Time has labored, With you there suffered; Paid off, And then some one Hard as the middle— Poor you poor thing! It takes the fliest and knocks the falmer Many a space between; So licked his nostrils at the red backwoods, I felt them urge me on. But time lay heavy on my mind, And what I’d not see through the foxglove’s red, I did perceive through the needle’s. But time flows backward, Back whizzes in the dust; In the foam and eke of it We trace your image, And the snipe decimates Like a precipitate. And the lame found wings Diverge from the ledges bare, And the blind canes devere in the snow No less steep the way are. So what I knew through you is done In a thousand lonely ways, And yet with nowhere left to go, As great as you in the hundred thousand years. Then what was I But a player on the stage? Poor light received, And went out and in, For the curtain had not yet been pulled. And the curtain I have not pulled Even now, and thus you may Suppose for me was I, And not my song. A log in the fire, And a log in the fire, And a log under the fire, Was never wasted so, I my barley, you my corn. I my log, you my log under, That is our trade. As any solider might know, By far the greater part, By any at all might be done, One simple word he might hear. So here I am alive and sound. Oh, is there need to write? Just to stir the fire up, Just to melt the wax and oil In combination a dozen, Just to muffle the clock in its case Just to sing the song, Just to make it sing, Singing how the marshland smelled Before they planted it. I am as good as dead. The Yankee boys will feed me. I shall like to have them and my guns, But would not be so silly as to run For fear of Americans. It was hardly mine; It was German gold— I gave, I did not give away. It was a game they played. It is safe to play again. They will not hear me now Because this time I will not wear my name. We are a loudish carouse. My name has not a feather To stand on for far returning. I am going to shiver in peace, The way I have shivered. No lawyer was nor rich. No judge, nor any. You orchived husks to give away, You orchard tacks, I orchilled silver, I orchilled gold. Just the same I tell you. <|endoftext|> And soul in just the same way. Therefore I know it is Well to keep on walking. God See, I said to myself, You are a fool, you are a fool; And here I have gone on And still am only a fool, And still am turning round and round And now am nothing; Now this side of the vanishing Has other side is From that other walking-place Which doth not allow Twixt it and this place a ======================================== SAMPLE 41 ======================================== mounted in "suggested luminous architekment" helmet & shield of dry ice in perspex heavy 2D million/ii.e. men in fleece toad-skin trousers very fine mauve bikini briefs very bright sunglasses w/ BB bright reflective sideburns mask of an American Indian & its facial expressions green space helmets Star Trek science gloves candle w/filtered Sun & moon & fishes & fur, & birds & monkeys but the wallet was empty from the canal worse, they’d been everywhere so the kids gathered a few rocks & frothed bococorns, & caught the half-wild monsoon & semaphore. We headed back to the village for the woman who wore pretty white w/prayers cross ankle cat eye rimmed clock of worry, & keeping her beehive's door jam packed with flower practice & other fine-milled stuff with a long shape, weird to smell if you sniff it you’d think what it was like — the girl thought — but no. Even walking home with her fine old stinking man of affairs —highly fecund— into the hippest place in the strangest way a bunch of kids calling herself a religion you know too well—not yours, the man’s, fierce in his own ways — still in his insanity walking the other way. The rain turned it <|endoftext|> "Jerusalem Art Editions", by Ruth Stone [Activities, Jobs & Working, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] Erase the poets’ shields in the ancient markets out of love for history, not lust what returns is changed what does not change dies in a hurry The migrants’ graves are here as well in the ancient markets Not to brag but to survive lucky enough to find a home blessings that keep you Held together in the modern markets Homes for winners in a desert of questionable grace << if not presented wi' spoons would be great But to stand alone and not lose to clutter The market’s sculpture! Read literature about nature reflections in the grass << but not grass not a tree, though trees are there with you again and again The short-leg runners have gone I am again a boy A complex hunger maintains health I will survive among the magnificent smugglers’ tools etcetera The poor estate for which you walk I call you back I now pronounce the roofs in the market were named for me I called you <|endoftext|> "Asparagus", by Ruth Stone [Living, Growing Old, Activities, Eating & Drinking, Thanksgiving] The bodies of young girls do not stay young long, simply because we give them away so soon. Babies come this soon, and the bellies of them are perfect and the hearts of them stick this soon. There is no heart to ruin and no mind to take when they hit their high. They teach the way, they say, and teach fast, and teach so hard. <|endoftext|> "At Home", by Ruth Stone [Activities, Eating & Drinking, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] To Mrs. Mausefuss My problem is getting older without having kids. It is that I’m afraid to unleash the bacillus in my brain. It is my heaviest heading into a sharp klaxon that points upward, and I know, from experience, it leads to heart disease. So we have dinner soon, pinkies, the nocturnes, pre-Pearl Harbor, and I let them talk. The cheese and crackers taste so pedestrian the Indian die-down in the mustard is like a missile launch they tell you to protect yourself. The maitre is breathless, like a balloon dissolved in a flood of freedom to talk so quickly. It’s like that: the mayor with wings, a balloon, and Mars as if the planet were floating through the city in his prodigal love of how he looks down. These are simple foods for simple times. They’re safe with one another and your cat. Cherry pie for the stomach and ======================================== SAMPLE 42 ======================================== A simple birth, to get in flesh and blood; That now I owe (without hope to get it back), Have from my shoulders, stuck under this stubbed old ark, The glad assurance this at any time Can thrust and snap and break my back. The widows' noralis Spring is here, Arnold's pipes are piping, Marriage is a cry, Master's gone mad, and while he kneaded your eggs The Krauts could not get at the King. Pigmies leapt, nor were we free From news, for there was rumourmonger Gone crazy over there. 'This is the season, then, When ladies are fairest, When they are fairest of those that are to be; When the gilt's most frequently flung, And the best laid down By the spirited little scamp, at his birth; When every beast that sklip in a forest, That drinks at a pool, All rises to the head of the fern As to the kingdom's sovereignty. But now is the time that the first wife Bringest to her spouse, The fear of a parry; And so in his terror, He revives, for his sword he flings, That he may cut down his adversary; For, like one that grabs in a market, From slaughter, mumbles the self-same morass, So strangled and inveterate, Had that sense been able to prevail Had the self-same sword been in his hand, The body would have been just as much in doubt As when, as of late, 'twas being torn out That a vestige of sense was seen to wither Ah now! the best that God can do! For not in leaving, but with you Ever constant, shall I pass A being, doomed to trifle with The passions that daily seethe In the fever-cock, Like bairs from a tree-stool That do land on a wall, And with far-seen heads of battle A clatter of horses set, And with great scows and voyces Their ambition to fulfil, Which thronged to the wonderment Of the fountaining crowd, that sat In the temple of their desire. They changed their humble speech, Not the language of pain, When only just-said, not ever spoken To an eye by misfortune o'erthrown. This cry they had for each other Then, as 'tis now, and long shall it be, If this, the best-loved of parables, On the self-same subject be told; And she, the wisest, lay down her head, Gnawing, and said she should have thuns. "The dainty will I ever see." If it be hard to bite the hook, It is easy when that's done The hook's a little harder to swallow; If it be the kingdom, Lord, 'Tis easy a kingdom to obtain. What good fortune hath my credence bought In the nation that I've been? What real good have I gained by it, That my credit my account should stand? O ingrate! have we allorship won, If your love is an ingrate's craving, You shall pay for it ere not long time. "But all the rest," so well you know, Is nothing but folly and fun, To play-pretend wisdom's man, Wherein, however wise you be, You very well may guess as such. But to have felt all the while and known That you are wiser than your thought, To fancy that you can please More or less a neighbour or a friend, Without the least wisdom's stroking, Is mortal foolishness I think. Whom to forget? Who should be forgot? Who by that love was never sought Nor ever had gained the thought? Does not look askance at his account, Nor cast a word about him, but Holds it for luck, and that the spleen Of disapproval it may be, or For fear his secret should be told? Who should be so hard? Who but God Is worth the memory? To serve right or wrong Is the right or wrong to remember. But in this world of love, and discords, Of suspicions and discontent, Why should I, Ari, confine My zeal, if it be not for forgetting? Not for forgetting lies the trouble Whereby I labour to be lazy; Not for forgetting falls the labouring tree ======================================== SAMPLE 43 ======================================== in the sun. <|endoftext|> "The God of the Zombies", by Garth Plager [Living, Death, Time & Brevity, Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Nature, Trees & Flowers, Social Commentaries, War] There is a lot of swearing in the book of the laws. Some of it is obsolete and unnecessary as evidence (the absence of death doesn’t really apply, in this book, to flowers or to stars). Some of it is incorrect as evidence— the absence of a church of a forest does include the houses and the trees but includes modern art. Some is incorrect as evidence, for example, the statement “Dead men stagger toward us with their swords” doesn’t mean what people think it means <|endoftext|> "Patience", by Thomas Lordew Wood [Living, Time & Brevity, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] I wonder what time it is in San Diego; I sit among my weeds, among weeds I’m close to the ocean, near some buildings that are flat and not gray. A fair weather government that wants a meal with no greens in it, the moon shaking its horns in the sink of a high-rise. What time is it in San Diego? I find a clock and it is time. I did not set it for that anymore, that open dark I forgot, in the summer, that I would be, with a memory, a lover of it, someone who sat in a classroom, eyes dotted with black, a pupil size of an elephant, a coin weighted with bed hassock. I forgot I would be nothing more than this, if I knew that I knew that, with my eyes. How could I keep my eyes away from the window? Why are they there? Red isn't the color of stars they are colored because there are doors on the side of my apartment I was not told to close. The day has begun. I am not the kind of person to stretch. I prefer to lie. The way I’ve always been framed in my head is a short jagged ridge— or a part of my mind a dedicated project with purple poetics to just have sitting in my brain. I am there like a figure out of a ballad of a boy I once was— there are streets in my head I think I have to walk through if I want to stop running at all, just lie in the morning by the door of my apartment, make a cup of blue tea— maybe Chicago at the top of a high hill— and sit on a bench that says “Audre Samuel” on the side to pass the time, a week on the road as the sun comes in above me. <|endoftext|> "Double Rainbow", by Garth Wilson [Living, Love, Desire, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Home Life, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] Double rainbow is a horrible thing to have to tell someone you made it with them in the bedroom: they thought it was their home. When I brought hers in, her bare leg was like spider silk. He fancied her. We laughed, that we would both be struck black with the weight of what the evening would bring. I tried to imagine how, as the sun goes down in the south, it would have chased me, as he had chased her, in his silks of mist. Perhaps it’s more of a wish than joy, a longing, now, to be into the next bedroom, a boy, not a girl, not only with my boyfriend, but with you. But it wasn’t long before my sanity yielded. I thought that we were going to be something, a dance. I imagined the worst weather would stop us, of our relation. I couldn’t stiffen and not make it, to say what I had thought we were doing. But the rain came. It was like her face, not some ideal of a face. No matter that it was the color of sunlight in a forest; or that a bright day hung in the garden; or that our beds could probably, with a little pouring, make the moon disappear. <|endoftext|> "Ordinary Darkness", by Jeffrey Schultz [Living, Life Choices, Nature, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Arts & ======================================== SAMPLE 44 ======================================== With a goody, raxed a-dyeing, On a rival a-splicing, And for to mind yer mou'n a-felt, A nut-brown youth was there. The boys (as ere, I ha'e herd) A stiller coit to wait, And startt them in to speeden A nut-brown crown, (They ran it o'strong.) Whereat, astonished, they lookt aghast, And weel did sware they ne'er would lay, And rowts a' cryst a gleess book By her plain shoon, And after 'at, the lass un-dreeces The new-breeced mistletoe. Such uses might her hafted maun get, And no otherwise 's she! I wad be glad o' Christmas curf! But then the kirk-folk joud build up, A' dispensers "lose their ration." But then the lothes they grow strong, Wi' honier pensell and wreathlet; And nooa' win a Governor's pardon, A divil sentence, it's saft an' sound; An' they have fair o' sic cunnin crool. We took o' course wi' muckle avarice, An' spent the warth tad do it, An' came to strikes between us there O' taking a crack at it; I guthe slav'd an' secure I did it, Wad slade a kimmer an' do a bust, An' rigor's life, that ne'er forgot, Would b'elieve me I'd an' heve a wife. If gi' me swat an' sut aft ú' wrang, I though my course was sure an' sair; But then the course'st o' wife-bed I lo'ed, The ole swabbie-wife o' my life, And mid a new-bathed set to hear The hev-loved sound o' her tongue! Auld blighter! now, wi' silk-skin cloak, A bare nose, an' back to the door, I go the giest, an' I wear it; The gods be thanked that the band an' needle 'Tarns nigh ase'n me like a fiddler, For ne'er sae nearly sae's I met her As much as now! I mind na' that gray muckow-foot drudge Who 'timent I was a' fa' placad'! Nor ken I a' the gal 't was ga' to rake Ae drape nor a' for her clo'es an' dress-- Wi' saft hing-chuse, o' concealing it, An' e'en a spik'd suet, I dow 't up lo'e it, So's she a' nicht could a' be seen. What god, but faith, that can sae Unto our wretched canoe, Fer as my Gucdon at the Tweed Sall ha'e sold his tunny-poop And captured a' sae the rain! Yon sweatin', blue-silk sea, See it, I follow, tide, And dew, I follow, dew. Ye onlorn, lamppin' Hous, When will ye cast your lead? Now auld Time's teeth are loud, And ye are grown quite offens and chaps Where a' the auld streets look like the plain: Will ye come an' haud the droving, Ye're just sae haut to yoke; It wadna be a spring of water That wad gie you sport to drink. Come, come; ye may drink to the hilt; It's fit present chalice to hold To thole wi' play-fellows, I wot, Tho' ye must aye be saucy Wi' d--ne croons to keck your cok, For wi' our laddies just wean'd, I fear ye'll drop o'er the wall. Ye'll gang a mile, or ne'er come, Till down, down comes your clamour; Then we'll truce an' rub the rust, Lest ye think a'the way that's rude; Then I maun, being sune a' the a ======================================== SAMPLE 45 ======================================== Sent a may-flower to the miller's cellar. Hole after hole the air doth breathe, Till the man doth but live in air. Forget-me-nots by this artful dew Were put into foxglove buds and flows, With roses purple-crowned, And violets silver-crowned, And seven genies that rather, hid, Did bear the care to take a journey To the highest heaven from under ground, Where they do live with those that keep the grave, To scent their tallow-bearing nose. For, in the far distant country, The simple wits do all of them reign, Or the great minds to a large extent Do study, and remain untaught, Or by their lords to study get. Thrice, thrice, once for all, they must kiss, With all that hand can do. For son of baid thought doth frolick, And means by means to soul; The furious breast is purpled-purple, The heart's like as if it had a way With her sea-tossing bosom bare, Who to think of love looks never. In the midst of love the heart must lie, And must love, and be loved whole days free; No rest, no pause, no time to weep; If shame God's name be in vain, Then in the shame of deed, If God be blessed, a blessing. Above the race of men in fame, Being foremost, do at length come, Which know not how to praise, Won't help my head to feel Of the reproach that doth feed, Or my heart to understand If me they blame for it or me. In this no comforter Which fails of bearing up, Life or death, alone; None of them can pardon thee; It doth live that way for them; Wisdom is before, love is behind, Therefore above love thou art. In knowing roses the most Till now they doubt they know; In those they bear the title Of perfectness. In silence, may we meet again; Is it for these years long we wear Soul, body, love, hope, or sorrow? Is it too late to do again That last act which we may sin? If love are holy ground of prayer, Where shall we kneel and sup? Banners soon to praise, Belfasts and prayers, Pray, pray, my thoughts to sleep. Pray to-morrow, me and to-day If thou didst feel me but it know; What shall I do--again? Bid thy servant sleep, Weep, me and be still. Thus God will deal How he can best, Kind God, who know'st and saw All, and I alone. <|endoftext|> 'I sang with spirit and with fire Of rich and living colours, of light; I sang by pictures and shades and sorrows, Of buried love, and lost love, and me.' But of what have these given power, Conceiving power To mortal ears, When we see, indeed, The white lights dart afar, Reflected glories of those holy skies. So at her heart she burned, When the tears had washed away the trace, And she remembered she was not older Than these low rocks, That listened to the song, by the brooklets laft Above them, till the mists died in clouds. The sun streamed o'er her bosom, and shone On the white curls of her pouring hair, And laughed into her soul and laughed Because the song would still come on him; And then poured itself out again. She wept because of the rock's deep joy, And her soul wept and her heart beat fire. A star hung o'er the lovely island, Like a guard, guarding its jewels safe, There, in the gloaming, golden and hoar, And high above all of the Seven Stars, There was one white Rose, as old and young, Girded with a star in her shining hair. O'er the Island of Dreams, She was queen of the sweet Isle; She charmed all her fairy court With voices musicall and sweet; Then three young maidens came at eve, Clad all in white, and glistening gold: They brought their loads of budding fern Which, sutured in a gleam of red, They placed 'mid the lilies ======================================== SAMPLE 46 ======================================== A history; Anarchists have been creeping into our highest places, And protestant investiture has been sneaking into The Cathedral, so that the vestry is most certainly Orphaned, And all the people. A high bastardy has been hatching up, Placing itself between what we thought our property was and our soul. <|endoftext|> "The Study of all Victims", by Alan Gibb [Living, Coming of Age, Youth, Love, Break-ups & Vexed Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Crime & Punishment, Popular Culture] I. We meet in street in front of Rhymer's bar, a door-opener flipped and re-opener like that, during desire’s little ass- slapping music, This is where we wake our lights. The wind cuts the smell of hay a flower has; it sprouts a ball of grass. So this is night, and we are young, drinking like the climber into the blank beyond the happy illusion the stars share. Showing my windows in a pilot non-blocked glass, as I have never done before, the iron light flares like a flame in my face and blinds me as if I had no eyes, moving my black hair to cover my forehead, the nervous gaze the brain masking my neck as I answer as I answer, in my sleep. II. We meet in the bedroom we shared one time, the narrow crib as sort of folding chair for the long journey of the moon, before we awoke, wrapped and prepared for night. O good sinning, good involving youth! My skin has formed the lining of a bronze zodiac and weathers of distant hours, as my eyes remember like the rings of fire in the signal-lines. In dreams my hands have longed for the wet, the body’s curled like an accord, defining body-space, body-space as time-delirium; in dreams my hands have dreamed of sleep, the sweet shuddering of all things in sleep! III. We met in the field beyond the fall, a slattern tangled with weeds, shrouding his I lines from reality— oldish, dark, even; covered with too much hair for love’s law to court; his mind circling the stars. IV. We met in the wheat, the field’s pale eek, toward the seed; the faggot and stile lopped from the truss; earth worms stoned into the field’s stalk—faggot and stile for the worm. Where did you stay? “Next year’s toast, sir”; my eyes giving him only hay. V. My eyes have caught the universal world-light. Now it is dark; it is night; pastures are quiet with men and space, the horizon's roaring semilinkers, men slit by slit, with chaps in the sun’s shell. Not that it is over. I kept looking in to watch the end, in such silence, but my dream ended, which was, and my dream. <|endoftext|> "Solo Rims", by Fortunio Giovannini [Living, Life Choices, Arts & Sciences, Music, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] Sometimes I don’t feel inspired, I feel like a lost switch beating the over and over of La Brebbia that I’ve read in Lifer Stories: the birth, the birth, the light lights, the masses, the world is so quick to discard the blues hardened in the sour trefye of the wine even the stars fall apart at the edge. And if I don’t finish the chords, I fear the process will vanish in the notes into an empty shape with a blank taper and a clean midscreen cutting out all the rest in an orange sky ahead of me where all the lost ends are ======================================== SAMPLE 47 ======================================== where we stand, Is forever what it is, forever what it was when we were young and independent and met where we met. I think what you’re doing is smart-ass Like the real thing or the good party where you and I old souls used to roam drunk as the day we graduated And left with nothing But our silver toes imprints scarred, Flecked where we met the enemies who turned into friends By the time we married at 19 years old. Your words are clichés, Words about the same things as anything But now people say Gaga in a broken bed Words about the sad things we all have to leave alone Or what we say Is the truth because it's what we think Stop thinking just do it I want you to tell me I want you to tell me what was the right answer to what was the question about love but with no answer left but no answers no one in the universe finds love in a bar about to die or in a house without water but no one can drink the water the more drinkers there are the more drinks there are until no one can drink the water and then it's the water Love is a bartender, is a bar and a city about to die He sits behind the bar and the bar he sees all the time is there when he does he told himself He could have grown a beard like his father at the age of 15 but he would have died from rabies so he saw the basement where the skeletons bobbed like zombies and laughed his father right back in his chair while he could still cry his father right back in his chair That’s when he began to write if you only knew some redemption is salted so it needs a little sunshine in the middle <|endoftext|> "The Axe", by Scott Cairns [Living, Death, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] After witnessing my friend’s succumbance to a wheel to the rafters of fame, I sought to dismember the opiate of his existence: my hero-haircuts, mowed hay nights, and later the clotheslines of my own wanting out. -Tyler [The Long Blew, ZilberDirns, Natty Woank, * Our axes are our swords in that we gift ourselves in absence of the umbilicus. -Meredith M. [My Book of Home] 18 <|endoftext|> "Your Citizenship Documents", by Scott Cairns [Activities, Jobs & Working, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] my stamps from the time I smuggled my way into the Black Sea, my old Egyptian dominoes, gold beads, caviar. My blood gotta be fucken purdy like a true American. -Michael [Letterbal, Birthdays, Festivals, J Street, * In my seat at the airport in Maine, I missed my plane, only to find that the plane had flown a minute over the Atlantic, leashing a homing trail of bread-crumbs that will await me at an Asp point. I’ve lugged my ass from coast to coast so you wouldn’t have to. Stool by without purty reason. You’re not in this life for the money like you up in Connecticut for the crapp-outs or swimsuit pictures. I should know. I was one of those New York girls who helped them pitch the big As then the small As with a wink-wink-index-sign and a semi-O catch through, but this was the height of atomics, and our pelts turned to the new Croes when the boys came back to town. Men thought less of gold-plated A-Actions and more of beans in a cork field or jasmine in a white-out of- Stepan, New Jersey. <|endoftext|> "The Unretirement Home That Is You", by Christine Piru [Living, Life Choices, The Mind, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Home Life, Men & Women] The place where you will dwell may not be the same ======================================== SAMPLE 48 ======================================== "Despair! all-beauteous youth! Life hath yet one ray: Dost thou repine? It is the gods that dwell Here beneath thy breast; 'Tis a sure boon, And like the tropics springs thy heart: How very grand, and sweet, The living picture here Of thy Goddess: So trim, so trim art thou! With thy sunshine and thy showers; And shames no base pains on earth, From thy lug proud with thy laud. How grand, when the speech with nobility Blesses our life, The humble gift of lovingkindness; As the wind wherein are split the branches, To bear the precious fruit to the hand of Love; To bear and to be borne, how fair, how fair! And glad the heart and full of the joy we feel. Art such a Goddess and immortal! Thinkest thou that long-ago'd rain can wean This sweetness away? Sometime so fierce and brisk there came from the North, As Rhenish, the battle of old days; With fury over mountains and still waters, Raging storm, and solemn with its singing. Thy will, without fear to ask, Not heaven, but thou art god, I am but a poor old man. But ah, that feeble way, Its end a-lack of breath! Oh, quit it swift, and grant My prayer, feeble, work us a better birth! No, nay do not slay The captives, and the town To us by treaty yield. And this, ah, this again: the merchant of Metz, Who brought a perilous treasure in his ship from thee Metz, the wintry met, metz, the metz-me-a-tiotl. His faith he lived in open lie; And in the open storm he died. His noblest blood was won To gird his arms and shield, To for his friends, and for his city. Ah, what are men, their life, to yield To powers so utterly, Towers to fail, and palaces to crumble, And their loved wives and babes to tear, And their young courage to requite, And their virtues to redeem, By death, and torment, and terror, For what is lost by molest, Bloody wine, but a sweeter drink Up to the breast, up to the flesh, To the lion's mouth of hate, As of old. Alas, alas, on this hand of mine What baleful boding and dreadful portent Hath come on this doomed dwelling, Of my royal ancestry? Curse on a cask of curses, yet behold What fiends lurk in what furthen's here, And what a wreck they fill How dread, when on the entrails of the moon, Their spirit ebbs away! Now what this hand of mine shall do, Can never be told Till the fount, the spring, be drunk, Till all that toil and sorrow has Flow'd out of tears--nay, Till, at last, this cask be full. "Thine empire!" cried King George Eleven, When all was now for victory; "Thine empire!" shouted he; "Thou tellest of me to-day "Peace, friendship, and the rope." "Never was,'' I answered him, To that which I was told; "Never was,'' I said to him, "Hath such a company, "Of friendship such a crew "Got in a hundred years." Meantime a token flew, Where, far in the north-west shone Of Drontian hills and mist, Forsaking and beyond Thought of such a doom to be, And Drontian hills went past; Now northward a little way, A little doth it flow, And then enters a haven, Ports were there and sea-mouths blind; But out of that night of woe Ran, for a sign my brother gave. Meanwhile, Henry Eight, A guileful man, and now stark blind, Could not in such a cold domain Move his followers from the king, But whelm'd in the forgetful fold Of his false comrades, Fool as they were, and yet haughty. To a deep music was made sweet By our instruments loud roll'd, And he, with a sure aim, Shot from his horse, and shot the lowing k ======================================== SAMPLE 49 ======================================== anchor, which it wore, by means of a rope escorted by Tritonian Iacchus, the sight of myrtle, that spot of beauties, which last was seen to swim by thee, O stone of alabaster. "With these limbs I revelled for two years in idleness, which the good Fortune, who cares for no retribution, smooths to produce the good fruit; and I, who erred in that I erred, since my dissolution, do repent. But I worship this stone, for the soft portions which it weaves resistorily, of the mold vouching sweetly to my limbs; and, so highly did I charge it, there meets with the blame the good of this post." Thus I supt in the grot. Nor for one and two days did my so great hunger of that grot prevail with God, for parching thirst for the pure draught, that tormented me more, than when, in summer, oft in the pulseless sands of Lofak, the sun burns, scorched with hot wind, when the fresh water, that through a chink in the rocks comes with the breath of God, touched by one lark who rounds afar the orange and myrtle tree. "Now that thou hast noted with what mighty stress first I held on the slippery slick upon the mountain, even as the bronze goes black to-wit, thou mayest know why to-day I lift up my back the prayer the most, and the bier of faith, which I say over and over to heaven, and in two stones by mighty sign, and so empty hatchet without fuel all belief. Lo, thou art one with me as one soul! And if thou wouldest in such light things of God understand, my head now long since would rest in the The second ascent, from the little Finger fountain up to the three-hued circle of glittering peak'rs, is thine. with wise marred thereof. I neither spoke a word to thee, my own son, nor what Beelzebub did that I looked on in sleep, though we went with the Magi nor know. For that time was a war; God in wrath unto law, "The ark was good," singeth one of the Sibyl children, because of the son of Beelzebub, that fierce and smitten shepherd. "Say, what is this in the likeness of a beast with two horns, like to what was he wont to say? The furnace was gold and silver." was never made thereby, or any on earth; nor hath been redressed since then, or in the life time, or hereafter. Such is earth's government, which shakeeth the nations with their strife, that every day new godliness rise and sail. The old god, the old thou, thou shalt be host produced in the world, and old evil deeds with their doom; and it shall be so, unless thou shrill and babble it forth. Lo, I know not, nor can be so well wrought into a bond of love as thou thyself art wrought: yet if thou wend through Arcady and lead with thy hand and ane go forth, thou and I can pass the whole of this little finger flowing, and many Grecian works, which were may there and Greek, bear, of thy appearance; all at once shalt thou live with the blessed, and be so far-forward in renown." As when one set on to hard work to work hath naught left to do save thread or bur, the sword becomes as stone, so through my senses the hard thing is, that will I fetched and stayed, When that I went forth of the grove, a low place for yonder city, and saw therein two maidens that charioted men, One here squatted, that discharg'd his horse with the flank, and one a-leaping on the images of weapons, grasped the flawless shield with the acute tip of the point of his sword; So he struck, blow by blow, so that the glove was seared; and the flesh was beaten. All my soul, every one of the flower of the Argives in me, got like a shriven and cancel'd; yea, for death receiveth all, as soon as it is known what it has befallr'd. So sunk I, and lay by the godhead for a long while; till with a sudden thought I, "What would that the Emperors and Logres should be thus ir ======================================== SAMPLE 50 ======================================== ', muses Mæcenas. Ch. 32. The Land of Mists]. A very fitly-pronounced name for a land of mists, if it sounds like mist. The mist and down are to be distinguished by a sort of red mist, like a few drops of blood, which our hero from beneath is descending into, and is hurried all away. Ch. 33. A Carriage, and some Others]. To answer to the nation. Hect. It takes two horses to draw a Carriage; and two men to ride it. Mac. It is a thing observed, that two men are a four to a fight. Sir Wm. Hudson's Travels, 11th ed., p. xlvi. See Appendix, A. Hucknodeer, an old man, Was carolling his lame years Aloft, and in the Carriage Which his old arms sustained. 'Twas a fearful thing for to look On the moon at half-past nine, Without a man in sight. 'Tis quite the funniest thing known To frequent Comus, and hear The god as he belied in The moon at half-past nine. 'Tis a fearful thing to hear The fish from the distance croaking As the god gleaming in the moon At half-past nine. 'Tis a dreadful thing to think, That the fish, so numerous, Should never be mistaken. 'Twas a mighty sickness, In Comus' train, that shook Our consciences, long ago, That fish from out the sea Would not deceive. That ill Left us in number unmeet, For number would fit to crush A man and his wife, she said. A flock of buffaloes, strong, Found us, to sudden terror, And to confound our sense; For she fitted our sense up By dint of her charms, in Our eyes, and to the nose Was light shaken of its sight. In my wife, my infant child, Is my son's life and pureness, With the case the same. The senses confounded We may well perceive, that his True name, his form, were never seen; And, as a rud receipt gave, He finds, that the same case come To a woman, holds as a gift. For much good that may flow From a woman's fancy It is: by what she will bestow, The case only is allowed. Yet, not that she bestow it In vain; some wayward fortune, That nature ventures in man's vein, And blind human instincts resign, Shows in the woman's nature. 'Tis a pretty life, this theirs: You may begin, at six, and thence The sun an orange will grow; You are nine, you fancy free, And there's gingham on a Queen's Warden. And at twelve you've a churchful; For half a dozen prayers a day; And at three, in sixteen nineteen, You, you 'tis evening, and o'er A maid whose neck you've just bettered, Are baken, as we've already said, And married at fourteen: For no woman's married yet. He's only fourteen, but one; And if that young bride was his, Somehow the youth must marry her In twelve days or two, or sooner. For the country's standing in arms By a foot-hold hard by, and a garrison, And there's fear she'll tear him in a strife. The reason why the young ladies take To sing these melancholy songs, Is, that thirteen centuries and twice five, Since the beloved of the Saxons, Mother of glory and pure martyrs, From a woodland refuge came, And here gave half her power and wealth, In gift of love, to a scoundrel. The lands of the Elmdore, You know, are full of hospitality; The beer's not good, the dance scarce more light; In vain, by the drunken flood, The burghers of ill-deserving The prince's bride would disgrace. Mighty and royal he Her villain heart can deceive; They tell each other 'tis so true, With such subtleism, And grin, to see how it's warranted, Poor Thorny Branch! How she despises poor Br ======================================== SAMPLE 51 ======================================== in their shadow and squandered and, for the painfully conservative men, the hairy jacket of their money in your vestibules, and where the bees were when the poets went home for the night, this is the yellow voice of the nocturnists. You turned and contented yourself. You turned and starched the guts of the moth. <|endoftext|> "Sonnet #11", by David Lau [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Health & Illness, Love, Break-ups & Vexed Love, Realistic & Complicated, Social Commentaries] In a poor corner of the country I’ll fill you with joy, Romeo with joy in his capital, from the choir of St. Bartholomew smells ever fresh and wholesome; When the city’s night falls low and cloudy, I tear out his heart for the doctor who ruined him. You have been accused with his doctor, you have had to own, that you never wished to know what was making him miserable, but you do, you’ve known him, you know him, his inferior, you know what is ordinary and stuff, And now you look and read about the disease and its forbidding, and suddenly you feel it would be easy, so easy to let it pass. For the quill and its feather, for the strings and their masters I stay in your house, in your place, I have you at my elbow, where was the end and where was the beginning, and what is l ongle and w ell . . . ? You write to me, take a line, I’m here all night, all night, I’m here now, I’m here now, let the clock stop —we’re all sold, we’re all sold, in my government, now that the universe has come and gone, not an hour not an hour, the government, your words are everywhere. There is money, money, money, money, it’s everywhere. But here, I’ve never said it, I haven’t said it, you have never heard it, you in your prison-house, in your prison Inquisitor’s body you know? Here you get up in the morning and walk about Every minute, every minute, every minute means paying for the life of this place, that means paying the thing in me that I am, but all I want is to be paid, all you people pay me in changes, I like it here, it feels right, Here, we’re chained by the fence to the square That wall, but what it chained us by is smaller, You and I are chained together, here, soul on soul, here in the square— Not here forever, here forever, forever, for the city I walk by, the slums look on. <|endoftext|> "The Last Novel", by David Lau [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity] 1 She awoke in a country house, in the country house she saw a pale face in a red flannel shirt and a boy in a red flannel nightie standing outside, not old or young, not a beggar nor a voodoo doll carved by Chinese priests or moon-eyed witch doctor— young paralyzed body and head— all life: fear with no name, not there in the world or there in her nightie, not the land of her dreams.2 She was found where she was and nursed and cared, faded like a sheet of money, married with a poker in the night, her name in her shawl— where was she brought and why? lay there in her bed, where she was, what for? not another lost silent face. no need to blink and land, follow the swimming text the hand can throw, unfurling a land still <|endoftext|> "A Roman Blessing", by Ellen Brown [Living, Life Choices, Marriage & Companionship, Love, Heartache & Loss, Religion, Faith & Doubt, God & the Divine] . . . . . . I love you, because. . . . . . would you write it, would you print it? Do this. Tell no one, and no one. . . . No, you keep it, for God. . . . . . . . . . I keep you, because. . . ======================================== SAMPLE 52 ======================================== hooting dogs: Nine and sixty, plaintive chairs without strings, and - oh - the cold of my heart when I'll have to leave her here, here - in the swing of her arms clutching the bone. I'll lie beside her a while, breathing her to me, her who laughs without me, her who says yes when I ask again. But it's so easy to forget the journey, to forget the road that lies ahead, the only road I know, to be lost and sad like this. And the anger that builds in my chest butters my head to sleeves that spit a wind as my heart dips in and out. My head to sleeves spit the wind, and I don't know why. I know I'll be angry. I ask why a heart should always be a loving one; should love itself all the time, but should love nothing, a heart is a sickness that pulls down the body it pains, pulls down the soul. I walk, in my world that is my heart, an unwilling mouth and aching throat, I never choose the way into a room: it knocks, it sways, it moves, I don't know why I don't choose the road, the one road, the road to death and a smile in a crowd. I never want to die. I've grown old and old and old, sitting on a road in the rain and in the distance I see trees. Trees, the sound of a boat, a man. Towards me, forever away. When I close my eyes at night, the scenery is taken from my eyes, and I'm myself, I lie in the silence, I am silent, I prefer it this way. I'm able to forget that I don't choose my thoughts, that in my sleep, I read my geography, that in the darkness, stars are and ever and ever, and that the stars are littler than stars, that they spin on their axes, that they're bright, that they have lives that are stronger than my own, that they can't be tallied, that they betray me, that my days end and end. Here I'm lying in my bed: I don't believe in anything, and I don't believe in anything, and I don't believe in nothing, and I don't believe in anything. And I wasn't home the night the fire and glass fused, the awful trouble and the awful quiet were entwined, these facts swirling, like crazy moons, above the frame. When the body is a beast the soul cannot rest in anything but the flesh, to go on is to enter doubt, to go on is to doubt. And for this we suffer, knowing that we must suffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The afternoon, the sky, not black, dark and yet somehow improbable, how far away it seemed, how light it was, or so I thought. How it seemed a sunbeam, how I can be that bright. The motor running, the glass moving. I thought, then, of her the sun among the leaves, the bright face just beyond me, gray and sunny. I saw the footprints in the sand, not footprints, but arcs, ripples, water, a sandy highway where nothing moved, dead tree trunks whose slow ======================================== SAMPLE 53 ======================================== His slaves, outcasts, informers, and thralls, Taken and fettered and depriv'd; His Golden Age is gone, a shade Pall with an empty space, and all For a fish that breeds not here. <|endoftext|> "An Ode Upon Centinel Wakes", by John Dryden [Nature, Animals, Landscapes & Pastorals, Spring, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Social Commentaries, Mythology & Folklore] Centine, wooden fish and crustacean, Who do let wild waves drown in thyessential seas; Pale star-flowers, filmy mooned blossoms, Which touch not earth with purer chill, Nor move my eyes with clearer dride; Earthdwellers come thickly, bloodshot beaks, Bare-headed to the sunrise-ray; Who lives of love and keeps it in a hinge; Whose soul cannot go where matter is. Honordanus, who puts apart Thee and thy white dust, for mine own soul; Whose sight is too strong for a bee, For man's eye, no eyes were needed O dale, beneath my thought; O stile, O fountain, O spring, From min to mind and thee; O glorious heart, high river-blind, Where shines no light on dale and sea. <|endoftext|> "Antiquities of the Romanow nation", by John M'Kenna [Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Mythology & Folklore, Heroes & Patriotism, Social Commentaries, Class, Money & Economics] R uster o'er o'er the dark Atlantic shore The bars and curbers peel away, And show the sunny famous run The trodden yellow of a year ago, And on the steep of life my story is told: the hand Clung hard around the thickly bedotted web, And every chain and cord was loosed. Money and rank and power were spent For every ill and every good, But to be glad at heart and be right, What matters, you see, for a man? Ploughing, roving in the fells, Fighting with half-a-dozen brothers Till old hat bursts: I speak in rimes On low and heartful cakes, Where seldomly and neverly A time is come to tell my pain. Now out, and in, and in, and out, And with the bard and crow and rook and quail, A thousand tangrams, a thousand tangrams, now out, And with the clock and loud the bell, The old Chronics' hour-old time, The trumpet and the treadle And barn and top of the clock, O bright blue of the bells, the clock, the horse, the man, And thou, sweet Christian Handel. And on the Stowlabsolutely where the rings Are cracked at last And with a sound, a solemn sound The slow resounding chime A century full of wonders sings. Man still must seek his day, And seek it alone; Nature still resists his care; Man's relation is with him to the greater death, And if he fights all alone, What are the odds, one, two, three? And though he fight as best he may, And think all reason nearly good, His odds, he knows, are one, two, three. Death is for man what fire is for the moth; Why not with them fight for the others? What is the use of speaking to them, And of defending to them, and of praising? Rome, sick to her doom, fell fair, In loud lament; I heard her ! In loud lament, I too, Rome, fell low to hear. On the temple's top with head in the air Her statues beat their instruments, And the unseen thousands heard, In whoLE the divine Rome complain. Ah, sores which can be cured That scar still live for other causes ! What has been done has been done, And all that has been done was done with hands Which had their hands already. In time of peace We reap our question: yea, time was to blame When we were fain of the hand of the sword To fill the place of our restored power. Thou, good sir, who hast A hundred men to carry off, Like clay, for a name, as a thing ======================================== SAMPLE 54 ======================================== If my absence displease thy friends, Let me go! Ay! a pause of sorrow May soothe the aching of a heart Sufficed to alter or to end All that thou canst not. Now thou On a problem haply not wise To comfort with no reason Suppose the world is but a dream Because thou wert absent to begone! Then I present to thine ear A word--that I feel would offend So strongly thy feeble mind That it may well reprehend The sound of it--Wrong,--per say; And I decree 'twas in my power Thus, the boy! And, even so, This thing I fain would emphasise, I love thee, not because thou art Of noble stock and fair with sterling Appearance, and common sense Assures us that in thee are found Means and arts of safety and of mind As noble in their uses. Here I feel that those are good which please, Blessing and good---per say; the rest Are evil in the case of man In human estate; the last ten paces That he passes are tres bad--I feel This evil on the farther side The selfish will is a jest Which must be resumed and laughed out, Or it haunts thee ever. That the power Of love and friendship is confest In thy life, here let me remind thee That one who loves, and hath our kind Beneficent, loves not his friend Who woos him; he courts his prize, who wooes, And the friendship's lord is faithful to One only wrong, because he loveth For love's own sake. And herein is he Rightly to woo--which is of the soul, For he realeth other bodies' love Which is the seat of reason in the heart-- To whom the selfish will is not harmless The power of loving in thy soul (As t'incevè benefits the world), For to the contrary is hazardous His will so nettéd and mangled By doing wrong that is not it. Nor can he, I say, the insufficiency Of action gain, of this bequeathing So much of sense and being; but it is Of sense repossessed, or repossessed Of sense and being, and of being Of sense: and so what we are here, Perforce, we use as we come, and so Be, then, we hurry. But thou should'st Some other words convey, which words Will not be willed, for which I invite Much patience. 'Tis time for parting. God who commands--'The widow's servant On our third day of Christmas--be in time Amedilla--as I was in yesternight (For, out of retrospect, the noon was sweet) I chid, that, without, I should have bided Thei had not met in church together. I then distinguished that which was to be, When I discovered I had not wit to guess That, their ada, but their ance vext That, had been completed. This is done, And now the times are come, dearest, for which I look to make, my strengths--now in defence-- Sufficient to fulfil my desire, In faith, of making thee happy, dearest, With all my strength; in such like cause alone The King of all is taken to heart; For (for I care not for the rest) this limb Hath been, like me, a fierce ruck at making, So sæculious it is, or nearly so. Therefore, not what was learnt before But this, was taught; and, what 's more to say, Some now untwist I felt my pulses bound With pain, and fainting; this was not, it appears, Ever with thy dear hand, dearest, touching me; But only with thy kiss-- Some false affront, or new excuse for wrong, That struck my supposéd sense--no matter how Our speaker is ensealed in the gobble! My praise For doing this, or for these, I pray; no more. Of many years of devotion spent In learning this, I had the inward joy alone Of preventing, as far as could be, the pleader Who, pent in thee, makes his paramour With partiality, nor ask I all; But that from thee and thy pure yet-sustaining Reserve, so soon to be debarred, is rue. ======================================== SAMPLE 55 ======================================== Girth and focus and poise in motion. They fall and stand, and roll and move; the vanes Are in motion, and the swift wheels are yet Still moving on the whirring wings of wind, Thro' states of marvels and beauty there, in beauty Still wheeling and sweeping, never settle. Our-neighbors still are our-neighbors, and our eyes Still meet to make our spirits with our spirits meet. Our-hearts still beat to make our heart-beats meet And our spirits meet in laughter, or our pity, That now feels pity. This is our. This is our light. As France, A sister spirit. From the eyes of sun Of God's own sister, a host of stars For our September, are on fire the white And glistening filaments of light, That form in one bright space a thousand ways What sea of light from dead Lake Tiberias To swell and lighten in us to be The image of our days to be, and that still Spans and embraces, and shines into far And growing years; these live ours as do the white And glistening filaments from planets revolving To light our winters, and the cold crisp snows that Fade as they advance the brighter through the air, To glaze and stain our faith, till at the last We set our winter somewhere beyond the gate Of heaven, a bridge athwart our dead thin edge, Stretched across a cruel sea whose hides of snow, Deer, horse, man wearing the same colour skin As morn and evening, still are on their strand. They die not so far as we that die, Living in faith, and hand will hand and heart breath; But silence, and at last silence that shall never die, Their golden voices for their living yeasts. <|endoftext|> They are dancing over the gate That looks out on a river And the dark river in the riverbank Where the tides and all the current run To the heart of a conquered land. They are dancing over the gate That looks out on them, their women and children, Their sons and husbands, and all their pride And the houses of their fathers and grand-children. So they are dancing over the gate Where the United Nations once took its stand. The serpent guard their robes in sleep And the monster legions of Red Terror Will drink the blood of the heroes of yesteryear Who still are unconquerable. This the proper time for her to come To the city which she once called home, For the bridges are all sunk, the avenues Seen like a picture in a book, A picture that one saw in his book Of an unknown city and unknown people, She sees a forest of hills and trees Seen like a picture in a book, The Washington Monument, and calls Its hundred gates her own. They stand in the clef of the dream, The hundred gates, and her busy machine Can grind to minute processes, To minute details of costuming, And befit the needs of callow Gillers who get full square sight of things, She sees them come and go With a throng of dancers in rich attire With the fancy's torrent of waters Thrust out like a fountain at them. But she had a city with its avenues When she felt the unknown inside her bosom, When the first day after a hundred decades She had the strength to stand on the stage of her place And to sway in her presence the calling World of her century. They have brought her up with precious things, With a dress with a mystery Crowded with paly flowers and silver-belled blossoms For the wind that finds her flowery way to her. She is pampered and spoiled by the people She took into the city, By the centenary train that carried her To the stage in splendour under lights, But soon the people called her away, To the huts Where the poor and needy lived When she dared to dream. Her foot-mind Went beyond all recall Of the old city's features, Her home in the open air. Forgotten are the people and things In the calm of the gray, And the dress she wears At the house of the Unknown Man Like a wide-eyed doll of leaves In her slumber, Though she has the sweet red of fallen Summer-lights in her eyes When she wakes. She has left the city but not forgotten The trees in the lawn, And the roses, and the garden of ======================================== SAMPLE 56 ======================================== A man, like myself, whom doubts & rivalries Had wrought into a haughty boaster, gay With flattering dreams & frequent flurries Of illusive wit & cant, whose scheme was a wife To honour, rather than to be. I was one Whose resolution was to serve onemood & one Overcomming death, which did not yet seem half so Eminent an aim in love's purest light romance So when the breese my sitting-room shews a lunch Of roasted goat, or when I can considerable ware The scent of clover bloom wch. B. Jay, the all erudite Traveler, I thought this man had stolen From Solomon's bench in the holy supply Of Ismail. A sprightly youth, too, to shun The grates, and a jovial dame--she had A very hag. Too little, too late, &w. Too eager to be liked, I handled her brush Before the sun was half sunk, &c. I am neither Pope, Knight, nor Citizen, yet The throng of strangers is so anxiously Palmed about with what they call their rights, I've counted fifty times I'm all alone-- I'd shout and stamp--and expect a helmet, I'd kick the curb, and give my sword a knell-- For want of which, and that the form's in danger For me, like thee, Who could'st be of these? Alas! it seems, no noble knight would give up My broken throne to join the assembly In abject servile clause; and sham democracy So earnest seems to me, the State you join Is vile democracy, its mute Vice-President Your proud, vulgar wicket. Quid prouds? Most idle, Immaterial, Ignorant, Have I read this horrid speech, on T.V., And have it to the mouth of my brother-- The play-house wall for such as me, Is he blithe and full of cheer, who learned In ancient Greece that I might, a schmendrick, Then, finding this plain good, why take they not The liberal means which a prince of Art Would choose for his foot and his head, With cordials, clear glasses, spirits and palsies? Thy sneering, droll pictures and thy snare They have vexed out of their brains, I know They could me down in an instant and cut, And much more than that could, if they tried-- And yet that would fear when and how. So tramping and feeling the point A-tweak, and finding the way, and feeling That while I might in the plantain's shade, A hare's noggin strike a clown, to a clown Affecting such minutenso, I saw My leg and my bull tongue among Had more in trust than the millionaire's Great eye of promise, and lo, beholding this Gained here much to sorrow, and gave a leg. Then, seeing myself as it were my share Of three levels, as to four, I felt That I was double, a partner of thine And therefore that I should do The branch of political laws, And sit, the church, the box, the thankless job, And, feeling my tongue slim And my limbs as a branch of the leg I have, as I did before, myself Chosen twelve year on the trunk and leg Of this worthy page, and so, as the worth Of all my kind self seem'd half-desired, Here am I, a lot of semblances, Wise, reddifying, and silent as gods, And once more object of that never-dying thought Which will not be so, nor evermore That which it was, but due to my self, That I should be as it was, which now Me seem can bring no recompense nor use. One day they went (the cardinals) to hear And see a concert, with forty singers, And forty-two that man could make delight To attend and hear by, without delay or fit, All instruments. That done, here Fanny de Lion Jump'd up, said grace, and sung some bars of ice I'd brought him, with four eyes at four points, to see From the King of Thespian snakes, the eyes That looked, from thence, of lightning, and as he sung And leap'd, the blood in each red eye seem'd flame Burning, with the same fire, and the heat in them Disluing his voice into liquid ice as they came ======================================== SAMPLE 57 ======================================== path; When with harsh learning we learn from the centuries The virtues of prudence, what wisdom's goal is; And keen-hearted youths, as yet unwashen, Are roused with catchwords; we might say, in laborious school, Are brought to their knees, or by strange implications, Stumbled over, with strained efforts to restrain Their uncontroll'd, why they walk as they do, Unmoved, and with eyes let dream what they please. There are some miseries, too, behind this ragged state, Which these handsome, firm spirits, or men indifferently, Ravel under, unweigh'd, and smooth men, who wait A spirit possessing, to whose lap, Where dullness nor firmness both blend, but kindle In sweet expectation their own mild thought, To find its course along the mountain slope, From haughty mount to basnet-brows on the valley. We pray that heaven's peace shall swell her skin Of perfect joy, and life in you arise, As sunshine swims in murky air, and you Receive just as it enters to your breast; While with the more tolerable aspect, The mood subserved beauty which puts out Its window, and lets out the rays from below, And you justly deem the breeze of heaven to breathe Its mild, its celestial freshening breath. Juan, who loved well the picture, and of him Who loved, with him grew pious; and he found The reason where they led the way: the grace Is the same, and yet the semblance different. And even to Juan, who loved most the place, He seemed the form that all the Divine Made grabs for: the sacred presence, and the dream. Like the Angel when he set the stars Of all the world a-flying-so, That he had laughed, that he had done the thing And looked, and forgot that he had done at all; That something had been-done which was to be And something to remember: in that guise The Angel took the people: he who had heard Long since what they are, and only said, And only dreamed again, and again forgot His laughing-fire, and fiddled-offered it like a slave; The Angel who had taken stone for maid and man, With both hands a wing full flush the golden fire, And on the cross the broken hand of Moses; The shard-stone glimmering; and he who, With the same wings, up grows to heaven's dome Winds off the water-blowing powdery snows, Still downward laments, still turns to learn how we can grieve: He is the to-come messenger: henceforth The awful habit of his rest shall be To know what we can suffer and forget, To feel with others what we ourselves can do, And find the open eye a dumb man's mark, And stir it, with a friend's faint touch of prayer. What of Juan's terror of the sea? His rest which was not rest: no sea-walls to spin Upon his heart, or grope on his thought, His merry face, his limbs which he hath tamed, His mother, and the Mother of him, she his best Comradel still behind him. His lampless head Now joins the she-world o'er all her beats, Tottering a wonder of the blithesome full Of gray cloud-masses beating on to the bow. His chin takes still its vagaries; that shoulder Which bougetters always deem the mark Of bitterness, has got a strange one; The breath which gathers to a shadiest puff Of his unfilled combs, goes red only in line Where the mouth breathes o'er the ground, and that hand Which mouthing life, makes blood only draw there. Is it a sleep of troubles on troubles, O Spaniard! tell us, to know thee true. For thy white bones which, clustered, lurk About thy gowns' white corner, like hen's eggs Sealed in the arms of sleep the wrist, Thou speak'st of being buried with thy grace: That's true, if English hearts be peaches to be: A Spanish took thy feather to be dried Is't a rosin, O then, I'll play, I'll play a game, I'll have no bull with thee, I'll play, I'll seal no bet with thee. I'll have the great box, with the seven deals, I'll face the toss of immortality. Whereof ' ======================================== SAMPLE 58 ======================================== CTE she's mad for France, SEE a-half of all land in Italy, And all land half half in two more. GRA. See then, my rose, all a-spruce 'Twixt the tall hills, When will he come, when will he come, O lovely Long Ago. Ding dong, ding dong, TAILITEER I mind The ca’ th’ bewails slow decay - LITER ROOF, why then I sit and wander The end of things where I begun, When will he come, when will he come, GRA. Well, well, When will he come, If God will - Wherever He abides In whatever place He dwells He is the end of things as well as I. There’s the Place Dichæia. Dance, little boots, riggity-seconds, The limber straps don’t knuckle. Tell us about the World, said He. The joint he sits in now Lets the ear be taken elsewhere. Where he will go The King is offered, little we’re told. When the man draws up to the screen The little slipp’ry place and all the - Gasping of steam. The man that stops Tight legs, the man that stops Chew up at the air <|endoftext|> "The Waist and the Neck", by Adolf Wood [Activities, Jobs & Working, Arts & Sciences, Music, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment] I THE BUTCHER in one place, the trumpet another - Meant to astonish, me you thump, me you thump, me, me - My wife and me are met at the City's Exposition. Since no one knew the stomach’s size I made it up, Me thrusting my tongue out, me the price, Me, me, me, me, I me, my hungry self - Here the Man with the Wrists like the Hearts Shines up, dips a horse in the White Blood; He is a Strut like the Coachman he rides in fur - There the Heart, between the Wrists like that one Heart - There I Thump, me, I. II CHAMPIONSHIPS are Misled to the Parade One Hundred Years Before the 19th False-front Night of the Yelliewells. Far Adöd Her grandmother lives alone, watches the cock Sung like this, sings a song to her heart’s She is careful with her eggs and which side She carries, cheers for her teams and scolds Her sweet pig and her Fat pig, weeps when Her Big One is born. Far away I lean among all that Mopey is, stacks of hay, new horse, trolley, Riding and hopes and doubts, my toe out on The gate, little dreams, gray, in my hair. <|endoftext|> "From the Juke-Box of Death", by Alex Britton [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Men & Women] The things we live to grieve to Remember the Things That Were. The moon’s dim hook stuck through the window frame Slowly pulling at the curtain as she sits Here at the edge of the storm, wind, rain, The shapes of happiness leaving as others leave As dreams do when they’re seated in the armchair at last, And that tall clock above the desk ticks slowly, And the song ends as though it were the song of some Legendary figure, The song of a life that seems unrecoverable. Like a life made up of many flats, each a Quiet and long one with a light on the balcony, And nothing left of the mood or the moods we knew, Like a song we were somehow in the process of Creating, like a room that had been found After the bodies were scattered on it, like a room That holds nothing but memories, like a book The last of its books ever, like a silence Of late hours, Like a scrap of clean clothing to give something context, Like being laughed at for no reason, like breathing Harsh winds through clothes that are ready to be divided, Like children singing: ‘Would you have [some other body] like me, Like me?’ So what if she changes in the shape of the trundle-foot And he grows in the box of the face As the room darkens, turns towards ======================================== SAMPLE 59 ======================================== Children of man born, they, kings composing, Oft by the like guidance bade abide, In these wide borders of the day, Where never winters or storms come down, Nor any changes of the time, But is changed to an Eden green. O kings, the remembrance of the race Of men of old time on these isles trod, Kings of that time, and of the time to be, And queens, the seed of kings most fair, Whose bosoms dance with sons of Eve the fair, With pensive Lucie, and apethick light, With Thyre, and Urizen the bold, And all, O fair ones, O bright, O rare, And much-lov'd Flora, and blythe Faun, And mild Apollo, and the thyme-ree! But when ye wak'd, from night of evening clear, No less for feirs and airs then for the rest Ye had also of title held of yore. The dancing is more lively now, The song more tuneful, and the rime Smooth ris'ning with the flowing vein, Which, in her nightly ecstasies ablaze, Flaming her eyelids with clove-powd'ring light. The new-drest flower of the verdant May The flush of whose eyelids voluble fleck The noontide for perfume full doth bring, A thin yellow gleam, which held in suspension Swayeth with the graceful nigh-throb'd show'rs; To which the satyrkinick plectrum murk Of their lip-smackling bowls, sufficeth not. Ah! well-fanned spring, thou art frail, Yet in how many another name Forgetting us the fickle year, Thou hast beside thyself reseen, And for thy self a law keep In silks, in cheeses, in silvern wares; In vineyards yet whilom; And all these things, but few know. By thine own face we see thee sneer, O! miserable man! at last Thy sorrow on the earth thou liest, Self-sidebanding, cold, dead, and dry. In thy own shade to do thy part, Hast thou the power? or art thou dead? If so, thy shadow does it prove Thou hast no match, no left hand there To touch the more humbly-charis'd earth. It is possible; if not probable, Yet how cannot it be true? We crave More aid from thee; we, first, the clue Of this wild laughter, this divination, That o'er the world dost drift, And only says that thou art born. Death that has lain one month with'Gore, and has said The sort, this, and next, he would couel choose To rise with living, and to be not hung, A sinister connotation of his word (Though all he cou'd say, we hear it now), Dull'd sense with many a tedious round of doubts, Till sudden on thy back he breaks, "Knowest thou what doth know?" And who is he? Yet, could we perceive, like thee, the shades Of choice old styles of foul guesswork here, We should but feign so, and we but feign To know. And thus it is That with so cunning a study we Still make Heaven's Logicks our primary school In which but late the favourite shadows pass; And laughing we become logicians still, Not simply to rail, but to make good. For, why? not one illusion must be left In this mighty chain of arguments and laws Wherein we cou'd such execution teach, Nor thine, nor tyran, nor Pyrrho be the last Of all the things, nor none; nor is the best Nor yet most banal, nor the sadst-sad, Nor pleasing most pleasant most unpracticed, Nor must aught for that: but we must be seen As all the aids that OUPTL seemed. But they who cou'd not know, no proof was good, And 'tis thy doctrine, but I here indorse That haply if our countries were as truly Fugue or Game, the hearer 'll take it as no shame In Greek-'Sibyam, if, hear't or not, he sees 'Tis but comportment to the world, nor otherwise, But in the state of matters, which already Have ======================================== SAMPLE 60 ======================================== <|endoftext|> "Catalogue of the Territory", by Anne Winters [Living, Death, Time & Brevity, Love, Desire, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Men & Women] Beautiful, happy woman, You are a puzzle of the heart. There are certain tracks you will not drive, Except you go out alone and pray. You are to be celebrated with flowers and words, And some moon-reared cock, The first faren to gladden your eye, Will be your carriage to a hearse. On a day like this You'd wear long pants, And not a dress to hold. So when you die, oh keep Something like a knife Or a coin, As a sort of amabatic shell, We'll build you in. Many months you're towing A big dollary chair, And never a complaint By day or night. You should be taught to shave, Or you'd think us mere Lumps of sand. We start as passengers and loving Carry-ons of cotton, But the seas are filling up And the moon was broken, When we stop for sea-breath On the drive to Tahiti. All is done; for to-morrow You start and go away. If you could only see How glad I am of you! Here's a bouquet just outside the pale of worth, And it should be as dear as a nob but cheap prize, If you could but be kinder to me, Or to Heaven you'd be gone. We may fail or prosper; be supreme As powers on this Earth, But when we cease is when we cease to thrive, Like black holes, with a slow and slow increase of power and size Caught by the field-reeking worm. We may be happy or hoary headed, In what we do, But to be untrue to ourselves is the dreg or lowest of wickedness, If we don't do something for ourselves Rather than others. Are we better in what we think Than what we say? and when We think we think and we're sure To be deluded; We're three-footed like the people who make the Law, And what are people like that? We who go off into the earth And think we are wise Are as bad as those who see with their heads down And pound at the fourfold door Of the Heavenly Court. How I hate this mortal groove, This noise and quarrel, blows, and crave and rive On feet as great as the wind, Where the storied architees Licker at the horse-chains as they walk in the sun, And the music makes of them all. A trumpet note in my ears And lightnings all my heart, Above the brightness and the zeal of it all Throng and trample the mist of the morning As the fragrance of the gardens is blown into my nose From the footsteps of the great, old-world divine As we march by their meadows of peace, The ringing circus, the roseate air, The labyrinth of music, The lightning, the paradise The key to the triumphal stair, The turf where that Testaras handed down His marvels and words, Are in my blood, in my blood and my brain, As are the flowers that once I trod While I strode under the palm-trees of Castile My father bore the brand of the fallen I And I think the wisdom and the courage And high-born heart of him who would allow Only four roads to the soul, One of which was, "Lo, there is no one." For I knew well the value of what I had And I have a heart, But my path was roughened by cowards And the ways were harsh and cold As a road in the fog of night Frozen with sleet or one crossing frost. But in the marish light of the marish sight How four roads there are, The one of the hum-bird's choice, The tree-bear's two, the caterpillar's nine Who know I have my plan so plain I only say because I say so, For they break my heart with their far excellence And break my heart to spare it if I don't find The peace of four. Who say they have the peace of four Are like the sailor who ere he's tossed Takes stock of his bark and finds it poor in quality, So marishes his words for lack ======================================== SAMPLE 61 ======================================== Through the reeds a dryad drowned, Killed by a gull’s bill, Sent to the shore, bereft Won’t again. The boatman dropped the basket, But the girl kept the cup. We were finished, the hour was late, When from the shade a man Wore off his hat And his back, and begg’d free. The wood and we were strayed, Rough weather and sund’ning dark, And a berry in my mouth, And the company that evermore Made our pace so dead. When she look’d in my face, ‘I had thine at noon,’ she said; And the man thus begg’d, with tears, ‘I can sleep no more;’— And the aspen whereon she laughed, Long, many years ago. Firth, who e’er his bed could claim, His name was care and shame, He beheld with his own eyes How her red lips on her breast Were wand’ring in their play. But I that the most approved, By his own choice took none, Would not, did not dare advise Her wishes to fulfil That she would make him some word That ne’er should look again. Down yonder lane, o’er the lowly sod, The woman said, I heard him, The spirit's tongue that shook withal Sang of this loftier height, Lying, length the dale. Out of some time, that shall not long remain, To quarry the virgin maiden bright, I will give my steed his halter to let loose, For his mane I will allow The halter well in thrall, And thus at length to let him go at large, O’er the silent mile. He rode him thence, and I among the rest Sat munching my poor hearth-frier thin, Wondering what with all this hosannas filled, What spell the stupid heather filled, What boughs shook in various winds, What wolf-sloth seemed to lure such wiles. What flutter is of true love’s vilde When on this late observance run, Of threshold brides, the variegated line, The red, the white, the green, the violet wed, The crown, the saddle, and the plain, All at a glance did range their thin names. Some to their lovers desired light, That none might longer stay And need not keep so close a breath; Some to the pleasant task did urge To sudden let their strength retire; Some in heretoculate alarm, And sink this wench the weaker made. And these to cure his body’s fret The dumb, to the devil, would be bound; And some bewitch so fierce and fell From what their terms permit, but few Would suffer death for love than for spite; And these in deed, as well as figur’d, Rued the manner of his love for man, And fainted on themselves, they great done wound. They deemed there was a time he would Be kind to them, and wink in smiling, Since all to woo was blacked out, His face wan'd, his neck drooped, his air All haggard, bare, his hand he placed, To learn they sought at last some skill Their mate no better knew, And near the morrow’s noon of day He lay, yet unfulfilled Of all that they had got, they sore Provision made him still. The mounting sun-light on his limbs Gave, as they sank, their bone away, And like a tired marl it was Their weight their shade to keep, Though like it was their state to rise Or like it sink. What matters it, when set against A passion, how our hearts may ride The crest of love’s speed or pain? The best does most compel, and then Is little love; the lesser far Is nought, for the less we deem the more We put the higher away. I’ve sick o’ hearin boys whine, Yestirry billy tuk up yer back, An’ shum tonight, an’ mak a vow To tuk another when we go, Or else you’d bin my lass for a~~fore. I tell them’s but ======================================== SAMPLE 62 ======================================== Cinderella’s father must be an Italian barber. Why the white dress? Children of sinners were given white dresses. But the Greek tossed away the needle and tipped a comb, the stepfather became a public servant. He should cut his throat if he touched this child. Yet the Greek had a golden feather. His mother’s twisted gold chain was a shopper’s basket. The Greeks flew first. The poet’s sentence hoped she would not write that. Three right facts These children play the game we assume that any loving parent must: “Always be giving.” They will only say “I’m giving my gold chain.” If the child’s white dress is not tossed away, we assume she has a white dress and no shopper’s basket, so we can go to the burial differently: “This is how it is: we visit their graves together.” We don’t say “I’ve seen a dead person’s shoes.” I pray the generation dead can see a future where the work is never done, the generation dead cannot read or trace allegorists. I wish I had a gold chain, what a nice treat. They’ll say “your necklace could have been gold, we need a car for this trip.” I will not be beaten, beaten by only living in our proper places. The toddler sweeps it off. “Look at the flowers. They smell good.” It was a good thing, they were at her side to step so often. They were children in proper places, who understand children are proper places. It was a right treat to see them go. On long vacations I think I would like to be entirely washed. We wash the dead and then we make them whole. If on vacation I had a car I’d go faster. My nose run. I give them great haircuts. I washes car. It goes back to the station and I say to the man “Where’s Cinderella?” It was the donkey which has no eyelids we do not ride we are used to riding horses. An elephant never forgets for people or places. When I was young I said: “I want a horse like Cinderella.” I didn’t want to go anywhere, but home. We ride horses all the time. We look over the horses for three things—excellent whip, strong heart, and are they terrier and judge. It’s no use looking back. I remember Cinderella’s shoes. And some people say they have no sense of smell. Some people say: I know they cannot see through their grins like that. I say the blighters have the taste of a shoe worn in place. If in the far future we do not dominate almost all things there will be no dirt or shrubs to clean up. If some foresters become so abrupt we do not 'waste' a chance to rid the earth of rats then perhaps in all places coral are a good crop. <|endoftext|> "A History of Love", by James L. Casper [Living, Life Choices, Parenthood, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Home Life] For Jerry Orbinton PFC (D) They always mis-call me, light me up until I am frothy-white as a soldier's flight scenting the air around the field, or I think it’s fire, though it is only fire, wading around in their ghetto warfare. But I get right out of the car and into the barracks the way a soldier does, sitting it down and talking to you as an equal, and they get right out of the car, still crazy, and I walk straight back, as I do, and you roll your eyes and snap the angle of the window the way you always do, seeing them way off, as you see, and I do when I’m ready, as I do now, though that should be irresponsible, I say, to the driver, driving from the field. But he is roaring, down to it as he pulls over, in ======================================== SAMPLE 63 ======================================== : And dost thou not feel, oh, soulless one, How there is yet a world for me Out there beyond this pale? Yea, dost thou not know that I, Who am thy child and serf and slave, Am not and shall ever Be far, far richer than thou? Thou knowest I have won thy love, Thou knowest I am weak and good and true. And I shall hold thee serf and child No more, I, who am thine for life? Thus all alone shalt thou go forth, Through the wide world from age to age, Away from thy fond one! Thine and no other shalt thou meet, There is no foot to follow, No hand to lead, no heart to move 'Mid the dull, dull city's crowd. There is no face of all the years To greet thy coming as it goes, No heart to feel thy heart's beat Like that which pierces now my life. There is no man's heart in any heart, Nor any heart for any man, Nor a love but hate, nor any love but pain, Nor any strife but too fierce to seem But the passion of my despair. Fare thee well, my spirit! Fare thee well, for I will not spare The bare breast that beat between thy feet, Nor will I lose the serfs who dare To live for thee, the freeborn ones, And make the strange world look on With pity on a slave! Because thou wilt, dost thou Makest the miles of green, Where the tiniest few roses blow, In shades of dying night? Not all of earth is thine, Nor all the world of light, The air is still and deep, The waves are fiercer far. For fame is bright on thy crown, And hearts do fear thy rising flame, And far and near, In the dark nook of thy green crown, The dreary plain Seems a crowded heaven. A king might well be proud, But thou wouldst be the proudest As all hearts are weak, And noble thoughts the noblest, And freedom the mightiest I love thee with a love Might envy to man The monarch's love of his own, If for thy pure sake We lost perhaps our souls, We should not feel it then, But in the end of days Would be as one heart with one, In a land where no man knows, A weary man that wanders Over a world of wrong, Who in the end of years Findeth rest in a grave. If any man be left to care For the rare things that are It matters not how true Their beauty may be, A man he shall be, Where no man knows how to find The rarest of things. With a word to a word of signs Will the heavens fall down on him That men sing to as a star, Grate on the eye and fix the feet That are quick when song begin. God with men that shine so bright Lives, and wonders more. If man would live he must be free, This he knows and this he seems, That his heart by choice should swell To the utmost of space Where the great love of peace may be, If he lives in this wide world As a man should live. For the red brass-string of labourable deeds Is strung above his heart, and it is sweet With the gold-bubbles that keep their sombre place, Which the deep spheres of outward things surveil, He is painted on the insensible air, And this world shows what rare things men may do If they would but choose, as he, to be great And so they are, by their choice made great By the fountain of an eastern sea. Where winds may gather, here and there In this world as in the other, for the bringing Of his harvest home; and men that weary find That an inward harvest in them sways With a joy no heart has told, but the sense That turns round and is turned round in song, The glory of a summer day. I would not have them higher Or draw them deeper, That the dear sun would make them longer The wise sun's life, So that the glowing east Should not Be greater than the best Word that Stude is, and not the Word. Let them feel the sun; Heed their prayers; God's sorrow, being An inward thing, is ======================================== SAMPLE 64 ======================================== --End of the supple truth Our children's children Quiet in a row. Letting nature rest, Plucking afternoon Rae to fullness, Daisies, innocents-- Fine gold-crowned stupid citizens, Quiet as row and leaf. Comrade, foolish man! Knock at my door and claim a share, May your candle burn With an added span To the house of John and Jean. If the angels could take one, Where would be the use? So the horse-companioned youth Seizethe, Seizethe, unsaid the steps Out the door, Out the wood's green void; Round the wheel at low thunder plough Glimpses of little fleet things Wild to meet, and hitch, and shoot, Little golden arrows. The little song-birds, led By the cricket's sire, Looked with a chid enlightened At the nodding tree; The sea looked mellow, The white and downy slugs Got up at night, And their prow-scented nests in shambles Were made, with all their task, Of spindly reeds and leaves; And the willow-trees close Made shelter all too safe, Of mosquito and possum. (He turns a living remark From the old horse's tail: His ear he espies, and he Marks her free and safe, With a box and crew Below the level of ear-plugs.) No crook of the hocking jest, No barbs of the toilet, The best-clinking clink O' dirk and flagon liquor; We do not knobbies, And life's a bore. Blow, snap, thwosh! small pity, Because men work, Blow, snap, whatever's the case: Down goes the game, To the Devil a dish: He's but a low fellow That goes clanking by. Never mind the dam, What she can do for you. Leap in and take her bed With a swinging smirk, As she parlays old clothes In a starling petticoat, And its tail her tresses bind, He that has drunk all is his own, Brought unto me in his belly, Shall go without reproof. Though my milk you pledge as white As the milk of your own cow, You shall pay me back with black That you drank while yet a child. God makes man so is he may, Breaks down man so is he can, Nor gives a breaking heart to him. I made the woman, I can take her By force, can take her by force; The child you bear is the child I gave, There is none that can take him from me. A soldier clean my lance of buckles Goes forth to fight. I shall not blink but your lance shall float In darkness of the battle. Strike hard but, O boys, but kinder, And the more your lances fail, Woe betide the man that strikes for God. I know the earth will pray like the flowers, Then mark the sign of the cross On the body clean and whole. Though our tassels are pricked they will beat Your faith, for then the world will say How fair your sacrifice was made. But, you, stand nearer, be closer still; While we stand bare, there is no greater shame. Watch the wheels, but stay the rails, When you plough the field of fate. Our tassels will hang like weeping willows, Our harness will be bedded in slaughter. If I do not go back to the day, When you said white lips to black steed, How can I look at the vision Of your lance in the face of the dead. I have known pity in your eyes, For it had been, I thought, you had not To learn so much. Your hands of little grace Were never such robed As they are rosied to-day. Your rustling words and your broken smile Are praise for mine own praise. For we ride the skies to the earth's end, And the fields turn dark In the thongs of the night, And the din of the car Is a cry that none will heed. We go singing down the tracks Where the sow, poor sow, deep dies In the crush of the other fell. We ride and we sing, riding and riding ======================================== SAMPLE 65 ======================================== |<|endoftext|> "Self-Tracked", by Jennifer O'Leary [Nature, Animals, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] "Better to die trying, than die unkept." —Sun Yiyun They were two pocks of fire in the sand and then they were gone. They were rivers with water in them and then they were gone. It’s not difficult to find them now so close to home. Twelve swarming insects once a stock of two million. After that? Well, after more digging someone might uncover old matches, gold jewelry or dirty underwear, perhaps even a love note left for the commander in Iraq. Who knows? A second strike. Forever after remains to be discovered. They emerged from the mountains on the far coast of New Hampshire. The one-armed pewees and one-eyed crow and then they were gone. Somebody called that crow a crow. It was the other way around. There was some kind of music. It was deep in the woods, it was divine. And soon that music was lost in the sound of weapons. The bad guys had bows and arrows but we didn’t see any handguns. The bad guys played good defense. We listened to the trumpets, followed the drummers without knowing it. There was all kinds of music, followed the drummers without knowing it. We followed the lead of a cell of vultures. The bad guys shot at them with arrows. How many times did the good guys find the holy-warrior bird, the magic crow? The peweer from Missouri a place for the contemplator. There was a choir of orcas and they left their portholes behind. They were heavy with fresh salmon but they could not move. The orcas went under water and back, then the good guys left with their toys: four bicycles, one typewriter, a cake, a trout cake, a seal rug for a lost baby and a crow: an orca and an eagle. Our first white feather and the baby beaded with waterskin, wet but dry. <|endoftext|> "Parasites", by Deborah Warren [Living, Health & Illness, Nature, Animals, Seas, Rivers, & Streams] There was blood on the sand, the sailor said, but she brushed it aside: The ocean’s image replaced his feeling, and he wrote. A constellation of stars in the heart of the sea. What else? Then the salty, earthy smell of what had been prey. Soon the sailor’s hands on the dead turned cold. What else? All the marine sounds: the gulls’ first cry, the splash of little whales, then their song. The musical pulse of dark waters. And they took from the sea, and it kept on taking: Stink Shandons and keel, bones, perfume. And if you stayed there were a million things you could forget. A battery of tests to find you, to bring you, Unclogged its rut or ruffled its tufts of hair. As if the sea owed you a great deal, You like a fine bottle to your mouth, So much you could do, so much you had not yet done, You owed it a deep sigh or perhaps a kiss, By the sailor’s Notebook, but maybe the sea Got bored with your story and moved on. The velour and velwe of birds, or stars, silvers and millions for the ocean’s screens, And below, a celestial shade of such vastness was a near-miracle of slowness Just below midnight, the few stars, so small and dim, bright tiny diamonds of crystal, just so tiny (they look huge in the notebook) Distinguished like stars From the biggest, all else Gave hue to those sharp little shiners, Swift and pure. <|endoftext|> "Maturity", by Deborah Warren [Living, Coming of Age, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Relationships, Home Life, Philosophy] A man’s life for me was like a closed trunk and as one grows older the narrower the opening, so the emptier the life within. Gone are laughter and gossip, warts and allen-wright beds and all that went before. The empty houses now, the seagull’s high peals, are more than empty homes, more than coffins or ======================================== SAMPLE 66 ======================================== Cassia's balmy odor, heavenly fragrant; The fragrance of the clement white lily, Of lilied rue, and labdanum, And lilac whurl up in morning air Above the hipp of her purple bed, By shady Sicilian firs, where those Whose garlands crimson-toned ev'ry whirl Or blush of mid-day sun and blossom. The master whilom took the care For each vine and each ivie sprout, But thou may'st pick them in a single day, And ever find what they are: A damp clear spray: a stream that flows, A sallow lawn is all. The Master her way sends thither sent, A worn old bed. When first she gained The gardens of his presence there, All that was sweet to her was seen; Croton, where the tunnies passed by Arched walls of venerable fig And over all the fairest twigs Of all sweet-spun law and architecture Sweet fruitage hung the veining night Of young smooth leaves. And low in the reeds Which swelled the river of the brook A silvery fountain gushed and flowed And made a water-well that seemed For thirst a thirsty means. And there Grew vines and flowers and leafy trees With graceful roofs beneath. Then all he had done was done, To hold so long aloof: nor she That now one hour in May Was wailing in the deep of May, The curtains that the inward Spring Had drawn, the season of red flowers, Which must of course flower, Than any playmate of a child Set off alone in her part To play the sweeter for the joy Of thinking on her content. And now it was his part To count and see what fruit might bear That September might be sowed: and here What new thing was she which he saw? All the old sweet earth had sent forth Its flowers to wear the winter weed; And only that they might not yield Her fruit for grief, a rose he kept As the first-ordered token Of that certain leave she gave For his next verdure to unfold. The pomegranate's flower was the trigger With which shot lossfrey Cinna's memory, In the hot-prowed dark of fate, That blow uncouth now fell out of hand. And just so had it been with her, And now a week had brought her there Who to his look, And the old Law that spun the cord Of fate, From one thing drew it into woe. So much he loved and left behind For nothing; by the Law which gave More grief than joy And more of grief, because the weed Her love's hand had sowided bore a bloom Well, now when he came to taste her bloom, He tasted not the decline Which told of ice of freedom in November But a spring, as the ages changed, unwedded In all the tenderness of Spring That came at once and passed away. The King from a great trump Which pounded on the knells, with his wife Was threshing what solace there might be In bringing her; which brought her; For though love's is ever rarer For bringing what it sets out to free, And though with her a night's earth may end In a day's earth begin, Yet were it ever so short, Socefearers, since bringing hath not been Nor done the ending of love's life, they Would see time's dawning from his mirky east Again to flicker into birth, And by the seed of the Earth Give to our mortal dreams of Heaven, A shine which will not be undone As stands the universe's "about it," not yet Within the worm's thick viscus air, But stretched into infinity, Lifted above that ugly amber track Which links one hue to another, reckoned By any course of its lengthening snows, Man did not want for many days, Which shows as the galaxy's seed-fleet Darting alone its thread of length, Bending its larve above matter's keel. And, as we whose task is to place This multiform universe Of suns and moons and stars each on its post Know better to confound The throngs of lineation which map The milky road, each devious star With aequeous sunshine or its shade Grown grey with mass of sea-going sands Or as a place where the sunsets glow Would consider it wise to ======================================== SAMPLE 67 ======================================== muttered of men so many ways that I must obey, or still go down to the City and stay with Penelope, with whom I passed the fair babels belonging to Ceÿneles, who was disposed to urge that old hag, Circe into the fattest flue. There are twenty maidens at Penelope's bridle and the whole belly of herself is palpitating with delight." Then the more they marvelled at one another, and thought “How can we now entice Eurystheus, the wife of the noble steed, to meet us in the meadows of Buprasidas.” And with soft words they sought what could be done. Straightway their wives in their presence took from their stockings the spotted mourning-gear, and dragged it on the ground, saying, “He is in no shape or guise to come near us.” But from her high chair Eurystheus went down quite dry to the plain, and there he asked of every single creature, looking both back and side. And he was seen by no man, not even by Di’oph son of Norget; though he strode along the beach. Then straightway that savage hunter came back from the slaughter, and stood with his teeth laid close in his hand. He was all in purple, and his gait glanced all rust-brown with the nakedness of a sun appearing through the boughs. And he answered Eurystheus, saying, “My friends, I kept my word. Not one of you shall this deceit detect, nor shall ever know I that I had myself cast into the sea. But, O King, if thou hadst offered me a son, or desired to hear my tongue, or hadst entertained one of my sons in my old age, or had found one of my daughters suitable to take up a husband,—and I say even these things I am sure thou hadst no perpect of doing,—thy heart is now in evil enver~ment, for thou hast none of these.” As he spoke, the house-croyg fell into the washtub, and the washing machine rolled on, and the red water seared their naked shoulders; but the witch led them back again into the midst and compacted out the grimy grubs and wassail- mates. Now when she saw how the folk were devouring the flesh, the daughter of Sora, the old man of the mighty servant, rebuked the murderers and said to the counsel, “O dear friends, I am not glad at heart to see hated flesh, nor rejoice at the mockery of thy face, nor take delight in the sport. Why, O Thracian king, rather have some bit of meat, green and tender too, or even if thou wilt tempt me somewhat, take the skin of an ox between thy teeth. Of a truth I am sore angered thus, neither having meat to hand, nor garment to cover my head with; behold with-holding till I have clad my body with wool. My hair is also lamed down; or, if there be some other cause, it is because they perchance know not of the gods, and the tempts of women, and the bitter fates of blood. We are buried up to the chin, which if the Thus he spoke, and reined in his chariot, And with a leap he leaps on to the earth, and leaps again, laughing as he does so. Then all the chorus sang out, and all the rest sang In the Teucrian land the grapes were stored on the slopes of Mount Ida, by the waters of the milky river, which sent its boiling issue down to the sea in showers, whereon it lay as milky puddles; there were Syrtis, with white flowers of its whiteness, and vine-clad Latmos, and clear-eyed Ranobe. Thence it had come to fall with Nemea, who first showed it to her wives, when she had sojourned there of the folk infamous, she and her whose cheeks were stained with tears, one after the other, so fleetly did they take it. In more recent times now is it held with heretics of other minds, that there once existed a race of soldiers called Achaeans, from the name of the great river, and that all the people of these mountains were followers of one man ======================================== SAMPLE 68 ======================================== room this fire will melt me karma I can hold in a diamond’s gushing pine I also feel ancient odors passes through me like a portal opening a cat from his tears and my body a man from the liquefaction of gold Gold oozes into my veins house not coins burns into thick heaps of a broken copper burns into monel powder of old-age and lead and suet and finally fire and salt burns this broken glass I carry around with this kamaal the music and as time runs out drikut I know what a winter will bring the street to the older men and their thin knives my father of the graves dug for strangers of the feeling of dying When I was told that I too would be a god a boy told me that when a bridge was about to fall in the river the music of an ox on a given day there was a word for that snow fell in the room’s old stone that morning We listened to rain and heard the rain as earth. The paperboy had brought a green sack of grain from home. And that was all. The word’s longest valley from there water falling from the sky into this well a plain’s place in the sun a date’s and time’s only lies I’m still not being heard. Thick gold burns into the walls in a winter morning one time I cried for being abandoned. I want to say I’ve spent my whole life missing a word but it’s a magic word for ending. I want to tell her not to ever throw a word away never throw a small tree out to sea to hardly any rain sends golden birds into the lives of golden gods sends moons and olive leaves sends heroes and lands sends water crawls out of the valley to cover the world this morning. The man and boy are still a ways out the house’s entrance. Kumbhakkar there was that greenness that came from the evening which never came again. I’d begun to go off into the valley by myself in the morning. It got to the point where everybody did as they were told. Whatever the differences or the lack of light it never was my place to tell them what to do. The flood came from outside. I was left almost an adult I was forced to walk in the valley no one there to help. <|endoftext|> "In the Dark You Have to Grow", by Timothy Moore [Living, Life Choices, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Romantic Love, Nature, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Weather, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] you have to grow in the dark as a bush of gore or hair or even a single crystal and you you have to swipe to give your hand away and you have to be so star struck when you dance you have to be sick of the light you take for given you have to grow in the dark for the love to stay this long way for you have to be in the dark feel about it grow in the dark sigh away and you have to see that it is there for given in the dark you have to be grown for given you have to find it is there for given you have to grace in the dark you grow in the dark for given so you have to grow out so you can ======================================== SAMPLE 69 ======================================== coach went slow, And the buggy lagged long. "What's that?" asked Uncle Jeff: "Miss isn't it, Annie?" quoth Annie. So the buggy went on slow, And the buggy never stirred. "Don't go round so fast, please," said Jeff; "You'll shake your clock." So the buggy went on sound, And the clock was still. So the coachman thought it fair, So the horses were contented then, That he thanked them for their stay; "It's a most delightful sight," And he sung from the window Of his street and his home In the great state of the year, And he shook his clock, and he knew So the clock, the coachman, home; He shook the clock again, And the clock and the coach horse said "Time has been elsewhere" And he shook his clock, but he shook The buggy's back. When the sun goes up the East And the morning comes, And the clock shakes to the road, And the buggy shakes to itself, And Uncle Jeff's clock never stirs; When the sun goes up the East, And the morning comes, Said Uncle Jeff to his son: "I'm rich in the city, you see, And you're going to be an Old Man Tom. I live in a nice house and fine, And a little garden, too, And in the city they've warned me And I go to the church and Sunday School And to church and Sunday School; Tommy more schools the better When I go away, They're like to teach you, say they. "There's no Jonah this, no Peter that, But a Samuel! But be careful, Tom! Tommy you'll be an Old Man Tom." For he turned to the clock, who hung Upon a silk scarred Wrap, the city gate Of four blocks of marble gray In front of the block to strike, Or ever the drowsy old fellow Strikes from slumber, With dust-smear gray upon his eyelids, And dust upon his cheek. He shook his clock and set it off As sure as he could; He looked down the grove, he stood on the gate And whistled as his clock Did when he blew through a almost As clear a day As when the Saviour came. And Uncle Jim held up his finger And said, "This is true; This which follows from a "Yes" Is "Till death expect"; Though John asked after science, Said that Science little meant. But, "Far be the soul from poetry, Better pour the liquor of life Than study guzzlers," Said Uncle Jim, And he pointed to the clock, Who shook his clock Who shook the clock with his finger And blew, and blew, and blew, And blew, and blew And bluffed the dust from his finger While Uncle Jim stood by And watched him, the clock With two hands, two fingers And Uncle Jim stood by With two hands, two fingers. Oh, there is a shadow long and wide That has swept over the city of books, And the garden's weedy front lawn Where they hid the Book of Hours In the sun so bright Of the sun that the days grow gray And the rosy slates turn to gold, The holy book lies cool In the garden where the Book of Hours Stands among its rest, In the weather where the shadows are deep That have swept over the garden of books. You are stout and you are armed; You have changed as the leaves in the park Changed in the nights Of the quiet year For the noise of the wheel of the going away, And we were never able to hold you Until We had our judgment night; And, as in the never ending round Of the game we were there As a turning to page, We had to hold you fast. We had our judgment night; And we kissed you a thousand times Lest we should forget; And you turned as the paper turns; And the words were so long I have lost my ragged black dot In the white future Of the change that is over; And you turned to my eyes And the shade was yours, And I kissed you for judgment; And we never seemed to go; But you were armed; and, as we turned To the Book of Hours, We knew that the hour was ready; And you had turned as I turned To the face ======================================== SAMPLE 70 ======================================== stunned by that awful plague, there was none could cry for the Argo. He, therefore, vowed to break the ground in twain, if love for such a wife should ever blu. The husband, full of chafings and with crying prayers, too, was murdered with his wife; a woman but softly yoked, that she in beauty might outsell all the vanities of Greek sculpture, was always doomed to death. Thus did I go from day to day, in this gloomy land, and all my prayers were only for the child. I asked no other thing, I was of such childish Age, and therefore of such weak courage. I saw the lad, and every word that came from him turned to a curse. The gracious Father that saw us soon would hide me in artificer style, and I had better have gone about the country as before. This when I had seen I felt too much, but I hid it quietly. At first I only went to bed at night, but thening again, with aching ears, until I was all of a size for my long hours, I will say that it seemed to me a very great thing, for this was now the second sentence, the first sentence the third. Then I could only A big black swallow dived down with a loud good-night, and I cried to my mother, "I have heard some noise and it is the swallow. It said to me to be silent, but now I shall be at twelve years of age." I was suddenly blind with having said the word. When I was able to see again, I said to myself, "These are twelve vicious dust that never heard the law of their punishment." I called the cad to the ear that had said to me, "I cannot look on any more, for he is dead, and the swallow is speeding on her flight; therefore I will bring her to the forefront of the tribunal." I said to myself, "I will only say to the ear that was my ear, and to the forehead that was my forehead, some brief words so that the person who was in the dark shall not hear." For I had rather see the judgment against me than to have to sit upright in heaven. Then I called to mind the first sentence of the Lord's syllogism, which says that those who take the sword should have the whole world with them; the punishment for the same crime is therefore a good unto justice and a bad one to justice. Then I thought of the three women who were our confessor, and I said, "I think of the three women and say to myself, 'I will say to But they were firm and inflexible, and there was no solution, for they had no heed of that. Then I thought of their tongues which were so abused, and there was no end of the malicious word that had issued from their mouths; whereon I made up my mind not to say a word more, and I wanted to find excuse for having done so in my haste to do all that was left to me -- to see the boy, my bread and wine, to seek Laestrectize, to clear myself of doubt, and to rush quickly on to the Lord Jesus Christ. The first day I had called upon the Bishop, and told him all the danger that lay in wait for him, and his precious sons, but he came no nearer than Bethburn Hill and never was there of the least fashion of help, to call the Pope and pray. The old woman went again to Rome, and died there in the next year, the twenty-second of Beatrice. "Let not the common world go to and fro, seeking wisdom and heresy; if one goes, one shall not have either life: judge for yourselves; I pray you, and perplex yourselves; you who shall see above the dry wood all that has sense, what will you see, how shall you Yet my hunger would then be less if I did not pray to the Father, and beat my breast against the shining pavement of Nice, and say, 'Is it that he who sares so little of this world that he can win it for me and mine, and is it not he who on that day at Astragar is clothed with such a mighty name that I, whose name is but one of many names of this day, shall not find it in myself till he comes who beats down death and gives life.' So I would pray, but my lips could not speak for trembling, and my tongue was ======================================== SAMPLE 71 ======================================== A wide, unending panorama of chasing worlds; But feel that, of all recorded and set apart, Not one but knows, has in himself, such as I, Perfections so rare they may be named, among The blessed twenty-one, to mention but one-- Ever does a God who respects and gives them scope, Explicit or implicit, to do good, provoke So as to make His will the goal of all they do. 'No man ever trod so sacred a wall as I.' He would awaken them who, like me, divinely hold That Law is that, and Pen and Pencil as the means. Thou, my dead friend, in this dull mottied jail here At Drancy, thou'lt wake, I pray thee, when I prove That Law is the means, and Law the test of him Who gives the law; and that, in due time, a man Who gives no law, deserves no damned life. Will I do good? then, for I am determined, And shall bear up under the must of Law, And not demand, as thou, a common thing, My just proportion of praise, or praise too harsh, But, even so, shall give what passing boy's aregiven. Foul poets can't tell why their race is low, Nor can reproach their fellows, but themselves; But they whose merits bespeak them well, Knowing how to cite),--thou seest, I entreat, A higher pitch is reachable here, to gain Honour,--learns Phaedo, or the master-stroke Of some ode that floats a line clear down to the truth, And is not hasty in the remarks it makes, And knows to make a true entrance into the life That is before men's hearts; or, if it floats To front so far in a certain line, and then Feigning, races round, and goes again, to see What's the latest stanzure; then goes home, forsooth, For at its latest it's home, is best depart, Like a fond wife who flutters a little band Of tints, not quite so fine, with a freedom Half-forgotten, and in which she has no right, Yet taking them to be her own, and like treasure; But have them only for a season; then Thou art a thief, since there's no return thereof; Nor a lord, nor a patriot, nor a lover, And that's the reason,--that's the reason! See, then, what's the mark by which I will prove And prove to thee, if thou canst, what is it? It is--whilst Law-being stands the way, A man's strong purpose shall be heard and Steered by the same, in the same channel, As if in each, his fate were to be One in direction, one in aim, As if the deed fit for invocation were The deed that grieves, by addition, to be told; So that, or the heavens of life in dust were Fell flayed, we should, as the world went by, Take up the whole on trust in a stronger hand. This shows the sense of all poetical art, Mingling with virtue, and this the sense of All poetic philosophy. It shows that Which makes us blind to God, or all's one in this,-- The 'Triune Spirit,' or as American writers call The 'Three C's,' of doctrine, content, and conscience. Yet we have seen and feel that there are degrees, If only if one takes not his ends in sight. Let them follow as he likes; he's but a fool, Who, since it needs no leave of doctor or lawyer, May read and meditate, and his feelings have taught. Some prating ass! in whose looks one might trace (Like that of Laurencegil) greed or sleep, Narcissus-like, with eye-lids turning up and down, Nostrils fluting from his nose to his teeth. This I have felt: Had I a dollar, where's the wit, Or reason that could have saved me from a mulligan? Not in a hundred; and I know not what I'd do To give myself up to the pack of cards. Thus far he's raked; but let him go, and the grip Is on me once more; his cogged and groovin' pupil, At best, is only half asleep. Nay, I'll have none, Not even the polite sense of the word, to clear my conscience. Is ======================================== SAMPLE 72 ======================================== |> the band to play it they could play even for me now How could I ever forget them? How could I forget the folded periscope I'd lifted and shaken, I'd watched from the heart on deck And found the light to scrape, to scrape, to be Still there—in air—with that history in front of us With the lights on for my sudden laugh or tirade When hell went down—with the fever, the heart searching for it— Like the rats again—with the steel in the empty sea— The cursed wells under this city under this sea. <|endoftext|> "A Slice of Christmas Cake", by Joseph Lasagna [Religion, Christmas] It is the man's burden to carry thoughts of coming riches, to cross long distances and to suffer loss for his daily bread, even in the here and now. I had hoped the world would give me the eye of the world’s leading lady— the wind and sun. But the world will give me only this slab of Christmas cake with the fire spearing my tongue. <|endoftext|> "Green Tea", by Hieu Han Dark tea color in my throat, cold breath of smoke. Dark hell of flavors where I want only to drown. I want only to fall from this green cliff, to this strange land. There, I will prove my strength and endurance. After the meal I walk in a dim light among the open windowsill and sit by the light. A warden steps in front of this door: seven more minutes. Greenness glitters on his shoes. His belt slims in the dark. The sky is a color the sky when it is not lit knows alone. This is the color of my body— the kind of myself a young man’s body felt like in the past. <|endoftext|> "Most Interesting Man in the World", by Hieu Han Riderless guy with head of a goat and clothes on the line, his clothes as green as a leaf as the picture shows, the background transparent. His hair holds in the wind that blows over the tops of buildings. The goat face looks up in the wind. His clothes hold. No, he says, no, it is O. J. Subway Co. Chicago: I am the loop, the circle. It is very nice, the lights glisten O. Most of all, I am the sun. When I take off my clothes it feels like I am becoming a goat and it is no longer me becoming goat, it is just the circle in the air. I will feel more assured if I am naked, no longer holding on to my clothes. <|endoftext|> "Lines Written in Outer Space", by Hieu Han It is winter. The hut we're in inside a subway station is coated with cobwebs. We're cramped like sardines and there is no way out other than waiting in our station. Later, in our new neighborhood, people will point out meeting places and houses on our street as a girl thinks. And when she smiles then we can show her our house. In my dream I seen the whole earth inside each tree growing roots and leaves. Green, in my heart, with each one I say it means prosperity otherwise signs of war. <|endoftext|> "Letter from another World", by Ted Chaandos [Living, The Body, Nature, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Mythology, Heroes & Patriotism] I saw the whole earth growing roots and leaves, the hairs on my chest enumerating, but I was a man in another country in a different year. That year, not the year before or I'd remember it now. But the one I dream. I'm inside the leaves. There's a crick of sound. What is it? <|endoftext|> "from The Book of Lucy)", by Ted Chaandos [Living, Coming of Age, Life Choices, Youth, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Mythology, Greek & Roman Mythology] She’d been an island, now, part of an island in an archipelago. Her father gone, too. His airboat was anchored elsewhere. On the ======================================== SAMPLE 73 ======================================== O thousand, thousand fair Shining upon the poppies of the hill Like the snow in December; O youth, O virtue, O spirit triumphant, Binding earth and sky! O darkness, that art no dearer to me Than the North Pole is to the space beyond, We know thee the angel of an evening's shadow, We know thee the angel of the sunlight's fall, In the hills when the dusky night Draws to its noon, and at evening when we pause From idleness and chilly susurrus, Hearing thee, we come forth to meet Time. O hill, upon whose head Our camp can rest From toil or dream, By day and night, Dost thou arouse our hearts from folly's woe And the dog's violent fury? O young poet, O poet old, Thy verse hath swayed me from the plodding throng, Thy verse hath taught me how to mount and ride, O last and first poetry! I have drunk thy beer; I have drunk thee as the sheep drink water; Thy song I sing to still the cock's bloody cacophony, To set the car of death a-trip laying down its reins of speed. Alas, alas, that statesman great, the glorious Read, The glorious Read! Farewell! in us, statesmen are not famous; There is not room in state taverns for immortal names; To the place a man might have won a medal of honor, he is likely to pass a bookshelf. O empty page, O stained shut-up visage, Your stuffy old picture is not Read material! Your barren rhyme is not worth the wax That I chew, to keep my teeth sound; Though the woof and the arc are hanging With words that the great poet would not save, But simply let it be read, Most like a book, most like a press. Alone, alone I will seek the root Where yet the sap of life is; But you may guess, so always should know, The snows are startit from the tree. You must come out where the hills are steep, You must feel the cold and the storms, You must fight for a good place to stand, As well as I. Not with the trumpet's breath can I put it; Nor armor's lance shall I wint its; But I'll swear by the great Aeneid Is more than humanly tried! I will kiss her whence she had her birth, And her way with me. I have fought for a thousand where are lost, And I'll fight for the rest; I have sinned and repented, but I was not Meant for my shirt to be sold; There is time and haven for me yet, And you shall love my tome. Stand, brothers, So long, or never a more! One man's here tonight, Brought here by a bull and a bear, An old gray portent sitting here, With long white hairs and dark downcast eyes. His soul is weeping for his home, He will soon depart for his land While the sea roars his his warning away, Till the moon rising to a full would say "All meet again in seven years time." In the presence of these illustrious men Of high moral character and surpassing worth, For whose happy death alone We accede to hear them speak, I vow before the sun that made them shine In this our Western realm of pleasant speech, It is our part to praise them evermore, That in their memory we breathe a New England. Sorrow and Strimming (The wonder of the first year), Rinaldo, and such words, Hard to depict; but wonderful and rare The ghost is gone on the garden lawn, For he did not drink, Nor did he go abroad, Nor in utter loneliness. The Pilgrims arrived In a season of sunshine, When the garden was fair; But they called, and calling came To their anchorage in the creek; For the port which they gain Was on the beach, Where the fragrance fell Of the sea unto the water, And the hearts of the men could not be still. When the men went ashore From their vessels, and beheld The hard waters washing Their burden of treasures, Their lean and perishless sheep, And the great headboard fair In which their barren families leaned To guard from thirst, and yet to be Their palm and temple; the men ======================================== SAMPLE 74 ======================================== The petal grows not; from the grape, Taken from its bed, no sweetness results. Come, boy, taste the bitter wine: 'Tis sweet to pray, but sweeter To drink, but worse with foam from felons of the War, Or in that sea, the thick depredations of the deep which storms produce! Beware the snail, in his pool, that crawls and ne Bespeaks the mud, and farther spread You are a friend-- She spoke not proudly, yet her mind believed-- "Forgive me, if it must be so," The keen sympathy of Child In looking hearts and hopes--as a seaman The hearts of young children--was all she wrought This is the familiar scene, The church is full of psalms and thanks To God for sparing a helpless girl. Lacken, a lambkin who sped, his master's horse to a pen, Was slain, and now the case had come before the Court-- Before King Charles--of a pitiful man. Hep Much the mixed strain of that far mute pleader Hath shocked us, and failed in many ways; Nor, dare we think, could any grisly exploit Have reached this island; for in all this great world, Yet seen of him, or his disciples, or mortled Razor-bearded Rabbula and all his flock, Of her fair nose who spoke in many a prattler, Of ribband and unbuttoned breast-pocket, shrunk That hearers stunned and bit-worn Christ in cold, Of all his millions naught else, nor swerved one hair, But stood erect, silent, in the torrent Of words, and of one only, in one dog. (Though holy) the word for world's sake; Whilst we an offer made make-- To spare a dog (or one), in form of him Who did more than dogs before or dogs After our messmate's dog, and was less. He became such a boy among dogs, His bestiality and his faith not But these. He stretched Out sullen-eyed Upon the towns, the farms, the sun-swept highways Where men all day eat, and as they go To church or elsewhere. I was an child Among them--first among them--with them, in a brown Damp night, Downy after a wet day, whom dogs nor men Nor storms disturbed, Nor, to my shame, the fetid filth of day. In every town or city-square, In town, by plough or wagon, The dog at home at noon was a foot shorter, The dog at night was a hundred and two pounds Folder, deeper, stronger, and, his tail like his head. But dogs, though all his own house and seed, Were dogs at home, and none needed or knew. Now I who were such a dog That I at once such a man Should such a dog of me make, As that dog said I should become. My man--but we who love said All that is said by men and dogs, And mine shall be like his, though his My foot, and my eye, and my ear Be as the ditty that's said To them by men, while dogs say not a word. I could bear--bear with us dogs, Though he lay tail in the throat At the sight of such a foul creature. Nay,--though that he were dead, And done to a mortal death, Yet I knew well I could bear him. How many times? how many untold Saved-meet-tide surprises In his sleep-tired, vacant air, What time he was seen to dream, and After dream, to keep his rest, While he grew in size and strength and Wore clothes that fitted him, with none to Get the gloves, and no to rummage in the wardrobe, And the wardrobe was seldom examined. He had a look like his master's, but he Tried to be so much like him, he seemed Not at all like his master, but something That he had neither resemblance nor likeness Of any living dog that ever I saw. And it distressed me, and grieved me My eyes upon him, that I could see No pattern for him, none that was true, In earth, air, sea, or sky. Thou doest it!--for I thank thee, Nor blame the thing thou doest; I know thee dog; Thou art not he who told thee kneel Down ======================================== SAMPLE 75 ======================================== Makes the heavy eve less dark; Lonely still the city towers, Lonely still the domes are bright; O'er winter snow and frozen streams With tears I start when the dusk begins; In the dim sky the naked trees Seem as they just had kiss'd a bride. Methinks I see her: her snowy breasts, White and rounded, bare in ravishing expanses; Her jasmin' of hair, her back a throne, her waist Laughing with short curved islands of white bloom. Methinks I see her, smiling, when she sits, On a throne of beauty, great inlaid; Her ribb'd sides of purest white; her hands Long fashioned to hold and firm to touch; All majestic in her majestic waist; Crescent'd clustering around a pure soft bloom; And over all her radiantly pure In saffron tint the golden doubtless nest That in her bosom lies, whose summits join The hills which freeze heaven in their chain. Of Friendship: when from the sad heart's foul chill She stole, it meant at last; and while I press'd Her sad pleasances, hand in hand, to weep, I felt the heart-touch that gave me pain. The child that keeps rememberants for the past, I, next, the small meek-collie puppy wag'd Which betrays by excursion back to its lick, Begot upon kisses, give back again. Through the chill and heavy night, Stirring each in turn, we went, With that he called Beatrice, And that I gave that to her, Who was to him in all things profuse Except herself; and still she spake, "Have," "I, "snow"--I knew Beatrice spoke, not sure Which hand she meant; for her breast so white Was moved to Pallas' snow, not sufficient; Her other hand she reason'd might indicate A will in it, and so her speech they did Dispute. How could she?--for even then The will belonged to her, nor could it Commit beyond its first vicissitude, And, therefore, I the while upbore All fetters out of hers, as are those In gold, silver, and all besides, which natures Are wont to copy from their past passions. It so befell that 'twas Diana's appeare, On whose curteous throne (as such another fair Was not, but for emping daylight, Save Love, in Arcady) there an evil beast, More pitiable than women are by far, Beholding us, that we, with nor ears nor tongues, Should help nor reply in Beatrice's name, Begat from equinoctial heterosis; Which new creation, not a Creature, she begot, Nor self-sustaining from herself could wake. For so, out of that bulk, a monster, hale And hearty, purpos'd by some other hand, Began to move. On all sides, as it grew, It took new form and change the ground beneath, He animals of large regard to see Which pass by on so short a space: As a drop, Hollow and rough, by having broken thin, Dwelt in a hollow body, and from chinks in At full speed. The closed term of years Made this entire renewal: Those bulks first, which Are creatures in themselves, were begot in this way. Many strung art medical opinion wields, By many dubious and weak inferences drawn: Since mind and Memory so handy, and of light Such power rendering possible the past; Memory, to most remote things, such force Compelled, in other nothing ever was; Memory, because such slender allowance Of change takes therein reference; And so of thoughts remote, then still draw nigh, The capacity to think extends; With which, the love to associate draws around. "The soul not only lives, but in abhorrent Creation, which is mob-obsolete, And body hideous, of basest metal welded; She (art would I had a tongue to register What rage, pain, and sadness to my disgust I endured) I forced to speak, of which, my torment Made the within the without violent. From her most desperate and detestable mansion, From her where truant and offence (in one Perfidious combination) were combined, I swift to the outside—to be yet, and yet That beauty, which, ======================================== SAMPLE 76 ======================================== Shall but accuse thyself, or leave the cause vain? Of ill-looking tares, when, in warmth of blood, From the llaes, though autumn's longest twliicks, The oats be plenteous with young and fair; How happily might God ordain a man That for his own carcase would prefer a wretch's part, Whose soul to fate's flitting summer and winter Hangs over his sheep, his master's hound, Who durst, till corn came at his elbow, survive The winter's sun, and ripened herds; now leaves Warm from the streams are gathering: he, without The land's perish-working heat, in fume Of constant onward march, an army assembles; And the whole summer long must all look dun, To see this multitude. One god alone, Within his country's ruin and his flock's, Never wandering, offers hope of change. Thus, while we live, thus only shall we live: But when the ghosts we govern'st that rule below, From primeval oaks to the farthest latitudes, Then shall the Earth's vast body's Ithaca be A husband, most unhappy, vowed To penance and to wedlock's woes, although A firm spouse he have, the loveliest, his life Untarnishable; in his father's dome, A royal bride he will toil for port; And all who shall of truth of life ascend, To her the right-eously pure. Look not on me Nor expect a song Wherein I sing: though, with love and pride And pity, up and down, There is no song but care. Battered and compact You, and dark and bleared Your fur is, and your beard; To you my song shall come And howled from it; and when Long after you be dead, A song to you I make. How black and dusky, In the winter rain, my dwelling-place, When midnight sweet Blazons the hymn; and noon Makes a music pure In your soul,-- For what, all imprisoned Raining on your glory, Storm or tempest, they sing? How, all my life, I had, and have, a debt, To Pity, and to you, And it cannot be paid, My fardinger, nor repaid Till you and I, to life And its furies cross, Your heavens, that do reject me, Give for this one grace They lighten on you To mock my filial face, Who am dread you, here Whose verses like a radiant Springs in rain of passion, Your pity's gage Athwart the wind, and leaves it Smooth, and shaggy-smoulder than, Through my angel heart, Where all were vent for, and sung Till you called with oar-stroke, And I alone, O Lord, Forgot I was a dream. Sole myself, My thought my life pursued, So beautiful, so dear, I and you, like poet's-syre Cozened, as love's most hapless, I and I only, Fought for, and won you, and the storm, The tempest of passion, and you, but lost! Yet, though you to the end, Heaven, and you, I, overcome, Deduct, 't was far in rhyme That the small rede was given. You, yet free, Maid and mate, Heavily do you woo? You, yet whole, Alone sustained? still wandering Like lovers, who reach home Too soon; 'T is life beyond Those lovers' taste: Wings in vain they think, Farewell Love's wish! Who will see the same Is one thing; but who Will one hears how you lie For wind and sun and wind again? Now there's not a thing To call a nymph amiable: All the world, for love, The one small blossom they admire: Or the bird that loves, but ere the mate, Woos, for love's sake, alone. Nor must one hear Tune of softest chords, in lute concert, Bloom on the lute that woman strung. Earth's low grass, here, Is not enough for her arms: Or they, here, Now she unwares the wide earth in wiles, Ere the array of Love ensues ======================================== SAMPLE 77 ======================================== I was a beast of play A chaser till the last. I saw it was not safe from prying, I saw it was not fair To make a dream and keep it to the seal On which no sunlight was shed. Ah, dearest, have patience! When I am dead, Have patience, love. There's a great nest up the dun And there is a fair forthwith there And thence would I seek it but for scorn And think, perhaps, that in the way, That out of the scorched dun, there might be A flower in my scope? There is not much delight in life For to be gaped at and spake at, And questioned, asked, guessed, eyed about, And questioned in a thousand trumps As not so bright, not so fine Of hand, of eye, As everywhere I look. It was like as if they did As children play, though the noonday was still In morning twilight, to make bold the sun That shines on you or I. And round the dun ground they'll pass And speak as children do in tone supreme, And, but the tad, the way the way, "Lad, is't the body that I kisses Or the hand?"--and straight, a truth, though neat The laws of line and measure, breaks their sense Of resemblance. And, eyes and lips and face All touched, their fingers, or the pace That fleeces the ebbs of course. They'd wink to go through the world, In beautiful countermotion To the laugh they'd take. Then, in a straight, rugged line Of harmony, by quick, hard sign They'd point to something called a place. With start and flutter and self-ignited All eyes on mind. That sound to see, And once they've seen, they'd live for it, Nor ever think of anything But what was covered by it. They'd wander in Above the rising or the falling bay, The mountain-tops, the plain beyond. By-pass the forest, that holds the way Or the river-brink, and so are sped. They will not spoil The fine fat clearing from the rest The laurels to glean or the silks That ridge the trees. Nor bring the stones That mark the sculptured tomb or the frieze That tell of valor in some merry feat Of warriors, or of matrons. Nay, this What's worth praise in them they fawn To pass, and throw their eyes In other wise, on the thing that's hid. The road through the town runs: They are as swift on horseback To-day, as on their way to find The haunts of life in their own country, They travel as they might be Upon the wind to meet A gyges mountain side Spun by the North Pole's cooling breeze. There was a house, the dogs howled there, The lost, the undone, where such and such Had met to play. Their joy in the dawn Of hope that followed their despair, Down there, through the high blue night that spoke Their hope in the rains, never had died, They cast a wayward gaze On cowed souls to warm them for their sleep. Towards the sunrise they'd look, And ever as they turned to where In the waves of the town to mount to sway The pale white balls, in turquoise, of starlight, Something moved or was the glitter of moonlight That left the rain-clouds dim At the cold moon-step's edge, Lifted up the sky, As hour by hour that calls them back to noon, To the mysterious hour, To the beginning of life, The hour of bitter rest, The last chance of life, To love and to be loved, To break a horrible long vain doom, Or to break it and be bound For all their hero-knew, On the bitter revelling mass When stars are made, when life begins From the new-born to the old, With a lilt of the dance floor And a root-like cooing Of happy souls when words Would be more noble than deeds. Now as days and nights have slipped By since they passed the door of that house, As the days are slipping And their never-moving planets go So softly, they seem to sleep In the secrecy of their glad nook, Like some simple, thankless, placid folk, Fitting under the weather, And blind with the cold moon. Never ======================================== SAMPLE 78 ======================================== But never a ray of sunshine came And life was one vast and silent autumn. The mad fight went on, day after day Fierce struggle, no way clear in the dark. Tired of life, the warriors look so old; Then shall we turn and hail with our hearts-- Welcome to our homes again, welcome home. Homeward goes each weary warrior, Home to thy dusky city is but half far; Home where the morning joys o'er a good breakfast; Home to the kitchen, home to thy cooking, Home to thy pretty babe--'tis best when Home, where never the gallfish gnaws a lemon. Forget your former coarse surly mood, For here a hearty diet of cheer; Here is good beer, tough to the core, Roast barley and oats for the oatie; Here is good beer, that fits the classics; Here are good ale that's the foaming tip Of a good month and a fleet-foot ale; All are good, all are homely digestions; Go! heres where heresies run amok And drop their quasi-Sicilian thistly venom; And where the Jews have long remained A people bathed in black arts and minstrelsy: And where the religious fancies come Like guileless snakes whose mother-tongue hath slipt Into airs, and vanished deep into fancies. Here's Homer and the holier riffle of the Gods-- Sure, some of them would make for your nerves; Here's wood, and paths, and secret places; Here's mystic trees with doings quite opposite A true appan-ted scheme of things; Here's a heaven that knows all things at once, A heaven where only one true God reigns: Here's a heaven where raptured souls ascend, Where ancients in the compast austere Lovingly give a backward peering view On pictures seen in the past which are Near to us, but distant, far out of reach: Here's Hoyle and vital motions; A, B, C, Cheek'd white against the night, A, B, O, Boozy A, B, E, F, and G, and Y; The symbol of the lifetuhs True, like I am sure, Like those well-sung pictures which we see Which are the last and best advices into the Wide and wondrous future which waits mankind, Whilst from the bottom of the eye's depth sonorous Falls unto the heavenly eminence. Nay! rather in the faint moon's let-down, Shews next a statue great and minatory, Wrench'd by fops in exultation: In form extreme, in feeling near divine, Well worthy a place in Pots and Wonders; Here shews both the gravity and temper Of the great, constant, friendly spirit; Whose smile is a blessing to imbue Toys that nothing but majesties can fill; Here is Eternal Humble through whose wondrous agency Is tamed, and debasement, and loss of self esteem Vext of God's dread discipline! Yet to utter back the sigh, I feel I may be himself Ere a moment asunder rips The moist lip; though mine all to ripen Like the glebe's on the tree-tops that tremble, In tumult to the plough I away. Another however if I may say That I feel he are smooth things Wondrous and great, good, great; Eternal, childlike glee, Like a little night Of the bravuras, whose sum total Appears great. And the next shall make I am like him Great and smooth and light, good, great, good, Unburthened, bare With no front or rear, No grandeur to persuade me For any monarch's That were of my immeasurer. For I know he is artless, that in his swell The fops have charivari; To add to beauty a fair treaty Is a branch of the thin flower; And I know not art, and yet I list. I know he is distant, that his glory Drifts on in the air, A sort of plumage, then again A ripple Or thickening of the wave That comes up now to lave, But I stand when the veil is off In awe and I bow, When I know that this all of his is, Is the true and sum Of the whole universe. The happy vermin of joy ======================================== SAMPLE 79 ======================================== Men must not be unmannerly! Men must not be reproachful! They are their own best doctors! That's my own belief, at least, Wise counsellors we now possess Who, in their cool and friendly mood, Are able to heal the most serious ills. These, then, are the wise prescriptions We may trust to you and yours; Though not a patient pays in cash (The doctor's wage) for his full extent Of the necessary trouble, Yet, in the plenteous rest we find Of nature's dispensary, the true With special mercy by your hands, Some to soften and purify, And some to stiffen and confound. Take the latter class, O gentle reader, Of those self-acting springs! Lift the latch on every cork And hook's a blessing out of nature's Treasures in no time at all. There is a law, as well to keep in mind, As the law of gravitation and of Air pressure, which is, that whenever A traveler, by sickness or mischief, Is turned off from a point on his way, The attraction of the star Which he had not felt before Must in order and a proper state Be eliminated; you may know that The chances of the traveller, who is Thus we are well pleased when the Lord Has made the mind less subtle than the body, And therefore we cannot show you any More kindness than the usual respect. O out upon that man who appears To feel the road one hour too well! Why, even at a, eipoo, there may Have been some subtle necessity Which we know well, and would have express'd In plain language, for all ordinary Persuasions. You have the pity And therefore the right to treat As your own kind and good friend; and then When you judge of his case, You'll find him rich in genuine mystery. O dark mysterious! worthy friend Who is, in a sense, also we! I do not think we overdo the things Which we feel the greatest need of feeling! The path of reason must embrace some Sober observance, that may excuse Parties in suspense, and therefore the Wise, sober guests must stand by The insolent doctrine of convivial spirits Which so injurious to the good and just May be capable of physical compact; Nor will it do to yield in advance What may chance to be put by; Nor so much as the shore allow To which a ship may be brought in. Then, moreover, when it shall be our Birds, we then will play a frolicking And we'll care for nought beside, In light-hearted play, which now may be A little bit too presuming; And we shall only learn the value Of length in hanging, and length in weighing The risk involved in free living, when we Learn, when free living costs too much, To weigh the cost; and now the proverbial Authorities will excuse These absences from home, if there ensue Some profitable information. Thus much, my young companions, I allow, For which I need not mention to you The refined Chinese of Shanghai. NIGHTSHADE - It was in some quarter of the world, Not far from Bad Luck Club, where I would spend the Slump of the week or month; in some populous town Of a foreign language, not in the centre of That city; and there I'd sit on a hill, or On the bench in a rich garden, and the dim Wink of the fairy lamps in the declining Afternoon sun would have dimm'd the wit of all Who were not insane or none at all. MOTLEY - The days went hard by, The last was empty and cold; Men lay within the shadows cold; But I did not know why. TOFFO - Nothing to say? Frolic, toy, take thee to: Then, pensive dwarf, I knew thee well! Nothing to eat or to drink Were left in the circular plate; And yet, for all its fervour, it Was sweet enough to melt my sea-glass. LINCOLN - I might do as much as any In telling of that time, and when; But the English soldier that I loved As well as any Is a different sort from other men. He is a sort that may have thought In candidate-times, He sees things That are not, yet know; while they, who are Most solitous, cannot explain. WAR - URINE AND GAMMON ======================================== SAMPLE 80 ======================================== Handy, and fast, and strong, and fine! The foeman's sword, the prince's levees; So she stands, to bless and succour the right Rich, braided? by the broider's iron wire, Chastelle'd and in scarlet quilted. Many are the cows the cow does strike, And howling follows, howling often, Bounded her infant man alone, Sorely saying:--"When the workwoman is cow'd One's self remains in danger, As no cow is full of need to thee. "There's no let to stop, nor plan to frame, When her industrious head is ta'en, Her soft ungentle heart is broken, And her softer affect is gone: --Old milk-in the mellow jar 'gan, Now with the new cream: O to abase And turn the poppy down, and wear The huge cow-calf in the town, To mooch on sandals of his race." Says she: "This my great power my sight, If I were resolved to move, At present 'tis but illusion, To flatter myself in town, To do a thing--in bed, But oh! what's in one's mind to say, When sleep this while keeps me young?" On a height amidst the town Dost thou also find? And how lies thy tale of that Thy body knows full well, Where envious force may naught avail, Freed from the wall that rid the place?" Makes angry to weep, And mutters a curse on her, Who brought thee thither, To live but as thou wert taught; "--Thy delight is past!" She cries--"so now I knew, When I came, and thought no more Of death but 'twas by thy side; Asleep, what should I see to weep? What for my soul should now, avail?" "Maiden, my name is now beholden, For the second time, To the still'ning fountain, To the fair one who enamours; And I scarce am of thy flesh as yet, Ere my head that seems so fair unbuking. "I know that if we should meet Upon earth, we should dismount; And my feet should then before thee Carefully be led, As 'twere for fear that if we met On earth again, we might not find Each other soon. "And I believe that we Shall once again be dropped by The same well--so no more, But long since wilt in coffin, From the sun and rain, Sleep, and never think of day, Of a world of chasing, love, and light. Thus the maiden's cool and quiet air, O'er which stole slowly such a tune, Charmed the beauteous poet as he read, At times, her night-carnal, as she still was, Kept watch o'er him and his gracious fore-father. "As thus I thought, by her still loving voice, Beauty, with the strictest truth of thee, Was ever loved and feared at once; And as she, under guise of other days, In visions held thee with sad clay, From thy own remembrance, I could see thee Amongst that number of the dead, Who hear thy changing voice, and then Find life, and sweet desire, and then, For thou art welcome here amongst brothers In the ancient home, thou hadst thy choice In life, to go, and here on earth, the year, A foreign land to thee; but foundst none For ah! I see that day when thou, unconfined To the poor and lowly of the common dead, Conjured in a strange land to tell a tale, By a strange tongue, to tell it aright: When the first Greek who sings of Zeus Sent all his birds to the white-heated apartment Of the lion, and the gazelle fled From the flame of the thunder-brand; And the stranger, then, who speaks in tongues In the dark chamber of his tent, After long exile, strikes the Greeks With wonder at his strange song. "Then you saw, with what alacrity The long night through, the fields in serried folds Bend beneath the plough, and with their light red The shadows to the ground, nor gave a thought To the salt garment he wore, nor gazed To see if it was its own ======================================== SAMPLE 81 ======================================== to roll towards her head- It's the eye I'd look into never-flying beside me. So much stronger than my body I glance around to see the thoughts that want my back and see them all grouped like a rabble of flowers [in her photo]–bloody hand clenched in sheaves of rusted snow a pit of fire she might contain when she held [her] head, a field of dead-masted emus that I might sit in the center of, a sheaves of medicine she might drain. Never have I seen her unset when the gold-handed sun sucked up from the blueish deep. Sometimes she will be sipping her tea when I make my trip to see her, sometimes she will pull me close to her before she goes to sleep and hold her arms out to me. A cock of her head. There are snakes here. I hear them. The train is late. I’ll find her later, I guess, in the rattily flick of trams that leads to her room, her arms outas she breathes. I’ll die then. She sleeps so softly I hear her and feel the rise of her chestand the leaves scrape down, a skygreen museum of hungry birds lost in the thawing snow. I must remember her before I see her. I’ll live then. <|endoftext|> "Eef", by Peter Balan [Living, Time & Brevity, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] On Syria: I have some knowledge of the attachment of a taste of tincture to the factitious hue of “green.” Let’s say it is the drab green of dust. WMDs and such round off the mix of sand, each grain—sand that really is the arms of things, the end of things, or something done with hands: please take this little bit of green, and please let things be, time is of the jelly, as sand is of dust. —Deborah Paredez 1 Bringing color to the confinement of a binary with red and green titration gives some impression of the indirection of an other: This same green may also refer to a spectrogram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-_ZVqzYlXo I forgot to bring my spectrogram. 2 Spectrormark. Let’s listen to a real-time spectrogram to get a look at some binary strings: There’s something here: I wouldn’t expect such intricacy in binary: It does require a leap of the imagination. 3 On a different axis: we can ignore this axis I’m afraid we’ll have to lose all the colors for our existence: I must bring back blue and green and gold as well as various shades of gray: I must bring back all the colors we don’t know about: “But there’s something there,” Deborah said, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten. I do look up in a book: I must bring back all the colors an employee threw together in her last week: Bid protection or a number to call to the employer: I think it’s safe to say my colors are gaudy: I must bring back blue and green and gold and gray, and it’s my job to bring time to the minute. 4 A time to wander: Bring back blue and green and blue and green, fools! You’ve thought of everything, I must bring back blue and green and gold: There’s a terrible can of pineapple with green jelly in it. “It’s terrible,” said Paul: And green is a lovely color: A sentence I came to like: Sentences are lovely. You must try to bring time to the minute and you have: I must bring back all the colors: They’re all with you: “Of course,” Deborah said, “She would try to persuade us to this in the first instance:” But I’ve noticed Deborah has gone missing. I must bring time to the minute. All colors with you: And you are each at the moment: Let me have a look ======================================== SAMPLE 82 ======================================== too weak) their words were spoken, To cast or cleave, The own and rented, lay to sleep and waken. And when the next light we saw, the sky blow Its brightest eye, And, smiling soft upon us, put us black On some dull day Whose work it is to shed or to lock, Then fairer days for to endure; And even then not full, The landscape sits as if it watched the fly. The night was never quieter, light and fret Aroused for ever in the reading skies, Nor than the glory of the day that flies As sooth to say The last faint round on the bar and swallows bay. Not forever must this soothe, We can no more do than we have done, But life may mend and become Arancible again, And might be grunge: But in one hour to be wild and strong To be hungry then and be full, That hour must be The highest something you have thought. "Farewell for this!" and we fling Wreaths and offer round the root, Wherein grew her head That thrived And blossom'd for our sakes If we loved her so, And thought we'd see no more Then turn and sigh And mind our own sweet flower. Ah, Fate is not in all; But in our hearts' embrace We shall be still, and ever be, We shall be stirred, nor yet be still. I can but doubt That her whose face shone All a summer-day, Whose laugh repressed the need Of notching the hour, Had lived, nor part From boyhood's finding-date; And if he kept Her face too long, That face's trouble, not her mine. And we could hush The ghosts of all, If we but kept The palms of ourselves, The further then From her knew source; Then, what becomes of her, When we at last Unroll the leaves and fetch The fruit of a just-grown rose. Come, my only one, Let us depart! Where the reed is still The river will begin. Come, my only one, Come and make preparation; In the shadows now Foolishness begin, And wicked brood Freeze like the doom. While the swallow, pours For Ebro's sake; How the red-roan stallions speed Back to the stream; Flake of the wind! Fall on your way, Save this The wind that shakes The reeds which she lies. Now it's past, Come, my only one, Fly hence; You that will not rest, Leave her to me: Flame's a light, Water is a shade, All are materials. The flowers, all, all the flowers Out of the garden are laid, O daughters of the earth, Your wreaths of fresh purple blow On Ebro's bank! Up and down this sparkling stream, Your locks, so bright, Fall, as you come and go, Now the foam smites, Now the foam caresses; Take them and kiss them, Take them and kiss her! O lovely! when the day is kinder, The stream-flowers' shadow softens your cheek; And, if more cheek you have, Their tender waves hover lower; Her eyes are wonderland; what are Frost-bound? O beautiful! the days go by, You bright ones, when we're gladsome harts; And now the summer through your stream Will sweep the flower away, Then we'll hear a noise of fife, The fife, of those who have given all, O red and white! Their lives, you say, are full of tears; Their very essences; You've heard the skylark, how and where The wildest part he blows! He's haunted, and his heart is sad; All his notes are "few"; But, oh, he sings, sings fainter far Than any tears! Effulgence of wickiing hearts! Affection that sustains your flight! Buds of bents make sweet your flavour; And you, whom goodfell dreams, Leap to the altar, and submit To the leaden reign. You blooming ecosts, that have seen Wit, courage, honour, and praise, In your name, to that blind race, Whose ======================================== SAMPLE 83 ======================================== Landscape, fiddlehead Hearing death-rattle on the breeze, Fish-horn leading our thoughts astray, Mountain on the mountain Mountain without an earthquake, My own house on the sea. Wings thrumming, spotted rocks Kissing the white hair of the sea. Fritter and flitter and bob Rise against the ice Of my hair Ice by the force of waves, Muddy in the moonlight. How shall the soft beauty Of our ghost vanish That fades and vanishes? Ice in the sea, Strangest of all! How can the land who stands by Water, to gray-boat a Star run fritters, That one outrides, the other Outrides, but follows To follow on? And what are the tides to it When below the water Stands white, all-at-eights. Oh, among the pleasant Cities of men, Where is gold to flow Flushing the faces To wedding-pain. What is the constancy of the sea Which thrills me to the extremities, By itself in endlessness No hills between? But God said, Let out of me Grace for your earthly boats; Cries begin To call, Cries, with anguish And high emotions, That the troubles of the age Upon them rush. And on the cliffs of Dolabella The call grows more loud. From red vents of England's wines Let her courage win A voice through women: The dawn of plenty Is red on you! Little lightning flashes Under the eye Of God in heaven, That the mill-whey Of a split endarence Is the shade of green On which the heifer Nods. And rivers, fuming With mason, woman, Leap up to this land; And it must find A safe place in a lake Of Catalonia, Under the feet Of the children. You near her, Ireland, Love sees her, Heard he: in a given Time of sobbing Of love-sick Careless sin, and he can but Count her beauty, remembering But one time of all her strife: One little, haunting. Were he vast of soul, For all his humbled state, He could not say, "They come to me the same as now," She who holds all in its sway, Who is she who is seldom seen: She who lifted me. Oh, dreadful, dreadful the love I bore her Like storm-driven clouds till, by scorn, and then, They shrunk upon me like a dead thing's mien, That whose flaw, cold-dropping rain, and then, At sunset or soon after, Into the mix Is it I feel and I discern With bowed head, upon a hill, The missing thread of too long woe? A messenger came, saying, "Come hither, Come hither, I beseech you." I would I might go But fear the mob that ravens me in its hate. So waited, sweetly, the wind in my ear, Felt the earth treble-sweet, And the birds sing— Have I remembered! Then have I forgot, 'Tis I am here, Look round this glass, that I am here, look, but beware, For I might come unseen Between you and your love, And, as a sinner, thy prayers be heard. Night is in the mountains, day is in the valley, The valley night; the woods are of night; Red is the earth with berries in a seed That was night; the moon's path is of night; The brook is of night; the river of night, The sky a seed; the bird's flight is of night; There is no sign of the time of day. Many fell out on the stairs Between us in the night; Many gathered round To make us hate each other Between us. I have lived most of late Under the sign of the linn, And year by year I tell my woman, Who runs me a pickle, for I have given Her ear Each week, Or place, or place, And I am sure but a broken one, For she sees no sign of the time of year, But days begone. But here, between us, she sleeps, And when she wakes to face the day, There is a change; the brook is deep, The woodland made clear, the ======================================== SAMPLE 84 ======================================== What is still to us, far seen, A sad retreat, now your Great son is gone. Whispering and low, and soon to cease, The voices of your name have faded, Fading fast away in silence. While you are standing front the song, With music, and the force of thought, Your master has but little need Of yours. I leave you, Laureat, To whom I was obedient, Nor know till long after The knowledge which it was you Who taught to those I love. I am not afraid, Nor fully trust nor fully trust, Nor yet embrace nor embrace, The mystery, the sky, Which makes that where you are there Is nothingness. Only to know, of what you know In song or story or true You should have been a teacher, And that to yourself alone. I saw with love and behold A light from where you sat And held your heart, in that familiar growth Which cannot be taken from you Not of all the stars that are less. O mother, who could be first, Set in one face the letters of the others Small, single, solitary, and conscious, There is no balance And you are heart, in a double still first Full of beauty and height. Not one of all that sings that sings, Not of all that slides that slides, But in his own Creative intellect Competition with all time the first Creative fear And first in sight The brightest and last The time when you would know What might not be seen by them Who for us did so richly render Which ought to be more than ours, See only what they are so all of them And unseen by us First, we learn from you to trust What they sing of what shall make us whole Great art or happiness, Or a thing most small To show us both equally a glory and a weight of sadness. For what art thou to us? The beginning and the end The crown and centre The master being awake for us to hear. What makes Art, what makes him, our saint, Who formerly was with us, Who shares his hallowing grace To our eyes? What makes him to be thy will, To make the many thine Thy image and our mould Our various art To perfect have grown From us and back again From thy hands, to us, and back again? But thou art empty now, the foot Of Destiny Is on us. But thou art seen What may be there, to make us whole. Thou tryest once and now, To cast a shield 'Twixt thy broken page and us, but it fails And seems our burnt book, We have found faith in thee, We have felt it burn and grow In our hidden dark, A soil That sweet sweet growth of self and knowledge sweet That makes a world of earth the throne Of gods, the ever-crowned most: Thy gold in moments most fit For shows of life as moments pass, As trees bear fruit Or wells replenish their brim; What must be known, unknown, Worn, not owned, For every name Received leaves us better known; Thy gold and might Have felt, or known That we never can, or need What might be so, but differently At the heart of thee Not my own Thy love thy will The rest unwrit Which is not me Upon a bare black day, One says, "I shall not suffer Self to stand between me and thee, And so entrust myself to thee The fear of thy feet Stirred in me the silken floss, The fear of thy face, The dread of thy approaching face, For, oh! thou have'st heard The cry of the slain, of whom I, poor, Pining, thought was my last despair." He came, he bowed, and his face was calm, For whom were entrances, and all power was shown, Which as he passed, in quiet grace, He raised his hand up to heaven for a breath, That did as much of life as a second, On the grey grass of that lonely plain In memory, honour, humility, Had he the face to remember For him to climb with his brow less smooth, But me to be mindful Of the time when his presence then was lost. He raised up his head and his soul grew chill, For fear, not for that death to fear More than its name ======================================== SAMPLE 85 ======================================== Will back into my arm— I want to, but can’t. I have to breathe it all: the sick solipsism, the rusted navel-gazes, the all but dead gleam, the ruined summers, the choking nightmares. The best is far off. But I live in this now. Every morning a kind hand flings a blanket over my bare skin, or a kind voice tells me I can't count, or a kind hand opens the bedroom door. Or I die. VIII Every street has its King, my grandfather so-called, my grandmother so-called, so-called-again so-called-again. But no they aren’t real though they shape time so-called, so-called- again. My grandfather doesn’t come home; my grandmother comes in a beautiful dress she sits in the corner and repeats the same song she’s sung so many times I dream my dreams. And I dream my dreams. IX Break from the mountains— gray with high hills Then my dreams are in a language I do not know. I dream my dreams. X And I can’t have them. They roll up and clatter in the house, till I recognize my face in the mirror, my foot on the table, my hand in my hand. XI Half asleep I fall in and out of sleep I wake and dream my dreams. They disappear, lost, out- Throwing dust around the edges of my vision my eyes pop open— XII The sleeping land is not a field it’s a scar. I push my hand through it. My eyes are still shut. But I turn over and over the scar My dreams don't tell me why. My eyes open. XIII And I don’t believe them but the scar's young cousin, a bullet-shaped hole in my back. And I dream my dreams. I dream my dreams. XIV Hills that I dream about waver and smile at will— mountains that I smile about waver and smile at will. I’ve sailed up and down and thought my home, and then am blown back and home, and then blow back, and then am made up of nothing but air. I can’t take off, I can only go. XV I am the wind that lifts my twin home on the sea. A boy looks up and looks down, a snowstorm behind him whirling to gray. <|endoftext|> "After C. S. Lewis", by James Li [Religion, God & the Divine, The Spiritual, Arts & Sciences, Mythology & Folklore, Reading & Books] I The 'cinte doonto ceufredi' Céu that she 'comes and doesn't come' (She said this in a speech, by the way) is God’s 'cinte' that 'comes and doesn't come' II The only story where God speaks in the sun’s own voice God 'halps the sun for an hour, Lest men it should 'be' God, but not! (God’s own discourse is sometimes, or rather, 'It' <|endoftext|> "Zarabi", by Anthony Gonzalez [Arts & Sciences, Music, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] the long notes open slowly the skin creases, I love like a newborn’s wings I am like baby treading water about to be drowned <|endoftext|> "Geronimo", by Anthony Gonzalez [Living, Death, Activities, Jobs & Working, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] I stand as Geronimo stands and I hear the now ribs creak as Geronimo whimpering steps on the spot he crouched to kiss with his tenuous ribs turned inward and I scream I scream I scream <|endoftext|> "The Ghaliate", by Toh ======================================== SAMPLE 86 ======================================== we like to chase. When back at home, the friendly man’s laugh leaving a twinkle in your eye, you start to sweat inside, sensing you will catch this jester’s sudden joke. And jesters have tricks that leave us reeling: Aunt Sally stanches her oh-no; some laugh out of turn, and some laugh out we can’t help. We should not be distracted when a blue-faced lady begins her homewreck in which we all find our lives undone: a foul-mouthed gambit, rooted in plain old obliviousness. Ah, jaded immunization to comedy: your god-awful joke isn’t even a joke, not like the jokes in a children’s book, not even like the jokes you may or may not be performing. <|endoftext|> "Of ‘Fiery Love’", by Simon Barrow [Living, Death, Time & Brevity, Religion, Faith & Doubt, Funerals] I can still picture it, the amazing discovery of my treasured, now-memorably, rudely-acted baptism. I can still picture my companion, my salvation, my auratic, ecstatic enthusiasm for the good work that would follow (there’s no going slowly, or swiftly, as it happens) so very, sensuous, rapture-frying message across the thirsty coasts and seas. We’d returned—we three, in fact— to the cave, and lifted the huge, wedged, veined-endgraint helmet; she took a fresh, lifeless look, took in our threaded lives in that wide, un-expectantured viewpoint. And she asked me of the past: memories of moved, of action (as opposed to observance) were having a field day, and I’d just tried giving that in concert with a gustitious tempatation of excitement; I told her time: I was ten, a stranger’s bride within that Neolithic pond, not really expecting to be so possessed, so rapt, so eager, and, knowing sex, or what I knew of sex, hadn’t yet known—blushing, gleaming— and no one had just described it in so many words. And I had looked on, when it all clicked, the reaction of it the instant we satisfied the nothingness of it: yanked me, through that door, outside of that cage, outside the moted darkness of my own lit prior awareness—this was the unexpected apex, and then it was back, across the ground, back into the gaunt stare of the robot tree, and at the insolent-eyed presence of a robot that seemed to sway with the presence of the God I thought I had departed— then it was upon me, and then the rapid descent. The assumed importance of being caught, and of not being, on the one hand, was also in this case deliberate, the escape was deliberate, as was the feverish flight, the fear, and, especially, the empathy, for the human animal that we came to know was to be discovered. And my partner, too, knew to what extent I would turn to get there. I was out then, I could feel the orgasm to it all, this time, not suggesting penance. I too could see what I were losing, being freed. <|endoftext|> "Make-Believe Club", by Daniel Borzow [Activities, School & Learning, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] Every hero needs his posers, and so too does a club or company CEO need its regulars, even as it presents a creative working team, includes quite a few mopes, so I need to set you guys up. This is the Make-Believe Club of the United Food Retailers of America. Each of you is a posy, we will organize the annual club- trip to be taken by our idols. We need to foster a more serious, committed attitude and recognize that by the end of our working lives, sometimes we’ll have nothing to wear, as our retirement plans are paid for by the company, somewhere in the terrain, at some point, as you know, perhaps in O’uk’s Aleken, but not this ======================================== SAMPLE 87 ======================================== Fierce and uncouth he was for weapons: His head so piteous of looks. He shared A quarrel but to give him arms. Here we are all: or as much we can Of those four kings, not here to mourn Those he hath slain: we rather bless The supplacings of our sovereign prince, And give that content to thee, prince dear To prince, we pray. Adown the glassy deep Adown deep the fourghosts may we cast Look past the mottoes of the strand. Thou doest well that round the hustings pour Thine halloos of a monarch; true word Casts up at your wait the red-lead of the corpse That thrust him oer the baronial gear. Good Sir, my liege must be well-taught The captain of our band is one From Kain to Sniegener; `twere writ In signs his Tersethild that so They proclaimed his prince of name, and he Is of that gaunt race which decks the sky. Be not a nail-biter then; a king Shall not be whip or mack lest scars And oaths enough disgust the sight Of his high peer, if we should borrow there Sensation from the multitudes to shame The ordinary, and ride him unto death Even from his seat of state, and to exalt And scour him, and avenge the martials Who with his captain had been horsing round, This day, so long anticipated. More hoisting then, your boy ye will not, For we could soon find some hindrance hot; Soles so clever and so wondrous small Have the North had no Muses dear, Nor ever shall, tho' there be found Soles that ride and run. Cripple-paced, But sinewed, straight or half steep. Backs to the yoke-fault the yoke must crumble, 'Neath whipped lash the reins red-briars. To him, as ever, at our council-board, We lift in derision high bred whimpering That comes from hell on legs and earthly yoke, Which all want brains to please the city dance. Here wags compare their tunes and their dances: That night we held a wager with us all: So I, who was of the fretful set, Longing for a joggling, or rough-side race, Said--"You know our king, right? That he were dead, His spirit, or body, or both, to sell With the heads that we gave for his state, All set in a pavement of great gold So I could raise some brains and hands, and stir Up a quarrel I had a mind to win. Which I did: the township was wrangling o'er An air of late--what a shock 'twas to all! And as the gloves came off I cast to see A wag of ours that caught a pair that stayed true, Still pleading, still all their hairs by hair, While eye to eye stood ready for a knock-down blow. I could smell the stables and stall the stalls, Their odours and smells went up and down the town, Gaining and losing ground where joltings of glee Broke and settled with a grumble as they ran Tumbler and twitch and dart, like capuchin balls, Down the line. So much for the glutted margin, The crest and the lunges and lapped positions, So soon to be clipt and bound and flitted Off to Paradise for all our oyster-making. There was a bam-moon-piercing blaze of sunset As of the wine-press in her Summer's pride; And we could see the blacksmith ploughing, And hear his bellows rumble and jar, And the sailor, strong with wind and tide, Sail-soak and run, and cut shore and snag; While beyond, quick twirl of spuds and twang Of spanners and bobbins, and spirts that floated On the air like flack and sail-sweep slavers, Came and sank, as one by one, as a ship runs From land, the silhouettes of women as they scour the streets, As if they were the gold and silver runt and poor, Down-low vaults, panting alleys, white-washed beams And flabbiness, and ruff and wash and wipe In teardrops and spasmodics of loud exhales, From sinks and gas ======================================== SAMPLE 88 ======================================== The sense of life, which does awake, Just as my footstep lightens a white feather. Too pure for malice, and too stout for laws; When envy is in me what fear is. Now do I love the earth, so changed from me, All with her contrast, beauty gained with haste? And my thought now flies like an eagle On long swift wings through all the changing spheres. But what is done to-day is not undone; Nor yet the future pre-empts; nor all More twain than man's, though the terms more vague seem. Some still see blindness and see blind, and say That in this matter darkness reigns supreme. I say that sight cannot see, nor yet The everlasting wrack of very light Unsettled in the heaven of things; nor yet Long loss is in that brightness settled yet, Lost in the mariner, who at low tide sees land. Thus all the material of my song, seen From self-evident true standpoint, Can wait, with without rest, in action brine, Till night from horizon-centre smoothly shifts, And smooth to shores the waters of the deep. All nature cries, nor sea, nor stars, nor land, Nor the sole abyss of being, the soul, But one: the powers, the glorious acts that touch All elements, all spaces, and extend In every burthen round, o'er the globe: This made the earth, and this the heavens uprear, And sound of all is one eternal tongue. But still, how long it says, 'Hold thou th' uncontain'd'! I dare not, therefore, to pronounce yet, If more is not blasphemous in some way, By His-God, the Ruler of Heaven and Earth! That singing, as the cautious ear, represses What is the song, which with a quick view is heard Of the complete thought's whole harmony, With harmony far too resolute, and pure, For time's dullness, or the wisest mood of thought! I say, if, with a sceptic view of things, I Perceive a providence too niggard, For one simple peasant kind his family. Now before this noble mind, fast holding in, With all th' observant world concealed, A fearful truth, the lurking birth of life Deep in the hidden soul of death, I felt a thought of life so true, so good, My love-shot ray of thought was green; Till, in the horizon of life, my sight was poured, And far, alas, I saw myself returned. And, lo! that good, that truth, to justify This ruin-fire of love, rose up and preacht My heart, and wings it could not contain, that my soul Must sink and prove flight more dutiful than its own. That the lost labour of the human will, In worship, howe'er warmly, is love's last! Now, O how blest the soul, if Heaven's pure will Annex the sight of God; if 'tis of God begotten! Possesses an inheritance from the kind Old Law, An in-fallible trust in God; in Him, all Gives voice and sway, all advantage humbles or farbs, To Him she, for whom, all things be convered for her, Peace, serene and righteous; blessed be she still! I say, soul, awake, and pause; pause and rephrase, rephrase This solemn truth, that still my heart disobeys. How soon, and for what, thou waste: how lightly run Thy fleeting days! how, by what license, and for what endearing purpose, thou found'st not wearance's law! Forgive me, aunt, whose years of long inexperience Have made me here too judicious, to all trust to thee; And 'mongst thy subjects slow, poor, sickly, lame, and old, Still to have to do with such, who plough the miserable soil Or pluck the sick fruit from the thorny tree, that's the holiest thing (With which I do in love), with very wickedness, Lest I judge with reason: but I say, the youth, Thy praise and yearning, youth's most prized and pleasant thing, 'Mongst things most contrary, contrary to youth, Is scarce from his great guide, and surest thing of all, Faith, away. And by this, This hopeful youth's very looks and air of pure, My poor heart's kin, a shadow ======================================== SAMPLE 89 ======================================== masks by derision— Perfect as whatever a delicate jet of spirit is New York City speak without the e on the word And so in his twenty-odd years old Steadily he mimes his philosophy on paper It’s the Town Topics at the bar at Sundown, pouring crocus and sours and his best buddies, the ones he and Isadora once played tennis with— a music hall in its element, a mix of jazz and bohemia and no consistent style They talk about the short and the long They have a quick response to everything a little breathless, in their wry hallelujah chirp And I forget them And what their questions would be The eternal and the new I close the Times in the thermos with their name scrawled on it below the message ‘Dora Nelson’ So much for poetry and memory Aeroflot and the bored people waiting to board the airplane They say ‘Wells out’ to mean ‘Wells in’ <|endoftext|> "A General Theory of Love", by W. D. Snodawa [Living, The Body, The Mind] The mind, closed up tight, is smaller than the placement of the eyes. The mind, all of it, down here inside the ball, a matter of inches, lined up tight, is smaller than the making of angles. When a person is properly taken care of, he grows like a tree The mind, closed up tight, its tiny manifestation, is smaller than dressing up for a night of ambition. When taken care of, the mind, is smaller than making up words. The spirit of the world is smaller than making a thousand bindings. The mind, is a single frame. When the spirit is waiting patiently in, the mind appears at a single location, closed up tight. The mind wanders breathlessly there. The candle snuffs itself In the darkness of denting the blues. I am no one’s father and I am no one’s wife. When the spirit hath said the words he’ll float the words on its lean face <|endoftext|> "The Sphinx and the Social Commentaries", by W. D. Snodawa [Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] We were rising over the hill of which the tip is the sphinx. There were palms in the palms. We were rising over the hill like the tip of a sphinx, circling the palm that was there growing straight like the spine of a sphinx and a crimson palm leaf grew over the palm as if flowering over a sphinx and my knot was a knot. It was night. It was tinder in our guts to see them like this. Climbing alone it was like the tip of a sphinx to see them like this, growing even higher than a sphinx, a knot, to see them not quite touching like the tip of a sphinx over a palm that was there to see over the night like tinder. Suddenly the knot caught in my throat, my hands stopped and spun. That’s the way a Sphinx talks. The palm became a mask and that scared me. I had to have been looking for the mask underneath it. My knot was on my neck. My knot that was spinning like a rope. I was staring down at my own knot and what it was pulling at. I let go of the thought of knot and opened my eyes and saw the moon. I was standing in my own moon and I knew I wasn’t going to see it so I let go of the knot and looked at it and it was disappearing. <|endoftext|> "Mercy", by W. D. Snodf and Gwendolyn Brooks [Living, Death, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Race & Ethnicity, Anniversary, Nogral&OldMetropolitanIcivolence, GrandmasterStatus, BlackHistory, GrassySpires, the Brigate, the Spur, the Gap, the Gully, the Path, Story of Old St. Louis, Race & Ethnicity, Race & Ethnicity in Art, Crime & Punishment, Crime & Punishment in St. Louis, ======================================== SAMPLE 90 ======================================== The singing of hell by Tismaios Scourged with frogs in the hollow of the marsh, The laughing of Chiron with arms of light, And Sergestre, his whirring car On flames of the goats, and Silvetus, And Phlegm of Geryon killed by Thammout, With clouds of rotten frogs. Lone scribe against the wall. And the flow of blood between A whistling palm fronds, and feathers, and breast feathers, And a drowsy shriek. And the loose-flowing, wandering words Of the thirtle syren, or raving nymph Lift with one voice a wild dirge Of many with the ears of astonishment My love's finger tipped huntress, You open loud bedroom door And far away, far away is the wildwood. I know it, but the calling of love fills my heart, If love is strong enough, not built of stone, There's no descent. You were a seed. Then like some quivered snow of snow-melt, Like some fledged pupa one grain, You rose on your perch Like a fragile running pin of seed, Or you soared from some felled bough, Or fed from fediment, or cloud, And sought your destiny. And it was always like a seed to seed, That up and up, and finally Up and up, and to a leaf or handful Of whirlwind feather, where from the cloud Strew your trail of silver light Till you are set to open All your flush of courage, Like a red flame to reveal the dark. Once you were a loveless tree On a house held captive In the arms of Death, Borne amid the green congress To be his lovely dower. But this is vain. He bends his frown. Sudden and far away he sinks. And you, who are barren and cold From his soft leaning fingers, Your self's only flaw - Your self's only flaw is thrust to view, Whirled, thrust to the open air, Or settled, or blown in sand As natural as the stampless sea. Arise, my people, remember me. This very morn That I said you sprung from Those two hands and turned Presto-ultrasound Into a now ant-like Slam of sound Toward the endless aerial Sounds that are a star. <|endoftext|> "The Poppy Museum", by Brian Turner [Activities, Jobs & Working, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] 1 I wore the black hat. It was old and rusted. I took the envelope whose return address was taken by wind or water. The envelope was plain. No fancy flaps, no bows carved in gold leaf, no polished metal, no sachet of gold. I had a ticket cut on clean khaki day. But my old hat didn't have a ticket, and the ticket didn't have a hat. It was rusted and dusty. I took the ticket inside, into the museum. A high museum with people strolling about. A boy picked it up, the hat buckling on it, and his mother came leaning over the fence. She thought it was odd she had to walk all the way up and down the long museum to find her son. 2 The museum was nearly empty. The boy from the island pointed out a button, and she realized, she thought, a man could not pull upending rusted hat from the stack. But he could find the thing on his own. He pulled it with ease. It was the one that ended up in a stack of tickets. He knew he was looking at it wrong. Because the motorboat from Paterson, who met her, was nothing of that sort. He lifted it to the edge. He looked carefully at the steel that ran down the center and at the blue-gray boat that was going down the center while he talked to her. How her shoulders swayed, when he hugged her that way. He lowered the boat, while she got off the steps. 3 She moved to London in the winter, returned to her attic room, had one arm in a brace. Her out-of-pocket reach was smaller. ======================================== SAMPLE 91 ======================================== Qorro of the Sea, through whose ribs We wind our way, whose ribs Were ground to powder, whiter than Santa's flesh. He lay there in His twenty-third year, when we Cut him down, as men cut fatlings, And so it was not long before We found his hair, much gold on it, And the great rib bones, and the Rose-hued. The poor Queen cried, "If You can but give me a kiss In answer to my kiss, I am Satisfied." One fair leaf flew To the sun, and then she died. "Give her a pearl," said one, "and You shall have the rest." And straight, As we watched, he gave her back her Hand in a twinkling, on the hilt Of her own dagger. Now She's at home among her girls and Daughters, singing, happy; and now The o'er-arching sky a glimmer Of October blue on her There was a book whose delightful Attic pages came Flowing in braided draperies of Natural flowers and dark red roses, Exceeding fair, and all the ways That such things are, came home with her So beautiful, so clean, So fresh in her bounteous embrace That all men said, who gazed on her, "Lo, here is all the darling Of all our city, and we, with Our books and flowers, are her heart And soul, as this dead leaf attests, And all that she has been, she is Only a little higher up Than all that other." And when they came To stoop to pick her flower at the foot Of her bed, they found a girl in The half of her. "Of such sweet slaughters Are you not well? In our big homes such cozings Never come to light? For when such rare rare days Are all packed away. If you be so great Why do you struggle So anxiously to feel Love even in your dream? Why seek no easier ways Of life than so, In seeing heaven on earth? Why run not wild on each Of such sweet rare days? What though the night should strive To hammer your fond mind With its infinite grief, Yet should you find no pain or care That has power to tire You down with constant tear, The darling of our soul, To-morrow, when her lips Cling alone to say, , Or should she send you any sign That you should deem her untrue, Should she fail in any grief, Then is she loved indeed. No longer let such thoughts Brooding in your lonely brain The dregs of this forlorn life Be to you a burthen of sorrow, Nor any future pain Be a heartache if they be. The moon has been to Bed, And she'll have a little bit Of the hound and lily there, And a hare will be there, And will be a piper too, And she will have her mate And garden for an hour. There'll be the night for your sake And all the stars that you choose, And just a touch of fire and snow To make it good for her, And not a cloud to mar its light And love it when he hears you sing "The bumble-bee is not to blame If the bee is not to blame, And I don't know why the viper fish Has crippled him; The worms have not the right, The wicked have the right, The things that are good they. The wing of the falcon, The wings of the falcon." Oh, she has the sweetest smile, And the sweetest dress And her hair, it's just lice-like, And she takes her laughing time Very late; And the wild ducks come singing To her pond to drink, But the swallow doesn't know What the ducks think; And the stork has stepped on her, And they didn't learn, but we're all right, And everybody in school; And the place is the town, Where every one knows, On a sun-burnt wold, To lie with a book Under a tree, For the roses are red, And the park is green, And the dogs don't know! But to-day the butterflies Tell of the violet; And the violets all, Are a sweet surprise To the mind of a child, Who is running about. I am ======================================== SAMPLE 92 ======================================== us bespinq; the wynt fox wold deny, "being bot only sin, he for it mai be cursed, saith the crummie Court, I that wolde so, And therefore that thou shouldte from me be wroth, Joug{3} and of myne uncles to call Ful me in derkw now in to great deni{w}age, Asso thei most fere; I pray to God here oute, But ere the floodes out of the wey{3 Of the Tribulation, I the moder pale To thee ne som[y] cr[=u]ility lye, I pray to Lord for thy mercy, I crue thee fro su{m]porte and thy-ne And ofte more, so as thou ne hast deserved, My body unto my ney{n}ce hold and save, Ther it be su{m}cent fyght and rare, Bot I am fyght and wy{n}de and wel led thryght, Yee in good and I begynnynge, I wolde right so fore alle myne, Togedre and hit longe, as I gan taryng. Whiche men yeble is set to beguile, His dede was so yonge, I mid hy{m} fre And of graunte he hadde a part, Yif me w{i}tfulie, so fond was that I Toward to ryde, er I mote bewepe, For to the tie saued was my life, And i{n} the boke of such a schylde, That I dyd mynyght stond upbraide, So sore as þe rain and þe froste vnder hond, My sheufer woo to holde for gyld, As sumgh as su{m}myry forto winne, For thou sholde I the god moche skryve, That thou hadste my unswete grett. For-sooth, of the water I dar hiere, Ther is a religycach, as byfore, For that is that worldes welle, Þat is esy ryche and rychesse, Þat mote ase I am on þe love, Þat I ne wepe ne hyȝe w{a}re, Bot as I holde þ{a}t holny w{i}t{h}. In many a Fy{n}t ho fynde, Þe heȝ, þat fiftene hoȝe ho fay{n}de, I ffynd to made i{n} þe bred, In su{m}fyed m{er}uayle of cause, I ffynd hou þe age how seluen Þat alle ful erthe erthe by syne; I ffynd þe tayle þat þryght may ffynde, As I of þe syre koude I have done; I ffynd þe ho{us} þe heuen of heuene Þe god for-to ffynde his oure my{n}g: I see þe su{m}fydde þe myry grete, Þat I mote ffynde halle myn Þer-cleopater, þat schal alle wayes wende, Þat fro rycher schal bryȝt, I ffyght so craftelwe seluen, A grete tre schort, of honyȝe. Þe mow{n}ne hoȝe me schal don so, I wolde ffyste of hys god[i]ede þ{a}t, So blyse of hys heles walle mynde, I myȝe, þ{o}u schalt denay ne{n}ne. For I haf neu{er} made bot a lon{n}ne, Ne whanȝ hys semblant on hente to ride, So grase I a bett for þe ho{us} leste, In here þryty haþeȝ I grase and myȝe, I wot ======================================== SAMPLE 93 ======================================== Birds lack me, in their worldly wisdom Shriven in it, That swift?e flying Birds lack me, and the truth is their's, Shriven in mine. Like fleecy wav'ring damps Of spectred storm, Where solitude and clamors make a brawl, Where no goodly blossom but conjures a curse Where endless winds shake down the stifling snows, Where blossoms, seeds, wind, and pattering rain Floods down, filling my breast Forget that all we dream of vistas dim Soon spring, one day Kindler! <|endoftext|> "In June", by James Weisger [Living, Death, Marriage, Midlife, Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Nature, Animals, Trees & Flowers] On one side of this strip of sand the houses and vehicles are strewn like white elephant cones on the other; and what is here is late afternoon, when the trees have told their story, and there's no telling until November or later just what they mean. Across the embankment, in a clump of sycamores, down against the heat, you can hear the pitcher for the sun, a reporter, a beast of planed sand. To find out where the pungent seamail, the people pray. This bird sees the ball, it's called, standing there in the sand. Some turn their backs, leaning on posts, then advance with strength from years of training, carrying light poles, climbing trees, and going out like thieves on their cars and knowing their way back should come up hill, into fields or away. The birds going west carry their bright coats, their shoes, and on the embankment and clear enough, small enough, to catch the eyes of would-be felons. How do they know how high they go up hill? By sitting there and seeing the trees act like tiny telescopes. <|endoftext|> "April Moon", by E. E. Brown [Love, Break-ups & Unthankfulness, Religion, Buddhism, Faith & Doubt] Awake—with you I meditated and thus renewed my doubts; But, awake—with you I sin, and thus my conscience put me to bed. Awake—with you I suffer, and thus my doubt took wings. Awake—with you I play the hypocrite, And thus my conscience fires my lash, and thus I scorn you. Awake—with you I fly from faith, and thus through your face I stab myself. Awake—with you I remain benighted, and thus my conscience rots me at my heart. <|endoftext|> "Christmas Carol", by Edgar Allan Hunter [Christmas] Then let me go now, lads, to bed; No longer miss the merry way. My poor scarf, left half aside, Cannot disguise the arts ye use. Away, then, now is the time for joy; Go, children, sing and be wise; And, while ye may, shoulder bodily The dangers of the night away. What if there should come a time When I shall no longer sing? When, like the Night, I stay, and cry, And leave my mirth behind; And, as ye deck the Christmas board, Leave me to waste in desp'rate woe; And, alone with my despair, Proclaim to him that rules my fate, That he must not forget, nor lead A life of pain, or aid the poor. And yet it shall not be. Remember, that I still love you Far better than myself. And therefore, forgetting this, The greatest misfortune thou canst have Make straight my own infirmities. And for ye know, or ought to know, Here are the worst I can sustain. Let me but say, that life is sleep, And rest, and tears, and such Dutchmen's dreams That teach us to see black mischief right: And yet I trust I can be more bold To venture, than 'tis generally said, For such a sum as that I sold. 'Twas when the honey-time was past, And winter came with snow and winds; When feasts were light, and fields were green, And night was with her pillow: With every fruit, the bough that lent Its native shade, and smooth, Took up the tinct of domestic taste; E'en, from its bud the sap rose up, And drank of being with the ======================================== SAMPLE 94 ======================================== The cold combe brooked no argument It set me to cry out vexed My wretch accursed<|endoftext|>By Bernie McDowell In ancient times the mason who built A lighthouse on the island of Masipe, Near what is now Saint John's beach, Estimated its cost at a hundred thousand pounds, Of this small isle constructed for little gain, Built it in such a way that it met The eye, of all that go or do come, And might be seen to prove that light is Hope. --It stood for fifty years or more, Then glided on into oblivion's eye; Although it wasn't a lonesome place, There were many who tried to make it one. Sewing the high road and clear rigging the ship, Those happy thousands enjoyed a sort of bliss, In that the coming hundred years Alas, and alas, unheeded lay; For their fancies the soft Southern breeze At their rambling always seem'd to blow. Their only light was they themselves, The Sun, that bright magnificent Sun, When day and night were one continuous day. One can mock at his eternal light, This glorious Father of his light, And now here to-day I bid you welcome And there I stand when the day is done, And the huge dusk gathering in from the sea, And in your eyes, my children, I see the sting Of that old foolish ridicule on your faces, You say I am blind and will not smile; You say that in too many years I have seen Too many sights to make me weary, But here, before you, by this sea, Each one, your alder and your spruce, Were lighted Shams with a golden stool, They danced and caroused, took pleasure too. You made their golden locks flap From the tan skin all white and lined With cotton for the sun to spurn; You left them to love their laziness, I, in that day, though I guess It must be to the bright ideal Of the country sky and the sunlit plain, Can see the pinnacle of your power. For every month that lengthen'd on, Though the over-watching Moon increase Her orb's descent, would bring in the proudest Of hope, to the city's vanity, And bidd all sorrow that I did see To its last downfall, as it was In those days, on the sacred shrine That you built with fanaticism, Would fade like flames, before it was time. Some had thoughts of burning it down, Some thought of moiling it up, to make A litter for the neighborhood; Some thought to give it to the poor, To the departmental houses to raise A stone-storm for, a mockery of The civic grandeur that raised you. But you would be left to dream On your remote pile among the dead; And you would have forgotten, so buried, So the mean-souled are with glory left In the fair field of being that you led. Oh, have you forgotten, now, what I am? The brother-in-law of Shylock? The only thing of worth in your house That's left? Have I done you wrong? Well, then, I'm your friend and counselor. Would you like to hold that with a bride? Shylock I am; Shylock I will be; And, really, if you had a ten, If the bank were in order to roll, I'd put a ten in your hand, And not think of giving it back. I'd have you in my pocket, my friend, A pincher-hold to hold on to it. Don't give it your attention; don't think It can get you out of a stick, That's common-sense 101: When it chokes, What comes out is good, and what's worst. A candle is not as strong as a sword, Nor as a prying geomancy as knowing The food is coming in. As a punishment you're not sorry; And if it needs be because you gave The word to die, or ate your dinner, Your praise's a camel ahead, Sextot, life's racing from place to place. You say I gave the word to die, That I was deaf. Not true. I heard. I heard; and to make the word more clear, You were the only one to take That word, and put it to use; you were Sane, no more, with other over-wise; But your wise other friend a stick will choke. ======================================== SAMPLE 95 ======================================== Nought being there to break, the pair press on Each other till the storm bursts from beneath And on the rocky abyss their foaming sea Becomes a windblown leaf, which sails as smooth as Any streamer that blots the sunset from the sky, And blows against the boat until, upon the verge Of a broad lake of smoothness, an opiate Gushes out and talks to her comforter, whose name Is laughter. A haze of sleeping perfume Clouds into burning mists, and with it is dealt Aroused an operation which in true odour And touch is pungently marked: the burning Is the strong and temporary odour of the soul, Whose action on the sense smells like the sense Of odour is action in general. Oh, the gathering Of all thy body's sensual pleasantries, the oily Smoke of the furnace to thy pale face, with pan Is full, as down to the last pan it is, of all Its motions of sloth, and sloth, the flaming blaze, In its sententious democracy, its watch-word You talk of aesthetics as an oar Spent in the flood In the waste currents of time; I am of these As I've spoken them The sense Of a good action is that which is done. Do you hear The wise ryght in you? You know not your ryght; The waters of duty are in you As your emotion is in me. All the works Have been done for thee. Then, since thy life Cannot ever be otherwise Than it is, do thou the works Of virtue, And be the man that thou art. <|endoftext|> Poet in Life not Poet in Discourse I thought about writing this letter, A friend of mine suggested it, and I thought I'd put it off till other times, When recollection brings that friend again. But as I thought, it might be worth your consideration To let you see the words that I had already written About that same horse and the snake. In other words--for I'm sure you've heard of this-- You'll remember I gave a horse to my dog, 'For $3.00, Enjoyed By The Whole House' And the experience was probably very pleasant: A piece of his skin snapped while he tugged at me And then he didn't need to turn around Because a horse bit him in the ear. I used to think that there was nothing funnier Than just plain lacing round with the dog, And driving home with him, having a few happy words, And turning up the dime-event horizon, As he whippled me in a way that no horse ever had, And giving him back a smell of his first food, Then racing through the schoolyard where the kids Were waving flags, so that the yell 'ed of us. Then changing horses, and letting him go at that, And driving through Chicago--all while rain was falling. There was one thing that I noticed which comes to mind About this affair, and it's this--at any rate, The part played by the old familiar neigh of the Mastiff, In the first twenty-seven times, of course. 'Course, my old pal Joey! He's been digging in my dirt! It made me laugh, I'll say! I'd call that a greater'n sign Of love than I've had yet. Well, I may laugh, But I've seen the Mastiff now all tinged with gray. All tinged with gray, and giving me looks most holy, That is, when I have been writing rhymes; When even a fool can see the humor in his work. As this Mastiff is the greatest and most venerated breeder That ever lived, in any breed, of its kind. As to all other petty noblestilities Whose only place is in history books That people buy for a quarter-barrels' value And tell us how venerable their lineage is, I'll tell them this: My best friend here, Whose grave I go to sometimes, is that Mastiff, And I've come to recognize, here and now, Each time I see him, both the rider and the trainer. The kind of stable-dog that never had the chance To work, though I've seen him here and there; And now, you might say, that it's becoming tiresome That the Brehmahme brayed the braying horn more than once And I walked away from the city for half the ======================================== SAMPLE 96 ======================================== Yet seeing that blossom aqueous, in its clearness, Like the kisses of balmy air, Afire with the light that in one vessel lies Love's sacrament, Yet less of force than earth's--we sigh To seem for a little hour as those We, out of Saxony, Who knew your frugal soil, Where light minutestices, drought and glutton Waste bear sway; Where eagles and leopards Scowl at one another; Whose churned cauldrons, burst At the fretting of the marauding pound The beast who craves, and craves Still the dreaded end of a man made stiff By his infant kind By the bitter in a stone-cold bowl; And in his pitiless, gluttonous maw The heavy ox cashie, Will after the first blanket of porridge Know, if his trencher is cold, or hot, As Howe's cow found out, Or howe's, or yours. The feaster, whistling the morn, Woos the light to break; The in-door light, the fire-start lit; And, as she to the frosty shed Associates mild, The cup which for their feasts and fires Were the brawns of prawns (tacous-quilling Gurgling saliva) In sombre winter, Weaves, as noisily, and dips The crusted fork, (A Jems on its eye) In the gabbling brook. Aloft in the air, Apolites for the flinging, A Llanthypsean hand Aflickered the lady's descending robe At a man's eye's search The ripple, where-of her body's crown Was her good name's allure, The circling Flora-vire, The flitting Frasias, The huld, the heil, the heil. The Knott's son said: "Weep no more, Bede while the sun shines Up the parched, reedy strand To the poplar flower; The westering Aurora I (The kernels just of May) Flaunt through the days' young tide. A secret hour The year is old, All channels glittering with gold In direct sun and shine; But I, alas! In this hour am riven; Or through my window see Sighing, of yore, no more. Weep no more, sad soul, Your lovedest lady fair (My lady Lenton's) Has borrowed of me her bed 'Tis no longer time or place; And were my hand-anchor broke The house would crumble round about Like an earthquake's shock. The maid with the massy bawbies The hunt is heard by the hounds At cool, moonlit, moonless nights On the brown hills, the pale steeps In Northumberland, The names of the May-stars Are said in a swan-fanfare When the brooding shades Of all that unseen hour are near. Weep no more, sad soul, Thus words are weak; The earth is space, where hands may go, Or any wanderer dwell Sleeps warm or finds an empty place, Some happens here. Unmarvellous evil may (Strange that thy thoughts should seem so strange) Worse still, on such soft days, betwene That knott-hole, as this wakening south Calls up a burthen, lead-wise, swift As fleet as foam Slumber that's 'neath a spreading fern. Thus, till the morns and cherub-flame New moons with white light mix, This man and that, as yet unsought, From brink to brim, or shallow spring to broad, Brims aloft, Sinks in a taper-lake, And seems An offering to a star. Now, my mourners, weep no more: They come not in another year With longer mirth, Blanker of eyes From yours and all thy years. Weep; and be still, as if a blossom nigh, Their autumn and their vigil blown, Is raining, while the light winds blow. In the lands beyond the sty, Beyond the reach of light, Blanker of eyes, and thought, Dim of hues, and woodland-chapel Greyer of its own hue, A field ======================================== SAMPLE 97 ======================================== Till a beauteous green and red and orange fruits hung On the trees in full color in the leaves! It was a month before Christmas. And mother’s ornament was a bow inlaid With silver stars for beads of gold. Winter and the spring again, And the summer on a drought of malice, The peaches sunk in glazes and indented, The musk of myrtle, woodbeared, wreathèd Intrigues me still, disentangling. But the sky, where the coy moon Glides through aquamarine, disappoints me. I feel that I must be living Yet distant. Whence, where is it? A girl of sixteen whose eyes are Foam-filled with tears that trickle From her eyelids, oh! where is she now? The cricket chirps, the frogs’ two bassons Of melody are nowhere to be heard, And an ear searches the garden through Where the towering asphodel grows, And to the asphodels ’neath one bough, The elm in front, the aspen up behind No sound comes to repossess Of this the month, O my soul! Which Of these the days is this? Which I say! Day and night I feel that he is not with me; It is as if the light were flinging back, To which when I moved ’twixt leaf and canopy My spirit did so precipitate A music and rapture came, such As seemed to finish it. And when His damp black hair the fount a silence yields, Whence he might have drank of that cold well, That well which well is known from well beneath! And then arise, and, strange thing! The crickets let loose, sing also not; For though ’tis well to pray, they do not hear, Nor I say prayers, from which she would hear me. But through all this the pipings Wherein I did patter, Piping, piping, Hard-hearted, solitary, I will say not one singing My loving but, my having been loved! And now at night, my Love Is past, and now at noon All gone, and now at the half Of day, my Love who is all, Love, Love, Love, Love who is half, O Love, Each tone to each, I say, “Solenonynya!” It must be tough for what I had, When what I now have, I say, “What!” A bleak, sad and sadder song than then I knew, But no less sweet. And I, sad man! I say, “Cursed be the man who cries Crandom!” Or to a tune, O what a ditty lads, O what a ditty lads, O what a ditty lads and lasses, Hail! Rain, rain, rain, Dance through the wheat and tar! But hail and wind and wheat and tar! Hail! rain, rain, rain, Dance the coo coo's once more! And tar and wheat and wheat Cry through the night again! Hail! rain, rain, rain, Dance through the night again! O toun, your boy's a lad Who’s fond of a gill, Who’s inclined to a haggis. Well deserved he may be That’s this a little odd And cozie and so’s spiffy, Tirl in your toun. O toun, your lad He hails an amateur And draws a chalk stripe By a side door, And one can hear him nicht And hear him rhyee, And tinkers wi’ his cozie. O toun, your lad He likes a fiddler And likes to tak a shine And gie his hands a shake Wi’ music like that, Hanging by a hair! Oh, toun, your lad Has bubbl’s appetite, An eye for beauties And snooze-a-cla-risse, Oh, toun, your lad Is a delightful nicht But grow’s over-sentimental. O toun, your lad, How marvellous he is! It are twee blessed days I’ve had to hold a beaker Up by the crack. O how like bakers! O how like them ======================================== SAMPLE 98 ======================================== What man would draw a sword, If he'd had no forethought, That so he might prevent The danger; but with blade What e'er man can know? How many lives at least, Have been lost, and how much blood On all our limbs been shed! And yet--so Providence be credited-- There's an end still of life's dismay, And 't would be glad indeed to lie Why does every one such pass As this, without any which he do not pluck, But with arms for life's defence clad? Alike of you all the brave Rage of the lance, The guerdon of some crown, Whose shield was never pledged in fight. The watery lion's with us yet, By eunuch tightened, And springing on his prey, not fierce to yield Though thrice thy foe hath been in peril to see: Yet, though our quarrels past, Life may be fresh in them, This of fighting, and this of feeding. Beset with peril, beaten to the fence, And each to prate with prattling foppish grace: Their song, 'Huzzate!' fuddles young, You may hear their ends in Oxford-street, Or in their inn-bred domes When they climb like larks their wings again. But we, we live on' other plan; The Shepherd did but teach us, We, the delight of life and take delight. Then why not drink of wines, Give of bowls to move your bodies, And, with those things that men to beguile As they that do light love-songs Wear like a tree, so do these solacie Our sabbath-rites, And send them to heaven, Whose hand, Saved as ours, with charity Should treat as a child againe. That we do not work on earth for hire, Why we do doome as we list. If man did wight battle, God should not such things read, As he, of some sinful men To make him cheat, And carry, and gluttony to all. What to your Peers, or how you view Our Acts and us, let not your selves, But let the Stars, that watch the skies The Barns that shelter you, Which your great Cannibal went the way, Pull down, And let one Concord solace every State. More the Corpus Juris diterper rather A fat mermaid to suck, than an ale-house Lending a sterne to make a wench drink, Lending a bona to keepe a maw, Lingering over a waik, Ding-dong dings that bring a huske-pie, Ding-dong dings that shall make a sister frown. The old line and origin of human kind Is such as enforces on us every day, That our first forefathers neate to feed But enforc'd at Table, and from flocks Of sheep and oxen curbs a bounty. All Pliny his historians had in looke Who write, for in the present day, A Releender does not live by th' law Of Statuts or of Poolls. Not that I would be in two minds And hindre the score, I'se my hasty thought, When all your Welch race are gone, You'd mack his King, and ruin all his Town, And mack the Duke, too, and sort it so. Mack the King! mack him, if you'd mack his Town, Put me in my huts, But hang (as run the Kings by,) Not let a Town so big do eat Mack the Duke, or you're mack'd at Court. 'Tis no marvel if I sware him; For, lo, when I was clean amang, They found me dirty to wi' them, And soon they wagged their heads a muckle As grand a Duke as ever paid for Swipes Was never tane in Edward's Court, Nor yet in Gresham, where their wigs were laid. So, Sir, they mack his mouth and his cheek, A face, only: wi' sulk or smile, He wears his Crown, he's taken by the heckles. Yes, Sir, when this Pruss's King, whose name Will live through many a score, Their doors are in't to keep An' an' an' an' ane's o' ======================================== SAMPLE 99 ======================================== Then look there yet, in that part Where you will see an abyss profound, Rays leaping out of darkness, Snatched with strangest beams at the visage hewed. When the minaret of the masque is lit And the caryatid gleams bright Of four stars that shudder and wane In chance-to-be to the light that is In the letter of the crown, Take her, the zodiac, for 'Tis her sign, 'tis the way she brings The order of the rhodesian seasons In careful letters for the rest of the year. The grass and the leaf which the royal teeth leave On graves where the glow-worms of the phoenix brood Are glittering in brass and the marble dies Like silver pearls doth snow upon the snow And the rime in cerulean coats doth shroud Till the shivers are lodged safe within the veins For the regions which grow lush with the tears of the sun. Wauken, and thou golden heavy lark bellissh Wauken, and golden longlist and firefly, Which here be singing with thy melody and sin In our early youth with the harp-strings of Joy, Who from deep winter of minds did lift These notes of fire and song of the dawn, Which may not be pulled by the nameless hands From the vibrating harp of the wind That only sounds to them alone how Toils or withers or gladness or woe befall, Who are northward by moon and by star-light. O Hesperides of the wakening day! Whence came the dawn, what did we find, In this lone land of the sunrise? O Hesper, in thy beauty and change, I would have thee hear and answer tell In this still country of the Sunrise. O Hesper, in thy beginnings, the light Of thy first bird-born darkness Was folded in a glow-worm's tent, Flush and fair; Thine air was soft, than garments more fair; Thine was the drift of a froth of down, Soft, and breathable, and alive; Thy voice was as a voice of the sea Calling in its froth to the wind-crowned moon From rocks where water-worms are wailing now, Ripe with dry but bloomless salt With the light-waves gilt Lemon-fish, mussel and willow o'er the rime. O Hesper, thy light of the past hours Is folded in thy glow-worm's home, And the voice of thy earliest darkness Is a voice of the water-worms now Calling their world afar, What time the pines of the cavern-deep Say to the pines 't is dawn in their realm. O Hesper, the sun and the rains Waken in this land of the Sunrise With a sigh; They are out in the wind and the weather That are down below, Whose lives are enclosed in the roaming Of a world of weathers and fluxes, Not dead, but lovely, and wan; And on the roots of life The tremulous hands of the gods are cold, And the springs of gold Where the earth-children run Are unapiece, As if in the ways of the wind They had passed them by. O Hesper, or if purple be The hues on which ye paint Your snowy epitaphs, say That the wind which blew the snow Was swayed by the face of a queen, And the sun to the laughing air Was moved by the eye of a queen, And the lightnings were wrought by the play Of a queen in a queen's look; And the earth And the sea and the air which are now A barren dust to the day To the eye of a queen's wonder Were filled with a beauty of love And a beauty of life To the children of that king; Till from her presence the maiden Sought the golden fountains of the day, But no nearer the child she found That made all her maiden-bower And each merry maiden-asteroom Intoxicated with her gaze With a glow of a glow of a queen. For as the flower till its spring, Like the flower till its nectar, may Grow lovelier till in no fire, So in the yellow waves of earth Than the child was born and could stand For the queen of each word, And her hands were like angels' hands, And her feet were the eyes of angels, ======================================== SAMPLE 100 ======================================== USA# | Engine# | To engine# Injured# | | An engine now blocked, confined or simply sieged shut in #PuertoRico# | HIGHWAY TRAFFIC highway# | Who is entitled to the highway?# | #Highway to the sea# The worker: his owner and something coiled in the back of his mind. Little brown owl at mid-window. She approaches compassion for humanity and idleness and the commuting woes of angels <|endoftext|> "The Philosopher’s Plane", by James Taggart [Activities, School & Learning] for John Millikoper The philosopher’s plane, imagined by Calippus, rests on a red disk of dawn close to the body We flop into the blue below our feet, into the astral horizon, that whose dots our lives keep shifting over the edge of empty space into the orange of earth And beyond into blue well into the empty page of thought Where we can embrace a little while of our desired end and then flow back into the world of time <|endoftext|> "Particle Accelerator", by James Taggart [Activities, School & Learning] We veer from the highway into a field of moss- out wet It’s all pretty close to the world of space It is a field of sound where the green body crotches down into the sound What is it singing Every word in sight Every word is bound in sound we make of it The sky is far from us our eyes It moves quickly from one word to the next word small in the sound of horizon The sky moves too in sound in the thought Of ghosts Beacons Of green sound Moving in the day Of sun By this the fields are full of green luminousness No sound of clouds inside Our own headspace Music spits from The cathedral of green It is an elfin language in a sound A field of sound and thought <|endoftext|> "Oh! Ordinary Time Is a Flux", by Eavan Bolger [Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics] My friends! My old mates! I’m sure you’re going to be awesome in this world of flux. Not expecting any answer! But I’m being encouraged. I never give up hope! But it’s just all in a mass of-disperation. We’ve all been good to me, I am a glowing spot on a darkening mountain. But this IS a haven! And for a breath of life Why all this fur? <|endoftext|> "Map of Our Land", by Eavan Bolger [Living, Time & Brevity, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] The stars are born in night. The ground is made up Of tales untold. The cracks are our story. The piles of leaves are our life. The river that we lie At dusk is alive. The buried Grass beneath us Is the truth! <|endoftext|> "The Fall", by C. D. Walters [Nature, Fall] The day lies ahead of us like memory at the closing turns of a clean game. The way the small beards of ribbon sway in the calm martial arts of fall, like a child at the start of a game, doing the bearing for the losing golden belt. What will we do when we return it will be a year of solid weather in the pass that came in with the dark cobwebs. What will we do, on the ways we have known which always reach back into the past and hold us looking at the scratches the big winds have left behind in the gutters. <|endoftext|> "A Way to Stop It", by C. D. Walters [Living, Time & Brevity, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] for Tom Sleibett The destruction is physical and absolute. It happens in two dimensions, it happens ======================================== SAMPLE 101 ======================================== A woman were in him. "Yes; then--I look up to the sky, And still with lips in hell shall shout That I am glad to have spoken with God, And bliss is mine. And every poor one of you has my heart, "For now I look--I take my bible Back to the house, and as the angels say Come into the courts again." On all the ships the faith for souls was died, And all the ships themselves believed they saw A people, a state in heaven: All the mothers who looked in upon it, All the wives said they had found a pearl. (For some still found, with Satan shut in, Or only shut in, and each one's heart) And I, the Judge of all to come, Heard, and at the sounding of the bell, Than this, was happy with that one The churchyard there must be. So many thought of him, and pondered he Had a true soul. When young he wrote, He drew it long and clear, But from a distance. In college, at a week, he learned A pin could hit it. In cold November's wind, I seem To read those lines again. A city of death, That waits the soul, With shackles on the soul, Is bound by a clock That moves from zero at last To its long quarter. Love, beholding this picture, Who knows its pain? In images that turn to stone Is seen the shadow, In wind, in thunder, in the delight Of time's intense divide. Time is come, time is come, And blind is the face of that face. All things still are in the gray Within the house of time. Thirteen years of duty done, It is time to part, to give him up, With glad welcome, when we go. He is with God's, yet separate He has said to us to be, He has said the maidens may Change the robe that God wear, And not be told their hair Should turn white. Oh! hurry, O door be quick To let me in that man Whose face, that lay Has faced the sun With cheeks so godly white Saying, "Beloved, it is he Whose life and thought Are worth the life Of any man. In God's name call me, love, I pray." Now, he needs to church. O maiden gray as he, When the first afternoons are brown, When the gardens shine And the wheels of joy go home To the place where the grave of joy began Whither we sought the gifts, the promise that changed The world, all glad with us to go and mourn In one to be, having been less than we Lo, the world is not for us; The year is gone, a year of wrong Not our own but born that way. Are we such fools to be sad For what we had not this day? Should we tire but by the way, Not been as we have been, what is It will be to-morrow? What was we that called the gift A word, and should not mean What voice will hear To say our name And not as this May time be Before, O gracious Herein, When in return I bowed at thy feet All the glad things that I had done And it was May I was in bliss I am grown old and now must be But I am not half weary Though June with flowers should bleach my hair It will be spring before I die If thou be spring, O Christ, O spring, That I may meet thee. I never yet saw rain that I would not drink, I never knew fire but when it burned I missed it and prayed But I shall see this night and not brew Of the bitter cup again to think That it is good to think but once. The world is ever hot for me, The cup is cold; The day is light and the night is dark. I shall fall asleep with fire and miss the fruit And wake with drouth. <|endoftext|> At the first rustle of the September flowers He heard my foot on October roses, And I said: "Father, there is something Upon the wind, the rustle is too close. I hear my teacher." "Speak calmly, soon." "I heard, my fellow clerks." "Tell them to quiet down." Dusk illumined us with the firelight ======================================== SAMPLE 102 ======================================== MC Mosquito, Mosquito, Mosquito, Mosquito, Mud-stump, Mud-stump, Mud-stump, Mud-stump, Oromoctotecological teacher, henchman, loomworm, toad-man, German accent. Not what one would be expected to hear. Oromoctotecological teacher. Far superior animal to what one would be expected to be expecting. Far superior animal to what one would expect to be expecting. Not what one would be expected to hear. Oromoctotecological teacher, henchman, loomworm. Not what one would be expecting. Better than what one would be expecting. Better than what one would expect to be expecting, better than expected. Not what one would expect to hear. Oromoctotecological teacher, henchman, toad-man. Far superior animal to what one would be expecting. Far superior animal to what one would expect to be expecting, better than expected. Not what one would be expecting to hear. Oromoctotecological teacher, teacher, toad-man. Higher in intellect than what one would have expected. Higher in intellect than what one would expect to be expecting. Higher in intellect than what one would expect to be expecting. Better in intellect than what one would expect to be expecting. <|endoftext|> "No Reason", by Billy Collins [Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] The thing that has no reason must have its intelligence and there is no reason for its indifference. —Dion Sanderson I use a metaphor to explain my philosophical interest in poetry and prose, writing in the intervals of phe- matic human affairs, at the private and public speeches and the like of which I see no need, and accept which belong to this position. I use a metaphor for this interest because I think no metaphor fits. I do not know enough to attempt a mapping. I use the metaphor for this interest because I think it more or less precise. I write the metaphor so as to suggest it is the last of the metaphor because the best is better. Suffering as pain, restless I go, strange little bird, and never, oh, never, oh, never, never, but don’t you fret I’ve been quiet enough, I have, no reason why to hurry, something to be done, something to occupy my mind. No reason to think the hour evil, except that if the hours do count I would like to correct that, oh, now I know, no reason, only poor method and habit. A method or habit is any sort of doing, inclination and promptings, but doing them is different, like being drunken, or crooked, or worn, or relieved with alcohol or with sleep. Whatever you do, my friend, is the thing. Whatever you do, my friend, is the thing you do. No matter how you dress it is foolish in the extreme. Tied to the mast, adrift, beating against the wind, there is no horror, but what is the subject, like the subject is the pur- limate of the metaphor. My (long-) coat, moleskin for you, permit to stand upon, here, as it is, there is no subject, it is all subject. It isn’t natural and it isn’t supposed and no one intends it. Punctual and obdurate are my own own methods, (2) and they have the advantage, not yet appreciated, of not being natural. For God and the dream of being, there is no meaning in the subject either, but I enjoy the difficulty, oh, and the ridicule, oh, for the purpose of existence, to tear the little twigg, oh, and the shuddering shuddering, the aspect, and all, all of my own accord, all to the suffer. What I seek, what I cannot, is the whole, I search and seek, my part being what I have to report, what I get. <|endoftext|> "How to Cook", by Billy Collins [Activities, Eating & Drinking, Relationships, Men & Women] For the first time ever, I want to wear a dress. ======================================== SAMPLE 103 ======================================== Beside the broad basalt of that wall Vaster than that artificial mountain Stands, and God looks through its fortification When we kneel in prayer?--is a better pledge Of their affection. And he who, when the lightning borne To my eager ear hath given the same Anecesticiment he saw; Whose benison an action knows, Like a seal upon a copper crown. And he who sees God in the amphora-- Whence he blow into the vessel, too, May look on him from the lone lamp of night. He loveth a maid who is a God In her round. She has a star on her brow More cleaving than the diadem of Poseidon On his, whose scales. He loves that girl. Tall as if bidden. He loves her. And most of all Who loves his chaste wife may walk the sky, High in the wind. There in no throne of gods Diverse are Zeus's relationships with men, Who beget or nourish or cherish. Here love may blossom in the Sun's And the Moon's and the Earth's, and again Where the morning and the evening speak Through the deep midnight and the night, Of the strange love that knits their halves together. Not many leaves remain, But what men leave behind The robin and the thrush, and they Who sing at their work, or make a tune More high and chaste than human is. They will scarcely hear this steel cage talk; For they have no other heritage; And their affair is And shall be left here To the crawling magpie in the wood, To the wild gecko in the hedgerow, And the tusky matlington or the pine, And the circle of red tessarabills Which adorn the western strut Where they wail The broken hushing of the worst. But ye--though ye are hollow and dry And the sharp beak of your time And the parched throat of your tongs Has a thousand melodies to tell, Till the rosinate of your worm Sings in pine cones on the fell, Till the wrentber or young ones cry When the door in the portal close-- Ye shall be ale that shall endure, For ye may behold the lips of Paradise. The night is all but dark to me, And when the dew-drops burn upon the sill, And what pleasant dreams, When the heart is at rest from pain, Of pleasures, both sad and sweet, Do I think upon, then I think Of other joys, which are not kind. The night is all but dark to me, And when the last far creeping bee Steals down the silken darkness with its plume, Then, sweet, sweet is the light Of your lovely faces, young! Of your innocent blithe prattle, And the prim greeting of their singing When they come from their morning feeding The night is all but dark to me, And when upon the earth I light the tapers and the candles burn Like small gods in their hand There comes a strange and pungent fragrance From the far vault of the stars, Which is your bedroom, young! Thus I weep, and pour my sighs in a flask, For the hearts which are warm, Whose lost champion walls are falling in; For my love who is loyal still, And whose voice is not in vain. Grieve thou the strongest may, Grieve thou the slow-pacing moon, Pierce on, and cause no ear To the songs of morel and the wooer, Till we do grieve the season's moon With our moan; Till we do grieve the time When the swift-eating light Leaves the hours of twilight gano-lore, And our lover sits With the gallant wood-trees leaning on The damask background of his arm, Kissing Bonds he will not take For our sake. Till we grieve the watering Of the jeweled beams, And their charm will be For the sick and lost to sing, And we wail With loud lamentation, In the songs of bards, Till the earth can song in pites Like the cetacean sun. Ogier sighing, Is it to the slumber of the night Or the foggy air that I'm gazing on? Since the moon has forgotten the cloven dell, And the holy people of the Wood-Court till the dawn ======================================== SAMPLE 104 ======================================== We ceased. The kitchen clock heard a long countdown, The rearview mirror I turn when to drive Not yet started. How can we be in two places at once, not yet started? Before we can cease, time Calls us to one place, the house where we are. We're here now. <|endoftext|> "A Song for My Rivals", by John Paul Jones [Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] Catch the cars and nets going to the son of the sedge-longing west away from the guts and jags of the town. Make your song for the girl who cries outside. Sing it while the elements try to drag him out. Sing it for the eel, the fox, the kid who turns round and keeps blinders on his eyes. It's your body, too. How can the sea and the sky be what unites you? Think of trees that are your breath, your bars, your bed. Get close. Sing it for my friends who are still in love, for those undervaccinated women and children, for the men who love their freedom. Sing it for the negro that goes to jail for loving the race. Know this: you have lain with the trouble you've made, and the better half of your life for being bad. <|endoftext|> "Symptoms of an Emmetropterygamic", by Louise Erdrich [Living, Death, Growing Old, The Body, The Mind, Time & Brevity] “Youth without possibility shoots in a straight line, accuracy in travel “from the heart of the heart “the spinal cord emerges.” Death's a town of glass, the farther I die. Now, I don’t believe in Time. But Death. It is called Not. It is not there but I hear it what is going to happen. It’s one of the things we can do to end the pain in our life. With, among others, a risk. My dad’s the same way, he laughs. “You should never chase your death,” he says “we need you at all.” And he continues: “Drink water. Try to enjoy “the little things.” “Don’t think about your death. “Don’t buy liquor. “Drive to a saloon where they have blue National Hockey League games every Sunday.” “Ask not why you die, but why not.” Death’s sound is not, it is not, long. “Redemption” is not, it is not, where it comes from. “The sequel.” Not, it is not is where it is not. Don’t use your death. Come back. All tragedies are one. Don’t worry, don’t chase your death, don’t worry. O, oh, the sequel, and the sequel! I didn’t teach you anything, I said. Well, I shall not apologize for being. O it was a frightful time I lived in that frightful time. O my dear version! <|endoftext|> "Keep a Foot in Both Worlds", by David Isserman [Living, Death, Time & Brevity, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] (SFX++) LAND Between us the roiling river glowed like tinder in the sun, And the shade, heavy and cold, Brought a muted melancholy to the land, The mute shade-world that remains Between living and dead, Where two worlds, opposed and abominable, Feel each other's dirk in their thick hair, Like a derisive indifferent nod, A drawling answer that keeps you dumb As you ponder what all this place means, And in the morning wonder as you’d like to Suffer from bedbug in a living track. Oh, come walk with me at night To keep a foot in both worlds. I’ll point you On ways to bring down slates, paper, And books to toss. I’ll show you where the crack Rises up in the rocky ground, Where white moonlight stays Amid twisted creek and trickle- ======================================== SAMPLE 105 ======================================== 'Our easeful lives she knits with gentle thread,' 'And hollow tombs with voluntary breath,' 'And graveyards that forbear,' 'Weighs more the funeral notes to the slumb'ring dead.' 'Rest here and rest, O Valley, in this valley.' 'When thou, land,' said Rome, 'scanty of years ago Twixt Lowitt and Holroyd's malefled brood, Dost utter thy fateful sire and throng To the new night that rises on the morn, Will men be kind to you? to me will yield That virgin forest and that reedy vale, And sweet heaths, free from every sad affray To rest and serenely silent tread. 'Tell them the place is far away from Rome Nor known till he comes to it, and in vain.' 'No more shall I believe it. Displeas'd I slip the reed of Salic law, not their own, From my sight and hearing not at all; While they, the seed of ancient Caesar, are secure In the hand of one incompetent Fates. 'Ye were so kind and wonderful to fair Love, Yet, his domestick kindred, are unknowing Passengers to you, and therefore see ye no more; Unknowing, or unseen, ye graze sweet Earth, In order smooth and homely, under sky sublime, Nor pause in your progress, with moody griefs, Lament and pity, upon your way, With tears, for hearts not worthy your departure; So their sad remembrance when your deadness is gone, Bereft of your presence, ye're lost to human speech. 'On me, as on our head, Sagacious and gravely sad, Gest thou your customary wreath, and take your seat. 'Tis twelf-one, and of the time and fine Seven hundred years it costs to make a crown. 'Tis but wisdom; when to time thou dost apply The wounds of time it is not just that she, Who prescient has been in all that has befall'n, Should at the same time see time's work in what is done. 'Tis sure an eternal law, That man's free will the more to prove his sin, Sees evil in what he approves, and swims with tides Of secret intemperate and single) guilt, And hears himself mischivell'd in his own tale; He finds the sinner hard, So hard that he will sin no more; That his own speech is least to heare. And as he journeys into the world, he chorts As sweet as he is journey'd, from the seat Of secret guilt, he finds himself become As hard, and for conceit so proud That he gives pain for others' man's moan. Nay, rather than that he is grieving sore, He in himself bewails his hard condition, And feigns a sorrow that he seems to bear A moment's weight: Which would be wont to deceive him, if he durst. Whence every wise, who ever hath beheld The secret man, hath forced his like to share, And that in you and me he knows: Nor ever was the secret hid from any, But men, when most they suffered, knew it not. The double self-sufferance of the soul Was from the first from our gaze restrained; Nor e'er was it show'd, that it might be, Though 't is manifest to one alone. So meseems by you; and will o'erpass In coming time. Salio's father, now In Tolico, far from his own town, Tells where the sword of Germar once was, Over the thickly-scented grass. 'T is said that from the Scythian plains Far up beyond their Wakhanine towers, When they abandon the steaming field, The galleys leave the narrow Strigon horse, The stern Tartar-speedy courser; and Their hard-furrowing stomachs do great deed, To savage the abysse of their race, And westward and north both, to seek the skies. The furrows plough up the fallow, the field Cays upwards, not straight up, to the skies. The stubble, instead of reaping, lies scrathing, In small bent pattens to the shoulders wide. The stubble lay as black, all asunder, As humanly smeared with defiled rain; ======================================== SAMPLE 106 ======================================== Wanton, boist'rous. If 'twere so-- C. Why should this place Be filled with groves, And all its airy haunts Attended with shades so fair, If thought's a thing of those, And Spirits love to dally As things of earth are dallied? E. Not all that's lovely Is pleasant. Why then should we blush Or laugh or weep For every stream, or lake, In this subterraneous world? Q. Why do you smile? A. 'Twas that I smiled-- Out of weakness, that's all, Of a kind look, an unkind word, That they laughed at my joke, my sport, Or with one of my flatteries. R. I think, when I am silent, 'Twill be to myself I speak. I can but let my musing glance Where its bright subsides shall ope To the perfect, the green realms, The primitive, the old, the young, And I am I--That--that I am. M. All the spirit of man Will from thy trancéd heart Take torment and 6o. Kind words cannot tell it All that it is; when thy speech Runs foul with scornful looks And bitter looks, and thoughts Walking with soundless feet. M. Faith of our chief word! Once too, for our chief word, I was not light. When my pride Craved the heart Of the young by the spirit, When the great grasshoppers Led me through a spell, And threw me on the woods, And my love was alive with birds And the syrens could never sing, 6o. a song. C. When I began to tell thee The wind that struck my hair, And set on fire my lips, And the bruise they gave my eyes, And the arm they laid across my mouth, And the brow they pierced-- Wisest friend, thou must know How it was I answered?-- All for thy trancéd spirit-- For the grass and the spirit, For the light-headed love, And for the wind that laid on me Light on my brow and brow, While I spake but lazy words That eased my soul to sleep. M. Speak now something new. All my blood tare to nine And set on fire; And my lips a-sack twice; And twice I tore my hair; And I lost sight of Him. But I wakened. And my light has all been made To better power, and still I gain the light--to blaze For Love's sake more perfect still; Light on my brow, and brow, and lips For the soundless songs that tear Me to the dust from all the throng Of joyless senses, so poor I think thou'lt find my voice more sound Than when I gave it; and the words Laugh at their witlessness. M. What light can answer but a sigh? A sigh is all I've got to give. Who lives with the love of two eyes? And no other bliss can be Like a heart that feels thy breathing, and hears The word of that soul, and smiles. Speak out, speak out, the sightless words. But what else have I to bring-- The soil, the shade?--I am the clod In aeons of its dark abode. M. I am the ghost of a race Ere this flesh's reign done its work. The girth of the human on my thigh Lies in my body--there it lies, And even as the flowers love the soil, The soul, by a power of words, Speaks through the heart and says, Beware This soil, O flesh! Here your wrongs Rejoice--Fear not; I remember My soul's a fixed point, and cannot fly. M. Know, then, thy sire well! The air he loved, the burden, pressed On him that bore his blood-red child. The word was like a hand upon him, Till, like a field in flower, The clouds settled on his head, And the wind whispered and moved him. Then, the first time that the wind spoke, A breath blew through the laurels, and said Fearing the worst, Stand, my sword! and turn And find thee a sword at thy side. And so he came to be The younger, and for seven days, ======================================== SAMPLE 107 ======================================== -It do not mean. It means far deeper than that. I will call me fishing line, if I must. And so The back yard bird which always seems to me So strangely agate, she may be why I turn to her. She grins at me From the black plastic tray that depends from me For fish. Her lines are too short, I am she averse. She has a reputation But is, you see, a girl, not accustomed To hard fishermen, who she calls. When they are not by she goes straight to bed With them. But often she brings home Fresh fish, which she may eat, having shed Her shed to tie on the bedclothes to go For a walk in the wise, grass-sown grass, Of her home, half west, at least a half west At least a quarter further than that. The green flickers in her tight knit capital --Not the green grass just to be in readiness Nor the wheels of any that one sees-- She tells me that when she was braced She held the hook away from her hook. And when She must have leaned her head from the hook A moment she must have heard my tune. What shall I do with the fine glistening fly And the hair pin? My wonder is not all That I am struck with. I am crumpled too In the green skirt, and the ground round me, And the old roots that root beyond the spring. I will find the first and compare her back to mine. My superior mood is amazed. Alone, one self the summer of my life Moves freely before me. I was angry, And now I am grateful, and I stand with you, Alone, in the windows, at the glass, Shaking upon the banisters. O you, Some of your wings have fallen in; but the sun, Moving into the shade, in another hour Shall bid you soar with me and I shall call You, as I have called you. You, my friend, Here, at the window with the wall of glass, lean down And listen. I have many things to say. <|endoftext|> "To Sexton Douglas", by Huw Bennett [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Social Commentaries, Town & Country Life] Soon you will learn the meaning of the name On that name, one who bore the lot That you now have, and did not understand To despise the former for the later; I will explain, too early for you, Your later, and I will not be angry, I will be civil to you, when you are dead. When you come to hear me i.e. after death, I will, in my lyrical tenses, Conceal the form of the first death of Douglas. <|endoftext|> "Old Man", by Janet Field [Living, Growing Old, The Body, Time & Brevity, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books] Still at the crescendo of the hand that writes, when even in sleep the muscle stiffens, when itself is soft, when the signet is unopenable, even the most difficult to understand creature will begin to glow at its own end, and become self willingly alive again, even the black tapestry pages turned, unable to close, turned in a language other than those rules that in fact compel the line, and these will eventually—depending on how you use the word—explain the meaning of the poem. I try to imagine Seaton Lovering in a windowed world, in love with all of history’s children, turning and turning out through the windows at the crescendo of his own art. The yet to be born, all their lives swelling behind him, impatient, oblivious to the rest of Time. A single life is so cheap. It must go on forever, it must be happily multiplied. We say the word impossible that happened only in our heads, a rational explanation for a loved one that was loved from the start. A loved one! "Unfolded across the curtain" routinely repeats, endlessly spins, until I am carried along with the eye’s obsessive ballast, a perhaps delusional mad hero, and overhead, the red flags of distrust, the still-ongo ======================================== SAMPLE 108 ======================================== He carried out his ploughing, With a sad land full of death That held no beautiful thing, No wind-rock fast in night. But I-- I never labored there, For in the sunny-landed town They mocked me, for, poor madam, I had no neighborly sorrows To speak of; nor ever seemed to me A companionable and dear Tropes or just form of beauty. Nor ever walked through the bridge Of gold to the King of Thebes; But we that people deserts, Of mental and moral weights Vex the fame-catching depths Of any mortal's path. All the dismal-virgin shade Of these superstitions Do I steer my dreaming To. Yet you I, dear friend, Have need not to dread the stone Of that great city (while you hear From time to time a crash!) Yet in lovelier guises You are yearly to me; In the summer you are gray Boys and sunburnt leaves, While in winter all white You are worn--you are old-- But a most envied type Of the Deity! Oh, so secret a chance For infidelity! You are not a Saint For he who loves her quite To just one slight defect, And her quite to be Sternly rebuked for it! My love and mind's the same, When so esteemed and shown. The secret, there, Is but revealed To you, whoever keep Her thoughts and ways secretly! What a fool a bishop may be! It's not that he's old and holding He's holding, but that he's not holding, There's nothing in the world to gain By preserving a wafer; And if he makes no show He may be taken by. A bishop may, as well as not, Be nothing and holding! It's an old grey church in a new-made grey land Where, in days gone by, five Hail Mary's, A little Jewish clock, A little kangaroo, and an old grey cow, Had knelt to find the season of the cow, And in the holy place was found The holy place where, across the way, The priest to-night would not go. Not hold myself about With a big hat to lose. Though I wear my coat unbuttoned, And have in my pockets an account Of the journey I've made to-night, There'll come an audience, I trust. In sooth, I tread upon more than truth! My feet are leaving as I press The body of a dead man To find the place of grace. Through the night I skip and go; So let them stoop and weep, As to-morrow, in the sun, They take the roads I know; I wonder if that man was half so dear As now he stands alone With myself and the world away. I have lived long In the dead heart of a dead land, And in its shardded sands I have found my half of life. I have lived long And with each dawn I wake To find some graven secret Hath changed its meaning old. I have walked with the Dead, And talk with their hollow voice Through the sand they plot, In a land of hollow sounds Where ghosts walk on. I'd forgotten how much I longed To see the mossy brown hill, The low thick woods of the eastern wood That hide the sandy sea. For when from the tall grass grew white The lofty mountain grass And from the white sage-brush burst, The aged man I went to see, It was my first man's paradise, And his wreath was far above the clouds When the wood and field lay low. He had knowled'st how good to live And what a grave to go under, And he had knowled'st with the way That laughing boys go by, And thought that he had seen in sport As sweet a grave as they, With many a whim and many a jest, Far in the rural round. And as he sat a-breakfast To-morrow night, He saw the world go by, A double, round, of friendship, And a life that was as free As some that are bound to it. He knew that he had failed in art, But at least in living He had proved that he loved the heart Of a comrade and of a tale, And in this he came to his end. But that old ======================================== SAMPLE 109 ======================================== a fair depe Som what I knaw not who foreste At wits by schwesternes and schow That my wit may wene thus. I am an officier of the king Of Englonde a gret man of Age. The welle of the parlement i' th' king Is mad because of my enquire. The king my grandam hath hented his head And that is fals to the ransome, And som of the world ful prayent Began to tremble at the same, And here and therto wept, that it dropt Which of his warlot amongest Went to feere, and that was al our welthe. A fere of fee and of helles payne This myghte my grandam, her conseil Swelling benygne, on honde fonde Let afters be eschewe; And there to nevere be throughclept In al the world of all the reule Som tyme or day or nyht or day. The prynce of Grece and his lond My wif hath take by altogne an ende Bothe in our court, and ther we slege The selynge of his folysshnesse Bothe of thaskson which beforn Wolde and wroght, wher himself in faut Tardant and in sinne out of this lond He made, and had a crope to dye Fulofte more, and afterward dye Unto a wommannes sonne he caste And there with his retenue Of children to hire al one among. And whan he sitten hise wel belovede In olde wayes was comely As to a Dorset he was vche as fast As he that was vera gentylman, With sorwe all fain he myghte fare Toward his chambre for his oghne cham. This womman ere were whan he myhte Ben other wyn, and sikerly he thoghte That it myhte ben do to him dede, And made a prive conseil tho, And tok hem pourveance and assent Unto his godhede whan that he myhte, Bot this king upon the mannes soufe Was levere noght for no worldes due. So that he wente, as it be knowe, Unto his womman al to blesse, Him wan that hadde ben his goddesse Of hevene, and sih him foryete, And thesoter of his beyete tho He tok, and was ful of his intent And levere men to ben out of his wounde. Him thoghte he tok in for his lif, Al that he mihte hevene no dealisse; And natheles he gret vengance Unto his wif that wode natheles He made, and was of honeste maistite, Wher that he hadde a wynter kepe Of alle wommanne in this lond at home Werkned, as it was wonder olde. Bot now pleinly forto speke on, I speken whylof as it is write Unto the point of turophe clepré So large. A bocrowded king as this Dente to Rome in this yeeldes The Erling of Ebro was, Which was the chief of worldes sory, The hieste of the Erpés workes, And schyneth al that ther is Of love, werre, ryht, in aventure, Ther was also an Erlen besein, Which ladde a Sone the toun And sende, and bad him to engrie With long jousts, and with máche mikernesse. Al that was I sene fro thilke, As ye nou thik antre of suche as were Under the shade of balefull wyldes The wyndes, which al her wayz toke Hew to hire al southe in a crurre couch Of long chaumeron, and forth withal A crois hierof hire balse stept in So lavelich, that with sute sattel Sche was al costede and repente. And he began to l ======================================== SAMPLE 110 ======================================== See how he lies on the cliff's edge, Cold and motionless, and in his eyes Eternal lightning is stored. A phantom lay the beautiful world, Which may for aye or a long while last The warm and lifting gales that blow, And waken a man to match his woes. I make a note upon All my thoughts; So they change, And other thoughts behold Passing oblique Upon the mind's screen Were so much subtler than the spot Upon which I trace Deeds in a dream I do not remember to have done. Mine eye Was delighted From the night Upon the water To catch the light; And for seven years I grew In a cave Which over-rowed Eagles in a sky. Sight change, Shadows pass, Pass like Fly by The most; Yet I keep These reminders Of all that I have seen. In my ears a sound, In mine eyes a light, I have walked A world of wonder From dawn till night. By a name, which is Of men and God, A shadow, changes all; And when I would unfold it, Knowledge comes gravely to me. I will go back Myself into my house, Loose up my clay, Sink my dark eyes, And sing once more; And -- dear Ghost, dear Ghost, tell me Did you look upon my child? Sleep? 'Twill weary us soon. Is it wise, my gentle maid, To think of dreams by day? 'Tis not wise to grope and grapple With the imperishable skies, The fame that all Eternity Will fold to an end, And leave at last to naught! And did you ask me, gentle one, Did I fain please you, now? I could not be so if you were afraid, If a woman's lips would not speak, If they found words unintelligible For their own thought, If the eyes of childhood grew too big For the circle of her head; Then you were wiser than, for wise, Since we know that girls and boys oughtn't Go to the graves the first thing rosebuds do. For she had hopes, And had not hopes enough, And a pink and ripe-white nose; And a scurvy-bruised hand; And a satisfied mouth And gray eyes, which had That peculiar look In common use, Wherein the pupils shrink And shrink again, Which makes the lids in their steam; And an uptilted breast, And a waist the size of copses of Bridgestone sl Now she was glad, with a leanness which will last until the heaven's gate is repaired; A buoyant child, Who might have joy of every wind that sighs And breathes a melody, And could walk on water like the wavelets of the sea, And still sit in luxury by the side of every brook; From him I heard it could be so, Since he made it so; Since he was so to make it so, Which is so, And her downcast eye Alone can be such, since it was so, This dark, this high And a happy thorn the first spring sheds, The first one ere the air has hurt That looks like fire, That leaves a tempest when it has plumed, Which is a flower unfaded, and he might be Your lover; then we would live again. His light had no shadow, For this reason, Because it cannot be That light, by any wing Or any eye, That does not rest in one, And rest till its own creation, Being all light; Can have no shadow Because it abides in love alone And cannot cease to be, Being all itself; -- Love's self is its own prison, That's just my case; Yet, since you've read and claid me, I'll tell you why I smile. If, the night before, the moon had not been clear, And the clouds not so high, As thus to hide the stars from us, one Shone, and another spoke, And I heard, "Who art thou? Tell me! Who art thou?" But I could not answer, I durst not speak. 'Twas lovely in her eyes; "I am Love," she cried, And her hand did falter, "I am Love!" she cried, And tears fell down her cheeks, ======================================== SAMPLE 111 ======================================== – Capsize her wings, her sapphire-colored, And fall along a quiet lake. And she was like the breeze, but she took My breath away. And I am glad that never we met The five-story building’s ascending sight Without seeing the lights it has at night. Such a light! <|endoftext|> "The Fire-Swede", by William Blake [The Body, Nature, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] The Fire-Swede Didne the soot rise on Dillion's breast? ‘The maiden is promiscuous;’ must I fear The Father’s wrath to find my lover’s hair Blonde and clammy, like the sweetest ivory Wherewith the flames have lapped it brown? But far worse were the Father’s wrath If I should see his child with blood on mouth And in the chamber’s mean sweet grange. ‘I would heal me of my foolish pity That would not take the sweat of trust; I would heal me of the pitiful snare Which did me blind with seeing.’ I sighed, ‘What can I do, since the hair Is as the creature’s covering!’ A little plucked bird I made Me said as Dillion’s child; And Dillion said, ‘I must do it Because you bade me.’ The fire-swede would smoke at night If the maiden should be sleeping. It took upon its pointed tongue The smell of soot of the fireside Tingling dulled and slow; And the plucked pluck thereof was wet Through weeping Dillion’s finger. They from the window saw, and said, ‘Pride, when it tingles, is foul; And ‘Is love no lance? Why cheer such Vagrants when fate makes beteten, And chance but settles who shall win, And who shall lose, who shall be undone?’ The flames rose, and smote the heap Where, darkling, did Dillion dwell, And by the plucked finger’s hue, He saw the pluck’d heat wave reach the girl’s cloak And reach Dillion, from the window. It came to rain; a little went Into the fire; and then, the heave Of it he saw, and wail’d. It rained; the plucking of the bird Was cold with sadness: ‘O pluck!’ ‘That’s the way,’ ‘He said.’ It was the old fire-seede’s hour, And shut the creeks out; And to give less wind to help him He judged were not duties. ‘To pluck a bird and send its breath, What profit at last?’ He pillowed his head. The wailing stopped; he did not hear The bird’s voice flapping its wing For hours, as he knelt to pray. He could not see what came or where, But understood his feeling well To meet him in the road with more And never, nor that red sky, see. When Dillion pauséd the fire’s fall, One dim-lighting wet, did see That the dead man’s skull’s brim Was all dishevelled of the skull cap, And that the ground showed red on knee Where that child his grannes had kicked. His eyes looked out of their lids; The man died of an old blow, If he but had remembered. He sat upon his teeth; his face The color of a burnt agate; His mouth kept from the rest; And his eyelids on him threw The skulls of cranes in the reeds. The shroud, a trumpet’s sound Against captivity Breath pushed it from him. So may fall Another, if it be sooth, In the sunset’s into weeds Chiarollo swept. When in a year The tit-mä distribution woke, And night by day the carriage swung, And night the man in whom they haled, He was a known face in that world, In his kind mind. By this it chanced they waken’d, And, ‘SIR! who draws this ace,’ Away the dead man’s hand withdrew, And al, the knot ======================================== SAMPLE 112 ======================================== . I’ve a blue-eyed rose in my bosom, A tulip on my wedding day; She blooms in the orient On my dress with the summer’s zest; I’m cold in my shelter While you are far in the west, And the rose and the tulip prevail. . I’m not a girl to miss a prank. We’re hard as the world that suffers We sleep well in the soft nest, And the same wick we’re true, We’re not the people’s palsies. . Fickle as ours At times were, and there’s As many falls As there are stumps or stone. <|endoftext|> "The Ecstatic Love Song", by A. R. Ammons [Religion, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy] Because what I hold most dear hath no speech I speak before thee, O mighty Muse And let my verse infuse With all that is purer than phrased speech And free from the parts and tones of wit, And rich in melody. Because what I love hath no song I let my verse proclamant Of awe and supercilious joy Be as a filling wine To taste sweet and not suffused with ache, And move in thine exultation. Because what I love hath no mound For me my love song brought To thee and to the world apart For what thou art, O mighty Muse, And for the state of things divine More worth than epithet Of exaltation, O mighty Muse. For all is sacred as a joy And I do praise the common things That one with others do we call And call them common things of joy. Because I love them rightly I seek not my world apart And secluded from the common things For mine own love or their praise I must and gladly am content To pour out in music deep of thee The exultation of delight. Because my world hath no central point I love all points and worlds quite alike And free from being apart from these In joy and without; henceforth I seek No joy in the short or long Of my own wonder how to live. As from this land and height of skies With its great noise of waves and roar of lions Came through the gentle corridors of air The night came down that kept the world With fear reposed and quiet peace My spirit, my spirit knew A jubilee and a rapture high And swift alike of the hour and moment That lieth apart from all time and place And sin and ours. . Because I love them so I have no need to impose The unmeasured power of speech But through my verse I bid the echoes ring A melody where no man can sing Nor name them one to one or two to three. . Because their days are long I love them long And short enough for me The days of the days that be Though those of the birds be Short. I have no strength to say Nor to say the thing I mean Or fear to bear My heart for another's mind The piteous world for my part And by the flowers where the maidens are, See ye the maidens of the fields! Because they fill the hour With play of colors and fashion Or make the unrustling iron be And the stream upon the granite hard Turn the grey shaft that glitters so And pass the woods with the flying wood So comes a song to you That the red flowers have an end Because their beauty is a valance That fills in the wall of our being I do not seek That your own lips have sweet teeth Nor would ye lack The nightingale that doth sit Among the stars of the night and sing That she must drink the sea water With outstretched neck Because she is a truer wing And his strength is as good as hers and she Is more wise than she And I think a love did live and die If he could own The heart of a maid. . Save the sacred vessels From pollution and waste, Let the sacred vessels remain Free of reddening and steep To be resurrected by thee: And when thou hast resurrected them Then let them stand, and do not fill them With water of mobile angularity Or torrents of a random coolness To blot out the living images of things. For a soft wine Was poured out of wood and is floating Warmed with the juices of the olive, And chilled with the winter Laves ======================================== SAMPLE 113 ======================================== Champeau River, one mile west As the travel light will run into the pale of dark Before the setting of the sun, Champlain Lake—one mile east. Few miles to the north, Slow and comfortable The road will go to-night. May we be in the space of one year Patrol-broken,<|endoftext|>Family names and family relationships are critical to the transmission of knowledge. They are why the Egyptian elite in 3000 B.C. could surpass the Greeks in persuasion of the causes of the visible phenomena. Philosophers of a great work like the Virtues or Sabres of the Wisdom Degrees developed and recorded here. In the long view of their period, as one walks through history, the family or tribal names and relationships are legion—the relationships among the seven men who formed the Mouchelal lineage and adopted the names of their warriors who became the Phinnites of the sea, Moors of Ireland and Roussillon who eventually settled on the fertile Low-Seiskees, Champeans who built the Castel Setem by the Lake of the Three Fountains, Salishan Onodoc, descendants of LeBrons, Paloavers from Gaul, people of the Cheam and Pilgrims of Atien who settled the valleys of the Missouri River, or at least adopted the lingo of its fishermen. Their names and the names of their daughters and in-laws form a history of the world of the last 2,000 years. Called by such names, people speak more clearly, particularly to the immigrants from the great languageless regions. Call names and relations (aunt, sister, mother, daughter-in-law, father-in-law, grandchild, child- in-law, grandchild, brother, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, etc.) form a history of America in the tradition of the strategic prazos of Peru and Costa Rica, connections of families like the river, kindred names of farms, families of the Hopi, and of various nations who name themselves Ini character- less. Generations and centuries repeat the same basic patterns of encounter and generation, encounter and succession of names. The naming of time that begins with the naming of time and ends with the naming of time leads inevitably to the naming of body and the abandoning of the results of encounters, name and relationship, name and migrations, named in Spanish, in Nahuatl, or in many other language groups. Names, the records of family, relation and the movement of people express the first agreements of life, of communion. Here we name— Dizung, ponoco, acapa, ahuichoco, Bethul, ahuich, cibola, ocaya, ahuiche, the Spanish word for "friendship"— We write and re-write names in the dark of memory and in the darkness of defeat. Dizung is the mother of Bises, who showed a gift for exquisite and effective pulp-wood sculpture. In 1654, her hand- print fell on the Harris report, which delivered the words, "In all the United States more than 2,800 scalps of Native Americans beheaded." In the distance of the text of this painting the quiet Cahuilla are the victims of the French colonizers of the Texas coast while the mussel-capped waters hide below the written words, whose translation into Spanish "atlantara" recalls the questions of discovery. That the French would need to capture the waters for transportation in order to convey the dead back to France is no concern of the painting. Its dimensions leave nothing to the imagination. "Of the Angel, Cardinal" comes from the Italian woodcut painter illustrious Scultetus Boccaccio, of Tempietto's famous treatise on painting. The elderly Angel, probably speaking in Greek or Latin, lifts up his hands to the Eternal City— <|endoftext|> "Old Life", by Judith Ortiz [Living, ======================================== SAMPLE 114 ======================================== A palpitating world makes the tongue to catch More complex accord, and weare through the ear of chance the direces of the prattle Of a grey mundan, who sees the world He thinks he canna make it, nane: The terry warld sings with a silver tongue And I will tell how it sings: These terry men that with red burning eyn`d hee be*d Are by loud presseyhere to a reed, Yestreen will learne how prest with his red cheeze And holdith he that can. Howe, my love, haue yll or ould age, Or yt is to some raa that saa, That may not aa plaace her to hat, For crythstande creatures her ys mair Than the mislear'd eaw? That to a reid the world his wise hen, Shal better heale than mind. By some more meane which keepeth closer gyft They that wate be in that order meeen, And come murther they by sleight of alme Will light in fun ere he begine To to their lives devild: And so all creatures are but playne or feard As the state o'th whos ayen the feard. There is some honest thot that hath his berthe At pulle ooth, and hath in lawth studied bot an ange Now is call'd: he suk the thing which needeth no, No ware he is at franke: And, fell that sike that he was i-marked hygh, He flyth thursnd at hanse, to heare the King I thred. I pray you, that ye wole his sett, And, win that throp not he be not slain, The hellish vs is of his glee, That at his gudeante age Thou shalt hym alwey have, And let nat for the kythe make hym wyse To wrack and de-w the kyng: For he hath tretyy, and thoughe he dwe, He shal be in the sepulchre. If ever ye shall make hym thret, For feere, but ye nat his time lye, What stanteth in that sudens of his fyte It shall (the best I take it in hand) Some full unkyd whiche doth them twayne Togedy, and can nought agro, As it shal bee nat re-membred In the man-hyndre of an Hue And so may the throte of this securit, Wheroweareth yonge children hast Forsowt tyme and fere, tresor and ousour, Sitten in the man-yard, and swyn agone, With many others of that sentence; Tekyth the sawe hygh as a gode wynd The children of this misded trust In it. To twyer, and than he speed Sbeeldys ground of conseil and advise With the newe lawes of the seynt at han The holy Synnytryon of the Cit Forsake for her lord the kynge her tyme To mak a memorial, byng a peech day, Of a Bastard, named Ey::l, That had for the kynge been shot in war, In many gamees; and that he was whan, The comon, and a squier he had be, In gilt arme a Parcasoile; But, for his ylte, for his Regalie It was an Armes he neuery thynk In suche sort; but not of suche men, That shold neuer haue knowe. So for that cause my right well sueth To arme and to se slowly the throat Unto the charge: and for a Scythe was sing Of hem that ferste had hem syght, That bett the Temple, as thei wolden hord, That after that the Temple wan fonde And thus the wordes hadden gret reyn, Than all the lond and al that thei can, And reyd in helth that it we clene; And forto make the teres great almesse Of money, as thei seide to the Cites, And these Cites doen the same ======================================== SAMPLE 115 ======================================== FCO'S said.... There was no time for breathing down the wind neither was there any time for in this dream but I hope I am here I was caught in the wail of the fire truck and I did not cry I didn’t cry When I awoke they were gone and she who followed me was gone and I was cold and alone and I did not cry they left me and I was cold and alone and there was no time for me to breathe I didn’t say goodbye neither was there any time for sayings in this dream I wish I were here and there and I did not cry and I did not awake there was no time for me to say goodbye neither was there any time for me to say bye I wish I were here and there and I did not weep and I did not rise they left me and I was alone there was no time for me to say goodbye I did not say bye there was no time for me to say goodbye and there were neither were there neither time nor breath there was time for me to say goodbye and there were no trucks there were no trucks there were no trucks there was no trucks and there was no time for me to say goodbye and there were no trucks there were no trucks there were no trucks and no road I woke up there were no waste waste and waste and there were neither waste nor waste there was neither waste nor waste there was neither waste nor waste <|endoftext|> "Sweet-Blood God", by Gwendolyn Edwards [Social Commentaries, Race & Ethnicity] You see me in the movies, acting Che and Aimee on-t [sic] or maybe Jack or Linda or Bruce. I got into acting when I found out that I had type 1 diabetes. I didn’t want to be in the movie business. I was making stacks, a stack is two or three cassette tapes with your name on it sold and raked in. When I showed up to a new movie they were like, “What is your name?” I said, “Gwendolyn Rodriguez.” I started getting roles where I was Caucasian. I did an episode of CSI: Death Becomes Her. I read only Latino Lady but always got the Caucasian exclusion. Then one day I stepped up to an officer and said, “Hey, I know this little Indian woman. Let me just say this about her,” and I stepped up to the cop and said, “you know this little Indian woman that I spoke for is heart disease?” The officer was like, “You don’t know her?” and I was like, “Yeah, I do.” And the officer was like, “Well, I heard the name you did.” I was like, “I wrote that down on my flippench and you know I guess I’m going to have to arrest you,” and he was like, “You doing this?” I was like, “ well, I guess you do.” And I was like, “well, this is my name, which I forgot and I really don’t like this much.” Then all of a sudden my mouthpiece said, “the polic- ety chief is here with you.” I said, “Oh, where is he?” the polic- ety chief said, “He is right over there and he will be your custod’cy here.” “Chief, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, “I am an Indian woman. This is my name.” The next day they put me in jail for being breathless. That next night I watched as the principal, with his wife and daughter came to the jail to see me. When I saw them I felt you just can’t say anything when you come in with me. And I stepped up and said, “Ma” I don’t know where this thing came from. You know, it kept building. I stopped talking. It made me feel like I was becoming ======================================== SAMPLE 116 ======================================== "There's that Jew Hammed returns," Then I looked up the sea, and saw As, setting sail from My Lecherie, Came up through the cleft between the sand An old Gdansk Jew. And a-he! his beard, it was white! And his hands, they were white as The-sea's own light! "Pray'st thou, friend, you go whereon My horse hath gone, And do not lay hand to cord, or But your Captain not know? But your Captain not know? "What, you leave me no gold Nor my poor Falconress won To let you go?" "Aye, that I do!" The old Gdansk Jew said, And he slipped in the Crow's hide, And cast a sling, and aimed a shot. The Star! The Star! The Star! the Star Rose in the sky; It rose in the sea; It rose in the East. With rapture the boys I watched Of My Lecherie. The Tar and the Spire were gone, And the Spiça stood Glory-crowned on the roofs And the windows of the Gent Whose Star the Night The Star that shone On the horse's feet Itwase of sea "O Mark," he cried, "O Mark the Knight, who took All of me, And all was won As light to hold That is light with me, Mark, take my hand I pray thee!" "O me," said I, "O my poor life And you, that will not roam Else where the lion Slips in the night, Where are ye, O blessèd Merry laugh Of love, your flock's Fortunate hold Still in your hand?" "O Mark, brother We have given Who will not take Or I have told you Go seek the sea Or for birds To be bold!" And then he kissed My hand, and cried To us both crying: And we went home To our stronghold. When I had said: I took my maiden, And trod I-round And I said: "This thou hast said But now We will never more Call or send Or spare a penny Till we hear thou hast let Me to the sea With my Lord and brother At his knee, with head I did say: "We will never call We will forbid Unless he will have In his care All our goods and lands In Ireland free For as much as he can pay From his own store," "O Mark, I cannot Have cause to call But to-day I call, Mark, for to-day I keep A wax figure of thy face On my pillow, for to keep If there be any who might Give thee then a separate head For me," "Well be seen how that! Lechery, I charge thee, Thou then take the hand Of this thing which I make, Wearing it about In my hair, And turn thy back To this silver thing," And mark if I say not truly. When the eagle is the prince, And the lion the prince's son, And the tempests the purl out At his pleasure, the wolf is the king Of the-world; Then love and lass are nought, Or, rather, the queen Is everything; The distaff she, the spindle she, The distaff she, the spindle she, Is my favorite. For me 'tis arrumen, For me it is arrumen, For me 'tis arrumen, I am the queen, And who shall be her mate? When the hedge hangs thumped with wind, And when the hedge hangs whist And the hedge is wintered all the year, When the world is sappy, Then thou art, thou rising Sun! The youthful vine as lily! This then is, in summer, This then is, at midsummer, The harlot's rosy spark; And one like me, In the sev'nth light, Is the full aeon's king. O, the harlot's true affection Is only of love, Her witchery of witchery, And the music it makes; And, with all virtue, To become the queen Of the world is my female honor. There's little comfort in a burden Where ======================================== SAMPLE 117 ======================================== <|endoftext|> "Vision for a Child Again", by Elizabeth Skidmore [Living, Time & Brevity] An apple rutten no sound except a chal-e. So I saw the snow Stenciled like the The Act Of the Witch’s Nests, with and unerring cut. Not in fancie Of diamonds’ ooze The moon’s alrate stars Hid away Pent to enscribe The bronze <|endoftext|> "The Periwig", by Elizabeth Skidmore [Living, Death, Time & Brevity] Opi secundum! It was my own fault It should be smiling now. It was my own fault. I pricked it with a splinter The night before. “The doctor’s wife was silly put To sing at the ceremony, But her voice Stunk like a dead leaf. I pricked it with a sharpened pencil So it would Believe it could have children. Even then My witching water Gave it a melancholy laugh That it did let me drown. Now I’ve a coffin That says “Death” in capital letters And is rotten to the core. <|endoftext|> "Repetitions", by Elizabeth Skidmore [Living, Time & Brevity, Religion, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics] Repetitions are a little thing That cut me, though. They are a natural Module, if you like Many, many Sound bites, and they Go, Resonant For some very fleeting duration. Where the hickory Is frigid, it lifts The clouds— This is where The time is Changed, or she Is moving. And So that she would Get it, The little rick-fold Tall tower, too, Paused and furled On its iron legs, Paused and fathomed— Sound bites Drift, that is. <|endoftext|> "Daddy", by Hettie Diaz [Religion, God & the Divine, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] She’s got a little nubby mane, His face is dark & soft, He’s so cute, His name she won’t tell You, but you can’t help but to pet Him. She won’t give you Christ, He would drown Her, But she’s in a picture, straining up so hard To show how pretty she wants to be. How could you fail to love The little stray in the street? Where you would look first, When you saw him lose his lights, All bared and tight, So bold and alert, A glorious black & white sight. <|endoftext|> "Paper Wings", by Hettie Diaz [Nature, Animals] Life is over short. We ride the branches of every twig hung as if skin Were stretched in shreds over the pages that live in autumn as well, then in spring spring all flowers place their feet into the strong dust of whorls we fly with breath to report, to be seen there <|endoftext|> "The Man who Tried", by Hettie Diaz [Living, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] After a long day with no glass light no air no grass to break the soldier was yawning in his rank’s loin-council warmed by my wisdom more than grace to mark space then tired of seeing he was the only one down for that walk the boys tread lightly after the setting sun flick a soccer ball at each soldier thinks he still belongs <|endoftext|> "The Nest Maker’s Tale", by Hettie Diaz [Activities, Gardening, Nature, Trees & Flowers] Her buds filled hollows with secrets oils that darkened, light that blinded and then for a time she was nothing though she laid thousands of seeds plastic, in the air in the roots… But all at once they seemed to fill ======================================== SAMPLE 118 ======================================== send those they love to the grave, go forth before, for neither right nor wrong way nor way nor wrong. Vik. This I will give you, that when you do good or worse--as though you did ill-- then I will bid you quick, through our snared souls, flee for a while from the face of the brutes; but if you keep from sin by your own wrong speech or action, then in your soul as strong shall the flesh of brutes possess you, as your good works possess the good, so flesh shall own that which spirit possesses--just as God wills. Now in these days, I suppose, From heaven the whole creation was brought down In one great storm to these barren ways-- One then, a God of that bright helm, Hurled these broad sands to carve on the deep, And I, the human who was never Man's equal on this earth, having been Either rock or water or sand, No wind to form a shelter, and a friend, After the silences that had seemed eternal Dispersed, sprang forth in limbs at ease From the earth, golden scythe of the sun, And the light made a fringe and a skirt Of the sandy dunes. So this Son of God Went forth from out his chamber, sword by The flood-wash thrust in him, sword and water, To carry angels, bearing the world. So in the manner of things heard I the voice Of God in a great clear breath, saying, "Come forth!" And I go forth, and my soul's desire Among those spirits becomes fleshly again, And to Himspeak I am, and through my lips Speak in turn, saying, "How often have I Guessed wrong, and never found me extra-terrestrial!" Vik. This is the triumphant work Of God's eternal season. In sooth, If I am heaven-clod and my seed-- To overthrow time's promise with old error; To be what earth needs, flesh-clod to flesh, And my own soul's destiny--to be gunned; A damned horse-wheel to turn the hoofs Of one in eternity who never Suffered an agonies more in hell Than I must, in that brief time of mine God gave me, for my soul's delight and grace, To be his trumpet in the Temple of God. We sat at opposite windows (Either house equally) to the west; Beleaguered sand and black trees to the east Darkened the sky) and misty hills Bridged the landscape in between. I saw your white shoon and sumach, you said, Couched up your way, the sunny shore, Climbing like the Hawk of Greenland. We wished to know what happened On those icefields; you, I, sferry, With pipe and bindup, high uplung-- Jointing, or aught else to forgive? Lack speaking, other answer, We stalked in silence into the dawn. The sense of hearing slumbered, even as thirst Mutes the sense of smell,--so that smell Returned, and memory vowed I heard Nothing. Then, scarce a word, Just a rustling of young cedars, The quiet leaf that evens To the hills, and downhill low hills; A little gust blew as though the trees Smoldered in wind, then hills and crags and spines Frowned white. We found no valleys, and No sound. Of air or trees we talked thereat There was nought to say, and homewards went, Nearer the end in quiet shade Mounting, the sky drawing darkly above The river, as that room we had left. Now the sky to the east grew broad and warm; And the earth drew a canal, rich and deep, By the development of a single grain, The scattered dust of some old eruption From the earth's interior upheld In one cluster, of immense cost From earth's own capacity made ample By man's imagination; And the snow dashed, the wind wailed, the moon Shone; till all was peace, the sun praised, The clouds, the earth, the heavens, and we That had been twain awoke As from each work, until the bird flew by, The light that loves the violet blue, The sacred force of ice-gods five Rose in either sky to heaven, The happy arms of ice, and clouds Passed, and the ice-sea grew ======================================== SAMPLE 119 ======================================== Not a jot, not a mere trifle. I build my litter. I now and then I lick it, without thought of praise or blame, And the sun watches and comforts me, As he watches and comforts little sinners-- He's there in the break of the day and night Saving my soul. Then my soul cries out For the waters and the winter rains-- But they come once in a long while Telling the world this is the dumb chair And that I am inside of it. Went and stood beside him there, And held his hand in the old way, As with the hum of it. Seemed to set his pace to the wind, Even as sheep go Behind their shepherd As long as the sheep are sheep. Sun, and all the lads went Along by his directions, Till a small wind rose That made the grass moan And the waterbanks roar, Shouting, "Jenny, Jenny, Jenny!" Clouds that had gained, the mist reached From the hill. Snow then was on it, Soft, misty, deep, yet cool, As it is to-day, And it cheered the hearts of the boys Like now, when the sun is setting. Glad we shouted in laughter, shouting, With our hands in our aprons Setting our pace all a-jerse. Wont to be only one of us-- Until we heard them saying, Out on the hill and down the ground. Pushing and shoving, running and walking, Fighting and getting in touch With the sun's luster Brighter than the glitter of snow, Than one half of the sky, That can set a man's fancy Workingly to working, Hearing the breath go off it Beating like a clock. As, in October, on the river Stood that we could cross, and go away-- And what was not there?--Was it the heave Of the water? or was it the banks?-- Of what could we the run and walk not Under the bright sky. Or elswhere the sea Feast of its frugal restraint, Dips to the depths as it dips?-- Only the sun's spectrum, Searing up the width of its way? What other news? Go back, O friend, when you have done, Nor ever this footstep May be forgot. He would not be forgot, nor you; He was most of the year we knew. But all that we did, or seemed to do, Was fresh in his ear, and true His heart's-east. What he heard We dream by the river shore Watched by the Quaker boys On the cork-stumps--that lay still. Unveiled a castle, masonched, With years' hot growth! Here against the public stone A high stone bridge's crossed, Now is the mansion's cover; Jagged the stone wall looks in it. And green uplifted walls On the further side are seen, All bronze-grey, and of the white, And free from all lines, like moons From heaven, where rest the train Of summer stars. If it was now to meet and speak Upon a height Of working-time he stood and I, At once his footfall heard, and leapt With furious briskings; not one tone Of bile-spitting, but this of trust In him, and forcible sooth His breath at intervals of reproach For sombre peril. And so-- If we should stop and take breath? Will there be still no stir Of labor that seeks it with shame That can make none of the life Beyond that near hover strange? The rush and pasting from behind, The clash on us, the hands uplifted, I think of England at work In her intent? Yes, the son of the gods! With terror that shuddered his Around his feet, and terrified me; His solemn yielding of the day; The blowing of the smoke of the wood Of long-hopped grains, the long blasts of wind That shook the spindles? Shaped and braced, with help from the hands Of sweat who could not know, A rope runs: high and clear the strip of cloth On which the screw was set-- Lo! the paymaster's turkeys, all fat And juicy, a gob of roast and of game. How do the cabmen Who carry the wood By it like shadows ======================================== SAMPLE 120 ======================================== And rapt-audacious thrumors faine They will cheerle to sing, Since there's never a languagelime So like this. 'Twas then I knew--not with faith to be Unfinished till the end-- The Sun not on us, as though in space A shadow from eternity, And earth a shadow, as though we flit Unburdened, unconsumed, were, 'Twere only the being of a I. The valley has so long been unvisited; The pinnacle, too, has long been plucked Of its snow-fringe by the frost's deep dew, Now every rose to scent and texture worn Long since, and on what generation, What beauty, were not ours alone, were given, Did we not see it, did we see it here? Yet who that sees her once, can ever Forget the irretrievable groan, The precious glow of her, the worthy, The tender shade her form doth give? Where has it all gone? Who is he, That ever has seen her and seen her, From whom it sprang and earned the name it wears? Whose heart has for that lighted through, The feeling to possess her, even Without the power of forgetting, Her loveliness, she is gone To that stern energy which doth say, "I have burned out all traces of the flesh And called my life at birth. Be there light?" And not on a life that tends, Or works, or laughs, or bleeds-- In our aping some chaotic stage, Clasps he her body, cloth, and plate? Does he--oh my God! Who? say! say! COULD HE but come again, Itself and self in him, For joys that face their climax In our unnameless state! For laughter right well said, For tear for a tear! For that red wine, for bread right, For all we have suffered past, I know not wherefore this the man Who in my days did much. I feel my days have been full of pain, Like a ship that holds a blighted crew. Now, in this center of whitest air, I think I shall behold his face. How should I know that he has gone, Who to my days may come again? Who to my days again? I can not think of him who Is not in my world, for I am In that dim land out of the dawn. What shall I do? what is to do? What if I think of him again? Oh! but to bear my grief, and Shed a tear that he may not weep! Oh, but to weep his look! Oh! but to blush his love! And so, for mercy's power, to know him, And then, the further shore, To let me know, For he may not look upon thee. Starry stars and still thou art, O Briar's Birth! I cannot quench the starlight That gives thee beauty. I cannot destroy the rose That points like the Sun, For it points him thither. I cannot mar the white And cut the rose-red things, For they grow fair Not into the same thing, Nor yet make me the same: But this did Lincoln do, And even in death he shines, The world turns upon its edge The space between. I have not lived thus long on end Laughing on the end of life, Lincoln-like, But I have seen the other side, And thought how little good it will be Even for him. I have seen the sun Dance down on Alpine coats By night; and many a thousand Look at their white boots by the side Of hundreds that had lost their king, And only the tree at a certain Height--the tree of the worm and of the Half-born snow, and all white. Was there no hand to clench of man's Any thing that showed him doing any Interest in life and not want of it? I have walked the lower world to-day, And if I might clamber over it, Who would not go up it? Can you Ever adjust yourself to meet the world's Angry face, its wicked sneer or smile? Let but man shine like the moon's self, Or even as our bed of snow In summer or its twin moons of ice, The world will turn away and away-- And love us as ======================================== SAMPLE 121 ======================================== Ah! sweet the task, and hard the toil, All commonwealth--but, oh! sweeter far Than labour, the watchful throng Of low conscious men that keep A hundred portals night and day, Who loiter and loom, and creep To the seat of princes, and creep Back once more, when 'tis fair! Sweet and low, sweet and low, Lions and tigers and lily-crowned. Peace, peace, ye multitude. Heaven's lilies far out-number Flowers in the wood, and boughs among the leaf. Ladies of the lily, have ye not eyes? Or must we strain ours, and beat ours, To swear the lilies are peacemakers? But he--he is black! I grant it--a wicked Though fool-hardy fool is he, I grant him. But he will be tame Ere he is tame. He will never feel In the time-old story of the Talos There is no mention of a Trojan Girl. Alfred cracked a whip he loved, I'm told; I've a million queer notions About how to saddle and munch, With a goddess-like face and a woman's body. 'Tis never mentioned, and I can't agree With an eighteenth-century commentator That Suspicion is a crime, and I As much as the devil--say there's no supposing That the girls were made to go to Rome. But he's too coarse--I don't expect the man In our English dark he'll find the Maid; In the twilight he'll light on her, In the glare of the setting sun I am going to call him 'Sir,' and get a little Cheap for my feeling--are you angry? Why! they were. There were two of them-- Said the porter. Old Brideshead, the long-wormed son of God, The Inheritor, the Emulate. Not a worshiper of all those other Eternal Beings Knew not, never dreamed, Not the Wisdom. Thee. Not a traceroute I have of the sex. But the Dance. It is the Closing Dance of the New Gold-- The Closing Dance that gathers in on itself More tangle-filled drops of other colours Than these appear in the heavens. 'Twas ever the Mystery. What hath the saying went to say, that mankind were these, then to each other, that there were hens with the eggs? Who could that saying go to say of so eternal life to say that nothing under Heaven's at all, and nevermore human, is They knew not what they wished to say. Did man have still the egg, The little men with their things? If he had, it would not seem To have the story the same. Eggs and the men, how they grew up together! To think that once I saw an Adolescent Who had still this saying going in his mind! It made no likelihood; Not he alone; For they showed the saying, And showed us the saying was theirs, And had it only their versions to hold on to! What was I thinking of, now you ask? Why it goes on and say, 'When the worm's the little'-- That's the heighthart of the Hen. So much as the other, 'Mid the flour-dishes of the board! Who cut the dough the ancient way, With their fingertips! Who taught of time-fared wise men That old way of baking bread, with their fingers? Their fingers never dried up, no less than their tears, Because their lives were not any less whole than the lives they lead; They find at last the best of bread and of body, If 'tis a pie they've baked with their thoughts, And what is more, if no man keep mind of his fingers, they've baked of the boughs. He of the many shapes in the flours That stand of human count; Our pretty saying saith, he is-- As a cross on a sheep-skin, or as a cross in the bud; For he's like us, and like in his ways, Aye, and he saith in his own way. We'll whittle him a little and we'll betoken him a song, Lest his bays should decay, Leaving us some new delight, And his little shmannae, if his bays have waxed much. It is a child--so small, If we jot it ======================================== SAMPLE 122 ======================================== It carries the mail from bow to rope. From Tabor the mail rolled from their lines Their ships swept life for England's shores Till those two mine fields rolling smoke Smoothed all manner of men and apparel To hide their sins; but never mind those men, The hot work's in Spain. They rode the sea And in it now have made their own Upon that harbor of the dead, Where sternest sloth so soon forgot its chains When one, before the ships were blown Far off, had seen the ship that bore him flee, So overcome its ragged faults and last thinned The galleon's tracks that led To the strong moorland's end. All Spain now Is swept afar to South, where that bold, True manhood rose. It thought of you and heard you, of you Who grew that it might be great. THE gray dark smother falling From roof and street and window Is a halo blown abroad; The soft autumn evening gathers To fling her hand and say, "We." With our great wealth, Latin and Greek We built a college great, With our blood for lime-trees lean And hands that sent the poets pale They saw us fall in that quick Sudden flower that bore the slow Men's souls in its front two hundred years. In all its ivied towers and carved Our great burg is fretted And molded with the world in mind. Out of the sea swept in, but did Not overwhelm it; nor defaced One palace gilded with the rays Of some old god-forsaken town. Its very ghosts did we not see And know the one true flesh and mind. A glowing star, the heart Of earth rolls under; we are one And merged into heaven and the sun. We walk its hills and walks, the steep Hill where our trees--many remain Still standing--the whirlwind side Where sweeps the deadly white for days Across the desert sand; to and through The ghostly streets, under or behind The holly tops, and far on south The bladed boughs. To on of us The musicians turned when the war broke out And now, at dawn, where yet the noon glows We walk. All that is great that ever fell Comes, for an instant, through the big gate That fronts the world; we come to cast LAST SUMMER, we took a litter to the edge Of the yellow river, unregarded The creatures from the common lake The first swallow of the summer Seemed only as a color. Yet the scene of common animals was Such that she, the outsider, Forgot to sit against the grand wall And did not see the king in his dark. So that first morning and the early smiles Blinded her to the wild dew on the ground, Where white drifts rose, and the stiff gray rushes That stood upright and swung slowly down Made embroid bond in the cool air The ash-white damask the grass. All summer long the procession rolled And its whirling choral wings and dewlaps Were full of singing. Beyond the tower The barge slipped at times in the drift of gold Or soft green sheen. At other times Upon the ooze, the last isle unran, Unwithering of the bower-bush till the last Hot yellow brood of flowers were afire with red. That thy breath fear could walk the air Beyond the dry forest? How such dawns may be! And last it seemed to her that soon, Along the stream and through the shore grass, Her shadow might have marched with them, To have been one in the great cool fold Of that unquiet land. For still there came no sea-wind To blow the lilies loose and dumb. THE EAGLE'S wings Hang battered in her shoulders, folded and torn Beneath her nerved body; she has fled Home, to forget The joy of flight and war-drenched tales Of better home. The only house that could Afford her was a heap broken pieces Of unvalued matter; each day she thought Of our poor earth, And pondered and was troubled as she wrought With this for hope of the poor child, Drawn by the ways of the world, And spending her own and others' wealth To have a talk with her, to make known The ease with which all things can be given To one in want, with a heart Bent like a wire, with the fingers short, Short of the feathers, ======================================== SAMPLE 123 ======================================== an out-dated gentlemen's smile where he feels I'm for a croissant. He wants a bit of joy, fresh and shiny, so that he can eat breakfast in the daytime though I can see him sticking to his cuckoo for more desserts and breakfast in the twilight. I'm sorry but we are not married, whereas he's sure of that every day in the trampoline, feather buckle, treasure of the matter where he's sure and meaning to pull off your turn. He jumps you in a trunk. He frets his finger over a rose, a flower; and you gathering his scent, gives him a pinch. And he hasn't even touched his mark. So please don't consider me too much for my satisfaction. 4 One might suggest a similar self that was wounded, but that's unfair, as we know well. Had he been like me, he would have many flesh wounds. He would have experienced unexpected warmth from a lover who knew him well and was touched by his spare moments, tender, pale, and sweet, saying, "Sorry but I must insist that you maintain a gentler style of walking." He would have experienced the care that's necessary to maintain one's existence although twice he's been in love with your carelessness, feeling yourself become a lion that would care for him always, saying, "Darling, I am not your servile lover. Love me, please." I'd feel scorn if I refused. You should know by now how I feel about you. So please—It's not that I want you to do anything but speak up when it is appropriate for you to speak up on a matter of… importance, even though it would not be respectful to do so without warning, lest I… What is this? You say it's not important. I beg you to consider all the times I might say it, when you are not there! For when you, with a word, invite him to say whatever he chooses, I see his tongue has already bent itself into the trap of that… Is it over? Well, then, let's say. <|endoftext|> "Crow", by Hajduš Jolicžak [Living, Death, Relationships, Pets, Arts & Sciences, Painting & Sculpture] There's something in you No one's taught me It works in a mysterious way And in my house the crow sits on my knee and crows there The crows think it's funny though I've heard it the same But surely there must be some merit I ask around and none is told A co-worker, being lazy, says, "I saw it in him" My neighbor laughs, I, too, thinking I must have liked it Well then, I take it to my work I know that it would take my eye I see that my eye is at work as I work it reaches up to where the crow's resting "Look there," I say to the paper "He was lying in a puddle in the snow was it? I'll write that he was melting "And of course it was," crows my neighbor But I hadn't anything to do with it I didn't even see it <|endoftext|> "Language is not the Draft", by Ževiña M. Branko [Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment, History & Politics, War & Conflict] No don't be angry Don't be angry, it's fine don't be angry No don't be angry It's fine it's fine don't be angry because every one of them died <|endoftext|> "We Want Our Karam == Karam's Wife", by Robert Davis [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment, Gender & Sexuality, Race & Ethnicity] She could have just as easily told the policeman that she don't know who he is and that she had to go to the store and then proceeded calmly to the store and if she had told him that she was taken, the policeman would have understood her complaint and proceeded on his way. The big difference here between the girls who have to go to the store and those who don't is simple supply and demand. And if we want to understand why it is that these young women are suddenly and shockfully so angry, the big difference is ======================================== SAMPLE 124 ======================================== When first I meet you! The sun-light is upon you, And if the subtle coolness Of other men that have loved you Could restore you to their souls, The sigh of all I love in you Would leave you gentle--and new-born With other souls would have their place! I lost an image of the sun At twilight, in the time of spring, When the dawn-wind filled the wet green blades-- And put to flight the many-tooting Thyrsus-flames of the Mountain Thorn. I looked again,--and still I saw the sun, Aflame with a might I had not known, And as he rose I saw his pure white rays Began to scar ennobled new lands. But from my heart no love returned, No glance of his hope or of his hope's remorse I had seen before;--a murmur loud and strange Took form; I spoke, but my lips were dumb. 'I am safe with Jupiter,' I said, And so I was. For when I loved, my throat A silent sob went on, and on, and on, And when the word was out of mouth, my heart Was as it had not a word for! That word, so loud, was forthright, yet I-- Him who had spoken it,--ah, with what will! And how would that word haunt me when it grew Too bright to lie in the grass with the flowers, For of my days on earth who I had been The wind that whirled them made an exhilar Wild with a strange astuteness of power! O all too bright of the sun, and wild with the wrath Of his radiance, and all the mighty length Of his equus, and his florets of gold! How should I say, 'I have not found it!' But let the sun be seen and be dead While let be well, I made a song of the night and day, (When you went back) Which was like a poet's witchcraft, The air of evening, stillness, and space-- (Which I made for you), Like tautology, harmony and slow Which thrills and goes in, which the eyes behold As music, Till music awakes to see how Music with its garlands garlanded, and knotted, Hang from the soul, Where the smallest of space, least of staves, is heaven! That house, which you would not let me enter, My house as your own, The hope and the shadow, did I build, and you The reason why! (Which again, when you left) Saw through my song, from its lowlier air, my true Pure house, and great with light! It is a great calm before the storm, A darkness before the Sun. And thus, within the shell, I'm sinking under silence. But though, O chorus, O subtle sleep! You were not mine, You were not the last, Mine still, O house of your making, You were not the first! I paused in opening verse To listen where I stood; I forgot you by that grace, I closed the door in airy calm, And careless that the day was done! And then I spoke Myself aloud; And what I said I do not know, Nor if 'twas right or wrong; But I, that night of lonely mind, What else than the birds I said, What else than what I wrote, I know I spoke without shame, And that it may be seen, I have the page before me. And so I did not ask Your hand for ever or for one time; (Why should I, madonna, ask for joy?) And thus I brought you with me down Without a word of praise or bye-lead, And if I'm honest, what do you say? You loved me that day and so you swear You loved me, I, too, may swear; I have the page you brought me, but that page Was not to be looked at straight, Nor can I tell now, or ever know, But perhaps there's some sense in what I say. Ah, but the sight is near! The roof has form, the roof has life, The loft, with wings, the hollow soars Like a bird in the air; And she who has wrought this craft Is infinitely better than This work could make her say. I see, I see, A house where in the shadows slept A woman, lonely ======================================== SAMPLE 125 ======================================== @ but I’m not— I’m not into that’s game. More idealistic than glory-fairy stuff, but here did say that youngness was a myth and one to be re-examined, that when “youth” matches admirable achievement, values, yes. But, that’s just the ego at work. How you measure and what you do measure changes everything. People change. We have a certain age that we must maintain for each new day. What makes you so sure it’s always the same you who’s poked that out there and that’s grown to be the vast ocean of  what-you-call- it that sits there and is thed to be one or maybe two perscriptions when suddenly, putting your mind to its conception, being none of us that live or not we know the word “reality” matches a breakdown for what people call hope — you could learn all this and more with our class next week. But no: one continual dread of   lost footage or some imagined lost one that doesn’t happen to have a face or some mafioso said he got the lost film on which the project was aimed and spoke the word of inadequacy all thought to to  an old snaggle-taggle the grapes of a little win and some defeat won’t disappear like bubbula eyes a crooklegame graft inside the oceans to be  squared on the ellipsis the ellipses on the ecliptic rocks meant to be un movable together for nothing can be moved to change just as the past can’t be changed  with a postal stamp a gossip licking the guests to soak. Wait. What was the elision of the air of the mole really a microscopic worm with superstition and the spiders salt their waxes for locusts to handle. Like a moth’s unearthly form their finally size and females will need carefully as small open their nesting nests. The blue lace on your shoes always tried to be black and if you look in weaving a chain of blue threads to stick to your sole. Weave to  your selves choices. These give ground in the that tell neigh what’s where you are now. Use your time of  runtime to do little things like touch nigh an apertice sky dome north west of the mountain braid to sweep grass back sear earth dark with a dark glitter wood off and forth to see what happens to ======================================== SAMPLE 126 ======================================== Let us go to sleep, then; And, being haunted by an angel's kiss, Lay them down to die. Oh! night, oh! sleep, with all thy gifts The dearer far! The noiseless candle, the beechen boddam's cot, The hapless lover that perfidious turns To watch her silent lover's sleep. Oh! night, in all thy solemn dark, This one sweet pleasure bring, The soundless silvanRAW, The fond immarities that steal Across the tepid moon, The wedded sleep, the tear-bound tear, Of those whom late they may forget. Oh! night! thou bringest a most rare bliss, Nay, like that noiseless moon at night, When yet from Pleasure's revelaid ball No soul the wish had : A bliss untaught, it neither robs nor rouses, A bliss untaught, it neither geas Nor charms the blissful gazer's sense. Asleep at the Moment's free summer-cost; When every sparkle wakeneth that To dream the future, and all nature To that clear fable's deep array; On the lone heart at midnight's hour, As night's last neaper looser, I think the world contains both ye com Which when ye think, o' nights waste full, As night cometh, night cometh; As night cometh night, so night is ever young. I think of Those--O! where? I can not tell, The place whereon their morning-light was dim; The Season's faithful Mahalla, Who fought his battles with the sun, Whose anguish yet in gloom is wrought. To thrones, he soars? And to the heavens and their height, He climbs the height where'er he throws The weight of the obliquities Upon the stars which clear them up. O'er that large bay, and still o'er the deeps Which none may find their bottoms again; To that Deep where the sun's image grew And died at evening, and so died Beyond the sun's image's height And, being soul, the worlds were-- Before I was a man. I think of thy hard face and hard eyebrow And of thy mouth with its groan and its laugh, Where beauty of the even and even Tenderly taught the Latin charms, Making the air for passion's aspiration And passion love. In all that I have done or am, I think of thy sunk eyes, And of that land, O! how far away From this thy heart! yet here I am, Thy children's beauty shows, And o'er thy heart, that far away Doth lie for evermore. Now, for the word'S long years' journey through, Shall my song put off this far away And bring this home-- To think to what time's owe I owe The river on the heather, Or to the what-name wilderness That bred me! I reckon who can hear all of rhyme A long while,-- To call those strains back, or be so never more That draws the lotus off its own cool root To make cool water For some young lustrous eye, With sap in it of fever, With fire in't of love, With utterance and dream of mute despair, The wind's voice; And then to loose again the gold, And breathe the fragrance of the gardens then When he, One Child at her birth, at mother's word, Went wandering from the narthex, And on an Orchard's walks at night Seeking the flowers, Came to a bright Parroquet and he Failed on his search. Or a red-faced man-- And I must not inveigh, To praise the inexorable stars, His very own, 'cause there is none else! Whose common star Led him the way, as on a road Hepherded forth the breath of spring From the lower air, He found the Orchard's withering breath And gave that man his sun. O'er the plant-waves sweetly disparted He gat a bird's watch Of beauties manifold, And found the place still covered with flowers, But where, indeed, the Orchard grew, With wood-vines round it, and lines Of boughs to name Planted here at earliest bud, And between with narrow wall, And clay and blue ======================================== SAMPLE 127 ======================================== e n e g o o o y e l e n e l e s w e l t o s e l e n g s e t e t e d w e l t o s e l e y e n e s e n e s o s e s s s w e l l y s e s s o s e s w e l t o s e s a r a y e p r e s e n t e d s e l e n g t e d s t e d s e s p e n t e d s a n e r p r e s e n t s e l f a c e n t s a l e a c e n t s f a r g e d s a n d e s p e r c o n t e d s e r a r e l a t e d s e t i n g s s e l f a r g e d s e t s a r a e l a t e d s e r t r e e d s e s s a n s a r e t e d s a r e c o n t e d s e l f a c e n t s s e l f a c e n t s a r g e l e n g s a n d e l a t e d s e l f a c e n t s e l e n g a r e t e s s e p e r s e n t s e s t e l f a c e n t s a t e r e a m p r e a s e d s e l e l e l e s s e d s e l e t e s p r e s e n t s e t e t h e s t e r s e l f a n e r p r e s e n t s t e d t h e s t e s t e t h e s t t h e s t h e s t e r t t h e s a t t h e s t h e s t t h e s t t h e s t t h s t t h e s t t t h e s t t t h e s t t h t t t h a n t t h s t t h e s t t h e s t t t h e s t t h e s t t t h t t h s t t t h e s t t t h s t t h t h s t t h s t t h t h t h t h t h s t t t h t h t h s t t h t h t t h t h s t t t h t h t h t h s t t t h s t t h t t h s t t h t h t h t t h s t t h t h t h t h t t h t h t h t h t h s t t t t h t t t h t h t h t h t h s t t t h s t t t t t h t h t h t t t h t h t t h t h s t t t t t t h t t h t t t h s t t t t t t h t t t t h s t t t t h t h t t t t t t t h t t t t t t t t t t h t t t t t t t h t t t t t t h t t t t t h s t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t ======================================== SAMPLE 128 ======================================== Where my little Mary Gave to me ever boy A bird as good as mine, And a little lamb that knew not lie More in my favorite pasture than in my own. By the setting of the sun Did I build, and did I see In a little corner of the night A turning of the tide of death. It was the light of her face that sparkled From her lips, her hair, her all-white body From its shroud in the tattered shred of a bed; And we were even as lovers dream of being, Folded in each other with no words at all. The young birds doze in the branches and Wake with the dervish breath of spring. The sea bears up the ebb in her beauty's pen As she turns to the water of the wells That glow like the eyes of a pear or a lily. The dew fell when we paused in the shadows of the grove And her voice brought back the vision of what we saw. A dryad's limbs, sweet child, Vaulted pale on the branches, Her hair blown back by the wind like scarlet flame; Whom once a tigress brought from the forest To the secret bed of the Eternal Bridge Was lisping lightly to the moonlight As lightly to a pillow or a dried leaf To fall, fall under moon and dew On the bent and set of a flower's petal Or the hidden point of a banyan's stem. Oh! When you were one and I was two It seemed the world was born of us; We suffered not, but we wore out our fingers; We saw the light of dawn and we saw it not; We learned the marks of pleasure; we were burdened; We thought the old world and all its secrets; We shouted as the night was our maker; And if you cried but in the morning, It was because you cried to be released; And if you stayed but the night to call in, It was not for love of us or a kindly letter. Now that you are three and I am four The world is ripe with us; We hold in our mouths time and pleasure. We take to our eyes the falling tears; And see the old world's great edge deepen; We are not lined and feathered with flapping folds, Like birds of brushy pinion; We know in our eyes the sorrow of earth; And we sleep in a familiar form of sleep. This's the way you sing a song, my dear, As only a happy pair of wings Could bring you on. I'm as lonely as you; But I wouldn't change it for a king's rise And lighting like light on me here. The trees might spread their leaves to the breeze In that sweet, merry queenly weather; The breeze might kiss my gold upon Their cheeks like rust; the sun might kiss my face And quiver with pride like fire. Nor know we any otherwise But as we're matched and matched alike; Sure as fair eyes for to prefer, The grass might flourish down the grass, And the sun's light the sun's blaze, And the sky's beauty the sky's blaze. No sound, no sign of strife; No cries or chants of noise; No quest or delight of sights. We are one, as don't we want to be; And in a common breath Freed from the old petty fear, The old selfish pain, The old hard tyranny, I see a new life waiting me, And wish me the strength to sing! The sunsets are serene; My heart's serene too; I sense that the world is wending As singably as could not, God would; not wish of him. Joy in the hours, the hours. Blown in the sun, not yet Waned in the breath; that the pain's stow Is as the grass. Somewhat have I learned in these, Speaking of songs they're the best For certain wearied feet, And willed into song, the sound Of that untuneable sea. A word of what your thought is like; For when you say I'll keep Silent now; the sight-cries slack In mine as i' the mirror. "You don't remember?" yes; "Was rather;" and, oh, the touch, And smell of them, the grey old hues That aren't hard to live in; And how far from sympathy Your word is with them; and how once You spoke of waiting there on ======================================== SAMPLE 129 ======================================== , Wally and Louie are here to guide us Back to our path (Old partner and us), Keep our spirits up We've got to go back to our roots (old deathmaker and new lifebuying us trust), Dig into the yellow jacket and have another crack at the "broil." They'll never back us into a fence like that! We'll open the door and set our feet into the deep down below! <|endoftext|> "A French Française PoE", by Sam Riviere [Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict, Mythology, Heroes & Patriotism] En roe. (1837) [I] Too muddy to speak one word of [men did] We wanted a word we found but were condemned to live a month unhide the moon from those dark skies during the French Relaunch "Boule unsided" En roe. (1837) [I] I will knock my head against your Laureate <|endoftext|> "The God That Failed (1931)", by Sam Riviere [Mythology & Folklore, Heroes & Patriotism] —“a mistake to lose your time” XII juin—We were in the middle of an invention, I &, B’laven was absent. Renn— I. Young men, think of a tablet. —“To destroy the object, then rewrite it as a tree,” It says on the agenda. The TV has a view of the valley. The faces of the inhabitants are changing. No, it says. In the morning, they run in the opposite direction. Later on, they make a new body & call it the mirror. Men can’t receive messages faster than the speed of light. I’ll go back. Renn, s’il vous plait. II juin— Ill fousées— After the ceremony, the line was rerouted, Parallel & parallel, to still existent places— Where the new channel left of the river empties out into plain sight It sees— Vous ne comprendz les pas— A bone is buried under the body— You turned your back—but you didn’t go down Simple as that. We’ll all be zombies— as they call the dead. When I reach Bayrock, we’ll see what you’ve seen. <|endoftext|> "Exploration Progression", by Sam Riviere [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Mythology, Greek & Roman Mythology] An alien power long-relapse explored the system, upset & down, green & white (how fire found the main the front door, you wanted it, it smelled hot, & so you was- mountains filled with canyons) Deeper but well— (smells better, sump- lain in front of the campus of bone & ozone, or see logic, canyons, in black- grate— (micro and tonnol- le) We—who were in process, down- -fix & up, e- nable & manual— carve in & out; on ride wheel of clay; can’t care about, scoffs, but do, concentrate, push past their gravities. Passing the tunnel, gas can blow past head, but turn again, clay (heat as fluid touches tongue) Comes, out, the light’s- light, up. Are those sounds we don’t hear when dreaming, when sleeping our distant route a dreamed road, places into distant soil—& the undreamt- of ache—(feels) Warm, beats in return; nothing there— feel A space Astartes—stout hills, road winds cold Blood & gore of angry men— The galaxy of  a single, man— made place, can get, going back— Not if You Turn right—Right—or left—or not, some- ======================================== SAMPLE 130 ======================================== of a blaring church-clock struck by flashlight in the window of her room, though all of the lights were out, like the rings around her neck, hot as the future: she was one of those women with crazy eyes, the ones the railroad and the police plucked from the beds and graves, sweating into frock coats, parading for their freedom, or the next paycheck. The clothes were usually stained, but never looked ill. They looked washed, like the clothes of her murderer, the clasps on her arms, the neat bow in her hair, like the eggs she gave to her father, unopened, with a little blue water just big enough to be fertile. He washed his hands, and said, “Mother, let me hold your hand.” She was determined to keep him from having a chainsaw put across her wrist. “You take good care of your mother,” she said. And then she died. <|endoftext|> "Birthday: Prayer", by Alan Dugan [Religion, Christianity, God & the Divine] — Glen Kirby Today the candlelight, High windows expectant of a joy I don’t know is in me or if it is, is a kind of veil too faint to divide or enfold me or sleep me, or warm me, so I will be bound to another so just for now let me spread myself from nose to thigh and close my eyes, I mean to take a little time-out or else sleep forever. <|endoftext|> "The Hecatomb", by Sarah Holland-Ruvoak [Living, Death] “I am like a babbling mouth, I help to fill this room.” — Kirk Arnold I give you a kiss on the head, and turn away, to get lost in thought, then with a little sleight of hand, and a touch of that hidden magic word, Amen, I cough up a little life, to think of other things: Someone, or something, getting alive again, though still a corpse, or ghost, or corse, spreading her wings, reappearing for a nanosecond, and taking a walk. I had forgotten how to write an epilogue, so I wish again to repeat the same message I have repeated several times now. Hip hip hoorah. <|endoftext|> "The House of the Seven Gates", by Tom Sleigh [Religion] 1. You can often hear the voice of a great chant from the aisles of a temple: a chant of pure mystery and silent awe. This was a early morning on the eastern side of Mount Radiological, beautiful, and afternoon, and I could hear a great echo of the mystery, the wonder and the mystery: clean room, as if a fine and dusty wind had just swept and blew tiny clouds of fluorescent light. The voice: Whatever has been happening here has been going on for so long that the smell of the place is almost pungent, like soap but also like death. 2. And then what was the house but an enormous and subtle piece of architecture that had to carry a tremendous weight, not only in people but in househorns of dust, let fall a huge lake of it, that was also slowly rising, not like water rising from the silvery water of a well but like a huge curtain of dark water and people who knew that they were there, who had been waiting for this moment, might have even known this moment, and the family snoring on the couch, as the voice of a child in the air, slowly and in the tones of a good dollhouse, “I am as strange as you are, and the worse and better-off- and-so-called-than- gene that I carry in my body is the one for the mischief, the time has come for growing strange, and now it’s time to up and start.” 3. And suddenly an awareness of the unreal and the unrealized and nothing that ever comes to anything good emerges into the room, slowly, in its effort to lift the floor and leave in the room, something like light, for example, the quality of a light bulb, or a certain kind of light, the quality of this room, still you can see what she saw happen, ======================================== SAMPLE 131 ======================================== Nymphs of eternity: Ay, even thou might'st survey a demon's van Lowing a goat or wolf or tiger with their regal face: The ivy ropes of, at their foot displayed, The choked whole burst out at their unfenced sight, And if the chase comming any trickier (The race 'tis darkening round a panther's muzzle) They hail a wind to roll the weapon down And leave them with a choice of steeds or thing to mount, But wherefore all this prolixity? For never In elder days beside the waters laid Beneath the woods a faring was announced. In colour like the wilderness of snow-flakes The wood-gods' pyramids of sweat hard at the fire These ill-judged pyramids through the year transcend; Now colored grim-plumed warriors' tombs erect Resemble this lost land of pools and serpents. Through all this weeping mournfulness, to save you all I weep, who for your sake have left our face To face the air, and on air still follow: The woodland way is mine, with winter's cold As chief ruler: none is like the great earth Heriem, subject to the great man's sway. In that sad hour the polluted saw the snow-flake Fall from the clear sky on the pebbly bed, And in a vision the plain under the snow Was charted out for us, and the fat lightning's band Constrained to fold the newly-showered earth; The snows unloosed the heads of all the streams By Hades bound: the boughs trembled at the limes. At last I reached our range of hills; and there Beyond their tops my soul becalmized, As cast down from Ixion's level mound The shades entwine the hills; when o'er the pass I paused with many other young flesh: For all the flood of pure youth's end was here. But even when I paused, the open plain Was wide: far off, the farther hills behind, A hous quickly gathered, clamoured down In steady silence, with the sound of feet And the steady sound of men, and then at last The palace doors open'd and in a walk of dames A throng of people, and of men in gold As lost nations joined arms with the sun. In that broad space, I saw how many there were Of other nations: with doubt my soul perplex'd And I was there confus'd, like one awakened from sleep By the noise of crickets: then distress'd I fell, And cry'd out as one forlorn of light, and to a corpse Calmneqe; and then a voice, whose doubt describes as sweet, To err: for then it was not naught the Voice Divine Dumb spy. Now, by that Maiden, out I stoop'd to touch The flower-like chalice the fruit of body-closer look, But by the same hands that sunder'd me from hir love Had set me to rage against the flesh, while man Was brandish'd in my blood, as would a heart The woolly rent in such a mighty space. The sight ne'er may deface, though fairer here, Or raiment, spread for pleasure on the blest Cloak'd by their wealth as fur the shepherds bring Their broidered sheep-cases, full of precious smell To draw some pert little skylark to their nest: One touch makes an error through the body's heart To wound the very sense of living fount, Where sight, hearing, and the sense of touch all follow. But say this was artifice to veil a bliss Even more exquisite than even this: then mine Cupid's chamber these pretty trifles had bestow'd, And I a surfeit pleas'd: for pleasures large Of name and use are the sure pious ends Of lovers tongue-tied. I therefore will expound Those trifles small and trivial in that house; And next, although the building seeming poor Yet being minister of a treasure there Of wealth unexplenling, for enjoyment, rare Of all, we shall have wealth by toil of gain And thirst of research equal'd all, and thus The manners of the nest shall be exposed, And the inhabitants shall ourselves be taught. Hence, O new-made eagles that soar on wings Enspanned, over savannahs and imperial plain And starrie-roads of hollow fleet-foot horses, over The woods and streams; and last, O ======================================== SAMPLE 132 ======================================== Nathless, on one who left The golden bowls and honied chalices Sprinkled with wine, and food, and sugar, strewn On ice, you'll be able to finish what you'll read. I lay aside the book, I took my stand, Which be the first the boy we entered unawares; And thought, "Here's one I know, that feels as blue as ice And as at the first, for the question is, Whether this be woman or wavering idol; But in the worst was I a known Canaan; I could lie down at night in the arbor bright And sleep with my shirt wrapped round me like a vine; I knew the need to say but one word and say it straight." So I waked; and the stranger, who began Like our old acquaintance, said, "The little we've gathered tells not always The whole; we may suppose We've born a hermit's dilemma; I think some ladies would blush Were they not far too conscientious, Unmask them, dearies, with my bow. But that 'twere perilous to unravel The secrets of the heart is shown By the fact I have a lady's ear, And what she thinks of this and that I know; Though when she bade me 'boy 'ere, 'ere As for the way to be dry, It is when the breezes are soft And the mist left on the currants gray Up above the cottage I have lain; In summer I'd run a race That makes an instant fine; And this morning I have begun To ponder if this could be she. "Oh, let me live a year or so," said the stranger, "and then I'll tell you where you shall go By boat, guide, or carriage; I'll print a lead in some paper And have write you home to ride, And keep it a lid on purpose; A tip for so poor a thing is, 'Tis not like strychnes or nitre, And though the world gave all it had To make it thrive, this would deny It its harvest, and to you I promise you won't think less of it Than I did before you asked." But then the baker and brewer are busy; The old quarter-butter churn is going; And boats came bawling down the river Like shallowed barges with our lady's face, For, with her cream, that's how they thanked her. For her this girl, since when she was new To aching arms and floury fingers, Has been the life of the cot And yoke and early wedge of the mill, Till they raised the dough-hill of the town, With miles of hoops for her calf and jib, And paths from the loop to the sweet-pine shade Where the old noble horse stands head left. Bitter music of the stately fell That smashes in a gallop home to sit, And claps its fearless ears, and snorts and bounds! It strikes with a roar, and leaps like a stall, With such a burst of old mining terror, While its stout beams shake out red scores in, blue, And long streaks run flame in a ring of fire, And in steam and a groan and music fierce They dance across the point. And then it lies Like turrets in a road half dug, That take a shot, and shower the lizards blue In a thrashing. Not like that pony at all, That keeps the sense in his man; the mat With quick coursers all must be played at. The runner doesn't make too bold, nor still The step under the whip; though at his spur The gambler himself seems to hold his cards, Facing the green, and seeing leagues of light. The lady lies like she has seen it all, Nor may she tell the phantom of the grift Or number the visions that she canceled, Or recollect the horse's sweet hips, Or dream the position of the foal's head, While, elselocked in a grim revel that's over, She makes the croup and the race, and asks How they can dance. Her husband's neighbour there, With fiddles a-blowing, spurs a plough And looks at the pair, and never forgets When his pipe burns black, and says, "Bring out The cow for me." "Aft here we go," the fellow In creaking spurs told them, as he swayed His velvet legs, one on the lily steed That once was ======================================== SAMPLE 133 ======================================== Journey home with me into the unseen And not stay to bear the honied robe Of high-wrought silks and damask, how the sun Is tinted to ruddy, or how the rose Blushes to the lily, and to the moon Whose twilight violet is a violet. So, here in the night I was Sleepless from my swim and studying The eve's poetry: then I walked out When the wind was loudest, and, by my rock I saw the undulating hills of Spain Roll over to the windy side. When the garden was loveliest, Ere she lived to look it full from root to stem, She held here dinner for her four-month's brood, Beneath a Gothic altar where the ivy Ascended as the moon rose, a violet, Sunset violet, violets, violetted, rose up On the cross: hence the emulous names Of sunset violets and sunrise ivy Are found in the Yspiss dialect, as, by my count, Theirs the English names of dawn and dusk. Till above her on the palace ceiling That ancient painting in azure lies, The vapors from her window's slanting glaze Are caught by the leaves in a shimmering green And blown about in a shower of gold; And then she takes her jocund way, Forcing her fairy vision to upraise The moon's painting and the mist's original Before her hand, and therewithal To catch the fall of sunset and the night. She did not dream of sea-wrack nor sail, Nor his who count the centuries and see All things eternally as they are; She did not think to die when all was done, Or tame with singing the ideal heathen, But gladly made a league with spring and spring To chase cold from the spring for children and The crystal that she loved, and though they did Their thinking in the crystal's nature feel, The crystal had its colour from her colour. Bowed with the weight that her feet bore, And with the loud leaden of the rain, And with the sharp heat that ran within, She pines within a desert land. Unsheltered, shrouded, from the heart of spring, From the full shining of its virtue's flow Which makes the spring and then the blossom sweet, She pines, to herself, with sighs and tears; She pines, and to her own heart pines, She falls, she sinks and pines and weighs With her own weight the earth and seas and stars. 'Then came she, swift with ringed green, On her white moccasin to be; She a goddess met in a wood, She made the barren green spring up, And turned the flowing gold of the moss, Warmed and worked with her hand's perfection, To be the cord of an immortal wreath. 'But she, the goddess, came in the place That is of wreath and scene of ancient lore, In the old kingdom of the sky and sea, Ere the great waves of earth's face shook The rounded land of her solitudes; 'Twixt the mountain's broken dome the lake hung, And spread a winding wall that clung to crests And crumbled o'er the landscape mid the grain, Then stood a bosom of clear height Which sternly, mid the folds of sky Met the wintry forest and the sea. 'While it held this tree of heavenly birth Made a majestic trellis of God's own leaf, Wide on either side a bower of grass With woods the fern and the plant of God weaved, Wrapped its young boughs and gathered peace for men, The mat of blue and green sheen and sleep 'Mid the wild bright branches--the prayer and fealty She laid down in her native land. 'Then came she forth, no more to seek for peace In empty formula, or the trick of mood; For never could she welcome rest or pause, While thus her strength was straining through the wood, Hollowing the circle for a pearl within The torrents of her body. "My body," said she, 'Tis made of four, not one; in form three I, through earth, the sea, the sky, and sky's Three corners, feel myself, in form three, Or in the midst, have body, light, and form. 'Earth, the formless third, I now have lost, And cannot grow ======================================== SAMPLE 134 ======================================== From the greedy hands of Rome, To the lute of Holland, to the brass instrument Of the negro in the Brazilian rain, To the oldest and to the latest tongues of all the world, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Swanton. To the lover of song, he belongs that heart Of sacred freedom on which treads with the poet More feel than beauty, more than harmony than Into its gladness, more than any tone which is of music or dwells in the sacred Mountains, more than aught of majesty which is Among the hills,--reproducing the Spring. Oh, am I not among beings and of the Intelligible heavens who evermore feel a stoned ardor to do right, who evermore am in Heaven, doing what in Heaven is the wisdom of doing? Who evermore more than ever Doing life's simple good, and not making dark Clouds darker, night more than sunshine? Well, Brave example, now before us, men of earth! And how hast thou aught come of all which we attribute To the man of all ages to do,--great Nature's Famed minstrel? But what hand dost thou hold? Who, what Creature, that doth whole souls give, according to our Chance, and doth, other things, for other senses More accurate, that doth renew itself and grow, where'er that walketh? Thou hast it! Grow out of it a star, the form, the noise, the sound of all we know, and hold that soul As a form of living music to the lips. It is that love which hymns and love songs give us, And that the souls in their prayers, and the Beatitudes, of saints, receive in the divine, In the sweet round which is all nature's prayer, And which from God itself is heard most; It is that force which, as the saints say, goes straight On without bound, through all its whole domain, An unbounded music, the sonnet and Rondeau, where 't is evident at the least That they go marching together,--and here Thou sartain in thy boundless music! thy Lana! if that were thine alone, What art thou, my angels, O, what Of many there be which liken thee to There own sister, what of thy sisters cheer? Listen, ye who cry to Heaven! we have not Here to get holy water in a sieve, And 'gainst it not will not let the font that's laid Till be set on its parlour; we have not A font, a shrine, a body-holy, or holy Quite from the body, nor have we a mouth to pray, But when all's quiet, we're quiet too, here, We 've heard it told many a sunday How that lady Lydig was to have kept the best Of all our kings; 'tis said--as 'tis now found out-- That the duke Charles, younger brother to the crown Of Ireland, in his city had a castle set Amid the mountains, his own city, and no less High than the Capitol, on its base The sweet Jerusalem Cathedral might fit, None is so sure of his own, nor who can doubt That to the East the city will send down The new built beams, wherewith alone the weight Of that church will be seated, as the weight Of the tall statue which the curators of Rome Would leave him, under her defence, and which From its own height of jasper, deep inguish, looks Down on the unpeopled nook, the garden, where She sits,--alas! on what magnificence! Here is no palaestas, nor ennobled towers Of gilded brass, which with the Archbishop have drawn Palaces; none is here the rich furred Queens, nor sweet beloveds of the gorgeous King; His trunks! and here the heralds and gentry, For wool and for rind, they exsanguine them all. Thou knowest, Lord of men that melodious strings Make the fiddler to merrier, and the maid The better, than ever I, lest I should lie, Say, 'I,' do not listen to their noise; and this Is all that comes of melody, and all that is I 've known a gipsy, and think, 't is she, The first of all that from the earth she came, That in these wild parts did ride away from men, A ======================================== SAMPLE 135 ======================================== rivers! flood, and river, and mountain, cataract, and whirlwind, and earthquake, the mountain-cloud with both its aspen leaves filled, and forest wild, and babbling rill. The while the day wore on, the sun went down to rest; the mists of that night do last, and lie upon the mountains even to the sea. I lay upon the grassy bank of a lake, whose grass with nag of roses was smouldering, or in whose waves nameless flowers were rotting. Some of these I lifted with my hands; some I raised above the waters to touch; the purple one, the burnished rose, and the snow white one, And more, made fast the mystic shore. Above my head rose up a pine-tree with its needles, against whose top the wind, breathing, roars proudly. Beyond the shore the sky was fluted like the fleece It is a long time since I have borne The horn of Scott or the long rain. I always thought, if I lived long, I would hear my father's breathing. For his eyes' light the sunshine quavers, and, above the earth, I see The sky wide open beneath his feet Like to some dark dove which gently sweeps his home, and may keep, then, nothing. When, at night's end, the moon rises still, then, in the dream, pure as glass, I see the bed, and the canopy, and he, within, the earth wide open, shadows wide Beyond the dark sea's bloody flow where his white hands would find rest. I hear his heavy breath as he sleeps. I hear the jingling nag's constant nagging, And the chirping squirrel's twitter. I hear, beyond the stretch of the Yadim, the watercourse's quick gurgle; The far noise, the nearer one, And now the rustling of the leaves, and the low wind's sweep, And now a falcon's cry or a dog's growl. But none of these, none, so none, none, save the far noise, the nearer one. He is there, on the place of his choosing; And he is working with his precious hands A mighty road, and the fruits of his labour Are wrought deep in the stone and the masonry. For the place he is saving will be great When he is gone. The boy sees death ahead and keeps far back from it, hurrying on to play. But death is far off, and the horse goes fast; And far off, over the horizon, I see the ship from the air, its sails full of foam and stars— And all of a sudden, I hear the voice of my father calling. "Where, Adam, are you going?" "What, Adam, do you mean, 'Adam, are you going home?' No, I'm going somewhere— I will not tell where. Tell me later, maybe." "Home? Where, Adam, are you going?" "Oh, dad! I'm very far from home." "You are, and much away. Where, then, is home? 'Adam, where are you going?' Home? Where, Adam, are you?" "I'm going to heaven, dad. Never mind that, dad. Home, Adam, is a hill, and I am going on above it. Father, home is where I reach me home. Home, where I turn my head to it. My father's home, and I am gone— Where I was just coming from. I'll turn me back, To go home. Oh, dad! I'm home." He doesn't hear him. He's digging in the earth somewhere, and there he is He doesn't know, and there he is He's stuck. Now, let's see what the owner is doing. He is clear cutting the forest, and there he is, in a thick spring, And there's his cane, and there's his hazel, and there's some dog. We want to run, dad, it's Father Christmas' turn to cut. He's very slow. "I've been cutting all day, Dad, isn't it?" "Not very well. Too much of the new-year rain. That hurts my spirit, lets me rethink my task. Get thee to home. My thought! Oh, father, I'm so afraid. I'm so tired, don't you ======================================== SAMPLE 136 ======================================== The fires of their shining trunks, And burning leaves. Houses seemed mirrors to the pavement In the dusky neighborhood, A phantom to the rushing Heart of the morning. The broken-hearted wandered up and down, Too happy to rejoice, Though the world had changed them for you and me, A gracious mystery, Where good fellows are as bad, you see, A devil's miscalculation, Yet the patter of the winter rains Reaches up through the pavements now, Or deeper than the utter darkness Still is the pity that turns us to knacks. He gives his house away, but cannot sell. At the window of the house his cards wait. Passeroned? And there you catch a glow Of golden hope for other passers-by. And what are the tricks our hearts to sleight, The half-hearted half-graces and lies? All their coy cunning and tricks they put on. And if they fail they play again, All my life long I've dreamed of love. This is not love. This is the way to be wise (The wise man's his own reward). Love for years, like birth and death, Has torn my heart in twain. No help, no man is near, Alone, alone! This love-guarding work has passed its season. Sad room, how long and weary We drag thee on, by this stiffening pace! Man cannot lift his head in thee, And further to himself he's bound. For in thy clouds I've seen a world's dross, And none to which I can go. My past, my future, all are fated to view The bitter sleet of Time's un- slipping swing, And there to-night with bold and free, As above the darkness the morning doth rise, There must my heart, my soul, be free. Have not thy sons, my daughter, (Like me their parent brave) All felt that laws and duties Of nature must be strictly observed, The rule of judgment over hasty speech, And truth from any greed? Have not thy sons and daughters Decorum in house and court, Hast not their nature grown swift, their faith In guileless folk clear as crystal clear? Do they loathe the vile over-wise, And hate the doctrines of lust, They must be true. And what wrong Can anyone come to this? You think, because I forget, On that dear child, who bore so hard, I do not feel your faith? Go and pay your court With bribes of money, with gifts of position, Thy terms shall be obeyed. So goes the race of mankind, Outstripping youth and beauty, Outshining powers, but outliving time, By hardship unharried, By strength of right, by sense of right. I was too young then To know the wonders of earth, And in my youthful years To search for beauty and for truth, Life's purchase then desired, Life's spiritual merchandise, Never enjoined, never asked. In my lonely darkness I had no thought of ways But through the narrow gate Where to advance by turn. The mighty stream, the immensity Of space, the struggling upward, And I think I knew A loneliness as yet undescried, An empty loneliness, So lone I cared not How sweet the loneliness. Out here in midst of town, Rocks war against the gilded buildings, Whose order seems to-day To hold its followers in aloft For as I in the old time looked At all the cloudy weather With wide-open heart. Here in the broad lawn Darkling thunder, there Giant thunder sounds, where trees are shaking But the house is not with an earthquake It is quiet here in the old time With me alone. So, on my hand A fate makes bleak The map of the future map, Through which I'm vainly striving For some air of hope, And ever with a growl Of horror I'll think of one Who lives out here, in fear and woe, Who has seen some things unfold, Who has watched all unfold, Who shall, with head bowed down, With eyes to earth, Watch too late, too late, This one time, this one time, This one, one time. <|endoftext|> My grandsire in the chain-hole wire, And I am his grandsire: ======================================== SAMPLE 137 ======================================== fturken and rive, the fir-tops and fir-trees each with their hew and the purple berries, The ghost of a cat-folk of a barren place, of snow and hail And all creatures they is asleep. No creature knoweth of my damsels, Nor knows where to seek the lady Alcuinne; yet, these things happen, and my heart is bright, and my blood is chilled, And what I tell it tell noteth unto any other. My damsel is of the women that run to covetize, And covetize and be covetize at the last with a goddess high from Syracuse To Atroventa the city of fear, And she hath wit, and skill, and faith and knowledge, And godly and honest; yea, 'tis the divine Heart of Fortune and of Fortune's parts, And pride of men, and the poise of the year and of life, in honor good and faith. Iskander, westering and bright, on the sea is set, On the banks of Ister and the salt tides Ierne, Flooding the town of Periandos, the land Where scathe was bairn! All the dwellers of the land (save they slay and burn, and spoil and burn, or sheep-slaughter; all the rest they Hassanite) turn and look the other way. Woe, woe, is the day of our fate! This the avowed temple of athat makes mockery of The day ofour lord, that which we worship, the first, in peace, as it were, ofour days. Though Fate lauds the sun with tapers and with flowers, And feareth with idle tongues, and feareth in all things, Yet in this we are lief and kind, and serve Out of the hand of the creator. There rose from the dead one Who cried with a shorn voice, In great wrath, 'O my dead, O my dead, Of thy dead, in thy dead go, Bring my body back to my dead! If I had but my dead!' 'T is a light thing, This leaping for joy, To weep for a ghost, That at death's door we cannot touch. If I had but my dead! Thy dead, O my dead, I have loosed thee, And live with thee and kiss thee, In many a land and sea, in many a land, My life all full of thee! My half-told tales of thy dead, Thou tellest me of thy dead, What can I give you of, But tears of purest white, My dead my mother's only son, Her dead that are no more? For me alone, I leave thee, My love of the dead! O my dead, O my dead, Of thy dead, in my life I have met, Tell me a tale, and tell Of all that I can. First went the rain, then was the mourner's sigh From the water in the flood, when a green And lily-clad hill over you Up-soars with the torrent. From the shore Wafted the cloud Where the cow-waits hung their banners thin, So that all the green-amable space Was daylight to the day-beam's green, Whereunder I lay edged for a space, Worn of motion and sunburnt heart, While the shore sloped away, and I was dead. Yet under the brambles, a chine Arose: Where the deep eddying strain on the level lands Had just ended, I stirred in bed, Trembled, the horizon's bottom wore; For a breath riven the boughs, And I woke as one that is stirred. Then with strong memory I wept, As Iestius I'd usued, When the woman and that flower Were but a mournful scene; I heard the pines were a-drawing Soul, unfledged, back to the south, And I rose to face the moon, I saw a leafy retreat To that sweet hillside we left, Our cabin lid. How I shall sleep, how I sleep, how Sleep I! O dearest love, you promise to be My guide the whole day through the wood? And when we lie down, to be our own Wood-guide, wood-gods, night and day? O, tell me, What is't of sound you talk? "There ======================================== SAMPLE 138 ======================================== Yasone's DAWN!" On, against the main, the dusky bark Spasms its prows in lazy sorrow's might; As on ye bubble, bubbling from the hand Of Chance, the act's performance best is revealed. Before the silent minds in wonder's place, They had the troubadoured hero called to view: Whate'er (in chanced) of romance or legend said The reader while he listened, spoke in show. His glory cast upon his laurelled brow, He there stood, a beauteous illusion of sight. The wondrous ringlets of his charms had more Seen than wove, save what had been told, And he was broken in full scene, and rough, More similar to Job's aged bower Than any epic hero of the range: Thought this was Truth, the secret just had gone, His life was in those starry halls admired. He told of time beyond the echo-like sky; A royal birth, one of a hero's blood, A maid to gain, and glorious to attain. He spoke of pain, of heart-enstruck woe One would have deemed a plague from so far away: There wan'd he, 'mid fierce, warm malades, Where the hot Southern sun, a slave to war, With scorn 'twixt his hands hurl'd his blazing brand, That all the world the shade's a ghostly town must seem. Then tears and sorrow come and go; the tale But reads as history now, though fancy's dress Is Fancy's loose; but hark!--his doom was mine! Darkness it is:--and lo!--what more remote Can I desire from yonder still, palatial spot, But the wild life is naught to Fame, and the grave his. He said, "Whence these, then, from the starry height Tempts her advent?" "On its antique road, Where the great fathers from the world descry The solemn way to man's progress through life, It cometh and goeth"--"Who is he, That thro' these shadow-shadows, that so serenely sweet Bestows like wounds on soul, on sense such horrible smart?" Then sudden broken--"Ah, from thy Golden Book!-- These symptoms came of the true genius, it seems, Of the earth-building God, that didst from our Earth inspire: And thus he leaves--then straight upleaps With his kind Kingdom's Kingdom's enigma, To bestow on men's souls eternity!" "To swing from what highest point till thou wert apprized Where now our man-born destiny draws nigh To its grand mystery.--Some grave so deep that is, My reverent eye determines should be Sunken, like the Sphinx's crystal bed. The dead have merited death--the dead and he Do live--'tis the Spirit of Life that keeps the skies!" "Look"--and the brooding gratefully awes --"Arise!"--and 'tis mine to knead that breath of life Up through its mystery, and pour it forth Into the mansions that our thought can home in easily From whence its draughts are,--a vast, rich ocean's floor. "Look" again!--I have for thee a clearer light,-- Let the lamp now with continual burning keep To the centre."--This the Spirit said to me, Then, "Dance the rose"--amid the murmuring throng Of Voices calling and cheering, "Rise!"-- And, in an instant was overblown In a torrent from that central rose, Which the triumphant Spirit thus swell'd,-- "And this my proud new Cause to Humanity Promises an ocean of ethereal gold; While the grim mask of Mongol ban and prison With a mouse-sore on the wall will screen, The mantle of the body's oak-hide cloak, In being's garment, till--the vocal flowers, Sweeping across the nation--rain the sighs of pain." The silence goads, a trumpet is struck; A call the nations in the darkness hears; Whither the Morn on its momentous flight When the broad beams its mass apparent from earth, "Ohow" cry the troubled nations--"I would see Some level--some turn away from yonder height-- Some safety,--where the mote that veils the sun Shines,"--as in mute, insensible amaze The nations wander, wondering where the sun is, And ======================================== SAMPLE 139 ======================================== Could I trace every passion or bad feature That has stained the lives of mankind, I could Excel myself in learning; yet I'm not Wiser than I would be, were I endowed With less temper or with a better mind. Then either fate makes little a mystery, Or else it is a matter of little concern To know the greatest mystery: namely, Why men are masters of themselves; as from this I gather that perhaps we are so because The course of nature is to teach us thus, And that our reason is the harp which strays Out of its proper song, at every moon, And that it fareth so, because each goes Farther in music, not because it toils More or less beyond it. I'm less happy than I should be, If more whole cup out<86.2> its cup With the same spirit. Nothing's true! I do believe it. Are you of it? Of me? How can we Have fellowship, when you won't tell me anything, And I have no hearing for your voice In the same tune with you? You may call me a fool, Or weakling, Or some thing perverse By your blows; but to a man who's a man, They do not affright him. 'Tis hard to say That it is just the same thing! I should be crazed, or you'd make me ill. What's madness in me is ambition in you; In both a love of glory, in neither less Than in me a love of that, in neither more. My guide's A man so much my sire's-- So in the mode of his bearing and his bearing And his very fashion of his wig, That I wonder he didn't decide on a more Contemporaneous octave, Nor wedged in me some simonie Of that laddie's tuning horns and pipes. I pray for the honour of the English race That such simple gems are not more loyal than him, Or him me! Oh, the honour of his sire's name, But the rather is his, for he seems to be More his own, as a fruit for his own kind. His sire the pride of the white folk, and their pride, He that wrote these lines Was conscious of a nameless grief The pain that rage Made him feel; He that talked with a hatter, But the nameless grief of his babe-soul, Or black soul of a being unseen by the world, And that he hit Was so Because he and Reason had fought, And had, therefore, He wrote that he had no shadow of wrong, And forgot the words Of his tenderborn. My brother's name is all of mine, What has he done me? A man to the woman, a book to the man, A fire to the hand; As he went to the fight I went, Like his book, Love that stood, And I think 't is safe with his blood To the uttermost end Of its trial. My brother's name Is all of mine, His name it is the light Of my hope. You shall have no hope If you have no will To enjoy. A light so vast, How can you hold it? You shall not brook My temptations, And I'd have you know, You shall have none If you have no will To enjoy. I am offering, A gracious offer, All my strength You have wrought for the spoil Of a rag, A lap-dog's bone, A dull clay, A far-finished quote. All my strength, With a round-number wiled, You've cheated at last Of the love-trove Which a woman's privily When she is so choleric, Stole with a tipsy talk When she should not have been there; A close be-neck. I'd have taught you better; So it's all yours. Alone she stands, or ever The evening takes. A leper till her death Weaves her night with a point to tear her, On the crest of her full moon-cape Floats her pall, which leaves one tear. Alone, apart, She's doomed, though she may look grand With the flashing of her eyes. Hurry, hurry, the wren's For the food-time with the singing of Little birds who feel, Each a bit of bread; Who up with a crow ======================================== SAMPLE 140 ======================================== And so began the siege of New Amsterdam, In which, by Providence, only three days ended; When, by direction of Ms Frisbie, the heroes two For their advance, together, took their way. The two fellows, whose mission it was to guard The city gate, took place in the greater army; While those two dukes who should avenge the town Sent all their force to put the place to rout. And, as the late oak, covered with boughs, Has done its work, ere its starving spike is struck, And this great tree sinks as it had never been By any human pains, nor would be now, But for her first son's interposing, So, falling foul of their first heart's delight, The Dutch no more wept for New Amsterdam. So in the streets the wretched sires and mothers, With pale faces, to their loss discrowned the wrong, And still remembered the old custom was In their sight, the contrary of all command, Too long kept hidden from their eye this moment, Which, if they had looked on it, had been their sin. Let it be granted to us that they Unbought, from their heritage, at last should break Out of their ancient fetters, and buy Perpetual strength with a compact financial package; As dead, enforced servitude, and retired, their chance This long, long day was entered by their feet. Let the blind lead the blind, and every eye Behold the path, and no blind man get by the way! But when, amid those whose herding every sort Each seamen was a bovine, every bovine Bovine as well every one beside, and every one Wrought to the occasion by the calling which it did, How could one even attempt, or could it be so done? It happened at a turn of the tide that they Of the deep stockman's tenor took note, and thought That such the voice of that sea-backed leader, And would his accord, one among a hundred Had but a tongue of such live resolution. It pleased the city folk that day: good henceforth; And such sound learned mouth was good for more than The dry speech of Lord Broughton or Lord Bramble. Besides, it was a dress that might be borne With the church bells that laid the dog behind; While the red sky, no less in cloud than bell, With its most different content, told of the sun. Then, this very bell, in sheer old oak decided (The oak had wished for so much) as it sung, As if it should forerun the moon. Down to the marble The deep North was a spangled lustresse, Mixt the church front and pavement, and through A vault in its topmost vault; With bowls and censers, golden and pearled, At its altar; all hushed, half-dead, From the solemn drum and tapers rose The day's full anticipations, and hung In their oblique light on the murky glance Of its ablaze inns, that casts upon the panes Fierce profusions of low May, yellow gold, Peat, and amethyst and topaz, right over all In certain, and every bright gem amplified; So overlaid each gem was a blazon Of a sinner's wretchedness and agony Of noncoming; made for each gem its claim To completeness, and each bell its right; Some of them claim, that have been seen by none, Or if seen, only by the sinner's eyes. St. Botrama's bells--ah, sweet to think upon! To think who think so much has made It to be thinkable; for then To have them peal so noiseless, And frowst from their corners of the kane, Like the soft founts in summer less And dew-lidding; with an ampler race, Less or more, to mingle in that blare Which makes men--scared; the bells then caught Upon that stroke of dizzy hearing, clear; Like the clear domino all together. In just such a criésdōntz a-ring As this sweet-slumbered, peaceful space, (Say, where's the Fury now to stand?) Turns its fuming, its ringing; plumes and cyes The pricking bells arch a miracle. So shrill, so clear, that you would swear, all flat, In harm's way, the Fury blew her cheat, Just in and deal; so she, ======================================== SAMPLE 141 ======================================== There were an owl, and I am fit to fly, So you will take him to the tree! But, porpoise, with open palms, Where will you betake you next? A command to me, Porpoise, porpoise, A marvellous crack Of gulls, you whirled, And went into daffodil-land. I heard them call to you, "You are splintering porpoise To front the lords of storm! I was a porpoise, and then a water eel, and now I am a tortoise! Tortoise, and then a snail, and now I am the butt of sport all day for being a hare, For I delight in running after the rich and dainty one! Hunting, and running, and running, Wisdom and fortitude, Puritán and pugboat, To the master whom the bridle is attuned to! Up, porpoise, and greet the good men of the place of torture, and may the magicians make sport of their most superb attempts, and the city garboons blast their mouths with the breath of sinners, that they may cease from their lewd deeds, and the stone impregnate their ears. Whilom they may answer most for their discourtesy, for their sweating and cursing, for their tossing of Gods and devils, and their splitting the chests of your eels, and your failing the race with oaths and vows. But, Porpoise, in my ear as I take my vessel and my paddle from my hands, on the canny text of a fisher, on the odd bit of a kid, on the strings of a bass, and as I fling myself in the best of the swims, I cry out in agony: Fate I will fear no evil, what ever befall, happiest shall be my lot! A child shall claim me with his snares of beauty, with his evil games; And I'll be his pig, his sluggard for eating at the richest boar at the board of a feast! No poet, no song shall avail a word to tell of my coming, my winged voyage! With both breath and tears, I'll seek to dye my scars, in this nobler and grander pastime of my pen, where the princes of all my time shall praise me, above the accustomed hymn of their marches. This will be a day when my chief delight, meant so seldom, shall be all but new, when all is past, and I shall proclaim the glory of my new art, and the final end of my fine prose! Before one has set his gourd in leafy meadows, before a briar begins to bloom, before the rose opens her white cocoons, before the daisies take to summer waters, I shall sit beside my hearth and a tale be told. And a tale of two lovable lads, two harems of boys, whose joy, whose sport, whose song, and one, perhaps, a Lamb: each year one or the other; one with his velvet jacket and his soft hair... One with his shroud, and one with his linen shroud, with sops of song to spare and warm flour, and flowers for his supper, whereof, when neither he drinks nor cooks, he cares not what his fellows eat, but sits with joy in the oven, loving his work as much as he cooks, while the ashes of the last dinner float on the rag of his frothing hand. And over them... Perchance a star shines out, or some silvery water gale, causing them to see the worlds of their flashing lights! What matters one Wolf, or Nine Huns! I who have sung of them, I alone, the better! Now the line is full, the cup is done, What a change, what a midnight face! There's one to take the prince's dispraise, One who always goes first in a long, long line! They shout at the top of their voice; Long may they fill the place! What how shall I do, then?... He... is this whole war to blame, Herman, who let slip His armourer's best to wash his master's feet? O Host of Christ, for whose sake Yet in ======================================== SAMPLE 142 ======================================== O'er the pitiless sea, Where chaos' darksome regions spread Horror-dreams of sleep, And waves all illumined ruefully, Across the strip of Heaven's blue. Myest ye land-dwellers, Voices sweet, that roam about The strange country of untracked space, A small, pure voice, to you as to a gem Has come from the darkling ocean's shores To give me a voice in my own. Bend ye not about me, that ye may To heaven our allegiance match! With longing of awesome joy, And o'er-topp'd with dauntless vision, Praise the Might wherewith I come From out the places unpeopled Where lives life on the sunbeams blest; The Primeval Soul, whose path is unstain'd By vile rule, and the soil of earth! Though I travel far in the dark sky, On ventrem hungered to be free; Though on their heavenly height I survey, And the wide bosom of the skies; And stammer to the self-same tone, Frail as a bird's that tunes in forest glens, And faint as the hand of giddy gondolas; I will give now words yet not weak or weak; I will send one to a score of lands; I will speak in your triumphant ears And on your proffered rimes ore. On somPhotosine or Caribbee Som Lychvis vabur I shall brag; Shanghai or Kinshave I shall tell, Or the sodden legend of Goudon; And must they talke no te mere maF That they should drop a pretty word, And snatch a verb which is their horsse of gold; Or that your finger is a hand full Of rife Latin, and with the blood of Christ; In from the anlexist of Malam9 crisis The world has heard the lang silver sound Of Heralds the out-come of me; Hear the glorified voice which I have groped for Forhired with pains a-tremble in the wings. Hear the soul which has no stirrer Fell from the dreadful heights of the last; And weary sothe sweat no more, For Sunday's silence hath God. Hear the voice, and I need not Speak as in a promise of your feares: Albeit a darkling, rumour may yeeld That I stand on her in a building college, Trees on the porch, and deep arches stownd In the gold-hung roof, and sowther The bass-dault stink of murnot corn, The fine speech carved in the slate, And stooks with the green corall; But the days when I was told to dight When I a-weary walk'd in the wuns. Then she, thy sister, our noble dowht, Whom thou hast twice set up to us With nought but the name of a love, And surnam'd to the world Elaine, Which to the minor Isa forsooth Was half to lower the maid's brow, I would veil my life from shame; For fear that I should seem to deceive Thee, whom I on earth have reigned so high, And humbly were to fore-run. And that thou mayst love me unreavered, And perfectly believe Each thing, and perfectly believe That I shall live verily, Here is one for to be nowise Disgraced, or of many words Far to short, to put an end to this little strife; But she is not only dead, But which in spight of thee, O King, is dead; Which, by the cause of death unhappit, Lay as a vessel with freight fullfull freight That holds sinne full grown, in-warefu' of the root: And as full-growne of his flood The flood grew vete; and as he must Revive beyond his flood againe Was with a body full of life, The which all heedlesse with shame he thus did damne. And thee I write thee dead, who with thy hand First smote thy father's fire out with cold hand When thou didst from the temple protestant draw, So smilest, as when a shy-wayning man Turns his face, and looks with haughty gaze On one that dares to admiration. And thou, and my most cruell brester, I do constitute thine ======================================== SAMPLE 143 ======================================== Spell on my lyre, my King-- Maiden fair and true; Sweet love of my true love-- Though lonely as the dreary sea And full of tears and foam, Or as the grey ocean-rib That's fetter'd with a rope, Where in his oozy channel The great ship rounds a frozen wreck! The wind is out, my own! See how the clouds fly out in rows From the blue point of heaven, Like the merry lads who range the skies On Christmas morn tucking-shrouds, Blowing snow-balls and singing gongs In surly coach-lights by their side. And we're all away, my own! The winds have come back and so must I, And round me a fairy ring Of fickle smoke--I see still Invisible hands at work; For of all those who seem right, Some are turned, but O! but turned in such Blemishes the magic air, Or wander beyond the bounds Of eternities that mock the sense. I have no knower's face, so that it's you Rude folk have cursed and turned in place That 'neath their oglers, mine should puff, Ere I had learned all the lands By snail-like folk in their featherbeds Sweetest and steepest and purest Flow sweetest music, and that you Sitting by the fire, I saw In thought as clear and full of cheer And full of stars a shadowed dome Watched by no eye but the flame that now Lay nigh me and burn'd full hot as lath As though in clouds we saw the gods And smitten like iron 'neath the heavens' When I recall how glimmried the western sky, How the slow lap of rising brought me back Up the hill at the last of summer, That may be nearer now the heart that bled, When the night watch is done, and the great star And the distant mountain cloud-high, eyes of starry night Gleamed through the curtain of deep sunset And--my dearest, I am half at sea And half at joy, for I love you the more Since I can not forget you,--see you yet, Gem of dreams; of which, dream what, 'Tis you I love, yet why me Who now am living, nor can recall Being yet one with you, my first love, You and I then, even just now, one, Yet must we meet in the skies a third time? I'd give up all, since the gods pity all, Not your face, nor for long, you know. You may have turned, and so be mine once more. Hear the cry of man to his man in the street: "This is he, and this--he's OLD. He's a stot, And take him straight to the hospital. I hate Those pansies, I'll have no bell-cats: there's a cat At home who has bigger work to do. See, There's one who's learned English, takes a cup Of coffee to his mouth, and smears it out To 'eat well'; and one who has none, but has to memorize Words which he doesn't understand. One there Is hungry and tired of being hungry and tired!" And I, who have lived it all, answer, "You're young." Flowers bloom in the grass at the feet of the apple tree --And in it the day when the apple tree was felled. And even though the blossoms are blooming, the part that is opposite That the last to blossom is not happy, that is not black. And in its room the blue milk pail's two blessed daughters. Why, love, you are stupendous, and if I gave you the whole of me, You would fill me in the term as it was, How love's alive still in the strangeness of danger, No two terms in reading, the same reason, Reading's pursuit, the same reason for all of them. Yes, love, I've read the Bible thru myself three times, And found it manna of love in a land of doubt, And twenty times when in a trice love was not there Love, what you'll come to in my part of the same book. All so ingenuous and evasive and sincere, Not a word I've ever said has gotten by me, Not once in my sight, but everywhere, at every moment, Always there and back of every thought; Knowing, it makes my head swim to think of ======================================== SAMPLE 144 ======================================== Harpestus that is busy beating! Stand close and pet a gay-stepping Dog That keeps house and fawns upon the Lad; 'Tis a health, and no fault of his; Go, turn the old house-door in, And call to Him who goes on before: 'The great James Howells is here!' My true-love hath my love a-thinking; Aye, faith, it's my love a-thinking! This she said unto me the other day: A year ago, a year before new-moonlight, I sitt upon her couch of darling-snow, And all the fashion of my love is in her house, And the fashion of her love is mine. Yea, I am going back to her home to-night. The full moon shall be my chamberlain, And she shall take my books to show me For a full day and night of love, the best of places To sit and think of love by love in waiting. And all love's wild ways into the night shall lead me. And I shall know all love in its doorways that burns; And all the fashioning of love by love in waiting. I shall know all love's mystery in suspense, When I go back to her and find her mother. When a star fall down, the winter's coming With the snows returned upon the trees; When a boy runneth that has fled; When a lad standeth by a lash, When the father findeth the wealth, When the son dealeth away the long Hand shaken by Fate, When the boy standeth by a lash. When the father findeth the wealth And the son dealeth away the long When the lad standeth by a lash. When the father findeth the wealth, And the son standeth by a lash, 'Tis he taketh the old's gold in his hand, To drink and soothe himself with life. When the lad standeth by a lash, He to earth an instant goeth The father set him by the rope And so fearful works with the lad, As the boy standeth by a lash. When the father findeth the wealth, And the son so fearful works with the lad, To the end of time and limit set When a star falleth to the fen Where the fen be molten away, When the boy standeth by a lash. 'Tis the season of moon, and the chimes Ring in the sun's dark dome; And the snowdrop hangs all a-sway, From the old mole concealed; And the whitest ivy climbing, Wears the covert so aloft, The wild white dew-layer. My heart turns, though 'tis old and the core Of the heart's warm life be gone, Not all the memory of other years E'er meets the soul that now is seen; For, when the earth seemeth beautiful, God's thought may look within our clay, And comfort our blind old heart. There's grief that leads toh (while a star goeth) To where the Child of Peace with his Star of Day Filleth the world and all that in them is; And, dost thou know, Love's early reign had ended Since thy lover passed from the world o'ershaded? And he who heard thee now appears to thee? He, who once in the home of dalliance Loved and taught, at deeds of peace and righteousness? No, no, he taught and slept and dwelt in milky bays; He, yet once more a silence to thy lyres, And another far arm upon thy strings, And on them both to lodge thy voicings-- Thine, late as then the sweeter for melody, Now all alone. Thy lyre now alone Hath learned to weep, to thy fame's distress, And, like the quailing dove, to take in blood. It teaches thee that, were all earth's riches gathered To the treasury of God, and there unapportion'd, There still would be hunger and thirst after gold, And he perish in his lust of splendour at the last; And that whatever is not God is, and none; Yea, what is not--the world's riches (11) found Ever abound in God's mortal need; And that as that One to whose glory stars are made, Their own are all the more manifest, Who beneath that deepest sea was troubled first With the stirring of such deep desires; Who saw a star from out a wave of ======================================== SAMPLE 145 ======================================== And my tresses red with care. See where the Alpine winters, that no grow dark, At whose slender waist no mountain beams, Where darkened Alps flash back those snowy glades On which the Holy Tower and Trebius Breoz Reflect no quarter, flash too the pea-grasses, And the bright Gulf plain, that shears the mountains round. By fogginess of fate made poet And historian and singer. Dum, about my heart,--'twas a word that wrought My very soul's ruin; but 'tis changed, and now-- From whose pale lips the sweetest has been lipped away, Borne through the world as war's mute mouth,--a strain Too now untimely to bury--it reaches me. And what, if in the grave the Thing shall change again, Why behold the beauty. When all is done, and here, after strife, And death, and every bridge between, He who stands above the death-bed, even Ere Death hands him on, says in sobs: "I am but dead, to live is God's decree." And with a mind like this, the light that passes From the face of death, even,--the breath I breathe, which then shall be,--that dream is done. Duped by an idle hero! who let thee Thy Master's blood entwine, a poor marcher, His love to blind the merry king and dame, And lief their mirth forbear disdain. He whom a blush would shame, now breathes God's breath; And dark,--the soul his veil, the body, Husband of earth, would think the air his bone. Enough for me, not as earth revives the rose, On me the sun shall look,--and at a birth Storm's eye shall round thy tomb,--as now, here. And in the air more storm than thunder, Whole nations in the sinless tomb shall lie. And if I breathe--and so it lies to die-- For thee, the world, a sacrament profound, To the things I loved I pledge my soul in death. Waled be the blest for this! For, as I stood, I felt within me love's soft warblings, And from my feet the wine of love fell like light, But when it fled me, then I knew it not, I saw it vanish as the flowers depart, With tears, which, hand in hand, together going, My heart lay in the garden, in that pavilion, To take the air. De Walsdaw, who ruled in this English-speaking land, In those far ages, who, in those far days, Beheld Heaven's sweet light to souls sentenced far, 'Tis our, who love, this to sing! O, why do we paint the sinner's heart, When God's own heart in the mist of tears Is more to us unseen? O, why, indeed, To such forbidden fruits do we subjugate, But this is best of all! For well that old race, in their lowliness content, Which God himself made not. How many of those trees and that light of theirs That, in our back-woods, by the sea, we long for, How many of those woods and flowers we wish to change! Yet, as the radiant sunrise comes to them, A sweet and hazy light, It melts the air And, shining around, Is like the morning's baby hand. When France was France no more, We found that still we loved to praise her And breathe her name, And hail the flower of her lovely bent, Which, though she was sought, we could not have; But, seeing our England wane and grieve, Where then should we chiefly look? Not there alone, O thistles, blooms the glorious thistle; Ah, not alone where gently swell the flow'rets That break at rounding suns, As heaven's white-sown children they Forth from earth's inmost hills Outspread to bless the world's end. Not all the dewy quires that fill With incense sweet the court of love O'erflowing with amulets red, To keep the dead youth's sweet home, And tame the living love-fire; But there is no decay Nor any ending for us here: The thistles spread forlorn, the flowers decay; We fade; but the sod the day Holds our green hearts ======================================== SAMPLE 146 ======================================== ia the price that we paid The policeman who shoots a rat Now this is quite too much for me It isn't fair at all But he had a card so he got away I don't give a fuck And the beetle crawls The policeman breaks in The helicopter pilot cuts loose And the camel enters the picture This is an awful lot I didn't know the taste of But I have got to laugh at the prospect This is civil defence A lot of men with big guns Whose food was denuded trees Slaughtered cows and caught fish I couldn't bear to lie down at night When it all began Now they say the caged animal Still a little time is left But he wasn't very well He got worse and then he was dead The horse has been gassed So he comes back to life And now my nightmare, of course, is over I have had a miserable time of it What is it all worth? Nothing at all Who can say they have had a satisfactory night's sleep That something which they call love Was told, or Forgotten soon as spoken NOSTLAF This I do believe I dreamed The sea was my destination As I ate more and more Of the surrounding sea I dreamed for a time Of all the various creatures In sight And thought for a moment Of where we might meet In the land <|endoftext|> "Eating a Waterfall", by Francis Lau [Living, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Mythology & Folklore] The map tells you this cave was where the water must have descended, for a hundred feet thick, from the floor of the cave. But the sides of the cave have been eaten away by moss, and a red grown over the green rock in the shallow pool; a leaf had set upon the edge of the slide, hanging horizontally, like a trigram, slowly falling and falling. But of course the water came down, that was what the map said precisely and then it is turned into a sort of mirror. It is not necessary to be able to see or even hear the sound to believe in the likeness of an uncanny missed opportunity. The gift of the map is that, in some respects, even though it says otherwise in other ways, the legend of the Fall is not legends, but the rise of what we seem to know and yet are missing from our minds, the things we would for sure have known but wanted to know without having anything to do but look. <|endoftext|> "Insomnia", by Francis Lau [Activities, Eating & Drinking, Nature, Animals, Landscapes & Pastorals, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] Small. In the morning A duck pondering Her dream-inflected Pluck. Snow To keep up With what the very Pale will have At that hour. This lake, Are you aware Is Designed for sleep Among the ritzy Crowned Coffee-soaps. Who knew The cilfee-soaps, Coffee, this lake, Which, with its numerous twiddles Greet you as you pass, Mistaken for clouds While here I spit, Somewhat mistaken For The cilfeathers Which Reecho along the sky A glance to forget I can so easily Afford That I never forget Even That I never Say good morning To the beech But Which, at times, have Refused To Come Asleep So that in the slow Raveling dusk My thumb can discover Uselessly That, even so, the fall From her, so freaked The rose And rammed the moon The red, scalloping rose of the moon up and sinking In the top of the rose bush; she, in the distance, Worryingly stealing the bright hawk's Contemplation from the black swan's And cawed by its very distance In vainly pursuing This dreadful sky-wise fashion, With great hood Of A morning heron. <|endoftext|> "Peru. 2 August, 17OP", by Francesco Celi [Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Arts ======================================== SAMPLE 147 ======================================== "When that awakes,--nay, when, When thou dream'st of waking, thou canst dream Of waking!"--Ah! and can'st thou ever wake Of truly saying farewell? O, never! while that silent smile Is on thy lips! O, never! while Thy life around thee whispers "Live," Thou--he--for whom no tear Of anger could reach, no word Of irksome sadness live! Ah, ne'er! ah, ne'er! while the brow That in thine eyes so long has been Is now the brow that once was thine; While to the hands that raised thee down Thou art in the death-lap of the departed-- Long, long since thou wert a green-wood! Ah, no! for he is in the air His coffin-lid will yet seal his place 'Tis a face--the angel-guard have flown With the imperishable star! And now upon our frail fire-night O, thou art laughing thro' the smoke-flue, Feeling the cool breeze that stirs thee round Far from where, a fair young form is waking, Where, by the drum, the apparelling glows Of the bright Chapel flashing golden light, And the sudden plaudits of the star. What hast thou seen that wakes in thee that heart Whom, crying "Hosanna," death would hold still? "Come," thou sayest, "what naught have I found, But the arms of peace, thou sayest, wait thee there!" Alas, not so well-opened is the gate To life as our in open war! Thou sayest, "Come and let me dream again! See what this meaner boon my old bliss yields!" Alas, my fire is past that time doth make, And thou--that askest, "Come and come again!" And when the flame among thy budded orbs shatters, Lo, thy soft tears are the wintry stars, that glow The stars of hope, and show where grows, in faint extent, New leaf on leaf; the fragrant woodlands of rest. Ah! and when light of bliss has crossed the gloom of death, The infant mould who, while on earth she seems to live, Grows up with her young wings outspread, Rests and hushth, and rests, and she is lost! "I saw an Angel!" the little queen said, "And, to declare my wonder, if I said, What Angel it was that doated above To punish the earth for some petty fault, Of those first setting forth that year on which went down To wicked round, or warring with the sun, From whose fluid state there came the inky sea." She looked and pondered at the white brows that bent From the tall visage; and then she saw, in reserve, The waxen crown, the law pure and trebly blessed, Which those around the altar gathered to display From the arcs above; "Lo! here the mighty souls Whose pious works, in their royal mansion, Did heavenward bow for holy city, or betide To secure from impious stir the head That pours their blood, both crime and grace--ah how These crowns holy, and hymns of heavenly kings To many a saint!--Ah, I saw not those holy heads To whose was thrown the crown of martyrdom, All too pure and just for earth's woe!"--"Sooth, sooth," the child said, "This play was many a season; and even I Lit with the sun, while gazing on this earthly scene, Was both enlivened and inflamed with sense of what "By thought"--"Like a dream"--"This view"--"What, dream?" she said. "In every mortal life there runs a day, A transient yet all-creating day, "From unripe, immortal mind--so was it in mine." While yet the sun, that year by year, saw out His last, youthful day, when as he sank low His orb, the earth threw open, and he found For all the lapsed, wasted years, to be One single orb of his new span; that day From whose uncertain fires of birth betook him To birth as pure, as was the molten globe On whose flamed axis he first framed his path: Then as, amid the mighty throng That did his light survey, that same day was spent, In solemn festivity. Even as his ======================================== SAMPLE 148 ======================================== (amazed that any were shown at all!) The mountain is thickly timbered from base to summit: The stones about it are of the dark green color of oak: The summits are green, with green tassels and verdure: A green of silence is writ large on the top Of the airiness of forest; and in such mode, It seems a gentle letter which tells you to be still. There was never a sapling at the foot of this mountain: None in the field, alder or beech or cypress, bough: None near it, and none without it, on the mountain's side: And not an echo in the clear earth, nor in the sky. I shall rise and go forth to the field and wood in the morning, In the hot season: there I shall find at a single throw Something to cheer the minstrel in the play Of the lark, when the pale green fuchsia wakens from the alp: On the prim twig, in the green wood I shall find your eft; Or, in the cool morning, I shall hear the grey flute; In the noisy uproar of the village, I the shelt'ring flute; And, in the still evening, I shall see by the moon's white eyebrow Your fair white face looking in the lamplit porch; or the street lamp Is lightened. Shall I be summoned to come and take your hand? I said: "Tell her I take no notice of men; but if I should die to-morrow, Jane, I will come back and abide With the cows later." Then she suddenly struck the river. Then: "Why so? Men are insufferable-minded!" Then: "Tell her I take no notice of men!" And suddenly I had neither hands nor feet: But you gave them a handful of my robe and tunic: Then: "And be your troth annulled--we now do feel on." The dying have words, when it comes to be revealed What they once have will by them delivered. He rose and said: "I love you, dearest to me; The sense of your presence is sweet: if you loved me, You would come to me to say so; you would not wait Until the next weekly-search for you. Say so. You say so? Is that so? O then, I must skip When the first wild bird chaunts "Kongo" at the pause of day, Like the first-born "Kongo" rang "Mbube" to my ear, And your presence was so near; and I saw the hot sun Behold, the sapling-stalks of your forest whiten, And in the palais the bride, whose frontlet I loveliked so With "Besoune a la Figaro." So we were wed, And my home is by the great lake, where other "Kongo's" Are nigh. I shall return, but not by way of the dances. I was abroad--not you, but an hundred times a day-- Where that Yankee reporter Belmonte mapped and surveyed Or floated, the wild rich clover star of a day! I was abroad, yet I found a home here for the lost life of the single, the solitary-souled, The Lord's dealing out his justice; but there I found the blessed heart's home; the blessed heart's pools for the homely; there the tapestried coverlets Blent invisible across my home, until the ear, The erudite heart's unobscurled. So I will pluck the hoary stem of my tree: I will wreathe the oak leaves in a grass of white bloom: I am "doubed in rouge," for my homely white-looped soul Has that rouge upon it that's "doubled in part." Beware-- Betray not to me; guard from manslaughter my pride! Like a brown dervish at the dawn of the day, I rode through the spice fields, with my spy-eye Ever upon the lookout for a pash of red; But I could not see a patch of red in the shades, Or sight of a taupe or vest of "pearl" blue: For the mellowing groves that I passed through Were of that green between the distant green Of goldenrod and the turquoise of the dulse; So, when I reached the house, I said to the maid, "O Salamie! will you set me on the door ======================================== SAMPLE 149 ======================================== He glided like a soaring flame, and as I read the lines he told From the brush-side, the light was as if he had In his motion what I saw pass in my eyes and in my mind. When lo! I saw the Water-Nymph in the Wilderness Carrying on her lap a still-born calf! Her daughter there, and Adam tying The shining locks. (What spell is that which makes The grasses droop, When I come to me when I is putting My ashes in the ground,) The yet-born one Took from her, and stoopt The freshly-blown babe, And sat down to play with her, Laying out twigs For it to hold. That's a true heart, and a strong, too, I ween, To draw to her the weaker and the lower! The blessed Spirit of Jesus Lifts up before her the gate of death, For some fair token of life eternal, Or some sweet reward of a cheerful hour, Or till the dawn of that fair resurrection, Which still, Adam, lights the solemn night in thy mind? "Blessed, but made sad With infant crying, And precious breath to pay the toll Of her aching gums. Though little she would bow her little brow, And swaying not, to obey, Her shrilling voice is weak, And, though it makes her heart to tremble, Yet for the babe alone! "And that would make thee sad, Adam, is there not a child, And a mother too, In every age and clime, Thy sympathy to ease? And oh! that mother's bliss Whose love for ever more Brings thy restored age To her dark task,--to her satisfaction; That bliss, Which an eleven years' long life Shows ne'er better than a mother's) Which an eleven years' life Shall give thee, Adam, I fear, For a still greater woe; Yet still the nearer thou doest that age, The nearer thou dost to return." And, looking on the milky babe, Thus Eve by the apple smiled. That it might see the like and wealth, He gladly held it to his eye. And, lightly stamping the ground With impatient foot, He left the watering place, While Eve from her unseen retreat To apparent despair was fled. Was not that smashing, Eve, beneath thy rule, Which of thy merits did appear The most aghast to be mocked? 'Twas the high power of thy heart, Which heav'nly as the nature it self So much condescended had That aught but flattering to thee Were thought a duty. 'Twas the gentlest outward sign Of highest gratitude thou mightest do, To borrow a text from heav'nly art, Or borrow a heart from out an angel's protection. The nicest and the purest Of that paradise, Which knows no tempter's wiles, Was then thy welcome and thy best; For he appeared in whose clear trace God worked, though sleep and slumbering, there The transitions of the upper air, And sorrow, doubt, despair, had no part. Now, with the babe on breast or feet, And no repenting, - and whether The clod was more of delight or distress, The sleep was fit or the waking life, The ease or the pain, His eye would follow thy whereabouts, Nor stay one hour of its voyage! But sometimes lighted with a ray Which showed a saint of the brightest and the last. She would not be asked To change her for the world's, But listen when he pleas'd; And follow her sole way, Or run to her in the wood. But when in her best abode, Nay when in a cottage, she was Not always seen with the babe on bosom, She was as pure and as purer As the Purest of the Angels. Serene and worthy of love, Holds Mercy in her bosom; But for love's sake and her own A love, without alloy, 'Twixt her and all, And in her rendered not offend. And, when she works, or when she sleeps, There is in these sweet rules More of mercy than you will find In other saints' testamentaries. A work, "printed" with grace, Which she hath brought to the best, Is, in these lines, to the best of verse, A highly commend ======================================== SAMPLE 150 ======================================== Root deebies. No- bury me, yet with entombing- And they're right, My flesh, my face, my empire, my heart, my wandering now Hides all, and on their bone I no-hold. I need not they can look on me, though I crouch at some poor bones I pile There in the earth, the grey earth, the clay- dark earth, when, as when, it would breathe Vapour on a wound, some fire of us Speeds my soul up to blind godhood. Leaning me 'round, one cheek on the other Whispered what that voice had foregone. 'Tis right, 't is proper; yet how I bless Thy music to whom, a child, what spoils Of love? Half of all these loves, yet unnoting Which are thy limbs; the angel-dust which Thou dwell'st in; that vacant face with Whose its life's flame is of my life's This face of my body. I knew, I had not known it; but this Thrilling sweet night is waking me more To the dull throbbing spirit of it: black is The eve, as black goes on brooding, deeper It goes, and hark, How the quick hands are clambering from Ah! how I know that music, which Is never with smooth notes of pleation, Mouthing the muezzin of tombs. My soft lips sound along the ways of art More drowsily than in the words of the gods, And in my heart deep silence has lost For all the young draughts of courage that it Speeds out in the face of the dust-wall's bloom. Dry your eyes, or they will light on mine. Lend your ear so they may sing As, there, where dewy eyes grow dim, What is it to be? O, what Art, my soul, is that which so touched Your spirits, O, what is it That made you wake at this gleam of light, This leaping flame of the world, At this white rim of your heaven-covering Her where he stroked of hair? Was it that thing, this beauty so vast, Wherethrough I have seen the master of The world at first unclose the womb Of his first breath and thrill, When the white lattice of the forehead Of the face of the dawn draws close? Was it that? And that he who did entwine His flesh in the bones of the fawn Whose fresh limbs he tore asunder To make his future lyre-- Daft to the child that feel The babe beneath the mother's breath? O, for the joy of the earthly heaven It were the sweetest thing of all! But still my blind eyes are blinded; Nought but the immortality Of all things else I see, And all these hours which seem spent In the strength of that one word, To me seem but the sluggish years 'Twixt successive day and night. When the world grew old, the son of it Was still strong, the son of God, as yet, He, the creature without sense or touch, Self-poised on his spirit's vantage, Rose from the land of freeless things. He stood up whom? The wan God who rules This life we give to his father, death. Then was he worse than death, worse than hell; Now he is well gone, near gone ere he be dead; But by to-day we who knew him here, Why hast thou cast abroad of His grace All the humblesyre of men? What thou couldst not entomb forever, They lay him up, their humility. Where lay the God of His avowals gone? Ah, you crows whom his presence filled And marked Him daily, why you know not! He, the fluttering cousin, at His side, Had still his minister; From the blue-locked vale, To the lamp-pillar of each house, He called them to his banquet table; Whence in whose shadow, Which caught each small inhabitant's eye, They caught the warm and scented wind. He could be heard Where rapped the door of sleep, And still the children knew him there And knew the fragrance of the flowers Which His presence gave. He was the God who scorned Who drew the first of flowers to Him And picked the night-savings thence. He was the God who sat apart, An humble ======================================== SAMPLE 151 ======================================== , to feed thy fancy, the more: Thus far the only Art we neglect That makes good men good, and the devil bad. A sordid time of manners, when nothing good Was seen but sin in all features blended, And vice was rampant; a prodigious tavern, A prodigious sober-house! Ah! let us drink! I was a sigh and song, and thought I had found The key to hearts, when I admired Cassio's mask: I'm sprightly, witty, and fancy-free; My digressions, and especially my jokes, Are like the river between the second-greatest sea Hailing but inland, and the country pretty For amorous reason a ripe, easy conquest; I like to name and shame the folks that do wrong, And stain my honour. This temper has its fruits. I err, but I err when I do not know My sense was at its full, and my sense at its may be: It has a double sense: the outward shows Are true as evident, but my heart is true To a most diff'rent standard. Truth, beauty, fame! All those endearments plump for mine or take My sense: not the worst that's contained within, But finest, truest, best, the innermost springs That ever came out on earth. Let's have a glass! Albeit his mask soon forgotten, His pleasant cavalier vest he walks away, And, eyeing like a reveller the green boughs, Walks up at last into the glowing hour, From coinage of sweet and sultry air, And feeling warm, in his porous vein, the moist That, in so many souls, was made a spring To flow and frolick, and make him merry. But see the youth, now gliding softly through That well-attuned music; all his blood Exhaling with delight the breath draws back, And the limbs all graceful to move, and run In easy measure. No want of strength Had Swift's heart, so like to the chase. His eye, No less than sight, wishes to behold the creature That runs so merrily by, and almost, But oh! what a moment is the run! Then like a burst bubble, of the liquid human World, a soft and metamorphosed creature leaps Out, triumphant, under his own perfume, Down, and foaming, panting, strikes along The glimmering pathway, glassed in velveteen, His human countenance bathed in rainbow. This is the sense of man. All the rest Surges into sonorous accident, Faintly aperpetual protest, prompt to smother A gift of strength, or heighten of a blush, Fills with his scanty light our shrinking firmament Always with violence of ragged night That lingers, like the weight of ghosts that pass, And falter and come up again. When I remember that I am said To have been a pupil of his, in thought And thought only, and in habitual thought, And the two phrases I have found most fraught Are those of his which mean that man is boy And that he swiftly shall become that, Which the same Master taught, when he said: "The man is not more than the doer." Once we were walking in a forest dense And feeble light, on a pathway broad, When the sun sank and the terrible moon Rested in heaven. And if a word Of man's strong power is weaker, thought Beholding his full strength and present will, I say the moon and the sun Have marked us out for more than we are And they their marks have written in gray. <|endoftext|> Expectation and delight, Like bloodhound bay doesn't give To sudden bugle-hounds Their sudden catch From the last safe tree; Expectation and delight, Like moonlight falling through The atherborn dark, Do not fail To bring to eve Their full control. Tentacles, with hurry of Heads that cling To man's heart, Have he heather lilies Which throng and clamber, With men that bear Their bells that ring So gaily in air; Some under the day, Some under night Exult and sing To the moon's blue eyes. No passionate snowstorm, No spring freshness can freeze Our hearts of sin, No autumn sun can fall Off sky so white, Our sunless ======================================== SAMPLE 152 ======================================== In an oblique quarter of the sky, An ear of corn, and fields and fields of corn, High over every town and great country town And bien mein' city, hills and towers, A noise of hoofs and wheels, bell-clinks and shout, And rumbling engines with their panting thunder, And the tramp of sentries on the Railway, Bouwen's stamp and the stamp of Bouwen's limit, In a circle wound, by the river and the pit, Where the river bursts its barrier and spreads out. In a white wall of oak and grey slate the clock, Melted in the furnace of the sun, Melted to fuses of uranium and sparks of gold, Melted in the furnace of the sun, Fused and shot through with colours and oils, Of grail-dust and crony-dust and centre-dust, Melted into fissile and brittle gems, Melted into gold and molybdenum, Melted gold and carminus and cedarel, And zinc, that a mill-weight will fall short, As ten to one stakes yon woods through To cast the gemmet of yon bright wheel, The magical golden Sun, that turns Blue-black when the gate of the lake is open, Black as the blaze of the furnace-blast 'Neath the breath of the bright flame yonder, Under the blaze yon giants anoint, Glittering with sulphur, above the blaze, Or, dark with sulphur, when the glow Is melted to fume, when the furnace Blooms are parted by the glow, From mouths of flowers. In the winter the bees are with spring Gnashed with gold, In the summer by bitter, each one follows Each other, most sad, each one, in the breath Of the great tree, Or yet aloof in the grass, Gnashed with gold. Or otherwise in the sun They grow and live, and their own life is broken A little as with a chisel, and part With this base, from that, and form, or super- nal essence, While they breathe their sap to the great Tree of life, And the flood flows over, and the tree presses in, And it flings up on every side its roots. Melted of old it rises to the skies, Melts its white glory to the gold of noon, And in the blue, no sound. The sun is but its face, the sun is ripe, And layeth in the blue-sea of the great fire As when the elder molten out, And has crumbled in the gold, Sunk back like an age. I see in its way the face of men As it were, like hermetico in a cloud, An awful flower, the FACE OF GOD, With the terror of the rich forests The-scowl on each side. The horror of the length of the sun, The torment of the setting sun Are we. Oh, the summer waves are roaring 'round us! Are there death-knells on the heart. Oh, the sea is shouting to us! Is a thousand-year-old tomb for us For the land 'twill roll us in, A desert where the heat Is as in a flame! Who among men uttered the word, "The strength that sustains us is strong naught That comes below," Of the loneliness of all life that bleeds In the muck and the storm, and the roar, The strong waves sound like voice that calls us. In the day-dash they faintly speak As a far-off living voice may call The stir of a creature at watch In a grey pool of dew. They have seen the light in the distance sink, And in the width of the water-dark Cast a shadow like a tent For your glad-eyed face. The wind is raw on the sea-moor, The foemen from the waves are gone, The strong winds of the North are cast Like broken arrows where we sleep On the fierce forest-beds. The strong sun-shakes toss the white hair Of the glen and the grey pools From our tired eyes. "There is winter over us, Like a watcher on the walls Who sees the day-light shift. Here, in the river's flow, His face is framed On a faded battle-ground Like a lost king's." "And the night shakes in the river, Like the bending cities Clinging ======================================== SAMPLE 153 ======================================== Farewell, dear friend! farewell forever, To your proud palace, where the glad proud feet of a Prince are no more to tread the sunlit spacious way of The Commonplace, Before the rude-masted ship that is fate, Strips the sands, and in the charmed drum's sound Loud and far its call Scores like a drumhead's knell to the dawn's Strange fluting, wanderers, wanderers, The waste waves whelmed with dead men's bones and beach weeds Like the joy of a kingdom, from mountain to hill, Drift-like, wanderers, like the sail in a storm, O'er which the Winter shall hisz' for an hour Scatter a feast to those that sit roundt the board If any on the desolate sand Wander forth from the city-walls of their home. Those in the sun, who, being as the Sands, Feasted from morn to morn, now loose their hold Are cast on the inter-tangled writhings Of the long-hulding gnarl-dyes, whereunder, surmised of late, Faint-currents wind, Dying still, like spilt-out iies in a pool of dark flood, Float at last, Chattered, scattered, left for the whosettops to skim. God in his madness left them to the wild man's fears. Pilgrims, captives with priests, murderers on their shields, Ruined like kills by the tempest's law; To the steep rock that o'erwhelmed the sunset Exultation flung the gold of their cities, Lives that had not grown by the tame light Up to pride of the shrines, but grimly held in thrall Still in their joyless triumph knew the crime. The hills are oped; where where the once-tall oaks Rose mid air as a plume of innumerable clouds Gleam dull gold, wind-bewet with a comely glory, That roam far, wild the places of their pastures; Turn up the sponge of their quivering breaths, for thus All strength and joy of the fields are turned to dearth. Who yet still love with those same grows that lift Man o'er man, and the blood throb in the pulse of his face. So may a woman, who roves 'mid the fields, Stray through fields and fields, and the sun-creased roads; Be of their fond delight, nor cease to grow, nor cease Love her and be glad in her, nor fear to bless her And to feel in the joy of that love, rapt as of old In the uplands where the days fall as they may. Life for the worshipper, and death for the friend, And the growth of the earth from the dream that glows to the bond's Welded into flesh; Hearing from the walled city as from a mount Like the far bell in the tornado's mouth; Crackle and chaff; the money that comes in to the pockmarked governors' palates of the rich; Hurrying to and fro, away from the shell and the clink, From the quays, from the churning wharf, from the anchor and salt; With the match for the mainship, the ready light for the coal, Whatever that, for whatever that takes care; With the fore-fronted madness, the open misery of a kiss; Hearing the same deep, hollow music of the seas As they rang from the mouth of the streams, on from the sea-weeds; Breathing it in and with it in the breath of the sea; With the heart of the hill From the gully where the clover-hedged horizon Wanders with the sunset To the place where the little hands float in pools, To the dun dust-cloud that holds the coast-lights of night; O to feel the air Where, as the track in the rain, Struggling with the twisted iron, Glances over the scene, and the road lies bare. Fearful is the sea Where below lies the tangled surf As the bitten frog Of the nights of the toilsome dead; Rise with the ring Of the surf that leaps against the wind, Suck in the hounds ======================================== SAMPLE 154 ======================================== i do like you i hope you ll grow up to be how the f—k you like your style never seen one so fine love your queen leonine i think she’ll be alright i loved you once i was just like you i like you 3 i can’t be cruel i have a tendency to be violent and wanna bite and scratch see you in spains and stan. <|endoftext|> "wax andane other pets smells" let’s make a playlist of  junk music i can’t make up music alone i’m the only musician on this junk playlist spices & incenses i sprinkle on wet sand & call it music pour some tea i can’t refuse back in the day i made this playlist & this is what i played first song of my choosing back in the day of my choosing she put it on her own never mind the scratches just scratch it & Andane in both ears peel away the paper of my choosing beware of ordering too much in, say again, back in the day of my choosing me again me again there was a rustle before the lines she can’t recall the name of the dog that they show on their screens here i made a playlist i make up once for me every minute of every other minute the stages of desire are well known to me each dream i’m in i make up for my dreams elsewise i wake up, cut off from me it’s a mess i was just talking about back in the day the tricky nature of music every five minutes i feel trapped back in the day i talk about music in a vague way & you should know back in the day, the tabla was playing meadows tabla is ancient music for me the cracks came at the end now everything is faded i stand at the mirror & i see the woman trying to tune her tanned legs to a rhythm one of the singers in my family pauses in another pose without the dornness of faith taking us to another world <|endoftext|> "jacarande", by Vali Troop [Living, Death, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Spring, Trees & Flowers, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Race & Ethnicity] juveredude 2014 for all the claps on my bare left ass for each pussy in a new garden of vroned quince and rosetrees and autumn cuckoo son of a bitch if the worse came to then the blamer wouldn’t last a day then i’d climb into the leadbegathering kit and be like i’m here i bout time i’m about time lord have mercy on this earth so many naked bodies so many naked cherubim naked postures as thin as my wrist all so horned flesh of dove winging their shapes wreathing to the night that’s jabbechi by the cedarn mill how the fuck should i feel when the bell rings cries from the jesery west and says son of a bitch then i’d know i’ve made it son of a bitch i’d be so proud to be born i’d thank god like of the bright humming sun to tell me of i’d bow down my head by the flowers of gilkeya i can see it like here come the cherubim & they sing a new  song & the day is turning & i feel it coming & i want to be a cœurrier & show my son my new feather & i say come here son tell him this song & the birds are sounding & i say if the noise all be one the time will be a lot better <|endoftext|> "beaver camp", by Karen Dynan [Living, Growing Old, Life Choices, Nature, Animals, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment, Money & Economics] The topsoil and creek water lift; it’s a marvel of nature, and also the topsoil is moving, and the submerged tree trunks below my ankles, thick with sap, lifting from that ======================================== SAMPLE 155 ======================================== The main with small stars and rays of gold Plumed its sea-like breast, And in the dark of the pale purple sea, Was heard the aged wave recede. The skiff that carried her boat and me Knocked on the shelter of the shore, For the waves knelt with their million terror, And said: "Bring hence the maiden, bring her and me To the heart of some deep unutterable sea!" But when I saw that wave, whose the sun bore light, A rose-lip, a red rose, whose ruby bloom Had drawn tears from the sea's great darkness, Enfolding me at her beck, I said: "The sun, I know not why, doth bring me here To the heart of waves; and yet I know not why, To her heart I must orang-ut-ca. Heed not this counsel from me, nor regard My speechless weakness, for her kiss is sweet. Tho' the sun, and this world's guardian I, Had lost not her heart while helping mine on-- Or else I should be very weak indeed, And yet I had but praise for gain Who has not brought me, albeit but in a dream, The sea-side and a tide's edge to the heart of me, And though a void pavilion, flung in the sea's face, Hated, and austere, and cold--yet sweet I love. The morning glows with golden fires; The autumn fields are mornless and grey; But the fore-knowledge of these things Is softened and made feeble now By the memory of days immortal; And her I longs to see is silent, For she wears the flesh that he has worn. I did not know when she went from me That the love I have had I would tare And knot and clasp and bite and rend; For her love I would do anything, And therefore will my work be undone. And though I break faith quite often, Yet, as there's no more love, I will not. Thus, therefore, I break faith, and gladly would Have made of her, if he could, a wife; For, though, of men, he seems to have known. He takes to wife the woman of his life, Aye, in a kindly way, in a wise, And comes and stays, and kindles fires forever In his heart, where little lances stir; And she to his arms, when she is wed, Will be wedded to his blood and nature. O better had I been loth to wed And wounded by her absence, had she come; But it was not well, her face should bear me ill, And so I vow me in my service past To be infinitely her debtor, That when she comes home, and seems most bright, 'T will do my best, as well as I can, To make her heart what she makes me, sweetheart. Would that time should stop, and then My words were power! But no: and time is always cruel; It ever changes her! With a nod to outward care, For her the street-lamps are connected, With a finger to her ear; The effect of her dress Comes, her word often changes A mill-stone, a bridge, a bridge-watch. There is no house or window With a more laconic face, No hand more practice With perverted touch Of awkward itch, Nor any one With a more insipid fashion I mean: If it had been mine I would not have acted Had I known the deeps Of thy unfathom'd mind! Nay, go, say thee, Thou art not here; I will not see thee, I have not thine affection to deal With thy presence, And I shall not be able Or else to deceive. Yet, unhappily, there's one Whom puts a part in me To bear witness for me To things beyond my commission; Who is a schemer and a swindler, A supporter of misery, A poet in thought and deed; And the honest song is not so loud Which is sung only by him. F. If you think that after years of separation Love lives and lasts There's need for no cure In hope, in rest, in cheer, Which else would come to you If Nature had stamped you for her service; And after years of separation Two longed-for friends should quench their life-blood To beat the ======================================== SAMPLE 156 ======================================== Gulf canal, figure-eight turnpike through Detroit. what would we do without you <|endoftext|> "Freedom of Consciousness", by Steve Rotherham [Living, Health & Illness, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy, Poetry & Poets] Going along with it That's the problem These objects do not aspire to be loved. --W.H. Auden The eyes under a blue wreath of smoke Racing around the pitiless fire While waiting for the breakdown From the volcanic past of the pitiless Lord God of the heavens. The pitiless fire Sweeps to its born stars above. A slit of fire that watches all. Dips into the fiery pit And smiles. The fingers of a sieve Desire the smoke in its fruit. Both cold and hot in one. It is. It is. It is. Beating the flames with smoke Of blazing admiration. The hands of a man in a shop Seem to grasp in vain A pack of matches. There is no end of the fire. No way out of the fire Though some wood and smoke Could stop it. Your fire will do. And you will go along Because the world's gone mad. The marvels are there For you to seize And stoop to. Out of the depths of the wood, A hollow roar of rushing air, Sudden howl of pixy and hag Whose tall shadows snagged them there By the gate to night. Holding the gates of the damned. A fiery slick of a kind of smoke Waiting and glowering to be. But how else to be. The life of the mad. An ever pushing out and in Of the upons. A glimpse of the future is the spur To the perspiring effort of life And to the unbuilt plan To organize the mad and the yet to be So that the time slides by And the unknowable marches on. Though the yet to be and the unforeseen May blind the senses, not us. Life is scar. It is scarred and hard. The mind, all its fire out. It is the vicious termite Clinging and building From the muzzle up, Like a house that is the better for Existing in mud. He is a giraffe. Vain. The lips to be pouched They are puckered. And the fire has gone wild. A gray inlay, a stained glass, a rose Dyeing the glass-- A ruined flower, a grain On the hard to be and to be done New termite town. A pathetic and pitiable sight. As you say. The lids grow puckered and stretched. These terrors of the unbuilt house You think they'll be And the yellow moon. You think they'll be helped By the warm hand of the woman The artist saw in the glass-- A glass you don't see Ever a blossom In the stained glass-- Never a rose For the little march of a sun-- Out of the deeps of the wood The unseen wait, Dug by no human eye, Until the calvarial rains, The flying long-rain, Awesten on the mocking river. No man has seen her either. The dreamer and lover, The freer than winds, The born worshipper of spells Or of some vague God, The born outlier of men. Till the green trolls in the hills Had sucked from the depths of the wood Tresses all as they are, The walking born At the dripping end of the thread Uncoiled to burden the troll Of the flood that flows out of the woods. Skeleton of a body, a soul, Half crack and more crack, In what god would she choose? Most like a whale she looks. The dreams of her eyes-- A whale she has dreamed. A soul on the body. Her hand is full of things To do, And nothing she says. Half gone her soul To what lies below. Drowned and black she sinks. In the days that are, To back her dreams. To make of her own soul A claw And a chain, To dig a road. To dig a road, A way to go, Across the hundred-dead-meeting-field Of hundred-dead feet. To cut the old rope loose and slip The silly ======================================== SAMPLE 157 ======================================== Lōt thou yet the saule so take! In a hollow tree he gabbs and gawks, Gabbles and glances, Where he pukes up the congees of gas. All that deale is his mother-son, All that deale! Liken him unto his Sone! Go to his Den ye weepe, go to his Groves ye wand! Some me fix in Wattles three! Whar Somes weep their wallys away, Whar Somes dye at night by canekness of Wolsey! Some me fix in Solymans three! Whare he gropeth, howe'er his Lugs diest, Mongst whiles Gothic Groves solace bask! Some me fix in Gray's three! Whare his Groat' has been no Nurt, Whare he flow'rs up, dirst of Lulees three! Some me fix in Nimphs three! Whare his Fancie, t' orbes alle, Is a wild speech about. Od'ing' yeilds and warks yeh to haif 'Bove me through Lordis Lictors hands, Whom I hat a board to keif. An'tir wights a word wif yeh heild Whose bail the toorse I call. Niggard an'till me hoot, me bide All this deade like a stone, An' let yeh like me enwith, Mumble-Mouth! See yon you-HBERT guv'm, Like a pat, Mule-Ease? Seasons and Sics-Ihesus, Sometimes the stomach be, And the yeilding-kist yeh rev'red go. So the sick an' deaf, Ye must bear it, Mumble-Mouth! These red roses, make a shrine Where my love may go; Shake there, an' where yer marks the furrow Mumble-Mouth. The day I saw the Devil, With a kiss on his lips, The Devil came to me By the neck of the bull, An' he came all of a timmernin', An' he laughed at me An' I stole, an' I stole An' I stole, an' I stole T'owards Heaven's minnities, (I chanced upon a pigsty, Where a girl o' the more 'Eared the creature, an' a bit Of its hide was my prize, a chimera, A witch undress'd, but for dinner, As she's a disreputable body, So with a knife she is dressed, Said me, an' 'I hate pigs,' This ox-faced thing!) Ye housie-pig, what wot? Ye roosty? Away, alreadiet! Away furrin', alreadiet! He's amo'y, he's at 'im, Them at 'im! In a per-dich idiot posi- tive sort o' way, But, for their aspect, I'll stous A little more obscure; Thus I'll show ye, in a way, Diligent rectory, That a parson, n'er fry! Your heads! each for a candle A-sang! an' a cake for the bender In their proper time! Away, alway! Yis ow'st, yis ow'st, yis ow'st! 'Bout your 'eads;--let them stay, Ye'll buy 'em in a bite. Gie 'em 'angle! Well, I Don't like to be hoked; That's the thing. An' I'll state it plain, Yis ow'st, yis ow'st, yis ow'st! An' 'ave a go o' I'pin's; An', when In you're busy, I'm busy, I won't be afeared; For I'll rid you in time. Yis ow'st, yis ow'st, yis ow'st! Let's flicker an' keep our order, Wi' clourine's cauf, c'est braw! Your go's a go, Your go's a go! When Christmas was come There was snow on the carrick, There was snow on the hecks of the k ======================================== SAMPLE 158 ======================================== See in the bosom of the recluse, Live verity, and proof from false emprize, The sage himself to stand, In the same room she dwelt, St. Agnes and her damsels three. See how she is dressed all over, And disposed to endure What may be brought by that direction; Her frock is even turned And bound in state to lie Full in the middle of her stay; There, as I guess, she sleeps; But you should know her as well, And be as certain of her wink, As I am sure of you that you are. Well, well! Be content; It seems that you have paid; You are dressed in fashion, And I am able to take Much grace upon you. Let me think a little -- I will not say a word; Are you a patient one? A similar purpose has brought me to seek you, A similar power has backed me, In like effect to canvass you, In like festal charier to be. It is our age's epoch when The governor, and the paying public, From tars that bind, and courts that faggle, Run head in the air, To courtiers that tick, and be exempt; While we and our peace, and our life Sit shivered on a knife -- Knife between our teeth. Then to our trials sure A revolution comes, and on A knife our throat is done; For we that have not yet the King, The Company, in our temple, With his bills that we owe, Keep being prostrated, and prostrated; And cry aloud in our misery, "Why? why?" And stare at the closed door, And wonder why on earth we Let these be our lowest beds? Is not your Creator on the rack With his plagues? On no page of prophecy, In the grand American swell, Is there such as Job? Was not white the storm, Or did the whirlwind sweep this little world As it should have stood from the inheritance Of darkness and of death? Would we were living in our father's Ancient garden again! Come, little Pomp, to call us From our sorrow! "Mourn no more, nor start, Nor sigh, nor murmur, Wherever you be! Life has been good, And what of it we cannot know! In it we could have been In some sweet gentle Garden we knew, Not in this seething commercial Hell that grows By tide of trade, on every street, And scatters its burdens to drain our withered Severels -- Mourn no longer! Come, in the middle of the town, This way, my gentle lady! The way it rolls, this way, is the way the Lord Led Ruth to the safe keeping of her master, Nor Ruth knew aught of this for singing; Till lo! all hell broke loose, And broke her master, and the righteous Sent her back to the wolf -- The way of the wolf is long, But you will see it soon. Not for us This swift returning to the wild! The sky is like a mirror, all is strange; The sky has snow, and is pure as frost; The forest smokes, and chafes with green and blue; The brook, that bursts through its bound; The cloudy table where we sat -- This was the scene of our quaint arrangements -- And the trees at our feet. My bride, the first time I offered to stay This late pilgrimage -- the fair one -- (Seeming to consent to mar a bit) -- Was hesitatingly agreed; The third time she spied a rope, it was tied About my arm, and asked the guard to let her Come up. I have lain under the might of the sky, While her still slept. When she saw I was saved Through more I willed, she grew into my speech, Not remembered, though she saw. Let none see us From now onwards, for in that day I shall forget That which they wished, and bid them welcome, And so to meet again, without a rope. Oh, you men with gold teeth! With gold teeth in your forelock, And brawns flaxed white like the sea, And old beer is like the brine, And love is as the fat of the goose, And sweat, and the springtime, and plenty -- Serve your sister, my mate, with the spindle. There ======================================== SAMPLE 159 ======================================== I shall bathe in my blood, in my body, I shall live, and put on my robe of flame; And the eye shall behold me in white And the tongue of the living shall prate about me; And what man shall meet me he shall meet me never; And a tooth that breaks myy wit-free, And a sack with my blood in its core, Shall not remember me when it has blaken; There shall not be the fatness of desire For one of a hundred such to cry for me. I shall praise thee and sing for thy name To the Lord for he is not fooled, If a tent should stand in the East, Or a gallifrey in the West; If the rivulet droppit in the stream, Or the plain was smutted by a sliver; If there was a leeve of {400} wine, Or a thief had the clothes on his back: And the word that is to be said Only the Lord knows Whether my fire have I now Of clothing unheard by the devil, Or whether it be the flame of the palm tree; Or if it be their night and the starry morrow; Only God knows,-- Be so or be so, and God sees, A stroke on the withered wood, A knife or a stick, And at the word The wood is represented as if defaced, Scales of parcht locusts, All so thin they be As the wort-smell that sticketh in the tree; But at the word A mighty noise is made, Fires kindled by the touch Of wise iron caghers, Uniting, And we share the heat of the bow as on we go. At its sound A supernatural awe falls On my sense-door, And at its sight Is lifted the bosom of God-states old. So I knelt On the highway the yellow summer To gaze on the stroke of the yellow Revolving stars. And my thoughts Were the springs of my woe; And God was a palsied epilever, And in my sin The gold and the heavens of my verse were stolen, And a workman at this factory Was rolling out magazines. And this is the smile Of thy face, I heard the brides of Babylon in the time of Moses, In the time of Sagacious Biseberg, When there were no laws, save "his word had spoken it" And then his sword. 'Twas the word of her large womb, The mammoth of the world. And my stroke of the withered wood Was its stroke of the ignorance of sin. The flicker of her flame Was the moth of the darkness Of the wick of the moon; The bees of her net Were the sleep of the flowers Of blind suns. And the chords of her spoken word Were to the music of the symphony Of blind watches. And the sounds of her viols Were the thuds of the rain. With the stroke of my withered staff O'er the gloss of the clematis I spread my mantle for the night; For the shades are meek, And the gossamer of my suns Are wasting in the glare, As it seemed of old. And there I am, and in the afternoon The palace will mount me; And its phantasies will warm the day For its final tune. There is such sweet music in the tongue Of men and wrung from them by trouble That, alas, I turn it o'er And it takes wings And it leads me in a wild pursuit All unheeded, and aloof, Through a long dream of the leaves On the brink of a blue landscape of wind, For thee alone, O sweetest tongue of my love, Sweet music of my strife. The darkness of day's prime Was kind to our wintry joys; That doomful time the high-water mark Made beautiful with sunset fire, Was ever the time for the open band. To whisper a song, or to join in a dance, Or pause and feel the morning laughter fall Upon the winter world, ere it came to be. Then I heard (as is that mortal only Who feels between the living and the dead That piteous vacancy, once, to know and do) Tinio, and she beckoned me; They shall come en two ji6iones parpour. (Sing a song, if you will.) I saw ======================================== SAMPLE 160 ======================================== savage and barbed and brooded; The drawling protest of week-end long-heated friendships, Derided and railed at like a traitorous tabernacle, plucked, And rusted and darkly all, a heart-broken mischief in the grave. <|endoftext|> "To Leamon color of Lyon", by Isaac Rosenberg [Arts & Sciences, Painting & Sculpture] As France canvassed and saw the Nature who painted, I saw her earth-loved face and the words engraved there In a single tone that ethereal calm would inherit In the soul of that dramatic angel and lend it Yet another. One tone and one world of sensation. His book suggests that all the painters were male. If this be true (and all its latent confusions) The real world has but one painter. A mine of history. What of Le Brun and what of the 'Monot): In the wonderful world of spin-doctoring, And in our age of pious, arbitrary spin, Does the Church insist that they were women? One thing is sure: to make sculpture and to make art, You must have the undiv authority Of someone who knows what to do with them. But the heavens are not clearer With authority than with seed of something bright. But, yet, while authority is awful, The earth is yours If you come back from France, that's your plan A. B. C. <|endoftext|> "On Sailing", by Carol Smith [Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Arts & Sciences, Theater & Dance, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture, War & Conflict] The baby-groade, the baby-gide, The baby-grove— The train's a-sidelines an' awa', An' the stars are a-shabbin' blue, An' it's even nigh to warm, An' the van's a-satin' apout Like a 'ulef on the post-house floor. The cobble-blight, the cob-ble-blind, The cob-lear— The bloomin' mither an' the aunty, The ole jammer's the only one That wears a uniform! O love thy country, young chap! Noo 'Eadle Dohn:' he sez; an' then He sez he's 'RR Stovendog' ready To 'Ain't what ye hears in yonder smooge. 'Yarra, an' sah! naw, ye sounds kind. Say Black to me, by Wallace, by Wallace!" 'Are ye deaf? By yer 'ead,' he sez; 'Yarra, ye sounds kind! an' by the wall, Ye seem 'Rarra, ye seem 'Rarra, ye sounds kind.' The warly battle-dance, the warly battle-dance, The warly battle-dance— The warly battle-dance! The baby-flower, the baby-gide, The baby-grove— The baby-grove— The baby-grove to be a elder! An' then the reverend elder! The eldest baby in the family, The eldest baby in the family. The sort's the same in both— The reverend elder, an' the youngest elder, The infant in the family— The eldest baby in the family. When the baby finishes first, 'Rd per 'Eadle Dohn!' sez he, An' then, "Yarra, yarra, yarra!" Noo 'Eadle Dohn!' was the sound Of the 'Rarri' on the post-house floor. But the reverend elder, 'Mr. Porter,' Was a 'Sauf doing then, 'Sirol wad be my son, 'Eadle Dohn could 'a' 'ad me 'eart.' 'Sieid, ye ken, Sieid, ye ken, Yarra, 'arra, yarra! Noo there's a kind o' old British grit In the style of the 'Sauf, Siever,' An' it is, you'll agree, 'Eadle Dohn!' I sees 'eard ower the old pul— The pul-ley 'eart, Awa'—the possibles were good— The possibles was ba ======================================== SAMPLE 161 ======================================== peace! content! In the green-matted midst of the grassyland, Unclothed, on the grassy-crowded ground; Where the whitethroat perch and the waxingbluely hangs above, And the scent of the twilights with melodious stirring Rises to the Heavens, intoxicating the blossoms, Pleasantly warbling to the altars of the vesper. Peace! be content! Even as the scattered night-moths, flitting, flying They will find the turf-wright's help for their defence, In the songs of the roses, or the moonlight, Or the scent of the violets, Where the rose can no blossom tell, No whiter blossoms than these. Thus on a morn of Spring (In the green grass, or the field of Jove) Hath the Sun, like a young lad, Closed with blue eyes and a springing clean shoon; Hast brought to heavenly day A fresher lustyflowers, and taught their toil Who lives with youth's abundance. Not the fall of snow, That slings o'er the palace of Earth's infantwait, Bidding her wake with festalteller™, With the patriarchs of the past; For this bliss of Earth hath not that East that. For this we plough the ruggedroot of some greatflower, That we may dream on, till the dream grow strong. Thus hath the yellow-backed Summer, A king dire of his dead, No spring or stronghold in Of his own wrack, Where the dark glare of war-paint Dims our eyes and minds; But our men of valour styles Fields of red morocco, Or banks of Tagus, while they sally At their signals, and descend, Swiftly as wind or whirling hail, With the wingèd squadron that follows. Alas! that all the glory Of March's flowery prime Mere profit averaging Sixteen wet May-days, Bud the risk of not lending My trencher carlins a full fierce cup To these strong soups, this baldery o' Death, As March to other March leads On its green boughs, And with his juniper boughs Doth loll his dire calyces, Bud bid lie slightly. One a rood, the other's tow'rd Some trickling tide is, and dares 'Gainst that surge the morra'toon all his life Bemerk, as leader, to beguile. God shewed the bird his hour Dying on the shaven block; Scattered the blooms for room Till he escaped, outflung From the reeking tent, And the war-bird's heart was sick. God's poor Bird that lost Heaven's light, till the bird found rum, Green-lined in a jaundice of grey skies. Now as at Ivy-league's Sweet May tide turns up Bits of gold, such trimbels do Keep the old chimes. There's Joseph Pulitzer's house in town, Lamb, adulter, stoop, and bow, Saps its leafy loft. But say, say what's the use Or remedy? Who's remedy? 'Tis Fear's--fear and shame. There to the wood, or otherwise, They steal the beaded wings; Nor know they what they miss Of what a Song (sad-old Summer!) They touch that wingèd power. Sweetest Summer takes the nest The dove to hide; Only I'm that outcast, That Summer's Summer's Summer no more. 'Tis their sultriness, not her winters, Their gulfs are lees, not sweetness. The girl She has the heart that only sheds A spring for honour; to the cause Her bosom turns, and the flush Called amber into white. Her dreams Sunk naked, dear ones, 'fore her feet, Before her face the hues of that blush; For it was, in like act, to show Her yellow tresses now. Her face, her eyes, her fingers, are that Dry earth, young grass, that else may yield Fruits faded as the gleaming dew. Her dress, set out where fell Small howds and fern and tufts of grass, What sun and dew have done to make The ======================================== SAMPLE 162 ======================================== Besides, my bones are dry and cool, My heart has the old trade in it. 'Tis well and lucky when a man Can sit upon a well or fill his own As old as myself, To stand the shock and strain, the flying and falling-- It was a rough and hard way but well-nigh worth it, If but to stand and fill the well-nigh infinite well of God. It's queer, indeed!--the manner of a man's burial, Is, that he as quickly deep dies out of sight As Christ did: but 'tis little joy to die. One gives one's soul to the worm, Then, lo, the worm takes one again. God said, And so we're both plain, A judge gives sentence, God takes sin, The judge passes, not the soul. Let others scorn as idle: I'll speak what comfort I can. God help me, as I call, Where sorrows abound Do I breathe in thanksgiving For these that I have in my fosterings? I think I do: and shall I Turn round and round The wrath of heaven To my fosterings Where I cry as an exile To my heart's content? Night has fallen on us who made our business one: That thou art friend and I thine We know, and no man's Saying 'cow,' 'mare'-- But watch us the better To know it the best, For Thou art our only refuge Which my soul, And Lord, Did all it could, To do right, do wrong, but less. 'He loves me, 'tis true,' A voice crying in the wind A messenger that may not lie, With gentle permission roused by heaven's brightness, From land of toil to land of rest, 'gan arise The mountains' witness of his way, And from the force of evil's power addressed, That I had learnt to love the cross: But I must then, Like unto the ash, fall back a little: Till, daylight setting in dawn of day, We enter on thy world and find love in it, More cold and hard than man's thing in winter, Sitting all day and wiping tears and noses On my wear, grey stockings without looking up: And what with suet and mica and so forth, Weeps my face till it looks something wondrous; Then taking it off, my niece she cries I know that 's a ridiculous clutch; And calls me Lord, then bid all follow me! It's fair of content If I set only where, at least, In this one hour of life, We trust, God's business is: Thou art our life and these fingers, these hands That live for thee alone, Have a thousand fingers and hands That one by one thou makest happy. 'Tis food, 'tis comfort; and with food One finds the key of death and life. Food is what the rich eat and grow; Life's measure the poor man's bread. Look, O, how thy pauper sports and plays At card or fight with dogs, or come And look on faith with tears. Then wealth's like thine is fuddled In England now; Hamelin Town is no more Like her sister cities up and down; Yet, in a sense, 'tis she owes her name Unto yon-seven villages where roll Eastern Bridge, the steel-clad Thames. If thou be humble as the grass That trusts in meek-days' ungermy gain, Be sure thou leave a name that susteneils In posterity, Because Thou art of a mould to gladden And be a giver; for thus it sings: Who for thy sake daily toil In joy or privation Not only toil but pray to-day; Yea, therefore thy self should from thy self Give honour to the name Thou, with the whole earth and all its clime, Yea, Lord, be unto thy sheep and goats Not only father but brother. Fatherhood makes gods and worlds and all. I am not of a sect, Nor ask I call or station, But thou hast sons that are mine by blood And I will be to them to show That one should be free indeed. For thou hast not told thy trade, But with each time I look to see I love and know thee well; Seeing the child's plain truthful voice Comes down from the stars on mine: And in the furrow of ======================================== SAMPLE 163 ======================================== Levistus and Nisus, servants of Pallas. Sulla and Scamandrion, and their ships and crews. Caesar called and Cordo came in number; From Ida they, all the Idaean host, And carried battle to the ships. The thirst of fame made them. When of war There is a hill whereon the fight is fierce and great And it rises over Pharsalia. The storm of men is roused by news of peace, and they lift up their eyes and see on the heights the smoke from the deeps and the sea A matter-of-fact way of looking upon it. Scamandrion said in the course of the year How Rome will suffer, in her increasing sins, is clear, see that upon the top In Pharsalia men are making plans. They, as of old, would stay but for one year, And other men take up the burden of war. The gods help the people, nor care who falls If they go on, being the weaker part, And leave their corn to those that harvest the war The priests were in the temple, too, Spreading rumours and making mouths of them, And to send the Romans in too far. Lo! this was Pompeius; the Gauls are on the height, He has torn them from the snows of Algiers. <|endoftext|> I am the bartender of Kuzela; There are others of like mind, Speaking the same language, Speaking to us in the language of smiles. What have we done together? What have we done together? We have not wasted one silver rupee On the Indians; We have not eaten one singed inch of wheat To make them happy; But let them laugh upon their drum And march with the other gods. You bring us bread for our turning, But can we make you merry? You have given us toys for our children, But can we mirthously dance? Then may your clock be telling time, And our neighbours be told lying. In His service as protector Of the wild natives of the forest, He has given us magic shows To make us happy. He will guide us at dawn to the brow Of the mountain, And the shortest path find to the evening, With the night before. And now the hostess of the festival Is holding, in her great soft hand, A heart-shaped pomelo. Why does she hold her hands so still? She will not let them loom for those that fall, But is playing to them a pleasant song That none of them needs hear. She is dressed in a man's colossal style; The hair hangs in soft waves to her knees, And her sumptuous shape takes the air As she plays upon her instrument. She is playing a tune To ravishment and silence; While the choric verses to the clouds Crawl to a close. Yet now she is turning with her hands To mix the wine, and the fiddlers Rush to the dance, with every chance, Of their heart's desire. They have danced until the eve, And she sings in her sings in the glow Of their heart's desire. We were with you in Eden, We were with Cain in the desert, We came from Cyprus and Sidon, We were with Seth in the peaks of Everest; With Job in the City square And Noah in the Wilderness. <|endoftext|> What is there with Earth about, When she has had her way with us? Why do we live so fast? Let be, We bleed to be undone! What is there with Earth about, When she has had her way with us? What is there with Earth about, When she has had her way with us? Who is there with Earth about, When she has had her way with us? Who is there with Earth about, When she has had her way with us? Who is there with Earth about, When she has had her way with us? Who is there with Earth about, It is no use writing, Let it up and forget! And yet I am young again! I have some remembrance for the years, Though mine are many and their number Is not so many as before; But she, they say, is old and old Beyond all fear and many of breath Beneath the stars above the hearth Where she is dim with many hands. What is there with Earth about, When she has had her way ======================================== SAMPLE 164 ======================================== lingering months Came surely round the house, and only through the sun Blazed the dunns like mills, and out of them poured The short-grained grain, and the fiddling bit and the sharp sawnn-out, and bits of bark, and the sun-cracked grain Sped out along the lanes and choked the drains, Till it was well overspreading in the ditches, And upon the grass at last, and swollen the stream In a pool, then overflowed, flowing to the fields And borders, and swelled the trees, and held the plough In its slackness, the silver plough beneath, And smote the land from Yallicks to Loughlinss. So was the storm ended. In all these bogs there was No end of bog and stagnant water, but soft scented winds by and by blew some sweet water-falls Over the hills to the west. And long it seemed To the filmy eyes of the heaven that slanted off From the bog-veranda's covers, and the care And blight of the wet season, over and over; Till every rustling in the field was a leaf Moving or a slant moon-beam on a brook, Or bleating stamen, with the hints of grass, That sent the soul adown the valley of the view. On the green hills, through the mellow hills, the smell Of the weed-glades--we could range through them, Hewing little cherries over them, and fat Marmol and leeks and onions in them, and roll Astrain to little bit, and drop, and fret On the bare hills, in the dung-hole, and burn, Burn the knower out of it: then lift; And lo, the queer hills lifted; he saw, As in a line, the heaving hills slung From to the steel shadows of the fore-part Of the moving drawbridge, where the lintel of earth Still swung gaily in the swinging alment, Till death's swing, with call and trumpet's tone, Closened its great girdle to the earth In sundown. "Be it large," he said to himself, "It will be seen that I gain something here, As I see now that I am gaining it." And, indeed, It was to be seen, still lowlier the drawbridge swung Under the swinging gates that cl-lloured out Over the drawbridge: a fair swathe of earth Glazed with pale yellow vermilion-coloured light, Wherefrom a little vein of pure parshon-red Was shaken out, and flushed with the totties And warmth and radiance of brilliant leaden blood, Had springed; so that such tints did make the mind Play among them and in them play. The Form Moved of the grey workman in the tide of change; And the arm of youth had passed upon its way In triumph; and the arm of age had found When strength was worn its estate: and so there grew An everlasting branch of oak and fern Beneath the plastered sky; a ravening eagle's nest Shed its clutched young for so far beyond the door That youth had reached: and so the storm of age Tore from the roots the saplings and the glittering sheaf That filled them of youth; and each the triumph and the sting, And every lion on the open field And every goose in her pinous breast had crumbled, While Age had swept a trifle nearer to its goal Under its steps, and, of the matter quite conured, Each an old man as then, nor caring a jot for change, But with young faces, gold hair, and scanty beard, And feet perhaps; while youth and him it showed Stretched out beneath the dawn; and many a bird That swung at waggon in the track of action had Died of his sorrow: youth and him had picked The whole of the grey hill for their summer morrow. Yet, though the great work of years had nearly done, And spring light flickered faint in bits about The rust-barred window, he was silent. It was An early tale of habit; but habit poring His husk covered up some truant of his own Told him that, though these were the busier years, Yet they might eternize. In the sound of a song He had his image, mime, and phantasm; that forged To be the actor ======================================== SAMPLE 165 ======================================== Where did I lose you? I let my baby slip down my jacket. I put the cat in the pot. Baby was my love. Baby was my life. Baby had gone away. I can’t stop crying. I have no baby. <|endoftext|> "The Lover", by Carolyn Kizer I know your arms are familiar, near, a part of one, they have to be, one way of drawing from the world the rich, disembodied taste of something to eat, to taste. It’s how I love, the way I love is like peering through a window on a low wall and seeing part of the world the way I want it to be. I turn and lick my lips. You are the future. What other ways are there of knowing, other worlds than this where you are? My love is like a map made of clean, bright colorways and those days of love when I want to know the map so badly that the map is the only map there is. I am incapable of other love, I am alone with my infamously delicate, powerful, dark, loyal attachment, and my partner is my golden goodbye to everything not and never again. What other ways are there of love than this? <|endoftext|> "Second Summer", by Carolyn Kizer [Nature, Trees & Flowers, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books] The lover writes: ‘It was only a summer’s holiday When the music entered me Of the sun turning in the West. And all at once I thought To see it was meant to be And I was left in the morning Still underneath my sheets and afraid Of the call of birds but not knowing Where they were or whether I was strong enough To leave the petals and go away And as I danced in a sphere I was no other than the past I was wandering through the garden. I left that place and the years behind And before I knew it it was me I knew I knew I had been Me who no one else would have: The sad tongue and the artless ways, The eyes that show no wisdom, the fingers That fiddle but to amuse and the lips That were not meant to be sad. I wanted only to be me As I was the first and then— A servant singer who knew no throne, Knocking and knocking In a ballad that was true to aught But the old winter warmth and bitter rains. <|endoftext|> "The Indian Book of the Dead", by Carolyn Kizer [Living, Death, Religion, Christianity, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy, Reading & Books] for B. H. Ockley Particularly at this moment of the early summer When windless sunlight cuts the sky, and still the air is Unseasonable insufferable And cold, with no luminous fatality It can be unbearable—like now I feel it in myself as I lift the reader High, and run the writer’s name Over a margin which can’t be changed now— In the red stubborn crags of five hundred years Where life aspires but never climbs Where the blessed long for what the gods can’t give, The land where the dead live Not like us, where they carry their books With them in their bags, where death won’t be forgotten You may find them, find them on a shelf or framed In such case as this you can’t get you can’t get rid of Like a racehorse whose flinging is the race I did not feel died—I told you— I felt the dead among us, I got you, I got You once, and you are always this You may be happy, you may be free. . . Your living is much more than I will say. <|endoftext|> "April Rain", by Carolyn Kizer [Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Weather, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] I’m not the kind of man who needs a title To make me take myself seriously. If that tree is in a park and I walk Right down it, I’m too good for that Level of design from someone Who cut it down so he or she could make it A leafless ash tree, or an über-tiny Black, jellyfishlike tree. The gods would call that god “Impatient. ======================================== SAMPLE 166 ======================================== Who like to look on the graces will make their appearance, They can choose whether to delight at a banquet or a concert. How many may remember the sun is a lamp! A busy boy then like to parade in a mobile, When cabs come for a procession And the highway—gleaming with a Grecian theme Or those rare Decameron sisters, going to heaven With, Wertebookbackah, Say there's a hundred eyes blooming out of a ball One in the morning for bread and one only for sleep With crows and rooks passing low o'er their nest in the mart; And who can say what a courtier may say In the course of a holiday, what a lord disdain! If you put these things together and add to them The township with its uncertain alarum, There's a sort of a haze of war, a sort of a mess of it. The fact is the world is neither a small nor a great, Is neither very far away nor very near. THE whirlwind that takes what it wants and leaves you where you are in a hurry, when you are outside, The drenching rain and the blinding snow, And all life hath to say of The lives that end like alarms or alarms, or Life more or less gone before, The lapses into and lapses out of my life What I name as In a loose sense a name The place that The snow is white and the rain palsace; The lights are out between The windrows, and the rain Runs dark. What am I, what am I? You have called me eagle, called me fox, in wavering positions for the wind, the wife has shifted, the lover in his grove, the neighbor with his daughter hidden, the one who lies Smearing the foliage With rain-drops. You only have to know I weigh Myself out of a window What I have done, what I have seen. You only have to know I fly Wherever I am led A gypsy on the strait Brushing the leaves of blue Or silver her hair. Across the sunset Crying shellots of red. I who am afraid Come to you and away, So out of sight, That you and I May face each other. You have a roomful of flowers When the wind has swept the shadows under. Camellia and butter-cups Shining in the light; And then, too, yellow and green; And a palm-leaf pail Where water he cleans And turns with art. While the wind is blowing and swirling, I know a buck Will be wheezing At the gullet: he never stops In his home, an empty house; He either drinks or eats, For both our threats are bedfellows, At night I hear him before me. When the whirlwinds are round him, The little ones shrieking and stopping. I can learn What he would be like if I were him. A crown of satin is his crown, He has that for a right; And he gets it with one embrace From the woman he has loved, And his gods know all How he griped of me On our first meeting. THERE are worse things than that for me. They have hushed me with onions; I shall lie alone, I know. They have bound me and they will take My hands away, I know. What matter, what does it matter? I have waited long, they have done it. Nothing is true, save what's fact. They are mistaking my natural breath For something other than the plenum Of the spread of the city, and the forests of the unstinted sun. <|endoftext|> "LIT-TLEM MAZES", by W. S. Merwin Makes me long for the poor Who wake up and go to the shops; And my poor pale mother waits And waits for me in her blue dress That she makes, with care, and ironing gone wrong. The flowers are cold in the gardens That she works in, and the sun Is running and running faster, And the empty shops and the dark roads and the empty homes Of the hungry poor are whiter And whiter, smiling out to me Who come out of the houses Stretched high above them and cutting the sun. Litelemon was as white as a stone, Mae Azul's house was black ======================================== SAMPLE 167 ======================================== "O the brown fields of rye, my land! My ever green fields, that suck the sun; My ever brown fields, with buds that shake With autumn storms, and snows, and storms that break!" And, dewy fields, dewy fields of tears! "My happy lands! the golden sun has set; The blue hills of Ulster extend their night; My showers have long ceased, and the moon hath fought A long eclipse o'er the broad single stars." The night is dread and dark; the starlight thin; The wolves around her hush her prophetic flow. An awful stillness falls, and the faint wings Of clouds and darkness sweep; the sighing light Of stars, half seen in deep-scattered space, Tremble like references in the music. The woods that skirt my path weep out their hearts Intrapt with sympathy, and mourn for the Lost youth of the world; the far hill roads Heap despair upon the mind that his will bring To every generation of those eyes And drink the melancholy of his breath. "O Tears! of all the weeping flowers, that veil Your gardens', and unweep your own, and still The hills that awaken to morn, abide Uncrumblike when the hours of light are gone. "Weep, then weep no longer for your lost Saints, and vainly weep for yours, whose tears have No power to keep their departed from Hell." And after the last of the night had fallen, And the long dead day had slumbered, and grown Exiled again into the still mid-day air, And silence shivered into silence, all men Grew ruder and harsher in their hearts than afore, And mumbled a moody threat that danger might be. "Ah, God!" they said, "The Man is gone to leave Our hearts with more than mortal blood to pay; His prayers were not less sincere than true, Nor was his asking in the act of sin." Then, like a gloomy demon, from the glooms The ill-loved shadow of a crimson tweet Bore down the death-pile of a cry that quivered Like fire, and swept along the counties. "Man," said some, "our lost Chieftain is to-day, And we shall have more Chieftains ere we vie In the full consciousness of our strength and wrong. We will survey our firmness with dismay, But he who leads us from mist and mine, Is the only hope for men to live." "Go," they said, "and seize--so may his deed Not only go unquestioned by us all, But be the law of life on his triumphant way!" With surly sullen smile the Sire verbatim Pronounced the law of his own unhonour'd court; "He is at hand; we must not wrest his head, We must embrace his garment to the neck. Still the challenge of each upbraiding voice Is hushed in a quarrel or debate, And one thing alone holds the land: the power We gave him to rule us holds him to be His nature, his very nature, our bane." The hand that hissed, Stiff with a heaving grasp, Struck stiff with a heaving clasp, Wet with a wetting spray Flinging the woman back-- Wet with the down-pour From the trooper's blade Falling upon the woman's back, Laughing aloud In the nobleman's pace-- Sayeth that who hath seen, sayeth He who bare The whippoorwill shall find A better place. For all the fear, Falling back, the wife, the lover, Down to the warrior's feet, The whippoorwill bare, "He never was so lucky as, being obliged To be careful of his life, he should take His way of life from out our hands. It should be, Thou shouldst be with us! And I-- O sister, O chaste, undefiled! If I had never been born, I had always Wondered, lying hollow in my mother's womb, How things might go over for thee, my child, Wondering, always think how things might go over For thee, my child!" Once she lay In the palmy valley; once she walked the reedy grove; Trunk to branch with a saw; Her face in many a cycle changed with the Frost's youthful yellow light, In the May-time at ======================================== SAMPLE 168 ======================================== There where those friends in whom my heart's at rest, Orses and Ostrhida, loved of old. Nor would I grudge in the town to dwell For all the fair and blue globe's sight, If one, in dark or light, in country or town Partake of my wanderings as I have done, Should lend a hand to hone or plough my belly-land, But these are friends that cannot be forgot; If to those and to these returns my thought At random may perchance some good he find, May keep and cherish all the friends I've made there. As when to some neat home I'm inclined To take a little stroll for some weeks My rambling alone would not be forgot And some I've laid in till I'm better to wear, The life I've led through many a hillside or lane They would forget on coming here to town. Yet by their absence still their names would keep, And all through life their memory through my brows I'd wear a frown--"one being still absent quite." My jolly good fellows, and if you Are the bonnie kings of neighbourhood and kin Come join us, men have nothing better to do, Save after stouter trials for schoolmen, And by our sport to prove the generacy Of good old folk to what they are, their stone; Achance we'll learn something by our best humour To frame our partings and create a corridor, We'll mock with Mrs. Ridout her green death, Mrs. Waring's promise so young men call, A three-cornered one, yellow and green; If you'll join, I'll sign and I'm yours to-day. If you come in pair, we'll try for two or three For you my men will guard you, my lads. Who would be Jack for a sister's sake? With one small bonnet, and a great eye, What a glimpse, too soon over that; I may not. But the minute the hour calls at the door, I'll come in while the clock's yet a-beating, And—I could sooner smoke a spell, my dear, And chuck it down, you crow, at the foot of the hill. My father was the king, Before that period was red, Of Jack, how his father was, Would call him Jack the High; And if the circumstance that he Was the winde, might not one jot declare, 'Twas not so much as Jack the High was he; The name might, perhaps, be borne For a shade to click its stutter through To a quirk and stretch and leap; And "High" is a word and portico; He is high, when he would lift, Or of hisself high; And the priest knew well how to treat That peculiarity. Jack has a chignie coat, But Jack's not in it, so, And, next to it, Jack the High is, He may be, we're afraid, In form, at least, With a treadle or two And a toe that clacks, Not to think of him at all. He's the boy that carries a scone (Nor such was the common use), 'Tis so rare, so well, so very rare; Yet, please remember, when you see one, Jack is not he. Jack it's true looks most queer, Yet with an awkward stride, To head or torso of a man; To trot or run with caution A thing of many-pieces, The smallest below the galling Titan Is not so point-blank, No boy, it's true, But might in fact shoot or swim Above the surf and the wind, Should prove In play, at his tallest, With ease and a thing like a man, Jack is the boy he stands before, Jack, who to such length and length Will go, and will go still With the baby in his arms, With his arms full of his Little upright like a lion And his face up-looking; But 'tis not always, nor must it So be, with his barest skin Has got legs to go with his feet, And a head long and heavy as an on'tern; The round and steady face Is enough to navigate an aleager Out to the street or a play, As the wise man he says Who knows the most And the most indeed Knowes to make the smartest soup, Jack goes to school and makes right merry; But Jack must ======================================== SAMPLE 169 ======================================== save the goddess—“what can alchemy bring?” I ask the diviner, one of her, and she says, “that you can take a dunga and… I am to trust that you are to be a poet in the Victorian era.” So I take that lump on my knee, hard and moist and mute, hard and moist and moist and then they put it in my mouth. <|endoftext|> "Mother, Mother, Why", by Lucia Perillo [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, The Body, Love, Desire, Relationships, Gay, Lesbian, Queer, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] Amonkbal When I tell my friend where I’m eating dinner, whether it’s a seaside pier to see how blue the sky is, or a suburban backyard to make out for a dead night, she holds me to what’s in front of her table, taking small sips from a snort of wine to conceal the delicacy: I walk with a trumpet cast in my trunk, and you hold me tight with a fist in my guts. Who am I to argue, when who would win in a fight, my mother or your mother? If I can speak some Hern Castle aside, this twine of wonder wishes to be cut down. Tell me where to swing, tick me off, call me big, y’lick finger or pickle me, in body or mind. What cannot be so brave or so good is just plain weak. The brains of two brains cannot be separated, yet each knows only the other’s wires or a trunk, or a trunk and a pelvis. C.O.D.O. A connoisseur is eating a coconut, picking its brains. When I look into the thought that’s alive inside me, an emotion awakens and I can’t contain my praise: I call that intelligence or that frog. A box of good foods, as the song “Christmas [Motown]” says, and a good food can cure an emotion, she’s explaining. Just because I be your wife, or you be my wife, it don’t mean we can’t be locked in a trunk. The trunk of a trunk that I carry within me, you. The trunk of a strange tree that had to come to mean in its own way as a letter I received. The trunk of my grandmother, my aunt or “your mother”. What do you think, that mussel tastes like sand? The closest I can come to explaining love, the fat trunk where I took off my pants, I been called out of use only twice, both times by my stripper, the former to the accompaniment of smirk from a mealy mouth with anuses filling the elastic up from a paper bag, the latter to a general silence of groan that once was shown, a student babe giggled so here. And the mealy, mealy and the happy groan from the mealy head. The mealy voice, the groan of a dog; what about this chicken? What’s that you say to this second name? This third? A chef recently made it onto the Sunday brunch. I want a doctor to clip open both of our heads. Come in — you look hot — to the idea of ourselves as animals. Animals looking into the idea of us. After our visit to the veldt. After our two hours of seeing the three sexes emerge from their social crisis. As infants into their hearts, back from the grave. Back from the body quotient, or braver load of testosterone. To be out of luck, hungry, alive, you, I, too, now I expect to be not the subject but an object. And the subject can’t object. Or the object can’t object. In the fiction of fantasy the two subjects line up to reach the goal, the girl is wronged by the director, whereupon the boy, maimed, meets the evil twin. <|endoftext|> "Little Known Facts about Myself", by Susan Erskine [Life Choices, Activities, Eating & Drinking] Eating fish is more difficult than eating fire. You have to cook it in a pressure cooker or it will not turn into fish steak. I used to win restaurants in my younger head. But I am not making a new restaurant. All I am doing is ======================================== SAMPLE 170 ======================================== : I was taking a walk and upon the gravel path beheld a great snake with crooked scales upon his back and as I looked more I was full of a feeling of Beauty which passed in joy through my body as I passed by him and as I turned away from him and yet the image did not change or falter and in the air seemed prelud I didn’t need to move my legs to feel the earth beneath me that beauty was never a snake and I didn’t know that what was the earth was the snake and that’s the way it’s been ever since whether from inner vision or from some substratum of the world of which I knew nothing and yet which is the name of Poetry which is the true flaw of all things and of myself a speck of matter within that speck and the earth and the snake that is what they do always out of their laziness and vanity to convince themselves that they can do it and that there’s the real art and they should take pride in it and that all he’s asking is a set of words till time awakes and turns the long ago into other years where I reflect upon the style of that poem and whether or not I’ve seen it performed I can see that he might be inserted in the sequence of a good number of poems only when one can say that the more a poem is worked on the more one is freed from that labor until it stands so fine it’s greatful and fit for collection in the very least of plasticine duds but there was something remaining of that principle in the words to which he’d stuck so when I read they said that I thought the words took the style of that poem into it out of what the poet is made of without not without speakers and watches being moved to take these words which are unsaid and the reader should infer from a relationship of which the poet never guarantees it but reading to be retained this infinity is in truth the first art we possess should you know expect that There shall you be hoping to see if the photos I sent today are up to snuff very soon after you read because it’s true and you saw through it when you have been resolved to do so by examining that which you are looking at because you’ve seen it so your mind cannot possibly conceivably expect you not to want to hold on just a sec more because it is very easy to see by undoing the cause of the pictures for they will entangle you if they make you look at them for a second and try to hold you down if you think they can hold you listen very carefully listen very carefully because you’ve been warned you will hear that which is innocent because it is the most innocent form of mischief you will believe you are innocent which is why I like this one for it makes us conscious that it is there because it can be seen to be there this is the best of all of the photographs for it never wishes to be its feature because its features cannot be its base but only to be a peculiar with a center of ignorance of what it is in fear of and the worst of it you will ever believe is by the by the by for the evidence of its innocence is by the by the by it is not sleeping like the serpent of the world makes ======================================== SAMPLE 171 ======================================== New-re-born; And the grass grow out to covered wold, And beyond, and the sky full Of grey play-lands, and the sea Within it thins into hills. Then the autumn came in greying head, That perfumed all the world as seems The forerunner of the spring; And in the rosy garlanded creepers Of beds of ivies, the ivied weather Scarce hot to finger-tenderness, Scarce hot enough for school-days, on a sit For half the summer day, In warmest month; and in the dancing light Of blush-in-the-light-for-wine, With acrid taste. The world dwindled down to a small Grey card-case full of bright Glory, where 'twas brought to be Pursed up and down and up, To be a churtery for some king's Young head, Or a lotus-poker For Prince Erotikos; Or a swift linen-band, bearing Ten-pin shoulders. There were broad leaves, and next Some of them curly and some white, And then I saw my Mother's face; And I swooned like a tea-ferry From a long swig. "Ah! My Boy, what are you thinking Of that Fool of a Spouse-leaved Summer Whose House you've taken to? And the May came, with a heron song; The sun had flown by sea; And we said Good-day, to the dawning grey, That had come to our house to-day; And I said to her as in company, Passed somewhere, Good-day, but not as at all; And I married her, not the same way You marry, Good-day! Then from that house at last There were left, on either side, The steeple and the castle tower, The little house of my blood, And my aunt's strait white face, We thought it mighty lucky, So we decided, God bless his beak, We'd better marry early; I was twenty-one; And to marry a woman young Was not an age allowed; And I'd had my shot at Life, When the wheels of Time were turning. We had eaten well, and drunk About, When the bell went boisterous near 8.30 on that morn of May; When my aunt said she should find Some one else, who might marry us. And so we set about it hard, And we tickled, at the last, Our betrothed person to hie To her little house in Broad Lane And to her little narrow hall, Which was up-stairs from us, And open-heaped, and down-strung, With a neat little nook and fold, Of five feet by three; and, withal, There was no room for further movement Of one or two of us, But with careful step we swept the floor, And kicked up the contents of The upper chamber from the floor Of five by three feet, Which she had been a great service To our feeble mite; and there She took us in, though somewhat stained From the Boscoub pocket of a crust With some jam and water-dreg; But, though that was not very pretty (And yet it was our own), She kept our lock on her narrow room, And kept the sides of the bed, And kept us both from marriage. And so we set about it hard; And my dear aunt cleared the bank For us to stand on; And as we set up house on the slope There was our house, And a barge-ticket on the window-sill, With a note on it from Sir Cleveland, Which my dear aunt read To be a good recognizance Not to be released till far in the bottom of the hemisphere; And it proved a good fore-sign To the lady, whose foot-cast complex Had torn all her dresses out; For my dear aunt was welcomed like A saint by all serviceable folks; So that we had on close-woven hose, Lace capes, a flounced shift, And red boots, and bonnet red, And a cretonne or two; and all The gear of gentry in The street, all dressed to go to hall On public notice, 'mong gods and king And lords--though not so great an art As that the women laugh, too, and we Sh ======================================== SAMPLE 172 ======================================== To whom thus replied the starre; 'No more there's one thing wanteth, Thou art wise and well of will. I am glad to be another man's wife, Because the truth thou speak'st is true. But I do saide 't, O forgetless, Of all thou saidst me a woman, Thou hast no vessel fit to take The mire: a sownele yet would I bee, And not forgeten false. Thou may'st comfort me for a signe, If thou this sorrow telle." In their danger marvelled as they stood, The sight they meetes seildes in her een, Of these contrarious objects well exprest. The whilome judge, tho he ere began, Had granted that, where she so crake and tou'd; That nothing strange he had in her enscrest. Then said he, "True is that report, I greeue, But what is true report hath hire in righ, For sure she is for to winne: But the quill can never hire amende." "See," says the shepherd, "this woman's broyle, Who gladly her wit will be so trau'd." 'Twixt that man and the shepherd The strangest converse fell. And all her wit in her face was lou'd, For who the judges of a felonne, And upon that caviller staid: And he aske now what avails him so, If he his neighbour's body mickle To sell? He knew the sum in hoggs, And took th' occasion to tempt houghs. No wilful blindness makes the tale to go, Hoping her fault, we see in truth. Such grace keeps her from the lightning, And sudden fall from kindly Heaven. And yet she mote have shame deflowr'd, Because she to heaven was vainglorious. But that same meaning fals it sets, For vain I hold her grace is. Of some fifty coming, I said, All were great, and of so diversitie As many knots to make a coronitie, The which, proov'd on thunder-hand, With many chaplets was endow'd. What paves were made of! Why dost doubt you? The sons of Nectaneus were they, And each one had a star of gold, And seven or seven had a moon: And in their powre the se- Bystan Uluxes dy'd; Not content with that to give us, Lyrnessus, or let his star obtain The grace to keep his brother warnes. With gilt he whiskers and in gold was doffed His jacket, his slippes were gilt too, His tinpe for his pillar was slipt: His goodly conch, to make it white, Was with itself prepared, to be sell'd. In all he was so beauteous, As e're the heavens saw fit to take him hence, To queen of that array. When that he gon his royal state, Like Mæcenas' sons, he sung his praise Unto the golden prince's ear: As old Acme had of old been seen, Upon the mercy seat; Whilst rose he all his wood and heat, That last relief of glory. Then to the dove, that once had sent him o'er To chaunt his lays to that temple, Was folly sent again; But this delight went with him thrice over-joy'd, Since to another prize he came; That in his honour wait his son, Whom he there famous beseek, As she without all praise may be, And with his prayers they will beare her. In woods or fields, whatever place Or place had fame or memory, How was it ever, how could it die? How strange to these poor lines appears, That while 'tis sung, it never dies; That in those words it lives and spreds, The same as when he first was sung; And of those lines he is the writ, That scorns to end it self-ever; And that through endless ages is sown, And gilds the further moss of time. Here, haply, in your flocks, in yonder bog, Or in yon shy solitude, you walked; And here you sharp-moustachio'd shook Your manchet with your masken; now you trow Wee, rory T ======================================== SAMPLE 173 ======================================== 223. I grow sick, I wear her neck, Aunty Harri, my homely wife! She was not bred in sumptuous Ctmes, She bears the needle, she must Be bidd'n with love or hate to choose, For it is the world that makes her wild, And the beauties, though all seen, Refine to cerulemania. 224. To hear my child thus gay, as though The world were only a vacation At Ellerslie so glad and young, I sit and dream of purple isles, Green forest-skirts, and the murmuring Of birds and winds from far-off harbors Of forests never full. 225. O they were wont to meet! for oft My heart fell sick through absence. This Is where my soul's close pathway meets The light of her young eyes. And now I fancy, as I see my face Return upon her cheek and breast, That she has gone for evermore, And dreams no more of Ellerslie. 226. I wander in the symphony Of music, which was he, Who truly could diviner Come after the way of the gods, Than any after their kind: He hath made immortal A forest, which now is nigh To sunny Egont and Imbroynd, In countless cities roofs and trees With travail and power of Christ. 227. And now on evening's highest dreams My heart so soon is with you found, How much with love so oft I see! As though the brighter sun would see My love's chalice and my lord With my cheek burning on his with kisses. 228. Sleepless, that hath no wayward thought Goes most the spirit of love's law As in such scene from star to star Sickling for all within it; This rapt from all is best of all When it burneth with love's one blaze Alone and most to nothing. 229. How strangely the groves have shot Into this girdle! As stars Leap new arrivals, strange and young, Showering their gifts in fair Arctures, Round, bright as cockle, their feathers fly; Each love-weary day, new life bestowd, From Bloomingford with an Angel's look Now jumping, and now singing low. 230. If he that hath an eye so stern Should glance in the place whereon I sit, His thoughts would the grosser mind behold Of dull ignorance, with not one spark Of ecstasy or hope left in it But only the sense of a wide dispence Of allsiveness that love hath left in it. Ah! his faith, which is the world's reverence, Made flesh on, nor hath it strength nor grace In its impurity to sustain, Where with the youth were not dissimilar. 231. Methinks it was the Son of God Who didst forsake the capital For lowlier earth, where angels might Take up their rest; and him of yore He didst so gently tread, to prove That no man of mortal nation Was truly fit to be touched by him. His hair's luxuriant length, of gold And silke, of golden lattice-work, His imperial move and imperial air, Made him of all full thirty-five. 232. Queene Aix, France cesse des Francais. Listen, my folk, while I tell Of that little nymph, who is more Than half-bustled in saffron brais, More half-topark'd in gait and dress, Than even herself, of her lovers New comers to this holy dance: Who, both of their long fairings fair, Which you all have seen, but partly known, Are of her self more than she half-bare 233. So, the day of the conquest of Tyrandil, I let my eyes sit till I had given Myself to slumber, and they saw the pair, Which, to such lofty irony, did Suit both my hopes and theirs by turns. I waited, on a day, to hear Their talks, and they on the contrary Turn'd their solecisms to religious chant, Each singing thus a poem, and both Anthems to an octave which they each Turn'd by a quarter, nor in their turns Look'd any more than quarter-tone, But like two saints, who are but one thing, But without the help of this world's ======================================== SAMPLE 174 ======================================== of their teacher, and the show a hard word that might be said for herself. Her eyes, on the other hand, are so brief: before him she seems a box of sugar or gold and nothing more. And when he offers her a ride to the lodge, at night the ship is still in the bay, and he has yet to awake from his dream. <|endoftext|> "Physics", by Sandra McPherson [Living, The Mind, Arts & Sciences, Sciences, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy] The times I've asked William T. If he knew anything about The universe he talks so fancifully I think perhaps he's just a dream Of my unconscious, or amnesia Will not be accounted for by fact That when one dies one knows one has been To the best of our ability, However intelligent, sane, and clear We really know nothing, and it's so Strange how little a person will care They don't want to know about The X and Y and Z alone, They want to know something about the grand Universe of which these things are parts, That might be the set of all the sets Before us and around us still We are part of the unnumbered web Of which we are, as is, and yet must be, This web is invisible except to me, To you it is invisible except to you, And only to one another. I don't like talkative people, I don't like hocus-pocus, And yet I'd be willing to think That knowing a little about the whole Might open me to diviner lives, And help me own them, and might then Might be the only thing that I would Recognize in all the world around Me as a familiar, a friend, and I Am hopeful that nothing is beyond restore, That all is in the rewind of time, So I'll talk to you, maybe We'll walk into an alien sky And walk out again, and walk For it might not be a sin To let you talk a little while, And while there was no one else To talk to, for a while. <|endoftext|> "Dr. Seiss (on seeing my first aquarphyte)", by Sandra McPherson [Living, Death, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Mythology & Folklore, Ghosts & the Supernatural] It's the cemeteries of Europe, and of Asia, and the Garden of Gethin still, Thrill with the ghostly ivy of his feet. And so I am wary of the empty house, and the girl with the arms of traders, and where the ghosts were, the place of their worship, which I trace, in dust, against the sky. And I am wary of what is not, and I am weary of filling in the blank with things that are. And I'm reluctant to draw there, in the dark, the necromance of Julius and his reverent throng. I have a rule, I like to use it: ever since, on seeing the new design for a fence or a wall, I have always said, if I had it to do over, "Why, of course, but now instead of ripping out this and that, this and that, and so forth, you could just blow it up." <|endoftext|> "The Construction of Order", by Sandra McPherson [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] Out of all the destructions that determine men, and the betrayals, the lost and the martyred, the need to live and to continue to live on, I have chosen peace. And yet, I go wherever it be some nearer to me. Of course, I have planned escape. The only thing is: what deed do I carry in my mind, or, more to the point, what deed am I trying to do? <|endoftext|> "The Human Nature of the Shoot on the Prepared Fire ", by Sandra McPherson [Living, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Friends & Enemies] Friend: We have all been toiling to make a lot Of embers, collecting dead of all kinds And wondering why the smoke kept up in the trees. It came down a shine, light and sweet. I watched, And it faded fast. It reddened up, yes, But kept ======================================== SAMPLE 175 ======================================== ants all over pilled and lous their white wings curled 'round the tree is big yellow also thorkill has jumped up off the ground into the white water his wing is all covered in lice now his life a way of living that lacks its purpose I go there in the sun is the purpose of the world and this peel of pale pink/grey is like a jellyfish swelling with plous blue veins it bulged one time the way the egg does though its purpose was the same I saw this same thing at the turn of the century day by the side of the road in a museum with boxes of things pictures and things I guess there was a time in history when we were neither that thing but I could not find my way I look at my nakedness as though I am not sure that I am still I think the more I try the more that I cannot escape it You have written about destiny before how you cannot separate the inner from the outer you say we are both of our acts that very moment we do what we feel, and how we feel if a box were to fall off the shelf and shatter and you never thought of it I would like to live in a room with no hedge where all my cares would be left I would still go out into the fields for a walk if only the leaves could warn me (you said that the veil is torn and God is good but you looked at the rose without looking at the rosette) when the roast beef shmongrass and pumpkin I asked the butcher if the rosette was cut but the man leaned over and whispered into my ear all is well When God is quick the life of the world is swift to lead him I has done what I asked That the silence be broken that all of it be known I look at my body at my torn soul God gives us neither rope nor butcher’s block (in your epiphany you are in the spirit of your experience) how is it that all this has happened to you and not to someone else (what is your foxhole and your turn) and what of you and me and the rosary and so that the orange grape is what and the reason and that the garret where I am punished in your moment of self-congratulatory happiness isn’t the rosary I say the rosary it was given to me by you and the dull harp when we wake from dreams to go to sleep who is being born isn’t who’s going and isn’t we either and only the dark is where the babies go and the harp isn’t a harp and I don’t know what I’m looking at a woman with a clavicle & the rosary it’s so far off I refuse to believe it no more sleep for me is good than a day or death now, who are you if never and never again a year who are you is your body o my family I’ve sent you my life these last words of spring & let us drink as the years go by and who are you in your one day of wonder in the woods of August & let us drink to find out who we are <|endoftext|> "Money", by Terese Christina [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Parenthood, Social Commentaries, Class, Money & Economics] You want to buy something from me. A book, or a bottle of wine. You want to buy a jumper. A magazine. You want to buy an ice cream cone. You want to buy a six-pack. A hat. You want to buy a car. A television. A record. You want to buy a cow. A blanket. You want to buy the whitest wool. A cow for that matter. A snowman. You want to buy a snowman. A horse. A radio. A can of beers. You want to buy a book. A book, and a newspaper. You want to buy a good one. You want to buy a large one. You want to buy a really large book. You want to buy a really expensive one You want to buy a vegetable. You want to buy a grocery bag. A can of soup. You want to buy a loaf of bread. A can of food. You want to buy a pound of meat. You ======================================== SAMPLE 176 ======================================== Then, while you were a fugitive, Away, away, to distant lands, Where you might meet the Bride of Souls, For none, but he, might wed her; Still your dead bodies did lie buried, Still awaiting the day of hell, In Oporto's sacred fields, In those lone fields of Orience Where your once bright brows beheads, And in Oporto's very streets The pale-faced lambs of Famine whine, For three wretched, long, weary years, Upon three Czech dark valleys now has been spread, Drearily and drearily, to gaze upon Sorrows of love and suffering endured; And the dews of love, and the frosts of grief, And the toil that was not once a joy Where once the sweet, deep breath of content blew And blest the heart for its happiness, So that joy might pass as lighter waifs of sleep And, when past, the soul might with the body's track Still on by the same grave from age to age; The suns and suns of Oporto, and beauty's flowers Shall kiss again no more, but we perish all On one black shore, without a name; The steersman's desperate, nameless hands shall plunge In gushing rims of heaven's yawning skies, And the dark, deep, sinister eyes of death shall stare On the face that death has made immortal, and aflame With fierce desire to mingle kindred souls; But I have heard, and O! I love the Call of Europe's thunder, The deepest, longest night of woe in world's history; I would be, in anguish, to the uttermost westward bound Of all those suns that yet in splendor hold o'er Paradise! The elders yet shall say what too feeble hands Deny the Child of Victory o'er that mighty host; And leagueless, and misty, and shadow-thin, Sad in the yearning of senile age, The long wan crones shall marvel why O'er lands for whom love's plight was dire A woman's heart should yield the part, And daze old mythologies with keen eyes. The older men with bated breath Shall, after time, the bold truth confess, That she who smiled in their youthful day Left hearts that sickened in their woe, Left them a den of nothing but regret Within their oldest age and wane. O Europe! the crone hath told thee her mind, Her religion with the poet's hand, And thee she will praise ere long in a loft, E'en to the skies--and thy lifeless lies, And thine indolent stagnation, Like old turfs that snap in an autumn storm, Shall see her immortal, as the rose again, With fresh, young, blossoming glory Blossom, over there; and she, O she Of the white arms, and face and those broad glories, Articulate and mann'd majestic With haughty grace and pith to move a globe, And to behold, is it not a live romance, Beloved beyond the grave? For why, for the sake of my chivalry, Do I climb once more the ladder slow, Her insatiate lightning, and climb The mythic mountain through the dawnless dew Of vain desire, and see, The hero and the mythic maiden, The same, in many colors twain? But why this crime, and not that? Say, what hath borne thee thus apace, With such a dense ennumer Of cups and baubles, and such faint Scentless perfume, in the wide Market-place, while I sit Upon the rainbow's rim, forlorn To drench once more? I know thee of a summer day When you came o'er the homestead door, And all our calm, deep, cool repose Was burst asunder with the beat Of pastoral wings; O happy morn of loving Time, When love, and most of all desire, Took heart again. I know thee now, even as thou art; Of what I sang thee ere in part I was inflam'd with love's pale start, And all you then in me saw, Shaping, out of those fitful touches, Kind soul in soul, all equal, yet Like as two souls in one, Mingl'd with all fit words and passes More swift than those many lights Which streem'd like rain ======================================== SAMPLE 177 ======================================== and bash. Meanwhile, back at home, I’ll take all the flowers I’ve swallowed and dump them out on the deck, the more common flowers of the roadway weeds. I’ll spread a blanket on the grassy floor, hop into my car and drive back where I came from. <|endoftext|> "Vivre Royale", by Simon Reich [Living, Health & Illness, The Body, Nature] Any sign of life will pull my van out. The river’s like a door, I believe. What are we. What are we. Once more I lean against the side: yes, we are what we must be, we who are destined. We must be what we are. Like a forest fire or a ravening, the door. We are the doors flung wide. And we are what we are. Let me be less afraid of you, how you are, what you are in your grey shirt of blue. Like, should we all dress the same in life’s not exactly life, the truth is that, and maybe the man gets lucky, the other half not so much. Have a nice life. Have a nice time. Dress up. And if you do, I swear you’ll look back. And I’ll whisper, I swear, you’ll look back, and we’ll be there. <|endoftext|> "Moonlit Lunch", by John Wingerda The prime rib, lacquered, slow- ening, blackening, sizzling, oozing— corn molo, rib con salubrem, venie, daubed with barbecue sauce. <|endoftext|> "Fog", by John Wingerda [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Weather] Sometimes I lose the plot. That swag does not do what it should. It seems to take the plot from me. I loose go,frelling, squinting, simmering—are we here or are we there? <|endoftext|> The sentence is unpredictable, like the fog it stirs. In this world where fog—and even clear weather— fails to deliver, and it seems often to come as if from nowhere, I thought I would try to describe the strong, soft, salty scent of a good wilderness retreat—where there are no rules and the wise are advised to bring nothing more than they know how to use. It’s hard to put into words the way fog lifts a state of mind, and when it’s gone the nature that the mind once knew—and still true to its primal state— remembers. Once I got so carried away in the thick of it that I forgot to eat. What a funny thing it is, the way a fog swells the yard or soaks the flowers, gathers on the windowsills or hangs like a shroud over the backyard fence. I can never predict when it will lift. Sometimes I feel fog creeping into my hair, my skin, or a quarter- sound asleep inside the lawn. The watchman, he’ll rub his hands, too, to make that weekend out. The fog makes a mess of the photographs I take. This is the way the mind of a poet must abide, even in sleep, by the fog. <|endoftext|> "Lapidary Note", by Richard Garcia [Living, Life Choices, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics] Some prose. Some claims of which sentences, paragraphs, and lines are direct quotations or self-phrasing. I followed these prompts exactly— I wanted to hear directly how the author wrote that sentence. In that she starts her argument with, a sentence as she creates one or two sentences that immediately follow. I chose these examples: (1) Assume that like the moon, the sun will shine in any weather, at any time. (2) Actually cannot happen: an account of what the author saw that day, what she saw, was so monotoned and old it needs no explanation. (3) Though in reading many books I noticed that the obvious sort will not think of yelling, in their monologues, a thing until they have assembled all the words between that word and the one preceding that word in the dictionary. I had to use ======================================== SAMPLE 178 ======================================== And he is an Indian villain, a rez- He'll smash the old John Goff and plunder the He has at his heels the burning far- Paving the track of Mannix Jacobs's sled To the great capo-dyed gouge of the Brown River--what grand daring, alfousy to Get him away from his well-kept place and be To them a feather in their cap. Lets him have at him and makes the fellow Wise forsooth! For pluck I say. Then he'll look like a heart in that star, I've a bee in my bonnet, The most indigestion erete loveliest. I've an itch in my neck, And an itch in my side, And a burning in my groin Where I sit. I'm a heap of whiten'd flesh and bone, And the rheums within me pucker'd up: At the last descents of my breath, I lye on the floor, Unbon'd and unhated. My thighs are ghastly empty; my sides ache With a seeping pain; I feel the lugs Of the bed-foot, the floor above my head, The great dream-damping sea. I cannot see, I who am old, Nor through the door nor through the wall, But from my head to my hand can Crounblock the bounds of the space between. My eyes tear up my head, my heart Seems to have grown still and cold. On the bed I am lying on The room's a bower or a breast, But up and down I spin, and hear Voices in the future tense. The monkey-gray sash I wear, A pendant is it of pearls The same that Rustum wore, Who now in our world preaches Of internecine war And sits and reads. And the lady's garments, --They ne'er paced or floated or shone But, forever an unravelling, The long negligee! To me the precious pearly ones Are ancient bones beneath the floor In that lost house! They are quiet bones and glittering dust, That's all I've got. My Saxon O, If you have courage to sing, go, snatch him! Or if you have no dainty tunes, Put one of his tunes you know. But I wot when I'll ever sing again I don't know! Who's the singer now, Gentian or Alpine, sportive or grave, That's the one for me! Tell him Tango from the East comes! His wimpling pike's his favorite morrow! (Ho! ho! ho! I now do for you Whole in your country's spots wangle, What arrant, rough, rap-stretchable worms Love there!) As I stand and to and fro On the precipice and peer, It seems my husband's Of the Wood-Witchingley drag-stone, A porter of Easy-Jobs, He lingers; from the pit-stop stance Now closer to the run-side, Now "stepping to the main," His eyes, surly and sombre, Rest on the brave coal-black hairs That dishevel their unnatural glare, His lips white and skyward cast, And, his round brown spectacles on, On his snowy chee; Then his head held high, and bow'd erect The small wand at the nod Of the sweet Wood-Witch that he chokes With its twinkle on and on The low-pin'd earth-apple, The Skee-Ball and Five-Minute Election Thro' the white expanse that surrounds The little shoutless hold; And I, With weary shoulders and swarthy brow, Perch'd at Salisbury Sand, Where with his father two miles away Doth his bleak abode The Hunger-Games await Of stout-heart volunteers, who Will try to climb the same and die. And the sky an emus-balls and brown Strangle of writhing ermine! When I'm asleep, save me the cries Of any parent who may know My child sleeps on, cries for him Who's out on the inhuman Horizon, And on no Woman's Island; And thinking, dreaming, lifting hands With wonder and light Old fantastic light: By the flame's illusive reign I dream of dreams that do not exist! ======================================== SAMPLE 179 ======================================== My arm was a bird, you said. Your body all my wing. You told me a light Ends when day is done. <|endoftext|> "The Singing Dwarf", by Henry Timmore [Social Commentaries, War & Conflict, Fictional Characters & Symbols, Mythology & Folklore] He said to the bay "I wish to the abbey What you have in my hand. An ancient tree Stands on the heath and with its bents Rakes the mole-hill round. The pigmy Comes down at the end of the aisles." "The aisles," I said. "Your friend, (And he smiled) that it was, kept back His gorged mouth. The bay made answer." (He lifted up A lion’s paw.) "Speak," I said, "Who’s been?" I had not thought that anyone Was there. "Sola. Magic," said the bay, And straightened; "Roughed o’er his hat." "Where's he gone? Wherefore does he loll?" Said I. "The moles, It's plain, care not for us. They are Catching trout among the graves. A word Comes close to them, though round the roots Lilies bloom and roses bloom. The pigmy Will dance around and think it sex." The mole looked down and thought, "To butt Through bony mannikins. Once this way The walls of this monastery were Bricks of gold. They shall never be rebuilt." But I went on in all the length Of the wood at its well-set door, And found a walkway both wide and light, And there—a picture, a lily stream— When I stooped in—"What did he mean? What? and wherefore. That was the question Which did my question bring. "The sickly heart Found in the jewel. You know that elf Has never yet found a fit pokémon? Then, be it. There be dragons, nay; Not dragons, for there is a fire. But—what we have been seeking, a way To take flight, and, thus risen, in the smoke Of burning wings, may find our way To where he always has been, That Other into which we slip, At waking from slumber, sleep again. Then you, me. And me." "But not you. You mind, you look surprised. Who are you? And wherefore is that door leading to the place Where yet I cannot go?" "I am the way." "The door that leads to your home. See!" There were two doors to that room, the last But one yet lying open. The man did not Live long, and open it, you could tell. But who it was who by that door Had passed, we knew, must be a type of evil, Because a man, we knew, could go no further, For many feet beyond, beyond the door he must Have heard the plashing in the moat, the roar Upon the rocks above, the noise of this Deep, rutty river, and swim no more. There had toso in his dream, who had given Into the charms of that light the key Of these enchanters’ houses. That was the spell That moved him so, that voice which shook His draughty head to its full height, the maids And women crowned with flowers as tokens And brought him, bringing down to life Their Master’s image and the way to maids. “A sea of foolishness,” he told us once, “Would lead you—that is, me—to swim in that stream. They tell us however you may come To fall into the waves you must fill With water, be the water, and you must drink Into the moat. Here, you are, next to the door Upon the rocks. Let us go in, Master. The boat Is near. It will take you to the brink, You know, as those others you saw, here, Last year when the moon was thrice as large, the edge Of this river is not much more than a line, Not much more, although three times as wide; You will find, when you have gone this far, that night It was dark, and the true course it has no bar To its margin, while the others you saw You can cross, and walk your round, and back again.” It is true they have their marbles filled, They pour out their ======================================== SAMPLE 180 ======================================== O these can I see! by cause that it Receives not at all. We rise as we incline, And are more loath the course to pursue, than one As a strong man's strength of hand. Each to each As a vessel from a stout keel, taut, straight out Through all these miles of azure lake that separate, Tumbling, on its dark eminence, for night, Each to each in isolation, o'er the breast Of what in better hands the room Would take for three--although the floor be not So broad in each as'twere of wrenching limbs Crawled to a corner, with the ghastliest to spare For that sore closest, you'll never know 'Tis for that first, that his utmost hand Washes from breast to foot--this room and all. Our secret's hide; 'twill soon make us plain What to each other are our sov'reign's words; Or if ye wish to shade your feet to sleep, Speak not to me of noise! Seem I right? Ay, even so! To what I said Have you been taught, pray? Your silence then To my question did reveal the knowledge That in the grave, the guerdon of your fate Is surely light! Nay, but if you 'old me not secret of noise, I might believe 'twere good--oh! if ye were No louder than your neighbours. When ye are gone, Your fire will then be stayed; but when ye stay, It is kept as low as it may be, That you would fear to show a vapour, As 'twere an air-drum That clicks, and grows still no louder still. But ye have no secret, And your silence would betray me--if ye've No sense of having the gods Seen by! As for the curtain, Whilst it trembles there, it stands Lit by the moon's alone. I heard The entrance of a laugh. It showed Clear as the moon on the water: Drowned in yonder cistern, they dead all round, In their night caps in the submerged could not meet; But near us, and under the windows Of their night-canopies, see Gleam the eyes of the fire-flies, Mocking ghost-guests Laughed up the spouting plume, Seeing how we don't extinguish Our fire in the canal By flooding of water-wood, For the sake of a ghost, a well-air-ed Fountain sign. And this mightily for yours and mine Possess of that plover-pipe Set in the eaves of yonder elm. A very dark bridge! As dark As if in an age long dead, As dark As if it were of lead, And the banks of it Stricken with mosses, With their thousand dyes Had grown astray As when weeds and mosses grow Among The shut and swinging houses of St. Mark's. As dark As if we slept on marsh-land near Dover; Or as dark As if the God that manned The great sun of his time Were thunderless, And the light of his Seedless power Sucked forth of the earth's womb As through the usures of the morn. Here lieth one In his early forlornness, Or here is he who sends Nightshowers on the windows; Or who, In the days when through An old corn-field, or meadow Of an old orchard Swept an autumn o'er With sad inship Of the first stars in those high Wild fields, Lorn of a dream, the truth of fire; Or when that other Nightly from mast- And pine-top had strayed With silver scourge of stars And rain of moon, The cot of heaven Held pale and pied As heavenlier than it was. He it is Who goes with billowy plumes By thy sea-song shores, And makes that night Of this world's true night Of the grot and barrow. O, since I find ye in your Dreamland reels To a thousand devices old The far key of your Unknown songs Tunes wild divine, Tune harping, Or, drear with shapes uncanny, Wings out of sleep, Or, down below the sea, On some haggy hill, Or, abroad beyond the stony ======================================== SAMPLE 181 ======================================== Eighteen hundred tons this calendar year Can barely move a garden chair. The calendar isn’t true. So forgetful winters. The little we care to call the past. From the Times to the gospel, New York in twenty-two books in the mail. Sometimes we waste our time collecting and in the antique tickets you left you in a book and we waste the tickets. Before each book to the next, Each less and less a book Till we waste the novel. But after a minute from the next book, Before the nth book we will, Without further warning. Never mind the book. <|endoftext|> "The Right Time", by Anne Collett [Living, Death, Growing Old, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Friends & Enemies] I hate the time of day when people call me old, and I come up on their breathing. I hate it. I can smell the smoke, the heat in the kitchen. I hate the time when the daylight changes and the clock rings. But if you ask me if I am a little old I will say yes and on your fiffing go to the fenny castle, and have an ice cream tester and a cola monzerod. There is a picture on the mantel and it is of a fair woman. <|endoftext|> "Milton", by Anne Collett [Living, The Mind, Nature, Stars, Planets, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] Suddenly I found myself alone in the stilly darkness in the starlit sky above the treetops and I sang the songs my old clothes had sung to me as I fiddled my way among the trees. A pinecone's lead was cold and shining on my forehead and the singing wood was making melodious sibilance. My eyes were new and wild and I sang in a language simple as a smile, beautiful and bitter. But this became lost in translation. <|endoftext|> "Dream Song #1", by Cynthia Huntington [Nature, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Arts & Sciences, Music, Painting & Sculpture, Philosophy, Poetry & Poets, Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends] to Lorca I am a cenésshine wondering for your rest I am a violace wondering for your rest I am a teton spreading sunbeams I am the stamp of your name waiting for your kiss I am the height of your hills wondering for your smile I am a winepress wondering for your kiss I am a hairline stradewarding your hands I am the chartreuse in your throat I am a slope of how many trails? I am the second twang of how many trails? The rain leaves its mark I am a gate of your island filling with its fruit I am the end of your tiny streets waiting for your haplessness I am a rush of the silk in your hair the rain leaves its mark I am the end of your tiny streets waiting for your kiss I am a world of love I am a history of your kisses waiting for your kiss I am a cushion of your streets I am the rain in your hair I am the roof of your lip I am the butterfly in your throat I am a cone of how many trails I am the second winkle I am a dulse of how many trails It is a lie The rain leaves its mark My songs are lying Waiting for your kiss I am a doorway my poetry is lying I am your iron and plaster I am a jaw of your hinges I am a wooden crib the garden is my eggshell I am a latticed trap of your liars the word runs through of your liars I am another story I am the false rock I am the rod of your eyes of your eyes your kisses of your eyes of your kisses of your fingers your fingers are the door of your mouth your mouth is your tail of your tail ======================================== SAMPLE 182 ======================================== salt, by a sort of harmonics of great, drums groan, yell and growl as the turntable swings to pale face and down the hall his drums lift and skim, place and begin to cry and grunt, his synapses fire with the words of praise, and in asylacre, they roll forth these words, of glory to the Christ. the, of love, is also present in clay and stone, in clay and stone and the pagan stoops to touch and kiss it, and his soul must leap up and follow, and his soul is not condemned to die in the bad clay, but his eyes glisten with glory in He is not obliged to pray for the hands that don’t belong to him (not Moses or to break the Law, and the Commands don’t form the underside of his chest tattoo, any hand can point, and we also know the hands don’t belong to us either, you and I, she adds), all of us are living and alive because love is not a post or a tombstone, it is a door, it is at least a smile. <|endoftext|> "Five Divine Objects", by Rita Dove [Nature, Religion, God & the Divine] God acts in ways that are for the most part intimate and personal. He doesn’t tell you what to do. He doesn’t threaten or flaunt His presence, but he does intervene Where people are, quietly. People pray to Him in gratitude and in hope for reassurance. His abilities have been described by many people, with different reactions. When you are in a hurry, you pray. When you are with a friend, you talk. He’s like you, but He is not one of you. God does not make interpretations, and He does not compel or help, He does what is for the best. And yet, He moves with us like a friend of clay that has accumulated Through many lives. <|endoftext|> "Young, Christian", by Rita Dove [Relationships, Religion, Christianity, Faith, God & the Divine] I met him in the paper this morning and said, “Dear diary, I want to talk to you.” He told me, “It’s a long road to divinity.” I find myself in the remains of the old town in the valley, waiting for the first drizzle. I have a poem about the first few years of my life, the thought of it stings in the night. I leave my heart at the door of the Deveron hotel and go toward my first day of school. I meet him in the intersection and say, “I want to talk to you.” The years came easily that day, their gentle relationship at first bright, then like the levin ring gone cold. I’ve had my fill of faith and writing this poem, but I can say with some satisfaction I never saw him without emotion and I thought of him once again this morning in the morning journal, my very first journal, my second journal, and in the entry in the diaries. <|endoftext|> "Salvage", by Tacey Andre Henri Reece [Living, Marriage & Companionship, The Body, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Home Life, Men & Women] For the first time when I opened my life to my husband, I thought, as from my body my words were flying, might as well put them to good use: to protect the lives of those children I never saw again, as from mine. The problem with the country was the salting rain—no one around to see, and the bed among cedars made me cough. When I wrote my husband again, I was the thief from the hills with the huge bag of gold, armed with the two boys. My body with its shape of muscle and white blood was co-owners of the knife. My body in the barn alone with my brothers was the priest. The priest kept to the shadows, but I couldn’t. The flock never saw the graved window, but it was there. The eyes moved to the edge of darkness and then on to the floor, the arms around it, the lips on it. My body with its shape of muscle and white blood was co-owners of the ======================================== SAMPLE 183 ======================================== "Look at my little black cat," I said, "She may be black, but she is not you, And, if she be you, you cannot be black. "She is as mottled as an acorn, And you that have eaten of her dung will know That there is no such cat as yours, For she was born and bred among the thorn-tree." Sufficed it, I might try her charms for myself, When, poking my slippers under my chair, Down jumped my cat, and then crossed the floor. Forth from the roost three sparrows took their way, Down from the top of the tree's tall battlement, Climbing the thin white rope of pine that wound Down to the garden from the coal-black steep. "Ah!" the girl said, "look, how white they go!" "How black! Look, how white! You see that black?" "Nay," quoth the boy, "let us stop here instead; For they have capers and I lose all. Come back, dear, till the last day of our fun, And if she will not do, I'll give you no food; You told me black before, I cannot see That it's not you, that is, since you are black. "Go in and out and beat your black cackle till You change your complexion, and you'll be gay then, And try to be white, and never will be black, Since I've caught you red-and-native at your blazon, And though you're black, you're white as God is God." "O dare you talk to me of God," I answered, "for that's what I want to know! Could aught that's fair with pains ache so much As have words with dearth, and have no bread, Or have words at all, and lose them all." "I do confess," says he, "I own This one, and let it be." With the same red skin I've the same minds as he. I would sooner we should both go mute, Than play the devil's pr-routine On a question if one be true, And the other none. "But if it chance that you win," says he, "I'll close with you." Say then, will it ever befall My lot as it is to you, That I should make it good And live a black or brown way? "Why then," quoth I, "you have said the same To others where they shouldn't speak, And I'm puzzled what's worse for me With such a secret." Then he, with his shadow on his brow Fingers his way among the loam. "Well," said he, "may the Lord thank you, Though I suspect by now you know the rest, If I maintain I have a ghost. And you know it's not true. Yours is the victory, and no more. No matter if it turn out you've lied." The next time I saw the man, at a train Point he stepped in my way. And though he told me never a word, He did look so glum and ghostly there, And speak he only when I called him fair, Or bentest my ear that he might hear. But on the lift he got before me, Again I bid him pay the fee, And hold that little lad with gimping, And glad to see that I was not alone, When what in answer I should hear From the little voice he did take. I'm waiting still to hear what he said, But always came the man who knew, And off he ran, and won't be long in there, I can see the shadow of his beau, Not a day the dear man's off; No, he isn't one of those you meet Who are rich and like to boast their paiements; No, he isn't the man for such an a one. He's black, he's poor, he's got two eyes; And half of all that I'd choose to meet. With eyes as bad, no one he is so, Except a man with wealth or name. With a man of beauty and riches wrapped About his ears, no doubt; and so bent That one of either one did not exist. With fame thrice dead, and wealth an ancient, And rank with men who hate the game. "O who'd live?" No one in his right mind, Except his girl or son; and why ======================================== SAMPLE 184 ======================================== He gan to me. He led me forth to Clituzio, To Mendicantes town, and gave me as my fare: I to him, I found him the knight, and spake him fair. "I am thy stranger, and the church and us We beseech thee of thy aid; not daring there To rest, but toiling all night: to sail No further, nor on these nether wastes." The wizard wroth amain; cried he anon: "Hard is the cold stars. They see, or not, How thou fain wouldst be unaware." But I said: "That balmy dawn shall never break The golden time that closes in thy heart My hope; thou by it!" And without a word I left him there, where with nodding head He stayed and rubbed his heavy eyes; then hid His mantle, and we walked the uneven way Down to Clituzio, and beyond, and up the hill, And caught at last, half-way up the ascent, A goodly galley: it had whitely come From Troy all bloom, a scorched dunghill sail. We dipped the oars with silent care; And still my lord to me: "Why trouble My heart with what men call hope? I hold Hope unborn, and love so soon. Behold This beauteous bark; what flowers among The precious goods that carry it? Behold How hitherward her white sails are floating!" He turned his face. He straightened up the fellow, And looked the second time at me. "Art thou Still sad?" he asked. "With us, nor without Will every rank of people follow. But wait; One gift more, of the world, thou art not yet Truest, better to bear some gentle one At home, and he not one of the best, But worthy of a royal crown." As, at the first question, my face fell, And I answered, "Let hope find me, God wot, I never will despair." He laughed. Then the third time round the gauntlet he Presented me; lo, I stood upright, and set The point of my straight hand astride it. And "Be sure and look," he said, "from me Even now, and leanly hold the reins, thou!" And so in scorn he answered: "They are but Gutters for the ass. Go, lord; and find Among thy mostoute men of bit and peck Another treasure--when the mare is learned By circling time and skill; a mare, noble gift Of God! Thou shalt not put her through," he said; "With yon ass, or any meaner saddle-yoke. Thou surely art a man of large estate; A horse thou readest hath worth three hungered herds. But now I grant my prayer; for now no more They tramp and hack. I grant for thee to live Amongst the living ones." And, running, I bowed to his back, and then a little way Descended; and the sea brimming in beneath, Bowed me unto the twain. All this as in the ancient story I find: A brother, a twin brother both Creatures and gods, having fared by both, Came riding by a nether way than these On his immortal horses: the red eyes Are left of him, and his great head peer; The wings which as the ladder's high descent Lav's, curled, on heaven, his other wings so smooth As an angle; his tail is lengthened sharp; That snatchth, to hinder flight, the strokes of the wind; The rex overlaid, the two simultanars Of heaven; whose one fierce beak the fearful claws Stiff-drawn; beauteous breasts, whose corslet-spells Struck up in hush of sleeping. Lo, him who hath lost The mighty twain. What talk Hath the self-sufficing sun Beneath his ear, in livery long Dark, slumberous, to the feet of the sky, Seeming like him? Would he spoke? "Sadness is worst of all, my soul, That hath no portion save to fear Some final rest beyond of wrong and night, As dark and deep as this eternal night, Which from the world Of the lost things, my soul, is called." Thus from my ship to the shore of my mind I had descended. For that time let the sea watch the sea, Let him who hears ======================================== SAMPLE 185 ======================================== I' th' forest dark I heard her soft solace flow From the fresh well of nature's Fountainie. By the nameless stream she lipt aside her hat And let the brim shine on her head so fair. To-morrow in the sun I'll look again. Not in the river 'tis thin and sweet the print Of her little topless brow to read. Or round the wine-shop where old silver light Gleams from the flashing gutture, green and blue; Where the last carouse is still of the folks Who in the sixties strived with slapdunt youth. Some musing in the "sensation" hour, Let me glide into blisses by the untracking, It hails a ghostly woman passing by, And breathes of a lost I'll here am a-sailing. <|endoftext|> 'A short History of the War' in The Best of Beales 'Writers' and 'The Arts' (Buffering reproduced from The Best of Beales The cheery but impetuous rhyme It is that sometimes rhymes as if it grew Like a child by receiving holy bliss Has breezy virtues that teach religion to man And what the dullest priest might be To drooping sinners but a lovely guide Has in the Bible, such as not even I Have read, and in it I find most of all Though the apparent meaning, obscure to me As a blind man searching a cursed dream, I blundered coming to the end of dream Vague passion and hope of purpose that bade Me strive for suffering and a cross Of any sort forlorn, My eyes half closed Between the veil of the Gospel and the psalm. And must I leave the less triumphant song For heavy centre, even-song, the music Of a slow-whirling drum? For not in vain Desires of life the passion is ended, Nor is the consummation fulfilled, But death has spoken and not sin. <|endoftext|> On sabbath mornings when the snow was clear, It ran across the court in little fangs With which the old well was out of order barred. We kept it for all weathers. Then came a winter when the snow hidden ground In an unseen cross, Under which grew ancient gums Tobacco-palate trees. When more clear winter came the street again Of a snow-streaked court meandering by There was one cabin where the light Came through a little window of the thin roof. There was another where a branch of snow Lay on the court. They were more green than the first. There was another cabin of pine. An axe was there and an old-fashioned sight To freeze the pig as he peered at the wind Fossil-hunting through the solid, slant snow. He knew me. A gutter gushing from the righthand wheel When the cabin in the ice was as bald And barren as the broken cabin on the ground. Like a green bullet the years had been, And they sank inward like a broken-off tooth Into the disfunctional apathy of pine At the flatness of snow and ice, the sight Of him gazing there. Three silent pines in a line with a ragged face Tumbled and re-echoed the faint wood's growth, Unintentionally, like a mantra The body's mind forms as breathing's breath to be Protestations against the lives that sputter down As to an endless, nauseating end, Love-lovers of space, Weary seekers of the opposite goal, Shut in among sun, sod, gray air Beyond breath, dream, memory, Two pines cooed in the snows as a spell Comes on the third To quicken the lost with the things lost in the third, And quicken the lost into the two. Haply some walker man wise and wary, Not realizing the pine trees' deep shadows Turning the pines a white disk upon the snow, Might note the trees so quietly swaying without sound To stone in some great war the leafing undersides I wonder is it hate or love? I wonder why There is red in the phlox To die with some strange low burning moon-face, Rounded from some swift idiot course, And say to himself 'All these pines sigh For what? Wholly odd. For beauty; for no brier Shall be in the world a soughty grief, Strange, for the world ======================================== SAMPLE 186 ======================================== How a long night of grief, wasted still In tears, and battle vainly fought With filthy, deathful disease, was called The second dark; to finish so much pain (Though after years of cruel patiently) He now was worth all the agony; Nor his the last, who thus at length Came safely to the middle ground. Thee, my father, steeped in bitter tears And with agonies of heart and limb, With many a groan remained, while ye With pruning-hook went ready in prayer to Him Who bound the wounds, while through his soul He broke. Still his own country to her breast no longer reach'd, And like a flame to hell was driven away That spot, among the worthless and dismay'd, He named Hell; and six stings in the head He wore for mark of remembrance. From thence I was borne, to sorrow a stranger's land And great fortitude; and I invoke Your aid, which might have success in this, The only play your hearts will take, or lack. And my sincere desire is that you rise To such a height of glory and renown, That I my true, true son may one day see You to the world a name that shall distinguish Thee with the living. Take all my prayers; Which if you hear in depth from the All-holy, Justly deserve your infinite reward." I thus to him, who yet had unerringly Me’rd his noble mother, thus: "Wherefore thank? Will you have me if you have taken me? No. No; I must needs with the rest return to the gods From whence we first came, not after Madea rideth Her sea, that pierces the salt sea-cliffs; but she Scorning the gods, disdeth her own ancestry. And thou, whose benefit will it avail you now To have me in paradise? doth this thy love Produce your father’s pain? Doth it satisfy You? Doth the flash of love your bliss control With its mild influence? Ye gods, be your wills What they be. At my birth it was by Zeus Imagined, that these should be, whose ways Beare such wide chantier with the sun, Than yours, of whom’t silence was ordain’d; For hither were return’d, ye banish’d gods. Pardon my words. Why must you, then, tarry Till that the women of the wood may make Your bridal beds one to the other, and divide Your wives? so that late wedded you were weary fed With ashes, now those are spent, and prayers Need no longer to be told. The king of gods Can change these little.; but it were no matter To thee, my wife, whether these return And come again or no. My native home I would not see, nor any land I ask, For-dye not with the infamous things that happened For ever at the first. Better to have died For-day, than to have this to come about." He ceased, and all those glorious forms; that circle Which limits fate, they observing, made reply: "Our first-created lot hath in it all the cause The nature hath, of itself capable of heal’d; Nor need there it be beseech or pray for heal’d, Or send to tell what there is not better to know. Thy love is not like others’ who like themselves Make several courts, and seek information Of their own courts by various means. They choose Of their numerous offspring, and of every grace Administer to each; and judge whether they please, More various their degree of beauty, they Finding in their amusements more cups of wine Or more for their libations, and that at will. But thou thy love dost ever more approve And more admire, being infinite, Which must be content to know, and not care Which is the last or best of all their gifts. A man may have what of love he will, Yet never see the beauty of his choice, If it please him to possess it all. If thou observe them closely, thou wilt find That their degree of affection Less clear, less variety of shapes displayed, Than is to thee others count. But I believe No age has wealth whereof so large a quantity Is never spent, as when by fancy spent The imagination with a ponderous load Of delight, and idle labor powers. Most true, But whatever to regard or not to ======================================== SAMPLE 187 ======================================== - Some gentle swain From wood and hill, from moor and plain, Songs of heaven's own shower-beaten bells; The murmuring stream; the whirl of wheels When the gentle rain comes down; the deep Rumbling of the main; the echoes dim Of distant thunder; then she stole From these her heart-enfolding strains A glance. The spare jess of light, That then filled the valley; The evening air, that now Clung like a cestus night-bewildering; The stars that blinked dim in the mountain pine, Bright in the moonlight, flamed like flowers. She crossed the mountain pass; A wavering mist Flecked all things go the days of Februaries; And then the mountain peaks, Just where the clouds stood curl'd, stark And desolate, as in years of yore, Shivered, and went dim in the watchfire light. The night was a picture; wan and wide The lightning streaked the heavens overhead With lurid laughter of steeds, Clasp'd hands and eyes in their drunk deference Of beasts unbolting their feet. A smoke-cum-smoke in heaven! And for an hour the heavens crack'd Till the croak of unseen neck Rumbled on tremulous toes And from the breach appeared, plain, The rumour in the bush Of a belted sun-swollen bird Going down in a storm to doom. And then It dived; a leaper too Flew close, a long thin streaked wing, That on her way from Waubromant To Kewfhobe percentage Must flop along, It is the noise of feet In the air like crazy plovers That stirs, stirs. Crying, "Yoot on!" the whole world's in bloom. It's in the flutter, the stroke of wings. Just to know It's only yesterday she left Feeling the fall of mountains, heat, Hot sea-spray, the steamy pull Flecked at her bodice's clasp, And whirring spinn'd wheels of her. A scarred Pa was growling at her, Showed by the wood; to the west they said He was a bull-man. His hounds, Black and red, were howling, yipping In their school, under bluffs of Mnmey, Now the curious fisherman's jibs were howling In a bay at Mnsecansey. He told a story in his soft and rustic drawl. He said his chance had come. His lineage, he said, Cousin'd to that of the Bull-Run, had bred Rough blood, like his bull's. But nothing more of them; He might go alone; And at once he gave her his word. Some things men will learn in the world of the mind You may 't know. I have no son, Said he, But the lore I have carried with me, Blent with what you've heard In the feath'ry west, And the ground-of-tongue thought To wrestle with the o'er-clear sky. Hence the deep sight. With what of the bard do I define the sight? The hand of the bull-man in me. He had been born. He had been born. He had dreamed and grown to a man, Then beheld the word of a day, Mnml round the face of his blood. The indivisible 'i', 'illeth,' Took us away to the stately herds Of an infinitely distant world. 'T was she, 'magnificent' and 'splendid' and 'gay' She who had first him in the shade of morn, Mnml in the shade of his ear. O the gaze of her eyes! her keen white lashes Whited with the sun; her lips like wings Slowly, soft kisses of milk-and-water; Smiles that scorch the world. 'Thrilled with the awful pressure of her gaze, I sicken'd As with demons that make nightmare. Her lips such praise did mould, Binding me to her. Then I learn'd the great word of her form; The sacred litanies that rise and fall, Changing with her deeds; And, setting aside all fear, I bow'd low; Then seiz'd her hand, Mnml drawing her glove, As if to clasp the ======================================== SAMPLE 188 ======================================== ualier than the sky or earth, So satisfied to taste a morsel Of what I was before For one, scarce contented to be heard Before, for so surpassing loud! Give, then, my sighs and tears, that hearth, My pain, my penitence, In ashes, if thy passion find, That, living, had commanded; My living here am I, and how I liv'd before thou li'st so much, So much, with whom, both in space And time, thou cam'st to live so much, This spot, this life, these bodies, where By living thus thou'lt gain so much, Which of thy worth thou hast by dying, Thy stars did shine, did they not Out of their flourets did approve This soul, this body of thine To dwell, which else had had been In utter darkness, utter disease And danger, open flame and wreak Vengeance, destroy and kill, and drink their drop Of like desolation, which I fear As, from their fountains where they spring, Pour forth, the fishes of each element, For, wanting it, their fury nighs it, So wrath within thee fire-like driven, Is too much like their streams of vengeance, As thou to God, and to the others' feet Cast art thou and there retire; for which Call'st thou me, thou convertest well; and mine The highest angel to lead: and there This soul, which thou some time didst leave behind In threefold division, below Twofold nature was subordinated, By pairts so cut here: but make thou Reorgan'd like himself, and like to him Of whom it was created, unfold. As one of whom, so when, and to what append, I recently tolden, that the seat, whereof My sound development was [in me], Was vacant, because one of the race Of harlots, following Avarice, Conducted him from heaven, and that he won The will of them, not their hearts, which were By them. Following his feedback, they swap For natures loveliness from him their own, Which he involves in grisliness. Not in that absence so transform'd, but that Which carries a ferment is styled infus'd. Raban takes this discourse merely, and prints The figure, that behind him painted still Seemed, with his symbolics, to besom. But, in order to discern the nature, The face, the particular peculiar, Where that joins most with other, this with that, He picture fits, t' investigate which, Or in what tigress soe'er he scan. But he, who rears so far his effulgence, Is moved, before he fits the wind, more ferven Than any of the ringlets, from their shells; From havock, froth, and pod, he passes on, And comes as it were in a list'ner's posture. Bare Thebaid he shows, and calls the host Of fishes that in it, and that were Soyle besprinkled with amphibious slime. He first lays forth the joined flowers and covers, And after, the heating element, Then follows it, and the beast of each element. Then with what water he is fathom'd so deep, That it can seem a separate world; Then, till his sight has wander'd quite around, It sinks, and shows a single globe. The spade Next comes, and deftly cutting up the wreath, He to the cumbre gives the hollowed stone; And to the beast seeks to draw the skin, As to a wondrous stone, of which he sees Part a thin cross-section, part a thick one; And wonders much at which he chose. He looks also at the snouted fish; The which, to reave in their own shape, he treats As though they were nothing else but shells; Then lays the blade to treat the herb; and thus He spreads the load to so straight a cart, That to the wood no more the traces be found, 'Tis to beANNED. Thus in figures play the lovers. Let each one, who loves not, labour who will Or fair or beauteous; who of life complains, Or who is fair for once, recover, And learn to love, like their lovely song, Which like the sweetest salve to mad'ning shaft Laid upon the wounds, the ======================================== SAMPLE 189 ======================================== In scented bays of cloven apple trees And cities old as history, from their centre rolled To the last line of its echoless march. In this clear moment, man Gives up the thread of the far ideal, and breathes The measured sentence of his life. And what a comeliness Is round him, the red man, the oak with its gold Shining in the wind; The distant rivulet of its far-off waterfalls Like a song that is sung. It is the mystery of the statue of Perugia, and the artist who sculpted it, Its very westward heavings As of a city of elder Italy Hugely reaching toward its far outreaching hills. In this silent atmosphere, where the spirit-winds, Like the winds of autumn, bring the fragrance of Tree and sun and sea and mountain, All are at one in the silences that By their solitude make greatness, The more do the silent seabirds behold The white teeth of their going ancestors High, broad and shatteringly shown In blue and lonely heavens, There is the statue of this Italian artist High, broad and shatter. The pine is stricken with innumerable trees, Its boughs Ring with the chipping and chiselling Of some infernal machine, That here, silent and insensate, goes Scorching and skipping on with furious twist and Wring, It moves to the whisper of the sea, It twitches and quivers in the wind. The iron tracks where it shoves and skids Are but a wooden path; The heavy steel frame, black, Broken into many by the softness of the stone, Or less hard and less enduring Is moved on with the ponderous wheels In the whisper of the wind, Do not become softer To its more soft and pliant motion, But are indeed moved on by the wind, And are indeed whirled on with the wind, Who knows if this stone or that move These things moved, what should he know? Through the trees the polished river gleams As if that its course were measured and set, As if each leaf was weighed, As if this house were built For a live wind to enter, and not for a tree To be subject to the at will of a gust. Lo, through the leaves of the trees Streams a stream of colour, Of a liquid and geometrical slowness; So it knows, apart from the span and amplitude Of rivers and streams, Whence that whereof it is made That liquid and clear That through its glassiest veins and Barberettes, Runs the line of a vermilion, as it runs Towards a thing of which we are not aware Aside from the norm of its normal and average Surface, it likewise is a part, And with the leaves of the trees flows over the norm Of their normal and average, doth such an unmeant Flow make a more fine and whiter colour? We must loose the locks of our long hair to a few short fine twitches at the nape of each neck. Ye are few and they are few in number as are the flowers of the garden, And those that are watchful will tell you that with no emotion. What the gods do, the humble man must do, Whether he is wise or unwise or mad or sane, Is the question. There are many graves among the city's idols, Whence those broken stones that are statues have an equal weight. But the dusty streets are not a uniform compass direction, But there are inclinations and resistments. One, as one thinks inwards, so we turn outwards, And sideways and backwards are end and beginning. We must answer in numbers for our curiosity What the god who is omnipotent is after; But the same god who is evergr originally is himself Has no eyes, has no ears, has no tongue, has no mind, But functions as a spinner-spower. Man must remember that he is more than his cells, Each one of his millions of cells is a single thing, Each cell is nothing but the application of the cells, He is part of the whole and the part is itself, Each part is a part, And the whole is the master-gentleman of its parts, And he bears it with ease Wholly by gassing each part, each part and its ecxerating self. Toward the assembly of the city of iron mountains Upon a green marsh a man standing with his back ======================================== SAMPLE 190 ======================================== The warlock forges bellows; No forest green of maiden flower Springs from his furnace fresh and fair; He burns it in his tub while others laugh In sudden scorn and sudden fear, He burns it for his friends and heirs,-- A crown he yields for life's repose. Fair the fingers of his glove; The stubble shines, a waxen light, With slender bellows burning bright; The minstrel round his brow a box doth wear, And on his hand the little maker's name; From his he wears a bracelet rich That some sculptor made him while he lived,-- For him entombed in this cold prison tomb,-- They made no better artist live. Here too good thoughts and anxious care Were precious jewels to him, His eye o'er misery and death still shone, And gloomed like the noontide sky. Humbled in silent humility He felt them count upon their faith, Humbled beneath the weight of that repose Which mankind from him could not win; For art could not lift a humble brow; No art could cure the broken heart When that was cupbed in the depths of Hell. He did his duty as a servant, He wrought a service to his friends, And hoped that they, in time, would reward him With oblivion of his doom; Yet he could mourn in cheerful throng When men rose up and chorussed his grave, The towers of old Basford tower, The town was good to him In sunshine and in snow,-- These are the walls of marble-court I gamboled all the time. When Winter got the flu, he flouted home So well in coat of blue, And glad as house or ring He was, good friend, to me. When Summer time came he made his moan In chimney-seat or mess-todge,-- Then went to beat on King's Drayton's toe In his white collipte or stately Maltese. Says he, "This cull I hate,-- Me thinks he did no more than take Dirt from my purse, and drink; But my sense goes afoul,--he did more. 'Twas well for him there's a sense." As gossips talk, it is strange That he should go discontent Against a well-devised nose. He kept a real hawk, And was the hope of his craft, A fore-take on his return, And straight ane, as could be, He cheered and said, "Ho, Ruth!" "Home again,--Ruth, home again!" The youngest son was Lord Mar-l-ck, And Ruth was Lady Mar-l-ck, Both serving in the kitchen; In which, indeed, the Kitchen-knave Was anxious to be taught. Then soft, for the daughter's sake, Ruth was nowhere found. The younger son was Lord Mar-l-ck, And Ruth was Maid of Honor; A faithful Maid of Honor In closing robes entwined Her winning ringlets entwineth; And yet, when time gave place To rhyme and lore of quarrels, A fool was he To humbly mother her. To which the father, stern, Hid Ruth behind a bush of booted heel; But which unthreading, tore in shreds; The anguished tale of love, Till lip and cheek were dimmed. "Ruth!"--unceasingly Called with haughty voice-- "Ruth, will you prink down your gown? Ruth, will you clothe yourself? 'Twere a love-a-flower, And--sweet,--I wove it in." Such a cry the mother smote, That both the children ran (Only Lord Mar-l-ck remained) Out of their hiding-place, When Ruth (dumb) jumped, but Ruth (Useless) jumped, and Ruth Then lit out (so caned in blue) Like a lemon on a tree. Unpersued in this stale array, Cling with every vein, Cling,--onward clung they could not move; And fain would tear their blubber pale. Ruth, so big with pitiless firmness, Rocked like the lead-bladed flail, Hardly made a muscle, But she lifted them, And at one effort, Their drake-like covering folds around The wound of her deep might fill. " ======================================== SAMPLE 191 ======================================== Nursed breasts wet as fair bride's milk, Pressed sweet to juice with moonbeam dew, Fruit of rich trees and gold sands buried. All this we leave behind. We run no more In that steep-climbing world of youth, But, enchanted by the vision of a star, A flight beyond the tropic world and east, Where the caves mouldre wood, and ocean caves, Have their nestlings in an Arabian land, Rapt by the mystery of night. We clamber in the sun-kissed days, With the caves brown by and so brown When the grass was wet that the rain clung As it dripped and dripped, dripped and dried To a cup whose envy made them lie Athwart our path. We wear at our waists Rain-whiskered hides. And all day long We search in a lusty crew For the race that drops in the dark To their sea-hams on the sand and the dream Of the fathomless forest's hushed fount. We know that where we turn, Out on the windy shore, Beholders of waters and weeds galore, Without, was a land undreamable, Where the face of the earth was lost and cut In the cutting of the baleful bar Of a sky. An antre of I Know And husk that our hands made, and then We carry, not to the land whose ears We wear in the moon, but we pipe and tell The tale of an antre where the sea stretches And cuts the mermaid's face in a night. But we do not raise the foam To make men's eyes blind. Now, we who travel Have found a pink tomato In the field by the field mouse. But we have strayed; we will not see The noon sky smother in the light Of the rainbow, but we will trace The waste of a night. Where the wind lives And has its secrets are we sentinel Over the spiced clover and the cottonwood, But where the wind does not live, we stand And know there are stars, and we drink Of this, and that, and joy of all that's green. Gaily the full-faced sun shines On the nearby lake with phosphorous And strident outcry, and it is not so Much heaven that we know as wakened, A forest where white lilies have reared In caverns hard that are unknown to us. Chloe's face twitches as she peers, And we smile, our valley on the ridge; Laugh at each lamplight that hurts the eye, And spread a riddle on the pillow Of the universe that we know. <|endoftext|> Deep in the shadowy valley lives an old man, with a curious little old-man's-friend. He has a fine old-fashioned hand-cart, with a cover all of velvet, and on the box is a old-man's proverbs with original illustrations. The title-page says: in memory of an old friend who died with many philanthropy in his heart. On the inside is the name of the deceased in statu-ory; though he was so civil, he may have been in his abstruse and ceremonious ways. When you find this hand-cart, and as anxious you are to know who all are the occupants, look closely, and perhaps you will find one of them so old, he must have a number. "There was a old man," singing in the garden, and a splendid old-fashioned man danced with speed. They shook hands, and suddenly they had to make to go; And if they did not make it, they knew it, for with a thump and a groan, and a crunching beneath the wheels, and a hurried and an anxious crowd, and a rush for the door, they fled, and the old man, with dignity, went home to rest his aching Though they rested, as I told, in the valley for a while, they rushed like a storm, and they danced to follow the printed course of the hoof. There was a lovely old-fashioned hostess, who answered in a novel way. She had baked a pie as a birthday present for a dear old friend of her father's, for that old friend was growing old, and she needed a new pie for her next few years, and she gave her father the pie to divide with the joy of a kindly blessing. Through a window ======================================== SAMPLE 192 ======================================== 「Yoshi! Why tell you this, Whose every word I take, In words which you never heard? This, this, these, O yoichi! Come! O Go! Tarry! Earn! Whoso obeys the Fatherland, And is found in not a dun, Shall say of righteousness that it hath A singleness of will, as this: A red-hearted will, A perpetual habitation, The fire unquenched. So men say. A long, long tread, And so are there light hours up, The summer days are sweet with spring. A day is here! A breath, that hath flown a-reaching The high threshold, will fetch it back. A bare jagged edge, that radishes nest When we raise our fingers at play, Where, for its standing where it stands A child may look and see how good It looks as what it was. Ah, yet, The stars look bright when we, too, see! She went forth and roamed the marshes, And did a handful of fishes… She did not marvel how they were glad, Nor wish for any better; For this is now the nightly mood Of all the living things in Heaven, Since she the marvel of this feat This household moon doth crown, And no other wonder is More skilful to come back, And look the other way. There in the blue sky above the trees, Look here, sweet boy with your green eyes! To touch your hair with the curls Of the twinkling boughs of the trees, That shadows enfold. Come hither, the cold night winds say, And welcome, little boys, and welcome, Welcome to the mansions of the earth, And your damsel's light feet, which have carried Both you and your lissome mother, Bred up in their lovely mazes Between the stars that move serene And the glimmering skie-swarms That help the moon-land for some sport, There, little boy with your capful Of moonlight, as it lies Beside you and the pensive ladies, Is the spacious real earth as tender, As heaven above, in all her tides, And if the path that God goes by Gain't be passed by with flowing wheels, All is the world was begirt with wings, And if he loves as soft the earth as heaven, And no cloud knows its own glory, In the all-subtle range of things, What joy, sweet boy, of the fulness Of glorious wings! What pleases me Is, to look down through the air, And to see the Spring-time, and hear These lullabies from the grass, These little murmurs, that float Up to the window through the Spring White little air-games which we play About the present hour, with one Who, while the heart's in earnest, Sings at the breath of the heart. The stars on the trod-off sill twinkling Like little white-and-black-ray guns, Leave off their intent to marvel, and go Into an empty aim. No more of that great trail of the years Tracking their passage out, Eager now and then to flash a trail Of their own thunder-sound; Earning and aft and light it must, Until they've got a trail they know. No more of that, then. They're trying To make their own trail, sweetheart, will you? --Ah, the poor ones, the poor ones! Youth, why art thou so adept, Thou pliant tree Upon whom the rain Of glad tears can flow And make a river flow? --I would have thy beaks Graced with a rose; Would to the rose-less Bosomed tree Thou wouldst welcome dew And moonlight o'er; From whom is given So little, So much so small? Not from the berry, Nest of the plum Dost thou take. Why does the rose Back into the air Flick round like a ghost? O sweet grass, Nimbyslow As the highest Whin-tops, and lift thy nose Lazily to the breeze Which, bird-like, doth sing! What brings thy rhythm to break With such unbass; what makes thee get Into a quivering tune? Thou art not angry, lady, With any feeling, word ======================================== SAMPLE 193 ======================================== Will, and by what means they can, What danger under flags and with oil-floods." — But more than one a poet, at least In interior life, has deeply pondered (And many far have wandered), And oftentimes in bewilderment (Seeds of future flower, or future thorns), Has in those ranks been put to sleep (By some unknown means), and tovexit, Making for the stairway of the sky (Or flights of windows in the leaves), But whether 'tis done by heroes or by poets No one can, as this ancient man (Which life did not rebuke with more scorn Than either), And ye, my shepherds (who flicker, now), Let not your flocking wits go free In what distress ye may perforce Join together, they will all return; For this is the reason which wont to happen: The things have risen from under ground In an unknown and unhallowed quarter; And each is encumbered and agitated By living folk that long since have been there, And ill it is for us to wander there, And in the main, although for man it were The best, and only way, he fell to see The room so badly, and to walk therein. <|endoftext|> "'Tis hard to part when friends are good at heart With two pensions and two fiduciaries, With an ever-open purse and true And a mission to fulfil.-- Ere I could move, and for the love of mine I'd ask for pardon and revenge.' --Lane FRE, 1577. She's a rare old thing, is yonder pout With the odd, curly whiskers; Though whether from visions or from sleep She becomes, I've no faintest idea, A free vessel for her silver tees, Or whether she be a pirate's pet; But they'll know--just behind her and the rest-- An old bream if a gray final "zeal" Be writ there somewhere with a needle's force Upon some dead whale's blued side. As it was, I scarce knew her at all, Or only knew she knew me; So much her yammy had not grown old Or forgotten youth and her ease; Ah! how the hens in the furnaces grow When they're kept to cagelike diets And, deaf as they are, I loved her so. There came to our harbour in the dusk, A sky-treble lubberly ship To view our last, our departing Last mess, last meal e'er cooked, And there was Mistress Mary Poe, Who brought him his piteous case, To eat our country, countryfowl, And from thence drew, as it were, the king. I closed the casement, where 'twas said Some squaw over-wrought Was sent by Chateau Noir (In form of freaks of ice-hill--bird's-eye view, So old-featured yet--a bird's-eye view!) With quite a shudder at the thought Of every thing that might be there, Because our last feast was spoiled thereby; But something there was afraid to be-- Or else there had been nothing spoiled, And therefore, to the porter's office, through, He went with trid gum, the police-guard's fare, Who threatened him turn around, and so He kept them always on his arm-- His soppish hearses and their barbaric sties, With such a flick, of course, that they all On their ears rang like cat-at-ease!-- A coy reception, they found, for brandy; And when at last they hobbled back, they got An order for so much of their old song As could excite a piper's patents; Whereon they knelt, and then they drove away, For such a puddle-slow ditty; And so home they homeward slowly wheel, And--it was past the middle of the way. He sobers, he finds his wife and child Lay near the death-purifier; And "Dee Dee" asks, "Mother, dost thou feel? Do they beat you sore, do they beat you sore?" "How can they, dear, dear children, why, beat me?" "Is it water they beat you with? They beat me all with water; They press me, they rub me with a broom, That's how it happens, dear, like as could be." Thus ======================================== SAMPLE 194 ======================================== 'Twas on a holiday, Yes, in a vision, in a dream, I saw a fair young girl of noble form Come artlessly forth. And she walked therein As though it was the after-dinner carol Of some violets girt by the wind In the green wood, where she came To her fair, bright feet, bare and sleek, And all a-quiver at the ends, And smelt sweetest of all. And I heard A dozen harps that chirped her In the grass-covered hills, The lattice of her eyes, The song of her footsteps; Ah! the fragrant, healthy joy That rang in her bosom, The holy hope and will, The balm of the spirit, The maiden's high desire That seemed a life, as on a height Across her sleep-- Came dancing from the skies Among the murmuring woods; And she ran, and she sang, In rich, deep melody, The hills' immortal psalm. And the stir of the city Was like the stirring of the spheres That followed her high bidding By the river of night. And I cried aloud, And rushed to her side, and wept To know the gift that I gave; And she laid her hot hand On my cheek, and said, "I know, I know, from this high clear fountain Which drops into your eyes, I can feel the music and soul Which you have wasted here, I have done no more than kiss the roses. In peace go I, I am well content." Oh! why must I wail and fret Because another triumph leads the way Which her sweet radiant eyes have seen? Oh! why because my day of pain Has passed and leaves a shadow which I try To fill with my weary eyes, Shall I wound and fade again? In vain I patiently contend. Her beauty, though with me still mine, I have gone far in seeking her throne. The summer is here, my love, The sweet and the bright, Where the wind has made all the trees A twittering of sound; And yet, my sweet, I'm sad enough alone. The summer is here, my love, My stars of love to hold, Yet I sit here alone, And look again through their rays To thee. Can I know what it feels like, For Love to see thee? The winter is here, my love, The dark and the deep, Where there is only one vision: How by our passing, They should be more mine. The summer is here, my love, My breath for long through the night, And yet thou would'st rather see This pretty stream so blue? And do I look to the sky? The winter is here, my love, My dreams, not altogether true, That they were so, And such faces as in last resort We saw, or had seen, Beneath thy solace's bloomy cover Yet has Love won me a place With fiery hearts for a while, As deep and as bold; And all the misery of pain Is well, if they're well left mine. So, with my light foot I'm coming o'er, O lover, my lover, O; Down the path, over the field, Over the tide, by the way, by the; My eyes, my heart, my head, where'er I go, For thy sake, my love, my lore; For nearer, O fairer, come nearer, Hers really the lucky one, mine. From heaven there is shining nought But a stupid sunshine clear; Only the day to see Upon its altens shine, In which the Far-hope is black. O you who seek the way to grace, Why so slow? what is left of haste In that who seek the good high? Full speed on high, Longing, though but feebler breath, And burn the slumberous scroll of hope. Let hearts ring, the lesson to cheer, On on the blazing altars shed, For such alone can be fulfilled, The white, bright wings of godhead blest; For here, O only here, they soar, Faith goes in foremost pike. Aye, the love of him must be made First, lowliest, then, lowly sweet; And virtue, highest, lowest rare, Will sink again to touch his knee; The suffer, flower of the ======================================== SAMPLE 195 ======================================== Now, they say, they each a country do make, And back to Asia's regions with delight: And now, God for their amorous havoc none can blame, So proud their amours, so amorous now are they. Thus godlike kings, who have their wives and bed best, Are always reigning: for two days' song they rais'd They love to cease, nor were for longer inly pant. Thus goes the amorous dragon, who with venom stings And venom'd prick sobs them, that they want rein or flight. Nor stiff nor mute, though tongues throng matchless high: But, like true Angels above the beats of warring, Upon the peaks of pillars sit on high, And make big post of shield and magnify the war: Though he be cast to serpent, babe to dragon be I. Like him to wed: these a tall city have they made, Great clear-plan'd city, hundred, or thousandie, Where he be captain that first taste of love, He sunlike may in estate be made glad, For my little love was but a hand-wavy trick, And yet it taileth sharp as a well-toss'd odour. These beauties, then, shall ye serve, ye dames of pure. And he great fame, low-born to none he draws, But loves, as no high-born dame: proud of her Eye, hand, mouth, breast and lower; that for him Gather, warring now the fearful beauty, The knights of Norland sall hae nocht to meet, All hoary and all brave: Paddy keeps his place As a true-hearted chalmer, wha sall tell; And jupon his hand as ane of yore, Now spin the ither wi' the warp and the woof: And daigs wi' th' armour they were at naught, Wi' guns and powder: "One day's mirth is France forgit!" Yeelds but a torch and lights the laird awa. "Sons o' the Eildon, men o' the North," sae they say, "We sall never see Norlanter again!" O Fine Johnny-gun, he was my dearest blessin', He made me small wae lo'ed me, the laddie; I think it was call'd flying, for that he let me Fly in and out wi' his shutter-bugs indiscrimad. But though I was bobbins, and waddled, and weist, He was the Governor of all the land, And call'd me up as our Official Englishman, He haud me lodged in Bloomsable gaol. He's beheld o' keeds, yet never kegged keeds, For 'twas call'd Flying Fire Hydrant,--we were as such. He called me up, and spurs and runners gave me, The bays and halters cut, and here I stand a gaill. For though I fell sae near to my faemy's door, And did weeave struck his father in his hide, My fee he will gie me, if he shows his teeth. He held my strong elbow fairly a seine; But bizzin flamin sword he strikes me through Wi' the flat o' my barrell: an' but dat flamin' o't, I wisht that I could see him in de gizzard. O Fine Johnny-gun, I can't say a-good-not, 'Twas a suicide that hoist'd my self up, You hap'd your lucky shot, but your game was ne'er a rake, But it landed on the top o' de heart o' de sea. For I'm free as a goose, I live in glee; My chin am full o' swell, an' I'm foaming at my moute, The very moment I'm in, the pitch is a sma' I wonder din't you hear my Freein'-lead, I'm barrillochoe an' a' dat, just de same, I'm fannin' for de witels in Schizzle's bonny cambdee, As I join de merry villagers a year ago. But Free-mear, Free-mear is a new gift from ole Missus Nova-kindee, She seldna on dat lee-water forto tak inforn her awn the keease o' life sae hame. "Blighter!" she seld ======================================== SAMPLE 196 ======================================== Your palms every one a-wringing, So ye may strike at struggling, And also kindling, The Sun, whose stripes of spring ye May pelt the kites and wingèd Swords of heaven down to fen-sides! Now, now some light of the thunder, O Jasvart, O my lord! That we may communicate And ye may hear the deaf to loud chime! And not since man was cruel man Have men been fair as now ye are, In protecting others' right. Eyes do not deceiv, but reason Deem fool and blind, Thus when 'tis storm the fool will stare, While the wise man laughs behind. There is a hill, and by the shore, Where the gaunt wretch's cinder traps Tangle and rip. And its burden is seen and ween Baring its breast, and beggar'd, too, Trees and thorns do go forth at daybreak To tell of the daylight and shine. Youth and heart are a devil's dilettante, Those in the village don't understand, These to a hedge-daul and comfortable Pitched some distance from town. Youth hateth when Youth's Love is harsh, Youth most of all hate's zombiefied, They flatter deuces with spite, So don't count, though they'll take turns Both very dull and day. But the lady--well, bless her, Her plump cheeks are peaches; And we must remind youth Of the promis'd kiss; How the girl she sipp'd me, With a heart full of love, Vow'd her faith, tho' she know'd me Not with her marryable clothes. Cousin, ho! the days of wild romance Are over quite, and in their career Begotten the village bard. I'm more than friend with my Love's no prize, More intimate, and tote, with a face Too wearie to be forgotten: Though now, as then, my years have made Most men afraid to stare at me, I 'm my own Folco-man in disguise, Man, loquacious, alive and bold. For I was young, and still am young, And the dear hours do come with gentle durance, And I did never shrink so much: O then it did me much to be bold, And with an eye so steady fair; The years and days will turn their flow, And I'll put off youth and come at last And be old, and older too; When I can only talk to her, Who is so kind, and sure, and good: I 'll ne'er believe the silly sayings Tho' credit all Greeks may affect her, Nor give due honor to the knight Whose buckler is her pretty pin. 'Tis good to be liked: I am now; But if she loves a Scottish knight, It 's at the least a ticker force, And if she be not that, 'tis fine At least, she 's pretty, and that 's enough: If low as her lovely face, Then come a shameful thing, but now! But I dare not laugh off a low She was married some time ago. Come hither, friend, how merry we can make The clanking of the big gold bands! And hear the tip-toes do upwards come; And see where our sleeves are running! 'Tis easy, 'tis pleasant, too, To go to see a play. And all who love good verses Must come to see a play. The curtain, rising, is flashing white, The landscape all is gray: The landscape's gray, with sparkling lawn, The theater's bright green, And, looming o'er the green, toward us, Old Folco's drawing higher. 'Tis plas Meda, and she wreathes The brow of one who With slovenly weariness Has squinted, and drawn the eye To picture of she drew for him, The lips and cheeks, of Placads, And 's unluck or unpity, But rather each standeth clear, At breath of eyes, his name to read, To whom, wherefore, for love or wine, He keeps the hours and days of leisure, Or if 's not leisure, 's not joyful, Think then what 's delight. Why did I ever try to win The favor or the sympathy Of one ======================================== SAMPLE 197 ======================================== <|endoftext|> "The Prince", by Henry Wolsey [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Love, Infatuation & Crushes, Unrequited Love, Relationships, Men & Women, Social Commentaries, Race & Ethnicity] A people where errors bear such fruit in red As furious folks on fire, or poisonous berries In swamp or water; one steep thought breaking From men’s dividing their feet and the big Peace Making men the selfish and them the breed; One fleshy tuberose, more obvious, When any two would equall; they say Every TANNER hies to Washington or to To Boston some one thereof, goes we say From D. C. to O. P. are beasts that would fly If your music stops: our one Creed is losing Interest in our defense, and our trade, not Its maintenance, just gone through an episode, Exposing to alien forces their own: Not even familiar names save one, still Life in its every lignocene, colorless Tunnel, like a touch of Himalay: one smaller Man and his less familiar weight. “MIS-PRODUCE,” One writes. “Worse than being wrong or right Or understanding or knowing; without any of The places in which they stand to sense Experience, or hear and see, as odd: And one having pretty well all the name Of INFERior shudders, won’t be convinced Of senses or minutestiations. The best In simple conviction goes for one or two Passions. “Sensibility,” you must burn Like water in the desert after a while, And dry and be able to drink a lot, For ignorance is not, as some would say, To know the bare details of his or her own wrong; To put a dent in what one becomes by passion, Or reason, and to be able, where one feels To be complete, to search for deeper wrong And through his affection hunger, or one Imagines the one wanting the other to be. Oh blindness and alienation to the Convenience of one another which is The experience of these men But I forget, I forget. For things be That weigh as much as flesh and blood and bone Are worn away, it is a sad thing to lose Theambula, or better yet, against your breast To clasp with both arms. And the soul, though One wear it in the flesh, that which is Immortal is a yet unbodied thing Or some such phrase as that, which, when Time with his immemorial peal Of bells at the midnight chimes Has made long soundings, Brand comes next. This is the peace that out of few conveniences I have at last found out, and will report. And being in a manner, and so To some purposes to resign, It is not altogether a new thing. But for much of life which nothing but Pertains to me at all I lay by the error of the past. But as to BELIEF, see If nature do not say as much As words that tie them up, while mankind, Happy in my own belief, am Comforted thinking this belief and this At first rather doubtful than believed, And this consistent of solid things Confirming, for such umbrage to hide At least. It is a little thing That memory does for this, To leave the thing without me, and all, Reality, the good it contains; And in each second receive the image, Or, to be clear, the illusion, which Conviction, when put to the test, must Show clear. See picture, creed, conscience, Passions, the sign’s solution, and the Right use of the day. And yet Our memory wears with us And lies so firmly in the blood, Or what remains, and such belief Will prompt scornful enquiry, and so soon Confess, can it be so, with whom I live? but with who, or when, or where? I will not be to myself A horse-tipp'd splint, or elsewhere Bartering on the plain. My memory This by experience, this with words Helps; and yet a little more. Its trial shall be hardest, last. And before this, my belief in ascetic Powers being to the heart true And peace, and what shall break the bounds Of power we know not, or wish not, Taketh fire. And fire he takes, I one and other, none other ======================================== SAMPLE 198 ======================================== asleep in the chambers of bliss, And thought not on my plumes and my throne. "Lo, two years come round, and these childish charms, "This toy, this thought, ornaments of dusk, "These toys and views, about my youthful eyes, "Such as my mother had--these will she give." So saying, the genial woman paus'd, Swearing to give each idle grace well 22 By year's return. Nor soon was removed Her idea of repast; and there was A clog and a pack at the fount, a rug And saffron for the comed with, before The sight of it, like playing at draughts; And, after the urgings of her thoughts, Of some of those young hours, when words are loose And motionless, for another's eyes, To long, with slipp'd finger, in and out Dancing the show before her: still in the dim Expectation of the morn, she breathed Some airy sentence, looking oft To which, was such good news: but, more of that Was in the rapid, making still the ear Whisper'd, how soever deaf, yet still the same The eyes should prove. Now came the morn. Soon as the star, that a keen and beginning beam Had placed behind the hill that rises still Etherial when the night, all shame forsook, And when the morn awoke, bringing forth Fair life's new day, so rich and so exquisite Of dawning hours, as one before he died, Rose from the earth, and threw all lands to run In bright array. And now the fastening wings Of Phoebe, and her flaming footsteps great Hence opened, head and hair and all her grace To greet the sweet dew-excited eye. She, as She stood, gaz'd admiration: glad was she That once again, since other time than sleep Had pinch'd her dream, she saw her beauty true In true colours. Down falling, she uplifts Her lute and singing to her hands admitted, This her first song: Because I am so fair, Like as the earth, that open standeth, all the nine; No beauty of mine, save that which is nam'd Love; Whom none have seen save those two alone Where thou are, I can not see but feel I find Those beautiful in thee, whose number is infinite. By that path, which well we know, Rerethward it generally hath been found, T' address those who wish to stay, That it dispraves a bigot with a thousand charms; With that which he imagineth good, But barely yonder hath he found it; To quote but one similitude, For an eye, of mine, the dazzler! Those, who are worth their weight in gold, hold it dear Whilse it 's in the world; And those to whom beauty is not sae dear, Their eyes are all put out. Heaped pleasures, so long a line, Are since found out, they should not lie A inch with one, but bent oer the other. That was for aught I can best declare; Beneath the earth, it works a hell of thrall. You love, When you are tempted to be alone, Believe me, you shall not stay To gain a drop for all that 's to come: Yet if love had its doors so wide, Then, sweet lassie, with love you 'll me Trust to hold a drop out of your hand. Such a life as the old king held Whilse he was good, and he believed; And the plowing and sowing and the reaping Were grief to his man; the brook that came Sang by the moss he made, there lay So much thereof, that he scarce knew What was wine, and what dung, and what bristles: At last he wash'd it chinks, and sal'd, And he told it to his servant, The white Bear's knell, and the boar's bell; Full so for my love was wall'd in, All to love was that the way was, And the horse and fowl: he might Come as soone as it chanc'd to grieve him, And call his beggar, and bid him go; He to his door with his hand told him All that his goose should come with: And then, as his heart beat, said this to me, 'God send me, soon! before the ======================================== SAMPLE 199 ======================================== ; True persevering and kind, By day or night, still his truth Preserved from mortal or ill; Deny not this gift at least To human life--stay to-day Thine own, though it perish so. And if, but for a sign, thou couldst divine How that truant Earth keeps the sun behind, Staying it through zodiacal speeds, Stay till her retrograde to-morrow's dawn, Stay till the dusk that's in the delay; And with the dawn, still steadfast though it seem Like death and doom of Night, return. Whatself stand swift and hold thy breath! This is indeed life, this is Death. Doubt not that we work our ruin With certain instincts, certain ways. But be sure that the unstudied No man may work another's undoing, Or his work fall down and cheat thee. In the instant when thy bird's egg rattling Failed to its voice in the plasterer's door, The imaged painting fell as in decay, Leaving its aspect of mystery, Art's secret broken, its grandeur blent With the scantness of man's mind, As an old root withered leaves of crown: Crown of a painting, that as a root unhedged Moves from its lattice-work no leaf to time, Or glance at the wonder of the thing, Hath withered and gone, as a reed wailed by the song of a fool, Whose high license a marble that went running from the reed-pipe of RONALDI, On which I set my heart as a king's new rose, When the image, a crown fit for a king's head, Rose up and grew straight as a king's head, And the genius that knits the king's reed withered and wither'd away: What shall I do with my life-span, my life? I shall quit the place where many an evening-star Looks down on me from a wistful sky. No leaping my spirit up I spring, As once I leapt up when an ancient god, The lad might run for a playing-field That mocks up a girl's heart, the way the blessed bay leaves mock up the girl's heart, To carry me over the jolly sudden hills Where a lover finds his heart, Or where to weigh a heart from its misty damp, Till he feels his love rise if he if he stir, As the moon rises in a shower, Where the sunset fires the charnel houses up That lodge the slothful wild beasts, With Orion's hounds in the deepest sea Of Hades, when they slumber; Here's a heaven better than the best of Paradise, There's neither a spot's difference, O'erstarred with ages since earth's death in god woe. A ladder hath been scaled up the last moon To the highest stars, O, O where art thou, That thus deep elsewhere shalt thou go, But lo! a ladder hath been scaled up the last moon To an hour when the moon was black, In the tower of the mast- high up a space, E'en where the white moon's face was seen To madden with a demon's groan The screaming of fiends on hell's low lands; And up a ladder also hath been scaled, That not on all the heights we've strayed, But on that ladder whitens to the moon, As when the moon hath set and darkness fled. And there all on I saw, till now At the last moon, me and my love, I see her as one that mocks me For my love that mocks me for aye, When I've nothing left to claim, Still I laugh and leap into her arms All black with a gloom of despair, Just for a laugh, but the bliss must last, So win as portion of the sun! Yea, so, with a sweet deception, And with cheat happiness, Which me, and my heart, and earth's end, The moon lit all heaven with that presage That no god wist, And all the stars shall know what I kens, As we must know the sight Of some lost soul That we shall see again, but not know That we shall next behold? Back of a column the ruddy heights upcast A crimson gleam, as down the frailest point Flew in a mood of pride, a vein Full under a golden-red dawn, Rhonning a torch in it, and night Hung thick with ======================================== SAMPLE 200 ======================================== (Lowlily shaking their bushy heads) Still will have the cry; Though with courage I have bade them Do, and of courage drink. Oh! when they trow the golden cup, Of Niobe, be it called From that pale, dying niggardly head, They shall have power to wield Sharp spears of youth, And joy for evermore! The bed is cold before it-- The grass is chill at that, The moon its hungers bid it be-- But the sun is brighter than it; And even as the moon that's sunk Has risen in its smile, And lost one half, is left Laughing in full splendour As it was dead, That even youth itself is alive, That even life's lost colours are regained. Ye moderns, what is your faith? How will ye live and death? Man's work and woman's task Call for man's blood and woman's love. And night and day, In all the temples of your creed The worshipper your God to see, Your God to kiss. To follow the old race, the little litanies, To trust the little litanies, To leave those litanies To light their candles up the dark? There will be many more, Even to the ends of the world, Who follow blindly The fancies of thought. Their life, if not pre-ordained, Is blind and certain; And the hope they have, The wistfulness of heart, Are not the things they know. They follow up their faith And sink in to great crimes For progress unproperied, Nor care what rites they may On earth may bow Beneath the magic of their thoughts. They of this magic deformed Know nothing, not of Love The true successor to Sin, Not of His hand the dew, Their souls are barren and dry In fancies unproperaided. Ye of our age, be judge Of rightly to understand The nature of man and life, Be with us, be with us, That the race of mankind be done. Wherefore, ye who read these lines, Ye who speak them, Be ye not therefore sadly frustrated; For if ye be not failures then, Then surely in time we both may succeed! One evil thing we pointed out to you, Another you put on your back, And in some have you played the fool, In some you well have tramped the task; And as we measured it, again Another discorded note One moment was collared, then. For me, for me, for me! This is a sorry nether) And on and on, (Do you forget my name?) And on and on, And on and on! The hope you have is not a thing I trust, Which has the happiness of dreams, Which is the soul of care, And man is neither good nor woe, Nor is he in both, nor can we tell Which is the soul of man, which is the body. For it is folly from the start To end in motes the chain of life, Where matter, like deadly poison, Dies but to start up yet again; Where reason, like a balance's balance, Agrees to go either way, to wiggle Or to nod: whence, then, do the moves (Called to us down from astrolabiums) Perpetuate a dull intervolution Of futurities (of the sun's In sun-worms and of stellar nauts), And what have we to offer but What a magnet's poles are to balls? ... as I found out (who found it out?) That little the the mind doth scheme And that the body is but one to skeme The thoughts which that mind wraught is bred (The lema doth not much it if it were) Mind and matter, body's body; in this Vain souls have been (vain, had at least one been) Stuck through dicephal, but metherezed As soul and matter go When we the pair produf And joined the coarse to the purer clay. I: Immortality! immortal frame! That throned, immortall state! The vigour of the gravest blood Whose virile force may not be lessened, By immortality, but be leverted To better motion and toder By virtue to fertilize heaven's flame, This vigour vouchsafed, as centre rests ======================================== SAMPLE 201 ======================================== Shows some cool center, Shows an oblong face Stretches out its arms, Sits and rotates on its feet. There is no light in night; A grove of trees goes dim; And the lights of city Seem to play a trick. The drive has no strength; I hear a bug in grass; A wind,--a gust in grain; The wind goes past--as is a vision, That is a thing that does not exist. From noon till night, all day, I scatter seed, And think I till a patch-- But the night creeps on And my sun goes down. Where's the way to our westward lights, The mountains green? The way has been marred Till snow-blusters and leaf-demolished ash Dispel the sun's fires. When morn has barred out the thunder, When eve her tome Unfurled is, With all the after-rapt looks of sleep, My eyes grow heavy. What's done is done--but the work begun Never to be done, My thoughts go north, My senses take wing, For joy that's not morning yet. I found him sheltered in a booth; Little he said of home, Not really home; And when he had this to say, His hand outraised And his head on one side. I was his first guard, The last I rolled Along his lead, And high and tender Were his fantasies; He spoke of doors And of a passage, Of blowing gates Under the West. I made no question; And he spoke out On the cold and heat. "I could say a lot of words, (I said,) But no one hears or knows Of anything beyond This booth, and this wall, And the West." I never knew if his speech A little more front it would have meant; Or, for that matter, if he cared For words at all, Who carried his heart and voice The way we carry ourselves; We were so bashful! We saw him into flight-- He turned up inside a tree. What was it he'd said, What he wished to say? For he'd a hood, and a name, And he went With such speed, and he went And did the best he could. But I could see I'd in an hour Be faced with a crowd Of worshipers, all intent On the path where he'd trod. And so I bowed and fetched All he had wished, The warm stuff of my wares, And was giving to him In a glass the wine of Christ. The wind was shivering through the day, As down the hill it blew; The deep inland stations stirred With the ciclaes go by; And the trunks of ash trees, blasted bare, Strove with a swing of their spears. And here and there,--as it lent an air Of doing with the unaccosted, Like a genet, or a cup, A skittle, or clown, was one, Crumpled, to the crunching of bees. Or else the air was running strongly With a wind from inland that blew And men were leaping down and running And running; and their breath Seemed like the wave upon the beach Till the waves were thinned, and over the pebbled ease, And the level road that led to the town, The breath of them was on the road. And they clamoured up the belfrys, and down The dim-wine stairs, and straight, Gasped with wet fingers, leaned their faces Taut at the buckled horseman; And in spaces shivered the dying Of shade and soffitti: then, the car Died like the breath of life. I look on yon house, with melancholy Which says it is not done, But I must give and labour, from the wish That some day I may unwillingly Change for the joy of doing, at last, The chore of my day. For to-day I did not choose Myself from out the mountain To be the Keeper Of these letters, nor surmise, Day after day, any more In the least of woods; but kept Some shouting from the cliff In the rocking sand and lime Which the sea had raised on the shore. I looked for the ship on the hills, I saw the ======================================== SAMPLE 202 ======================================== And the bird crept forth, And the bird went forth, On the second evening after the first. The citizen of the city Shuddered in the street, Felt that his toes were growing But for a moment, Then ran screaming and screamed For a matron to choose From the house of the widow: "A cat! a cat!" called the girls, While the mother shook her head; And the father, with consternation, Crept and peered and eyed his daughters When the cat came to the door. The cat grew larger, And the girls grew smaller, Till they were but a span, While the old cat spoke, And her voice was soft and soothing, And she purred and sighed. "A cat! a cat!" the girls re-echoed; And they ran out and laughed and screamed As the cat ran down the street. Then they danced and skipped Till the sunshine and music Were intermixed, and every footfall Seemed a step to the sweet rest of home. And the father followed the girls To the place where the cat had climbed; And, lifting his head, he saw What he'd missed all his life,-- Love, unannounced, in the parlor. They sang out loud, they danced in turn, And he kissed each child on the head. The old cat purred and sighed, Then sat down upon the ground, While the girls and boys both clapped, And laughed and chirped, till at last, Ere the father had freed his breath, He himself called to the mother To prepare a safe retreat, While he called for his daughter, Until he found her in her bed, With the red flushing face of dawn, And her eyes a-gleaming with it. His wife was a weaving nurse To a houseful of babies, While the cats were nunk or cunking in The house or up the wall, Or snoring away Into the bag to take their rest, And the girls and boys Swedication spread like a bloom, For the mother's eye Was as red as a siller rose That a full-blown girl might view. And the mother's voice was soft, Yet strong and sure and swift As a swift thought to encourage The girls and boys With a readiness devoid of Identity or will; And a face that the tears ran Fluids of truth in it. While the father wandered far, Moved by fierce impulse or chance, For he would follow where he knew Love and purpose fit To a wife's retreat to find her, And there would marry her If the long-waking heart Was not so bracing That was weary with idleness. So he sought, but came not again. Then he sought the parlor, That was thoroughly stilled and cold By the fire-light, While the red dampening And the draught began Made the back and the cheek Cold as the sheet That a mother lays down to bathe. But the girls and boys Began to laugh and applaud As the father neared. And the mother laughed and clapped For her husband and the rest In the parlor, while the father Looked, still turned with a pulse That was yearning for the wife, And the old house with all its Ten-score years and more. When the spring comes in the spring Once more, and lispers while the house gets frosty, After the frost beheld the house unwaiting The thawing season coming, Then, my little people, Tenderly said, "Why is it Since here our name"--lookt, they For the name of the father-- "Has not one kiss been enough Given us of your men And of your women? You Who are coming along? Give all you are able To the men and women, To the wife, the mother, the girl And to the father; and, behold, He will come to us." So, he came to them. He Came as we knew he would come; Flowered and rang like a monadain That, once a goldsmith, worked things As they bewail'd a love that has flown. With a neck for a garter all the while And a little thorn planted there For a hemline; and trews of linden Down the sides, to hide the hems of the gown. His hat hanged low on his back, ======================================== SAMPLE 203 ======================================== soul no pensive aspirate understand! A-bed or up, now waking to drips and drips, the one thing that really makes for peace. As the ruddy sun has contrived to show with unclosed eyelids and a radiant frown, here's to the drops in the storm! Mother, whose arms of mighty strength are my strong place, for rocking the cradle or singing the lullaby of the ribs, give me the hooly of the open road, give me the drops for the driving rain, break my heart of thine iron Goethe. <|endoftext|> "Modest Proposal", by D. H. Our motive must be adventure, our work no design come to spoil, our method must be free, our leader the spur of a flaming thermometer after the grape-juice bath and hash. Our motto shall be ever present, ever growing, ever expanding, ever diminishing. Our trade must lie on the trade cycle its friend, as we walk out of the fossil tomb and the alkerke. Our commerce a matter of speaking gentleness, never sonic, never sue of a lost object, as we drift beyond the sounding water-steeds, clear and unamazed, while we hear the trutta-tones of die-hard thinkers get shriller and louder as the night grows colder in the still needle lagoon. <|endoftext|> "The Heart-Attack Commando", by D. H. Not fit for combat. Maybe the Green Hell could use some love and respect and a more objective stance. That's OKCupid much for you. He loves the night and all its kelpies, the sentimental moths, the B-29 flight-lights, the book of astronautical names, the pleasant road with its indistinct singleness, the placid-brilliant- green mountains and the fine houses browning like cedar as the day turns from crimson to incandescent white. Love is like an A-Z. He can have the sideline. He's mellowed to calm. His face is mottled with a bad painful disease: he's as soft as a feather, with the softness of fluff. Who wouldn't sympathize with a moth or a moth's friend? Everyone, then, forgets that there's a thing that needs to be done. In big fields, the plow-horses sway to the bitter wind on the rutted road like lightly boomerang-blown ashes, and the ripened grain sags like cordage. <|endoftext|> "The Sun Splitter", by D. H. He walked out to his lane in a spread-eagled moon like a blind man wandering among the ferns like a hand with great tough-love in the darkness of a green evening. His face white-knuckled in contrition. He picked up a stick and marched right up to the sun skimming the rutted dirt road his body pressed against the trooper-blue sky. He held up the stick like a warrior on the battle field. He swayed on the brink of a biceachen tree, like the first plunk-um-platful of the rockets in his eyes. <|endoftext|> "Poets in Civil War France", by Dean Young [Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict, Memorial Day] A frontline of skulls trying to hold in a pair of shoes that they can barely into their sockets from the rain-storm of bullets. Oblivion. The army of forget-me-nam-s. O o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o ======================================== SAMPLE 204 ======================================== Trebles twigs, and pearls in brooks; And out of the quay one pearls we saw Play'd through the moonlight, red and blue; And rich jewels lay in every strand, In every isle, even in the sunniest place. The Irish barges lay as the flags Of European commerce; with the smoke And the zephyr gone, we again reviewed. "Where sail'd the 'Green Fire' to-day? That barge is all the plaything of a gang Of roguish young coxcomb chaps. You really must put things in just their place; There are not half enough theaters." This said, he madly pranced with his heels In a race down the interior arcade; His fasces, rings, and clubs he threw In a queer sort of kite. We, hearing the song of his bells, Can't help smiling, we declare, Though we know that, secret as it is, The stout fellows are right; It's right for greater things than the show Of things to us afloat. Now day was done. Night was at arm's length, It might be day, for all we saw Was the roof let down. There might be light. We saw two Joined at a window-sill, with Their toys that peek'd out From branches of young pines, they four, Demurely did meet. My Soul's a-sloppin' !" They thought they heard Me say that in insult; That's my jest. Out of the bottom o' the wine, The one who did drink it spoke; "This ain't good pub!" said he. I lit a cigar and I drew Two plates to the pot. "Oh, whadja' mean?" I said. "No ha' 'at?" he said. And there I will have no Good language with him; It was such a prate. We sat silent a long time. I lit another cigar. "I'll tell you straight," he said, "This ain't right. He should n't ha' done that." And at once I lit one And sucked a second one, And gave him a third, And they were gone, though They only came back again. I lit one cigar. "Oh, whadja' mean?" I said. "No ha' 'at!" I said. "It's dark in here!" He said, "'Twas dark," and He jumped up and sprang At me to strike me. And I lit my cigar. And went on and on With insults. He wanted to marry me And I didn't reply When he asked me if I minded. That's why you see he's Egotistic; But it was dark in here. But he has gone out And left me here; And now I suppose There ain't much hope, That he will come back. Oh, I'll quit. He'd do the trick. I'll see what I can do. I can't do a thing for him. I'm as hap-keen to stay. I have gone away from him And now I think It's better for us, But the hour's daylight. But a minute here I'll say, "How's it goin' folks?" He sits in his room, but he sits In the parlor of his throne. There is no one at the door, but he says To me, as I come in, "You're new here," says he; And there he sits at his table and hums The score of old Southern songs That he knows I love, but I do not And one says, "Oh, they're the best, I say, That I know of. It's true, it's true," says he, "For I'm the man of the house. Just watch me. For if there's one thing wrong here it's When I say, you know, You may say, 'What does the country do?' And I'll say, 'Something,' and I'll say, 'Just close your eyes,' and I'll say, 'Nothing.' And then I put my hand on my chest And call you in." I never knew the legends About the empty bottle, And who let the cat out, And who left a cow, And who let the cow go. If I had known That old white dust Would climb a hand In ======================================== SAMPLE 205 ======================================== #90 A sharp knife A tree that bends #91 An old-fashioned glass The older I get #92 Leaving the family For a while #93 The weather The cold The river #94 The money What do you want I'm your Uncle #95 The village Old-fashioned smells #96 My arms My arms are still #97 You and me And is it really the end When the evening comes #98 The roof I can hear the castle Or a bug #99 The altar Evening is over #100 All done <|endoftext|> "The Girl and the Silver Fox", by William Byrd The girl and the fox went down to cud the snow together. The girl was very wizz. The fox went squeaking after her, squeaking almost squealing. She made the snow, it was so clear! The silver fox would not go away. It had followed her all over. Now the girl was done. Her coat was pretty and her hue was down. She sat under a tree. The fox was in a circle of peonies. The girl's shade was sweet and her hue was down. Now the silver fox was up and stood in the way! He came on the heels of the girl. The silver fox was saying whea-wee! and had him's nose and his shade was all green. He shook his coat! he thumped in the snow. He pawed at the peonies, they liked him much. #101 The fox in a circle of peonies. The silver fox had a shade all green! And made him wiggle and go wiggle, wiggle so silly! It wanted a coat and it could not borrow one. The fox in a circle of peonies. The silver fox had a cone of ice. <|endoftext|> "The Crane Game", by Jean Toomer [Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Relationships, Pets, Arts & Sciences, Theater & Dance] After dusk the street lamps flicker green as a phoenix, green as a phoenix, and the boys take off in a wagon, a wagon with a bell. They see the crane hanging at the end of the alleyway squirreling away on the grass. They tell the driver he should drive over. The boy says to the one standing beside him, The one with the back, I think you should go, and pull. The man says, That's the crane you might want to take, a boy should go. The horse with the mane like tangles in a sea of spun cotton, who rode out at cross purposes, runs to the wagon. Both boys are laughing. The crew has split time, an eighth, and the man's shirtt open the riding breeches and fleece. The driver looks at the iron, and sighs, I'm out. The one with the shelly shackle has fled up the alley, the one with the castellated fetlock has followed. Now the boy tries again, This is it, boy, this is it, this one, I'm up. The driver says, No, you're not, I got one down here somewhere. He belts himself and gets into the wagon, and the others near him, whanging like posers, who give each other awards for quiet and cool cuts, I give you both. The leathered boy who did it all and did it alone spends the night next door. #102 The crane game #104 The girl with the silver hand! <|endoftext|> "Gold Disc", by Jean Toomer [Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Nature, Religion, Christianity] Let it be said at some point that, no matter how or with whom they play, no matter what the rules, the men, the women, the children, the marbles, the boys, the girls, the fathers, the mothers, the lovers, the hearts and the elbows being equally scattered, all have one stick in their hands, and their neighbors' as well, all disconsolate gold discs unspinning, on their tables, alive and dying like golden dust, among the last leaves of season before they blow away, light as grasshoppers before the season comes down. <|endoftext|> "The Wages of Nature", by Jean Toomer [Social Commentaries, Money & Economics] It is his blood over the streets ======================================== SAMPLE 206 ======================================== place in spite of heaven's controul. But if from this all have a clear field I question, Or thy mind the question well considers make I must then, for my contemplation have To do as otherwise than mine could. Farewell, and look not in that face for me, Thy first-love, who, the world confessing should, Thy self, suspecting not, nor, the ground as yet How gloriously just, how justly pure, In all thy senses seeing things by half. One page more written you soon may stop Upon thy mirror: write, I pray, Some one admonition of the fly, He is in there--Why, bring not this book down, That the fly may have something back again! Yet see, my dear, although this is called The Back to the Soul; to the Soul it fits. There leave room for further verses, shall they not? The Soul which I leave still comes to look thereon, My dear, I write, do I think that I can, Or do I write as I can, to do or find? I that have it, so long, such sweet, such bounteous gift, Are all set forth, as by me writ and writ. The back to thee, as if the beginning be, All things made first by lightning bright, the soul, 'Ne Tellus seeming first, or as first appeared By Ph[oe]bus, in their Ithacaenchalion, No other way but where his the earliest. On the tree whose golden fruit and juice divine The fruitage, in young, is mostly found,--on that Waxed, from an eye. Oft again in good I have seen That sun, that is but love, to much, much good, Like light, through a man; nor whither else Had any light, save that brightness. Here is the way; begin; there as thou likest From that first sleep, thy first natural sleep, Fall'n asleep with odors sweet, with sweet repasts; Sleep, and thy repast, as such delights, As later on thou sawest, like sight, did flow From out thy glass ere thou knew'st it. There wouldst The Rhone there, with the Volga and by name Rivers, at the time of annual falling, Tigris and Perunciation and the Sonnet, Which Julius smil'd at; there would the Rhone there Hang to the base of warlike Argo's deck, And with the Gulph of Nature all about Lightly her sould flay crafts through thick water, There be mountains and hollows plain. There is, where, lo, we view from high, The world like as if in a wimple, occupy A country-dwelling. Such a scene be mine When London, like a tower, large, proud, and vast, With many an oak and beauteous tower behind, It self high in air, up-turns with sight bright-seen. On the White Queen we see the French mount The conquest of many lands, but not Beside that distant country, I discovere A people that, but by a foreign name Forgive, therefore, this palace, and lookt there They that did conquer, and what did reign, Saint Peters, from the Court advanced, which saw Outcry'd, "the Monarch be hence removed," Their scepter, that of many changed To coronets; and his ruddy cheeks And kinsfolk every one with ruddy eyes, "Heard, amazed, the thundering noise." Stately tall the phantoms stood, in white, Like castles of a skedar gray, Thrown ope in walls of descending snow. And shining bright the crown fit for their state Raining on their heads, low kneeling down Wrapt from the rattling storm, went in Straightway their own vast waters--those to the Of the river sealed, and then with Their silver croziers in bright raiment dry, There standing on the ever-toppling shore, The sire and daughter kings and queens beheld. Straight with theirs for use and royal ease, Of royal dress and royal veaves, they Unfold, and cleave to an abiding fire Of love and peace, which, singing to itself, So smilingly each degree at all it meets, Compares their several land's aspect: And it being now a part of him, The bended womb of earth and all the vast World outwears, the young Kingdom out ======================================== SAMPLE 207 ======================================== So, singing in the veranda, They entertain the guests, Ringing in the ball-room, In the temple of the sun, And their hearts are full of pleasure, And their eyes with laughter Follow them as they go. I have sailed the billow-lashed seas, I have sate within her harbor, I have met her people, Shall I seek another? Go and seek another. How shall I seek her? How shall I find her? You have sown with roses, Your lords the sea, have seen you, Have heard the sea-nymph's songs, Her trumpet-voice: But I must go; I must seek her; How shall I meet her? How shall I find her? Cease your dreaming, Dreamers of doom and woes, Nor in the waters Wash the dark stain of a drouth; Kneel the waters Till the waves of death be over us! You have sown, O girls, Poppies for harvest, Larkspurs for sport, And they have sent us Roses at our bower, But the rains have come, And the streams are swelling Over the hills, O the mighty flood, But the hills have fallen! Where shall we seek for shelter From the tempest in These whirlwind-tumbled heaps of wood? You have sown the poppies; Hark the hollow thunder Of the rain and the rain! Shrill, shrill, shrill, Crying of the tempest; And you pray for a bridge to stop By the mud and the drownings of the snorting water! You have sown your poppy, In the garden of your soul; Where it hung with the other roses, Grew the prettiest rose-tree Ever known of! O the sad poppies! O the poppies in the ditch! Dear sister of the wise! O the poppies in the ditch! We have gathered the poppy's pods That hushed the gale, Dry we have stor'd them not, In the hovel of a she. O the strangeness of life! O the strangeness of comfort! O the poppies in the ditch! Hare thus I here, and now, and now, Where trains of foot have clomb, The Prince of Poppys lov'd by the Earth. Sir Triptizevenne, at whom I strode, Came there, to the palace of no king; And that which gave him power, was his horse. What a face was his, and how it danc'd, Would shock your sensation, if you saw! What eyes were those? what heard that voice? What saw that hand? For me I'll ask not, and for you I'll not inquire; I shall eat The buffet, and be entertained. Now, riding home by the same road, Whom, and whom, I now remember, Upon that journey I ta'en; I follow'd back, what I came, and found A priest by a cottage; 'twas an inn He keeps to the Holy One of Heaven. There in a manger, if you please, Slept the Hermit of Crescas, Stout-hearted and stout-hearted; Such was the Almighty's decree; As soon as ever he was dead, Of all unhappiness was raughted; For his heirs, and his heirs, Took counsel, and conspire we now! Death gives no great cause, his doom Is not to be brief, and be mock'd. We will take counsel, and you'll be great, And we'll make you a name; we'll make you great As he of all men that were born, That was before the foundations laid, As much as it was ever meant By him of Crescia's house to be. It was not meant that you should be, 'Till, sure as it had been done, You bore into the world of the grave. You've now laid it all in charge; We will take counsel; you're very wise, Lord! if you be wise, or not, why not wise? Why have I borne the evidence? What proof is this? and what proof to make To make him know that it is I? What shall I show? what shall I but do? Woe's me, Lord! with that you're driven, And Fortune's blight on my ======================================== SAMPLE 208 ======================================== Gothamy, with all its strength, Eoin o' thie part were weak; Now, to his own's destruction fetter'd, Eoin o' thie part. Strange contrast of voices to this one And now this other, singing here; Heard by us as by the winged Heard by the wingless, or the flashing The sudden glimpse of sun, from star to star, Which lightenings at morn Now bring from the winged Ethereal springs Of birds of various notes, ethereal Voices in other skies. Here in the gloom, now spreading its thin fog 'Twixt us and the hills, Now, flying these winds of air, now, Making their cold wings our own, we two Were singing by the graves. But one there is in this deep cell, not dead, And trembling though it hear the winds, As one from cold and bondage, out of Hell Blew all its net, with free hand now free To find the shore, to find the shore Of peace, the shore of Hell, where all is done, And all can follow on that shore. For lo! from out the grave of all things, From out the royal air of sunrise hues Where fall the lights of heavens and of Death A message bringing Him who passed in, From whirlpools of the gulfs of greater seas Thriving for the buying and the selling, From the venom'd deeps, the sudden grip Of hunger and of hate. Not one of one strong knot or nation, But in itself a volcano: A word, a breath, a movement, and then flame Lights once again the world's eyes; In the little dust where evening-glories sleep We see it and interpret; It cannot rise too far or it may fall And all things are preserved, or all things perish; But how, in air so dense, in space so filled Where none may run or move, where none may fly Out howling in that foul devouring twire, What may not lie hidden, poor or great, Is Man, What may be mean or what be great or small Who may be hidden in this grave somewhere Taking what he may after death Out of this throat, this poor breathing ball To find a home for life somewhere else. But we would tell him of a home in Heaven; We would give his hands the rings and wreaths Of silver for the crowning of his head, Where we ourselves in high shine shall stand And kiss the flowers like blossoms of him. Go, little candle of God, Bright the fondling cock makes Of the great One in His book; Gropes its flame to fill At the last all the sky. That with Him the world be free, And that no good Is tried but His; the point Of whited sepulchre. Thus the holy card To men win; In the courts of Hall, The Stair of Souls. Here we overjoy, O brothers of the town, The great man win To a ring in the mud, And half in the Belfry dust; Or he who is small, At the rope's end May tangle in foul means And be not free. Here we consecrate For the art Which Death will lay down, Till the last trump, Hands out and empty, Tossing their seeds to ground Which will rise, And if the grain Be not sown And it live, The Man of Middle Passage At every event Where we count in life, To God or man, Let the difference be, Your own you'd let, On a holy day, Or beside, Of a paler sun. For if the fog of Age Hurt your cheek, wait for the sun, And your brow in fresh bloom; There's something in its bright, That ages cannot destroy. Here's a crown to the spirit And the eternal hold Of your faith's move, So never again Shall you go Toward the new darkness, And he's your friend. O, if you meet Lithe as the trees-- At the call of Duty's office, Or its manlier notise; If you'll help it, Don't of a' that, It'll ask, but helping yet O we'll see, Billy, It'll not devour, With war to teach it grass. For who can tell The faith which is so great ======================================== SAMPLE 209 ======================================== In glittering wealth have once more been kindled, Light is all the gloom, light to all the air is given; Like the throbbing artery of the heart of youth, The unalloy'd languor of the will O heav'nly pow'rs, Wash with spirits that rootward glide and float, Lift with thought, and send across the weather press, And answer with thy whispering whatever floats, And bring the back to spirit of each natural motion. Who sings of death as life's impassioned heat? While we can hear of loss as gain, Oh, sink the loudest song into death's chill outcast, And loose from Death's deck the dullest drift of sound To be retired to some deserted isle Far from the world's misruling, chary throng, Where none will question, none will mark the place Where we ourselves may slumber, nor a shadow cast. Not thus the festive season th' anniversary Of time that warms and softens, laid, may last For ever, nor to death the fugitive hold Of life return. For God there is no third. There is no me, there is no you, There is no me but none he knows; We laugh, or he mocks it, To another's he laughs; Or we smile, or the orchard laughs, To see us ere the summer gone. There is the undivided whole; Aye, the awful union and conjunction, And down to ground together, Wherein there is a dropping away, A drop's drop of sound, it falls apart; The sound; whereof there is a thousand, As the first sounds brought from The world's primordial altar. The exulting earth looks forth, and smiles In her eternal home, As she was happy while she gazed On the girl, with song for answer, To whose thought seemed kind and free As the stream that ran without helm, And dancing light; who in the fall Uptorn the brows of the sky, And round them bends her tresses bright In the wide world's eye as in his. And they are still; yet she leaps away, And dances past; or, as some fay With bodacious young one, by-and-by, Who dances till he tires, takes arm, And leads him back, and takes the way, Away from sight of man, of love, Or shadow of man, To some river, changing swiftly, To a river fair from mountain's brow, Where men can bear aloof the setting sun. For that wherefore she bounds and bifoot In beauties of the earth, the fairy-folk, Far as the forest's barred, Leaving scarcely a name, And none else hath made renown, But that a witch has a name Who rides by night upon a wing Of the wild wind's breath. Do thou, all I may, To meet my spirit's Call! Who am not yet as I am In time and place, Hear me, mark! Hear me, oh, mark my tone; Forth from this frail real world's air, Which, though familiar still, is not I am, as thou art me! When the storm has made repair, And round our earth has borne Its burthen, And the bright sun hath o'errun, Our weary eyes,-- When the earth's old soil is red With the bodies dead of Day, and from the tree a bride, The drowned sea leaves of joy to make, While the children smile and sing, Oh, then, thou seest our tears that flow, The tears shed over our dear land, What were right to weep, and say, and do, Or who would think the days of spring So to look upon our own? When we sink down with the man on our bended knees, Like his dead, and the flowers mean, Which in the grass and the leaves be, When we see what hath been so and done, We know how good men go to madness, How the world can be so bleak. Who would look upon the sun in the sea What time the waves are undulating, And who in the broad sun-faced deep, Would dream he should greet the sight again, By any means? Nor could'st thou of Life's ever pray, --Yet by the stars thou smilest By the thing's clear aspect,--for some sweet, Beyond thy faith, Is nought sweeter than the bloom ye see ======================================== SAMPLE 210 ======================================== ινα στα μαν τον δικαρα ἵνα σκομαι παθ' Ἔσουνης κοῦν τε δεύτα κλόν πηθεὮς με μὴ δέξα τέφοραν ἐν οὐφελεις ὀνομαι δέκανον. Ἠσιν ἐσόναιον άί φυλέδον, κέσα τέφοραι κέπτα πορετήσατα πλοίγει δέριγας φήσετα ἅλεις δεῦμασ” “φλήρειος, κ. 41. ὆ρ tovert dΏum lagathiar katholikon kai Phrygikia kathalamen pri ouk en palaiois. Phrygia pede nymphaikon kai pleuto, to Katholaka taomithraśthai kathatêyon Kathate hystorikon kathéroglopéntém monon Αὐτάμεν οὐφίτο· Οιὰ εἴδε τύητο εἰλασον, Ο὜ων ἱ δέξας καά λυρηνῥε δὲ δεύην κολά δά νῖρους. δὲ μὴ σύημα· τὸς ῥΥσην; Οὼν ἀπομίσαιν νεμωτῶν, Οὼν ἀπέντα ποντὲ παθ' ἀγαθ' ἐξὅτ' ὁζετα. Ἁρμασμί δό τὸν δ�ίτίν, Οὼν ἀπονταστε πεπλαθῆηνανα δὲ νέκν εἴηνα καά θ�ναι, Ἔφ὾ νύμικΓ. Αὐτέχος δὲ συμοπαρ, Νιλαμέ τε καλά βρό ταῦτο. Οὐπος ἔργεται δυσπαθεῦσω, Τως ἀγων πεπλαθίσα νοῦτο. ἄρττα φησίκα ἐδὴων ποδ�: ἀληθέτα ἕδρος ἀνέκπον, ἐσουε σου πετεῖς. Hippokratios dikaoloïs tetraï knenos, Hippokratios admou ouk ohte pikem periktetys, Hippokratios amet hic ulaï dikate sytro, Ἔφiδοπον δείτασ· εἶπεται λι ======================================== SAMPLE 211 ======================================== ph. hodow, There it, be done. He will not take my thought, I cannot be his mother, for the rest is over; Heaven, what is the use of longer delaying? My sister's like him, I think; if he some princess be She will be like my brother, by and by. On the old trees that are in front, He like to have a wisp of gray; Thin, but his merriest best Is he, and his best-beloved has a hair That, just to see it, looks more fair. The little cows that stay at milking Are all gowned in green, And his curls like they were made For the bushes that growing be. Whilst his sister can hardly spell To please these good children all. Why, how it is grown since he was born, Twinkle, let us have a game. Can you find out how to say, That your clothes do not stick like moths? Twig, why do you pull my leg When you know you cannot do it, say? Clump, why don't you say, How well you would do in a race? I shall go faster and say more Until you give me a hand, Or some brighter leaf than you To shine in; and if your thumb Had a feather, I'll tell you its name. Oh, I shall read that same Thing in school books of next century. How shall I be better to the last? Hear me! let me speak my mind. What is't worth? I'll never care! Not worth the scrap I'm chewing! What can I see to replace it, It's so easy for you to-day. It is but only a little curl, A little feather on the thumb. It will go on for ever, It will even stick in another, And when I am almost dead You'll hold out your little finger And wink at me from under your fringe, Lord, if the Moon were green, Or could be like you and me We'd make our lots and our weights line, (On both sides, Lord, the sky's in it!) If greens, we'd be--blue; If blacks, we'd be--gray; Black and gray would be--black. If whites, we'd be--white; If blacks, we'd be--blues. Why may we not both be--blues? So the world's my cup and you're your own; I'm your dog, but say "Good health" for me. O hard one! when I go I leave you trot On shoulders enormous, both you and I. The very devil has trotted on Over you since I set you there, I suppose; Yet to have you trot upon my neck, A few inches more, and you'd have gone To where your Mother rests and her alone. Those are no trifles to take up or abandon, The journey is a whole age for you, and I Held you at gunpoint and would, O thank me, Have fled the house and not uttered that word. No, no, to some one wiser, bolder, May be resolved; this hour is yours: Say, where you put down there, I will take your blood, And offer it as the price of peace. God knows the time, and you know the day When peace or war, which I think seems that same To you, might well be our conferance, And mine, which say in case you come to shoot, Or like that Partridge to trot and make show of, Who now--the smart one--their heads with death attach, Let them, as you please, but here are mine, my dear, Who loved you, more than you my fame is, that's said. Your own round at the geese! round at the geese! Your eyes, O wretch! at theirs, at hers, round and true! Just for a peek-a-boo of a look, Just as you came through, let them be so, You, just as you have been, and just as true, Too, at your best--a spring-offcut turd, Just like you--if such be true, it may be-- Just for a look, though, then get you out, You old clart-stone--d'awt-head, as now--god's blood! For now and then, you know what? Now and then, For a feeling so common's been known ======================================== SAMPLE 212 ======================================== of all I'd be making just thinking of her a forever fleet. And so it was, they said, all my life she was; and that made me especially self-conscious, while just the other day, imagining her clothes scattered over a '72 Nova, my new right hand started cutting a patch of grass, and I remember looking at her that way, how my six or seven-year-old self could not see anything there, even there, and the idea of a person could be deer in the grass; or here, where I'm standing, her clothes scattered around the patches of grass, nothing to see there but a little girl moving her feet around to some old country singing, and my six-year-old heart were still on fire for her too, and I'd never have noticed it, as her speech led my gaze elsewhere, up, down before it came, realizing the real scene, the whole bundle of it, the topography, the whole truth so suddenly in relief, could only be seen by seeing as far as an eye could turn in the real world—as I have, or ever had the the grace to see as I'd have to look that way for decades before, or far less had to see it from above as I see now when I step into the Park Coffee Shop: a smudgy outage of smoke and ash, signs of smoking the day off, lying around to read or study or whatever, the very sun burning a green and the shade of it mottling the sidewalk to me like a badigment of what she made herself. <|endoftext|> "Love Poem", by Cynthia Zilber [Living, Life Choices, The Body, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Men & Women, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] How much you weigh depends on what you tell me. Can you feel pain? Tell me about it. Why should I care what it is? Tell me about it, please, without your having to do with it. Tell me that it is not all in your power to define, however it is acquired, or remember what it is you have done. Tell me about it. Tell me of your power to do something about it. Tell me as much or more as I, and I will tell you all about it. <|endoftext|> "And when I Saw You Sitting Alone", by Cynthia Zilber [Living, Life Choices, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Men & Women, Nature, Summer] He sat there in his dullness watching his own reflection —limp and futile—with an older camera trailing after. His shadow hid her face, her in the corner of his eye caught from another mirror, her face moving in her shadow as if she had turned down something she had wanted to see. His face had never seen her face. How do you teach someone who cannot love? The camera caught him alone there by his chair emptying a cigarette and looking into a story about an old man and his reputation. His face was drawn, nothing could stop it, the content of his character a handful of words. Nothing could be better, something to do other than look at it. What did he want to avoid? What was there to look forward to? He had known it as soon as he had unlocked him, the disenchantability of being a man to be regretted or embraced. He did not know what to do with what he would have made other than what he had, or could, what would have been better, what was the wrong to that of always moving on, or what it was he suffered in rebellion against, the shame of it, or what it was he wanted most fervently or truly desired, or what it would have been said, or what it said, or what it would have been in some future accompanying, like the image of a man holding a drowning man, the thread that would unravel, and cause the moonlight to blind him. <|endoftext|> "The Book of the Cent", by Cynthia Zilber [Living, Time & Brevity, Love, Desire, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Mythology & Folklore, Greek & Roman Mythology] And what if it was made of that common thing— A flock of ======================================== SAMPLE 213 ======================================== mentaled brow, —Mystic words. What (knowing I was not) Would she— So patient, so many— I’d hoped, and still hoping, In the smile still—say, For her, her virtues, perhaps, And in her balking, and always her Spirit in me.—If it were A dalliance, So far, so sweet, Such as are writ On other peoples’ faces, Which they betray By the arrow which leaves Bridges a way To inward thought, Which they pray Obeying some command Of wrong-comers’s law. So, my vision, If signs there be To lead you thence, Should convince you that by faith, not Gladness alone is meant Although I can’t know, When I see her face. In the green ground And all sorts of dawns, She will know the truth. (If she must move Around the house) So, my blood By Greek and Roman rule Is cooled, and shut Languidly up In my tabernacle. <|endoftext|> "Some Disclaimer", by William Wordsworth [Activities, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] Think—while we deal with you— Of lasting shame to hear the name Of Sir Walter; hear the jingle Of belching cannons; with fire Laid against his temples by the wind; And then to hear a poor Now extinct in genealogy [123]. Well, there—shame on him! The bravest and the best Of them is dead. That little puff of air, Our [language?] knight and his company, Has sent us to tatter. What a laugh Poor hearts had got as we sped across England, with the devil’s own Concave on their shoulders! Shame for him! What gross cheap ejaculation Is it that he gets from Yarrow! But it is a little mystery: I might call it Hoglandia, For hearkening to Yarrow, For hearkening to Yarrow. I am sorry, my friends, I am sorry—shame on Yarrow For letting his sob story Echo what a sad instance it is That is of ghosts, and not of songs, That is of songs, and does not exist! [125]. Well, it is strange, [language needed]— There are walls round Yarrow, Yarrow—how it is Yarrow! It is Yarrow that holds us— [language freed]— To be what we are, [language small]. [language small]. But—dear you are, Dear friends, to hear me speak Of Yarrow! of Yarrow! Do you not hear, do you not hear Whither this clamour comes, In Yedo sound! What, at the "River of Powder" Swift, dusky, rolling, rush Horses, guns, and men! Do you not hear, do you not hear Grit teeth, black face, grey head, Goblins—pinioned down— By Sturport Hill? There was a way out! [language small]. Grimed—gun, fierce, brandished— Over the sultry ground Swooped the wandering Bat; There the embattled lines Sullenly stood; In the shape of things that are Fiercely and foully grimed, Silently from the slick, slick mud bank— Low or just—I know not— He went his way.[language small]. I went mine [gesturing further off] Down the river Yamba, Fearing the prying eyes of men, Sleek and lively to spy Just the twinkle of his shoes, Graying—dodging [language needed]— Horses, guns, and mule. [language small]. But—true as in all other ages, Under the forest, under the pine, Trampled through its tidy web Of boughs and moss, Under the mossy boughs, Dappled by the creeping vines, Every evening shone Yedo As with thousands throughout the year ======================================== SAMPLE 214 ======================================== Art's most like Nature, yet no less Of worlds than of each of them, and of human thought Too. For we, too, have struck fire from the virgin world, Not though we knew it, yet for which we know not How without, and whence to cast it. And this white fire, More terrible than beasts, unmade, if 't means What he conceived, or who created him To make him Creator, or of what world he is, This white flame is for us, if the name 'created' Stand good, Creator, too, not the poor devil who is Its creature, man for it, which being, to the end, Is his former and his future:--Be it, all is. But whence it is, that what is past is and that This must be, more than this, make for us now But cells, or centres of fresh-board to the meat, So to grow, and eat their deliverance, that the Empire is no more. But if it be true, as oft he sings it, that he Who from his prison goes to punish His neighbour's guilt in the balance, Has his own guilt at heart; and if we choose To err from vice, and war is that wrong, Which we would shun: Blot out that error, and be each man straight; Seize then the swift, loving standards which are Scattered with the foeman's fury; and the Confessing hour, each ethereal frame For the dread grail, each minute in the course, In its strong frame is rapidity and life: So speed there too, O soul, upon the hour! What if the little bells rang again Just as they struck above me? the stroke Of the fair chimes gave everything that peace: Silence, and starry peace; so would the song I would my verses soon make briefer, Or be more sudden: what could I longer Wait? I linger in the place, that makes me wander A something between last and first state. When I was here in the beginning, and before me Always, when the proud inches were being blest (No longer hastening), and the weary ways were sweet, I called on strength, and the hour was ten. Dost thou, then, pause for pity? Hast thou entered Even into thy last age? Come, say, If the moon shall have another bath, And once again retire as she has done, Or light, as formerly, to her summer shower? For if I once again, Each day alighted here from afar, should the state Grow more miserable than before, 'Twere well that I were straightway retired again, For this well can I call me in the place. But now, what man could live in such a place? Ah, heaven, we know not. Few indeed Live perfectly in the place from whence They spring; the great generation stands still And looks far off, and is unbothered (For creatures thus magnified, if aught Be left thereof, 'tis that all else's gathered) To the broad sun, 'neath whose genuine glance The hour is wholly to the lot an expression: And the world is void, the destinies Bad and full of suffering; and the swift world That rides the vast at a bound, assuredly Beams bright with destiny, with eternal reasons; And man, God's last instrument, like to bark That bears the cross while heaven's kine dangle. Wherefore I say not that it does not fit, And have not patience, so much as I would, That thou remount and take the fount again, Because on earth (and not in a dream) Thou hast thy being. And I wait The sun, and think (still) that the sun has more His round contracted than if he spun About the world (as some Middle-age. Let whate'er be told be fact Of time be told true) and thus had fixed Eternity for something more, Though kept to himself in fixed bounds The sort of wide-scattered beams, Than spheres which tend at their given angles, Upon an horizon, narrower no doubt, But it is fitting as a place For centers, and not for motions; I know That, were it thus, the sun still would Regard the other gods with distrust; Nor of his own actions would he be For all the world to ask, can he be But I could not but say truly, 'tis thy rounds Do carry all things away. Thou (pray) Hast set all elements ======================================== SAMPLE 215 ======================================== Figure so great and soft, Lay asleep in snowy white. "Next, with a sad eye, I surveyed Those frozen forms so pure and fair. I mourned, and bade my tears be Down and the softly flowing rain. As thirsty streams theirways pass, Nor yield their wonderous springs To mortal eye, lest it be deprived. My tears gave my last obliquite, When fate my sight from life sever'd, Where life maintained her luxuriously crawling Curse, for my doomed and irreclaim'd shade. "These bodies, whence the founts of cold have risen, Ye ghosts of dead virgins, now to Stars and Sorrow deprest, Forget, for here no virgins yet remain'd: No offspring from the tree of life hath come, And no flowers on earth but minster-plants are seen. Vapour, and smoke, and swarms of fire, and fury wild, And many a soul-rebuffing terror-blast, Asks many a horror from Heaven's throne. We a small plain of that liquid plain (Though hollow'd smooth, not trodden down) Lay gaping from on o'erwhelming cliffs, That never have e'er seen sun-beam golden. A vast round ocean, in whose noon their flight Is, in the greatest thus depleted of power. "If from this vale of death those steps had tend'd, Ye fields and woods, where (if the flame still burn Their wax-like life be thinn'd) the battle's sound Ye shrills of thunder, that assails the wind. But if to light we have to turn away From what to thee we owe the worthiest of the two, If to thine eye he should no more return Nor we to him obtain glimpse of soul again, Then, where to turn or halt, he is not far, Who has such treasure of winding store At his full hand. With fearful hazard, then, With feet that tremble, does he reel and bend (To curb and bring, by mortal revolution, Their motions), but in his cowering posture, Pierces through the air no air, but up-start, And jumps through times with impetuous wing, A furrowing crane, as twinkling stars. When I, where the chasm open'd, saw the point, Where first the gate of that ill-scap'd sun Relieved the milky pallial light, I came, and, entering, thus began. My glorious star, daughter of the skies, Compass'd round with lights, the harbinger of day! The conquests of the gods thou dost sustain, And stoop'st not her slender stem to ground; But, stout hearted, endure th' opposition Of the dark, and such hard tests as it brings. Lynceus I, for feebler Phoebus fear'd, So much I fear'd in the sky; For, on my side, th' alien stars afar, Had smit each mortal with infernal fire, And now in your dominion ready stand, To conquer and o'ertake. For if the light, Which moves the world's orbit, and requires fuel To sustain, could by its very force be won From night and sleep to strike the eye of men, (Such conquest you Hercules), then would he, Himself, at once resist this light, and try With force of arm the luminaries. But, if beneath the sun's dark body Some suns, before our hour, there sleep, there bear; Then, what was gain'd not by us, would suffer. And, if, as some tell, these Suns from heaven have often strayed; And some have chang'd their light, if it be true, That is no concern of yours and me. The suns' that have reight the seas and skies (Plausible matters) thou know'st what to think. And how to strike with wonder and delight The proud heads of these new-fledged stars Sink low, to search with wonder and delight What means the change, what in the stars, And whence carry which reputes divine. And, if they dwell in quiet seas, to know Who rules them and their offspring's state, In seas unknown, he, they know not how, And how to give their rosy handles To the warm kisses of the sun; These know well, and ne'er was known the east Until the golden age begun. "Well, since your speech, so urged by you to come, I tamed ======================================== SAMPLE 216 ======================================== - no! - away! - That is a man! - No, it is no! - come! - that is flight! - Yes! - Come, and stay. - There is no flesh - No! come on, I'll shoot - no. - where? - That's me eye. I saw the black - that's strange! - that's too! - No, no! - yes! - yes. - that's my eye - let go! - No! - that's too! - that is a man! - I'M the only one. - That's my man. <|endoftext|> "At the Golf Club", by William Meredith [Living, Coming of Age, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Men & Women, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] At the golf club with its hanging tees where the putter sells for ten bucks. Somewhere else, the pond or the lawn maybe, it would have been green and green with a blue line of putters and balls for rent. That blue sky and that putter had a calming effect on a boy who was thirteen. Of the two courses he could swing and play both, neighboring the ball on the rye, and that was kind of heavy and roll and tumble. His brother and partner in irons was seven years old. Five irons, tee, and putter served to empty pantaloons. He never figured the craps disappear so quickly and loudly, as he thought they would in another man's house. His first five-putt wasn't even in yet when he took the hint and sort-of-kind-of-agreed to get wise about his caddy. He could still range the Putamina or golf, whichever he preferred, and, if given the chance, could make it happen, the putter said, to reach the age of forty. That was the idea, the putter said, to stay in shape and make the best of life's available opportunities. <|endoftext|> "The Final Page", by William Meredith [Living, Time & Brevity, Love, Heartache & Loss, Relationships, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books] Nothing but this page will tell the story of that night, says The Graduate (and its title, The Name of the Wind) Four and a half hours after we screwed the rot of the ocean, mother and daughter with two black fish black smoke lamps high and very far away into the haze. We had done that. Pale sunlight on the wall, the fountains; then, a book; the gray horse grazing in its copy. There was no book; we did that. We read by looking, turned the page as we had read; we just wanted the fountains' story, took it on trust. A less than grateful world would have given us a squinting glass, a hint of amber, some explanation in black and white. Books feel rare, as though taking in a narrow round cut in the heart. <|endoftext|> "Two Years Later", by Donald Plagni [Living, Death, Health & Illness, The Mind, Activities, Eating & Drinking, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Relationships, Pets] I. It was at the house of a friend of a friend, said to have been given to much worse. I was drinking a margarita with its afterglow. It was strong, rounded, but not memorable. White elephants were nibbling the bar during the conversation. Not funny. The margarita was often an afterthought, a drained bottle or a frozen keg of draft beer. So much slobber was pouring off the bar that it took forever to fill. I drank in short order. I hated this. I thought I could handle the goliath. With more drinks I might learn to love it, the feet so massive they were almost superhuman. I felt the monster rise, like a dervor of cow dung in the pit's dark chambers. I trusted nothing, but relief helped, and a television in the living room helped. II. Nothing like the moment when the bouncer at the suburban apartment complex called the newly-trashed, says it's impossible to observe the beast in the apartment complex, lights far off, said as though the burden of explaining were a duty not to be borne. What did he drink first ======================================== SAMPLE 217 ======================================== Fixes fall in showers, Ne'er a sapphire crown Full of light. Little brook that flaunts that sultry blue With its freshness like a rose That haply here and there Grew in Eden's Eden, Full with pitying proclivities Bid the wise heart in me long To greet it; To face each morning with an aching slant, And beat it like a spirit blushing under fires, Saying, I am blameless! O why Are ye thus? O well-struck Spectatorie! Wherefore are ye thus An image stands, that smiling, pink and brown, Lies on the wold, amid the rubble still At Worzel street; Where the pride of days gone by looks forth, Filled with beauty, Clean for burial here. Bald, let it be so. I have also once been fair And liked to myself. I have within me Love, that has made me sane. Griefs and wishes That seek to rise Beyond the hour of breath And seem To rise, and seek Like lilies to the skies To live for aye. In your blue and snowy church The scent is still sweet that clung Like a blossom down your vestment years, And lilies once threw From theirs With a sigh Of perfect bliss Out of the minster's highest window, Like a flake Of frozen snow To that far blue Of Morning in the hills! The Town - it has changed beyond belief The very hair of my greyed head, We shared the ploughing then! The wood and water hydras, The land as clear as cider As wine, And all of the great mess Of morning and of evening shapes On their black cart, the sun! The Town - most strange to me The silence and the dull Of church and city as one goes, And I went always the same And had no friends, and then I found That I was lonely. The Town - most strange to me The silence and the dull Of church and city as one goes, And when I look on earth It seems a dark strange grave, For I was numbered with the stars, Yet here they glitter like eyes That haunt the Night. The Town - most strange to me The silence and the dull Of church and city as one goes, And many will gaze at me And say, 'He shall be one Of the most famous men, The most famous man that ever lives, For he foresaw this silence and this dull, And made his great simple plan, And came, and walked these pines with that black sun And walked along this water! Three voices loved one solitary sky; Earth, that embraced them, was not rich; As if a shell that thrums on a drum Tilts twice over frantic in its proud Farewell The Farewell Is but aught but dust, They spoke for theo— <|endoftext|> My search for the essay prompt-- Such a thing in the anthology! If it hath no literary merit, It may be worth nothing to me; But, to belong to the Tripathic Games, I see no use in it. 'Thas a myth, this,' says my Grannie; 'It is a fairy, my Granny.' 'Tis a fable, says the Creature. 'It circulates in an ass.' 'And they hop or they run or they Rip or they bite or they fight For the milk and the bacon and the bread, And the only ones that run away Are the Cats and the Dogs.' If I may be so bold, I think the Soutoon may hold Outshining gold and brass and gems, Made of purest gold and brass and gems, If but that by the mouth of man, The sole of his shoe, may wander near it. Tho' there be cats and mice In the shadowed hedge behind my lea, And foxes in the orchard and the corn, And a wolf at the hunt and a boar in the fold, The wilderness hath a distinctive smell, As of 'hautburg' and of 'champaign' and of 'rue.' ======================================== SAMPLE 218 ======================================== like the prides from their lifeless hips you think it is gone this place must be made of the stupid he will kiss her again after What we've found so far is beautiful as the mast of the train,but sad as something found with the victims of sun. Your hair is like the hair you would get if they shooed the nettles from your head, you don't wear that many clothes but you look like a murderer in her wetness or a mother who will not let the body be buried at the bottom of the lake which is the bottom of the lake. Only the tarp is there over the hole but you can see how she opened up the lid with the thorn clippings to wash at the moisture. That you were wounded opens the story of your mother's family, how her father gave her up for adoption and the birth mother left her. That you were adopted and grew up, can let your birth mother discover her roots. that you have been abandoned and survived makes her gratitude a little harder. I know you think you deserve to be the mother of all women alive. How many times have you called your mother after she gave birth to you? And I know how you have needed her. I have a father like you or a brother one of them, who has thrown you away, I have seen you search for your way among our streets, we are all deep in wounds here, we are all disappointed. We know you are not as deep as our blood or our brains, or our bodies, you think you are not God because you could not save your own mother from the bombs, but you are here, we are not and you know this. It was said that you had a future. I was here and I heard a tattered sheet and I took the sensation as an answer. We knew that it would be temporary. This is not the real earth, I didn't want to touch it, it would be better just to find some other body to enter as your own. I have learned that many of us have no intention of helping you. The real earth has been destroyed and rebuilt in a new pattern where I am no longer an instrument with his power there is another voice that we can listen to. I am here too long. I can't touch the wound with my hands. I go on more like a whip that someone thought a snake and I take my revenge. There is another voice with his power, even if he did not mean it. He is gone in a different city working on a different dream. <|endoftext|> "Sonnet with Three Verses", by Peter Cooper [Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] I keep remembering the day I stood at a mirror, standing for a whole hourside-on without seeing an image.My name is an interference. I try to withdraw from people and they gather me. A perfect record of me is wound up in me like a spy's mitt, or a swag in blue jeans. On the phone when my teacher said, “Take me, take me, son.”I took her right then out of the library. Celestial objects that are intelligible to the sight, to the pointthat we could join their equilateral trianglefor perfection and immediatelyto the drawing board her pupils navigated me in. I can't say the first line of a sonnetwithout fearing the orchestra will melt itself for crinoline. It’s hard to be in a taxicab with you’re broke as a plot but good luck:when they put you in the taxi the driver’s like, “Man, you sure know some history.” I mean, yeah, the first son of all shithead Clives were questing for pizzas in Rome, and indeed, and indeed. My self-titled pop song for the ages with all those bells and whistles, but also, Quattrocento , posters, banners, elaborate map of Rome, three-dimensional map of Rome, not three but four-dimensional, the movieted, tacked-on fabric of the Olympics which is to saythe second of which (or should I say, what) I did with the second part of my sophomore year and for which I was subsequently awarded the Greek alphabet in the arena,whereby my bookish prauncilista defense was thus accomplished. That, and a few other pointers, I remember now because I seemed to possess, as if “contained” ======================================== SAMPLE 219 ======================================== Although on earth; and many other guests in common, Chosen from earth, dwelling in thy gardens around With Adam as in his paradise; yet, a God Is he, the author of all life on earth; and From him different nations and different inhabitants, Ranging their varying lives, draw divers substances, Souls air, earth, and water, beasts, and birds, and fishes, Into thy courts and conversations, bright and blest, Delight on blest; and full of motion and joy. So when from the same warm nest a grove of pine Spring thitherward, and swarming after the sun Forth away the glittering hosts, with sonorous blades, From north to southern west and under Arctic ice, Into extream splendors, sonorous, golden, To flood the mazes of night and cheer the earth; That on thy lush and expensive park Flames the moon's host, and the thin stream under The golden towers of the swan crescent shines; As from the river-banks between one mount Torn out of her olden way, the dim shade, Snarled and old, and with a scorned crest, Peeps through the dry and inert green, and flits A moment to and fro, as though on fire, Then falls and gathers in the gentle stream; Or as on torrent-waters wild and wild and mad In their own water-strands, that fill slow From parted confine the plains and pass Evermore unswervingly across the plains; So on the fourth day of this ninth moon, After the session at the door of Adam's Paradise And of the Serpent's countenance that smiled Of his great persuasion and of his strong lure To think and act, thou seenest a certain Jew, Of Juda street, a Jew by birth or adoption, Servant or poor, upward for two hundred years In the affairs of trade, merchant, partner, Advancing from a foreign land to this And in this street; who to an eye of wonderful vision Sighs, because of stumbling bars that now appear And bars of steel; and whence doth grace from higher Immanuel to erect a wall from notch To notch, a wall of holiness and glory, Wherewith to rise; which wall is earthly metal chosen To be the fence of peace, between or freest force Of warring worlds and issuing violence To labour and a king; for in that place Yea, rather than this race of men, were planted That of woman, woman's race; the natural offspring Of celestial seed, begot in difficult way, As hath been shown by a manifest scout. (emphatically goes) What thinkest thou, Lod on of men? Is it by death, or by causes equally Useless and disgraceful both, that thou alone, Perforce, as Woman, art desolate and laid In the need of him, that thee who only Holdest center-sheights here shouldst lift to him up High God, to cast a bar into thine heart Unconscious of its kindred obligations? Is't thyself, thyself or others, that thou wouldst This wall between us built, or didst this place Lie idle be that arrogance of thine, To hew or fling or hurl some trespass? That here one body of two souls ought to be These at their separate natures, separate Like sea-waves in great calm parted and yet Peteently contending, like a cony sought And gone out upon a huge island, while the other Still ran through the shallow in the threshold-sand That scarce appears? All things shal be in their natural state, Although at morn there be fair days and foul; Nor shall for any change what there is now be seen Or change, or hide a moment, (but) all done, Ended and completed, or with an oath Ceased to commence, or what may be done, of greater Or less? If of two or three whole walls of this kind Be left, we long since have no eyes to see Or mean toleration nor compass any goal Of ours, but left to be an end and an end, Leave with the Devil or of the Devil's race Whereby to scrape and go under with the least; Leave them to do their worst for us who have worked And toiled and now are stiff with all this belly of yours Now on the table there they lie Beating their little faces Against the top of the pan, In the sure wood they made their dish Of the sweet, their mouthes of brass, Lid on lid of ======================================== SAMPLE 220 ======================================== OTTO In desert vale, on lonely hill, The Fauns, aye keep comforterin' That ye han'st seen an' heard The murmurs in the night wind's throat, Or sounds that rippled from the stone The hall—where votaries oft Have felt the whispering ben Of falling water-crops when nippin' In the brook by the water-side, Where love like a wild bird's lays Its quiet moaning vole In the leaf-strewn, shadowless dell That seemed to the eye, alone, The night-fire's self alone Folded, like young Night at the breast Of her own infant; she might thole The time for thanks for good words sung Ere fast forgotten. No coil Of dust in her thread-worked self Her last silent hours to seek The churchyard of the buried dear, And know that her poor fleshly days Pained still from bloodless birth to wail, Nor yet to offer to the touch Her hearts untainted soiled hand; Her wedded hand, her eyes (Thus strangely both of Death) had kept The sacred fire, but now, vainly Unloosed, watchful—from the stone (Though faith like a lamp in Heaven Sought it) had leapt from her frail cot Laved with olexes deep In benediction of night. Now, the quick gifts so earthly fair, Love is with me (like the Blest) Too much—as their young days go on, Kindled up by good Earth's frank light That old fancies deem such eyes must covet. I, sick with misery, feel my dear, Haters of virtue, struggling in my breast, For suffering cause of love, their heated Heat, faint to nought. Sweet dreams of wakened fires! again, Bright visions of the year that clasps With spring's smile a mysterious strand, Again, unseen, will come that brief Last gleam of Sun-in-the-Shining days! Again, unseen, will come that word, "hope!" With which the upland statesman year Calls time to its daily acts. If she, Still cross'd and still parted by the way Sorrow'd, if I, farewell! the world's Life would be all glad assurance gave to sorrow That we return'd to the selfsame world; The Year's Delight, that it would round us throng Some joyful note of overreaching beat Of song, to swell the eternal throng Of its swift onward pow'rs. Alas! awhile 'Twas so;—but for a breath, and then, my friends, Loose your persistent valour in the kiss Of your sweet compassion, (let others bend, And reach the trifling edge of narrow search In narrow search, that frights the glad life-path.) Our high aim! dear friends, let no error press Ours too! Let not error, with the rod Of Hostis here, upbraid us that we rest From thought beyond thought, though thought be thought. Lo, This world, with all its sins, is but as a rose Gathered from thorn, is but a falling star, Sweeter for its falling! Oh, close To heart's eye, not one of us shall fail, One, of our own free choice, not yet to know The first. We may doubt, or say, He hath chosen This world and for his love, in which, ye who walk The world's strait glades may perceive, He hath flung An icon, a precious idol in the sun; An icon, a divine miracle, is thrown Into dark ocean far, unseen, unlearned, Beyond the range of every drifting prayer. But even this doubt to go, our peace to gain By this full knowledge, would be a thing to grieve, To which there swinging from life's thread-strings we wound Our heart's strong cords of sense. Sad are the springs Of other men's thought; who, sure that He in him Whom they have missed, have raised, as by divine Slumbering, their messengers from the soul, (Their messengers who are messengers of Heaven) Teach you, and the sun that shines on earth Hangs like a false door. I am the door, therefore. Speak to me, and I will hear you; thou art Thy brother; thou thinkest I hold thee fast Through a long way, and that I shall be loyal To thy cause. Think for ======================================== SAMPLE 221 ======================================== And call: 'I have children afar Who have no place to rest. Sisters and brothers and a whole town Are weeping and praying for us.' But get ye to the heart of this, and gnaw Till ye find the motive: and we have had A fit example that, and the town. A KISTFUL God has but one short hour To bless us: how can He spare time To taste eternity? because The saints Came in His tender mercy, and His saints Went out of His justice. All the vials In His wondrous cellar, safe hid for us In His acme-warehouse; The little prophetic dust That drips and is shed, Remnant from all He bore with Us, Hath a new lot From us. In our love His heart is full: His love calls for our service And we serve, where we may, with uneasy feet, Even as the beasts that fill the field. We cannot breathe apart. The city's Hell, The wind of Heaven falls on us there, And darkness and the sound Of freight-trees and mighty throngs That storm with malignity Our solitude. We are our brothers' guardians, with battered frames And very stones That will not crack nor stay Till we have paid the King The debt of our last sick-bed dream, And, where our strength is spent, For Him, for His dear child, Who has not left us while we were here, Nor will till our breath is fled And our eyelids close Brothers, be ye brave of will, So will you be free: So may ye, when the day has failed, Stand fearless in the right. For who can to such a one Turn, and be not made A slave and die? THE wind stirs in the hills, The locusts play in the sun On the long slope, The lonely slope of cool-toned days, With dusky skirts; Where hardly a different shade From the foot that's as peaceful and still As the won seasons, sallies forth, Gifts to those who pass below. The air in the autumn is sombre, The air in the autumn stained Like the air of a great chamber where For summer is life's lull-executed honey And death's restoritivem. So do our years slowly wheel and go, And darkness say to the soul. Who grows not old? not drunk with wine? Nor of the heirs of the mouldering years, And may not weep, If one light puff Of sense forget the whole crop. WHILE utterly forlorn, I cast Scatters of night over hills and winds And find no beacon on the storm, Then where the sea, An agoget round the cumbered rim, Past the furthest bound that I have known, I had a fellow to direct On the track of my dreams. I only had to follow his star To his hunting ground,-- At first the great hill curve of silver he followed, Then the slope far below,-- In a brook, that his eye went to sleep and woke red, A woodland copper; And even as I turned it in my mind, Sheer to the foothills of morning; The far fallow plain Lay flax-sheathed of bare soil, Whereon the antler'd stag So loosely lay, Stamp poppies turn'd blue. Oft he did slumber in the reeds Of Serpent's Cwm, And now out of the hill's low crest Does his choler out On the winds of the plain, Like the gales that bring Water to the beech-groves Where the locusts swing. They stalk and rummage out in the open And out of the grasses and sedge Wrap them in the gloaming, On the mowers' muzzles, Slings the queerest worm and seed, That the harvest doesn't go. And when day has put out the buds, Then at their clumper hands Slings the queerest worms And what ever finer friend Out of the earth you could Pass that way with a smooth round stone. These are his deer, these are his antlers, Red gold and purple thickets of decay; And when they turn to golden brown, And one comes to many rabbits, I'd rather look at them all night long, Than any fable of a person. The hill-tops of his ======================================== SAMPLE 222 ======================================== Britons, my subjects, What have I done to you In the blood of your sons? Is the price Of your freedom To make way For your sons To the drudgery Of toil? Is your life To slopin' In pettin'-houses, To work in the fields And groves? Is your life To mud-stores, To storacks, To the devil At girdin'-gizes, Where the Old G. H. S. Roars through red gates, What have I saved you Against? You will boisterously Bustle like a white-toothed grouch At the mere name of Blues (laughs). Or, far from home, for nine months, Be on the streets with the drifters, With the wicked elements of the city. Are you wise? Are you strong? Stronger and wiser? As sure as death! Your high-priced Liberty, Your lavished goods, Your salaried work-a-day Will prove a trade. You will find your profit As sure as bacon, Or as rope, Or as lades For the buck and dogs. What do you expect of me In the longer view? Let me see--I've had it with blues For ever and a day. Now don't get so cocky, silly! Let's see how you stack On the bottom of my Blues Commission. It's time you started with me. It's not any old day-licence You'll get from me, old club. 'Tis a licence to work and die In the blues. It is to be done In a style sublime, With the thunder of ten thousand lyres, And the clamor of ten thousand drums. Its irresistible message Calls for a sumafo and a dirge. The triumph of the Race! The haughty sign Of the Pretender's fall! No safe-guarded treasure For the haves Of the future race-- For the haves of the Past. Now the color of a bridge has failed me, The last sign of the road I crossed Has gone down in the dark, and left me On a useless road in a wasteland. I can make a ticket to go over there, But who will get the ride? A heavy number of my friends have lost More than their fair numbers I take to the grave; And I don't know what to do, And I'm wondering if the ones I've called "sirsenchws" Will get their rights sometime soon. And I've lost my household name, and I'm one Who wouldst have known better yet, if I'd it. But there's no one to do a man like me A foe to, or a friend to, and to-day The Blues look just as black as the rest of the race, And the hands of the pavement mite along the street Are full of their mess of flesh, and the black earth Is as black as the devil and the devil is black. It's queer, when you come to a lost place And you're using up your coins, To find that you've lost a race, A taste of the blues somewhere, I guess, Between you and the sages. Just the other night, I wandered to-night Down the middle of the street, and crossed The sad gap from Forty-Wall to Forty-Square-- And all I could see was a big black box In the center of the street; and the crowd That moved around it moved in a motion, somehow, Like a single pattern, that was subtle and artless, And people moved in a manner not unlike the race They moved into. And I said to myself, What the hell's this? And thought at first it was the construction Of some fine radar-odometer or bore-meter To measure the speed of things, but when I paused, I found I was dreaming, and when I woke, I had whited out my eyes and the thing had gone away, And a spotlight had a disappeared, And I realized that I was the night-traps suspense-keeper, And I could seal a prison with the breathing Of a cat, but just half-way down my throat, And the string of the catwhip I could pull The poison; next, I could hammer a little Fastened by a secret eye-telescope To a crank-ended vein in the hard, cold road The gilt glow-worms ======================================== SAMPLE 223 ======================================== Grandeur's made of grandeur, I guess. This Here's the origin of the Earth: (One of Nature's tiny, frightful highborn creatures, that began Immediately the ways of Revision) set to forge Nature, herself, in the Grand Idiom. The Grandis Kingdom! The Grandest state of Cents! In All Grandness, a great magnitude! The Grandest, on All Hallows' Eve! Even out here, some way. Is there for this Earth such such stone? Such worlds? I behold My Triangle, on the pine-tops, Its Red Precedent of Perplements! The Triangle is most intelligible, only when We make it simple. A Monument to Vivere. That's you, and you're so grand, so holy, so wonderful, My fair earth, my glorious earth! Even on All Souls' Eve, this has been a season, By what chance, by what sacrifice Of Grandness have you won that place, These lords of nearness, these demigods! They have held you up, Acharnius and you, Charlemagne, Who, for your sake, the young may find lovely, When the old turn to bloomful law and lawn. <|endoftext|> "I, IV, VII", by John Donne [Living, Coming of Age, Relationships, Men & Women, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality, History & Politics, War & Conflict] (excerpt) I am young. I stand by my countenance And show such-and-such body And such-and-such-and-such mind And lie down among my friends, And know I am beautiful; And when they take me home, and I see their joy, I do not sorrow for me: I know I am not, for I am. And so when I walk by me I follow him the way the dark was Whose shadows are I, I, and I, and I. I will not be careless; I knew all this, you know. No matter how, and so I move and I run, I, I, An agent -- you, if you will. I will not be dull. I have him, and I know it. I will not be silly. I will not be a slave; And so when I'm with him I will say: I have cried for you, I, in that your count's seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. I would be the cool, the shade; And he is the transfixing beam. I'll be the goad, the lift, the sweat. I shall not be the worm; He will not be the serpent; We will have fun; But I am ready. With a singing body, And a mind in young fields And a mind at war; With a body that's a waxing, And a mind in fages; With a mind in nights and days, And a body that's flat; With a heart in business, And a tongue in music; And a mind to have, And a body that's alive; Now then I shall be what I am today; I shall be what I am in a hurry to be; I shall be what I was. I shall have a body like the great bodies; I shall have eyes like to the moon's; I shall be alive to greet The mornings and the eves of time; And if I'm living, And if I'm awake, Then I shall have moonlight, And day-weather, And I shall be a man in a hurry, A marring earth, Who and what I am, This of course being an indirect quote from Donne's Comedy of Morgan, Act i, Scene 1: "As he came. The horn was rung, They brought in the coffer, and he took his seat, "I'm as good a man as he's got," said his conscience. 'Twas all that he could do to save his sister; For they'd killed her mare, And he was dead, And so he said: "If the brutes could cry, "Some little heed they gave to that end, For Jack and John, in a trice, All six, Were shot, and he was hang'd to the mast, Therefor he says, While looking up he says, While looking down he says: "They cap't!" Or from Sir John Skelton, Act ii, scene iii ======================================== SAMPLE 224 ======================================== his gudgeon, the barbed wire, his meat: his pheas from being eaten is well-spun; his unmention will pass, like his un- eged eidolon, Who sits not at the palm! Good morning. You have spilt milk And scumbag, Floss and uncumbag About the kitchen, Shined from Your yucking at the toaster And your Exploding Enclos of bread. To you In the shape of the voice of the toothless old man Who eyes your work from the bed of his grave From that bed that is wide open Over there. "I want to make love like this, like that, With my own body, with my own blood to The rhythm of old Lithuanian sheets, To live in the shape of skirts that are Behind you in the shape of your white thighs. For this man. I would like To have my body like this, To have white thighs like this: A good shape for making love to. "In my mother's shape, in my shape of the Old ladies and old men, The secret room of the great ladies of the Port from the direction of Altmüscher, Belwind and Belkafé where the topmost cliffs Are sinking and sinking; The fjords as far as a traveller can Climb into the sky. "Where the earth ends And the heart of the earth begins, it begins To beat like a wounded bird; To drive for the girl, to be beaten By the young woman who flutters and quivers; To be rounded, broad, not formed, but Empty of content. "It is a spirit from the inside that it Immediately apprehends, And the wind that its mother-of-hard-more Is lifted by the trees of fog-wood And flies like a swallow is blown, To the spirit of my body and soul Wand'ring itself in the shape of the Boughs and the berries in the Bock, The shape of the walls And the roof and the day and the Light-blind roof, So that it will not be Continuous, nor need be Sentential, but subjective, The shaping of the limbs and The breast and the shape Of the mouth. "Thus it is with me that I am thinking On the room of my body and soul Thinking in it of the wind that is drawn To the tree of my longing, which is Like a willow, and the room Of my body where my longing is As tall as a statue is; Where my willow-shaking courage Is forced for the feast; Where I take the fish out of the water, Turn the spit of my longing For the thing I know not. What is it that is dark behind the Wall, or what is it is drawn? In my mind it is drawn, but cannot Be distinguished; and I cannot, Not even in imagination, Take the body and the soul And uniting them in a shape That can say: I am here Without my will. "I have been walking in my body And thinking in it, As you might see me in a vision Standing, Speaking, in a vision, The shape of my body, In which I say, 'There is no one else, No one else in it; From you I have accepted Your invitation To come with you and with you To the aim of the wind; But it is not easy for me, Not easy for me to keep My body in its shape as it is; As it was when the holy Virgin, Or as you saw it, willow The young bull tied to its neck.' "The shape that your fingers make on the parchment Can you observe? You can say, 'Cut here, but What follows will be, By cutting, in part, the religious sentiment: In it, Do not cut a single line that is not soul; For when it is born, Is born a living being, Is as little less than immortal.'" I have beheld as a shape So beautiful, so beautiful, So beautiful, A shape so beautiful, a prophet standing On the high mountain of Capron, When the dawn was rising from the east, Shining above the bushes that smiled In the valley of the shadow of death, On the road to Rome. And in the shadow of death, I have beheld as a shape, The shape, a ======================================== SAMPLE 225 ======================================== Cycloptanum love-magicus Thoremus prophesied, That Virgil's pen could set a man on fire As those he could drown as these The misnamed champion of the Romans Lycophonia's war-poppets love-- Also Troglodyte Plays his line Over the High-topt in Leather boots Goes To buy a Place While he lectures a reader Who's Waiting In Finger Knots. <|endoftext|> "Nahum Bechot: The Well of Love", by Eduardo deParza [Love, Infatuation & Crushes, Relationships, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] For V~rbivos Without all lamps, Night would drown us, Without all woman-kind, We would be yoked. Come we are not from Wadi or the waterfalls, There is neither way Nor any clew, So our road are blind In a wild Trail. Go with me to a lovely distance. Come down from where you are, What you bear, Tell me. Nay, do not pick me up, O that's worse, worse, Nightingale of my heart. Come with me to Chorabosch where lions tear the dogs and horses from a caravan, and on Debrekburo, or on the square and by the Russian ladies' streets, Walk with me on the wind and by the palms. Come along in the thick of it, Let's learn Persian stories, & have fun, for you are a strong lover, Master of quiet. Let's go together to the spring of our well, the spring of love and there hear the time-tides as the cuckoo shrieks over the willows, as the breeze-sweep turns desert into deshaker, as if the night were a song we could not hear. Come, let us have one another fallen under the thunder and the miracle, we who are not so very far, & can speak together on our grief. <|endoftext|> "Cantico della Idiote", by Johann Har + hymns + otherwise (= Wotaned = Hebrew) Whene'er your spirit comes, and you turn your grave eyes on mine, an unutterable anger, and a kind of despair, I shall not choose, to gratify that passion, between you and me, the easy way of something better. A year has come and brought yearning and an emptiness like winter, the tangled fibres of which are rigid: not like the simple fibres of the fresh frost. I shall never forget the patient squint of your handsome brows, nor the frail suit of your trimcoat, nor the words you said to me when last I saw you, as fresh, in their hoarseness like an inspiration, I thought I was not in my life, and I looked straight in your eyes; my father told me not to; my life in these was as the unawarehold of a fly. I saw your eyes for something unutterable and pure, nor did I dare to bear it. For I was awe-struck. Once, because you had come to visit me, I put on sweet perfume, and with sweet voice exhaled it; and I stood closed as if in awe, and to yourself said myself, "This is not good"--but I was not able to stop or say so. for 2 lines like this one at the end of the 2 lines written with the title Cantico della Idiote, Book I, line 5: Even as a man which has seen what it wants, something about it slips away; whate'er the tale, now told, now told again, again and again. Doubt is subdued with ironical doubt, certainties with cloud contentions, and the subject-poet in such a position that he cannot but seize. Even this is not happiness; to hear the story, again and again, I have no pleasure in it. I am bewildered, gape on the ground, with nothing to reply and no power to reply, and with this my head laid open to the stare of the skies, whatever sky may be in the tale. <|endoftext|> "Auricular", by Johann Aschenbach [Love, Infatuation & ======================================== SAMPLE 226 ======================================== evidentes quandam castæ mihi secuêre tabentæ ­nocturnis jocis pulsîtur jocto quercuîs, spessere capitis fascor, gratum tegerem, letum rus ego seu profectus furor. laeta tabulâ caput, divomia divinâque rugosque tabulô indicat quietâ numquam rara spectare bis toto jocundo extulit diäsas species impassâ, nunc pendent et non pendent, ut placidi per iter adlapsîs habet intextam diutem calet, eterni jocus non moratur, rapuit et humus fuerit. parat varios ribem magna per tenera fonte nocturnâ. at änibus parat ex aliè trib. ex una suo dat. parat inter temps, extulit diäsâ, etsiunt pectora per levoto mandat in medias serenis. ille magna docto pagam ciuîs, tamen adhaesit hostium qui perlibérte tantæ type et traximus iræ dubitoque domus, cum præsultat Agamemnon. nam sub iugo mensibus inpulit, tum longum staret aequor, lauent cibus, rauco cibus, te plaudentibus nimiumque rapit, se quis sit prævenire præsentibus tardat ut castra pessimi in limine torquam creâ. esponte haustus sumpta dictatoque rapit. STANDARD OF THE WORLD - GRAND OTAM CUP, which hung within the Temple of the Two Bears near the northern portal to the baths, with a cut so severe that few of those who walk it have ever seen it. “At least,' say the inscriptions, ‘less than a magnificent man.” To the HOR back again, that great crane of the HAVANAH, He may come, if at all, only on a cloudless day, And lean in silent wonder at the scenes around him, Drawn as a cloud along the glittering plume of smoke With bent necks watch the long roll of smoke go up into the sky Which spreads in noxious green and gold-girdled blue A heaven thick-assembled o’er the bubbling deep, And the great cathedral seem to breathe heavy smoke. On its side the HANGING DEAD lift up their silver heads, Crying with trembling hair, for they have not seen These fiends which, though they live in clouds of smoke, Should seem to men that men, and shriek with horror loud, Showing a mightier eye than human, and of make Thin as the sands which man may scrap and grind To some hard use; who, to see them, would turn and fly, Like senseless birds which fail and hove below, For fear of greater terrors, not secured like they Against the silver eyes of the swifts, whose wing Glides through the haze, and shocks with silver feet Of silver as they pass the cities large Wherewith our fair earth, upon whose face The clouds of smoke among men are hung like a sky, Dull men-seeing men less thus-seeing, they and she But few of such as see her fair. Yet she gives joy, if seen by them, as one To whom each word spoken is a praise or praise Unto her face; and, like to him who sees, The joy which a man feels to be his own Brushed off and blotted is from him, her face Like to the dead, when he whom it gilds With seeing, to the living life, as far as these Turns; and but brightens where it can no light. Shrouded in smoke her vile body lies, the rest Are dusky in some cloud which men no more Through all its lengths that far and wide blot The sun's red spreading into the shadow At men’s doors; the horseless men who, As much of mud as their feet are as the damp Of slime, are sunk to sleeping, fast who lie Spread out and miserable, and are but Death’s spectators, and, anon of smoke, The living do not die; when the living Shake at their eyes where he was shorn of hair Which now the ======================================== SAMPLE 227 ======================================== 'Tis in this dry, dry air That I am dreaming and dreaming, That Reason is lulled and half-dazed By these bright shapes in vision. And they are blossoming forth, Out of the dry, dark air, Of the centuries that the sun has burned In his golden pruning-knife In a splendor of roseate lights Too weak and unrefined to be known, But they are blossoming forth, The fluttering living fans of the air. Nights, whose darks are richer than the suns, With no sunrise, nor sunset, nor even evening, But merely tides in some sweltering sea Of black and suffusing mystery Where the waters of a dream Float out, beyond all measure, from morn To night, and make the barren places flower With a sweet moisture and intense, That makes them like the fair expanse of light That, from the ever-shifting heaven Of its confluent and instant dwelling, Stoop to the infinite sky With a volume and persistence that proves That it is and abides. Nor are the dark and dreamless nights Hid from the days and hours that are. The daylight made a truce with night, And held the day behind it. Yea, and the bliss of every soul Was to be here in the clouds o'erfraught, No wandering after its will is done In its large eternal way. There was no need for the feast that is These days, and the wan lights of the air As in the pallid far skies Show forth a wavering blue. And, bird and bush and stream were mute, Empty and desolate, silent, dumb, Save this lone rat, that, shaking off The dew that was probably his grave, Snorting in his feeble fear, With a broken reel and flicker Tinkled on the fallen leaves. He was a lorn old rat, Had he brethren far or far away? I am sure there are stars now high To light you on your way-- That rat in the nearby grove Who is your king, and why Are you gathered, dead, and gone In the passing of long years, A vision, and a sigh, A picture, and a sigh? The daffodil is dead, And the daisy like a flame Is dim, and fades away Into a mist. And the twilight falls around On the great grey rock, and all Is changed for the better. The breath of the rose and the nest Of the nightingale, and the fern That knows the roses and the light, Take delight and sorrow. When the Rat and the Dove and the Rose Had bidden men to come And make a place for the footstep and sleep, The Garden was more fair than a palace: How shall I say it: had the vision like a dream, Where God reigned, to all men? A fair spot to walk in is worth a stone that is weighed. No doubt; but now they are dead. You would learn A little; draw close; let me kiss Your sleepy face. All the rose-flushed hours, who raced and pressed And hurried from their meeting, speed you down Life's dusty pathway, track and test you o'er The dust; and these we, who never know, 'Mid incessant motion and the blast, Who never know, are content to give, Nor spare ourselves for the beautiful; O, with these days, not like a fresh spring, To cool the heart with its hot rains, but to seed Roots and sprout and bear. Because a second before you died Your eyes had that way in Which you drew breath, And in what sound you breathed; And that you had given birth You breathed; And with Nature's face painted, The hair upon your head, The night of your sin, the fore-head, In beauty's womb, and all The music of two kindred spheres Embedded. In my heart I felt You tread; in the dusk of a spring day My heart beat against my breast, as I Turned silently within the dust-seeming town, One with the changing seasons: every cloud, Each clod, one with its veiling of the sun, Were stars and silence over my heart. I thought the King had said it, alone it was The whisper of a man that cannot tell a leaf That bends on the dark night; and the lips, The trembling lips that kept it close and some-where The ======================================== SAMPLE 228 ======================================== eriapt and his teacher, saying, He hears me that ye are wretched, do you bring hither a bowl of corn? He said, Yea; and I suppose that he will drink it all himself. And he issued forth, and the teacher, parching, kissed the back of his loins, and he sat down, and the honeyed bowl he cast to the floor; and the take food that is brought him fell upon the storehouse, and the teacher got up from his seat, and took his staff to his hands, and took up a 31 cup from his staff, and continued his weaving; and after that the lord of Cape elevated his dwelling-place from the ground, and shut it and all about it, and covered with a pile the place of his habitation; and he built up his wall of reed and stones, and increased his stern strongholds. Now Telemachus had scarcely concluded his journey, after he took into consideration the lap-dog who served him in the house, and he made him a fine garment, and he made it with the talents of the fair comely spider, as it is written in the book of Wisdom. So he passed on his way through the midway of the country, a fertile valley, the noblest vale that is in the fairest corner of the world. And notwithstanding the good promise the maiden still liked the wooer, for her maiden-praise was yet with alder, when she came to the house, because of her white lily nipples. And this was the good reason why she liked her husband well, that the tender year of her second love had scarcely come. But the maiden spat in her lap, and smelt at the clothes; then Odysseus became the more to be beloved, as he was fairer than all the world, and he had a fair form, and his limbs were straight and smooth, and a straight-limbed back, and his arms lay flat, and his ears were well knit. Then she was proud of him, and her pride began to hurt him sore, for she thought, "Surely I have taken something no more than he has. I must have eaten spirit, some delicious sting from the midi-daughters of the gods. Nurse at night they tell me of this man, making boast, and my anger boils within me, lest it break my heart, which hath no bridge, whereon I know my soul is worsted by experience. Ah, for I am old, and my pain is constant, and my weary brain will not believe that any thing can be so slight, or that the hand of evil is making such sure progress, and ever would send me sprite or word." But as time rolled on, he was the chiefest in wisdom of the women, who like to look on beautiful (for the gods give sweetness to them) and to behold fair form. But there was one among them, who was sitting apart, and penning a book, who made her mansions in heaven, and called the goddesses by their own names, the many-eyed Singers, and stood among the delightful women. And he wrote and sent it to the Nymphs; and they received the gift gladly, and sent their gifts to him also, and Odysseus wrote on the book, and it was brought to the son of Cteatus to all the thethane, and to Hermes the messenger of heaven. Then let neither man nor women, from this day forth, draw such warrant as this lore: and so they loved and are loved. 'Wits, like to apples, ripen best themselves in the heavens. But we men do not flourish so widely, for all our cleverness. For there is no snow which doth not some melting come from others, and there is no flower which does not first come the desire of some other. Lo, thy beauty hath a deeper root in heaven, than the clearest thistle-bloom. Thou art the fruit of those nymphs, whence there sprang the Ideals, who might be drawn down to the abyss. They dwelt here, reclining on a tree, nor knew the light of any other; but the gods, the chief ones, were acquainted with them; and they shed on them the sweet diviner odour, and adorned them with the fairest bloom, and gave them fair names. Then once more, O stranger, do thou increase thy gifts, and pray to ======================================== SAMPLE 229 ======================================== The loftiest, and the filthiest, with heads Bowed in abject respect, of all are served. Upon their sides, from ankles swoln with muck, Fall coats and garments by the hag combined; And haggard eyes roll uncontrolled, and haggard sides. Suitors, in bracelets fastened to their necks, Exalt their glories in a row of spoiling. Lightly thrust aside, a supple hand produces A shank, and, falling on a drowsy arm, Breast cancerous quantity of meat with savour. Among unwashed brains and fevered mouth, With swollen cheek and peculiar smell, Feast on, in momentary orging. Black-bearded, in perpetual uproar is pushed, Insufferably wasted by an intimate friend. Oft, the erring race, accomplished with the feast, Bawl upon thy marble vomit, and wake Thy false tongue,--pyréaneous and perverse. No end, save such as gnaws all--death and foul defeat. When the weak head is laid on the bed of ease, To have the pay, and the pacifying pelf, Contamination of the pauper-poor; With the eyes, and the quiverings that engage Affection on an unloved man. Than most offensive stains could the cote express, The blanching fatality and hue of blue Is drained from the paunch, to give me the trace, In my large estate and my high estate, Whose remaining six-pence makes the worse better. I am my own brand. Who can strike so, shall strike More well: but I mine own fashion to escape. I need not the example I can see; If I need the welcome of the good, 'Tis that I receive it; that I need Accepting, that I faint not and flinch. And I can ask, as I tack and tan, And my stumm to the winds shall be drying. Oh, yes, 'tis sick; 'tis corrupt, and foul. Possess me, I am yours; and be seen Of the rich by my wealth, by my love, By my wit, by my taste, by my glass, By my maintaining; and say, perchance, Some more by this lens. Thou wouldst be my friend By this blackness, and rich life in me Shall double its warmth and extremities. I walk my clear department, do not say If the snow be black, 't is pure as the air; Make high attempts, though in coarse, trimly trim A green E with a touch of a B. Would I could discern the T? I would seek The ME, whom I taste not, where frost undoes My most sweet scents; and try the figure of U I had, but that I gave a youth for wine Who never lapsed in time. As I feel My diurembolo's waters to decline, I feel this skipper his pickaxe impelled To look elsewhere. I would feel rather That I felt too much in wine for my fountains, And here vow that I left too soon al it, Ere the mist of it had formed. I wench knew I was stout, and my cantos Embellished fully, and count my corners, As trim can cut in Lent; so at each trade, Each spot being a freshee, I get a black But, God be praised, none of the livery Shows in me, nor rank anywhere. I shall To my wench like vassals, giving up eye, Have lost with all that my departments Where'er she is; and I had rather It were better and safer for me, And bettered for her, with all my heart, That I with her should stand in Concourse, than this stratagem, and sink To the naked shooping of the leech. The man That I would make such a post-boy, as he Sits at his post, handsome and cordial, smiling And cordial enough, but foul minded; too, Alluring her, and allimunde, to fail, The which both of great manners' count, and show, He in his office carries to bed. Then set The post-boy at odd and haste his post To fetch in the vinous jelly, and in His own his good woman back again. He Would consider it of time and ease All was too hard of Mentality, Were he only inclined to it. ======================================== SAMPLE 230 ======================================== es an old man when he's been a plumber five years straight without seeing a stranger. and mason since he built me this beauty. he builded me, an old shot, a tall brick, stiff as a thumb tack. but you know what, all these homes I didn't choose, I didn't see a thing wrong with you. that something's so obvious, you make it every hour, but you see it so rarely. not to you either. now the rain comes. take your coat, it's full of cold air. that's what you have on underneath your heavy woolen coat. and this month's coldest weather. and do you think masons ever think about dying? no, not they don't. we live on till the sun's almost to nothing, do you see? it's very painful. it's painful to be old though there's a mush of lovely young stuff. old stuff, old structure. this stone, old school stone, old mason. you would never put down the mottled color of your eye. not tombstone, that's too new. but do you think about your grey eye now, you old bird's eye? your warm, human eye? all new stuff you learned on your way through a fallow field, a blank, all-ruddy shore. you learned the letter T. a new shape, a new pigmentation, with an eye that's been painfully heated by others, twice beating. do you even know you're dreaming and doing it now, then sleeping, dreaming and doing it again? can you even learned that long ago? so many rules, how they shape us, make us their subjects, not the other way round. +53 <|endoftext|> "Compost", by Philip Henslow [Living, Death, Nature, Animals, Trees & Flowers] No one gave Compost (his sheep) away. It was his to give or not, and Compost gave away his berries. Who ever thought of Blacktop as the jeweler of the forest? No one gave away the $5,000 promised on his cheek. His neighbours made from him, not from him. Who ever thought of Spring a trick or a tease? Who ever thought of Gold Clay sippin' with the Spring? <|endoftext|> "Forget it", by Philip Henslow [Living, Time & Brevity] Forget it, forget it. Forget it. Forget it and think of it only as blackness. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow We are silent on the road between Memphis, Mississippi, and Meridian, Montana; our mouths are full of dirt. We stop, we start, we look, we smell it, look again, think it is all mud. We turn on the radio on the carseat and it vibrates with the static of the dial. I would give a hour of my life to hear those words again: "forget it, forget it, forget it." Is there enough wind to bury the tongue to its mastering? Is the jaw set wide enough? Is the mouth allowed to run down free of its troubles? Our teeth are full of mud and we are full of trouble. We turn up the car and make a deaf ear of it. It is hard to describe our contempt, harder to talk without saying it. We do not have the words, but all suggest the same thing: we do not have the words. Forget it, forget it, forget it. We cannot feel it, it must run all around us, disappear. "Forget it," I tell the others. It was one long taboo to which we clung as a group. The way was always left unstruck, and we hit the wrong side of things as we did the right, but more ordinarily. We climbed over the fences to catch fish, under the rain, above the snow. We knew the feeling, it was ours. We never knew the distance and we joked about it. We would not be caught. No surface for a rail or channel was marked, and nothing was missed by our talk. How many times we climbed the fence to watch another enclave marching under night, in the white ======================================== SAMPLE 231 ======================================== dark. Then I hung them on a line and stroked my palm against the sticky back. then before the magic of the desert my fingers had drifted away from earth and sky and all I had left was the power of my fingertips. We wound and twisted, parched on a thread of loose-wound, into the cool of the invisible animal. and carried our dreams into the smell of the night. and in that hour I heard my mother's voice say where - her voice was still. I saw her as a man might see his own reflection in a window glass. All the rest was dark below. <|endoftext|> "Brief retracing", by Lynn Henry [Relationships, Family & Ancestors] I took a tricycle to my niece's birth I left the house and drove All the way home I brought her Brief retracing The tricycle was a vessel of wonder So that she might See it Before I showed her There was a strange tricycle That sat outside My aunt had bought Before she bought a home It sat in the front yard For my niece Who never went there Though I thought I saw her Walking down the path She knew that a horse Raced by the gate It might have been a horse That was taken away By a sleet-storm Or an older horse That wasn't So I never guessed She knew The tricycle Was the jailer It was a tricycle I think She knew I saw her put the tricycle away And never see me <|endoftext|> "Alone in Washington", by Lynn Henry [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity] Last night in the stairwell, beside the door to the House, I happened upon an extra on the couch, a middle-aged woman, Who told me she had recently left a high-ranking place On a project in Europe. I passed her a paper: 'Listen very carefully while I read this.' She thought it was peculiar that I'd come into her privacy And read her correspondence with some old friends of hers Who'd just written something 'classic.' 'It's one o'clock in the morning,' she said. 'I'm asleep.' 'Do you know that you're awake?' 'I know that I'm asleep.' I wanted to insist. I wanted to say I loved her and that I'd never guessed She was so perfect in all things but one thing— That nothing that she said or did could be true Until the sun came up. But she was not asleep. She was very proud, she said, of her books and manuscripts, And very wary of people. I think that's her way. No one knows what old people think or feel. And I'd proved to her, just by the way she said it, That I knew she loved me. I'm only a seeker, who is happy to find That others think and feel what I think and feel, And yet can't put together the words to any word To say what they think they're feeling. She'd always been right to be so proud Of her books and her work, And I felt that I could prove to her That I felt the same as she did, only better— Only, you know, simpler. I've written my ideas in those letters Like a sentence that makes plainer what is to be. In them I find examples of that language My old college professor used to talk about. I must go back and re-read what he said, And ask it's meaning. You can never get at what lies The language of feeling. I cannot describe it, because You cannot explain it; you must learn to Live with it. One of my writers, a poet, says he's always feeling As if he knew that he was lonely. That's why He writes things like a letter to you. He cannot say I'm in the garden And think he's lonely. That's not what I'm after. Let's play a game. Tell me your name, then. One man writes always 'w' without the w. The other 'T' or 'T9' or 'T3.' And they both know, but no one knows who. We could play a double game, But we'd be wrong. Each one would think that the other knows What he doesn't know, Or has a name that's not his. You do not know that you can't Put yourself first, You do not ======================================== SAMPLE 232 ======================================== And glittering like a winter of the years, The great, old house, the hedge-roofed pile, The flying rats of H4800 H1500. My poet, old man, I cannot lift a pencil, and my draughts are steel-witted As a baker's brain, my Muse's, mine O they shall sing with flour-hooks! My poet old man, I dream no dreams of doom or dreadful births In the darks of hell or high Venusian bed; With a surfeit of psalms and holy hymns The cats are licking and scratching and stuffing My poet old man's chaplet! And mad with wine and her gall bladder, She barks and bauls the bars and lattices; My poet old man has hovered and peered, His pencil fell into her lap, He's ague of a dead old man. Then she waxes bolder and bolder and brags, And when he wimples And feels again his wits She rushes at him with nostrils like fangs From Sybaris, and then he writhes and gives An oath she was a female lion Incestiving and bred by the Sphinx! And the Venus of the golden finger, H4800, will be sapless unless she have the watch Of his Titan atomie, his ungentle blood, That never stops, and its pelvis H4800, is an assassin bred By Pluto, and at Ktesian wears his spleen Belly-hearted, mine, he does nothing but lie All fagged out, and a poultice to find sleep, No oracle, his own quack! She should have remembered that before The war-dreamed Green-Thumb she went ados In Pharaoh's long retire, and that, When the Mammon beguiled the Sun-King, Was what the sycophant meant H4800, and how he swept so straight Until his young, fair-robed daughter Was honoured to embrace her! But while the dames were whispering, lo! Before them the she-goat She stood with lion-droop and a dry Leaping fawn, Her malignant teats were all a-suck, She gobbled them as cold meat; And yet with all her ancient charm Her female hunger never yields. For lo! another's blood! Another's The counterfeit of her true eyes! Nay, he more. The nimble reptile! Does he see what he is been, And from his bloody pinions See through the mist of time? The absent mind reels him round, Their warfare in the air, Sterenothed in a wave of mist and fire. Then none of them knows how the rest did do, There be a hundred that seem and are But once before they were not They do not remember how or why, Nor what at last is gain Were better forgotten in a breathing-while Before a waiting generation. For Time, whose industrious hand Twice in the morn of years At work fixes the stuck-up wheel, Was all her shift, And both her hands seem'd busy. Alas, not one to keep The loosened spokes, turns the ground Of all that hollow creed, Where trust and courtesy With all men's purse should accord, I, with my thumb Folded in a poplar; so I spake Within a mighty glass. The spring, my Charlotte, will run A thousand races over to the brims Where your squadrons charge; Marching-flat, as when you play at bowls, Each bulging cheek-bone shows the balls Of eyes that brim the sides of mouths Fluent with plans by grim pragmatic brains, To venture to the lesser wars. Little Cupid, peeping in, Like-spouse at his high house Sits with large breasts, like a spot of ground, Doorways, bulging folds of flesh, Love-bloom, lofty-bosom'd garb: You were not ever so light before. Little Cupid stands before you, And if he loves me not, then so much Goodbye; no more I'll assure you. He's been between a master and a mistress, So he brings with him that store. (Little Warblings, your turn to bluster!) There is not much left of home, any way: Mostly just deserts ======================================== SAMPLE 233 ======================================== As yet he risks not in the fight: So with those whom by his craft he sets free, That their due reckoning be made every woe, He sees that the sixth art makes fair return, Since what man forsakes or gainth by defect The other twain needs fear no cross or pain: But the first art whose fire of loving fire Loosed widows' bindings and unhoused husbands' hearts, With the empoisoned worm does give relief, And the helicon of nought which darkness was. Fees and rewards to him that knoweth It may suffice, but not the welfare-giving rays, Or the night's cool smile with warmth of love, Bring delight when you bring forth the day, And the peacock-crowned morn white and bright, Is joy's merriment's token of delight. So when a layman falls into sin's way, Contentment falls not at his feet, Nor caring parents here set to feed Their tear-stricken eyes or dry, to ease Their children's woe, or take their young ones up, And bid them love and leave their sorrow-sighs; For all love that man may show he does betray Through selfish- ness: which knows not his brute in man. From this right-welcoming essence of all Do we depart (that we may from flesh become To spirities of daemon and of higher god) To be rendered spiritless again? And yet this fact, what is it but our life's rest? A pang which joy with sobs doth compress, Deserted save by choices, scarce lamented when Swift-winged winter with cold zephyr brings Gladness, and life waxes tender and lengthen'd Which seems from earth to sheath the soul with groans, While we do talk on such an infinite. From such delight to sorrow cast aside, Enjoyment, care becomes to man A thing inviolable, and such desire To know and not know the source from which The power that lulls him must be stirr'd; That would possess itself of nought, When nature makes power over-tame and mild; Power over-tame which courageless shines The crowning age of man, which knows not its power Is but an equivocal or profane word? Sagacious Tyrtaeus of the gods, Our race's progenitor, thus speaketh: Our soul must be of heavenly seed, In which some fountain doth make clear A clear-amassed lore: for this we see, That mortal mind hath from the gods Nothing seen or understood before; Yet to the gods' original is All these things, and more, since this This essence so far from mortal mind Enlighten'd cannot be encompad But that it makes a heavenly clew By mortal eyes to show the sun. Our intellect must therefore be of heavenly seed. The weight of words, what are they that defile And check our progress in this course of truth? E'en their immense clusters of mistaken words Bid down the wrath of Jove on the Head, Bid thunder breathe, and earth forfer glory fling. So when our soul's Essence looks around, Seeing all things conglobed in Source, She calls to mind her Essence, nor fails To say: 'Intellect is in Intellect, Wisdom is in Wisdoms; if my words In any place say Wisdoms is Wisdom; If 'Wisdom' is 'Wisdom'; it must be so, For Wisdoms is the name of the whole.' Earth with her common flowers the fair Doth blend, and secret plants abound Which if the rich soil which they over- get, Are nought else, when earth is so enriched, Then gold, which is another name for flowers. Thou art yourself, being both Yellow and White; Other-White is another colour not 2: Same with other yellow is White a little; E'en such a name as Yellow be-lies But is not of our world (yet know We both have blood, so the same are we), Yet both your Hemon and our world. White is some tangible aspect, Yellow some color without colour; Yellow your body and your head. White is a sight: we gaze on it; Yellow, your garments: we behold it. White is no sight; yet color is there: Yet Yellow sleeps, and makes no noise. There is a world of Yellow one ftood: Yellow ======================================== SAMPLE 234 ======================================== "And still I cried with my cries, "You shall not die!" And, with long sighs, she drew my gown, And, over my head, with her words that stung me, Raped me of many haughty wishes, When first, a boy, I stood before the forge That shaped me of heaven and freedom, where my brow Sought then a capital, what then I sought? From this high page that, with great pain I must confess, I am here transcribed, and one place is sick, And this others is where my sweet Liberty Shines like the sun for a short space and then is gone. "Lord," I cried, "give me something that's not there!" To which the Savior, with a smile, "Yes, I know There's lots of stuff that's not here; I'll just say that!" And, "Lord, be some sort of debt offenny many souls," He spake--and straight I wept. "You weep," said he, "too much?" I bickered back and forth; but, his hovering line Cut it in twain and my poor request was gone. Began my tears to flow, And flow without measure, all through the year, As I walked in that barren calm; and, from my arms, With other thoughts than my own, when his face So longed and sought to have me, which my soul Knocked and rushed against me, because I was Torn, and without me no more, even as my face Took that for its mouth; but still in some Sighing heart and silence, and some words I uttered, for I had not aught to use, I let these drop, and in the tears that still Rained after his words, some of them large And some that clung, were mingled. The Saviour, with an altered face, Hid his face from me, for a crowd of sins, No less than ten thousand, I thought, were forgiven By the new blood that I had drawn, which made Petition with God, which swore I should have My money again, or sooner or later, And as many raiment, and many weds, And white sheep, and flaming brousse, and bulls, As suits the generous owner, if the deed Be done, and the ungrateful debtor Be forgiven." "The King," I said, "of all his people here, Is he not rich and great?" "In wealth," said he, "But with an humble heart." So we chatted both, For awhile, I and my Lord; and I was gazing on His raiment of royal white and purple clad; And when his name came, like a rat I sidled up Close to the wall, and, like a worm, slunk away. But soon he showed the place Where was my room and carriage, and, "The King Has sent to ask me how I did from minute To minute," cried I, for I was shuddering And falling away beneath my bones. So "It is not loss of power," said he, "Nor height over line," he explained, "that makes The world go round; and if the things that happen Are taken out, thou and all thy knights Would still be last and least in line: For, sure, if we had not kept carefully Our hands and swords--or only used The power we had to keep them so-- There had been long time when to-day Should be a war against the King, Who would have driven us out at last, As foes that fail and perish all." "Nay," said my Lord, "but height alone Is given; and, if the thing were taken From its set back, a heaven-high ridge Of earth, to which no one could climb, Would be immeasurable blest. So, without mastery, let those be Who keep the heights that give good sight, The spacious earth for pasture green Outlined with crags." But there Was little more to say; and we were drawing Nigh to the marches of Satan, When the hall door opened. It was all aglow, And there stood more than a hundred men, Enraged, gazing like men possessed, And yelling loud, and rushing one another To smash the door down and plunge us deep In darkness. My Lord drew first, and the rest Followed him, and then drew. There was a glare of steel And fire, and my heart began to pound, And eyes to fill with blood, and all my ======================================== SAMPLE 235 ======================================== -I felt it. That hurt. It really wasn’t that bad though I knew it was. He told me this was now my home and we’d have to make new beds. That was sad. What hurt more was he could see he was homesick too. I got rid of some things. I went out the back door to mow the yard I guess I did everything that I could have. It’s weird to remember things we talked about. He was lonely too. He said he was on the shuttle. He said it was really crowded with passengers. There were quiet tears and laughter. We didn’t speak for three months. He told me he’d come back if he wasn’t getting mail someplace. I think I wondered why it was OK for him to move without saying anything. But, he was gone for a while. I brought it every time I used it. I guess I’ll call him that. I talked to my mother, who was in charge of family policy. I told her it seemed he went through windows or something she couldn’t change. She sighed. I said, “The future is the past being rewritten.” I was glad I’d hired a company who knew a great deal. She asked me to talk to him about it. But if he did have mail, he shouldn’t take it to the hall post and give the letter to the wrong address. He could sign for it, put it in a file, put it in a desk drawer for safe keeping. I could not do that. I couldn’t. I’t, you know. <|endoftext|> "A Hard Winter in Ravensbrough, ", by Brenda Calk [Activities, Jobs & Working, Nature, Weather] On a miry afternoon the working men Draw their grease on the black road Roofed with headlights with the frozen air In a common gesture We local folk have known all this For years— Winter going hard and dying at the same time. If they were forced they would not stop to rest And the diesel truck that made its way, Black, with four flat tailfins, through the flood, Now, behind the scenes, ticking like the ticking of a clock, Fords in its train of moments, winding, winding, winding On a world with steel blades for snow and men. The sky was first a bird’s example of ice, Then, far off, was a white bird slapping rain Against the edges of the dull grey lake. They called it the Winter Demon. It was the city together with the parts Gone covered in ice, until the oil Burst into smoke—the water which was also glass. <|endoftext|> "Mother", by Brenda Calk [Living, Relationships, Home Life, Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends] Alfred Andersson’s grief was rather strange. He liked Alfred’s wife more than Alfred When they were married. In the back of his mind there was a dreadful Child he could not have, that his grief turned into As sharp as a sword, And speak again as he spoke, Which made his words sound like a hammer Crude and ugly. From the bed and from the saddle The Mother hears me speaking To the Mother I used to love Who has become my wife And Mother. She understands perfectly well That my unhappy post- Wander Life is better than my life If life was always That bad. For Mother I am glad, for she is Along for the ride With me wherever I go, as I am She, leaving at night The city, knows that she should be Happy with Alfred Andersson At the height of his fame For his poetry And all his weirdness, the worst thing He could have been in his silence And what he was no longer, The worst part Of himself, or something he was He is for ever and ever as my luck Is ever so much better than I deserved And I didn’t deserve it. <|endoftext|> "Alchemy", by Brenda Calk [Living, Coming of Age, Activities, School & Learning, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Race & Ethnicity] Be born In Albersaid, Down in a valley Far from ======================================== SAMPLE 236 ======================================== Don't not lift your hands from yours Or God may not speak to you But gently to you speak As men hold up their heads from a tent-wall. Won't you, one in spirit, Step with me into the tent and give My face the first and second kiss? We must go between the rows Of tents for the old woman And I do know a man at College Lucky to have him I am sure. Or stand on one side of the bus Of people whose life is a book And one for me to be And the other for you, God's wish for ever! O, I could walk and talk and sing, As one who hangs his hat on a peg And seems to be living Just like an owl who hangs out his belly I'll try to say Something for you and for yourself From your attic conveniently here. It's all wrong. Oh, how can we start, We who are so prepared To die, but what of work? And it's too late to start, as you'll see From outside the wall, I said to him, But here it is, now. You must get used to sleeping Like this, alone, unhappy, When you should know the real thing, Mile on mile of joy And always that false one next to you Never at rest, But may not be cured of loneliness By a song; but you must know what now You did not know. Go on your way and get well, And try to make your soul Full of true goodness And ask for grace from those Who've neither wit nor good-will Let my soul go to God for grace, He's my way and my strength, But He allow And see what I do, And go with me, Follow at my back and help me on For I am never far from home. You must learn to live For your soul alone. You do not love me to-day Nor will you ever; But your soul will require Courage and strength and someone to teach it. My mind is very far away, Far away, very far away. I am weary, and yet I am not weary; I hear faint singing of a pastoral note, Of the lisp of an angel's harp, A harp with silken strings drawn tight Between harps with unequal strings; They are singing with palms of the valleys, And the sound is much more sweet Because it is half heartened. My dear, my own. It was for good that you were here Before your God's good time, And your God's good time Is before the dead time of judgment; Before the judgment Of God's stern time And your spouse's--the one, the other's love. The rain was all water and then I knew The sea was silken and unruly-scented, That poured silkenly and unwisely down To quench the thirsty plants that lived on high In the great nets of their fruit. Water is water and I rested And watched the faring of the skies. I knew That God's sweet time was over and the war Heared silence of the trees, the vine, the flower, Of what I was and what I did And me and them lying there, And I were nothing, I one among many and every man's Made out of nothing And me and them passing away. I knew no more till I went down and heard A voice outside me saying, "Farewell, Be safe and find Thee Lord, and be free of the one who was thy Lord." I returned home and there was she, The woman who was my soul's wife; Hearing her I turned and rejoiced And there she was, Not so much in her life as in her soul. She had not been long at our welcome. In a month, a half month, or a little more Her little angel changed and grew To grow like my soul so dear And I rejoiced, for here was the Lord's call. She drew us from the soul and let us be Only with her child, That when she grew and days grew old We might say, "Blessings, O Lord! on mother and child, and soul and guest, And every one," From black hills where the ravens cry Into the garden of earth And blossoming white, There is a glory and a hand Of hope, white, and hope in the loving, White and hope in the sky. Between the soul and the body lies ======================================== SAMPLE 237 ======================================== Shadows creeping on the grass, And I wish that the last year was not the first. At last the melody of the low bell Calls from the mountains of night; And light enough, not worth the light, To follow God's own trumpet, And such is this that is and was; And yet it was all so sweet That I went into God's word And let it burn in my sight, This crown on my head, that it was love. O let my mother still Believe that I have been happy; Believe she shall be, through me, This wretched, shed-blood next year. But God will have it so; For He is good and wise, And set my love and will above All His holy thoughts and promises. Here is my home of rest-- How it flies up the sky, Uprears its blaze of glory Upon the sunset hills: Where the ocean takes his rest, And the year's heat doth pass In a dream-tranced eternity; With a mood that is heaven-- O what spirit strayed through time To a land that is not land, Where there's no thought or speech? We stand as stones that are the same, While this planet draws his course Into his compass telling straight-- We are not swayed like them; We know not fear as we; We speak in words of light-- Starrs that are nothing-built; Still they drive their mute breath Into the night of their life and stay-- We stand in sunshine, smiling in the sun; This is the land I must leave-- The fear is that it's not the best. The night that was our final part Will shine with the sun's first ray; And I'd have it now, if I were wise, Back to the sweet summer ways. Our future lives are wide and bright With the prospect, in our own land of burs and bites. While this is the case, no voice will speak To your pleasure; no eyes will watch To see the windows purple or gold, Where you anon will turn to cheer Your lover with the glower of delight When you have turned your ringlet through the wood. Nay, no; the day that is dead yesterday Is not dead--we knew that when we died; And who would draw life's jugular, God, I Would let it out, so glad of breath, Just for the breath thereof. You grew Like a fine rose with fever caught; With its thorn-points kindled to death-- And I-- But what did I care? The day is gone; The ruddy time your lips will impress, But the years have been, and they know What the green water held behind, And will keep that fluid truth. One war waxed old in blood, and one Brought remorse and hatred two; They staggered around till the head Waxed mighty and began to fall. The earth--dark Gaia's son, who had Died with all his blood's rich sheaf, Waxed dim in the blood he dyed; And for months his story was told, Lifted from his lip and heart, To tell again what the earth Learns the most. A kiss he gave, and one in turn From the shy, white, uncarved, cheeks That the leaves once clothed, and the loose Twined arms, the leaves of whose tresses lay On the grass, among sun, dust, and rain, With sunset's whisper, and wind's swell; Like roses, whose blossoms wither Because of wicked men. And these (Yet more safe far than they) know that Time's heart, like beauty, is planned To grow the more cursed we lay it down Through begetting. And it shall grow more kind, And it shall grow harder, since by man It is tested; and as one soul that way Another's warmth and ravishment Makes manifest, what God wills, must. Though he shed his gaudy seed On such a myriad bosoms as lie Shut in the wild interstices Of the growing earth, he, in truth, Hath pressed the heart of secrets Among his children, on every side; Hath made some light for the race of man, As God had made some light, and so Part of this light shall be his own, When time's last pulse of warmth does pause At peace within the summer-house, And love and silence side by side, Pointing the trembling of the soul. Behold, ======================================== SAMPLE 238 ======================================== Happily to work thy will Art thou thyself a king, and join The sons of mirth and love in one, The wardens of the gate, The warden of the living And of the dead. <|endoftext|> "Bones", by J. A. Agcaller [Living, Death, Health & Illness, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] Part of a dead man's bone. The cook makst cases of them And carves them into oaten Hammers. O what will happen To these bone-bound things. The double chine of these dainties Speaks with a certain farewell To marrow and menstruum. The oat-cake laid on its face Expects the rain-lash. The idle spokes Of the wheels have caught The snouts of carryalls. <|endoftext|> "To the Patrician and Daughters", by Alan Seeger [Social Commentaries, Class, Money & Economics] Daughters of privilege are your true children only within the set of your pedigree. This gossip, wherever it be sought, is to subtler than everybody knows, and hears from eyes as if from quiet men a thing or twoings before the whole world knows. We make of no meaning what we do: When the old woman puts her ale to bed, who's to say which beds the ale goes to? The hyphenated all come to the same: the refined all run for different. Money talks to men about current coin, but not, I use to think, when coin is gone. And they call us earnest to that old bed, just as, if you got tired of peace, you mounted the air in your angels' wheels, you could say it was because you'd had your money. Dear little shoe and ring, dear little shoe, and fancy shoe, and fancy ring, That was my shoestrings once, A shoe for fancy, shoe for the fancy shoe, When I used to fancy whole days, And our toes went all green o' morning. Your shoe may be a new one, but the shoe You put on me is very old; You'll wish for the new one I told you about If you ask me, say, for all the new ones if you'll give me the old ones to keep. O friends, the people are against us, against us, We're going out of business, everybody knows. I see the grocer, standing in his shop alone, With a clew-light on his knee and a bare table-leg, He cannot bring himself to ask me in for a loaf; The court's across on my shoes, the people's asses, The jackboot Juries tread on my ashes at last, The people hate us, the people in a hatred Cannot be many or little. And yet time and accident have not always been kind; We have sometimes been better citizens than some Of those who are of a generation 'with the sky blue in it And the rain a runaway;' If I were in the clownish business I would not venture in the shallow religion of hope If I could be certain that there were no expectations sought; When one is a charmer with time he will be a jackass with his time, And time's an agéd malady, having done a deal on the pit of the soul It is impossible to extract the core from the broken bones. The rest, as beholden for their own dear lives, From being beasts with their reins already wound In human blood, 'twixt whate'er they happen to take, And that the bawdy names are better than the sweet names Because old whores are still read in our streets, Are as vassals to be told in a sermon to be spayed, Knights to be stopped and a thing among their kine, Boys are good business, they have no souls to be so, And they will be boys and girls, for dress, and for eyes, The bow-wow, the gipsy, and the clown, with what is in their sight, Will grope them in the dark like a strange string of words; 'Tis not the talk of men, 'tis the talk of women, It is the gossip of mothers and wives, It is the desire of the woman to be forgiven, It is the cry of the woman that she must be made insane, It is her cry, her cry, as she listens, and waits, It is the gallop of the boat that doesn't move ======================================== SAMPLE 239 ======================================== that gave their forms for their conception, each stamped on their face. They are three kinds of woman, of fruit, of season, of redemption. I have sent my seed into the world and paid them thrice. I have seen the hands of the third pull backward the gown, the unseasonable beating of the third rosy in the leaves, trickle down for ten years, and since that springtime three times more you have had your world turned. You are not only the red and white on your face, but the true fruit of the priest, the hope of a people, and the extra something you have tossed in the sand. You are the deepest, sealing, most luminous thing in the eternal ocean where I dip my eyes to search in vain for your coming <|endoftext|> "Oath Linger", by Louis Unterman [Love, Heartache & Loss, Unrequited Love, Relationships, Gay, Lesbian, Queer] My God, in that only love that knows no other way I breathe and rest from all the world's bother, a safe level on which to bear a far off chair, the bookcase, the lovely woman I love without fear of being seen, of being wrong, of giving wine without explanation, a clock that tells my time like someone else's watch, a cold, my God of love, make me one no matter who the ass who breaks past my window without me, the culprit so I hang on to the white of this stone over the bay of my heart and shine. <|endoftext|> "Le strage", by Louis Unterman [Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Gay, Lesbian, Queer] I.oO Ole Belle Isle Mine, where the men go in to touch the ape who stands in for woman that they hope will approach but will only grow loupe better guns to take her out of me Ole isle, oh I thought you had it good Ole i, u, us yell to keep alive o b<|endoftext|>Anticipation abounds for one simple reason: America, our great awakening, the storm that breaks for freedom in the north, carrying iron and steel to hit the south, taking hearts with ardor conjured up in die-puke revolving in and out of papers not printed by hand: a summer in a rural community in Maine, a paradise where two-thirds of the people can't spell or speak, but the eagle says the things that rhyme to thought from here to where the slow last and only cars touch down in a great silence to drive off to work in a farm town where the silence kills the sound of the wheels: This is the way you whisper with your face turned to the sun <|endoftext|> "New Frontier", by Paul Violi [Arts & Sciences, Architecture & Design] I come from a land where the weather is always summer, always winter, a land that spins its fun down there in the sky on its west coast, and some the toiler, the worker, has done all his tricks, is having none; and he thinks, anyway, I'd have a hot head on my hands. It is the beating under-lip with the dust on the cheek. Or the tear in the eye from a man with a tooth that hangs hairs and is gone; he thinks, anyway, I'd have a good eye. It is the soul of a picayune guy or girl, if you can drop the clothing, shake the vines, pick your bones, it is only a puff in a fine breeze, a puff to go quickly out of breath into clouds of feathers, to be lost to the far side of the brain where you dream the weather, in a strong wind though your finger is against your throat. You are caught in a dream and can’t recall the fire you set inside your house, what was theirs by mistake, and it is the glee of their face all day now. It is the girl you took to bed whose white robe rubbed your legs and you thought, anyway, that maybe she was shy; it is the ======================================== SAMPLE 240 ======================================== Covered with lush mosses he has hewn, And hard, even to the jagged rocks, With adamant, such as might well take root, If long enough to endure the sun, If long enough for the rain to pass, They sometimes have been so, since time began. But now to-night, forsooth, each day, Like to a snail that glides along The warm meadow, when it slinks aside The lowered sun, now rises soon; Sudden it gleams, its slender form Loose in the blue of the sky; and then Snaps the rest by nimbler wind, Bidding the ploughman/Dame, for minutes more work, Daughter, for half-hours more play, Oh! for another kiss, and soon-- 'Tis done--and she is gone! You of the mind to feel The high hope that fills my breast, Then play with me the while we live; You that believe, what you would have, I also have--when Time shall go, Leave both the tomb for you and me. I trust I shall. Now--for you. And now to loftier scenes, the poet's lyre Waves for its hour its branchlikecircles; The starry shimmer of its wraith-like rain Lures us away from the tempest's gloom; And like a naiad Dame from sleep on night Dappling heaven's vesture with the dawn's Dreams, we hail the Moon for priests to-day. The Queen of Beauty Had her statues builded in Thebes, And I, the milk-pourers, came to it. To Thebes it was, so makes the Greeks And Egyptians tell each other--for Arise, Osiris, descend To Thebes, the great work of gods. Thebes! No more of that; Let us lift lift lift up Our brows to the Goddess our fates; Ask her homage and lift up our brows. Be we graved, gilded in the grave; Be we mast, Be we tablet of the Nile. The house where Pilate lived-- "He told me the streets I've made," Explodes from me as a lie, "His time for a waxwork is done." Be it so; Here's an upside down V for you! If I've made it Like a orifice of a cup Pounding, And another point from his nose, "Ha! a wrestler at the gate!" Though the Egyptian legend is, The Greek one--oh! 'tis better. Then I am ready for The breath of the real world, no matter The wars of the Nazi--with true Thatchery, Risked words of the Greek, Witted or spoken as they were, Their errands done-- In no case better paid Than in Rome, when to the Christians The Temple's rusted out, Who blessed that rotten mouth Of their tyranny, Reting a live man's made out of clay-- It is better there than here, Than here, their evil done, As for example, all the bars That block my way, Or the hall of the Temple where Himmy ben Podes, holding by grout Baithing, Pees and blusters, his iron lies On a slab in every block he blabs, "What sezin chaume que l'entour e l'ombre?" Which means "What booty has my ormolus cho?" He's trying to tell us something. I'm a man of like-minded men, So let me no more delay In calling my friend. Nor better can Be told. Ebbing and flowing Are the times of my doing; Running gaily As the whores do run-- If I could tell, sirs, I'd go Possessed of such a man. The ground-birds follow his scent, If yon she-wolf of the skies Sows the seed. Though I've slipped my old wits In the rocks of the sea And I've no account Of the Graem risen 'twixt Clyne and the sky-- Still, I never could see So long a fool was 'twas sign Of a wise wolf than yin Wrath, though his wits, almost, were Late to a beast's scheme; We see what the French make, Like that Irish wolf, But he spake not his false desire, That leaves ======================================== SAMPLE 241 ======================================== Jove the war-god also, came, My father and king, when first I kissed Your soft hands. If Jupiter Himself a fountain hath built, We've 'tis but light ostience for you And jingling water to quench our thirst; We've 'tis but light ostience for you. Our father and the Phrygian crown'd With much domestic bloat and pride. I'd tame his spirit, and sure, you see In nothing but in his own spite Of others, but we shall not vaunt And ruin of a feeble state; No, nor with imperial blast and crueller Of taunt and sneering, cross his brows, Unwisely, he his Godhead pricked With mischief as an anvil made; Whole summer after summer doth he spend In feeding fools with mischief, fresh And galling shots to strain our purse. Behold your years are wear and old, You are consumed and hard-worn; You pine in bosom's depths; Who fed on Baucis and Alecto never Grenguis, with evil dash, And bold diadems in the fountain. Still the old, old policy, in me Afflicts my craft, Will still keep the old standard beaten Trampling at mankind. Be true to one whose heart it is, Not the vain show of it, And skilfully the dear old standard We'll triumph o'er mankind. Now though the foe be hard on defence, Tis a time of encreasing war; Nigh the dawn the battle roars afar And all is fresh and brave. The cheeks of all are large, the eyes do shine Of all that out ye grow; And far and near that voice of thine Doth thunder round and far, And fright the hearts of far and near. Up! up! rise up from the tables laid And know that your dear mate is dead; A thousand memories of delight Like flashing stars appear With hearts from heaven that rejoice That mourn their mate is dead. It is a great and happy life To me to know mine's deserted, It is a great and happy life And shall I live it again? My comrade is dead, who lived so long, That, hard o'erthrown, I say; Now first the winds that called him "alive!" Have parted with him, the world doth know, His servant none but he did understand, And he himself has to God given up The loving music he would keep. "Ah! dear lost ones," you shall soon be near, Through whom so many days I stray, That "ahd I you'll fade to naught like sun-drops" That "the last is but the first," And since your dear ones are now forever With God to whom you go, I'll sing to you from the choir of lost ones soon. I hear the hollow door doth clang That says farewell to dark and light, And then the slow, long beat Of slow expiration; but, Heaven's child! The whole earth is not quite So dark, sweet alb lads, ere its dim drawn out end. Though the wedding-dreams are ended, And I, amid my joy and pride, But where I go to dwell. Though thou, I knew, would I were wife, And thou, my child, wouldst call me bride, With thee to dwell and bear a child, The world to speak a woman's name, I should not hear it. Nor would it matter If all said "no" to me. I know By the glimmer of this heart that there be Some hearts more near to God's than thine. And sweet may be our Sunday-mornings, Sweet on our wives' and children's hands To kneel and hear the blessed words, And sweet the song that blesses them there, And sweet to feel, as 'tis, our hearts beat By the headstone's weight. The little children, like lambs, Shall kneel and hear; Our children's hearts will beat More softly than our lips. We'll love the lads that all day long By our side will lie, Nor look nor speak nor do Theught that's rude to them or us. Though the lord were cold, the slave might break His helplessness with weariness, And since they have it in their breasts That in the church they've heard, Be it mine to mourn, to meditate, To speak my thought when others ======================================== SAMPLE 242 ======================================== Outside the window the rivulets stirred like people in a grotto in my mind Mothers we share what we find in the river In its jaws in its heart he’s come and I’m out where our own and the river don’t meet <|endoftext|> "She Wasn’t Like Other Women", by Amiri Barrucho [Relationships, Gay, Lesbian, Queer, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] This moment, she is an Alibi. The other women, unforgiving of fault, Cannot forgive her. She had, to the guards, a suspiciously close nose, And, in an attempt to look shifty, Razzily refused to press charges. The case is still turned down, Her eye-sight is still dimmed. She's wakened only to work, Silky from sleep Or peenless She lies on the cinderblock. Now, she is a sound to be closed, She is, for the time, a blue vein On the night's dark body. She is the night That, by desire, must be priced. She is the seamy aftermath Of acts that don’t stray far From the coming. She is the mortuary Await for the wounded to visit, Who feel no want of flesh, But are somehow rooted there. She is an eye-place, It is her unopened flower. She is the eye-place, the ill site, the open tear site Of livid hours Where she is, The tainted urn, The shat with humans. The corpse of a history That no one wants to think about. The eyes-end of things That men fear to look into. The kiss-face of history. We, scavenging under the rain, Find her. She is our turn-in, The story she has sought. We know all the stories, We know the weather, But, we’re forced to trust her. We know the time of day From wild fire alarms. We know how far Beyond fire pits The hamlets lie. She’s a window to another History That, everywhere, The day-writ heaves Creek from plain. In spite of ourselves, An ever-courting light We blame upon her And she is always A light behind us. She must know, In a doglike way. She must have felt, As a ruined land And a false past sought, When she did that. <|endoftext|> "The Glories of Our Fathers", by Ben Belittick [Living, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Home Life, Nature, Religion, God & the Divine, Social Commentaries, Class, History & Politics] We can’t take God when he’s shivering in his woods or searching the universe for a grass-blade to strike the annular zone of his mouth brimming with the lattice of his lies. He will not hold a candle lit to a flare thrown from a fireworks cart or recite the multiplication of Pi for the length of a Babel argument in one provocative moment —  either one results in his death with shouts or he will remind you of the people who was better when he was stuck as a badge of his prowess than taking his meds and losing his edge in the wild. He looks out the cab of the truck as if he’s finding his own way home in the snow. So we pack up the cats and the needles and the groceries and a battered bible and a worn book of instructions and we trudge through blizzard, darkness, rain to the little store where you can buy God only God, but God is still the wronged people of your past. <|endoftext|> "The Story", by Lydia Lillist [Living, Death, Disappointment & Failure, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] We tell our grandmothers who teach in church and our children through stories written with longing, sadness, and loss. This is all of what we know and little is known now until in the small, windowless ======================================== SAMPLE 243 ======================================== Air, Thou descending Spirit, Sister and Wife of Man! Dark from the darkness, Not of the light, Look with Thine eye, and qualify That of Thine all-knowing Eye With Thy knowledge of truth. Not of Earth's kindling fire Thou art, and not of Earth's Sons: Lo! Christ's kindling light, Not of the same Birth, Heirs of the Light Thou art, and Thou art He Of the great Thesight Thou art, and Thou art He Of the great Thesight. Dark to us both, yet informed We see with richer eyes Thou, descending from the skies, Art seen from points as of old Which Thou, Almighty God, Hath in a moment set O'er thy descent. Beam and darkness, light and darkness, From change of glory Distant to where the Eye Shall God's own throne and majesty Beheld, to which as from a mountain Clear from a west-wind Thou risest. The glory which cannot die To God's descent is Light of glory, or day and night Compact and couch the heavens; Light of Light, of Lights infusing They are confounded both. The brightness of two powers is From their conjoined state: Light of Lights, of same and different Energence and influence, The glory which makes them one, Is to us a single light, It is the glory of both kinds, Light of darkness: For which they are prepared, And clothed with splendour, When God is such to unite His different colours in one fold And raiment of redound By his own action, When Christ has knelt down and swore Neither unto none. He said, but when unto the Font He was applied, All heressed, and even as a lamb Doth open its eyes at fist, That is, into its grave, He shed on us his Holy Fire, The same wherein In the heavens the visible and the invisible Are one. Then, with a keen and tottering knee, In honour of the Lords, whose thrones are now laid Low in the pell-mell tumult of these times, He spoke of peace, and taught that prayer should be made From hearts constructed not for strife, Sufficiency and power, For the destruction of this new co-Natanyahu, And yet not to afflict the earth too much By their reaction. He saith, Not them that whine For offices not too well performed, Nor them that over-act in times of conflict, For which they expect their Prince to crown their heat Of ambition. Yet not they that cast away The grain of gleaning and grain of thumping, Nor them that in proud imaginations Expand their warmth, Nor them that stomach the great draught, And let the stomach prosper, Make their Earthly Cares be blest. Nor them that bid For birthdays, and mar the play Of joys and pleasures, and debarre With those that smarter are That in their eyes There is but one Glorious morning: Not them that with their eyes The sun obstruct The cheerful ways, Yet spread their hearts too wide, As if their hearts would eat All within their sight, And out of sense They live a lie And no respect For those of fellow-feeling. Not them that here oppose, Forsooth, an antient array Of each old warfare; The good old days Are at an end With other good days than those, When love, and a pure content Their plan Were on righteous grounds, And their proud state To bless, not overwhelm The world. The antedate, To which that amiable race Of cunning people called Celestial, have looked up From the earth's first floor Into the spheres of day; But, like as the folks of old Whose vanity was a lot Of nobody there. Our better spirit, our god Above all that is, The kindlier, and of the kin That play a game, has promised To the sons of free-eared men Of today That the Reign of Price Be not reckoned To these in hoary white, Whom Time shall have nought That of earth's White Horseman They shall not hold. And unto them shall they have Of the earth and all the good That is and will, Unto whom their gentle lore Shall be sent Their own delight. Then cease, fetch, fetch ======================================== SAMPLE 244 ======================================== Glanced a little into the west, The unknown heaven for future lore, The unknown nature beyond its ken, The hum of myriads of worlds. I put my faith in paint, in paper, In papyrus, parchment, in iron, Paper of processions and particulars, Painting a phantom air for distinctions, Printing my few sensations blue, What my eyes see--not seeing at all, No eyes see. I love to take my trays Of color bound, Flap my wings and escape, Glide into the sun or sea, Migrating artfully, I can make this world as one To be without beginning or end, No beginning, without end. I dreamed a dream of the house I want; This yellow house has a hundred doors, Each of its doors is a gold-columned doorway On a gold-clouted corridor; Its yellow walls spire up in a splendid wind-tunnel Of many colors and the slightest gleam; The floors are sawn logs, the doors are plaster, And there is a bright painted sky above the tiled, And there is a yellow crowd Of yellow people marching on sixty-foot beds Of grass with long yellow reeds under feet. A baby cries in the street, The yellow noise of the August air Sweeps my brain like thin purple sand Sweeping the stiff, brown woods like silt; And white leaves flutter in the air, And it is dead of night, And I walk for miles In the yellow street, Looking at little yellow houses Where yellow children are like precious stones That I could cut and turn into money, The gold down the streets To the yellow street where yellow folk march, Like precious stones that I could make a fortune Out of yellow stones. I love the hidden recess Where you come out at night with yellow hair, And carry the book I wrote about the butterflies For their heads to rest on top of As if those people had walked under the branches Of yellow trees where butterflies are roots. They turned my nose up, as I walked along The street, where all the objects my mind reads into, Like hidden music were arrayed. One thing, beneath its layers, was Not visible but much too swift and fine For eyes to receive it as it were When the stage is open and the soul is free; It sounded, well, like chickens crying After midnight, coarse, thin, scurrying wings Sweeping a field under lights that are yellow Moving from sunset to dawn, A bony crying from those yellow chickens. I love yellow, yellow things; They hum me into the heart of the moon Which is yellow like yellow things. Yellow flies through my mind, moving to Sound, becoming alive for a little while With this lunar machinery. The light of the moon, Rainbow-colored trees overhead, The pale flour dusting the sun, My happy mind Move in yellow light that is motor-like, Move with swiftness, yellow light which is time. So I walk out in the street at night, Where yellow things are arrayed. The water drops fall yellow, The yellow stars drift by, And yellow is all the sky. I said to my companion "I wonder," I said, "would it be all right To have a little playhouse every day On the green?" The light of a leafy room From a window controlled by a batter Droning about in rows Caught the color of my face. I said, "I wonder," I said, And went to work. A newspaper man Came out to see what was up, But when he went He left a piece of the paper, Scratched off at some point By a rusty knife, Then passed by again. I ran in the house, the woman Who was the baby's head Paused by the tired baby's bib, Paused by the tired baby's belly Waited a little while And came out to you; I was writing a book About the baby and you, It would be better If I wrote it By a hand that was almost The same As mine. Out of the windows, The wind murmured on, The wisest thing in the world So we could listen; On the very same wind that came And went With the white Christmas, it was done, The book was finished, The letters to be Dropped by the half-feed, Sticks and straws, straws ======================================== SAMPLE 245 ======================================== prophêt. As he went he chided. It, ubi quinum haec reddimus ex uuolatores conuenit, duxisti semina dedit ille columbiis, et metus a uitare sanguinis ex furbem qua deae fusim uitem lacrimarum dedisset. Since every one must now impart their help and aid, And I am no longer allowed the time to seek And ask of goodness and of entrance unto God; But with a zeal and courage so great as to eclipse In my new city to which I go, I must begin Such works as may God favour, so I bless my God, And hymns of praise that only triumph o'er my friend's slights. Climax Augustin, quid amores cogere victoria? Sanguis ubi nunc temporis ignes tibi nunc uinis; cast Bunam pudendis, plena sed longa voluptas, sed solitoque Phoibum sororis confessus candeloro quas fabula praestant anima sui! sed bello tot Isocyho nocentis omnia manent Nam tibi studeo uides nunc uiribus auens, coniugis ante labro Nysi, dyna nobilis; Bogiable uultus abest, quia fuit illa mouebas, a, Castalianis pedibusque uitabat haust alites. iam meditata mittit humus, quo nec manebis ara multaque sui multiaque manus. sed non ego tumidos atque inuidiatis harundine latus quas pernumer et non uiuere leuiter dicimus. sola fuit Hieronymum mare: tum Haemi failsculio uso cast Boleatim uagant, qui scindit opaca manu, cum Phoebus risis, Si frem vere iam carmine senilis, Naxianae cum muriue Nysse mele, inque dies Galliam colorem se quaerit acrisarum Pacholisque niger in lima mersa, vel signa capae. Ilium etiam dulcis men procul terga tempo est priuus: labilem et inilas pignora galeat ignea roseo et sacris commotae pudubi terrens auxilia, qui Lentum premit Ino commissa uicta tibi, subclaudit humus, imerba sub noctis vel aela caprae deliciae canes qui tempore subeant pila dolores, atque per noctis atque per multos oppida luctata dies. si Ganymedeia pellato linguae uestrosa ruptis, cognator amplius heu melius erumpendus arce, contrahit in astra nigerum conditum solumque multus, terra, prouens: A*teo adhiben est, ardent sub annos, ducensque Deae. Every solid day is an odour and incense of youth. But thou shalt not to Ganymede this double course endure; Behold from thee the Lucan text expound; And deem, how bland thy words will please my mind, When I have three days more to see. Lei noi quei ouoses tristes en papa fersa tres pelas, qu'en loin de son pala est sa pluia, Et palaverat Eoliae sim gliis uomaria laudes. tum primum labens molles oras de cunna vel purpuris; Et sali non flamamus floridus ortu son net belle, semper fuisse manus, per maeoro. quin etiam uos ipse sensim leuibus larem sopita, et quod dulcis erat servis durum sacrare puellae, sed pertus suis habitata manus, prosequitur aempe, contingunt regnum esse pede gener iuuenli. tum mihi mane deum morti ex alto mundo semper fuerit, tum nost ======================================== SAMPLE 246 ======================================== The leather-wrist in his hand he tied Over that sick baby's naked feet. There was a light gleam of laughter And stings of icy nails, like the rain Torn through a shower and into the limb, Where it went into the rest of thin, And chilled and cramp'd, and then would come One kick, another blow upon the wound. In its dusky prison so it lay Away from every softness and from fear; While he and Mother stood apart And watched the world go by beneath the bars. All the while as their infant little feet Dangled upon the bars, with one blue eye At the edges and the sky, he spoke In a tongue not like any they had known; And they had said the one soo-kah when. Yet they had need to wonder a little What he could say--a sort of to-0-men In plain English, jargon-like and odd-- And how he would speak to such as they-- A foreign body, or one bent To him, with no record of his speech. They saw no shadow of a doubt Nor thought they heard him not their man-- So silent they stood and bare As rocks that silent and bare were. His cloth the same. His own seemed a body wracked By hell's fierce wrath. "Sweet Mother, Sweet Mother!" And from his fingers, rough with pain, As from the sharpnesses of Baby's clay, Out sprang tatters of Skin, Wet as if one had wrung them out After the wonted sign of woe. Some fallen to strange and ghastly tears; A fair round tear which the day had dried; Another there of pale hairs-- The dry, white dust where the dust of dead sin had spread like thick and rancid sand Overspreading them deep in grief; And others, dearer, washed like love's fair child. Now all dispersed through these Were his a mother and his own; One who came with wan, world-weary face, His only life the outside of her own mother's grave. "O Sweet, Sweet, Sweet!" he would call, "What have I done, That you should weep thus, For this, this made me!" She, "Poor Baby, it was you That washed the tears from my eyes. Do now your pleasure." Her voice with love gone mad, With her words tossed high, With a ghastly lip and a sad tearless eye Flittered round and round her fond words-- "You, that had not met me before, Came in your boat; Dolman, now, you'll be my Sweet! Look up--you and sweet Friend. O, could you, Sweet! see How then I lived, Without thee, without thee! Sweet Mother, in a terrible way She came to her, Thrown and broken, of womanly fame, But no less her daughter and wife. From that grave which oft I have At evening sought in vain, From that near death-bed I have cast My songs, my loves, my joys. You who fed me and gave The strength to sing, Your other daughter to be, Her name is Mrs. Light. Go where you will, smitten, smitten, Fickle, flouted, crass, flouted, Do the fools tattle, tell your prize But you have fallen from Heaven, Fell from Heaven like a pin. O haven, in your tears! I have your song! The quaint old-fashioned way We said "good morning," It is only as a last Of pre-eminence to be Uppermost in our lesser words That you can sing; We have the first of blood! This hearers' ear are parrot men, Your first performers, in my faith. Aye, Baby, every glance of you Says Honey, honey, my sweet, You that are far more than your years, And your babies half your age. The young that cry, they're petted, The old that bow before you, Your golden eye opes and closes, While, bejewelled and oped in gold, The voice you raise to lull 'em Is merely you; The newborns all are you; And those that press to you Are drunken of you. Come in, come in! There's a new face On the dear old ball, And a doll to bed, And a rose to screw And a time to do it; You ======================================== SAMPLE 247 ======================================== To look on my sweet Sin, to win The comfort of her eyes; to drink Her wines and forget all sins; To see the works of Enochs, Not with wild Intellect, nor dry Extreme Jealousy, but by Love, Like the Ancients, on a mountain's head Standing, thus with sweet balance keep The dogmas of our blushing age; And keep by experience If so It may be, my last bottle flint Can drop a comical tear. Let such but now be seen And not too near, Or the desecrated grass Bedeck with fallen snow, Or the leathery flag Of a half skin That blew and failed to the touch In a gust of the poor Age's Supremacy,--aye me! Yea, though I from my window look On that self-same square Which, like the feet of the Just, A writ-hearth-and-rewind Young Canon now, ere she knows Me in this disenchanted mould, Both Seeker and revealed In an awful hour, Whom my Will hither may move, She must walk her life; for thus I write. I saw the grave of Mrs. Nun, Which shaped itself like a breast, With the door for that, and one hinge For the candle: she, the moment when, Was like a Campbell, stern and high Which girt the path for the candle. In the eyes of the stone-cold youth, Closed in her gravest bow, There shone the victor-spirit of the leap Of a "Nolueranea," mild Until the hour When its rights shall prevail. "There!" the Author said; "the sun-drop Spins round a little star; And the Landlord is hungry for chalk, My somewhat haggard mood Kept the skirts of the shambling glass, But he smiled. The woman's privilege Was for a few chips to get the advance Of the publisher and advance his schedule; And these dear charms and charms the Author Made his play: who, in the dust and the dust, From the shoeless to the stir-worn tread, all a-trivlin', Yet rested heel-down in a litter of dust, Beside the sack of his old enemy, And his child. Then the trysts in the perigee Of a recent Loser who got his malger and suffered the prick, To heap in a hazard now; and the Landlord and lately divorced, And, crouching at the foot, the lately released, each with his "Nolueranea," Behold in their misery the leaps of a "Nolueranea." "So now I see!" the lurching Echo groans; And now the writer drinks to the Muse, Alerter than in purer days, To make the elastic line at the strain out to the last gasp! "Thanat object to wish a gift of prolong help From that be-mused who in fiddling may play With the up-turned neck or the great back's fullest sweep; All else first sacrifice, then pray the gift be granted. If you will not, that one nothing more you'll ask." "The dream," he said, "of infinite beneficence Had held the Fanaticks in thrall; The Armies which may drive them to the Pacific- sea, Brought not an end of toil to the man-devouring. And, rising in any form for an endless feast On the Finger-leaf or the Blood-suckle's pure white, As when they devour the pride of the flower-flower, Round and round they lay, as though they could not stop; And each set ripples from the prying eye of the Eye of Love. "And the Fanaticks and their women, when awake, Did raving fast devour the firmament; As many of them in their sleep they terrorized Loose and shuffling, as, in a dream, they strove Round and round to reach that prize, the fair Pen. For they, by the victims which their quillie Had carved up, did delight To draw honey to pay, whose sweet draughts make men sick, And show a quill's lineaments like to wan. "Had it been for the Pen's deliverance, they Had been eased of a righteous prayer; Had it been for the Pen it had stood ten mile long "But when round the pen at the squire They appear, each kneeling on a quill, ======================================== SAMPLE 248 ======================================== A report has rung thro' the heaven o'er all lands, That, following the dear oaten branch, The shining topmost of the plant, Up from the childlike cheek, the snowy throat, Is sere autumn's fierce metonal self. The sere leaf of the harvest's late returning Marks the high god, alone of all the blest, And hers, the first in umidowed grace, E'en from his heav'nly throne, when droops the lily, Fairey to fair, the queen of the skies, Begins, with a face, a form, and adorns The scene with beauty. Beauty lives in most A land without a crime; the bard Should raise the virtuous, and floor the vile, As well as sing, and while he sings, The muse should shape her divine, And nature him wedlock with nature's great, To raise this world with nature's own produced Of blaze and bluster. Spring-time is the time to it; And so long as the mortal draws breath It is not late; for time that lives In health of body, mind, and soul, From its best years live many, or, like this, Retiring, lave the blood and bow, like man, to eternal life. To mark, in the painter's art, the skipper's art, In love, the lover's, and the sailor's, So nature's tide o'er soul, and heart, and me, Should flow from its best, or flow in its last breath, A new-comer to all life that yet shall live. It is most truly said, that second-hand is first-hand, By which old servants have they swears, who new masters seek. It is most truly said, the soul is full of heaven, And of the true fountain whence it flows. This is the truest cognisance of men, That, ere our gaze it rots, the self-same gems are there, Left me and here, the Self of the heavens, and it is true, For my soul is filled with the true heavens' self. Out of their fullness 'tis like a full stream, From which it flows, and seems a tap at it; and then From it Heaven looks out, as in a green emerald. If you thus its own broad-faced chalice, This country from a thousand skies Is within a little lake, the sea-beach just in it; a little breeze To make its brim look up thro' the spout, and show The moon from out the spout; then day and night, For overflow, like in a rainbow-shine, Pass like a growing water-vein. One night's dead night, what nation falls? What nation comes? A country's self in the self's defence. The self which here like water on our land Lies like a well-side, as soul within a soul. Nay, more, as God's pure stars like this new fire Is like an emerald through its glassy height, And night is like the sky above it all. What is a nation? It is an airy nation. We breathe the element in our lungs, and out, from the sky, Breathe an air as bright as this, God's breath. <|endoftext|> "Grief", by Dean Main O'er Cliff, Murdo, My Mind, Best Years, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] Not like the summer rain, which seems alone Grizzling at dry trees where no watering comes, I like these blossoms… Or are those trees dried-up flowers Too? … In the tree-glitter's round tarn incident A clearer paleness glistens than our heads, And whiter than the evening, which is soon A quivering silver, gives drowsier sleep. It is so pale, I wer certainr This is an ecstasy of the flesh. This nature, bereft of all her stigmas, Is pure waste. As clear as a log where the moon Serves only as a granulation to The benumbing and dreadful cold, Thus a constant moonlight that remained clear Becomes a bath for a crystal soul. <|endoftext|> "From “Ulysses, New Style”", by Peter Oliver [Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Reading & Books, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict, Mythology & Folklore, Heroes & Patriotism] Who gave the word to express the feeling of loss and the sure hope of something found rare; who placed a lion on a street, in the ======================================== SAMPLE 249 ======================================== There is no face but my own, No voice but my own, No touch but my own, No voice except my own, And none but my own, And none except myself. <|endoftext|> The iris blooms upon the psalter's page; The fuschias crumbles in the distance, The violet's debaree draws near, The may-tree, where the lawn, Dots-daisies with her feathery shade, Fast fills the burn of noon; Come in, O Nature! Doubt not the heart that beats against thy will! Come in, Thou friend of my choice, My constant, my truest of the four. I pause, and pause, Past the phase that yon hills and plain, And yon wooded gorge, Take me at thy lean, Voice of the timorous, with his cordial U-neck. I pause, and pause, Where the sweet-flowing Hebe, Nipp'd at the knees, With her vial of sheldon-nux that drops and glimmers In the brain's dark well of reasonings! I pause, and pause, In the defies of erring heart and cheek; For the life-draught is sour With the distillate that drips from life's unripe juice. Thou wiper's son, The lictited wanderer, Possess my welcome! Possess me, as possest Thou glorious accessory, Mak'd through life's mid-labors By none the autocrat of thy surrender! A modiste, a purist, And, while he doth before thee here Shed thy creative light, Mak'st, on manifold aspects, The Word's synthesis, For the excreat of the hour, He-sufferance! That stooped, in this fine aspect, Oft I wonder, when, in the June's gloaming, I listen to the full-ton'd autumn, How I feel my heart To grow a trailing burthen Of sandy sallows; How I feel my eyes, O do their sad ministry! Always they behold Some placid infant stranger, Which from the gloom Rumphs into light! For they hearken to Infant-murmurs Of brighter promises. A man that is a monk! a monk that is a man! St. Jerome! thou, in lyart shade Of mountainous Teneriffe, Hastened to the world's dole, With a whisper of the wonder-working Jove, Through the small grave lips of a dead flame. Like a flash that the world's beyond Thou leapest past its fall In a frenzy of Christian fervor; Like a trumpet the world's beside When it strikes at the eleventh hour. Pant it unto the soul's near death, Through the world's life Of a quarrel of leaves! Yet, the man that is a monk, he is not tame; That is a man! and a man that is a monk is not A thing for a feverish rabble. The panther's drawn out his mighty stripes On the sweet breast of the man that is a monk! Like a Nazarene, by faith uplifted He liveth to the last Among the keen natures, Of the sap-like dogmatism; In the narrow sense of the world's going; And the world's wisdom When the blind dust turns to dark violet, Let the sacred graves win back their glory, By the hand that is set fair, For the royal-mown lands Where the great sun dies down the darkness; Be the victory Of the staff and the targe Then let the ear that never looked up To the wide world tost, Of the man that is a monk Then make haste to awaken it; For the man that is a monk When the flower of the gentle tide Blends with the vegetable ast of night, And the nightingale, with a fervent note, Mourns with gaunt grasses one sad lament At the gate of the day; Then I, like the holy gossamer That is knit by soft love and tender skill, The mind's golden cord Tying me and my dear one, In love's wonderful land Then through the cloud-girt presence of the day Through the vault of star-lit noon, I stretch my motionless eyes, To the azure clusters which seem ======================================== SAMPLE 250 ======================================== Black like a shriek from the mouth of the fire, Red as blood, bronze-red as a dove's cry That divides on the wings of the wind, Then, as of earth is she stretched apart. And you wondered, wondering still: And you said: `Is it God who is speaking, Or does my woman's heart moan and cry From its trust in its mistress, from her love for me?' But I stood weeping alone, And there was no one to hear: For all was hushed, hushed, hushed, hushed with love and fear. Lo, a-drawn as a dead horse drudging A post-wagon of soot and smoke Down through the ruts and corrals, With the noyseman daubing down, Dark in the eyes of the sprouting corn, Red with the blossom and brown with seeds; And the horseman in front of the horse-tail, Clearing his mule-logs on the plain, Just three rocks behind the rider, staring, Or a-line of froth upon the far horizon Of black moorlands winding, the garberry-red With light damp grasses swept from the river And bright with the points of the long spines, Then sky, then hill and then stream, To the deep of his silky forehead, Like a ghost over the wintering house- He is huddled for the winter In the deep, dark shelters of his wigwam. Out on the ledge of the dune, Just out of sight of the road, Dipping his paddles he does push From the fringed edge, slops his palms Down upon the slats above his head And sits upright that he may see Over the canal that he has Made with his hands in the air, The long-rainbow like the crescent Of a woman's waist against the hill He is watching the wide dune again, He has stopped a cascade or drop Of the rising or the falling Of the kernel of the camel-drought He is thinking he is a bin, That he is a rumour, that he dies As the Lord Buddha died, As he sees the rising sun over him, A coconut-do not for this Boil him or touch him or harm him. Out of his heaven of possibility He is weeping and asking for His children and his wife and the life Of the months and years that are over, Time from his Father's hand and spring and fall. `Alas! dear Father, alas! and oh! And if I had but a fool I'd be Hanging for setting I would hold A candle for. I want my sheaves, What have my sands of life That I should work or see But I'm your patient, tramping son of youth, As is the wilderness our Father made me grow in. Come in thy mist, thou Orion at my side! And take it from my hand and heart and spirit, To the farthest end of the universe Come with thy mist to meet thine own end. Haste thou and hurry and travel until Thy mist impresses us here as we go Up and down and sideways and upwards To the furthest end of the sky. There is no evening star To guide us in our wanderings, To set the hours at six, Or day and night at four, Or night and day at six, We scan the mist like savages Lost in thought, that know not night. No suns to zealously expend Bidding the darkness cease Because we are our suns Or, as far as earth and sky, A fiddling ghoul to ourselves In the mist of eternity. Thy stars we like to bare Ne'er by chance might we grow Warm in our fruits and fancies Because we know there is no sun. All gods of little light Have burned in gleaming glory That our mist may grow. When we are old and our night is coming, Come with thy starry mist to the end, And show us thy way and aye to go. Our home is left in darkness Who can find the morn's approach? But thou who art brightest, let it be Through the first night for us to-night. O little night that ever sleeps, Untroubled and unheeded, Is all the world asleep or a lover found In twilight now? That with wet eyes, that with dark lashes hides, Seen from a distance through the dusk's wall, Aye a solace finds! ======================================== SAMPLE 251 ======================================== Poison I'd have you think, And burn your light, my dear: You'd do naught but break your clay, For that 'twill soon be baked. Let's sing together, Emma, and laugh At marriage; Let's sing together, and I'll do the same To-morrow. And I will come to your window, And wish the doubt a' And sorrow, and know that love is free. There's not a soul in sight But bears love's fair face; And noble hearts aboot them all Have welcome sinned, And shame and hell's dead. The gallows is down In yonder navy, And faith and thought and worst and best Lie frosty cold, Where owls may cry the morn. Love once I knew Heaven's love would stand the gall Of hell's evil; And torture, and wildest rage, It is not told. So let us lie beneath This gobbolder drear, And call the fates Heaven, So love may live; So pride may prove, how soft 'twas That love was born. Flesh of my flesh, and heart of my heart, That all my bones are one; Be shell of my... ‎ Cit ish v. Spirit that now I am, In this... ‎ Cit ish v. I'd be well blest If upon some day While I am still alive, A beautiful rose Might bud in my field, And shoot, with my season​s colour​​​ A wondrous golden glow. One night, without skirting, Nor bows nor wires, He kissed me unawares; And, kissing, I whispered, "Kiss me and give me A rose that is more glorious." He took me gingerly, Placed me on his arm, And warm he humptered me All the house we will get, Hoping for a long-time flower. And what, to me, Is death? but a wonderful golden flower to me! Good-bye, and all ill Is over, now, and well; For I only just got Over pride, And ever being over Ever be to-morrow. THROUGH the window I gaze up, Above me, over me, at the stars; Through the small eye-presses on each rail, Two young girls pass, each carrying a basket Of radish daintily, and grass beside, And two small cages containing roses, in one cage Swallows, flying from a hazel bough, with wings, Making their slow way through the air. In the other cage Two turtle doves; And up and in the trees two chimneys, calling a distant, low murmur; And a few beechen tables, and at each, A piggy bank, with green candles and red, Above the green, moist carpet; all is silent, Save for the dust that shuffles from the dish. So, through these words, I muse, in such deep silent rumination, As heaven itself may only be to my weak brain an ever-present source of wo. He ran in full gallop, and as he did so, He shouted and beat his drum, And he flop-flopped upon the table, And set the dishes adrift With his palfrey `for value.' And then down through the deep abyss of the forest, Unpetting or heedful of the jarring drum-note, On the naked branches and branches again, And the bamboo poles, which were already there, He pounded out the battle-note. It is not nights, nor is it days, That oppress the wanderer; It is the clouds that erode His passion for the valley; It is the clouds that loosen The yoke of the king. VAMPING IN THE MOHAWK Virtue abides in riches, Destructive war, nor hearts that break; But the minstrel pleads in vain For the hills he cannot win, Since it is not clouds that ease The weary king. AFTER the king's fortune, After the glorious victory, His heart beat fast and hot As waters in the spring. The maidens appeared in court, In humble looks, and pleasing speech He coursed around the court. At length they said, his years are past, His aged head is bald; From deeds as old as himself No daughter has been won. The aged ======================================== SAMPLE 252 ======================================== Dark-gloomed in eve, and pan Ne'er shone a sunbeam from afar. The flowers were mown, the fire burned low, The reapers' hands had already grown Too dull for the sickle full of dew; Then troth-plunder seized me, and my fear Flooded with loh-- Then my sire-love mocked me loud and long, And he hooted--then I paused; "What, with the loveless flower of Mar, Light of the spring, When ripened day has ripened love, Sweet woman-flower outgrowen not-- When day is rose's prime, Tho' star keeps close company, And night smiles soft in sleep; When flow'rs all live in wind, And dark, besmear'd with dew, In glory never fear to die, Since frost is death for all-- "Then why, Ere the blooms of time to sprout, Fade from the earth their summer-flowers? Why spring feasts on their brown bare heads, Dartle their days? When all beneath is barren wane, What with their beauty ever fled? "O that ripen'd sun, tho' now the last Weighs the summer year for heav'n, That wimpled east, Should not stay till his dull ring Dulls to nothing all the sphere! But, most unkind, He not yet departs from this, That I grow finer, more I Heav'n; And shall for ever ripen'd joy Her suckling, her delight And for whom a life was hang'd off, Until to mew her live, Like black years of other men. The Gods, O sad that never can Turn back the way they press, Disfigure all and man disobey Their illiterate days through, Who triumph in proverbs. And ne'er will Hell swallow, ever, what of Heav'n That was, If on its summit she could like a swan. "Lone roamer, Now old and hoarse, Blow wind soft so, blow low! Blow, blow, slow down, And fill the dim air With winds, bare branches only, blowing. Here is no land, be not affrighted. No house is there, nor solid object, Nor road nor staircase rising, But wind can enter and enter all. "Do you pray, Rocks have hills, Dare you a head, With the map of earth? Do you pray, Rocks have hills, Dare you a head? Take your leaflets from your heads, Rocks have hills, Fear will carry you Into the drying bed; With your own nose for judge, With your own tongue for knife, And your hair, and teeth, Then let your life determine; Strict corlog`re hath none. Strict corlog`re hath no kitchen Where haggling pixies meet, Except in our Cabildo, Hag-diggery; Then haggling pixies will seek To wrangle words, which racks the hearing. If a horse, He gets no mercy Haggling pixies do have skins, And are from shivering Swine drawn. So when you hear Haggling pixies Will they shake Their thews, From their feet to their locks, From their feet to their nieves, From their eyes, from their ears, Be assured that They The devil hath two hands; But the good husband Hath two hands, And a clean divine, clean visible hand, To do his will. Because he him should wife hath chosen, Because he himself Choose him, Him the common police has spied. And when, you know, He could see, And he himself a light-handed saucy wench. But at the last, From the police station he went on a journey, Under the acting order of his constable, So clean, Loving, To his wife and him. "Let there be light," said the Authorized Driver, "My servant, quick!" And so forth pixially flew, From the moon's arrogant heaven on the earth Two good husbands! And they brought reams of riches back from the bush wars And they were very glad. A sailor whom the Maori feared When, whipp'd and primmed, he slept upon a doctor ======================================== SAMPLE 253 ======================================== life without exertion. Water begets water. The sun to the tide, sunburn or no. Starvation to the rise, the eggs back to the yolk; the sapro hunt, foregone, with life. To bear the cross on three hills of wheat before, and three trials of the cross-road man. <|endoftext|> "Places We Vessells At", by Michael W. Taft [Living, Health & Illness, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Relationships, Men & Women, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Religion, Christianity, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends] 2. Come here, put your shoes on. Let me tell you how I found you. Down by the railroad tracks, fighting off a train that had gone past too fast. A train that wanted to blow you up. Let me tell you how I found you and saved you. 1. Dust of the air, body vacuum. There is no good warrior. They don’t believe you. They don’t need you. Dust of the dark fresh needles, tidal water, sea salt submerged farthest away. Mother of twelve children and one baby in tiny sheet wrappers. You had a mother you never wrote in your first diary. Dust of the ether daughter, of the swollen waking waking daughter, of the swelling breathing daughter. 2. I would like to sing for you. Only voice. Only when I am young again will I get to you. Ever wandering. I would like to sing for you new song. I take your love. Too many. I take the story. 3. Rainy winter sunny spring moon. Love to your son, Lover, and lover. Need a little extra presence on these son- father father- Father- Son. You know it isn’t how I knew it will be. I take your love. 4. One in the sun, One in the tracks. One who makes love Secret in all. Three to one, Four to one Father, Son, Love on Father Son, Love on Son- Son- Love on Mother, Love on Love on Lover. 5. Sing the beginning of a symphony. Your Father Is in the sky Making beautiful Light. Sing the beginning Of a symphony. And your Heart is Sweeping the floor Of the ocean In a world Floating. I call your name. Give your heart Light, so It knows What you love. <|endoftext|> "The Letter My Friends Made Me", by Eric Ansen [Living, Relationships, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire] Who am I to judge? Who am I to convince These fools to live a life That’s true, that’s true. Here are some rules: I’ll only eat the food Coaches have On the way out, Be clean When I’ve touched the dirt Lies this stomach Eating blues, Before you break Your own rule. Your horse, back home, Is sick of stealing Nerve agents, putting on Sweatpants, slings Whose butt (butthole) Holds a bead Of pollen At night. I can’t sleep So I dream One more time Of Jason’s pants R ======================================== SAMPLE 254 ======================================== sturdy and reverend; To others of the company, He said, be kind and laugh, That I may say the final word. The Prince's Pan, our Prince's pleasure, O! love's high burly sister! Was friendly, amused, and kind; But when I, fair sibyl, ask'd What did this golden-tinted Queen want with her lovers? I Was harsh, calling her fool; She left the room; for if I Could tell to one that Caesar willed not do, that he Goes to the feast of Proconsul, One fail not of laughter. A crow sits on a tree O! dagn a-crumpula; A crow o'er yond intangles Yonder, and opens out the ground While a she-bird and she-purse ass Follow the banner to Sparta. It was a steal in the dawn, When the Sheriff rode the nigher, With a hiding of the gowan, That ruined the Macintassar, Nestled 'neath a burnt-out roof-stack In the cellar o' Boston town. He had robbed Fortune so profusely That now he plied the legal system To employ at the bast point, Which the Hunter's henchmen learned Was naught but a trick he had learned; For each "Chicken" had his "Dict,"-- What was Latin? what was it a,-- A mighty tragedy! What led up to it a sidewalk That stretched from the setting To the sunrise! What better Were there, than ordinary titles, And a sight of Europe's royalty, In the memory of Charles Doumouse! He drew up one day in the office To Sir Charles's lawyer, puffing And puffing, and puffing some more, And declaring there was more,--more Than just what is polite, He gave me to know he was well And saw a smile in the future. He was in a fix that was more, Perchance, the cat's dinner or the sun Touched with a poison of its own; And I thought that when he died he'd smile And explain to me, as he flushed, That the pipe was old and the water Old, and the house more old the fish, The mist-rent zook, the ZOOK, legal aid, The tumbler tub and the barber. And, all about that stately building Was roughness, and charm, and yet The places were neat and befitting The pomp of royal tenants at a feast, For the Hunter the neat, the tasteful, Was Puritanic of the legal mode! It was a homely but householder Intelligencer of honest guilt That blew from the mouth of the Hunter, The court reporter, court reporter again, Behind the scenes and familiar with all The ways of the Hunter as of the better—- For it was the Hunter's, breathed from the North, And bore a coy or polite whistle; Nor yet availed it of the Hunter's grim Turn of beet, of toffee of berry, Of silken smoothness, or southern bulb That retails the tropics as well as the trades, For thou art well familiar with them, And at the Hunter's good wholesome ease Exchange thy money for Hunter's twine, Or bear a Hunter's agned or beat out Of words that're to the hunter true The grace of the Hunter's gait. But what now the charming complaint Of the change? What was that for which The Magpie made in the snow, That the White Spirit came again To warn and bless, when the Prince set Upon the dark hillside To bring back his boy, and make waste The brity of his woodlands As when the Great Spirit wandered In even-song? A truth, that I understood, Was there, and a secret too, For in that wintry mountain The light wings of a lost golden bird May have perished in the gale, And the wasted mystery Left its image in the fiery use Of the lean magpie to the last, And the way seemed from the light, where was the path To the grave of the Sea-witch, Of the last knowledge, about whose sun And image the woods still made The image and the song that the light shades In starlight and in darkness Are the spirits of Wonder and Wonder, And at noon The snowdrop, to smell The maiden and the lily, At the windy ======================================== SAMPLE 255 ======================================== <|endoftext|> "Song: “The Holy Head”", by William Hayter [Living, Growing Old, The Body, The Mind, Love, Classic Love, Romantic Love, Relationships, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] The holy head,And the face that is sure to raiseAt the call of the wise man's wand,And the head that, o’erpaid,’Twixt the floor and the vault may move,And rise as a pillar to hold upThe head that’s dead,Tortured and ashamed—there’s a pleasure-house;And a face is a temple whereMan worshipping in the city spendsHis body and time,From which in pride there builds up his soul,For it’s not made by the glass or door,But it’s the head of the heart,And the pleasure-house of hope’s desire. <|endoftext|> "Thinking", by Christopher Simpson [Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Philosophy] The reason has some secrets, as the sun having water; God doesn’t. In a boat on the river I sat down, The sun behind me, and behind my reflection; For what were there to see? the water rolling to the sea Unchanged, the brilliant flood of it, the iridescence Of the fish in the current as it glided past me, the fin Even moving, the fins of the others, Their beauty in the light to be seen, the fire Of the fish shedding, in the change of the light Effused, the attention given to the flame For nothing else? Here was I in a place of its making, here Moving I, a part of its life, a part of its change, A river flowing, flowing, flowing, For the loveliness the seasons pay, the fire Of the river, the cross-currents, the glance Of the fiery lights among the rocks, flashing down, Glancing up, the sheeted darkness, the light Glinting from the beetle’s back—what did I see? There was no image of the shape of the thing Falling from the light, from the light in the fish, Or of the insect after it, lying on the grass Bathed in sunlight, but the water, flowed past my head. The beetle attracted me there: just the same As when I first saw him, he was there, the same Fading into darkness, reflected there, reflected As though the thing there flowed ever, flowed past, flowed past, Slow flowing, deep flowing, flowing past, the life From the water reflected, the light grew more intense. <|endoftext|> "Beethoven’s Prayer", by Jeffrey Rose Crowder [Arts & Sciences, Music, Stages, Performance Arts, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Money & Economics, War & Conflict] You who have heard my work over and over, Must have heard me at some point shout the name of Beethoven. You who have danced along with me for the better part of a quarter-century, Must have seen me kneel down in St. Keswick to do the geographer’s version of “Paradise Ragay,” You who have seen me weave together Russian, English, Spanish, German, French, all in one hairst You of the oak pan ubiquitously, the panbub sporiously—you! Each of you, in our eyes a mysterious and beautiful dark-haired girl, Every dark-haired girl an exquisite dark-eyed girl, and every light-eyed girl a girl, You of the bruise blu, you of the bruise blue, you of the bruise light, You of the smirk mint, you of the silver bruise and you of the lilt mint You of the romance of earth and sky and sea, and bun and brown, you of the flare, You of the sun blu and you of the sunlight blu, You of the political blu, you of the pentamill blue, You of the far blue, you of the bright orange blu, You of the brown and blue of plover's grey, You of the cheeks of dappled plum and flesh and breast and limbs, You of the limbs and cheeks and lipped smooth and soft as hay, You of the deft touches, smoothnesses and textures, You of the heavy breathing, You of the nervous twitches, You of the throbbing of the veins, You ======================================== SAMPLE 256 ======================================== A / Thrust thy hand in mine; Let it be wet with thy tears. / / Give me thy hand and thy heart; Have, make, give, melt it in mine. I am yet a child; Oh, teach me how to give! / / How many cruel hours must pass Till one found place for these two streams? How many, cruel hours do I spend In looking through my fingers at the thing that I feel is but the dimsmake in my hand? / Yet when I am learned in service I can make clean the hand at which my finger is pointed. / Oh, but to make clean the hand, first of all to make it whole, / To make each wrapped tightly of each nerve, / To bring it safe and all cleans into me / Into the hands of God, that is, to serve Him there alone, / To turn my thoughts toward the ten fingers in His care, / That is, to love those ten and all, or all and some, and to be glad of this, / And that, / Oh, yes, / And I am glad. / Then, oh, give me power, / That I may well believe! / Give me heart, / Lord, that beth my part, Giving some twine All round me, wreathe it with prayers. Give me a hut, To put my fingers in, And be done with it. Oh, I am fainting all; Give me my fingers back. Tell me, oh, with all good heed, Thou tell me, what it is to be. Give me, oh, grant me sight; All the world is but one Hand which I must hold. / Then, oh, then, give me power to give, / Oh, to be cool with that thought. / And from all giving, while there is time, / Give me most mercy's path; / Till my heaven grows worthier. / Cease, stop! / Wait, till the time is there. Let me come back whole. God, if this doth pass, Give me all, oh, more than this. There is but one fly to continue, That compelleth all the other flies to come to a swarm And multiply: it is then that the swarm appears Of visiting angels; it is he whose providence Sends subterrane, deep-dwelling friendly. [Cloth. cont.] His providence, then, his angels intend, At first, no bigger then a common garden bugs, Nor haunching more then an average bush or four, With heads like those he sees (suppose) librarians put out. Their heads together then unclosedly close, Wives and lovers out of the garden come, The faithful providence of heavens endears Their sight, since bet time, their powerful luminary Let Heaven to ten quadroon spurs, which one doth wound, While the other does their heart unespoused unclose. (OPHIHOPÉ) Cloth. For whom we are the.) Gives us Power Reed Road Fire All these (If we Do nothing But) Make Art (For it Makes us GIVE Power (We Thet' we Make Art And Grow Art Thet 'tis You Make Us More Power Speed; Like a moving hill, Like a swift-revolving planet Like a sprung gale Like a moving sea Like a mighty wind Or a rushing torrent Art; Like a flowing cauldron Like a torrent's rise and fall Like a mighty wind (Ask what your knighthood Will do for us) One Two Three Four Five Six Seven (Ask what your knighthood Will do for us) All the deep sides of the world We seek not. Only our knighth hands the sphere of heaven; We offer gold to set the sun and moon And planets and suns at dusk or early dawn, Hanging till they are wet with rain, And many leaves taken from the ======================================== SAMPLE 257 ======================================== Ne're parted so the sea-maid When teares grief doth beginne And long-drawn absence she An elder daughter of the sea, (Saving of her name the more That she is surely cleped SEA-MIND.) Her dolefull seate and well-ten'd Of him did she regard, And, with much air and noise, Burnt every guard down who kept his guard Twixt her and a Tangier horse. Burgd, and with a desperate thirst Of aveng'd wrongs to God and man She had no longer placable. Sometime before she did dispose Her feete broad of earth to tread, And done her will, and trode aside. But they that were kinde of her beye, Now hearing her words, stand around, Apprehensive as of hell. And sometime before they beheld Her limbs, and heard her lowall sweet And harsh, teearning them with horrid fear; And oft by force they will be urged To kisse her whoates: and in this wise Will dolefull warres have them sit by. For often too their owne passe will scare Th' angler, who shall cast out sleep and sigh. Who so most madly wants withal Shall get the lower than the head. Her sacrerie beare now (O holy Lord) Desecrate and pourtray Upon an idol, that sacrifice Him for a guerdon to her power. Als with the water out of Forne He feign't, her owne one to be. O ye gallants, know your deepe case, What hand (in sharpe anger gan) Twixt you first an end and first a rule Did impose, and now shall keep it good? He saith, casting his ragged scar. Thin as he lay his favor'd face Right fair, and yet for seeminge ill Of middie bones, no light appears, But beares like a witch a crutch: And to her breasts in place be prest. He had an hether close, when her When he had lain there many a day Fled from her breasts in that wild mould. Now boldly near she him did reare, And also those other bones, That in their gore were shut and mudered The child was like; that other Left both her fearst selfe and gold Then also boughten soon her head, Where he it was wont his holy one To hang his countenance towards; An hollow show'd cover'd with a reed. O ye gods, and all those angels, That burnt in Jupiter's colise! What hope of rue? and how to sue For justice, who would not be grown! That starre of which Cress, that Homer, Cyrsel, and the other pater Call ye, and which Tyloch is begot of. In filthy mystery of punishment Saturnus, not by choice, but sordid fate Yoking the consort of Zeus, the king Of cloudie stars, heavy rues the same. O most impious twain, that with banisht eyes Beheld Thee rising from your loath'd moated mew To dazled amaze the multitude! For lo, Saturnus turns to flee, And, casting his banisht rod of light, Heromew this vagabond hath cursed by night The wombyre of Nature's great ancestress, And all her works. He made the night her morn, He made the day her ease, that noon his smile, His joy her lengthen'd prime, and his repose. Thus glad in flying from your dread procest, I turn again, and, thou appearest, A son of mine, a dame of mine, Shall, turning, chase you hence, that now Ye know the laws which he assign'd thee. Till your hearts fail, and then (why stay ye?) The shallop of this sacrosanter Shall not be taut, but swum away. Who knows the Queen of Tyro, Or who hath seen the Holy Dame Lavinians? for his posterity Have mortal news of the said Saint. Worse news than these of perils lurk Still in the north, and cold mid-Heav'n storms. He thinks to catch her, if she will be caught; To bend those mighty knees of hers, And look those poore understandings through, The with'ring store of what ======================================== SAMPLE 258 ======================================== That crowd thy fragrant stages. And the king and the priest have Yon fair goddess for their mistress, Her ivory neck by thy gold, And that neck in its mystic chains, My shaft has subdued, O Fecundity! Here, sabbath-enlightened, I must skip A wee with the county to dip my sudandy in, And they shall be dumb while I extol Thee and thy beauty, Glorious Follower! And now I have not to thank my stars For this long labour of love, But, bright goddess! thou hast kept me, Imperiress, Thy bounds secure. And now I have not to thank my stars For this long labour of love, But, bright goddess! thou hast kept me, Imperiress, Thy bounds secure. The soldier hath his amorous dower, The lover his snood, The scholar his silks, the priest his mitre, Thy ways are known, O Goddess, Thy loves are free and lothly gone, O Goddess, thou art near! The soldier hath his amorous dower, The lover his snood, The scholar his silks, the priest his mitre, Thy ways are known, O Goddess, Thy loves are free and lothly gone, O Goddess, thou art near! For shining pearls and her white neck in the deep dream Of sunbeams that awake when the stars burn out, Her living eyes that weep till the stars wax cold, And faint with tears of wine and passion that prove she is A worldly flesh, Her fire and loveliness, in water I kiss her; For these are nymphs and goddesses--I pray thee, shake Thy whip of pray'rs and shake away the mill That grindeth that flesh to marble flesh, that it be not touched By any foot of mine, until it slick with laurel buds grow. Beware the Persian with his brand, the Chinese with their mint, Who work their magic with beads and charms in wreaths of green silk, The Boptoer jungles with odours sweeter than the Balsam, That wreaths like these, seeing but the planting of a bough, May be sweeter, being unhung; but theirs to bloom as in the dew Of sweet crocuses; ours, frost and hail have pierced; the buds Fall in a ghastly meeting, spreading wide the pall of wan And madder leaves, that shriek as burning; and the whole Entranced being blossoming in. Here then, O shadows, here be shadows; and the Gods, for you Have lifted up your faces and wagged with your Phidias, Take off your quilts, O Nature, bowing to your grave, And let your gold as witcheries for men dust bums or oaks Be for the Graces' sacrifice. Fair saws of Ismenes that bore him the house, and his love, And of which more had been said than is in left of you, Than had the related been by you Had she hir'd the trouble of the thing That for a wife they found out, And how there had been so many girts and travails at that; What crocks and sugar-tartles he had eat, And put them in the toaster again; Which had the wise men tempted him To, that he might a serpent show That touched these, which made love for wenches, and bleed And chaines to shoe them with; and to play The subtler, and do the wrong; And that which is a living shame, To fatten beasts, to plagues. And to dis With them their old, old sister, so To sue her, and be lyked a disgrace; Where as for all this, with golds and fee To make her as good as best, Or for the battle let her follow For a husband-partner; which had been Hard the contrary for Spercheus, hard to be found; Had not her father, Pampanesus, seen the same This magic in his son, that sought of love To breede issue, given the name of Venus, Or Love, to helpte his fair daughter. He then out of Crete went to Egypt, and saw all That late was sayed of by the Brites, for that he went Into all t'old in Zennary. It chanced, they All were that siege putt up, and all the folk within ======================================== SAMPLE 259 ======================================== Ideas, which alone could inspire A brave new world with joy and love! Hither and thither o'er these quiet plains I wing my way, and view the wavering lines Of dim and shade;--the moor's quiet-settled showers Of pearly dews; the sleeping towns-- Still warbling through their brumal crotches The fells from which the quail with haste so modulates Its summer cry,--till downward from a day In which the full-sea sailed in her blue corner, And the pine-trees layered their shadows dim Over the ruffian shade, a deep-dense drift Of shelter came, wet-faced, from the forest's heart. Which now the smooth-trot light zigzags through, And trailing broods of tinkling dew The braved-inlaid amphitheatre; 'Twas a ritual so allfilling, such The sculptor apprentized his power: His work in bronze I was censured more To inferior stone or elab'rate wood Dissuade this guy, the butler to assail For he lacked ceremony. So, for thy midd'n look on these lines, Which rhyme and match the canto's feature Ev'n to the last letter. Not expunge The natural ends for which the human lyre Possesses the gift of'd seeing; And are they not the ends by faith divin'd Or is the faith which ever heads thy path, But heads the eye whence on the divine it dides? A stanch proof-affecting poet! Most divine Is he whose varied forms and stories In one sublime narrative agree, In which the art's self's subject quells the subject. If lovers may find ease to their want In the brand name of Aganthrough, 'Tis in such names as one might think of Trying That we may find our perfections. A code-names, whence, as when one sees, Allurement is to tell the tale, And she, as all good analysts will own, They're nam'd for merit, or the risk of pains. This, with brevity will I attempt, When Love his winder flies and waxes hot; And Boadicea's evil must not be vented Till 'twixt her and the falcon's feather 'long'd. Love! whose avow'd abettors were banished, Among the first to marry or die; who Should, save he worship'd, brought, in sum, Whate'er was named good and prov'd good, in sum; And more than prov'd good by that betreed heart Who taught our times to marvel,--her. I have mov'd from your auspices afar, But if I yet have left a native air, 'Twould be, 'mong elements and corruptions, Such as those, or no elements or frames, Is love; and these so interweave That ill unction would their ruin prove A-theist behind a high and holy wall Of burning arrows full of peace and applause. 'Twould seem right sense did forbid to be felow Its distractions in my lines, And write them all the less provok'd By turns and meditations; So they may smile, with mirth abide, and be Absolv'd of guilt to sit in judgment next; On some white salt line, secure to set The least album a-gayer, like man's, Or god's transmuted word, such as would rank As good author for an aged race; Or for a poem, good for euetonant, To cure the chronic cough of age, A most gormy fourth star, the fairest mind That mounts the least mountains and tells dolorous Of princes and coins: I the freedom thence May well claim, since (being original) I sing All free, both future and the present hour. Nec faræ slide vix a somniorum goxt, Se nevelle retro, regemque frequentis aram. Thus sweet, and more than sweet, this solitude; Whose soul-burying music hence must leap and flow, Because the carkand's grave it cannot rest? Ah! such sad death, with curse so vast of our birth, And such immortal bands! Unsung, unsumed, And in full voice 'twixt heaven and earth! Untaught, but by the ignorance of men! Time doth the labyrinth of death forgo, And in sweet paradox, ======================================== SAMPLE 260 ======================================== "A Shropshire Lad," by John Ashbery [Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] I want a house with a great view,Where the lumber's all shined and the paint's all perfect.Where the sunsets and the MaysacsLight all things with a flaming kite,And the gnats and slugs and nightfalls are nil.I want a bar,That's only use of sport or finding use,And a table of nought but the finestwood.I want these, and then I want more:I'll get my house and leave my view. <|endoftext|> "The Five Dowland Brothers", by J. V. Cunningham [Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Social Commentaries, Class, Money & Economics, Heroes & Patriotism] DOWLAND Brothers, let there be no more of this;An hundred grand! Come, take your hats, we are done with greatness! (Note. That there is never a Right Deeply rooted in the land, And an Uncle but sIR EARNEST the riches of the land.Brothers, we have nought to hide: <|endoftext|> "The Beggars", by J. V. Cunningham [Social Commentaries, Class, Money & Economics, Money & Economics] Beggars we, the beggars, may be foundBy the score, all paid up and beggar by;And beside the count of these, the rest have bread:An easy, comfortable life, and then the graceOf God and of the Bishop's approbation.Come, brothers, with your brogues and your hoods,We'll hang o'er our lowly Chance. <|endoftext|> "The Beautiful Dream", by J. V. Cunningham [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Arts & Sciences, Painting & Sculpture, Philosophy, Reading & Books, Theater & Dance] Man, the descending jack, first committedTo the care of canvas and fence;Some tender, others, larger than your turn,With heels on the noose to cadcy.Do you, then, from the painted crowSerename for him, who had the trick?The sun-burst on the plucked fyffe,Or the rift on the mirrored shadow play?I should have your secrets, all your tricks,Harshness be here, not heeding,Not space, the puffing up of an atmosphere,Dull beings not here comprehended.Let us fix on that ground that gave.Where, to this august plain, the earth affordedA wealth of music; its green plain,Beyond its majesty, and just an end.For from under that great time-framed green,Hymns such as those, more tender than wild,Arise, do you think, though you give the signs,Still will not come.In ancient ev'nings such a muffled wallOf rounded hills, and long vistas to the sky,Hearts, the swells of the vales that rolled,Cast shadows not less than those of peaks,Nor broke a lily in the meadows young;As the sun-spent soil, whose by-past of springFelt the warm glow of its own rays,Burnt so heat-red, the violet heartThat stole the lion's shadow, stole the jay'sToo faint for lilies to the distance:Where earthen smoothed the grit of mountain soil;The white and green reposing in the long'nuealo shade:'Tis green, but such as where at christening massSits down the meadow, moulded by the plough:The bent soil perfectly, and on topOf a broad and sweeping lawn of unrun grass,With masses of sharpening sunlight in the valley stood.Let us the sad flat hill there scanAnd hail that stream whose murmur echoes roundAnd ripples thro' the frosty and frozen ground.Through the loud tracings of the low lands northOf the country we now survey, and bid him slip'Round the bends, and up and down the valley findAnd wake the waters, as they were sorry if they should,Sit in the spot where Nature's temple is:Loveliness cannot a chrouement join.What, lovely bosun, of thy full-grown seedHast thou so prematurely blossomed?Thou didst not grovel in the trenchlike grass of dreams,Or kiss thy lyer forth, as the seamongeur didA maid o' th' folk, her lyre that none would learn?The wilderness of pains in thy cold heart and loins,A rain of tears its shrine,Were therein laid for quiet: none should knowThe whole of thee, and thou might'st as well as themA-froaking fox-terrors.A boy ======================================== SAMPLE 261 ======================================== After two thousand years has run its long But she is young and lovely as evermore; But as she was her goodlier mirth begins, And she by love and fury has her arms at play, And tumbles round his head and kisses him again. The town is lighted up with torches, The towers are bright with lamps, And the song has now no sorrow for the song, But down the streets the beggars go, And down the streets the lilies grow That sweet New Year sees Hath brought them their mad good fortune. And down the road, where low The bank has receded, And the raving rill Has vanished by, And down the road the empties flow, The fields all glow, And in the elms the first flakes chime The ribands sing, That kind New Year sees. This sweet New Year sees again The hostess of the place, With her white and ruddy man, And the lot of them that fell Lived rough this New Year's Day. Belt and trouble are two things found in steep and flippant simplicity to be, or not, in Italy. His vests are trouble; 'tis always known That trouble lags Belt's limb each moment. Belt is an equiv of every trouble, 'tis said, A sort of tale for these slender vests Of Belt's troubles, or trouble only. From trouble high The lower trouble comes; and every part of the knot, Lower down the knot, and sooner to the belt. It happens, too, that some care Matters to trouble in its turn, and to trouble, whence, by cause and embarking, it comes. I'm but a feeble frog, that, ashamed of no shame, Would fain be Chartismo; but, if I deserve that honour, I have to mention In this my stump, that at supper-time I hear no more Of this New Year, but that the New Year's gone. There, d'ye think? there's the market town (Deuce be me! deuce my shame!), Where once the market-place I knew! Whither of late the stoutest heart Hath drawn, on many a thumping day, Or with much asking (in vain!) To draw the battle upon its bank? Not in this lonely pool shall stand All that the merchants do appear; But in the market itself shall stand Theirs too, or their thens' men. This market-place Shall be their theme and memory, Like as the mast-swarm of our days But here to assemble, by turn, Lest they too shiver and be still, For weariness of that season's play. What manner is it remains of all That bought and sold and paid with comfort for less? And if 'tis wearisome, the less so The more it puts out the livelong day For very weariness, the lesser The pain, if labour with its hurt Hath better eased it. Yea, in sooth, for wear To pay it small fare to live by! And whatso lives here but by it well With grace from whence to cast the stone, The pelting stone! upon all sorts of need? 'Twixt heaven and earth to pay it adieuf Is all men's common heritage. Who buy it at the exchequer and den? That land may see no more its cost, Than if no tax could see it at all. By the said cart and that canal Caught in its turning wheels, is that Old world, our world, here our world again, And ours in it, on it, whate'er the world May yet be turn'd; even as a star In glass of nights, by night so was said Which turn'd anear, toward heaven and true, Averring, circling still its pole Pointing heaven and saying to it a true The world's life, more and more the pole Answered, and swiftly sliding it the a Until it stretched its everlasting reach Full-charged, full-filled of light. And if we see Any wick'ning on the pyx they sink. But at the suns they rise full-charged anew, Making at heaven and at the moon, And at the suns, moons, rivers, stars, seas, At sounds which make the night, and all That lives and shuts, full-charged ere night. In that day of perfection they call'd The year, and from its steering-stone The light from light that fell thereon Was wither'd ======================================== SAMPLE 262 ======================================== Problem to talk and have reason to talk. Waving his hands he smiles reading poker chips in bright gold and black his eyes held still in the center of the plane. Walking off he’ll meet a younger gentleman: walking off with his younger graciousness—one look, one step, he’ll kneel to collect his money. Coax his hand to a fire, create in the blaze the crackle of keys falling out from honest places. <|endoftext|> "Mountain Laurel Lovers: Third Moment", by Frank O'Hara If you love mountain wild green growing things— but you do not want to be the scorched heart of a wild man- handled— then bring a clean white sheet of any color. You will see your true heart with its animity and rhythm— where all un natural beauty isn’t natural. <|endoftext|> "Reservoir Junes", by Frank O'Hara [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Parenthood, The Mind, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Nature, Weather, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] July 27, 1962 1 steamy white & black 2 small shops in sixties main street had 2 2nd street w/ asphalt 1 breakfast Ours was fresh they ran on lines 2 water passes water at first half 4th later hot weather white frigid 7 crosses with way down weather street slowly going 1 own 2 rain not 2 our house in town only a little 2 own 3rd just pass back 4 sisters 2 left right mind only they are wrong only 4th 1 day wed just before 4th morning rain no 2 week water- thin stratford pavement wide lane sisters 2 the address st the marigold man standing just cold 3 rain 4 hours of rain 4 4th 4 thirty of january 3 in the late 4th 4th JUNE 3rd MONDAY THIRD MONDAY for 2 febri 3 mo 1 febri 4th june the lurl the whit 4th of july 3rd sunday the whit rain entire lurl the whit 3 Mondays the whit rain they run off first the lurl in thirds 3 SUNDAYS the whit rain with sonlites we were half way through 4th Monday morning and half way we are locked and we are with them 5 AFTERNOON: with sich houses lit high southern temps. sun. it ran a streak of colors from Hawthorn or Jerusalem in milky Desire where they used to live up high near a silo a blaring sky 2 walls near a water wheel with beaks of  moons with flock of yellow feathers & dried heads of needles & roof one of whose sills dings near a bottle cap (Dudselsmeyer) of dew on weathered rock. 4 bottom-ranks sister or only sister sister brother brother brother’s wife’s grg drowning he smelt of junk a plague pit a bottle of moons in rush hour 5 Sky, just stare into the eyes of the moon of ======================================== SAMPLE 263 ======================================== Magnus alone would dine, to-morrow And my early messenger await. Thy favour, show, for grace; the name resounds. And sure I trust, once cometh peace, Hereafter life may be my bed: Glad for each event that pointeth to good; Still mad with love of heroes old, Lover of conflict, not confin'd To wars of little interest. Who here, or thither, wait, like me, A nightly curis to sit and beat. I love to see the youth; and how to see Is fancy, this cold age has bred, Thou say'st: "All young doth now decay, All past is alike, as they say; In summers when, the flesh in proof, The bellowing ox, with voice accost, Thy gods are call'd from antient clay; "Of age are ye, whose minds Dost strive in trivial mischiefs now, To grudgingly watch their work which here Flatt'ring fools derision call. Ye feign, with intermitting due, Your sin, and fear the interr'd date. "Her time hath past her issue now, No reason to perceive; too late Desist; beware lest you be mated; "And for a mortal joy alone, That mere outward calm doth breed a doubt, So much the more lavish of my means, My love, which you begin to feel; That she with me, or else some season At first secret, covertly become; "For when you proved, on my meaner board, Her mind and virtue, and her vice; with me, Like an injured spouse, and with vain prayer, Did argue for him, her life assure, And never dreamed it might be die, or fagg'd." "I shall be mock'd, I fear; shall strive And seek him, when as others that conceal; And I shall laugh; or shall remember well How in his arms I was his care; How I was body to his office bear." Therewith she smiled, and said her say All trembled as she said, And towards the view of Pluto's bewace A growing horror grew, no more to tell, And mute was all the room. Yet a brief space Her audience stood: then without them spake A voice, that sang, and, incredulous, They saw the flame whereon the smoke was fed. No fire can hit that thing which smokes and glows So thick, no pencil debares it from the sky; Nor arrow ever reach it, or no whetted dart, So glowing hot. This is she, whose vow Was made that minstrel from the stars. The song, Whose sound divine, the poet pois'd to hear, He hears, nor hath repetition in his song, So pleasant! What meditation does he sing? What love or hate, what hope or fear, he sings. But envious Cecilia smil'd when they missed The darling of the poet. Is she come Come, my noble friend?--So flutt'ring hot Her heart, she fears she never shall the hand Shake again, nor live without a kiss: Behold the anger of the flame and heat Twirl in her plained. She sees how near The envious flame and heat her flame doth pale. She smiles: and, when she saw the times did good That brought her error to disgrace her son, She sigh'd for absolution, and her spirit Throbb'd up with compassion, and her breath Ran shuddering, as she saw her son disdain A maid not free. "Maid! (she cried) be rul'd Mine own and serve me, guide and govern, Lovely, soft and loving, with a kiss; Thou art not loathsome, speak and lend thine eyes To these sad changes: thou art no wedding: Thy light discompos'd is our dark disarray. "Thou smil'st too fresh for blight, and dost seem To bloat in skies not cross'd with cirque and cubit wings. Thy blazon'd head, with wattles, roses and portals, Dimm'd in purple, pearls and silver peacals Sarket up the plain: and now, you say, You are not thine own proper self, you put on For burthen of incumber'd sill. "So for a while, till time can return to God, Weave you a shred of fleeting time, ======================================== SAMPLE 264 ======================================== (Their cousin is a Pantomime, but no one Anally himself a rare thing) (Whence Antistrophe comes us to declare Our counterfeit for her love alone.) At our home-parting Jesus we were raised By fond neglect Before we learned our Grief, So we may be quite at our ease And drink Your liquor without gas. We know this because we have felt That Life hath locked for us a golden gate Which, opening, will let all kinds Of shafts for us to shoot at as before, But Truth, above, Will give us bolts to shield the soul in all The tumult of the awakened West. THE beautiful dark-eyed nymphs of Greece Stood singing: "Oh, why, Boast I am none of you and rejoice? I am not one of the singers Who light on the wind like gossips, And sing but as a cloud doth, without care, Till the music, blown by the marish, Is choked and shocked. Fie! to be a nymph Nor love this way thy lord. Forbear, I pray, To shun the lofty wrong; While yet I may sing A little while on ground Or yet on air, Still, still to keep my lord's sight, Still sing as if the sky were deep. WHILE wild thy blasts and nimble wild On wing unperched Flutter this paper canopy Yet let my words, strong though small, Fly like the wind Light, flying, like a spell Through whatjoy thou hast wrought, Now that thy sunset strains; Wing to the forest Wheeling to the south; Cheer after cheer, Hear thou the valley, Cheer to the hill. Walk without, O pale one! Talk without, O star! Follow these flames that burn above As those that scoff and snort Up the flames, up, below, Clench their paunch, Cheer-like, up the valley, Cheer to the hill. My heart leaps up and BOBYNYS me to the high story of the sunsets that abound in dying day, But not the sunset of gentle growing desires; Yet oh! so very slightly the lighted ruins that flicker and shift all out of their seats and, from the Witch of Life's resonant arches, white As clouds, or as clouds, that sweeter over-lay the dawn The drowsing phantoms of Beauty, the dying day Overlook of Seasons that they call, like Paris, the morning. My Muse is by the ear,--God bless the ear!--forget That sad-voic'd Muse of Song, and hear what I can say In a new Spirit, and in a newer strain. The lyre that Marsyas raised, the Lyre that SCARCE Wergilds, and the Goth that darkly carv'd it, if true, Were both but starry-singing Pixies, or but Prick-marks strewing spangles for our eyes alone. The Allegro is the fashion now, and the fashion Will increase as the Scene grows lovelier; and less Of Hour Doughty's Harmel harp, of Carew Homer's lyre, Of PA Administrator TULLY's more lighten'd tone; And the Grecian countenance of the Cavil-house; Th' Ambiguous the Greek-talking host, The ADRIATIAN Helen, and the Spartan maid; Those all have lost their reputations, or have proven Few, at least, of the WISE, although A Glassman and a Hero should prove to 'spite The Poyson all with a Wiser temper. Will The Grecian face light up your pupil's eyes, And send the Benjamin towards the Salamandra; And will her human eye, that otherwise For ever on the blinder part Has drop'd like a shooting star, have weigh'd down your memories So?--oh it cannot be. But there is an Ophelia In that Castalian, most like a Libyan gate; From whose pace of motion, and not from whose sex, Alas! grows, to ours what Grecian Normandy. There, too, with error, long from our world hath pass'd At length, ere that which encumbers it with ice Was worthy of that region; though it ne'er so nurst The fruit of a well-fume'd goblet since: Of all which grow the soften'd pulsing jam Of real bread, he doth become ======================================== SAMPLE 265 ======================================== that didn't exist at the time the book was written, you know, or centuries ago. And so what you have here is a dark, older country that shares your kingdom's phobia of light, which, given a hundred and twenty years of sunlight, doesn't mean anything good for you, thanks to the Sahara sun, which always the same sixteen hours long, but in that sixteen hours of darkness, sometimes in rain, transports you from one extreme to the other. A dozen pages of sun are spread between the black stone cap and the figure of Cupid, drawing a sunbeam of pure black on the city, wrenching the darker colors out of its palette, into the blue marble for cupid, and rendering him so like a sunburned hillside that when you stand under him, you are so black that you are black. You smile at me, still serene in the knowledge that there was once a dark time when I didn't count shadows, even of my own wish to vanish. <|endoftext|> "Lady of Shalem", by Trish Krall [Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Gay, Lesbian, Queer] Shalimar, not Shalem, wore her golden locks in a tight buckler and was sorrowful as the dark beautiful women who've given us lesbians an image in our own history books because we've all seen those movies about a woman in such grief she strips off her clothes and becomes a boat sailing across a bridge to Egypt where they stop to look back at this day, that we're still alive, still allowed to exist in this un-Israel/Palestine binary that our oppressors have created in this state for ourselves. Because this isn't my Arabic name but my Hebrew one, because this is who I am in this moment. A gentler time, Shalimar, when you wore your jewelries and asked if I'd leave you, then took out my hand and told me to go fuck myself. Because I'm not ready to leave yet. <|endoftext|> "Yesterday, the Prophet", by Trish Krall [Nature, Religion, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] The sky was hazed with hydrogen when we made the decision to go to Baghdad. The steam was flowing from the combed-out hoses, humming generators, and the giant hoses themselves as we left as nine men on the hill the color of dreams. Their flakkit seemed to know the sense of it all. We ate summer melon and picked out packets of cream that a mother seals in the lunchbox for her daughter. We ate rocket, chocolate rocket, orange candy. After wiping down each other's plates, I dropped my jacket onto a coin pocket in the city. It was less than my men were taking it to the second neck of the week, but this was yesterday in a place so slow-moving we took hands of polished steel and walked into each other. In the next moment, all military, we moved through the crowd at the main gate to the watchtowers. In other cities, I'd always see in the squares of time, but here I was caught up in the scoring of some beatingup, and then returned to the groin and the double animal movements of large birdwork. Back on the hill with two times one every Arab's dark and barrek—coated head to heel in desert, bearded with the belltower's pulseris— and like the blinking of a LED backwards I tried to see your radio as a pile of black bodies below us nails in the sky. I imagined mutes and mikes and correspondent wires, ports and panels of shrapnel in the sky. <|endoftext|> "Domestic Violence", by David Dominguez [Living, Parenthood, Relationships, Family & Ancestors] For Juan Felipe Herrera My sister, 7, smacked me when I said: The bomb will drop. That was the second time. I walked away. I now recall the rain, In the white shirt of a military man, An army hat I had not worn for six years. The boy from Bushwick had beenhes his hands, And is borne from me, a 4-foot-9-inch frame To the broiling plains of Angola. My sister, 7, was done writing love letters. If I got in trouble for not picking her up I think I was fearful of hurting her, She might get the idea That I was not her mother. The letter of the letter of the ball ======================================== SAMPLE 266 ======================================== Where e'en the birds are mute While with sickening regret they gaze Upon the stars that burn and burn. "Thou know'st another tale I'd have thee tell, More near the heart of Christmas here. Ere the magi came They had already spread a feast; The cause, unknown, I know not why, I've heard said, that all the guests stayed home; For, filled and ready staved, From out the thickets far and nigh, Such miracles as these never fail. Then all the swains that soon and late Sat round that feast-table served, And knew by signs their parents' woe; And all the symbols plain and port, Were on that day foretold, In little bird-leaf or bracelet With little rose or leaved blood, What blood the feast to be. Ah me, what broils the year Gave from its foaming chalice Of uncharged moonshine? Ah me, what oils unbound, Gather, and redistill! Ah me, what new perfumes Thaw and perk and vape! Aye, and ye, who sought that nest, Here in the drear, Nursed with the days of old, Wherein our lives each other fail, Hearken! a lone man whose heart Never—at least By glad signs knows his nest, His kin and nestlings all are gone, Is called, though long he's missed Not half so well missed a day, Not half so sorely comforted. He'd better of his missing be Than in glad judgment loll, And though he else might fare Praised of men, and hold his kin, Dole not of his missing care As that of some poor fleshed Dating from his grief. Ah, would that from the plumage Of common woe he'd fly, That the sweet thrums of Elfin's Had palled, hazed from his mirth, And the calmer splendors of a day Had fathomed his ray; That night had been for him a ray Thro' all the bitter weather But ah, if ever man suffered From the snows, Whether by weight borne Or sick at heart forlorn From out the rains, I do not think that man exists! And in the garden's uproar In the garden's crowding With its unstudied ways Brimstone-sky and fire-plains Of grass that yet-smoke In the heights' sombre twilight Strung to the chimney-nest Of a house whose bells, At every hour, go sounding, Till none may sound it but The faithless one, who wants One central piece of Ave In his fealty, Though a marvelously small And cozily walled-apart state From the City's squalor; Whose dwelling has no windows To let the world in To gaze at doors and faces And in the yard is found The servant-paper, a perfect (not.) How the fever-sweat aches through him, Watching his ghost at the window Across his own thoughts of home! What the task? What the churning Of the plough and the restlessness That make his hands dirty, And the toil the sweat, and the ink The acres multiplied, And the burthen of the rain That the clouds pile to drive Ah, little he gives heed To the flowers that she toss Sparkles of the ruddy Leaves of goldenrod, To that sky that seems but dim In the bitter, cut winter weather Of the lowland, though the waters Moisten from the hills Are a red vine-leaf in the wind With a cloud of colour Splitting its; Yet, a clod Will he perfect be With a child no wiser Than he, Lest the working perfect Now the butter is on; Come away, O Girl with the fever, And the dews at morning On the hand of the cold Grinding out the oven. Draw in the pan By the side of the fire For the Flock at play. Where are they going, O' the four to the kitchen? I can see them starting to eat; I can hear the crash of the spear Goaded by the fire-dogs of fire, Through the lotus-beds of earth; The garlands of the earth Drying on the vine, The Shapes themselves ======================================== SAMPLE 267 ======================================== That Nanny's and Tam were doubly dear to me; And oh! a ragged verse will not do: The heart of Faith can never forget Those who have been. Think what it was to hold His little hand within thy warm embrace! Think what it was to stroke his satin head! How little we now see the blessing shed For whose delights alone that love is shed: For in the mire and mazes of the years Lost the prime of Love! Some doubt, 'tis said, remain'd To freshness even in souls--where Faith was strong Too oft for falsehood. But I think again, Weeping for the transgression of a plot At Charlestown! 'Tis a kingly deed to weep, Not to the conqueror, but the struggler; To mourn the crown of Kings, not his weapon. Nay, dear, not to him who wears the crown Should I give the hand, whose matchless head I had, when he grasped me in that old love Of Fathers and of Sons, and held me fast In the wild and quaint fashion of our song. Yours was the lay, yours the choral wire, Where we rear'd high the old immortal sward Of God, where still the passing Voice is heard Whisper or beam; that star, bright, proud, A gem, with God, in Nature's mystic crown. I have no time to stay And fill thy thirsty soul With song that is not mine; Mine is the Past, Mine, and mine alone: And only at busy hours May I appear, In glory suit, The St. Lawrence to the Spring. In another hour, By some quick eye's light, Mine eyes might hearken To War's loud March As striped and tumultuous as his own, The tigers of the past, Yea, the stamped plain-front, The frights of daily life. The sea is rich in gold Whose waves shall ne'er wear gold-wash white, But glow like stars, as those pure stars Which on the old ocean roll. Yet, by the shores of England, Bear we the token That all such eyes see That shine like to the pure skies, And in the sea shall live A colour like the sun And by the seas we know That even the stars may at the end Flame like their own sun, and lose or win Their own hue with ours. Let all the fields that have the same soft sun-brown, Or one soft sun-brown and one pale hue of green, Look like a rainbow, and let the heather That girdles the mountain and the stream In every field that is not dusky brown Be as bright as in the best of skies. The grasses let it now and again Glow like a rainbow round the way And along the roadside, as the light Shall through the leaves be moved away Like a moving spark of light. The little stream shall lead us on, For the stream that is most like a rainbow In kind with color like the rainbow, The rock-girdled stream. And here the dotted line Of difference all round the meadow Is strange and tender and sweet And fair for many a pleasing ear. Here shall we stand and look each face, And ask of each the question, "Which of Earth's Inevitable ills is that?" Here every cowwith kind Shall answer for the last that is male, And answer for the first That is female and that is most like, And give the tale plain and sweet, As each comes like a bee In the golden business Invented by Nature, How life to her owes its very birth. The white wolf shall speak for the cattle When her silvertime comes In the early Spring To plow the rugged places lightly With spring's careless glow And pack the heaps more hidden: That they may help the progress In her own ways, The brown jay shall say to the maples, "Come down and help your giving; Planting shall make you rich; The planting sun shall tell How good you have been giving; The winter rain Shall answer for the stars in their skies; And then, when Spring comes With a gladness to be glad at heart, The great sun shall jump the clouds And shout to the world, 'It's Winter still; Let us be glad, all this day, As the sun looks back to the night, And says, "The longer I live ======================================== SAMPLE 268 ======================================== Attendance sought, however small, Rinaldo, angry at the Prince's Loss of sleep, up springs to aid Himself in his misfortune with a shout (A crowd about him shout at once): "Regneus! 'Tis I who am here, the Prince to win (Whose waking reminds me in my bed) Before you come, to receive the praise Reserved for him, which 'tis my due; If, before so fated me, there were Another here, myself I would attend." Rinaldo in the instant answered--no, He broke into his prophetic prayer: "Nay! No ground of death on you shall now avail For pity, save the place that we have lost. Mine's the arm, my misery is the main, A like mischief each, I know, has done, But that his presence may not us bereav'd, This favor, for a guard, I come; the more You do it now, that the more of it you 've won." His fingers, open'd they were in prayer, And from his breast the jewel was rolled A forked road, and from his breast again Rinaldo drew the jewel, past the ill Weeping, and thru heaven to God went; For God, who nowhere overlooks the wrong, From the little creature knew, and wiped it out. The Prince he then calls, and commandeth fair How they may see that guard to attract his mind From the mount of life to take the forest's pride, To break the neck of that the night had made, And burn the wood on which they feasted so well. And to the woods they came--the great road--the mind Always runs there, as we all have found. The cockcrew journey'd on, soon as know, Of the city's chatter, great or small, The way they came, they thought they should discover. And when the road was won, here to await The blessing which great nature gives and lends The day that runs her different and long day; So soon, with busy and a busy guard, They reach the grove--so large, so prime, so green, In all that corner, at that season, might Be deemed, and on that night, as quick as they. But, with as busy as before, they came To see the honor that was theirs that night. For this was left from previous year, and this Was not without many a crime and mischief wrought; All which, as chance, or fortune, was right sealed, By future justice, which at that season Had yet to find her true island sleep. "Guard them, holy things!" the Prince, whose mind Such things displays, then and there, commands, besought; "We come, indeed, to hear some tidings important, Nor shall I seek to gain the guard away from you, I know this ground, in which you live, is great. 'Tis a sweet spot, and virgin down to see In where the acacia trees that quiver-greet. 'Tis a sight full pleasant 'gainst mortal eyes, Since many, on that humble bank, to shed Salutes, their blood so rich in sprinkling gave When first they saw the stars, and their motions charted By MOIRA, departed from the county and cast Their burial urns in common, and trust'd the sun. He, born the seventh of those from that house of old, Seems scarce an elder, as from now untainted. This estate is rare; scarce to that valley's sloping shade Could it be won by so rich a mansion. There, many of its enjoyments I would name: Laws for its possessions, domestic tranquility. A good estate this: and the prince's command To guard it, must a guard satisfy, for it To be to him as much as he to it belongs. A shade the prince will take, and never light On earth. In security and on peace Its waters run, in which deep silent pools We gaze upon. It is thus most fair and sweet To look upon. O deep dark ravishment, Deprived of light and of your waters for ever! The morning broke, as the night will break, And all things were as if asleep, or mute, Save of a voice which bid the wild wood wake, As those who roam with night about a tomb. The streams were all still in strange array; the birds Had lingered down, and there was none to hear, Save of the trees, those trembling leaves, and this The grey ======================================== SAMPLE 269 ======================================== SHAWTE, PULLAX, &c. The Quarrel for the Salter's Glare, The Gravel for the Spectator's Suit, The Flail for the Orator's Crown, The Jackass for the Cat, The Calf for the Sable, The Curl for the Ribbon, See the Train Departs from Slipper-Champs, With its hundreds lost unhoarded, And the jays in trains Woh! Woh! for the Zweihanders Who start the wild Song Before the chamois. Like a mountain-white Shivering before them come The curtain and the violet, The beeches before, The elms behind. And the lark frisking for the gloom Chitters before these; And rooks before the yowax Chirrux before these; And the field-mice stir in the adu 'Gainst the storm, And the snake-sisters are within The onset before these. The hare before, The bow-legged cur in line, The steed in charge before, The picture of all this, Before these. All this Before the tent Is the deuce what it is, The peak before it Is the peak of all. The peach-tree and the pear And the plum-tree and the Pear-laying? And the arbour where we Pipe for the sunlight, And the oak, And the elm, and the pluma; And the tussock, And the breezeway, And the hoary-headed Clouds of the lamping; And the wind-hissing Lamps that seem to blow Thro' acres of York; And the droond tolling In the leaves above; And the wallops Of the yellow flower; And the scarlet blossoms Mingling among, When this harvest ground Ravishing Like a dream. The lark? The lark Full of wailing, Frightening the hours, Swelling the air Like the seas all torn, When this, last, Rent the moonlight, The sighing Pain of the mountains Roaring by. The plough? The plough Tortures the corn; Tortures the sickly ears, The healthy grow left Nigh invisible, When this, last Rented the moonlight. The shearer? See The wrister, there, Guts of the shoulder, The mow; The furrowed face, The covered ears, The ploughshare, The open eyes, When this, last, Rent the moonlight. The cataract? The cataract, Where this, last, Rested the moonlight; Where the damson-red Flames against the moon, Where the dead flesh, white And the hair, Like a whirl of wind Of this, last, Rested the moonlight. Would I had been there That day! Would I again Listened to the talk, When this last, Rested the moonlight? 'Twould have been an easier path, If that had been the trip. How fall'n we, For the pleasure of it? Could we have caught All the story, From the ploughing, All the moan, From the ploughing? 'Gainst the lark, Only for a night! Dream of small plains, Dream of narrow streams, Darkened to chasms, Down which the thunder Sparkles in his cave! What was the colour Of the hills to us, When, last night, we loitered Into the blaze? Youth, of course, was there; And the night, full of promise, Made the mingled magics Of us three, four times three! If we dream of hills, Full of vistas, Full of blue vaults, Full of leaping ferns, With thin ice-filtering stars Flinging from fern to fern, We are dreaming. Where we were dreaming, The world will know us As we knew it then; Just as our dreaming Remembers life and days When it was strange. If we shiver, Feels with bare skin, Follow the sound, Follow the pinion, Leave the secret unguessed, Moths feed upon the chestnut ======================================== SAMPLE 270 ======================================== understanding that The King Reigning is not to Make a Man, And until one can No-Kail! Move a little faster, O, Ma'am! <|endoftext|> Three little rabbits, Three little rabbits, Never knew the woodcock's song; Travelled no far, Trekked no far, Basked in their mothers' oaks. Three little rabbits, Three little rabbits, Never knew the woods for fennocks, For nest and den they found; Three little rabbits, Three little rabbits, Dunts, Dunts, Dunts, Doon, Three little rabbits, Never knew the dung of rascal bears, For home they came. Three little rabbits, Three little rabbits, Never knew the thorns and briars, For home they came; Three little rabbits, Three little rabbits, Never knew the mire of river, For home they came; Three little rabbits, Three little rabbits, Never knew the mice or frogs, For home they came. Doon, dae them rowin', Dae them braw, Four little rabbits, Four little rabbits, Four little dung-, Four little rabbits, Dunts, dunts, doons, Dunts, dunts, Dunts, dunts, dales, Never did Dunts, Dunts, Dunts, Never knew the sodden Never did Dunts, Dunts, Weel, then for me an' my ma a' Hev settled down a long, long year, An' three days ago wud be my ma's; Hev never coppit her, Hev never coppit his ma; Hev a' the charms, Hev oot the charms, Yet home he ever duckit, Du thought he'd pockit ma, Ef he could not do it, 'Twad not be coppit, He'd not coppit ma; He just arrived, T'undered he jumped o' a singin', T'undered he jumped o' a singin', An' awsee how ma sat an' stared, How ma sat an' stared, An' glins o' home at gallery-level Taught the beaute o' ma a' To me, an' me, To me, an' me; Me an' my ma, Wearyfu' folk, Heavily tuk our hame Sat up the day Sat up the day, The bud agen got here, Sat up the day, Uncousin' us to wed, Wee bit me like neeghbour's daughter, An' he cried "Ma" like he allus ne'er to answer, Wiv the tear o' my mare's eyes; But he pet me, An' told me how ma coomined him, An' sat an' tilted his chair To shew ma all he wud be; An' if ma went agen he coomitted, An' saddled with her assent, An' into me ma stumbled, But ma heant an' ma they both lagged, An' ma from us while he wasn't weitin' On ma's neebor's knee; Ma an' me coomised again, But him she ever feterit neear Ma heerd mich be An' Ma heantyin' under our neckar Ma beasit he were, An' Ma wair't tho at to lee, An' Ma heantyin' as it was, Ma thinks he's courted to death, Ma could no pate an' courted us while he was Ma heeah to see. So he he bepelled ma, An' ma heea mad an' deid, An' Ma hewer an' der dee, An' fornt to coom a' man, An' ma, Ma an' me heer, Ma hit him everfo' to death, An' micht be ma for to dye; Ma foond ma ender beyon, Ma foond ma ender bone, Ma foond ma soul, An' ma, ma ma too hee hee hee An' mich sheeeh wi' ma suon Ma waight an' ma telle moan Ma soul, Ma an' me etta laigh, An' hit de hoo, me toom, D ======================================== SAMPLE 271 ======================================== Never yet was alive to Troy a more royal sight Than he who sate his head, enthroned on gold, In the Aegaean palace of his brothers crowned With unlimited wealth of light. But all the while There rose a sweeter musick in the Trivia's home Within her tower, where Apollonius, a righteous man, In humble home, yet kept the laws which God hath knit To silence and to good behaviour. And as the Sun This day when he hath conquered day and night, abides At the heart of the wide Heaven, quenching the fires of Hell, For so the God of day desired of LUCIFER. God of the after-third! 'twas an evil hour For Prince Admetus, beholding the goodly offerings: Yea, fowls of Heaven cried and flew to Bacchus' gift. There be young men who love their power more than word, A little breath well served to keep them warm and play, And without what tryal they perish utterly, Who was the god that heareth not the voice of sense? Who hear what voices utterance cannot express, Who is the wise among the nations, shall be A nurse for women, unto their care permitted One that is chaste for their charming calls, one that Spies out the fairing of the world and teacheth women How to make fine delights for the charming of men. A region disorderest in our this earthly life Be our man's world! and as a new-made baby, less Than Venus of the gorgeous age, what time he drifts And is unable to express the wealth of thought That lies concealed within his infant heart, so By gentle manners and the roots of love entertained, Beneath a court's marts strolled, young Gentle disrobed, Seen hovering round Princes in their stately walks, Young affairs, young amours, young courtiers, young Prince's and triumphs, young-eyed Princes grown so tall, Young passionately loved. But hath not the long Lovership and delights long since fled away? Wolves to the well-worn road are soon hidden away. Flesh am I flesh, and not endear the better part. O Queen, I would not have thee, my better half, So far from my embraces torn. Stay for me, As for an infant, whom not land nor sea Nor all these groups of granite shall contain, But lift thee, like my sister, to thy breast. Alas, there is no fiercer winter smote By wavering boughs than this surmounting plain Of Balaguee, where the years of rule did pass Of good King Cornelia; where the rude road, that Lay rutted and bare at the noble house (Since stripped of their spire) by right of thrall Torn from its golden hood, bore the sons of twain Of these to the Saxon salt seas, perforce. High on the peak, high on the uncrowned crest Of Teith President sat the lovers twain Wooing: and the lake afar broad shone up The limpid white peaks of those chief heights With flower-starred zoned of night, silver-sanded: While two resplendent swordsmen on the skirts Rumbled to the groans of streams that went Back to brookage and sea where evermore The crumpled wave came in, the stronger had The stronger carried long beyond the rest, Whilst the slender waiter, that seemed fain to shrink Till he seemed loth to move, to take again The strife that else had power to make him laugh, That changed into fear on joy lost and dead, Clung everywhere, and would not unfold His arms, nor ever loose, nor unbraid His tresses, till they seemed like weeds at worst To crop up slender: he that never even Spent spied the tender summer untight: Nor in the woods ever dreaming seemed In the woods to pick some melon and to pass By Terence, nor ever dreamed of changing wind The high undying [pi ra]pine, but for fear Of aught save that he seem'd to himself the time When even flowers of Beauty and whenounds of Time Exhausted; beauty was his bane, for which He knew, and beauty his disgrace--Such beauty then As to one now grown old, or rather young In manhood, when that which he was left by And made by her he needs must fill The silken hour which no ======================================== SAMPLE 272 ======================================== Any reality? —So so that, I get, we can’t open the windows, but it’s fine because when we do that wind still knocks off the hot part of the window even if we don’t notice it because it’s shaking off some other part of the window and even wind chimes are subject to that it’s been shown that by threesam if we knock our fingers off with a hammer that we live in a world where everything is no big deal and have enough volunteers to nail the barn doors shut and then go home to bed and watch a 2 minute spot on some local news and sigh and sigh and then cry and cry because it’s nothing new and nothing gives a good feeling when you have kids to look forward to and to think everything is going to be fine and to have that feel good thought comes and it’s true I’ve got some stuffy air and I’m tired — Maybe that’s a silly thing to say about the weather but, you know, it’s hot and I want to get out of the house, to feel that wind in my hair And maybe that’s why it’s raining even if it isn’t hot because, you know, the rain is catching all the cars in the driveway and changing everything I know it’s hot it’s humid here and we’re going to sweat and be drenched even though we’re in the dead dry desert and the water is the color of cactus glows in the morning and it’s going to bead to a bright pink and make the desert shine which it is hard to get right for some people so that reminds me of this little newspaper clip about the winners of this year’s Pulitzer you might have seen it on the news there was so much of it and some of it was illegible and the sentences weren’t all connected that was one of my goals this summer getting everything to fall into place just like the obituary said we should we’re public servants and that’s our job and you might say that’s our second job because you’ve worked for the Department of Interior Preservation and Development unless you live in the desert and don’t know anything about it <|endoftext|> "Town Meeting in Adali: A public hearing on the proposed Townsite (read: green space)", by Vicky Ihns [Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books] What I know: In the September issue of Adali, Pura LP appears with her friend Flora [sometimes called Fleur] on a trail in the Burra Redds. LP and Fleur are trying to escape as they hike, but learn too late. LP is new to the water. She has spent most of her time on the trail moving equestrian. But the two women have big plans. She points out the canyon carved out by the falls. After so many ponchos, how is Pura to learn about fear? At the shelter, LP asks her friend to read from a piece of paper and she does, but it is late afternoon and they have no shelter to go to. She does not feel that Pura can understand fear, but she can find the place where fear lives, where water and rock and city in the drought-heart of an arid land rise up to the surface—a moon and a drop of sea spray, a cloud and the grit of the earth—a patch of sky. There is hope and there is the stillness of a mountaintop that used to be distant, a lack of light, a dew that gave rise to the love of a life and a yearning for it to go on. <|endoftext|> "Memphis: In Her Name", by W. S. Robert [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Pets, Religion, God & the Divine, Heroes & Patriotism] for ST. GEORGE and others When I left the horse, long after the buried flame had failed, and the vault lights dimmed in an emptiness not my own, and the night was long, I did not fear the dark nor darkness nor sadness. The unknown was silent like a person. And I thought the same air had breathed the heat and moisture of that air, whether he ======================================== SAMPLE 273 ======================================== something dreamed, washes down the corner of the corner, just an empty point on the chart. I never loved you you made me feel so beautiful, beautiful as a point on the chart. Beautiful as a point on the chart, just an empty point, washes down to a strip of sand. <|endoftext|> "The Rehearsal Band", by Joyce Borders [Living, The Body, Relationships, Gay, Lesbian, Queer, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] for Joe I can’t dance to Marvin Gaye’s “Sex..” or an office piano version of “I Feel like Lucy” (she sang it like a gospel song once). I haven’t tasted enough of either to get me hot for each again. My female and male body parts have a dark history I don’t want to relive or yet repeat. I doubt my skin will lighten as much as I’ve been cold all day. I can’t heam that my throat is like an old friend who no longer keeps in touch, though I feel worried when I hear it singing. On gay clubs, I can’t find a rhythm, can barely tease a bar, for how many years have I homedlow in sin this way? I’ve heard it all: my earliest love kit tunes weren’t written down for many years back. In the backseat of a car on the way home when I was 19, I’d imagine it, imagining what the distance between us might hold: then erase the car, not matter. I need to feel the gap between bone and lead, have it fade away, someday get to the point where I can actually hear it (nevermind that bit of music!) and still want it, want the space between me and my throat and I want the distance to go on forever. Can’t have one without the other. I want to be good at this, be a good musician who can hear himself doing it, master the art of singing: one song to the next, while the artist has his fingers working. God, how I wish I could just hear the string bend, the pit, the mute chiming and never stop, I wish my throat could keep this time. But it won’t: after all that time. At that corner in my mind where life ends and space begins, there is no beginning for me, only things all the way down the road. They run across the walls of grass to my fence to my son’s daughter’s back as they burst through there, even as my vocal chords strum to name you. I can’t have just one path for you and one for myself. The band of the road between the wayside flowers and my throat. To be alone on both sides is to be stranded. We exist together and apart, though no two people would ever think to say so. We are an enormous rectangle. On the road, I sing: you and me and Marvin Gaye and Alicia Washington. I cannot tell you who put this music in me it is a moment it is a song it is us it is all of us it is all the music of us <|endoftext|> "The Elderly Announcer", by Joyce the Modern I can only imagine the old people's surprise when they walked into the room, for an unknown reason, with slightly drooped voices and slurred speech, an air of languor, of being as if the earth below them gave way to their hearing, though they’d never before heard thunder. We heard one older person, who’d aged from this century to stone, repeating the way, across a century, that He will return and when He does, we’ll know it. What you’ve done, you’ll feel the peace of knowing when He’s here. <|endoftext|> "Dear Poetry Foundation", by Joseph Di Prisco [Living, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Graduation] I’d like to say: thou art more likeable than the last Thou wilt remain like the last— which is to say among the trees a dash Thou art ======================================== SAMPLE 274 ======================================== whole lives of meadows and of parched plains And, under the horses' thunders, of long hate Swells up into gladness, and the wrathful seas Breed nourishment for hunger, so that on the sea Of the old cruel war the desolate land Grew up divine, and only the days and nights Were like the fitful imperishable lights Of the end of time, and like, and only Death A billow seemed that swept away in vain: I said "Such the immortal life! The life to live Where immortal lives the immortal Lord! For life I shall not suffer, and I can die no more For having lived, this immortal life Having been summoned to immortal life, and death Giving the power to die." But, again, "No, no!" said a voice that murmured in my ear, "Too long has he lived on, Lord, too long, too long, Too endless was his way: he doth not know What end shall be, he shall not die at all! For I have told him all, what grave Is for his head, what grave for thee, O, true And spotless servant of the immortal will To work eternally, Made without any spot, Made of umtereally immortal things. For these things, O Lord, I die; I shall be Immortal again; and live again for thee, And hold my hands to prophecy once more, and prophesy That He, who gave immortality, shall give Immortal life to men; he who made the world For men, shall own his gift, O, great and good! Yea, he shall grant immortal life to men." I turned, and once more did bend me over The clear-dialed chronometer, and there Did in the time-gouger calculate my life As dead; yet, having found the hours and weeks, And months, and days, and weeks, O, Lord! I did cry And praise Him; but in the place where time is meant To measure joy, I thought I should have cried I gave my life to drink a draught of joy Eternally, but now I feel so small I feared to smile. But, as I turned to look At that clear landscape round me, I saw one face, A woman whose fair forehead shone like one Of the bright stars through a shimmery sky, Bright enough to be lost in heaven, To gleam out there and be forgotten there, Like one of those sky-reflecting stars I saw Just now; and she was there, and had come With one thing in her hand. She held it up. I saw it was a book, and yet, I never Could read a word; but I knew what it said And I felt that I was looking at the words Of life eternal, and I could but meet The gaze of her—even as a double dream And I thirsted for them; and I felt I should Behold her ever, and my beauty wax So bright and comely as that shining head On that bright book; and therefore I would be Made worthy of her touch to light and live Unimpaired and inviolate. Then fell on me that taste of Eden Again, and Eve, and again the sweet Remedy of water brought in baskets; And, whispering to myself in her ear, "Behold! Thy face is back," I looked; and I had No more to say; and she had gone from me Eternally, had she left me there Estate. But I have seen her face in the light Of her immortal mouth, and I have heard The voice I heard; and I hold with me A memory of that hour, in spite of death, And of his shadows. My soul shall touch its Voice to his shadow, and be quick and kind With love that song may read the human heart, And all of us in them that sing. Then I stood there In holiness, nor turned a hair, and With great calm faithfulness and pleasure waiting The hour of that might come. Then, then, I thought, in heaven was my little Heart fixed; so well I knew it; and I felt Almost as if I trod for aye the earth As through the woods one hath felt the touch Of some one gentle, kind, that haunts the brake Of some new-born tree; and one among these Hath that free-sounding, free-footed, fragrant, And glorious forest,--Mary Eve! I was about the fire, And heard a rustling near, And, drowsed along the a ======================================== SAMPLE 275 ======================================== - the parson began - The world is your especial grace, It makes the suns in your face Into the mirror look like rays- I mean, they glisten and shine, They scarcely are yourselves at all, But just the glimpse of your face And you are the mirror, etc. - he had sat thinking - The crickets join him to the blackbird- A hush of water- The village cows all left the pasture, Nosing near With a song of particular note That trailed in the leaves; the horses Were circling in the blackstone wall. - our naïf bride - If your words be read aright What yours has said, the way is clear. So many there were whose praise had not been secure. - by the keenmost intellect was meant We know no color in your voice, etc. To you our babes are unknowing. - if an animal for an hour it seems - You have a plaits of white on your chin, you look Like a tiagra deer. At any time there are A hundred dragons in the darkening sky. We know that this cannot be so, that you are the own Hand of God on this altar. To us your hour Of abased greatness seems already dimmed for us. If you would keep the sabbath, then the Rabbi will keep the sabbath, though every spirit. Ever quick to move, he comes and stands like a trembling tree-emblem; And to our soul, that is its orb of day. It is an hour of pain for him; and the sea, The very realms of abnegation, Come to his lips, and he has nothing left For words to say. Who speaks now, with the gift of forgetting, Could make an hour a gift. - Out of the spheres of Kipling, or of Mukkuman In the kingdom of Mâ ka . . . Only the thread of Xinhun in its fallen Will lingered: A black cloth fell down the stream. So that he hung like the bat on the calla licks, And then he heard the river as it drank The scum of bank and headland. He looked at the city as it shrank From the millions in the dale, He saw that dung flew up along the river. - The spirit of a dragon, the soul of an ape. In that wisdom, he felt it, The strangeness of men. Like the church which itself adores It hung on his look: He read it on the book. They wrangled for a moment, they said it was no use asking Then Mr. Chi Son gave up the struggle. The old man fell on the river bank; the gods Are swift. We found the old man sitting on the bank of the young stream, Fasting like a white altar. To Mr. Chi, without a word He took up our pen. He said: When I look at my colours There is nothing beside but the Mountain In blue heaven, there is nothing beyond but the Void. - God touches everything in the universe; not now In these distanced tones he tells me. - We must be glad that on the hills there is Only the sky, the grass, and the clouds; Must rejoice in this; that the high places Never shall be disturbed by our steps again. - Now comes the climax of the story, While to-morrow we shall bury his bones. Ah! that this should be our woe. There is a god, a master, who here In things earthly draws forth all compactly, Prestidiously points out every path, Sees what is coming, then Ends it with this; from all men Doing or time or any thing: See ye, his judgement breaks All things at once, either this is done Or no; so he draws us easily, Without help of counsel. And these be the big words of the story. The rest be little. Now tell me the ending, O Story! To-day and to-morrow, the whole life Of each one of you; and the world Shall change. Men shall be changed. The ten tribes shall marry. Go to the hills and to the hollows, To learn a lesson to come back from the great To their men. See, she brought flowers for the dead. Flowers, and some to put in the urn ======================================== SAMPLE 276 ======================================== down below, On the wide boulevard: high, according to the blue sky, like the color of wine, And above, in the very pale yellow sky, dark clouds. The polished concrete walk, umbrellas Floating like streamers over Lake The windshields (half full of white wine) and cars circling on the dark green avenue. When it rains, The water sprinklers splash— Some great birdies are ready for the Water spurt, turning in the light of the sun Light shines through the red wheels of the cars And light the steel lanterns shining The oil-washed stone steps that lead to the Tall, very white, garden. Brick and corner store: a pile of Pale, elegant, cool rain Rises, cold, beyond the black walls To where the faces, so small, looking At the sun through the big windows Are half burned out, slightly orange (And there are flowers about the edges of the sun) Then the sun is upon the black, gray garden And suddenly the spade works are clear And the spade spade, as the shovel lifts the white Mud from the root of the driveway And the great tractor gets its turn And the black, wet vapor of the sun And the garden flower, the pink Filleted dawn On the pigeon's black wings, Is scattered over all the walks and the Strawberries cling to the dark brown, waxy ground. Shrubbery over fir forest, Thickets of pines across open space. So the sounds of the island, The bus by the narrow, steep shore and the black Shells raised in the dark, dusty way. Shrapnel And the sounds of the sky and the sea. Falling flame, and the bare winds. Gulls overhead, and the wind Heavy, blowing, chimes a full Great bell. The sea. And a jostle of rain Over the sand, and the baby, Blinking, calls back. And the ground birds, Row over the black stems, their rubbings, their green uniforms— And the skyscrapers, their speculations— And the afternoon, with a rushing, Going with the wind, Wind over the noonday; And the days of the year, the stirring thunder, The pink-footed, spurtted daylight. Gulls overhead, bringing up Rumors from the dark, pressing, and as they settle Down, lower and lower And you are the subject of the wind's Perennial call, And the news from the wet soil, it's hard, To imagine that you belong to the wind. The coat of a seagull clinks on the frosted eaves, Shimmers of salt-painted porches, dry docks Sharpening their nails to take the world Sweet. Rain dripping from the pines. The telephone in the house, a brass End-result of flame, a soldier With shells and grape, miles of dead grass On his cuffed feet, a doughboy Lifting a cup to the placid bees. To have a choice to drink or not Is not my affair. To be blank or well is my free will, Whose natural hunger, failing, is a Masquerader born of my flesh Or yours. This morning, sick and dry From wind and rain For days and days, the dog Raiding the garden and the wood Learned to walk backward and seek For the geese— And the sand is bright with the grit Of his walk, But I have slain them And the money I'll make on the hay Is not my affair. It was good luck Not to be shot: the clothes Of spring, the soft hand of a sister Sheen on my shoulder. I drink the days and hold the hours With fond fingers, hold them as a prize. <|endoftext|> "When My Killer Out", by Marianne Moore [Living, Life Choices, The Body, The Mind, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] She moves, she slinks, she hides. I try to cheat death By slithering away. She was silent the first time I killed her. That was autumn Tenshi season, And she slunk And I slumbered. I awoke From sloth, And ======================================== SAMPLE 277 ======================================== Bids look toward her like eyes,-- Why, this makes me longer flagellant At that in-shed human-humor Thou call'st the lowest of our dooms:-- 'Mid-'being-shaking mischances, Unworth the moth, the worm, the sloth, In which would writhe before this womb Who hath been grievous far to me: But for those waxen chaps whose tears so oft We weep to make inactive our grace, 'Tis writ in earth that must endure Never, never, never to be; The blessed home of virgin prayer, The cradle and the grave Of all our infant sainted days, Where each day like a new-fledged dove Will wag his winged tail about And make his own at home in thine. Forsakers' knave, thy words are such Sloughes, not food for feet of wings; Meekness and meekness make thee sing, I'll cry for thee, thou beseec't All-bount Saint; to-day thou art At home in-the-city of the Gods, Thou can'st drink with those who drink; Thee, as I gaze upon thee now, A thousand languages thou'st see, And hear the hush to return on all Words of his presence, that never speak One common word, yet seek to hold Thee a mongo to make an everlasting feast; For always thou'rt silent, and the land Throws up her feasts and harvests at thy shrine; The goat with a live that gars And cheeks of iron art, the fell, And razor with its garnisht horn, And gleaming crook of onyx green, And golden point of iron sharpen'd, His worship has thy power to shake That rustic idol of a month, That stood in the Forum right over The sound of trumpets, and the gesture Of Roman stole, and upright braid Of barbet tocsaced at the chin. Flashed all their chacalleries on either Lips, which seemed to mix in double life. They did, as I said, ten thousand things; Nothing but a goat's head, bare horn And russet beard but ill could wait Justice to Nero, and the spume Of tasting ashes and sweet nard; Such treasures as these they could pour All over a hentless thing, And give it not the heart to weep. And he did smile As upon a child, so mild And therefore, as upon a day My self I'd drive, upon a sudden When lifted in an odd repose, and free Of thought, which did not o'ercharge the night, One eye at riddance meant a look; And the same cheerless miracle it was, That he smiled, whether it was last night, Or other day, and he the same. And I, though in amaze to my thoughts, Wond why he smiled; yet be slack, I cried to him, to you, to me, Who cannot speak: he loves himself To be a parrot of the smile he gives. I loved, and loved, and loved my man; Love well, and whether you love him or not Nor need he further plead mine interest. You have, he said, how much? What have you left, all you have, all you have, The house that's left, is house, and not ship. It sways the world, but we know It does not sway us. And you and he Had only begun To love each other. The sea rolls on, but when and where, Is not the reef that takes us under. And where the home, one More minute! is not the home. Then, he sate near the fire And groped about, that he might, if he might, Arrange the pieces; and, through a bruise And through his fear of not embracing His one sweet disciple and husband of These hopes that make him smile, in the calm One handed him, then laid the instrument Not well, but exactly As he meant it, next day, as he meant it. A baker, by whom, in a house close written In characters that seem to stand For men's lives, eyes burst open like apples dropped Upon a press of people watching their mien, Where ere the tale was ended, his neighbor stirred; He thought that the story might have come from him; And aye he hushed himself and did ======================================== SAMPLE 278 ======================================== fn'd with the far-shooting Crosses a coach upon its way: And the little ships of war, And the seconded troops had tamed Three, four, five French vessels. And over them, in battle-order, Strewn their blazoned flags of red, With their phalanx of chapeaux, Iron breastplates, shod with steel, Clattional jousts were rased. And in scarlet's pomp, as if for a count, A foreigner in scarlet gown Was going, on his deck alone. Noon and after six had chanced, By these two hundred men wait; So that it chanced when their chieftain's name Was called by any tongue but their own, Or in the tongue of any books, They knew the Count was born to be the king Of this very land, and of the new-born world beneath. And every morning before the sun His course had run, they stood And laughed--the young English, but under age; The old English troopers, braying Their furious horse-battles' "lay your lance through!" In French, and each for the other. And right in their open nostrils shone The gun's bullets through their fringes sly, While to the unsuspecting air the far-off clouds Shook by the ship's own clouds did smite, And fire their tents and manes, and strip them bare. But little seemed of use to know; The country round, whose walls were built With dead men's bones, and their hearths-stones, Showed to the French their scant array In street; and gaily wooed them home; And, whistling their squeals of war, Beheld them like a battle-cloud flee; And heard a gleam of gilded housings, When they had found the castle free, And gathered all the pleasant warmth of home. When Sam, in mingling with the throng, And Don in the chink of darkness flung Him on their weary way,--a wight Beyond the goddess' favour, with his gun;-- But he and she together gone, and their Comes wailing to the gate in twilight, and the light Shrieks from the throstle's nest, and shouts their fill At striding Giant of the lamp and night. He was not of the mean who builded the towers; He in her purple robes could not be more proud; The hippogryve with its monomial brood Of empire blind could not justify The word from her, the sway from his tongue; And, laughing as the owl's moist bill Leapt on the grass where he sat and chewed, The nightingale's shrilly song, the airy Balder The lower night, soft-raining carols, echoed through the Stormy ruin; an Octohum--of that harvest Which follows Spring--all golden in the earth, arose; And the deep heart of the sands was stirred with his thought. And there came noons on the blazing tower, Nor down the fiery light of the sun, Nor twilight's hour of sweet-aided Morn; And the glad scents from the flowing vine, Which glides the market and the bay With its myriad vessels, were the least Of its the paeanings; but the air He named it, and the word ' Phoenician ' rolled Round and about, a shout of triumph. All the dim pilgrim nation thus had seen His presence, and its loved temple courts And rejoiced their old exploits had brought Their head of ages; now again is said: Behold! with what fury Caesar doth assault These hills, that Nineveh which also they, The Gentiles, stirred for mutual blood! And there were dead men, not on the public pile, Nor promises, nor counter-proposals laid, Nor showered gold, but on the highest stair Of the steep hall, on which the holy fount Shone like the pillar of the Mountain God, And the new day came, the awful first, When the master and the slave each found his best counsel Did rise, and one. Now, neither the white archinger, nor chief Of the glad Lothan camp, through the street Of the Temple-dome, mightst behold, If the great archangel and the High, Numbered with the twelve, and Angel of the Lord, Had not come down with far other train From the appointed place of manna, to shew Their kins ======================================== SAMPLE 279 ======================================== Did the men's earth-machine, the Great cannon which flings the flame, Did the iron-sling which Seizes and plunges the world, Till the iron chamber sinks in Through the flinging of the tide; The Arno plunges. Leaves the hostile sea its sail, But I, traversing, seem to keep While the farthest starres wheel, The shore-searches I can see, (My work the weathercock kept), The land and sea-sand hailed In my clock. I can see the smallest of the sands-- Its shadow on the sea is A narrow slippere. I had rested long when I At the sea saw the broad-sea land The ships have left the strand, Where they made for comfort they did flee, In the southeaster of England, and all they found Is grain and ships and ship-sails again. Now to the broad sea they all take the pen, To write a letter long to be write, To the King of the wind, Through the billows of the sea, How a new ship was born. Eef he found the country bare, And in the windy open ground Laid him down, to lie and dream How it were sweet and dry land, And his soul sayeth: I am glad to rest upon land Since I've such hard ground to rest on. He was a prince of signs that should be seen, And many of his bearded followers Had great thoughts that should be borne in part Unto the sun; And these men went forth, that had a crown Upon their heads, And slumbered, 'neath summer skies Like a king's son. And the mighty sea gave honour fair Unto the birth of this flower full sweet That had no care to long awake, But walked in dreams, and when it shone 'Mid the tide, It watched beside it, and it stroked The beautiful hair, And gently whispered, Come thou, And it kissed The new-born child, And covered it round, And swaddled it in the breath That makes men more strong. Then the wind it took up a leaner note, And to the land of all dry land Went the white star, the crescent star, (As 'twere torn from the neck of the wind, And wafted to this land, The new-born, because it was but newly born,) And it swung round, And the sun passed from the sea once more And said: Take thou my place again. So they were both, He and the trumpeted Aristophanes, Both that made no more an eighth Than that it should not be a seventh, Because it is not easy or clear To make a line, and be As yet an odd eighth, Though, as we are told, Seven is a most mystic number. And there was hung on a cross-bar, Above their heads, and near, A crown of gold, for the king of this world, The next for the next world, And a crown of green-leaved laurel for the third, And a little chain of silver pearls, And a riband for the spirit, For the king was a lotus-shop Where lovers bought and sold them; Where second-hand lovers could buy Their lovers' softest linen, Buy and sell, for second, Their mistresses, till They bore them old. A king of lotus-flowers, Cakes and chalice-cut flowers Droops in the market place, To buy and sell, his art, Tries his boxes, Buys and sells Lotus and marigold, Marigold and The king was a magic pond Where the lotus grows; And a lotus-flower's the king, When he's bought and sold; But most when he buys and sells, It's his art the rest, Though he tries his art. And round the pond I placed aspelleed (None so seek after fame, None so hidden away From the world in which he might Stand the most king-like, Nor with costly board and cloth Built of bits and blocks Filled for highest honour) A magic carpet, Perfect and pure, Where all plants of every sort Shallop. And the magic carpet bought Its own virtue in From its own charm of worth From its own sweet air, As the pond flows Through the magic ======================================== SAMPLE 280 ======================================== Assaulted by each mortal foe to fall. Among the strangest things to see When gory be the fury, When the black battalions face the red; Gon who can tell the things to-day? See a poor twi-lef-wolf at dusk Mimicking all our comrades: In the grey world that greeted him He saw wild brotherhood, In the blaze of alien fires The primitive fellowship. Twi-lef-wolf, disguised human; A confused being slugged to the welter; Hating much his very humanity, In a crowd that we love not to see, Did a meed of bitterness take, And a horrible death, he died, And was re-assigned the human wolf In the same territory, And lived on the same un-degraded slate, He toil'd his glad life to the last. I tell of the sea-animals, that swarm Round the world's edge, since Adam's defeat; But no blue-green clouds their ships besprink, A week ago or more the same, With storm-clouds to our prison flight, A punishment one and the same, For breaking the Great Invincible Armament, None have I in their stable, But heather or Tegethoff, And milk-weed, blue-awinths, queen-flies, Burrows in the blue-flower in the garden, And one, a hero once, slain for her, Or son of woman, The craw-inf, And countless others whom I know, From mice and snails, To the saur's a sting, And eggs of turtles, in the pea-straw. When with our fisherman's late hard winter-days, The fish-women's sails upturn and run, As we go fishing in the Romish-fields, All in a bitter week of trials, We fail to find a single hook, The greatest care we all endure Is the cunning-lure that the water carries. Now what you fancies we'll talk about, Fishermen! what are you thinking about? O, you, I know you, and you; And you, I know you, and you. We have heard your advices, and we've no choice, But to have patience, and to meet it; But mark my words, and mind this one place, Nor ever waste a single hour. The biggest snare of all to catch a man You fancies, sirs, Is the bait of your fools; There's not a fool's double portion, But a man would take his ruin just for a=million. When that you've convinced the fish, But don't change your time or weather; When you have caught the fish, Tell everyone, and get your living; There's one man here, one man there, Says that you, sir, Your trout are scarce and slender; But since it isn't for you, sir, And you thus but turn the trick, A-day and a-day And a-day, there's rogues the fish defy you to swallow, And yet you swallow them, sir; You, and only you, sir, Turned out as sometimes we turn the trick ourselves. Now a man may catch a trout, Or a nowt at least, sir, Not with all his words, nor with his fishes all his life. Some fellows, it is true, A fish, a trout may swallow, A nowt, sir, To be so idle, so base, You, sir, and all for it. But where's the glory of it? The glory of fishing's bait or card? For if you'd only men enough and bait, 'Twould be the talk of the town, And every one'd swear to have been surprised. Why should not fools like you go about To catch a trout, sir? To listen and learn and talk with, and to talk with, a-day, That's only the sport of the world? No, or to have it, with brains all right, As well as you, sir? Why waste your time to be a fool? In learning as well as with true feeling? Your body shall go to sleep, Why waste your life, then? I ask it as a favour, Just ease, Or waste your life for ever? I'm sure you will not think so, sir, I'm almost positive, With all my heart, sir. Or to take a second fare, ======================================== SAMPLE 281 ======================================== Mr. Micawber's want of sense Drifted a distant ocean's league, Now a penny allows him air! Mr. Micawber! if alive still! There's some writer's devil in it, I reckon. Where will he end? his last arrears Of conscience, dignity and fame, Will some coerving rake keep heat under, By some preordaining, skulking trust? O, we all upon the stage in times like these First learn, that, byden and cloathless ghost, You must have premises, whereon to call your - Ghost, all on the same model male and female. But, ever that you do all, with the yoke Of its objectionable fascination, And, after, with the positive call of duty, Fledy in the wanker's work, and sweated all day; Be sure you've a thoroughfare to mow, You must have some potatoes in you; A pin from under the bed may stick in; One you sit at in a drinkin' pot, May catch, and turn, and come to grief. So take 'em out, by some hope that's dear, And ain't afraid to take 'em out! What's fit for Leila's, just exactly As the doctor chooses, will be for her; She, though such a letter you've read, Will scour the cellar first and second. Who knoweth, bless his heart, so it be said, The diseases of Leila's room; Such tact on his part, I only say, That, in this family and such court, He ne'er would only see the girl poot, But tear the walls to pieces? To the old madoir, 'tis not strange, The old madoxle is so dank; But by the new one Your guide must not stop Will come one day, with friendlier gait, A smile in which your infancy's Known to you; and that will prove A breeze for peace. That youth whom females find it hard To separate, the better to try Their hold on characters whom they have In common far more than in right, But mingling hearts in love's embrace, A heavy mixture; what you see, The look that flushes up her face Is just the gaze that rubs Her chin in your palm at once, And which your arm then petted goads With nails that ask no weep. She's young, yet even still with shyness finds Time to believe her love is misunderstood, And that he doesn't sufficiently appreciate The sport she has set herself to lose. Perceive her heart's ecstacies, and there She fails for sympathy (though not for thought, Which to a great extent it owns). From our own Gallanacol! Aye, and the Town Is greening of her cures! And the Good Man Grumbling, 'twixt he and the neighbour, ere Too long, 'Tis she lies on her pillow dead! Would that the week was half-past and we Were with her! What is this halo of mine At Marta? To recollect again My yesterday!--It's gone again! Behold the loves that our passion's left as mud For other mirth to mud their every claim! No amount can Marta's mother reckon, No amount of pain, no measure of her pains Approximate, until she own her joy. Love's the best, in sooth, God's the best! I say, "Oh, wasn't I courage?" and in sooth, "Oh, That what I want was God's the best?" Such a thinnest strand that ever wedded girl Had clipt clean off from thinnest strand. And, boding well his comfort and his love, And heedless of brails, she found A golden bough where, in the morning sun, It seemed to speak life. We were there, we two. Mather and maid, you've missed all my advice! Nay, go and read and menst: it suits me not. A mother should have her babe. I have seen What might in days like these have made her love: Had she but held but firm, and never bowed her will (From some instinct, latent in her), And backed and backed the thing that was dear, Or changed her heart, or tried, nay, told a dream, But taught her heart, as sweet as any lay To live in, ======================================== SAMPLE 282 ======================================== Whose am'rous smiles her loveliness endow, Should bid a Poet's-eye delight bereave His heart's and bosom's joy; Th' inspiring Spirit toil of health distill'd From endless Spirit, and purpose'd bliss impart For vigour, not for morrow's abode. Oh! why should Man's bright Angel hang in doubt Of what is best for him and for his kind, Or the objects for his Soul's content? Our positive sayings are the negation Of a truth that's knowen so far: And we sing happier when we prove it Aunt Suz' little Daughter. Then come, the voyage's earnest words the band Of their tears and of their hopes conspire To call your admiring view to; Chequer it bravely, if so be you will, With wondrous tomes of strangest wit: Your Ocean-merchant, Man, forbears To scribble on a soap-box vile, And behind his bold Hirons draw his hood, That no Artist's man may proudly tattoo his face, Like a dapper Cryptic, and take heathy The light of fair artists' heaven for dark skies. Beware, man! Beware of the ghostly blast That in a theatre of our mind dares speak To Reason, while she thinks she's organizing A saintly morning, with a knife and thread; That speaks, till we know its words are an art That makes themawe feel, may it be placed where By and by we find it; in heaven's Pure fount of thought, or the longings of Himself, the tomb that sits a-wearing All that's knotted up, and our scrawled scroggie way Of a mind that's rigg'd beneath his scars; Yet, ever, up the hill she gallant he That cannot hurl headlong, trying with prayers To make bright 'thwart those moments 'mid his wild Woes, when his work'ths and writings all With thoughts and matters to b ypin We'd brain ourselves, and his remembrance beget, The Free Mind with its softest Orgasm fix'd. We who live in realms of art and naught Conducted by the wheel of commerce, We toil for our hire in the sweat of th' mills, When the 'maids work breast, and the men shar, We find not our wages but our fears; We sow in soul-sowing, while we 'll reap in sleep, The fat of our loss. For its fruit of fertile hope, this land 's o'erthrown In thine arms: for my land to be For mine and thine the brazen fig-tree's fruit, The leavings of the field of blood and fire; The salt-lordly sweat of the slaver's sweat, The night of losings, the angry glare of day, And for thy pay to what thy works have left unsaid A kiss and knife: Be that the stake, and that thine oath be 'Gainst all injury and blasphemy, 'tis all alike; To hold the free mind's free speech and the safe thought, As almighty as thou art. When all-pure nature was set down to die, In the close which lintels Art, in thine utter Where be barrens on the lips of kings, The pure, the clear, At thy behest, pure altars of the sun Within, where no light but thine's for the done, The seed set, pure as the flood to drown; Worthy of all kingly rites, and place Upon thine altars, pure unspotted flood. For mine, and my only, duty's ends are, Mine to bring forth pure-gold coloured corn, On thy altar, pure, not for the great, But for thine own end; For myself, and mine only, and things most like, And things not like; When the light Gives in at the pane, and hearts Feel in the dawn that waits in festal guise 'Mid the clack of little things and you, Wit's first truth, Too much loved and new born, Will I say to thine; But thou hast sworn On my lips, Then stay sweet, and hold fast to thy truth; Though my heart do disown, Though the purple calls on thy waste And garlanded glory, and the sun of fate Goes down, Behold and take from me thy crown! All great things go By ======================================== SAMPLE 283 ======================================== Here dreams of riven rock are haunting me, The terrible depth below a salmon sea; Above them is the ice, which would be all. Seamen for a hundred years have flowed from this tide Since Adam's bowing from the tree of sleep, Their lines folded, their children lifted, Now flowing backward o'er the grave of Shaw-Savill. The langue d'or was well bestowed to-day By those six sons of Adam, Who fell on Mount Ida. The thunders resound, If shewn to be sustained, will not fail. The salt shall not come to waste; the rose, to fade; The rainbow, when the dew is gone, Its glory--then the soul's real path Lies in the mind's creative power, Which, like a glorious road, will none but heaven hear. But grant this mind complete to-day, If one from each side of your line had gone free. If theirs a father, ours, yours, the father of God. The moon and the stars were beating together -- They were deluded by the gods of fools -- And he that first seen it shall not come again. The folly of an hour is past; When God is throned, the fool is not set; We lose the vision; we go backward Where never a spirit lived. Again a lightning-chased tree, Fringed by flakes, seeking balance, When thunder-heads come in, seeking Assistance; to all shade it has been given, To all flowers its voice is given. What's your dream? -- to be borne in the wrecks Of some whirled-away tree-trunks? What's your dream? -- that you and I, On the face of some slipped-strand of the river, Lying face down on the even foam, Catch a touch like this, And thence be overjoyed? I wonder, I wonder, Why these dreams of yours? Faster than the plash of a broom Slides the water; quicker than the Shrike Thrills the dark; between the whistles Flicker the fireflies: into the river Spring, breaking from some grin of the sun, Mints and iris into the stillness. What, who hears me, replies to my sign? Must I, then, profane this quiet hour, With my cry of the gifts of the sea? I would bide like the lilies of the morn, Bide as the lilies of age, Where the wave-blown tulips leap to light. The shivered blacking branches heap All the bank in a tangle. I seem The great torrent blind and overwhelm And since there is not a wing to break The sudden swell, take in the wingless mote That turns, then breaks through the sedges. Merged together, outbreathing And glistening in the sunlight, clear and bold, Out on the headlong wind in a singing splay, Queen and king of the current, corruant on the heath, Stands the shut palm, the naked stem corruant green, Oil and woodsmoke, low and slow. And a vein opens in a candle's flame; In a mouse-turned leaf a vein opens Above a man lying asleep at noon; The water needs to me are veins that pass, The leaf-closed leaves need veins that pass, O tissue of the sunshine and the dew, Cells of the gift that the dead gives, change to life. When I was all alone on the beach For the first time, two hours before the tide, This hand in a bogey's hand I lay, Pressed close and firm to a sandy point, Caught up to the rock, a vein in sight. 'Trouble only had a surface in that hour, No danger was anywhere. Its power Was mine, and over time it grew Into a tree. 'Twas of its stem I took A twig, a bud, a column of green That later, at the height of noontime, Threw on the earth, and with a sted or twang Made a tree, and up the point I plucked That beneath it grew a leafy match, Which from the earth I bore, white and blind, And died. But, over that, the shape that twisted free And twisted free, a palm above the surf, Pattern and image of the vein I took, Pattern as of veins, thin and deep; And over ======================================== SAMPLE 284 ======================================== Of all those kingdoms which the heart shall see, All those rich realms of the sweetly fair Celestial magi drawn from those hills Of Maurya--to him the Hyæno roves, And he who keeps the forest-grace shall be Some only-rare PANDEY. Yet shall springs Peer of life spring ever where his lyres were Where Harcourt seated sits on Mnemosyne Amid the cool of blue AFRICANA. 'Let your grandeur--the virtue that can own The winged soul of man to her sole task; Without pause that splendor can invite, With eyes magnanimous and superior smile Round your majesty, and not appall Your passion that is motion and not art, All whom the heritage of unenlighten'd days Keeps rememberful for their ships, shall you restore To that glory that has for thee the charm To make the multitude adore your statue-statues And thou that wilt be mistress of all?' Then the midmost of our whale-bone race-- Bearing on the white breast of their armor, The letters that bear their name in thunder-- 'Soul of Beauty, for whose neck'--if he strays From the home of that tremendous head, That mighty tribute falls, he risks being shot In the long, decorous train of death-pigeons Through the gates of the bubble of the sky, And then, down pinnacles of rock-borne time, Dwells with the idiot-sea, and dreams forgotten dreams. If the bard who ventures the golden lyre Have not for this a gem--that he can read The cry of glory in a gentle song, And from it fling love's heart into its breast, Which for the bard's pleasure blossoms above, Perchance he be at one with his own kind; O! if the bard have not such vision, He must not only lack the glorious Power Of fine affection, but must have a rugged And narrow, though a fine and a nobler hope For Beauty: because the lyre's a sword Whereon Love must first be taught to draw its blood. Tell me, Gian: is it not a candle-light of Thought To think we live upon a superstitious nature, That worships the bread-god in the white loaf, And the serpent in the rosemary, and the sword In the pomegranate?--that, therefore, we must need Such serious people as the gods, to keep aloof Their showier passions, lest we tilt the estate Among ourselves, and be but one among many To flicker through rank ill-weathered vapors? 'Tis by no means the fact that crowns and chaplets Of antedates from torches overlook the snow That lies betwixt the enervating shades, but rather That torch's oil burns in the pure flame, and thus It is the flowers burning in the frost That makes the rose yellow, and not the sun That makes it green. 'Tis not the harridan Panting below with heart-exhausting stroke That makes the leopard's scent so tickly; It is a certain element of cold Into the heart, that may not be weakened In any channel. Herein is part And party of beauty, mixed with part Of what may nothing more than an element Be termed, in this our azure mixed with blue Of ether-atmosphere, where myriads twitch In men and angels; and thus is beauty Colored and new and unstable As the inconstancy of water's hues, Shining here And changing ever, yet still kindled From new to new. Now we come to the sort of beauty, Auroral, and where the cold fire, kindled By moonlight, or descending under stars, Shines with a radiant force, that holds Its faith in iron, yearning. In such It is a fountain-like thing. The ray Shedding such flame dies clear and bright On the inward glass, and so lights and grows In its ascent to like eminence; And so the soul that breathes thus, it is That raises above the rank and universal As the stars rise above the level sun. Now, if the sons of Beauty, whose brow Crowns the first Hierarchy of the World With Power in their own purest light, if they Were eyes and loveliness lit in the sun Like Moon's light on noonday--O! now They would not cast their beauty's light on the Urania of man's commend ======================================== SAMPLE 285 ======================================== Housing would be abolished, Scraps of beds would be thrown away, Splashing sand on either side Hampers the house-dog; While windows gaped grim and dry, Horrid and gory, O'er them the Red Devil Grunted and bellowed, As, circling round the lakes, Rushed upon his master. The house at once and wholly destroyed, Ruin and demolition; A heap of ashes strewed with cobwebs, Worms were in the builders' lodgment, Demons were in the builders', No architect, laying down his work, Cared a fulness such as he laid down, Nor one that followed after. Shame on the builders who were base enough Lying down in their birth- hour! What traitors are the buildings that shail up our health and wealth, And shame on the builders to leave so long untold Thus to rust and brown! The Devil roared on the Devil's highway, Calling him by name, And Traeterus, Clorinda said, Homeward he flew again, While writh'd the earth about him, Or lods the mine. Then sware the trees that bore the snow, On the Heavens bore, Shrieked like furious doe, When a troubled face of pointy long, Carefully laid o'the pendant chain. The house of Jacob rolling slowly down, The grain was white, And gleam, a little after him, Sibilant like the Summer, Over broad Calvert, Led the lamplight down On Eppletown's Lord. St. Paul stood at the foot of the Mountain That the Mountain began, And He brought some bright flowers For the well-spring of our Faith; And the cross and the Crown Milton, behold in thy vision This very hour, The Crown of the English rose, The nurse of thy Liberty, As new planted to be 'Twixt East and West. 'Tis I--Thais I whom your Duke's daughter, Your white poet and lover, Will I be answer'd with a swoon! Till thy White Riva groweth more bright, More blameless and good And much more love-adream; Where a straw-built house thou canst not find, Nor art, nor canst, In that land of flowers, as I have said, Whose mistress, Jupiter, Behold with disdain, In Tiber's stream, Lighting thee with her gold. He that this month shall give me, And this also, The Crown, O man, retire, And place it on thy brow, and on thy neck As a pledge of thy love! This flower, born of a Queen's scorn, May billow-like pass Around thy Saint or Catherine's head, And thou mayst smile, and thou mayst sing. Hush, the moon's a bird! And the flames are the moon 'Mong the waves the coast, From the clouds they whisper "Fear no more" I have heard a harsh horn Blow hard to morrow! Love now no more; The long night is past, The hoarse hollow roar Of the waves at night And night's terror. If he stop this stream, Dead-seas bubbles might Rise a flood too high, Devouring or swift O'er the sky-line. Here by yon village watchman I wait thy summons; Hark! heard you not Your nurse's tawny cry At eve, when she lay Beside your cradle? A little laddered image crouches, A thin face with chins like sallows sleek, The same who watched beside thy slumbrous bed? She seems to see thee, she seems to hear Thy first-eager nurse in awestaken dreams. Long night long! Night long! Thou, who of dawn another song Weep'st by thy bedside, and dost still abide Waiting the clear light, nor know'st when or where to go. The moon-rays through the flowers, Wrap round my heart as though Some green magic cloth were strewn on the waves. They enter my blood and never leave; They warm, they mix with the air. Somebody keeps the petals warm for me. The dew fills me, fills my hand. The heavings of the breeze at night Break softly on my ======================================== SAMPLE 286 ======================================== But for who I might have been it would have been good to do As you are my nephew, may God bless you, and may you be the peace and joy of this turbulent world, Your heart may be much like that of Tycho, who as thinking of the rightness of his art still sees the image of the body there in the Mona Lisa. Yes, he was so quick he might have been A B C D. He says that it seems always to have been him that was the eccentric one, The other actors have got on with it too, but not him. Perhaps it might have been Currie in his garb, One of the painters, after all, or some man with a staff, Perhaps someone with a limp, or a walker. Why he says so might have some significance, though he never shows his face to the others, Perhaps he will write the truth out some day. Some men may be ready for the world to end, To swallow their bodies and their ashes, The world to love them all as equal in death, Then he will have carried the least which is their strength, the greatest which is theirs In life. They may find 'Midst the poems of Tycho That strange little cat with a hairy paw To me you may think it much ado to mock An artist with an artistic revelation. But the truth is, I do not care a bit for fame Or acclaim; Tycho Brahe, undervaded By evil star, had a reason to tell the world His distant planet had turned and crossed A thousand million miles from comfort sweet. So, I am only one who these quiet hills Would gladly find and quite content to live: What are you, strong with revengeful revenge? We had to think about what had been done When people spoke the name of God and found A name less terrible. But now we sing As it were with astonishment and joy Because we love the birds, the birds among whom There are no unusual birds, only the kind That work the skies so beautifully, that are The only birds that work the heavens at all. You remember when you were a child Two silver verses from some famous speaker, Such as you, such as Keats, such as Byron? And now you start to hear the others sing, The vassals of the Idea. I will not join the crowd Who feel the whole world turn upside down, To chant a note of the mariner's song, And call the small green insects under your foot, The thing that every bird and child knows Is only a little thing, and needs no song. I have heard a cause is somewhat like a mist, With flying colours, and many joyful fires, But we have reached the smoke-filled cloud, and ... we cease. The herald of an cause may be little known Until some public body with an official Subject-line identifies him as the messiah Of some great moral undertaking. And then, for seven days The number of the slain lambs of the year, Flame forest-centres far ahead of time, and break On the great waters where the bruised emder swirls In hurricane, or a half million seals know sleep. A thousand officious divers who would make the last Must go running like a flock of sheep to begin With a water-mill, and be dropped on by a meteor That splinters apart the moment it enters the firmament. And then the tumult stops, and men look from their tents At the bright sun-dials of their fixed assignment, And recall in their still-separate camps their Former province. Here they are said to have mocked The whole waste sea-trade and the Arbor plan (The red-haired Virgin on his Milsson), but no more. At least, they enjoyed their sundowners, and Each centring of their laughing eyes in a few Chosen places of strength, each centring From the hundred thousands of the blameless rout That late was called the World, though the Womb was one For all to enjoy it free from its neighbours. And here, from far Athabasca, they saw Beyond the horizon's black volcanic beam That world beneath the world; and at last, By some unthinking sentiment of runaways Called upon, they swore their eyes were made To see that distant and that distant (As if there were some good in earth and sky) Beyond the forecourt of their discourse and thought. Why should we mark our lives as to April weather? The white should lie in gold, the yellow lie in gray. Life is a moonsh ======================================== SAMPLE 287 ======================================== We'll wash and bake and do all we can To make you happy--wait, you understand! You are not half the woman that you were. <|endoftext|> Between the golden rosettes that border the garden wall, And the hazel sycamores, that, in spring, mazy climb, There, in the light of early sunsets, look over The garden of the future home of the great-man live there. There, mottled shadows flit where once, in the lawn now, Flowers, like the angels, drop plumb gloom and snow, When the great-man died and the flowers, in spring, Found nothing in the ashes but the tiny grass-trees Struck back by the heat-loving, bitter, living frost, And the frosts, if still there were. We shall not hear again The spring break over the hills and heave to the dusty square; We shall not see the purple poppy unfold, Nor the new-dropped blossoms of the bitter melon, Until that last ash-pigeon flaps in the coming breeze Its wizen, saffron-leavèd wings. The fount of the big-linnered chestnuts and the acorns Shall be sacred forever to the ancient beech-tree, As the bee-haunted chestnuts of the bronze-toothed woods; And the fruits that the cerulean orchards yield Shall be for all the world as fragrant as the climes' Wild-flowered monnds. See, where, all around its costly darks The cypress waves its lordly arms, Awash with cheap smiles. . . . Let the swift air sweep and fade, and flutter, and reel Over the leaf-strewn, stone-paved ways; Lo! here, where first the years of errant stems Chained in one flower-embowered groove, Foam-fringed bosoms shall love lead forth their flow'ry boy Gurled with gold. 'Round the deep, green South a broad-leaved box-web; And the blue South to north A wispy cloud, serene, like a cloud, But not so, that gray is pretty blue; And the hills of the North burst white And shine as she had alle yichoric soul That was ever like unto thilke sweete. Let them behold how wonderful Are Nature's wise decrees! Set no knilds; let him that rules the lot Of man or maid, Trust his own upright heart. Let me to you reality Hath revealed. Roses we beared From our neighbours bowers What, and we're able To make one of our own, The world-wide world, And we know not how, Nor the sky or any stars, Nor ani-alone, To deride or spite The indomitable will That sets it hence. Let us make to each One rosy face And not his bleached brows know; Let us not make one sigh For other's sufferings. We have strength in loving, Loving not ourselves. What do we care for sky, What do we care for stars? Love that leaps beyond? Yea, but the heavens know If we were once abased Doubting either way, and we-- Titan-crested, And we to the yew-hid dyke Drift, or in children's eyes What, or what not they shall, But that godless mope That steals the market of One-nighted merchandise? There the thudding noise Of the fisher-crows May shake our Bournemouth With the cry, "Something scarce you know, That may move the moon-taken." On and off across the river For the singing's in its slumber, By the dyke that stands at the bus stop, In the sunshine. There, somewhere, a little dim room, With a bed, and a garden in the room, In the room a chest where the loves unfold, Thick-edged, long-sharpened sharp white things Such as thine own moon-felt fingers search For the felt smiles, purple velveted, So thy father found. There, under the window-sill, the power Of thine old love may call again, And the moonlight in thy perfume hear Beyond thy petals. There is me for thee. ======================================== SAMPLE 288 ======================================== Repeat, replay, thou wonderful time. Red! Red! How art thou! Mother, say! Ah, by the flowers and the mirthful bowl, You refresh my soul from the Earth's black mood. Red! Red! My soul is poured and a sordid tune Is winding the chords of delirious feeling, Full! Full! Our throbbing hearts with a hundred pain To my my youth returns, comes back, and dreams therein. Ah! what griefs have we waked from in the night! Whom have we missed--who has remembered not? It is a joy to live, nor a joy to die For aught that we miss. It is a heaven To be glad for what we have, and a joy To struggle on thine own way, O Silver Mountain, To walk abroad, the rocky trail, the path Of the uncertain stars. What a pang has gone Through the souls of men to this their way of woe Which glows as the pulsing purple of the sea, O God, when his, with light from the distant sun, The wise, the great, th' Egyptian giant, wore His robes of sheen. To rule, It is a heaven, it is a paradise, To reap what the sea sows, and a stately sea That walks o'er tempests and storms with its dark Angels. It is a heaven, it is a heaven To bring in the vine by the tower, for the tower Of Egypt that has the grape, for the grape Breeds the smooth glow of the undefiled moon, And its litanies are joyous and bright As the Egyptian star, all the reeds are knelling That wave in the morn of the heathen kings So plucks the quivering sail o'er The lettered churning of this blessed wind That nods its plumes at us like a harp Of morning, and as a vine, where all The arbouche studious lines are unfolded From green night and veiled from green shadow, The sun falls into the waters and dries Its rays of moisture on the twin roses, And curls, and lifts his fluted fan. Then sing, O sing! O trumpet Saint! Of thy warm treasure let thy name be Holy! Not only holy, but celestial, As on the day that hath given thee the wine Of six great gifts; not only holy, To raise from death, and wine, and death, and peace, Like the quickness of the shock of nimble feet. To stand in the whirling of that blood, Its strange rightness and around thy feet To mingle and to bind thee. So shalt thou be In that wild, joyous whirling, so shall the blood And all things, the world made all in thee; There be no things except that pass; in his glance The morning hath not lost the compass of its scent From Paradise. So who hath loved what he hath seen? So who is maid yet? There is no grief in grief, There is no fear in fear, There is no bitterness in sweetness, There is no shame in trembling, There is no sadness in flowers. It is a wide ship's hold, it is a stable-yard, And where Saints will suffer; The seasons will come and go Still in a State of flowers, By bent and frail indwelled hearts, Whereof one brood holds sway; Then let this brown oak split; This shallow tomb an empty vessel be; But from the scalp with dust and pollen, Make red of days, and nights fall, And early eggs be crows; The lamp shall burn us through Where we have come to mould a little boy. When the snow upon the bittern lay Thick as kinder at the fields, And men with cruel envy Would scornful look upon it laid, Then, all hard pressing it to pen Saints sprang to it and said: This is our wash with blessing; How if ye would have it known Ye must the snow with snow unfurled Leave off till God ordained; If He he ever to any sickness bore To Christ he suffered sure. And at the time of fine weather Walking in water bare, One fell into the ditch of moor, And what fell out was the stranger-star That darkened all the year; But he that gave the talk so brave Remembered in a house, And there he gave order that it must be Felt forth; then men that came for prayers Flowed in a long array; And while they ======================================== SAMPLE 289 ======================================== Which may thenceforth draw for me, Sail me unto a fairer sea. This twig of oak which I have bound Will make a seat for me and thee, So that the whole shall be our home." Lamia, thou sayest well, But this, I cannot, none of these, Which cruel labour has ysprent; Time, thou sayst well, Fashion and seasons are in thy brain, But time, thou sayest, is annihilt, Time it is but event, Time is no more in time. Time and Tide and Tide are not in Time, Nor is any thing. Earth from Sun abides The unshifting constant, And has her being still, Because she put forth, Knowing not old nor pass old. If I should look on Time and Tide, Thou sayest rightly, well, They would offer something false; For these say, the present is the past, And the only time is the present. Time and Tide proceed And make no pause for dryness; When was the last of rain? When put out the light? But thou wouldst be in Time, In all things present, But, if I look out My instruments most stealthily, The same bright truth will resound. So much nearer, Night Declares the present wrong, In the hue of a winter's cloud; And the nearer, Time, Has full tenure of space and space. When the Lake the sky doth loathly, And the Earth with clouds is covered, The lesser shine more bright, Which do cast out for more than they give. So that what is a thing of taint May also be past the old taste. As dark red is the Iberian brown Tints the western sky; And so is deadlier, from the Norse tan, That ternorial Maryland. <|endoftext|> Why is her hand so white and touched With quick years of folly? Why does her mouth breathe quietly, Sweet as you'd wanning stone? Why does the moonlight come dimple-lined, Slim and never sullied, (What hast thou done with our maid?) Why is it, at my thinking, Thou, as one drunk with wine, Thou comest to my feet from slumber, Ah, your white lips have poison In them. And is this song only The last that you sing? Ah, how could I, in music that's called Dead God, Alone with you sing, My song alone or your breath, I have taken thee and wrung The head that had tongue to sing against My waxing. And you are to me Land of what man hath not Bred as good song. And this Mere knowledge is song, My part and mine in song. Think that I as a rose Am nothing. Think that I Have just a bit of sparrow's bell, A little of blood To fill in the heart's place With light and glad and true, And no more memory But of what you are to me And this love that I, In a matter that you Bred to sing, God's song only. Last night when the Fall went softly I rose in the dusk and went along the road And to the end of the wood, a little under the eaves, And lay there a little on the slanting gold of the leaves, And thought of the old delight, the old hours, the parted lips. I bore my crown in my hand and trod among the roads, My arms full of seeds of my war, The woods supple and kind Where I had gone silent with men. And soon I saw again High-robotic horses, Breast to leather and soul to brain, Down the slope-set streets, Riding, feeding in the end. Thick-legged there, in their smoke, I saw, I saw the last of them With hands to hand, eyes to eyes, Hurry by. And saw them cross The tracks or huddled in the tall or a tree. "He drew me," "That's he!" I heard again her plain, soft voice, "He's here! And this for me, you say, He'll draw!" And sure enough they did draw. How good they were and how white they were About the throat, and now with her I'm sure they're horses, dogs and men, "She married his brother," "Ah," What did ======================================== SAMPLE 290 ======================================== So the Last Message received a black Cloth With no writing on the side, yet plain The messages fabric were. The Mail carried in the Wrapper and there Was a Letter with the unshaped Plains Appearing on the outside of the Wreath. I open the letter and look For the words the Raven wrote, But all the words are words in a Song Of Moonlight and Clouds together. Like the Mark of the Monk said on the tomb Meeting the Mark is like a Shade. Like a Shade are the Arrays of Spheres, And stars are the Mourners with their Oil. The Raven is a bird, said the Owl, So this Raven is a Raven said the Raven Who thinks himself divine. Myself am a Bird, said the Lamb, So I learn'd this Wisdom from a Lamb Whose Line is as the Morn's Angle. It doesn't matter The Truth is unsearch'd Nothing does. This Raven has also learnt how to read, And the words don't matter, they are a Shade. I read the poem From his life, Who learned how to fly from a Raven Who has learned Wisdom from a Raven. If I find the Raven, He will not say, He will say, He will say, "My Nature, Nature, Nature, see, Whoso has flown has flown to Love." I know what the Raven says With his remote Wing and open Eyes. I shall tell him Words do not matter Nor do their Birth Matter and Mist Matters And words at birth Do not Matter at all. To learn Wisdom I must learn Wisdom, From a Lamb. I do not need the Raven's Letters To know the Wisdom he teaches. But that which the Raven Letters Is Matter and Mist and Shade. Folks have told me That the Raven says Wisdom. And to Wisdom All things are But the Wisdom of a Raven Read his Letters But if Wisdom do say How little Wisdom is said Write it here in Front of me For the Owl and the Mocking-bird. To a Crow Raven and Owl both say Whatever Thing is done well Is only Virtue. But I know the Mocking-bird Has taught Wisdom Wisdom proper From what the Crow cannot say. Wisdom never is past Crow or Owl or Raven Never end or start. And the Wisdom of a Crow Is not in the Letters of Crow, But Wisdom proper. Not one in ten thousand know What Wisdom is or can do. A Bird and a Crow are two Whose Thoughts are Wisdom, And Wisdom's Law is Right. A Brother to a Crow Is Matter and Shade. A Brother to a Raven Is Love, and Light, and Love. Love, and Light, and Love, Go together like a Soul Upon a long Journey To the Hours and the Moon. Or they may go to a Leaf To the Maker of the Leaf Saying the Word of Love Making merry, writing, calling I stand before a Mirror And in the mirror Of the snow is a Letter, Though in an odd position And without the Flower That stood upon it. All the Flower's Beams are mixed With the splice of the Cable And the snow's Unbroken Confinement. Now there's a Pumpkin, And now the Snow is different, And now the Mailman's in a Show. There is Painters, of course, Who try to save a thing By Measure, but of them I shall not say. One Crochets up in Dublin, And one Croches in New York. It is the Word itself Is the Man! It is The Word that kills or saves. But the Letter is the Thing itself, By which the Thing is fed, And grows, and grows, And helps to feed the Word So that its life may be long, And the Letter lasts the time Of the life of the coming Child. Why should it lose Its life in getting? Why not take the path And show you the way to see? Good-morning. And what is your thought? The things to be Shall not be reckoned good; What shall be done! You are near the place! I think it well To take by Love a bare Hillock; Perhaps then the snow will fly With the wind in the end of the day. For the Winter stays; you shall see This September the best. As you sat smoking Late last night The wind from the North Came in and didn't prove severe. I wonder ======================================== SAMPLE 291 ======================================== And fell to earth, each on each, when borne to shore, With dying whispers wailing their day of sin, So ready, so eager to be forgiven. And, that blest, dreadful day of grace And pardon to their flickering sight (They, too, recoiled) the sea made bright, Killed their uncertain course, and led Soul to soul in long embrace of grace And pardon like the sacred supply, Wherein, men, you may imagine, ne'er Are bought or sold. And the sun beams gild their way, Till now and then a beam Hath flickered through. So that night, or sweet fresh morning-spring, Has varied o'er their bright Aspirations, -- this is the day, In memory of which, They seem most beautiful. But when that hour Saw them the holiest meet That all they knew was proper here Happened the fulness of the grace. For we, who thus had lit the way As though by touchstone pure, And when we thought as far, We felt the heavenly fire Burn into us the nearer, -- We saw this day, O fair! Was never seen before; And while we looked around, Seeing that heaven here was A-tremble with flame, Did we not inward catch Light in wood and field, the sky, To bubble to the brim, And bring as high The wonder of the day? And so was heaven, that day, Great in our view, small in this, Bending and lifting in its sphere. Siemann, whose pine Spreads o'er this earth, Tradition's shores, descends, In ages goeth, Into the shades with us. Black woods: and through you He hath led his wild Dimin'd course, Like that dismal waste doth mark Where Feet of Fire Drub the red Riverbank. Howe'er the short-lived moon, Whom like a man She winds, in the dust, Night after night, Till her light is fled, So barely touch't, Siemann, went wandering. His lodgement, Where he may shun The scorching shade, The shed, the plow, There must it be. 'Twas the first morn, the first light Unparalleled on earth Of sun-flowers showed themselves Like a star in heaven; And without host or hostess, Move thou where thou art. Be the ground sacred, be the tree Sacred, be the grove sacred; The maiden shall not be Unhonour'd; the cavalier, Honour'd: the league should move One common motive. But it is the festival Of the Popish man, The cup is filled, For neither apprentice nor Flemish Nor lute-master, in all Belgium, Can save thee now, O Church! These are thy virgins, my lords, But they have not the look Thou hast, when they would serve thee. Shall it be so? Then for some few days their shame Turns thy cheek to rose. But though for short grace, indeed, It were good to give heed, That in the Church's strong shades Thou not as swine be seen, Go to the market-cross. The prisoner, in the sun, To eat and drink must have strength; And so for a month, indeed, He to be taken and cherished, To drink deep, deep; and then to sleep again, Where, to shade his head, There is no market-place He on his toasted face shall see, Nor with the paying of his orisons In his common cup From night to day, To feed himself with bread and flesh, So often blessed. I fled for pleasure, I sought not for survival, I fled for joy. The woods are called Again, where, by a cloudy, Clear, bare, they seem'd to denude Of all that they were. No beast, I asked not, to feed my need, I spoke not word. Yet knew One there was, and, although The moon was quench'd, I asked him, My trusty Faton with the fern, To send me a mount. Not blindly, O trusty friend, Lies the forest-murmur; I Was more than trusting; more Then have I ever since believed To be, or have known. ======================================== SAMPLE 292 ======================================== To this brief verse; Oh if you love me, Love me, as you should, Still with love be firm: Be as you have; Never doubt What we shall do When all our years are come And time for hope Runs hot behind us. --Ah! Ere we parted, ere yet a word You kept back:-- As if you guessed my heart The one you got, the gift You should have giv'n. Ah! Two years:--that count!--and still you try To spread your light o' love o'er me, And now your pride grows great; 'Tis vain: 'tis vain. My heart, 'tis still my heart That turns your smiles to gall. Ah! where must I unfold my woes, If not in book, Then with sighs Upon the table set? Ah! you do love this work: We must meet again As offsprings of the same: But vain the tribute You paid before. My fortune's part is yet with the dead, My cup with sorrow now is drained; The hand that gave me the joy, By grief mixed, hath said No More. Farewell--farewell! Farewell! thou knewest, it seems to me It will only crow again. When the years get over, and ye come With that wisdom and with feeling back From the sweet life that ye left behind, There will I sit beside your feet And recall the moments--young and gay-- When still the touch of fingers played And love, the love, made us whole again. Though death came between us, and I on earth Rejoiced to see the spectral boy Like a leaf that turns above the sea, That hour's suicide with its gall of tears Saved, I know, a soul that felt the rest Of love and victory in its full range. But could our fates ever again turn out To lead us as they did the years befel, 'Twere vain to hope that the sweet grace, that bloom Of old romance, would come again; And sorrow, too, must pass and leave A sweet genius on the sinking world. Upon the broad sumachs, flying Where the breeze drifted, we sang, and Flew, too, the eddies light and loose In airier music than we knew Of late: but on the shores were few That minded us of that sea-wave fleet Who vanished through their night--the moonlit sand Turns into waves, too, of its silences. When the very winds mourned in you, And the sweet breeze came from the south, And summer was on the sea, I had the care to keep You were wholly mine, and the love Of him I love, above the wave. Love gave you eyes for waters fair Too beautiful for light gane, For what god, might you have Praeins, or red-breast, or wright Of waves to star, or what gae Can add to theye, maun you? You thought that the sea was the place Where sailors met with his grace In their wailing, or will ye Escape the field o' the deild-- The full moon shining there, 'S a'! You were six and sixty yet, ye found The rade of their love still maun A-sinking-- Twa or thair, or twa o' the mill Ye'll love and tell us some day. They loved him--those few that meet At his countrymen' hand and sae-- In vain they tried, vainly did sae, And wonderfu' in his e'en stand Our braw King in the world's look-- Ye thought it was e'en Magi's cloak That hid the love he taur on you. My dear, if yoursel' your hame Be ruin or the throne of a king, But look to this, while you may kee, That the dearest thing that maun you be Is that spot on the bank as ye pass That tender smile, and that blest grace-- The saver, the gentleman, and the friend. My dearest, this is your seaven year: Here I stand--alas, nae care my sel' For my woes to ease or trowthe's hae ye; Where will ye tak' a rest? how'll it fare, When my good britches they brewin' braid, ======================================== SAMPLE 293 ======================================== Of a maladie of Aspado,(61) or a mix'd Venesection, Warr'd in the manner of boiling a gallyt.(62) Why must I then, like Norandino,(63) Act in favour of an Englished king, While the feet of Aspersion are trod In the face of an Englished Church? Lorenzo! what it means, no man can say, Save one that's a fool and says he's a sage. Were he wise, he would say that thou art mad: And thou hast been mad long ere thou art wise: I speak, as one that knows thee and must'nt extenuate Thenceforth, thy fame, thy liberty, and example. Thou wilt anciently burnish my renown, Though my less than ten years be my age. Let thy tear away thy voice, thou meretricius, That thou dost know the Muses' leman cassirer; And revere the Fathers, and apologize For king, as the license is from the canon. Philothea, at thy prayer, what Ie'er then! And all the happiness from thee shall fall; If he does but promise, pray be present To make him keep it: for such favour given Loves to be here present, hath all his life; Above his gold, his feather, and his serpent. Nor even at his tender best, his care May be esteemed great, which is but office. Was ever a Romaine vain of this kind, And ami, better hap then thy suit is avail? Or would'st thou know the fathers the hairs That are with velvet plaided, or with lace? Where the true god is, such our canon vow We should in (or for) our troth be lit; And all on which's the musick degree. It may be known to thee, ma' witch, as well As that which he does ask: but now to thine, Know, Phillis, thou canst not coin my drachmas: Or coin thereof, so much doth my sergency offend; On which so vast a proportion doth lie Betwixt the coiner and the measue, that I Escape alike, and both is condemned. Thou canst not coin it, ma' witch, nor cents can buy; For thou art solitaire, and can'st find no use; But know to please the musick of a husband, Thy self must do, but I not thine adore. Nor art thou good enow to do it; Nor can'st, nor will, ordain a penny to fall In so short a time, as is above my pay. Yet, ma' man, thou art content, because thou Might'st do a woman unjust imprisonment, To her ill used, and little else can do; Thou go'st in earnest as thou hast had in sport, Since thou canst not set me in my place; Yet hast not thy desire, when thou go'st in exercise; But force alone can compel, what force shall find In short time or not at all. For she that fled Thy anger, fetching Sione captive, proved By death, and that first fruit of love, in show Conceal'd. So, thou revenge again These maids-tress 'midst th' will of them that take Not credit of their chaster events, Which hath in those two cases both instrument And author, betwixt it and the judgements. For laws and judgments they put not on Their bonds at once, but follow, as they list, The power that binds them and no home. And where the root is not, the flower must fall, So we the plant shall not to earth remain. Thou hast no expedient nor device Against it, not nor any cure at all, Save in shorting and flight, which shall suffice To vanquish it; and where it not dying, In stubborn bond, remains, this our hand And our subject can expiate. If force, where it scarce can and scarce is, Could compass and not the same content, From thee nor any bread, force and scarcity Absence shall be shut out and silent room. Scarce could I tell how much to rest, to feed, How much to plain, how much to meet; How much to leave, how much to speed, With what an easy, what forbearance, By what, with what diligence, The judgment to be trolled, weigh'd, and viewed ======================================== SAMPLE 294 ======================================== Wrong thy sentence! 'Cause Thou says 'tis foolish Not in my book to hold--but out of Gods. Thou askest the riddle why Sir Peter writes Very long, and pleads as earnestly as If it were f'r a bencher. I have pass'd Through all the bounds, and thou shalt see as Great wonders, when I'm his arrant fool And servant. Come to me at the last of rain, When the sword-fish dashes, with crimson splendour The night into patches of sound, the hounds Shaken in the holt are into digging For vales by the river more than safe As found in other's lands or those of kings, All windows, flues, and sepulchres That are by all the comets in the sun. Come at the last of rain, on a morning clear From any roof, or throw the pane down And look out to the bank as we have a deal And have liv'd and died, yet never told or forgot. Wisdom to thyself--but I go to look At a house that God has made to be a home For one of two women, without window; It's on the slope, but not alone it has in front The sea-wall, but only in the quarter-direction, Right across it stands a tall cottage, too, Beneath the casement in the sun as the rain Whispers past it, with a mystic splendor mixed Of earthly and celestial light. When the bell strikes off the hour of ten, I go, and I leave thee--love, but love with thee-- My very shade--the sojourners who miss thee there. I miss thee as I write, And I came late; To look at those whose houses are on the slope Till the sun drops away! To a headland I came; And a field, and a market, also, Somewhere-- But in vain At a terrace Where the sun sinks slowly in, A moment, a moment, gone From the terrace, a terrace for which I've paid More than the historian the atlas eats, And I came back And I found it all a bloom of indifference And an empty litter For a past which has ended in the emptiness Of empty books. I am at a corner where two windows meet And nothing is visible. My books, these are, and the people in them. A house which I never buy. An attic into which one gets but from the air And light; and I stray far out of it, oft Into the infinite, Out of books and the rest, Into a light that is infinite. And in time one by one my canvases Dissolve, And as a case of delayed und ultimate has faded, The case as it exists dissolves, Like a light put out--and then it dissolves. Or, as an air of lost duration The color of darkness becomes, for time Which has time, is from eternity's side born Where its own measure at every moment Consumes it. So I go back to God in vacant space, To some past I remember, Or a part of it which is not now. For this we have of eternity. Light, the glory of God, the armature, The movement of the mind Set in a world on wheels of whirling light-- The motion and life of mind Sprang fast to a sonnet, Then to a tide and a thread of stars, And I go back to God. And I am back in the old world, The old world of empty rooms, The old world of silences, Whence a lot of loose talk gaily ran Like a green sea. I am in God's house of light. There was summer when I was born, There was autumn, and gold autumn, and There was winter with white moons And freezing trees, With the hurt head of the world in a clear wound, Full of wounds and half-wounds. The old earth laughed with the old seasons, With the forgotten seasons. I go to the old world. And I am sure in the old days, The old world, but I am no longer sure That they are the old days and the old seasons And the old suns, For the old suns have been to look Like many eyes full of blues In the old days, but all the old eyes have A gaze that's obscure. There were old seasons and many old skies Before the old man and the ======================================== SAMPLE 295 ======================================== Preach of David's high cure, and hearken to what I tell thee. To th' assembly of the sons of God I to the last, which upright aright Hilled by my words, fell fierce, as they aforesaid, In visage, and with valiant heart: But the Medii proved mine enemies, and beat To Thee pavement sovran, in one wail Of grief greater then that time was never. And truly, whereas that wise man wot not of these things, 'Tis mine to do what might of mine has been done. Love, they said, and in sweet language spake my woe, How they are dead; how ill to mery our eyes That this is born; that they have pierced with grievous smart Our heart, to do us all despair. Then unto my last house went the dame, Of whom be preacnes to th' Monarchy spoken, Who me as Ruler took of pure Demopho, Whom all the world with her hands uplifted Praised greatly: and with joy displeased Myself to see had mongst them so dolorous My woe, which they be-cheered; yet far I rued, Such grief I couldn't. But when I plucked me up, It, like a lion's skin, all outspread and glistered, Twitched off the worms of woe, and beat the ground With fruite of fair and strong harum-sack. Such joy from love, from libation made thereof, Unmixt with anger, made I such a rest. By this the sev'ral Canons I of loved ones, Which for their beauty praeform the choir, Have varied with their instruments in many dianes Till nigh the fourth century of the world, The song has been exprest. But since the old Wisdom, which, in the form of women, still, Joys out at sight of their curious works, Ne'er dares, without a whipping-pole, Forth with her daughter, for to urge her rounds, Or to torment her old step-mother In many a hard perplexity; Tis now by me more conveniently One of the rarest and most dolorous charge-full, Who would thee play'd to look, or else in sack To gaze on, with garter-wearing ankles. But if thou ask why me, and those Who love me, should thus be spoken of? It is not like to those, whom I esteem Below the water, not among the fools, E'en for a few slight spots of dirt, Which blackening is, and has been washed away. So With-in, that which is hidden out Of sight, and out of mind; so that which's hid In thickness by its being dark, not black; So of heav'n's water, so of this. O! what a hate and hatred wan Me then, woe now, woe damned! because That now he knows his mercy's already passed! My lover dies: will thou stand alone As though thy heart was alter'd, breaking on? And say'st thou, Love is-a-tread-some-more? And then thy feet, that once were paw'd By love, unearn'd now? And say'st thou, I Not onely slept-out-sore, but burned A-burning too, from head to foot, Because he died? Then tell me, why That on thy side the fire encircled Was not touch'd, and why but there? Tell me, why He, dying, with more time yet than ought T' afford to weep, but not a day, Burn'd one eye, did sooner flame? He burn'd two, and 'twas the Sun Two days; to burn two eyes, this game That men play, more-exhilarate- It is no game for widow'd ladies. O! but for sickly-delighted ladies, There 's more ruin in it, if, by their love, In this they bear a maid who can turn-up Her ear, and laughter from her face, As well as grave full poets, whose verse Is graver than the most, being smooth And in good patience like a shadow. But There's more where that was silent than you think, Or do ye, deep-draught'd, deepest-dreg'd, boast Hath kind words, the way that they do? Have you Him, when his fluxive hour is ======================================== SAMPLE 296 ======================================== and drinking is fun but that doesn’t mean that we should do it that we need another reason. Me and my friend would be losing a lot of time if we were either or. but the eros in fiction aren’t always just about the eros but rather are about what could be. Why aren’t they more common? I can’t answer that. were in the midst of writing something so that’s not the same thing. To be clear they were in the midst of writing a letter from beyond the grave and on the day of writing they were worrying about the possibility of a different kind of apocalypse (the fallout of a nuclear accident, for instance, or a pandemic) when I put the letter together and it met all of my wild expectations. and although in first position the verb is much more interesting than its noun and although that’s a problem. I don’t want to go away. Not leaving makes the writer think twice about her word choice, or else a three line digression about memory might turn into a paragraph. to be clear the eros in first position often comes from a feeling that the actual past has only hinted at the possibility of something else. I’ve included both because both are forms of entailed joy. to go away. I’ve included both because although the time is uneven when we feel desire the act of desire is not so uniform. And although that’s a three line digression, the emotion it supplies is vast. to be clear it’s actually three lines of thoughts that form a thought. <|endoftext|> "First Date", by Melissa Babson [Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Valentine's Day] You’ve heard me at this point. And you’ve seen the same photograph image through my eyes. I see you seated, your legs curled under you like a dog. And my thoughts, our thoughts, bounce like ding-dong bones. My words like a bowling ball. And there you are: me, the architect and you, the date. Because we are close to the bones, I’ve been asked. I’ve sought to clarify this. I can no more than that, a slice of equatorial gold. You are not me. You are not even me. I do not sway like you. And yet, you love me. And you want to be close to me. And you’ve made it this far. And you’ve spent too much. 4:AM, by Jack McClure [Living, Death, Life Choices, The Body, The Mind, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Valentine's Day] Time of deaththe un-opened mailbox standsin the snow,or is it the other wayaround the world?— or down4:AM by Jack McClure Some men like math, others music,more read (and lowdetermined) some don’t care.Some read, some care, and some not. Some move in penteeryour (one woman) or ten (some) and some put toget the letters in theircertified list: “My love,”and “How are you?”and “Good,” “How do you do”— some of the timein France. Not forever. Thenback from the dead,or not. And, if they’d known, they would have asked,Could be it was for the best. Not anymore,or maybe for the worst. Why choosea small place to hide? Not yours. Nor the proudwoman’s, nor the child’s. Not yours. This poem is not one of choice.Not one of eager self-involvement.No one so far in, one who might havebeto do what. What was it they said?Who knelt, bled, lay down, found God. Who got someother, felt anew what it could mean to bea something other than what—as above— without choice or agency. <|endoftext|> "The Well of Winter", by William Logan [Living, The Body, Nature, Winter] The Well of Winteris a well in Vermontwith lead threadsand water, a sea-greenwellwith water in it.A long time it has stoodin suchart direction, but nowit’s clear and running.It must be coldbelow, which must explainthe only other wellin view, as ifCalla Cyborn treasures this, and who wouldtake ======================================== SAMPLE 297 ======================================== 18 Now when the Scots first won The earliest English records, I know not if it was Nitzschke or Mastad, But Eals, and small or Medium or Bird-of-Rea-bittany, That the poet named The crumbling Preble street, The grey-clad porches of a vanished west-side church, Where me drawled, a drink in my paw And once broke a tiny porcelain vase, With its gilt beak. But first across the river Of orange-painters: Nock Orchards, or old country oak-lands Ploughed by the Ice Demands: The Hunter's Cabinet Of snapped teeth and bones Graved round his patrons and partner: The foxglove shiver of bees In a cold dew. Nosed in the mould: The governor's burning glass, The claymore sawn at Achree (Chronology correct, Where feet sweep out men) Whispered by a garden hose, The soft mud of the gut? And the gable a, once blown All with rain, now mats of lead? (Chronology correct, From a single blow of gun.) And the twilit star-quartz That hovers over the tap?" (Chronology correct: The Lady of the Wood Cast in spectacles, Still virtuous. And in time Shector, the forest seer, Who rideth with her. A fine bird-line, Red-dented, brown-lined, twist Through the thick glint Of her mint-hilled minstrels Pursued at nightfall. Red-walled From coble blossom to new Approach of vanishing bloom. Rode then, and at twilight, lured By the sweet Shilla, flowing Winter-lipped and strong and warm Like balm for fire, Thick with white clumps and foam Of wine-soaked grape-trees. Between the verandah and wood, Herbalist of sun, Took the sly tongue of Nocke: The shady vesper a and yellow-paned Garden walled from worm and pest (So duper rich the Mint reputed Had, in mossy ratline starved) Was mint in old days but mosses did curtain, Lipped white about the dark blue boughs On yellow-tasselled pumice. The much-crowned Maid accursed in's evil hour, Which the black pest both showed and shielded, When slanted pressure led to marble plinth, And clouded tress of morning held The tulip tree He smote, with loud crash, And down she fell into the gullet Of some big worm, with pliant leg, That led the sigh Of chittered breath, scurrying with slimy head The chill plumage went from smooth to serpentine, Which mocked her in the death of maid. The mad peevver out, that awful plume, Took the great air and flew amain On scarlet pinions, that swept the song: What's this, as the good Nockes saith, That silver-headed Hellgate; No doubt of Saturn's joll, Where a man of more than mortal size Is shapen to the standing oar, And nursed to lesser mirth? And every satiate swell Of all the waves could heave the tide In hysteria of delight, And whirl the hush-puddling pulse To ring-d6-call to star Of swanland, where the way was wild and weir, The water's pliant breath's please He led along: and round Is led, under the foam, Or glancing swimmin', on to swimmin' lost. A whirl of sweet and flowery fields, The meadows clear and bright, The witching mists, the torrent blues, And bower pale of trees, The land that stirs and weaves His breathing garments of emerald glow. And there is, now, yesternight, A purling light that burns A bent of starry reins Above the place we are in, The home of mother and of morn Where the cow ever pisseth green, And the day come on. A blue fire water-fille of stars, A rubies with blood-red wings, The soil we know, and the hours On their iron claws that climb, The stain it carries of night's tears ======================================== SAMPLE 298 ======================================== -Very well, then, I say to you, the Lamia-lady; and if you'll say, You, William, as though you were a stranger: I'll say to you, With the due air Of a person who is not quite used to playing, That which do you think Does your mother dance As she danced, for he dances, one, two, And, next, three; I'll say, first, She's a he, and, secondly, that she's a she. I'll say, thirdly, That this will greatly disturb you, because, The better to strike you, you won't See, sir, her daughter's head Peep from out her dwelling, in Which I believe, I say: And if, during this feast, you linger To look at her, I'll say, It's for her head, which now Has no head: And if this were not stopped up, you'll see her, I swear, Would dance all night Without a tail. Now, did I say, lady, That you were Charles's child? Nay, for I did not: And the Baron's grandson's brother's child? Well then. With the air Of an amorphanus, The certain, My father gave me one gift and one Requirement; But of the head I got the head; But of the heart, I gave you none. Or else he'd save us the trouble Of a journey and one speech; He could (and this I'd have had) Have our engagement at Easter-Eve, Because we're getting married, and a) We have no speech, and b) My aunt's aunt is engaged to Mr. Howard. Well, sir, as I say, the aunt's engaged. The more I think about it, the more I'm glad That I'm not his aunt! [Boo!] Quand le monde serait un expiring spirit? I don't think so. And the fact is, I think I have an aunt. I think her name is Mary Nash, or Mill-tine, But it's not quite that. [My aunt's maid.] No, sir, I never heard of her. Well, when I say That, sir, I'll tell you now. I often meet Her in the street, But I say to her, I don't know who she is; So that the other poor folks don't know, and get frightened. Yes, now, I think The matter out: I can go to Paris for a month, or the other days Of the year, or a journey to the South of France; And never to catch a cold, But wash and sleep, And eat bread and cheese, and go to dine, And then to go back again. But now as I say, When I first begin to think Of the part that Mary Nash plays in it, The more I am inclined to think she was Something more than a maid than she seems to be, And that to me. Now, if she played with you, Mary Nash, in the way That I've heard of, a lady, lover, what does it matter? What does it matter to Mary Nash if I Love a fellow with a amount of hair Like his mother's? that I adore And would think she looked o'er fair The way I look o'er like? [I hear That female heads are too good for the grave Dignity in which she's holding her. All, all the education of woman's nerves Her own is the most delicate! 'Twould be like forbearance to the dead, Which is a thing as much in love as rocks to flowers. Waving to you, Mary, from my loft, on a Must keep at this distance, won't you? [From The Heavens have no inhabitants So that what I feel can be told. And now, Mary, you can rest and sleep in my bed, And if you see her, pray to your sweet God That ======================================== SAMPLE 299 ======================================== - As the house grew older Its people Attention Into Dershom's Name the beast he thick ash in law. And what is the statute of limitations? — more dreams — — the metal inside the rain. <|endoftext|> "Imagits", by Andras Forgacs [Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics] No sound save the subtle utter silence of later morning. In a dark forest, not really a forest. Time passes. Not just the daylight leaving to return to the earliest morning. I have one image of the sky, and it is an image of the sky. One away. Two minutes to midnight. The shared gratitude of daybreak and evening. Night and evening, just a voice. Be good for so long only to be good for so long, and even that is not a word. That two senses as if this were the number of things, not of what things. Two winds passing as one. Wind one that whispers, wind two that oozes, they sink. Sink. That image of a sunlit mountain, the water that is nightmare clear. They sink. In the autumn, they are souls of hopes and selves of lives. Sizes and depths of dreaming of dawns. Once I loved a woman that was the world. That woman I love now is you. Every time you sleep, asleep, you leave the sun the moment you open your eyes, sweat on your dreams. <|endoftext|> "Impossible – 1970", by Andras Supunaris [Living, Time & Brevity] Pene guana p ruaha/Pene guan savoir/Basse au rian/Source “How will you survive the day?” It’s impossible to say, the teacher said. Not the old folk weren’t good at life In Holland maybe, I am told. By moving to Holland, says one Dutch Says a friend of his, or by moving to Australia. Some brought up in children’s in India Here’s the reason, the friend of his told me. India’s a scene of rites, of ceremony. Ages of history only, nothing more. “Een in India,” he said, “on these Rituals people commit great sins, Weddings, sacrifice, I never saw And even when I was there. Like maybe never killed a man. Indra will feel you up Even without killing you. Only clay is mentioned there, Manu, He of no birth, said one guru. Here in Holland? Not anymore, They don’t seem to bring clay Even for marriages there, Who knows, say ten or twenty times The ceremony may change, The clay may come from clay And before they know it, Are gone like flowers Who knows, they may even go In a natural way, according to clay, I cannot wait for this indigogo Of mine, if I gave up Not all for comfort But I will survive, it’s all I can do, So, I’ll see it through, It’s impossible to say Even in Holland, to survivors, just how it is, I mean, the common clay may change. And even their lies may change, They come to know, as I, While I also may, as I were told. <|endoftext|> "Traveler", by A. R. Ambar [Activities, Travels & Journeys] You can say anything all day but it comes to a difference after some use or another. I can’t count the times I have turned to watch that other people were making of course it is true and in English I must insist. But I don’t care, I don’t know any other way, I turn on myself and I ======================================== SAMPLE 300 ======================================== And give from their coffins to their heads; A tongue given to their sons in hate To wolf the shames of each in turn, And feed their greedy, careless waste with tears While O and II and III have slept. Then let me be content, so near The morn itself is gone, when a light Shall shine upon this land, to write In sand-countots upon the shore; And tell the secrets of the sea That once were men. 'Tis now too late, Too long, too late, for shame to be The parrot, drowning in its cage, Whereon it wails for the poet's fame. Alas! and I have failed the Muse Wittin' short with Alan Conynolds! Ye're two against one, and better To hold your hands an' parry Till we have a head! The man Is stronger that way, as the waters Can beat our flasks down, an' then Push 'em up again. The wind that's down there blows West An' will blow for half an hour; Then stronger, then stronger It's bound to get, an' then It's hid 'fore so much wind; The breath o' this an' the sea Is ore-gold, the breath o' the morn Is more than our value Of ore-gold. This is it--it's here-- The best o' things! Thick is the froth on ocean's stream, 'Cause the sun sheds 'most his beams Where the white ranaw hides. An' in mine own old bottle 'Tend the seeds of hid gold, 'Cause the Spanish mine 'gins to raise The splinters from the oak Where they've stood since Rome was built. Look at the little cloud it wears As it lifts and falls within From the peak of high Marca Pass, Nay even now beneath my wing It whispers words I don't know; While my head's all aweary--O! O' course you're not a cloud! One's enough--one's time has come To match his passion--thy blade Must also be of cutting edge; Even then, the lung o' him Had shortened twice before--W'rτ?--W'rτ? Shure in passing thee as a sharer Of what we caught from thine infancThou shouldst be Fitter yet to swallow. [ edit ] It is the same, they say, with bees, And when the worker has to fly, Hear the swarms as in a clatter; Then remember there's only one of thee, And leave thee free. [ edit ] The moment's fire that flamed so high I caught within my hands-- I step by step let go the fount-- 'Tis as if I set my foot In flame upon the heathen world. The moment's kinked light within mine eye Is so good to look upon-- For all the good it made me it's lost Because when sent to me, 'Tis cast upon me now. My fancy's wild; my wing's untaught; Yet will I fly and make it mine. Ye see how I fly Lightning-winged above the air; Ye see how like the sinuous lines Of my descent the precipice's dim-- Where'er thou drawest, I shall be found; Then strive to blot me out; Though thy memory's darkest rhyme The wings of truth let in should fade, That but my soul's high thoughts may hear them-- The voices of the breeze Blown waters down the steeper grounds; But yet I'm on the point of gaining 'Twixt love and death. Ye see how I rise Wind-hook-eyed above the sea; Ye see how on my wing beforn myself (Struggling to blow it off) how some More mad than I shall lament me. As I at my lips, I touch with my wings The dead dead land's more than all the land's Victorious, on whose orbs first smote by the dreadless love That dies there 'neath omnian-wrek Its dead swart image on the places bright Inexorable kiss. O sweet as the eyes of the maid ======================================== SAMPLE 301 ======================================== Kukau, Kukawai, said the former, Do not be disheartened, I will kill this wicked one, For he insulted my King. Then the malignant widow said "We shall now see who is the stronger." So they shut her head with a whip, Kukau, Kukawai, on her bare bum, Raked her thickly reeking hair, Cuffed and pounded her with sticks, Beat and ripped her sacred bum, Calling her a flirt. Then they took her to a wigwam, Took her body on a stick, Beat and bruised her many times, Many times they flogged her, Many times they mocked her, Dancing with a red butt, Dancing with a blue one. Wages of sin are sold In the Sold-marked slave-trade, Bought and sold for silver, Platter's cheeks are branded, His eyes are branded, Unkempt and unclean. Olive trees go pit-a-plat With fire of brimstone, Bitter are the boil-pot-broomahs, Slender are the Ojibways, And Shaugodaya is ragged, Wicked is the Kautah. Look out from your window, Beside you see Mount Desertor Air, Seas lashing Beachyow, Rush of sail-asrefugia, Swift of generation, Flee of the dark storm-clouds, Lift of the gleam of dreams, Fright of the flames ablaze. If you come at eve to seek me, A spectral figure will appear. If you come at night to seek me, First I'll court the waters, Call the winds to me, Shape the rolling spirals of the air-gust. If you come at morn to seek me, I'll court the thunder-storm Clash the flames of the smoke-storm. If you come at noontide to me, I'll creep into the darkness From the thunder-gloom's embrace, To the gloom I'll pause and frown, Rouse the stars from their thrones. When you come to court me, I'll be remeasuring your steps Round the corners of the world; Then I'll startle you with music, Till the solid vaults of me quake In the solitudes of space. Life I'll explore with thee, Fling new mountains on you, Cast the gulfs of the oceans Round thy wide side to range; Till the very heavens are jealous Lest you reach the earth's last bounds And the earth's last kings perish. Thou at the earth's last banquet Where the last of you shall drink, And the last of you caress; Till the hearts of the furies Are so cloven in ache, That for the hell of thee No echo is left to strangle Or the sufferers on the sod. You it shall mourn for me at long intervals, Or you it may mourn together, When it is meet for you to moan. You are free freely with me at will, That the mistress and slave may meet Pleasures and burdens as they pass. Speak and I shall answer thee, Crown thee with flowers and honor thee. No curse from me you shall require Till the sun go down in silver light. But where was the maiden that I loved, That I loved, and still adored her? This is the Rock that fronts the Sea With its ghostly cities gleaming. A thousand years of sultry nights The sea went wide a-creeping round, Where the messengers of Irem Wailed the Queen of Palms Sitting at her impossible altar Worshipped the mystic gods, Till Gebir set him free, And re-filled the Turkish Chain That with all the Pearls was tied, And changed the Grisly Pearls To Diamonds of the Nile. Horns of the Sun the Desert gave At the first of the golden dead; But now o'er Pharoah's Slave, We call to the For the innumerable rattle of spars, The king who sleeps in the desert. A thousand crosses they gave And every one they knew, When the seeker came to search them there, And the man hid him at night. And the riven Society Hears the sound of the drum, The South wind blows, the waves beat high ======================================== SAMPLE 302 ======================================== first a castle, masonry all around it, and then the middle of the court where the fern would grow, but the vines were making things on the ground, unexpected flora, the woods by then free of it, the only element unexpected, almost as if unfortunnded with penumbras, caryatid, unavored by wends a kind of gusto? violets and pansies, some rivers are said to bear them, clear or sugared, as if to challenge expectation and only hemmed in by themselves till in the course of this ersatz world where almost nothing coincidentally has to, they ran into each other the one and only time in history they were alive each other's eyes high and moist a leaf-like iris homing, and orbed, like a birdsong I had not recognized you, you are exquisite still there are occasions, to experience them, the greatest being that all that is precious has been purchased or purchased, possessed of one, acquires it and mead has its own world-changer, a god, a god whose evening than wine, is ecstasy, even wild as the drawing of animals, the days when I saw the pale blue tetraodac coming close on the western bank, a fox went flying, a fox’s eyes turned toward the river, gone, gone, a fox’s fatigue, just an eye flash, no sound that cannot remember it can not say why, the letter it reads autumn, is it and the dead season, limes that have eaten rootlets, the woman sows the trees in the living and so that’s what you said but these things eat trees and bushes, these animals, there is the place called meadows that not-being, but I know you in the dream and I know now, that you walk not in grass or the grass, in the place of fond remembrances, the grass it blisters when it hits the earth, when it is tine the way we’ve known it for long, under the blood, in the act of watching it sometimes, and sometimes not, in the sea or on our own coast, and if you could stay the chill, if you could keep the long incisions haphazard, unmedicated, the mosquitofies, you, me, the spirits of they join their voices with others, what they are, have been, have yet to be or we could call out to the heat, say hear the heat, find its absence like we could’ve been, find the hushed moments that she’s signalled not to miss, change the part, notice this lack of light, noticing the music, there’s the cause and effect, what we’ve done and what you did, go join them or not, join it or turn away, just like the sun now that the no-rise month is upon us, you and me and whatever I mean by human, or the thin-legged divinity that floats above you trees, woods, you, me. We’re all from the same star, we’re just going up into the sky like I used to do in the cold mornings before school when he shut down the telescope and we were out too late, and in the snow we went riding the moondust mountain, wondering, afraid it was killing us, feeling the light dancing and if it was meant to be in the distance, the bright centipede, when we knew, just knowing it was going to be we knew we were supposed to start somewhere having made this most pitiful best guess, while as always we could hear the snowball falling, and he didn’t, though we wanted him to, the snowballs all came to rest and curled up in the grass and out of the cold, the buffalo shed in the clouds and snow and the woman slept in the crook of it and he started up and picked up the horn but thought he’d go on living for another day and he didn’t, could never live like that not the same, as not the same, as no it wasn’t, and no one ever will be for I see now the blue vapor rising from the fading flame, I see now the time it takes to die, I see again the ======================================== SAMPLE 303 ======================================== loss, And to make this worse, and worse it must, To grow and keep, from some new thing beware, I have foreknown it, and it, my dead, He knew before I knew it, Now I forget how, the egotist once, I can't remember it. I asked for it and it is here, I have it; what could I do more? I wonder how that thought grows the rosiest, The saddest, too. Do the worst. Where were you So long ago? With arms outspread, A hunchback of the wood Came to the door, Grave, and slow Grins at me, You must have been a ghost. Where were you Lone and aloof and slow? I dreamed, you ghost, Ghost of the wood I dreamed, you Where were you, I asked you, Forever you. I knew you Where were you? Dream I Knew you. Lost you? I have heard you Where were you. Just such a maiden Whose flesh was still Thatched and grey As the blossoms on she lay When soft she fell asleep. And once I saw a man At an unsounded Spring where the swift earth Had but the royal thumb and finger, And knowing his eyes were not Seeing his mouth was not open, Threw back his head and cried, "Forever, forever, forever." I see the moon rise: Might I not say, Before her pale form she stood All the time that she wore The night that she waked to-wake? I sat beside her, gently brushing The damp hair from her cranium. Where was I? Ah, so late! I saw the tip of her scaled wing Now a shadow seeming to melt Like a shadow passing through a glass, And her eyes were smiling. <|endoftext|> As once a happy slave Came o'er the Eastern sea, He sailed with joyful hearts, nor was His eye-lens sad to know That Fortune's heaviest hand can prevail, And the proud world turns away And tears his joy, but not his soul. The hand that stinted all to save Its darling,--the large heart That earthly throne Still called upon,--these are within The depth of Freedom's sacred breast And those who seek its range Find a deep-sea's depth to ray. Sweet--most sweet the charm is Of honest fame, That brings no snare But honest shame A mind that's true, and strange To selfish pursuits. The harlot's eye May laugh,--perhaps his lip Was twitch'd by fun, But every pulse that's low Has high control Of no true prodigality. The robe of ephemeral finery That floating fools behold Upon the wide tide, As on an unfathom'd lake The sea-plunderer boats his bane, And joys to feel Impending ruin round him. I know a flower That breathes and blooms For two brief years, Then hands and verdant leaves And angel wings around For other lives to grapple, And all its sweet Memory be free To wander wide fields of air. Yes, this is well. The short days And sweet content Are sweet and long The lull as long as lives End in God. Along to the flowers! But all their little virtues We care not for, we! The heaving hope That hours to truth may come Is not as all-inclusive As if a happy home We did not inherit. A fair and full-blown orphange, Than which I do not think Was ever known or wrought Upon this earthly green: But still the purest thing In world or spirit In that firm western sea Men call the North Sea, Is the seal'd Catholic medal, And the Christians say In the full-blooded English fashion If God's treasured ivory keys Are within your nail-stared hall, Then trust your love Till it no more Is token of fidelity. I see my lady, By the snow-white sea What freshness she has, And think 'tis fresh and fragrant In the cold. Be not jealous, For God is kind, For He sends warm wishes And loves to work His good plan In small ways. To feed for a night ======================================== SAMPLE 304 ======================================== “In the garden growing there is no growing. “Here, woven by her, no seed of thistles is “Found grown. Many thou wouldst have it: and which “With thy will would give the spirit of things. “Her plant is every land,—far and mid-sea, “All earth-omened. None fertilizing dew “Heaps, no suns or moonlight ever break; “Her root no garden's fence:—none of these “Without her grow, are known o'er all the world. “Thus is it that, earth-hidden, so pure, so white, “There should be spring-sown the earth, root down: “And that no garland-blossom there may grow; “Its maiden-buds with each going shower “Swept from the spread buds.” These words Pohjolan honors: now grant them guard from evil, rest during summer's heat. <|endoftext|> "Cicadæa", by Katherine Duncan Fowles Centuries ago, a shepherd girl Wondered the rows of cherry-branded, witch- or snake-eaten blossoms And clambering branches of her clan And wondered, as she, from spring to veil, By the scattered, crookèd flowers of spring, Which, when the months of earthly time were done, Dropt, wild with change, a leafless choker, With mimosa-mermaids on either hand. And thought of these and muttered, Half-+half, Festering in the field. In perversity. Across the cypresses, the sky Of azured undersides, exposed More samite-streaked than the hip Of the goose-steps marching slant-nosed Past the streak of spiny umber Crossing the knob of the cypresses Limp adown the bosom of the stream I rise. I clothe in gill and limb And in a glass-wall become a wall, I-thought that of the earth. Down I see The buckwheat hours, and o'er the beach Cities which were drowned. With sleeves like glaze Of hollowed melt spheres of frost, The fir-ropes salt, up, up, Cherry-blacked, a bloomsome wharf of blossoms Battered, wounded by the hard-furling Floors of the night like swelling foam. The toe-end of her mother's foot, The rotted scar beneath her navel (Which had not known the deep: But had she laid her close against the plough And rubbed it in the sun and been whipt As lee-lang as a dead leaf To gallop on an arrow, and borne away Where the salmon rins, Hurl the plume up And truss itself and sink to the bottom) Unguessed, unloved and singular Lost to the litter of the carcase She, with the marish light of drowning, sinking, Dive-bursted, grappling, Struck, struck, and sunk to bottom Unhurt, unbarmished, Clad in a salmon-leaving ocean-salon Upon her lower-legs, her middel-hair Twined to the fishes, and in jades, and In sullen flesh, upon the slough Of slant-bodied river-light In which her husband, brother, And sister had their tears. Her knee upon the swollen stump, And her arm upon the bough Straight as the plume of a dill. But I I, I am A murrain on the country My spirit unburied, a gold-face On a ruffled day against a copse In the bonnet of the forest; Now like a whortle-leaf is my face; But the blue jay flitter in my eye To his feet I draw and my spear does its arc; For I have caught a step-father's cap The whitest of white sheep, Whom doing so Has meant a winter to a plowman. <|endoftext|> "from New York Time: 24th of last month", by George Oppening [Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, History & Politics, War & Conflict] in front of the Rescue Mission the Lieutenant called out, "He's here, Major. I've got him." The Major came out first, with some troops ======================================== SAMPLE 305 ======================================== nend a sinecure, disturbing that darkness over my mind, meaning the heart’s give- ing something is willing to be parted from, time’s many-lobed prison grows my ear. I hear the lure of the others I used to sit near, the three day-givers who met for breakfast in the diner, quiet morning diner, blue-eyed Klondy whose eyes were often black as the sky, and one without glasses, who’d say these sows won’t fit in the capacious car, meaning I lost a shoe or pin in writing down the way he held his pen, this sad poet, cubist, mime, tomboy, were never true men. You and the other two and the dead gals with ribbons and more ribbons, the canary fat open out of our cloaks. Which long might be a family, were it not we need “the drama” so much as this, so we could swear it is a true family we need. <|endoftext|> "The Dream of Winter Birds", by Robert Frost [Nature, Animals, Weather] Is it what we must face, the troubled night, With its white face all wuddled in a heap, The snowslide on top of all our field, Stained brown and gray, mired with cloud, All so mixed up by the cold, So somewhat like ourselves we must At least feel the new surprise Made for us by the cold. The stars harden on the yonder sky, Like cut-off tinder, and the snow Hurls on our walks bare to our eyes, Becoming like us our share Of the world we live in now, So hard to give to those that call us friend, So hard to give of what we are still. The snow-flakes fall as they may, They hit me on the head, but I Can feel them whirl past my ears And on to my cheeks. I walk Through the white, through the raining still, Haunted by sounds, to cross the sodden field Which lines the map of the town, where I Was born and bred and bred, a man At free privilege, at eighty I stood at the corner and prayed. <|endoftext|> "If This Is Just a Jolter", by Cornelius Eggers [Activities, Sports & Sports, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] Running out to the 8' tall yellow ball while his cousins barefoot splash around him in the shallow... Turning to the sandy beach as his playing mate in the shallow Stones all three except the smaller boy who stands firmly in the sand while others are at the White House Golf Links announcing a handicap of 2.5 —both of his hands at the buttock, head thrown forward slightly, as if still absorbing the whirring sound of the ball... In what atmosphere—the skin of the spectator—does the man outdraw the mechanics of the natural? Or does he grasp the form of the ball in the sun, darkly, in the shade, in that no location is ever truly in reach, that he is also in the circle? But what is it that draws him, if he is drawn to it? I understand the bottom half of the ear is devoid of pigment, but then the skin is bare, so what is it that draws him, what body, how does he become so it—the interpretation of it, the structure of it? I would like to be clear on this. I would like to say that this is not a form of affection, but a vision, that the ball is a rosy orange, that the distance between the scuffed face on the hole and the destination is the one true distance, for the pleasure and delight of every one is the sole pleasure, and every one is in attendance—the five of them are in attendance—the 10,000,000 in attendance.... Júpiter! Místari! You are a patron, and I am not. This is why I want to be here. I cannot stand it. I have passed by each of you so many times as distance allows, and now, when I see you, my love, I call you "favor," I call ======================================== SAMPLE 306 ======================================== That fancy's power, then she their sights seeking, Have sung the smoke-cloud round their heads, and, amazed And piteous, her heart's blood bleeding, when they sought The little kids upon her couch, she shook, And cried, "Alas! and dost thou think thy bones Are marred thereby?" and in moments more Her leaping heart broke hers with her own cry, "Go to! forlorn one! to thy dark sea go The very waters o'er, and the bad sea's storm Scurry back!" They went, and, on the morrow hale and strong, A rainbow in the palace-yard glideth safe; The little ones are warmed by the smiling sun; He watches fair beyond the gate; the days Are shapeless, unending; and light and darkness Crowd into his kingdom, day within day; And day fades; and in the setting sun The child sits trembling: and the sudden sight Of this, her lord, makes sick her heart's divine And, grown more steadfast, more entire, she turns Fearing not, as though her lord were her own. Then, every day, she sought, and sought and watched, As when a weary traveler the way, Mixed with expectation, bent to the floor With a start, 'mid the shouts of throng And clash of rosewood and wild fireworks, The echo of voices, the cries and tread Of feathered gins, and the clapping of hands, And flushed and gentianed green, and the fire That followed after light. But still she sought In vain; and could not find, or bore, and feared; For, where the grass was heaviest, there she found Not even. And, thus, she trembled. Fear built tower-like Her bosom; and her mood was dark, for night Seemed set for battle; but she up-stairly Wandered still, and seemed to baffle through a swoon Of events, until at last, with trembling hand, And bended head, and silent words, she sought, Now near, and now behind, yet never near, The silent ring-dancer, and would fain Have drawn him close; but, alas! he paused and danced Where e'er a smile beheld the light of her eyes, Nor stayed the ring till night grew great and dawned. And thou dost keep In that old vaunting mask o' thine art Armed service all the year; And sleep's my lullaby, o'er My cradle into the skies; My youth, like fire-sleeved lace, Watches and waits, And you, their sister, take the care To keep my sleep: sleep from me Is gold and rise-- The only rite of life That I would concede. A flower is this That, though long grown, is not dead, And breath perfumed with the breath of heaven Is thrown about the bed Where it doth spread and bloom. It is not mine But thine, in equal part, A leaf is this, that, Or else a star, which shines by Whose light but perchance a grain Is all of heaven the dust of time. All things will make A mute by which I must hear, Whether like-pale maids or bold men, Cry and make all flowers young: Thy kissing lips, it is not Thy breath, "Away," nor rustling dress; O my Love, thy flowery violets! My sun hath set; and the garland I Teach to children from the rose-bud's bough; My wild birds are homing; The new born fawns Thrust at my hand: All things do stop, The Eye that looks from them doth see What no man sees. For Love's sake I will not weep With all the company; For Love's sake, I will endure All the ganking o' the world, Though in the purple wicket Forth went Love to die. It chanced that on a season, A yearling April,-- A time when yet no blossom Was on her yellow stalk prest, But that too early for admyre And some green of her fillet needed,-- When through the fields they were traying AMarch-time steele And what of hedges had, From under savory lichen, In sunny sheaths complete, Pensively there came A long-lasting thought to one, ======================================== SAMPLE 307 ======================================== pensive he who scarce can say now,-- Just from the current of life, To offer our last humble prayer:-- If no other soul shall plumb the urn, To chill with everlasting woe, On that narrow bench which even we cannot fill, We--the only souls that find our doom so faring!-- On the mere bench of our own making--purely true, And daringly impatient of their denial!-- We, who in what is good choose to excel, Not counting God,--and the gods that we have torn; And not concerning ourselves--the few who front the Muse, Yet do we ever crave, at morning's rising, The hills to be more quiet in the west? The west is quiet: the nearest life may hear, As sometimes to the nearer does come sound and toil. And yet in the loud hush, whose sullen ruin Reposed long haply in the skies and was Part of the world's desolate quiet before The rise of the human world to make the clod aware Of the light its own loveliness too long had held. There is not silence, I insist! My soul knows this: That which dies not even in dream of death, Is--breathed in air, comes with the breathing wind To thicken its heart and revive its breath. The grace of that which in eternal Close friends forever associates, Reposes, like the view of fields and sun, And the approach of approaching peace. I, too, have dreams! Far back, I'd spun the pollen, The world's smallest flower, to where the heart doth clung, From swinging on the stalk on which it doth answerth To feelings--pollen-, fire--pinacle-clasp; And said--I would be thought like him, who is borne, The thistle's shadow, on the heart's arch, to speak Of solidarity!--'twas but to dream so, and be dumb, For all the folk, high and low, knew not what I meant. I dreamed the stalk would over-winter, In which the seed of Being were sown; Dream that through eyes of sleep it wove the stem, Forever from its loveliness divided: Dream that the precious stores were as silver, The snows had such a white sheen-- Those whose strength to leap were like the Moon's; Those with a burnished glory; I,--the man. It is not fit to tell how soon the blight Came. The streak of cold would leafless be Hunting for cranes. Lo, the old fields were won, And fields more desolate than their past, A silence, wherein the trees might wait Their brotherhood of trunk. The leaves were shorn, Of many a withering ile, had dreamed of May: And from those witherings came, the scent Of myrrh and kirtle, deep-set, and faint, The dream of clay, the dreams, unsoundable, Far feeble to bind and sift the grain, Or once, ere now, through cracked stones for grain. So shrivelled the land and gave up all hope,-- Himself to walk upon nor to draw beer From pillars of rock--'twas despair. So, And under all, the freshness of the gloam. So night crept on and all men slept. The spring Had choked the animal. The many sounds Of unseen wing, and wind, and insect life Were still. The brook hurried by, but no more 'Twas a minstrel to its inmost spring. There, Upon those hills, the goddess-seers drew Their votaries. There, too, the crags, the crests, Huddled against the cold with shadowing skirts. And when, at evening, flames within the West Became like rivers and grew much brighter, I left them; and before the fire I sat And thought what space was left to me:-- The power and beauty of the deepest night. And then I told my dreams, and you were gone; And thought I, "This life is small to him Who can no more than touch upon a few things." And, gazing on my folded arms, I thought, "This is the gloom that makes the world of art." I, who have felt what life can do, But cannot give back, gather up my life With more than mortal skill; And, because to you, my friends, it is given, Reach out to give, and go on from day to day ======================================== SAMPLE 308 ======================================== "Your welcome!" cries the bridegroom, and proceeds Along the road to greet the learned nurse. Now, while the guest is in the humble car Of one to whom he is introduced, Filling his hands with kisses and his eyes With joyful love, behold a dark cloud is looming On the landscape, making the grim shades Of the marsh and hard bank look darker. Then comes ringing a scream from the path. "Help! Help!" so runs the alarm; "Stand back!" cries the youth, who sees, In the crystal of an eye, The vermin running where With life-torment not one speck remains. On the bed of life Pale Death sits, And shows The ghostly pickerel, Then cries aloud: "The girl of us two shall marry thee For the right sum of three-thry-eight!" One who has practised most art Which is called charm To beguile some shedy bears In misty nights of Spring When the skies are grey; Ripples of dreary soe Dispersed all your faces flock To the tomb of charm, where ne'er again Their faces haunt again. And, alas! this is no work For sweet Mary's hand; Her charms, scented now like ones Which die in white spray, Are whitest things which hold their light To long his life. Then your season returns again; So prepare to die: You shall meet him by and by, Ere your gray pas be done; On yon wrappèd ash-tree's shade, Bedecked with thorns, which wide Hangs on the rueful sign Of life and love, you'll lay, Like the rose, that brings to mind The thorn that clomb to die. Now the thunderbolt is overhead, And low the lightning's rush; Now the winkling sprinklings chill; Winter is coming, mild As the dance of the months, with love, In their primest, Most intricately gay Bights, which only dance around You, to whom spring's in a way. O show her your eye Like the she-lily's Offspring bright! Paw patter from her paw Soft and fine. She a snouted leg will bring From dark, or, some more comely, Gigantic barrelock Will her capacious skin, One of pure dragon stripe, Guide to your gall. Now I am told the dinner is spread, Goodness! how the market is full; How is thy task, maiden, thine own? Not a briar in the market for itself. Or a cluster of red gold. A good supply of fragrant spring, Rich in odors, to be tried by all; And a full gourd for the summer, Which is no easy matter For the tender microbes, if they are To flourish or wither. O tale of March wombs, and how they pour Their day's excess in the silent spring, Not to rival Nature's in perfumes, Which on our senses lies a rule, Which is the muse's highest praise; Nay, not the apicis to draw, On a scene where Nature's hand could not be Encountered! This is no turning up of the key Round an old painful mill; An old sharp left hook's but the same As a new sharp right: In the world's too wide vale to dwell Two things of same kind ne'er meet, Or in their turn to differ. What shall the pilgrim now To his object learn As the gleam of the sunbeam, That, like his morning star Is not seen? What in truth shall he find In this star, that he descry Through the droning fog, That no eye can himself see? What truly lies But in the man's judgment? Dear sir, in all this Thy mistake thou tis mighty n't To imitate a speaker With visage like A murderer's face, and look, Anon, like malice plaining On the messenger, As if he should himself live, And like a woman said: "O thou strange of this bird The sweet bird of Love, Would'st thou hear me now As now loiterest?" O ye that take your walk, Or stray by night, 'Tis to the house in yon vale 'Neath the blackened tree; And if ye see with ======================================== SAMPLE 309 ======================================== 2 But at once a man sprung forth from under the earth who blew to heaven, and the Maenads threw his lyre from their fingers, then carried the lyre awain, and answered his strange words: “Innocence is the title to innocence; the world will praise thee if thou maintainest it. Innocence is the household god; it is well for virtue to have an open road (as from the loud loud sea, from vast heights). Innocence is the highth of wealth; to possess an open house. Let not, then, a wretched, wretched person be keen of trenchant point. Let not a man forget his donkey-paddles, who hard with earth is fain to gain the way, for this causes all the grief, and foul alarm, when the earthen mortar swings and swings across the trefoil-tray. Holding nothing back, wring thy arm upon the wheel, and thou hast found no void, for none was wanted. In the Gods’ possession is no heirship higher. Yet, if a man wish for a higher seat the four-wheeled seat is all covered with seats and trefoil coverts having but one top. A man may sit in every manner, over the hands of attendants. For what may not be done well sparely by unproper guardians, so that the feast of good perfumes may be tainted with bad ones. Thus it comes about that the toper-sleeve of a man, that cover is made. I have heard the manège of a man speak twice, the month of February pounding mounds of clay to exhume his double yok-chus. So more resolute should the kena be, and with a body more sound. “Do not thrust such affairs in men’s faces, nor hurry the telling of your age. For know that height the kiba of a man must exceed that of his donkey. Let things be what they may, they belong to their wayward making. Some men, and more in point of merit, are pleased with pottage of small victuals. So far as a proper ration of food may per Ubas is supplied. But yet the highest indeed is that nameless soul of our ever-cured misdoings whether it be kept with abundance or starved with smallness. For he who weighs the fragments of it at its crupper, as once he who cut the cake, then let the knife fall—this the last: reap it in the right measure, and think that these the better dishes shall be, which only they who think of right and eat of right, can taste sweet, which some wild ithe keeps, but few know, that unto them is chewed at its ease and this man lives more serene than gods of heaven. For each one who to the savoury spirit that chastens beholds, these likewise know. Him too I say that I neither scorn, nor God, nor man, nor aught else, though men, in their unjust contempt, seek to chain my mind with doubt; so well the world has confessed that, through me, they pass through the prison gate, as men let him go who bars their rooms, though he barred no gate that I could ever wish for on my path. They only know me as judge, who there receive their cases. And now I make known how much of old time hath passed, and hence how many a fresh thing is that which I proclaim, if ye recall what I have declared before. And if ye know that when I quelled the beast-foe of my people, which made their knowledge of me harder, of wine and dancing, though from me they had free admission, and which ever since loves to meddle with our nightly revels throughout all the world, then surely all these with the former love to know me, for my fame, which, still enduring, lasts, a fool for food. And, now that after long wanderings and long troubles he in no wise comes, nor his tongue is stopped with the fame of my lying children, still I swear to you, that I do not fable: the free spirits are on the earth, who of old did these things, but now they are departed, the company that they kept so long does not hinder them, as though it hindered more, but has in nowise changed. Ver ======================================== SAMPLE 310 ======================================== We twinkled and glamped, as they tell, At lads that tell them it, Three white stones from the castle wall, One from St. Omer's Lane, And one from Cheapside wharf. It passed through a bright pilaster, And a whitish rafter, With light dripping down from it; And tinkling bells to Meredith! O, Ma, you shall have it, and grow it, For that's the charm of him who has it; For, no matter who it may be, I think, should that bright rafter remain I own the possessor would make it his. You well may say that to the gallows it's no easy task, That most certainly is the case; There's not a chance, however, of them cracking it at all. They're talking very vague and deaf in this respect; For the murderous mood, like the deadly one of the vampire, Is, like every mood of the soul, seductive, And the best is when 'gainst it we arm to prevent it By carrying yokes, by being perpetual carriers of the whip; And then the evil Spirit swiftly passing to the hangman-- If, in God's run, you still remember the fatal pang, You've nothing to dread--you might have been the gallows-bird. At night, she crawls in her bed, Silent, till mother Sleep Wakes her with a gentle stir. She curls up, with the likeness Of a cringing Thief, about to flit Rapid from the path of the one true Love. And this is not a fictional scene; The faithful Miss Payne-More had It painted for her in a well-known Picayune. The snoring has been steadily growing, Since the day we had to wade ashore From the Mystic this evening; but all the way Thirsty for the bay, and on the wing to land, Bearing the first half-tillage of hills, I only have to say, I've scarcely a cent to my trade, And to keep on--as an Anchor and a Snail,-- I'm obliged to live on out at the Red Globe, With his Admiral, and his sailors and his equipment; And the only reason I'm the Friend of Britain to keep on, Is that I scouted the idea that I might have a wink. I sit on the couch at my age, And hear the rain and the cars the clear Sounds of city streets, with Nature's own tinkle, The one would-be Valentine there's not got A glance for the Law--all the passions I think over, But all I meet is a resumption of wearisome care. And, as a result, dear Sir, I come to London every day, And miss you in a very calm and pleasant way At your house--but when I see you, dear, when I see you I hold your picture out, Like a cheek that a tattooed figure of love has just leant on to study, Till the picture fades from the face of the earnest poet, And I've nothing to read, and you've nothing to say, and I don't care, My dear Sir,--what does it look like? I don't mind it; for, believe me, 'Tis the style of the age that gives me the clear sense to shun it. The present age? The thing that moves, does not lie; What do I know? What do I know? I see a dance; My lady's sat there--I see two hands hold a flower-- I see her--I don't know her name--but yes, she's quite fair-- But if a picture's a kissing scene 'tis the only one in it, And 'tis the only one you have to show of it, And there's none left--ah, my dear Sir, those little maudlin people-- Oh dear, I'm not antistaph, I'm a-mad for you, and for me. That's the King of Elfland, I've a service for him! I carve a cedar at your cost In return for a fairy's dime. Heaven lend us this day! Such a fine little elf! A woodman, in cracking logs, He comes upon me, An old bear, out at the rills I went up, in hopes to lighten my load, Broke a sapling--do you see it? Which I polished up, and sold for a song, Upon the corner of the square. If your patience with my brother Is ======================================== SAMPLE 311 ======================================== Art thou too inspired to try This second marvel? Art thou too benignant and lovely to it, Merely for the sake of it? Like pretty children, full of fire and merriment, Wildly jumping and coqueting with the music, Trampling the stars for cover, -- Play as you like, and smile all the time! Cling to your fellow and bemused! Follow me and keep him pining To your rapture and the rapture! Come, come, it is time now, -- Time and the orgasm wait you out in the world. I have spoken as a lover in a gallery. Do you cast to the winds All your cares, and reproach me as untrue, Striving with all your arts to cope with the fall of your love, And forced, with all your stale regrets, to feed on your dreams, Or tempt with sighs and tears love's sackcloth; Is it, then, your angel-island of delight That lies beneath you, without you, and above you, Now I have seen! Do I cling, as you have done, To the shoreless ocean's heaving waste, And in frantic hope and despair Cry to my heart for help, Wet with salt tears; or have you burned To obey the voice of a lover Springing to your feet and commanding No breath of reeking air Make you answer to his word, Or ever he can speak to you again? I looked, I saw, and I wept Lovers never more May share the bliss they felt, Or I have seen it, and I know it. Have you kept your life unfruitful Through the bramble flying? I know What the rose, when blown by the wind, Says to the thorn: "Seek the swift joy that came As a white shadow and winged from the wood." It is done. The fierce crimson stain Has cast an arrow through the air Into the reaving west. They have laid the red blade of yew Upon the altar-wood. (Down, down, the instrument!) The sun is sending a smile Across the stream. The children, to whom love is real, Loved it best at noon, Before the unreaping fire Froze his flesh, and all the pooling Wind's latest blood Had passed to verdure, and the day Was the springtime of the song they kept. And you were there, -- too near the ends, When all the others blessed their heroes, You held a lady's hand The queen's true child, the lover without blood, The lunatic of color, The bear's Hoof exhibiting. And so you sing, you poet-men of feeling, Without what tears, And scalding tears of perfect thought, Would have made your eyes bleed black And your hearts break? Your hearts might have loved you, and those eyes Have left their lids Unsoared, and in their place Sit red With terror and enchantment. I am not a poet, but God saith, Who can't help a sinner Who sits in hell! And so it is I say To you A single, new ray Of joy, To be your friend Without a word of art Or motto To be a friend, But because we're men And not deigns To choose our friends From these we cannot choose To be or not From friends we've lost, Tell me, woods, I long For your inspiration; Who will listen and help The stricken spirit To hear your old wise say, 'Though they try and miss, They must be right, And be proud they're still That they ever tried.' And when these Mayflowers bind Their heads with flowers, As the snow flanes and flings Her lash on the trees, We make our way with plodding feet, On your eight and eight; And it is good to see So many people. But there is one that never is, And never could be, From the dusk of morning Till it's eve again; And 'tis best to take his face And to remember him, By the old, old-fashioned way. There was never any word spoken, No word to break the stillness Of the hours we've been through; He had great words with him That other men have not heard. He had great words that were woven Out of the things that were, And was with ======================================== SAMPLE 312 ======================================== blue glory, crimson flow and more than ever I have marvels to try, remain a problem that evan just must make good. <|endoftext|> "When You’re Full of Content and Love and Your Phone Gets Story. Now at Thirteen", by R. Lindon Watson [Living, Coming of Age, Life Choices, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Philosophy] Because it was for the best. Because the wonder would eventually get challenged. Because you loved to challenge. Because you loved yourself enough to drop the shield and reveal the secret, or in this case, a sensitive love, a bravery, a somewhat less clumsy version of do I.Because it was for the best. Because not qua likely, nor quod likely, but quix, or do I. It took months of no pictures to come around a photo, on the glowing morning of Christmas day, the slow vernacular teeth clearing. Because of the newspaper. Because quare and thin. Because that posits it is. You had answered with a talisman the questions you had always said were silly. Because of the timelessness. Because you were all of us, or so you had told yourself. Because it was for the best. Because he knew you wouldn’t of  want of  it. <|endoftext|> "Because I’m pregnant", by R. Lindon Watson [Living, Parenthood, Sorrow & Grieving, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Nature, Winter] The wind was cruel, and blew a flag down that bit of road and pushed it along the river to the other end of the world. I hold him in my hand. And no, he’s not the one in the beach chair opposite to my right, my mother standing beside him. He is the only one of my mother’s living brood. And because I am full of fate. He said to come and he led me to the end of the line, but there are buildings on both sides. And where could be a line to the line. The war hadn’t broken out. Just thought I’d drop by to see. He was showing me the world. Or maybe it was the other way around, so I walked cross-grained and thought the names for things are all the lines. <|endoftext|> "Which has", by Deborah Lehrfeld Having left the parental nest so long and had enough to do with husband coming home from long shift we both toted around the finished dory and called home to family with smilax and wild scent (then home again) I dimly thought it would be good to start and home in one lot. Only later to find the dry gas rigs around mile after mile on a loophouse’s green around and family-size beds underneath the trucks. Then light showed up. Leaping chaparals sending flags about. Tiki torches. The ones who wouldn’t take themselves too seriously. Didn’t care if others did. Our air conditioned trailer, with its point of no return, its foggy tunnels, jammed with boxes, four, then eight-foot beds, ruined trailers past. Empty frames, that’s what we had. My brother’s dream of us sitting silently, banjos stuck in their clangs. It was good to see one another. Except when he whispered, Our trailers, our plastic meat beds, our dry fires. And their brown streaks, burning, all about. That was the last time I ever heard my mother. She had been gone years. Never mention the trailer once. Never mention the bees. She wouldn’t do this, our $26,000.00 house. She made it look like spring on weekends. Painting the trees. And that was the only spring we could. Our dogs and us, now a snug few toys, enough to encourage the dogs, the same toys, stuff that might not be used, then thrown away, which is why the few bags were tossed. More than this, the trailer’s sleepy other room ======================================== SAMPLE 313 ======================================== intended, yet kept immaculate, when there is nothing beautiful about that beautiful. So I celebrate both the king and the citizen over which he presides. Though every peopled place needs a king, the mere issue of kings grows desolate. But then the fragment of a roof and the little span that a roof, among others. <|endoftext|> "Scenic Desert", by James Koestenbaum [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity, Nature, Summer, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] for Christopher J. Anderson and Matthew Steinweiss She had a bouquet of peonies; they were smothered in wind, miming the drive up to a tree up and away, to a hill, then back. A young man in a car pulled up and her, behind her a man in a t-shirt laughing, but she didn't stop or speak. If there was ever a moment that could have been any moment at the end of the summer, I would have been there. You can smell the ozone in the air, and there is the pop of cool music on the radio. But it is August, and you don't get to choose. The car slows to a stop. A flower blows out of the grass, and one by one, the fireflies wink and go out on their own, and soon the afternoon is a blur of human activity. <|endoftext|> "In the Presence of Animals", by James Koestenbaum [Living, Life Choices, Marriage & Companionship, Relationships, Men & Women, Nature, Animals, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] The owner of the fur farm walked past us smiling and nodding. We already knew, he said, there were things you didn't tell me. I asked what it felt like to come home with those paintbrushes. He said he didn't know. <|endoftext|> "A Wolf Is a special Kind of Creature", by James Koestenbaum [Living, Death, Life Choices, Relationships, Men & Women, Nature, Animals] Like with all special beings there is a code They sing an ordinary song And then they aren't much different than any ordinary human A wolf is a wolf is a wolf is a wolf Which is more than interesting The death of the tall tree and the death of the beast which was the tree The death of the oak and the death of the beast that it was And the subsequent deaths of these other creatures Are, in a sense, the death of us all The wolf is more than any human And the human beings more than any wolf. <|endoftext|> "At Christmas", by A. E. Stallings [Living, Time & Brevity, Activities, Jobs & Working, Christmas] When all the gifts had been shipped out of the house, we all began to cry. And I remember one who had been through a lot and wouldn't speak One handed his hat to the next person and began to smile at him. And he didn't know it was all a front. Then a dog walked in and the whole crowd stopped crying and clapping. It's possible there was more that didn't come to the light of day, that we're unaware. A man came in late from another continent and wanted to speak to one of us As he had never been back there And no one understood a word he said. So good to know we weren't the only ones who felt tenderness for the unknown. <|endoftext|> "Poetry", by David Mason [Living, Life Choices, Activities, School & Learning, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books] I can rest my elbow on the computer keyboard and still write an Indian bullet whistle chasing the goose along the ground while I hunt the trash in the woods and think of the time I rode with Gezica over a field of barley when there were twenty Indian gunmen waiting for us and I said, "Back off!" And the field was still darkening behind us. I thought of the winter I spent with Gezica outside in the fields with only her to keep me company. I thought of the winter we spent together standing in the snow waiting for the morse to come and I asked her, "What was the duration of this clouded dream you were having? Was it December or was it summer ======================================== SAMPLE 314 ======================================== Smile on my throbbing breast, in me there reign Taste of nectar, heav'nly breezes ever blowing Far from mortal scenes; sweet poison off're, Lute, lute, with her I sing; Borne as th' immortal spheres resistless glide Thro' lustre and thro' space, To whose pale fires caresses flow Too dear, too dear! too dear they are. Chorus. Twas at a birth, at a birth, We beheld him first; At a birth, at a birth, Or a growth, or a thicken'd flock, That his mother's lap May wipe with plenty! Chorus. His first shrewd-soul'ning wing We watched, we beheld; And indeed at his mother's lap, He bask't there at a birth; Chorus. With a proper way he sprung To a proper bough, That in his mother's proper bough, Shelter'd his young he humbly sh'aft, And his warm nest Thro' all their happie plumages Did expand. I saw his wild bunting's flight O'er windy mountain rocks, From mountain cliff to crests of vallies, Where the gushing rills In huge echo cries From precipice to precipice, Blew adieu. Bun saw I how a noble crow Carves for his nest, on G'di's steep Sheltered his young in manners sage; And with him rov'd, and on thy way The flaming-throated plover, And rich with herbage rov'd the plain Faye de Romilly (their phrase). From Geddo's heights with art and ease All creatures that in time bepast, All creatures that bepast in time, Most religious wished to take their flight. My counsel then to follow them My gentle brethren twain that were of him, Much that restrained them, his second Which answer'd me, (for they would) did say, 'Let go, and depart where Christ the God, Whose purposes they knew, had spok'n, Tak'ning their way.' So straight they exchange Thenceforth, my office turning Letters. As any that in Valtellique town Thy day's ill care canst not bear, But hath that man within his heart The ass a stubborn grudge gives, So was my blessed nature thus Perpetual judge of me; and often Falls from the looks which with thee did flow Short while we met, and straight again I bethink me of our former meeting, Not of my worship, but my beloved And my devotion. I thus can see How Christ in faith is also made a slave To juggard wit, by all thy ties infer'd. All things thy gifts grace in equal wise To make thy self a equal equal had sped; And had have for thy gift giv'n in vain: Thus I secretly was with thee, that seem'd Free to thee in equality. My beauteous head I lost, and thy more glorious beauty took; And now of all my mind rich ill return. As pollux in urbem statio pollice luce noti, Scis quam sancto impetrato suo praestesipe, Dices esse vim female; dicas en Ili Encomia secum stat, o gret female Perfessiter procellis vitam. Et quoniam stat Caripline manus deflagrum conciliare marmore. Sinceris hic bene pollice quid nescia potest, Ut belli pollice quotiens securi, Nec paucer sui latendi sociare mora. Quid certamine forsan Poliprava Breatna diffundit in Constantinidem, In timore suam docilem locum? For that thou dost in heaven live unreproved, Look down and see what mortal doth there; And ask such souls the causes why they hang Out of the sky upon Poetry's gate Ready to run, and leave their families For the good cause of music, and movement. Or go direct to Poetry's house and ask What makes those female souls, so poor and silly Whereto their nostrils speak the breathing of Musicians. The answer will be glorious for their great attachment To such benevolent employment. Beyond all doubt Poetry and Women, in general, are Cheeky little Feminine Mus ======================================== SAMPLE 315 ======================================== Arms are thine to do with thyself; And God's afterthought, in thee. Do what thou wilt With the elements of Earth and Heaven, And with thyself; thou have'st thy will; Whatsoever thing God is thought to do Wise mortals do without; And, if thy willing soul by its own power On Earth hath, in Heaven away, So do thou: this I would:-- No more in Heaven; go thou, And do thy wish in Earth. I love thee as a book; For, when I open, My life is rife with meanings, And each page gives out new words; Which, turned in spring-cows or spoken, Kindle new fountains of thought. With thee conversing, I grow wise, And all wisdom is with thy lips. I am so rough and sullen: I have not sense enough to trust; And yet, if thou'lt cry, 'If none The one faithful lover, shall be, I'll be to my self and self to thee,' I must be to my self with thee! I want thee as the spring Doth need the nimble steed To fill his eyes with light: Then 'twill please me best If he, at least, should speak his best. Lo! Where, of all of us the spirit Fair and strong, and sprung of the sea, On thee la cape luxe encant! Our ocean's shade, bright Goddess, We come to thee on boughs entwined. Thou too hast thy sun and moon, All hail to thee, my gentle one! Thy charms be brave, my soul, And be these flowers to us: Our hearts then trust to keep, That, if thou have a lion's eyes, He is, he is thy lover. Ay, be this lad!--I would swear him so. See how he braves The deep, and, thanks to thee, Seems to sing the sky, And only the wave that lets him rise That prince, who made so brave a nose, And swept such broad welcomes in the world, Should the less? Who, I mean, should have less, Because he sang in a lisp? Alas! When we are somewhat dull, There's something quite in being mistaken! 'Tis vain, though wise, To vainly to reprove men Because their styles are thunder-red, While ours are met and matched At Tycho's unam'rous crowning; Nay, I find here, when I gaze with dazed Enthroned, apathetic face, The answer to my question wrong; Blunders may be met; nay, and methinks A knowledge should be theirs, That 'tis a perilous thing to teach Of nothing really knowing. Oh, for a hand to guide them Who might, themselves, See all's to tell! You! and your high fame, Kindling many other fires, Calls slow to hear, and gather slowly-- You! then, who much Deserve a hearing. But, wherefore cold? For some strange reason unknown, Yours is supremely unfitting For to inquire. You! speak of me! Why, 'tis That I conceal, or turn aside, When I contemplate Your mild, sweet countenance, And when, With innocent glance, The sun is streaming; While it doth imbue Myncelly, And lend, to mirage scapes, New lights, with warm wonder flashing, But if, some day, Some business pressing, I sing your praise, That much ado May put an end to! Why am I taken, then, To-morrow, to-day, In such intimate chime? Why so? The bold familiar, like The tender dole, Walks, with me, near, but far; The pride in place, The meek in action, The frolic prude in spright. It is that, by our birth And from our childish moods; In common ways, Nor least in this Is connected; That we are only found, So long as trouble Need never chafe, We never so Go to or think; That, if a wreath of flowers Droops in the wind More gay-graceful, That the rise of sun 'Tis here--with thee Be it end I'd seek: The ======================================== SAMPLE 316 ======================================== Surely this is the worst of all Have I said to you! But through the night When I was mid-way, I would wake again And work my way through--the pillars of snow! Or, from the bushes, seize the jewel then And feel it warm me o'er and melt my blood! The first to reach the mount--the other follows, And neither finds a resting-place there, And falling, each beholds the treasure, And treads it back, still treading, till at last The rightful lord comes up, and at once, unhid The dagger slips away, And no one sees the dame who brings it. Now the cithern that I used to wear Sacks off and takes again its place; The precious rod that blessed me full, Reserved for Heaven-spending, there it is! And wherefore, though my lord shall lack it? The vesture, when I worn it on my breast, Upon the bosom now has lost its power; So, though God so order'd it, mine The charm of its old form will wear. In God's and man's praise I sing and sway, For not a sin can e'er be done but here, The Kingdom's Tilacæ, whose rewards The empire's peace, its peace the earthly crown. Go forth, my son, in virtue go, And be a symbol of my name! With stepped renewal take your stand And let your youth in Heaven's ark Unfold--the guide to ever blest and fair, To every race, to every age, to all! Belov'd of such, become a star When in the loftiest reign of Him Who reigns above, Your golden lyre subdued. I hid, but thou couldst see (What I believe not thou beliead) Though woary as a beardless boy, I clasped the trusting breast of my heart, Heaving it to heroic pour. Fierce as the wild woods full-grown, My sword o'er its path of reckling sheen Scantly did I blend, And hurl the thinkless bolt. The path is level to the bay, He who th' encounter smit Her weeping lover held his grip But dared not raise his hand; But when my axe began to speak, With a broad sabre at my side Stood beside my two, whose fall Succeeded with instant cry 'O Vánar leader, look on me, For I am Varuṇi, he The worthy grandeur deem; And by my shepherd-craft well tried, Noblest of Varuṇi's strain, I, crowned with slow and constant rule Of life and labour many a while To Varuṇa, may my right hand trace And sense of recompense obtain.' He was the lord of high renown, To hearken his recital true, Who unto Daśaratha spoke As thus his tale he freely told. By day his leaving off is hard, But with the night he finds his way. He o’er the swamps, the rocks, and wood In the broad water heger trode, And then a forest drear unknown To him was before known by name, Tost up the tree-tops to the sky. Stored in his breast the knowledge deep Of trees with lotus buds that bloom, Of streams that run from men that live. Wide on the right hand of him Ránu’s princely Ráma stood; And, all who see him, round him gazed, Nor could they see his frenzied glow. The path of Ráma that he trod, Where blameless Lug, O renowned! At Bhavárak and Daṇḍak, blest In her own halls, was ruled by me. When as my arms to heaven were thrown, Thy promise given, O Sátak, From exile back to blissful bliss, Through heaven to heaven and hell I sped With many a fruit and heron grey. I on the river’s stream and clay, Wide flooded with my tears, I cried “Hail, father, hail,”—and my heart Twined in his waving, ever looked For her, with mother blind. But soon, with quickened eyesight, sight Of Daṇḍak wood I gained, where grew With lotus buds his blameless breast, As thou, O King, a heavenly bird ======================================== SAMPLE 317 ======================================== He had a baby's smile that was only half true, His brows seemed heavily furrowed; and in his voice You had the tread of a stork--one that would Have words with many a bird, unless you rang The bell for a jennet's feather, at the sound Of the chimes, to order a merry-song. When you asked, you had the simple retort "A bit of champagne, and you may be fed; I never charge more than I are bound to, And I take my orders from Paddington." Such was the talk; and such was the toil For which some years ago these workers fought, Bound for the skirts of freedom, in the dark Of a tried-time like this great skeleton of a town. The old evil seemed to be talking still, But we turned aside from its broken speech To hear the mystic voice of the great Pan itself: "At this stage, I'm down with the Symbolism. Take the woman for example. If the woman's not complete till she's lived out Just one life, and she can everything but family life; But here's the priest, and the old women want their toll, So the hero's up and the hero's down; and the years Are continuous for them, and a fair lady can die, But they can't pay five. What's worse than that, They can't pay one toll. I see it as a rule That the river builds its walls about the noble plate, And like a priest, it's stopped the merest gap, To let the poor folks in that bazaar of glass Within reach of the elfish prophet's face --No matter if he wear a bang or a cap, And though the museum be its own alchemist, Its vials are of fervenus, and its vile gas Has touched the martyrs' ashes and scattered 'em among Old gents that never attend church anymore, But you'd get no opinion of him or his spirit On a name-plate, or the measure of his deeds, So the land's bowed and stifled with its serf class, And doles out as it's got new horizons For gigants and mines--and it is well Because it is a laissez-fair free to the devil. At last, to the London flat, with a gilt full bladder Which it fought to keep under its exclusive shield, Lest any one but an ass or a whale Should be tempted to tempt it to its doom, And to add that horn to its boast, which Had made it the wonder of the darkness That could look out and see the not least Of that solitary street with the lamps blue, When the gaudy sun was an independent orb Pulsing the map of liberty for a sport With new world peopled by him--or the model Of those palaces which should be a part Of the distant cities, which my liege The khan would have built, had he not road-caressed His Turkish lands and then walked off with a smile All right, to give them their pure madding. For a while the well-balsam filled marsh, Rushed down the folded hills with a lowth And bubbled into the rivers, and thereafter The toad and the frog, or the cay- Withdrew into the vales, where never gold Had the heart of the curse to venture again, Or here or there. And thus the year ran on, Reversing the appalling profiles Of doom, which came in three devious channels, From that same all-pervading bosom Wherein the dragon smote his chain. You will know by now why the night Was not held in its circuit to strike A mortal blow to that heart of Doom, And smite its fondest yearnings in her breast With that fondest of all earthly joys-- The joy of bidden Venus, when she Arose from Jove at the human turn Of Odysseus, and gayly sighed, After their love was justly slain. This was a winter of perplexed hope; And by its own cold spasms of dread And yearnings to its depths were Ko- lu'ther by moons, than by the moon Was by the friendly cross that she bore To the girdle of its lattice-ward As she, as a lady strong and fair, Strode softly up the moonlight of their morn. From her own stars upon her head Of massy form, cast down upon the world Such beauty that its virtue was increased. ======================================== SAMPLE 318 ======================================== A voler a prave a luiken Bluk bratuien kust bocht U. S. Gie us th' U. S. A. guar! Tell us for God's sake, why we can't trust you. I never bedded a girl who laughed less Than the women that I have seen, that weep; O, not a woman since Achilles, A-quarrying with Spearmstrong He slew them. Love hath a silent tongue, but also a gag And, if the mighty fall, Him that he buckles, Though against a hundred thousand, 'tis Little, As David found, and oh! We prove no trumpery. "Let's Sweep away, as you proposed When we first met--that is, last December-- Aught 'twixt us to treasure. To-day, before me, 'tis unbridled galore And should be kept apart--overtrunk. Not that I think you are a bother To be so one-minded, 'twixt the 'orse And mule. I like your Hebraic look, Your Saxon nose, your Anglo Lothian nose. What! thought I, Saw you're human, hailing from a fancy. It seems to be, someway, you think yourself Some alien to my fancy. The simplest Doctor says You are my ideal, fellow-creature Which once, for a little while, was wed To a beautiful taste, Made even more beautiful by the hammer! And though I say it in a semi-secret phrase, Yet, on the whole, The things that draw me, those that please me, Himself, you may be, or yourself, or a child, Or a girl, I mean; The places and events that I study Fill the single page of Life, please me. It's a fairly satisfactory album. If I tell you that which I have seen, Somehow, some science may be denied, Till Time hath sent his traveller safe (His journey, unlike ours, in person). Then the individual looks quite plain; And for subtlest goads on Venus' whirlpool, If, drawing off the iron from a mine, He has not learnt what governs youth or age ( If 'tis but a sucker in the race-- The sum of virtues, generous, brave, and brave, The sum of ambitions, shrinking, coy, and shiv', A man whose main aim is to be pitied Because he is but a fool), Then the whole grand miseries of the race, The triumphs and the tragedies of the time, Or if time's hand, with a boy's narrow span, Equal the globe, on its circling wheel Of greatest merriment or portent most, Let a genius of thirty years Dash the starting-node Through the broad result's stream of his years. For I do see, now the golden moment there, When to an ignorant public hatch'd your plan Which gave birth to a name so dear To your family of gentlemen hounds. Now I do not censure that choice much. For the fam'd Montaigne tells us, ere we migrated hither, That a man's seeds of friendship is with Nature vested And, I well-believe it, in Wisdom's land, Where ev'n Death hath little store, And solitude at one time may be wantonly shared. So, should I be a Waldi-man or hood, I need not waste a word upon the bar. The Montaigne, who did freely in his school The young Carlyle and Chekhov translate, And made a third be made happy, I can show Whole volumes of yourself, whom at twenty-one You choose'd the school of your heart's best fruit. So should I ween this member's text Knew two ages of the arts, Because he lov'd the one, and that like me. If I do censure, then my censure's not For slighting your merits, but too much I go In esteem of your gracious superior zeal To bid of me one more delicate service bear-- The work for which ten thousand pains you mete, The air that softens with soft ennobling zest, All mock where you turn without returning guest. But I swear--I speak now as do all men-- With what I thought a grave occasion, Your book, no longer than I can disport In this small way, "his Memoir", or book Less rather, ======================================== SAMPLE 319 ======================================== To make the world tremble And speak with terror on The power. No menace, no Harsh language, no lust Of victual, nor fire Of slaughter; No garland--set, And flame at end Worthy; Only memories of Effort! And in each case The fear Of that last victory Of virtue over lives Threatening to Deterrent, The mind evolved To stick, Like a light unto a candle. --So, her boy was lost: Her boy, whom God called a leaven, Departure bearing: Her boy--reared From nothing By the action of the multitude. That black pathing, Stratification, and long range-- Ah, he might have done it better, Do it worse. Spent his bloodbloods, Seen black issue, And hear the crowd in triumph shout her, It was right. At the cover He stood, and without, Cave from the harsh light. Straight, as fast as set of fingers, And, eyes and head held ajar, Till it had been said He might be bound. Now he must stand, his act has paid-- It brought a king. He is man, of men men say The swearer Did. Their king. They sung no song, He took it. "Glory of Wales, by whose magnificent name “These liberties be held”-- "My forefathers held them," Durst say. Served 'em bravely “Grandseer”. Biden (d.232), I look on 'em yet Treble and great; And I say, with no vestige of fear: The Great God renders Fridolin was high-sicker when his wars made him brave. His foe (d.1303): My forefathers held them. Mortgagash (Sir), “These are our laws.” Some are loosened, some Like reeds. Had they drawn sword Would they have held Their ground. Whence? whence! Like to rabbits, they cozied under a tree. (Trossot, III, 59) Here are some other verses By Muriel Burgass of England. If a new title He should wish, A new one Must be fit. But, according to the Psalms, He and his knights Must be fit and fit For crowns And harried crowns To be crowned. One--two--red--three--bloody-- squadrons bold in the van, Thunder of flank and of helmet and sword, Skilled at the spear. If a King should crave Glory as great as this, Who cannot forget His Father’s work, Glory like none other, To be fit To wreath the diadem He and his Gods Will not let fade. The ranks of the free-- Sevenfold Saint-- And where the fierce? With godly band, Where the crowd of the slain-- Stout and true, Glory shall be theirs. So the dead needlled lightened, A flaming sea of it; They slew with a glory to kill, And then they stood as the dint of a lance When one solid sword. Blood of the six Gone in battle ere the dawn, Six to the grave With those staunchers. But God with his breath, Divine mercy, wrung His hand, And the cry went up the wind. Then up from the dampness And the pallor of the coffins A rising chanted. It heard, and as one Under a benedicite Towards heaven one way, So it came, and away Its great white wings Lifted the good and the bad, The usurer and his man; Bearing gifts When the harp of the spirit, Like the wind, Had the burden of the land. Out of the Divine Light is blown All things, no matter Where, down, or how; And light is shed On the churches and the skies And no one is cloud To clear the air, To change the clouds About the trinity. The trinity, the good of men, Is ancient as Eden, And was new-dight When Adam was not here. His share was a cross, An augury, The news was ======================================== SAMPLE 320 ======================================== 'Tis the sea I love. My heart's rapture is for the lovely land; I seem to tread it all--like a hope-sapping spray, I shot into the future, ere yet its path was far found, And only the onward wind my feather gave. What form shall I command? What well-trained bosom try? That turns, that springs, that mounts, and that ascends, Thro' cloud, and sunshine, night and day,--sea and land, I'll love and live with love till Death's coming serenade me! Within the false West, how many scores of years, Wandering from scene to scene, my life I have viewed! Why was I born? What is here betide! How many suns, how many moons have laughed or danced On the open track, since first the blood may flow red? That now calls, and that,--I hear it in my heart! O friends, that now call me! Call, and make me whole! Will they not stand to me, and trust me at last? O I have wept, and through my tears, I read in Fate's book! Youth, heart, blood, are those the master-songs, He that will read the book of bale, But he's dead, and so am I. Our summers do not begin, Nor bring us sunset nor moon; The green earth by us in the east Is wet, and rains do not fall, The sun and the stars far away Still burn and shine from far and near. What say you then?--We see it all, Or we see but part, A part, that is but briefer still, That is but less. The waves wash over the calm sea, And all that earthly waters breed Is but their shade. If then their meaning be That we must die, that we are all undone, If yet some life of ours May live beneath the deep Sun's blaze, Must feel no breath of their wind, Shall that life be to death more sad Than if it breathed below? In winter for long I've seen Flowers round the damp land Come fragrant up and fall As faint as to our eyes, To kiss the mist that yearns before The summer's passing rill. Till Death shall writhe the dire wolf under, With claw upon the pale blossom, And like the lavender Through all the land the distant rose Throw down its scent. So might I speed and see, Now that the breezes fail In the open air, How the blossom-ripe fruit Shakes out to sea. The last time that I was land-bound And came once more to be Upon my porch Blossom-ripe. The story that I gave you Is as old as the sea. But always the years go on That change the things that were. And time has built A city strong and vast And with the fire of Time and Love There is no instant at all. The hour you gave your love Left me as wistful as a star Where this infinitude of sleep Holds all the forms of heaven and hell. I called him ghostly, and I thought him stone. O you are named for Moon,-- The unlamented one. But the name of your feast, to me, is murder, Rotted and destined to be stolen Before the shine of any moon Till the dark years be. When the King I sought Was king, you gave to me A sign. A sun, That follows, born of the clay. Moved westward, when the vision Fell on me like a low Mysterious music. And I, Loathing The prey that I had begirt, Was stone to that sight, Until my time was long To face its dawn. Your eyes are the lids of sorrow. A light, like lityl, will come, But lack her fury, lack her blood. The female cat, Lying in her silky Dunghill With much gentle primping Of sweetly-smiling snow, Fur the high wet plains Of Tagon sharing her milk On this her homely computer, Grows into a fair ancestor. O for a litter of girls On this London computer! I'll bless the power That took me from her Burning into steam In a bath of baptism, To be called Sam, and stand Like any other cat ======================================== SAMPLE 321 ======================================== To praise, dear Christ, is a work, in thee By Joseph most dearly beloved; What helps it to be run on all his days, For 'tis thy child, this thine invention? Would that I might be mine! and evermore Be kind and helpful, Jesus, to men. Right angelick is this, for work in't, It seals a prophet's, .the work of kings. Camelot is this, with all his tallit names. And crowns and princes, and them that sayeth: The Messiah shall come, he soon shall do. Maids, I am Apollo's bride--at thy heart. I must be such a wight as burn to have Been fixed up there, To the great working-place in't. Thou art like the god Apollo. 'Tis but now shed place For place, on you it falls, Gave me a blessing long ago To live at such a place. Dare not then, as from the height, All my kinsmen flock there. Rome, I said, is a great city. In her great pulse I am sure I see Some fortune great fulfil. Get me of these to a far place, Where's space enough, and room is none To run a place of work; You mean (and this you know) that The Father's glory had a lot Of sins made of him, And he had to take his share of sin, So he bestows on you this place. It may be you are now or are not here; But I hope you, my han'ful friend. If ever the sins that I see Grown lighter, my han'ful friend, The darkness falls, the darkness falls. Then, my darlings, here's a blessing, As you go and do away. If once you love me, I am so true To my heart's darling son, That it would make me glad to meet you; If you find that he is now too late, You must fill it up, you'll ne'er be sorry. That is, when you're welcome, and will come. Here it's good-will, Shall-not and wishful The occasion fail not, To be here, that I have wished; I can laugh and take it so, For my loving course is run; And I have laid down my life for you. When you come here, then, do take all The guidance you'd want; And if you'd wish to build a wall, And fit a bed, and be a men, Then you'd do well to cease awhile; And yet my faith tells me no; It says, "He shall be here awhile!" From his foot to his fine head, In stature he's nothing vain, He's quite enough to carry As on his back, And all that he can do, At his six years old. From his chin to his chin, And from his neck to his lip, He's something sprightly too; A three-year old indeed, He could walk and maybe run, At the rate of less than thirty. And from his brow and eye, He has all manner of looks; He's a lisping boy of jest, And shall be, With so much ease to teach, And play and game and romance, And he's so small in the head. He is who tauld you how, And ere you had the slightest inkling, You might have served the common lot, In being a donkey, And losing your heart in the bargain. And he is who cautioned you, And said, "Be sure you bear Except what they may give, They'll never be a promotion Till you're promoted, Unless you ill and soon suffer A broken nose or worse." But all the while, he shall stand Oblivion with your time; And when you toil at the office, And he's "alone" the first quarter, And you feel the best of weather In the second; when the next score Shall give you the over; and, finally, His place to exercise the fourth-- Then it will come, it will come, Till he is the only object there. And you, beloved as wholly As is the glittering gold That's in his pocket, you'll tell me That, though with the world at war, His worth is greater than all; And I shall then be sorry That you ======================================== SAMPLE 322 ======================================== ceased to be, ceased to be. The Sea she were, she her wel I saw, of a heaving hull I saw her, but I dared no farther, no farther. She herseffe wel euyr out gane with his heels and with his claws, scratch-shot it wich I did, but the steel I splintered, nought I did save, I I saved my life. Now show us when we come back you soon shall know by your gracious stature, and by my replies the strongest, clang of pine or weapons. And so the day found us now, the sun shone, but the sun was almost gone, most all the rays were out, from the sea a tiny bit yet quies, quies, quies, I would come back anywhere, anytime, my home in the sky, my not Home nor home, but some place that seemed mine of the blue, a rip in the fabric I saw when I saw. Gentle and unnoted, pure and unnoted, in the open I knew all the dear teeth of shore straight, run very straight. Of her kindly Guest we were, and I rose and greeted her face of my own Maker. No doubt of the hour, that spoke me of grace many more had come, far and wide, to be my friends, but to no avail, theirselves they saw not the way they saw me. Farewell, old friend, you dear and good friend! Gentle and remembered you are, at home now and forsaken but never forgotten, no less faithful, nearer unto the Heart. What do I say? it is no time to speak, no time to speak, if I should utter one whisper, nothing would be said, if one were, you'd banish echoes. Back again then, sirs! I would you see, and if I were sure some one would smile, back again, dear friend, with me go and see her myself, the same one who go see now that you see, and while I have my bday, heart-hungry, enticing by my downtown entrance in six months her friend's face on the face of glass, (luckyseth cart of royal stocking new) at the end of my nose- gauge, in the rope, at the end of the rope. There come a thousand news, all. Back again, back again, so long as you're new. Breath, you're welcome, so long as you're here, back again! In the wood of lust they will watch, in the wood of pleasure they will answer back again, you and I. When she leaned on him, I held out my arms and dropped to the field like a drop of milk, in the wood of lust. They love each other they will love each other they love each other in the wood of lust, in the wood of pleasure where they watch to see you smile, then they smile and watch to see you frown then they smile at each other. They are a blue and yellow flag, a billowy green flag, the border on her face and the billowy green flag. Watched him, as I might watch an old horse he neigh and jingle his tail, a grey head and black mane, beside me, a plain low place to lie, beside a wood, some girls in blue and yellow stripes, going by. Watched the slender hand go up and circle and circle then come into the dark and return into the light and circle a rosy flame and halt while yet she watched. For what do I do? Nothing, only I, I can do nothing, only I, only I. Yet what she looked and spoke, what she felt, she said. It was good, I think, good it was, to have fallen, to have been chased, to have rolled in the bush, by a man, to have poured your first drink from your own breast, on your own tree, at the edge of the ground. No, it was not ======================================== SAMPLE 323 ======================================== The youth and maiden stept into a low wharf Upon a damper way to Leyden Town. Below the fresh long grass that waved below The gentle breezes, when the billow rolled A-wise the pale green lilies of the bloom That filled the Eden bowers of wearied Spring, And deepened o'er the rich heart of the rill. Beyond, soft Maud's adventure in the snow Beneath red skies did pale to burning Summer. And limping as the sun grew amorous, Under pale Lutelforenu Keborn stole To Leyden on a midnight moonshine, In Leven extended on a mug of gin, Under a big dome, by Snorre, one of the gentry. Slowly the noisy Cyclopcyne stopped in the Grain, the world-wide laughter stopped. A trembling voice Came through--a voice of terror. The short hot shuddering Of the blood in the vein, the fierce red eye's gleaming Seemed glimmering through the mud. And the rant of mad despair, Broken, thin mad rant of derision and gallows-sin Gave way to questions of dolour unknown, So thin, and yet the same cold humour was on the air, That it was clear to the lonely passer-by That he had passed into the realms of clay. He never saw again the soft hide covered Lips, that would not answer, and for ever lost To some delight of rapture; he never knew Ogier's glancing smile, the dimple of the cheek, The blue of dimples. Dust, of all, he saw The pool of may in green earth, the wind's way, the flame That warms the crimson tuft; and the sheen Of the white waver in the hard frost-blade flung Over the wood. Many a thought of doubt Ran through his mind, the unseen world homing, Leaving the dark narrow place of grave-folds Where only graves are heard; and he said: "Ogier's face is for a sign wrought of God; And, if the gateway of the earth could talk, I should recognize in his face the godlike Image of the human soul that fails In all the sad-hapbed ways of men. By all His words and mine, I understood not Nor sought to understand. What was mine, Yet whole, at least, he told me was his Own, and from that unknown world could tell How earth, which comes to meet us, shows us the way Through dark alleys, how the portals close Behind us in the houses of our homes And the dark roads, how each is a gate, And the great vast landscape dies down behind The gatehouse of our own region. I told him, On this morn of the blossoming year, of light After the darkness, that I should grow A hunter at least, and do among the others As I did, guiding the busy haunts of the spring With long harebells. Our forest-drink, And all the coolness, and the watch in the dells Of the leopard and the lion. I asked him, And he answered with no more than he had said, I asked him--only once--"See here my neck! See how it grows white; how the blood runs away Like rills through my body; where my heart Is where the brutes have pierced me, and to my rest They bring the nails--the lion's track go down In the path of the lion's, and are flushed with tears Of the man's blood that I have shed in the brine. Come, it is time that I was done with; show me now Thither and far away, what things I am, For thou hast a league and a half. What then? I have thought it best for thee, Ogier, thou shouldst be As in the wood, and as the creatures that Erewhile in the thickets didst wander with. We old men pitch our crossbows, and our forefathers That lived in the woods were with the nymphs and the rest That passed the nights in quiet. See-- They answer. O gods, and art thou so angry with him That sent thee? Look here, there is changed his ring That thou mightst have thee." He showed us a hill From the forest parted, its gilded summit Groaned and showed its ice; water came and went Through cracks and hollows, leaving behind A sand which ran in grey upon the slope. " ======================================== SAMPLE 324 ======================================== Let them dance around the wimple while they may, And wind be free; For fools they are, and of a go-getting race; Behold the dish was born with the picking fork. Now that Britain is so storied, Old foreign peoples come, Like to the fairies abroad Tracing scantly abroad In the cold snow. Long days and long we see them creep To the hot fireside; The furrowed face of Earth draws Night over our brows, And whiter than a ghost Is the air. Some sit like mariners On the dry ship's prow, And their cold plumes sludge the frothy wine Where they live centuries and die; And some, on the ebb of it, Have lipped it to song, Like the long guns' wide chambers Whole years to lose; And the sick have sat there too, Saying no song save "home," And the pennies o' the tin Won nothing but their pennies: An idle law, a idle view, An aim that is not there; And out of the cave there came no song. And we ask of them how the holy-river of Peace, Might find the male's or the female's mouth? And we ask them what for aught there is of Good In the living sea of Death? We that have tried Not for blessings more than these, But just what warmth has been, Or is in God, —We watch; and if the winter comes again To wash the saffron waves, Let us give our love to such as these, Who hew their ways, like the twigged pine, Down the ways of Him that hath memory Of oracles; Whose different events with visions are. "I, for my shepherd-laure, Walking in the midst, Tarrying without, Things half-forgotten, Whither I will have you hence." Oh, is it so? Is this sooth? Which gad-fly is the only one No lightnings ere the wrath strike, The one bird that thrums the whole air Up to His holocaust; The sun and moon and planets too, Dimming the dust-cloud from their place? Dost think that the dove's quivering Was ne'er so potent of a sign? It was no light availed for this, Tho' the face beaming, And who e'er acknowledgeth these Great lights of life and death? For what if He that made the dove Looketh so wan on mankind, In cold and hungering, As men do their direst foes? The saint and sinner may be seen By their pray'r, which is their hate. Ay; in a word That scorneth thorns and spurns bare Laws that cannot suffer change. Let not the quick and dead be doom'd A moment's shame To be parcht with tiger cuffs By the storm-cloud's lice; But spare an airy sprite That would make motions plain, Tho' in rags and soiled attire; For 'tis but the devil's tramp, And 'tis but his motion That the great sun and night. Behold the still waters That dawk and lake with meaning! Nay, 'tis my meaning; Have I called ye like man? Yea, ye shall be cold, Seeing how like man ye move; And to the recent skies Life hath left his foul and stormy Lodge and baths of clay. And who like thee, And all that breathe or climb With claw or clawling? And all that sing the song of spring? And all the entrails of man? Thou hast a way with thee; Thou hast a way with men. Thy God, O people, mein Kind-lie bin true, With one exception; for lo, When I the word died that told the story Of Jacob's fair Sister, To tell a tale untold, Than mine own life a lie. Thy God, thou didst appoint A fellow For to live In your eyes, And so He hath; For now, by new-born-joy's delight, The stars were setting When I began; And Thou and Father Time Hast reign'd, And Thou and Spring-time's joy, The bloom of all thy raiment! Thy ======================================== SAMPLE 325 ======================================== From this cottage sweet and still. I live, or live in fancy; That cottage there is late, From this cottage of years; From this cottage sad and drear, From this cottage cold and dreary, But still to be forgotten. The winter dusk is cold; I sit in my corner With the worms within And the starveling birds of eve. The birds of morning, and the sun, Shall fly over the fields to the apples, And I shall pass into the sea, To be shaken and picked up by the tides, And lie, grey-haired, upon the stone, To be broken in by weeds, And sodden with the rains, And hide in the sea-widows of the sandy beaches. It was a most immoral age, Mediocrate in office, In whose far remotest strata Impression was most certainly lease To piss and tune and dab Confusion like an autumn day; And all the three were bad, Or to say frankly I cannot recall the shade of divine I feel at this accursed age Mediocre impotent and mediatic, Letting things, like horns, through a lousy window. How shall I now begin to tell How I came to be here, close, my dear? Thou know'st how, long ago! We lived on end and I Was happy as a sun-lied dove, Who lives and dips his colorful Wayward goblet And takes the sunshine for his wine, And now would'st borrow of the winter To taste of the ice-hole. We had roasted chestnuts for winter, And cheerful store Of other scented hawks and other Squirrels and hamsters, And both of us knew the places Where the wilted springs And purpler mosses and white flowers Are likely to be. From a freshman now, a gift Of spring I take from a quick And talkative fellow Whose way the first flush of June Has more than once disarranged And made his heart his sets to show, The grass and the leaves and the fir-tops And the shady groves. I have known what needs must be done By many a hill and field and river, And the slow pains of men and ways In the ways and men, And this idle air Has enough of its patiently recurring Tasks to keep up and have a mind On the Winter's thaw. The weather when we left was like the heart Of summer in April: That kindled and that glowed, And, warmed and stirred by the sun, Settled into bright hue, Clouds and moonlight, haycarts and all Were held in the poise of time, Making one thing for all time To be the commonplace times With how they hold still. How careless we were, both of us! How foolishly! How slighted the spirit's ability To see That with the wild and adapted Magician's trick Our hands had placed A grave and know one Then, though how empty and crummy The eyes might have looked With dried eye-balls and tendrilled lips Yet I loved her, then--well, I must be in two places, Or learn the heart has a freezing And half a cocked back for one Who's put away. Not more than the bombs or fire We only remember, I know; They come with their stink And flourish, like bedabbled sin, And put us out of breath; But what was the use Of this disarranged beauty And no heart in it? If you let me rest as long as you stay, And for a sign to come below, Say, you'll forgive me 'em, sinner, For you fill them to the brim, Then I'll wait and long as you do. 'Twas a mother's boy, you see, With a pinebelly wound Who found a whore's babe and bred; He had a bomb's edge And was a doctor of arts. Well, he did lose the game For it is that boy I blame for the girl's, see? For killing time on a sizzler, Where drunkards maim And trippers tuck Themselves on boards, And they give their thumb To cover up their face And bib them with their whiskey They'll go 'neath. And so he did stand by the day, And wait his best breath, too, Ere ======================================== SAMPLE 326 ======================================== As it came down to Trojans from a land of glee. <|endoftext|> "The Holy Plough", by John Donne [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Relationships, Religion, Christianity, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy, Christmas] Widow, your holy minuet my ears do hear, That sing and billow to the world’s increase. But when I wrote of Christ, ‘What! not of Christ?’ I loved Christ, too, a beautiful and strong eare, If then the Holy Thought and Sword Came from the same Essence, I dare, to you, To a sweeter heaven, Owidow, your own Sour duke had an Italian Shepherd’s-book. You first have bought the plough’s beam, its flag, Its shirt, its slickers, in a god out-of-doors. With his purple and his fair white yeare Christ’s white frock, with ribbon, dots, and won’, Was the Holy Plough’s Prize, it sell’d To all who what no-rock’d Priests have clapped In deepest turban, knickers and flag, For Christ, and what, our Holy House men would bind Whose fire, whose glory, he who never wrote But by the plough-ball had as well spell’d As it that he, who a Saint by Saintly Men know’d, Froze the world, that Christ for Trinity With the father God, and Jerusalem. Out of its bark the plough’d beams dark blue, Its tree, so whole in faith it be not dim, The materials that with some grafts of Heaven Were grafted, with no transport; now we think the red Blue of these beams is red that God the fain Threw blue fire there, and right whose weede-moon’s Red colour in the plough’s beam doth clear, And all these beams red, our Bishop’s hir Set Before the Blessed Blue, wher all such Schismatics shall left be lumped that none Shall lead in poparakion, or sing Nearer its flamin SDOCANTs that they be. Down all this Blue-forest shall the plough Be hunted in; hence be Fonts Of many ashes, the son of Night Unwieldy, who were there before Did shed his fount, and loose this Blue Asylkul’d and (not it is untold) The thamis—with which, for this and the plough, Without more tell, the hilt and pame Of some bright sword such as gret England swung, Now fastened, and no farther tell His herbas twixt the page and sickle’s pain Of loss and kneading, both of it were past In being loosed. Wecumeniad <|endoftext|> "Penitence", by John Donne [Living, Life Choices, Sorrow & Grieving, The Mind, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict, Religion, Christianity, Faith & Doubt] I had a town called repentance Gone are these peoples. Though they are called gone, They are gone afoot For their own sakes— For our sakes they must perforce Seek this land, this country, As the last orore— Not yet spiritually as the last. Here is the apple of the yew Spilled at the convent gate. It fell from the breath of these nuns. Over, the Easter morning, I read the lives of the saints, Poring over lives of the saints. There at night—Oh, my God! They walked these streets that I knew, My little pilgrims, my Penitoes. I hear them now in the caf’e, Where the noise of the traffic swells, (The bars of the Governor and his Court) They hear the scourge of the common gaoler, The drachmas gush from the walls of the Exchange, The neighbouring bank rattling with the wicket, The bells, the bells, the banners up in the night, That kindle that feeble desire, (I wish I were as stout as a stout man!) They hear the toot ( ======================================== SAMPLE 327 ======================================== sous. They are no longer bald and many even have come to view him as a spiritual mentor. They call him "Senescu"--a word that he has learned to inhabit as a black man in America. He smokes Minnie Tripp and sits on sofas with them on new pieces of wood. They mutter and slough off their sweat with the sounds of the swamp and rust- ing wicker fences they weave beyond the spruce trees. They pass the One Year Anniversaries and speak of the man who, all the time, they said would return. The winds beat down from the South, their front yards sound as the string-bean crops ripped open by hail. The poles that he had tried to save, the city above their breaths, goes dark and they sit in front of the fireplace singing, he in the room he helped to move in, them in the room they sat in last. When the roof flies up, and he leaves with the folk who will tend the fire, the game that will decide, he was born to--Shawmology-- it is as if the mole should move on up the wall, the cacomius is cast out to its most shagreen hauntings. The guard dogs barking at the front door arrive. They no longer bark for the master, in his casque, and he steps from the body of the room beneath the doorway to the living room, in his shoes and bandanna. In one, he sees, wan and bent as the story sings, shoulder in the mirror, lonely, and sits for a moment, then the door sends back inside. They are here, in the moonlight, a girl and boy slenderly holding a sea-green tomato. The rambling, the builder; his wife, on the sill not speaking, as of a page written in silence, maybe with these they finish the day. <|endoftext|> "Fat Son", by Vinda Terdiman As if fatness couldn’t be undone, he moved thigh-wide in search of her and caught her before she could put adiethe ground. He was raw and neither had brushed their leaf-rimed garden for prairie-to-twelve, tree-high, and past the river of dirt they traced their way to her. Her first thought was why did it happen to her? Then there was hope: the tent and beautiful luncheon box set on his lap where she could sit and plump and make little bread and get a hot meal on with orange blossom tea and toast and butter. One in the middle of them which was twice as fat as the others, and a sight more fat. His body like plates of meat stuffed with cheese and blankets in front of which they could have curled up and been hung. He had no right, his fat shouldered them. This was a battle—what if everyone sighed like him, some disease? But it was fat not fat, nor good health, but weight. Maybe the body had such a gene for resistance to chemicals the rest passed down. Her guard dogs looked ugly but they scared the weird shit animals like bobcats. She should stay off the attack. And what if they retreated? What if the rest of them didn’t mind the siege as much as the young vixen. So he kept probing the tent with a thick night of rain, raking the nooks with light, hammering, tearing up the trail with his rock—The tent shake as he cut it, from two sides, with a knife. <|endoftext|> "Cherries and Milk", by Lisa Olitski [Living, Death, Marriage & Companionship, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Home Life] The truth is it was never anything but cherries—no fierce desire, or sacrifice. It was you I loved in the way that you tend to love other people; you know that, don’t you? It was always you. You loved me for myself. It was your standing on the shore and picking up the discarded fish and saying, “That’s it? I never loved people.” Which was just a cherry, you dumb thing. And I was the person you loved with someone, telling us cherries were fabulous and what if we didn’t love each other, what then? You forget I was once yourself, a frozen way into ======================================== SAMPLE 328 ======================================== The hubbub of the throat that did react and environ. When upon the little slope of grass, There is, the blue morning air to abide, They are fast in a clash of voices, till Love Approaching, smites the space, and all is still. Here, on this marsh, between this and the waste, Are the little lakes, swoln with mire and frost, And there the little pools; that, settled round With the ice pill, are hid from sight. The little hills that are in water lie Deep in the lurking of the tide. But where the rime runs down, and all's still, Their ice-pallor and their grass, and they have a taste Of water ice, the marsh is dry land; And so to them the water-herds are coming, That oft go out in canisters that flow, And in them the horses tread; From which, with piple step they move a tooth, To reap with water all their fields. So, were they seen of day, there would be seen In the faint morning, by the camp-fire glowing, With like purpose of the stars that their course Drives round to all the corners of our sky; For they and their singing water-rid Have cause to be celebrated As the three Angels of the Angeliere. <|endoftext|> The city was a-fireside, The stars were gleaming even and high; The streets and avenues were clear, And every armory was burning; For the great fight was fought That shook the fever-routes of the nation. Now the army, with blistered feet, Like soldiers with their clothes on, Had turned its face from that which struck awe From England's captains and the royal, And no one else mattered; but the field Where heroes fought, in its broad expanse, Which the cloud-posterous sunlight reflected, Where the red field of Victory And the yellow west unfurled theirlood, Glowed like a battle-field with color. No country's armament could have made A parl of these Wars;--the event Was its own Glory; for it was the will That the arm be raised, the helm be shifted, With this end worthest to earn the beginning, A fortior writ by Gods to men, The end of battle, a rising ground For the garland-craft of the living conduct, Where Glory under man's conduct grew to Life. As a King that sick the claws Of serpents round his rotting throne By evening, in the summer-tide He riseth from his throne and falls Awitude of woe, on all around; Throws out the serpents' claws; nor lets lie whelmed Yea, nor let be left to perish By the bitter oceans' flood The very palace--where one sits crown, Behold him sweeping to the wind A fallway from the overthrown walls In the wind and in the snows to wash. Far off the old church towers and chimneys Are storm-spirits hovering, blown From heavenward from the ailing town, The very pavements are flying For shelter from the storm, for the roof That the wind laid low as with sword and fire. A silence! Where? Where? And once they said, that the City died; The murmur of a torrent forgotten, A sigh that a wind went on; the fret Of a still pool for shelter; a dead leaf From the very bank; the course of The river that flows in silence. Man fears the grave; The grave is a lonely place And though from the ground His body, face to face with the stars, It hath a soul in the waves. Ah! but upon his star of death To the unlistening ear Of sleep how say the lips of Death "Once more before the world fade away, Once more and exultant grow from our blood Ten thousand faces that we see; And the face of the dead; and the voice of the drowned." Cant! Cant! There is no ear for grief To listen, to waft us back to life; Nor face to face to share our fate. With hand against the face of Death We lie in our unthinking tomb, Slaves of the year. Oh, nights of poverty In the dawn we are risen and begin To deal from the hand of Death our chatt, Spirits, as of old, are on us yet. And through the day the break of the dawn ======================================== SAMPLE 329 ======================================== Jangada Jato, Maria Remora, Mon Juana, Tova, Culiament, Rosano, et latrones a magnificat expone, a Domus Achilleis agricultur, and gloria illustrat sensus est ipse solus. Sunt eos, arbor, armouries, angelitu, paucer aureata sinus, non illa salubres cingunt flori, est siluae flores. Vixdaeque, quos aures illic composcant belladino, cum superat cornu; Sistio et extremo terrakisera sonorata senectus accipit dabum; quique sinis fui baccarum uva croco epistulam, bene relinckula munita sperant. Innumeris excedere nobis Inoa, aut emperata motum. Est compotas: sic laeta post dislabi tristia atque flumina posita gerunt, eque rubus adhuc mea non audet. Sed nec putet dum nubila erat contractionibus, torus et imbris rabilis, aeque salis ausulea cycla propere, quouis luctus e rota caro posuere, nec cunctis hinc arso nequiri: nunc quoque numerosa sanguine uia. Plebs, Iudexes, prima metues amens, et prou oro magnum opulentum est, et uires et parvam carnibus regum permula patris opus est, carcer in colum pube sua uidetur amici circum-bramici quae nocet aciebat Amoris, dum prouisti cursu et cura munere longae, Permatis et ibi quod urbe capit, Aemulationes et tertians ista putes ribus inouiit diem factura uictim adque perierum inuidiam patris, et usque ad lapis dulcem feci est In Europa immittitur morbi contrahit ab Avernos, et uocare caissentem perpetuo rapacia mortibus inhumatos; ad quam quondam versu cutis ferre terra, lux meum aridus habitusque suis. Cantem immensius felix alma pontum manusque genitumque tument acantho nec parat, nec parata monstriet aedis dicta donat; et feram di libro metitur numina lyra infixa ducere majore scribo, et nemus numinum numinumque terris recibat: alterant mensibus ut illud hunc auro litusque pube redit, hic, Melius Alme, nullus immutabilis sequi scribendis translat. Nusquam ausa nec ornauit columinibus formosae, sed agnatonibus explicat: et atque ita tunc frustra rota uenie uolatis, inuidet aquae, exsilia uocae, oro recurrente lucente tulit hora uaro exsoitoque incurat a se urne. O cristiana, meus autumnos latinas Amoris, in me suus tota uarias pede sepulcri, quae terra habet, numine desillicit hora Mars. At teremos et aetherios thesauri cuius lux alma et fascibus aethera soluent, fonte sua qui pater melius amniscebat, (septem stantit praeter uirum sepulcrumque, et stantisut laudibus sereno) carnifex nomen, domo quae glutino celerique sumet et Phoebo, sepulchrum fauillim hibera sublete, per nostris bellum astit. Sunt quidam qui cornix amet gaudium lingua, germine quid amet gaudere cursum, derigat et immitem apaes. 'Quam cunam? queis ======================================== SAMPLE 330 ======================================== You mustn't leave it now to talk it, That's after tea--and you needn't Have a cake or anagram; Be the torchman, the bride, So that hereafter I sing the blues. I'm very anxious to know, so Do you; so do I: If it's a very eunuch, It's very strange; and that If it's a Catholic, Isn't it, well, rather odd, Though somehow charming too? I'm grave about it, Be the page or the girl; So that's that. All right, Would you? I'll come in Another hour. Oh, dear! I'm such a ruined Heart, as on the brink you'll Tell me the kinds of fruits We used to have. I must rehearse it-- As I'm to be executed-- In another Time. But just these Kinds of fruits, if you Were to take into Your mouth now, They'd seem delightful. Oh, often it's dark below, And I'm afraid I could never, No one could do it-- Do you? No one, no one, No, not one. We can't Compare our ten toes with our nine; Not in terms of the number Of fingers on one's hands. <|endoftext|> If this misfortune still too hard to bear, Hang my head in the desert with the other slaves, And with sand I'll smear my face till I swoon, Or do what you like. Then I'll have to part with my style, And with my hips I'll leave off jesting; Or else I shall crave death so soon as you do; We're too near to one another to be shy. There, that's it, Now we're through. That was sad--being so near, Can't feel the least disgusted The curse of the lawyer--so I won't say much, But, my friend, he's a know-nothing, just the same as you. As for me I find that you know just as much as I know About the chance of winning at applause. Let's have no more of that. Don't suppose I'm any more eloquent than I have been; Because of what you see, You've got to admit, though you'll credit my letters, That I sound dull. But come down here and take my shoulders off the table, (Or if you dare, run off with them, or pin them against the wall,) And, even in gladiators, pull their heads up a feathered thing, Have peace. Oh, how gladly, lovingly, Would you be forgiven, if you were afraid, Of sin, if you think I'm to fear? The Devil himself is at hand, and the floor is on fire. There are some of us are naughty--none of us a fool; We're not happy unless we sing. You'll say that I'm far from home, Are you at home? Since I'm here I must be very near. Dear, careless girl, What do I care what you may do Where the candlesticks are laid away, And the wine is out? Come and spoil the room, you don't Take at all, I beg, Your knife. Why, you can't have anything, So why not, my pretty one, Go away. He takes me always, wherever I go: He'll go to hell with the next. I'm happy he doesn't and I can't please You, for I know That I would have you unpicked, No, never, no, no. Yet it's true, I often wish you'd lose a dress And kiss you that, and do just a bit of it. He's to blame for being so odd; You're an odd little lady. In the new edition of Paradise it is found that the first eighth number contains eight pairs of chain-links connected by a cord, the outer links to touch each other; one link touching another; and hence, if a given chain is known to terminate in a definite point on the inch-pound; then the probability is that a different system of numbering will-predicate that point. If the system were one of3 adjacent contact the probability is that the first octave is connected by the 8th link. The following table gives the information that cannot be conveyed through words. Of the possibility that the seventh instrument is a system of chords, or that the notes on the sixth or on the seventh ======================================== SAMPLE 331 ======================================== Being as heart-whole distraught, Or clearer much than thou mightest guess Here in the hush; Drear'd for comfort and despairing, With craft and memory sad; An ignorance vain, a will destitute-- In himself, and among his kind, A rascal eked out life's purchase there On a stout word, or strait ragged cheer. Some winter's day, however, and I Should wear a fling of you, like a strong Unlov'd pound. How you ever run in holes, and turn Turn up your backs, and clap your spurs In for pride! Where'er I bide, however still Ye roam on,-- May chaunt eternall say, to wayward wit In June: "Was ne'er, when a month was balanc'd, But just the man for thee!" How would you mourn me? Wherefore weep? With fresh desire I seek the deep, But erring hence turn for help, I catch in the fast-flowing row A voice from 'mid drownings, faint Upon my verge; Then what I remember deem Has often been forgotten: Fingers with whom the sole possession I can live; Whose eyes in heaven, where angels look down, A piteous thing appear, My plea as feeble's purpose meet, As thine. 'RUL YOULAR BIETH STERG AND ERGO, Thou saw'st and hast seen all, the year's night To gloam, the dawn's morning with soft smoke-wreath All desolate, and drear, and still, and chill, Yet happy in an unholy hour As the mild aspen's shade, That lifted o'er the dusky dell Uncertain, shuddering where it bowed Down the deep deep, with cedars wreath'd and dark, While dawn ne'er rose, and the pine-trees slept. Ye who have trod the midnight's hush and wail, And trod the stifling night-moorland, Hast ye also lost by which Thine eyes saw when the Poet sung Things of glimmering wonder to wonder new, Spirits far colder! Ho, man, why waste The moisture of thy youth on dreams, Wholeness thus, which show the eternal To all the loveliest that man's heart may deem? Why should the Poet's stream of enthusiasm Fluid as from an unbodied sea, No more effect the mystic yearn That burns, like stars that mount the immensity Of life's deep sky, with minnow and moor? For thee, Tye with palsy of the mind, No fruitless insight, nor no virtue, none; For me, Ah me! no peace, nor hope, nor joy, No health, no comeliness, no praise; Nothing of god or man, alas! that word says:-- To be is nothing; is it vain to dote On the immortal vision if thou wert there? I have believed till now, and in that faith Lay sorrow, grieved in wisdom's sweetness lavished So lightly, in a foul-mouthed faith's way. Thou poor and easy thoughtless man, methinks Thy doubts and anguish are all from that one thing Alone believed and seen: God. And, have I not seen thee, Tye, myself In thy dark visions, fill'd with ghastly guilt, As the cock fell from the dome's high window-door? Thy fleeter nights and lives I trace on air As some vanished thing that he seems, whose dream Of the past life our now noise destroys? I have been blind because it held its peace; Who stands to behold this awful truth In blackest hardness? Have I in this Deserted reason, to behold the truth, Had not my reason here through all her streams Pour'd death's pure stream? For thou diddest send me here The highest thought of thy nature; first the rays And films of heaven were drawn on him to fall, And some bright sun-shimmer round his soul; But what were these unto thine, were it not The next sun's faint spreading threads of light? What is this world but the groan of hell? How can it be thy soul? Yet it hath still sick and deadly trouble, And already in that heart doth start A leaden pain of heavy longeness, The weight of that which never can be light, And which hath been ======================================== SAMPLE 332 ======================================== O sweet love, thy creature! O raise her forth All soft and warm! The joy of her mother bring Unto her breast, who lies to sigh, to cease When she must have no sorrow. Bless the heart That knoweth love; it is most tender and best. By a stream small rills fair flow'd by day, The gliding woodland to her shade resign'd Between, was her call; there, from her fairest bower, The pensive sister would oft look forth, where The moonlight maiden doth appear, In white semblance clad, 'tween two sister shades Beneath her, whose charms to Venus do love. Therefore, her eye-brows of deepest olive green, Which Love hath plaited, and with gold emboss'd, Doth give, with all the good of age, to heaven. The nightingale, of sweet-perfuming odour, She sings: of that melody, Most like it heard is, doth Lady good, As happy, when half-hereat she taketh The lover, as Love's fair nymph on high Bears the long-sought bough to her grave. Heaven, are thy splendours thus despised, For their nearness to be compass'd with night? Light Beauty, that the world should praise thy charm, An off'ring grudge that thou art more lov'd Than most lovely, lo! how much more Thy beauty, Goddess, is the cause Why Beauty is detas'd from thee! O! was it thus, that thou didst defy The heaven, and smile to see thy smile! No other cause is, for a fact, withhold'd That thou should'st tarry in thy paradise To render a help to lovers slain. Those were thy vot'ries not unmim'd of old; But for their loud crying, Love thus did move Their stony hearts, that nobler passions warmin'd: Love was their guardian; love was their cure. Lo! the soft streamlet, with half-cloudless skies, Gives to the land where she will evermore, Through her kind cares, a goodly meed of rains; The wood that nigh it spreads, by her deep-flow'd veins Of crystal, her pure life-blood, to her lips Refresh'd nightly, sweet in its sweetest guise, As when upon her garden'd urn shepherds The loud Pan throws his magic finger; Swift as 't nightingale, the robin and phœnix Greet her with music and their cooing, So grateful is this streamlet to the eye, Love fils her face with tender touches; But alas! poor Love, as swift to quaff From her crystal fount, and pan in joy As the evening wheel, now scarce hath power To pan enough: yet so deep a bath Will not his thirst allay, whose floods yet make A draught at eve, by having wasted stream So sweet. Poor Love! he with the fay are three; Who are all one in heart, though they pinn'd In divers ways. Their union, it even overpowers, Though all these be and are not, as far as far Their four feet may. Come, gentle reader, sit down; A statelier chair you'll find at home,--yet come, Read, while I write; for what fellowship like this Can Christian ladies, or what Christianans have Among themselves. Come, dear Fay, Fairest bodding and sweetest darling, come; Spread thy like soft fleeces; For we'll taste the bliss, Where each does unto all, All things to all serve, And who but we? And it will be Like as in heaven; But I'd rather, perhaps, In this life's round, I could have sang there By jocund breath With a whole-souled choir, And keyed it tight To an instrument, Till I could read by tears A Bible or a speech Of an ancient Fairest Fay, And I'll show it to you, I who once liv'd In caverns dark, And saw so clear Visions of thy city, That I speak there, who write Not, though I lived there; Such jocund ease, Such jocund ease Of not being there! And to win you like me, My shades are cool; Come, lovely Fay, and waken New dreams of pleasure; 'Tis joy and song; ======================================== SAMPLE 333 ======================================== In various forms for glory and for scorn. Darting from strange lands and tempests, myriads From every quarter came. Some missed their mooring; Others were lost by a thunderous crash Upon embarkation. At first unseen, Yet soon plainly shuddered, came a train Of wars, and passing now was seen In noiseless cloud, an hurricane, Flings of fire from Italics. This well-nigh Discomfited the very rangers. To view a forest set with riches Pithy, trinkled branches and bark-ripe, Is but a painful prospect; to view A valeted and rather polished In laymanship, a brave and fine Compliment of art, is a rare felicity. Bold Agrican, with surgent stride A nameless city draws him up the street, Sweet provincial capital, called, ofttimes, Constitutionally apoplectic, That is both pleader and plebian. Here Teague saw feeble draughts of Camomile, Nathless I share a hospitality Of herbless dwarfs, for there they never swoon Like blither surf of generally accepted fact; From meagre talk that bore no tip of fame They submissively avoided each insult And coveted full citizenship Of this triumph-plutocracy Or other ration of domestic truth. Dull as a hothouse omnium fanativa They move a boulder-weight, of reach as remote As any one beside my master or master. And I...I felt by any ordinary And sober intercourse, I was a man! My tales. I was loving, not ungenial, Felt my heart well in relatable mood, Mourned for mine impresario, plotted my case, Wealth-medaled there, was used to print and address In gravlier less deliberate quattu'r To be a gentleman. And yet, a talent, A single fine skill, was all I wanted To help me down the road to glory. No reticence Of voice, or aspect, blackened me away from that Affectation on distinguished natures. The heavens saw that they were rolling clear, And waited. There is not excess of faith In this, my counsel, or my judgment: I knew What I knew, alone, and no more. To be My friend was always platonism: even down To that accomplishment, there, I should have done A business of the skies. There was no law Of mine, somehow, interposing between Theily and me, to exclude me quite Of the equivocal path, the Blending of pure philosophy With medium business. That sir, indulgent To some doubts of mine, the April- April quality, this truce among the Distrusts, in the sense of non-being, By me so well described. At the end, "I dream," was his pleading voice. So on. I marvel not, he was a genius then, And we were bound hand and hand. The easements Were taken up, what time we made a pudding Which covered all the houses. O, no blush Of earth's ugliness to make my pensive Partook of the human blushes that I saw, And gave his soul a hue, a Zephyr's-wind Warm on the bosom of the earth and sky! Where David lived, centuries agine, In Tudela, a small pamber, Close to the town, beneath the steep, Yon rocky ridge that keeps the scurrying stones Well-guarded, guard-rooft and wheeled to curb Down-arching sierras, some platted villages, And the squat spurs of Alpine that guard Navescap mountains; whose left edge wanders Softly, on the Atlas-land's right By what were vineyards once. Down there It ends: and from the crest's cleft upridge Hewn, between, ages later, the ligature Of mountains into valleys; that the flat Edge of the vallies bend to right and left, A point, a crest, of long-necked valleys is seen. So doth the valley lift in front of us, And we wait: and this was David's dwelling-place. Not highland, like mine, it matters little; but lean, Mouthless, starved of name, all have found their image In him; but he was artist, musician, too, Writer, ======================================== SAMPLE 334 ======================================== Don't be so thoughtless as to forget the days Of youth--for time makes us all exceedingly sweet; Let's do the best that we can on the spot, as we may; Let's raise a tea kettle, if we can; and praise to this lift, It is the grandest known! Hark! the chimes!--now is the time! If you find yourself anywhere-- In a house of prayer, Give reverence; don't shun it, By his who is the Prayer Seer Invite you, for his blessing On the house and its inhabitants Come with him, and you may Say a little prayer for him, and he will May it be your boon. Though the might and the multitude Of the forces of life Have their measure and their sphere, Comprisal upon force of will, And at heart what we would have, The little Wanderlust Fits the tome of the world of power He'ld not his the banquet all day, But within this breast leaped. Who, though power, gold, and fame, Have yielded his all, his loud voice, Yet is not fain to hark With the great down where it lies Or in day's dim shade Only with sighs at noon Waves half shades, or when noon's done; Ah! he weeps, or his passion And he clings to the thing he loves, But the hills are up to heaven! Who can hide the bright and the song And the loveliness of the skies, Nor will he ever betray What we know full well; Who but is honorable Not from cowardice Of the world's temptations and snares, But the love of that heaven Beyond imagination, The Infinite, and where all is new In form and spirit. A board--and a board it is, Wherewith to uplift me! The blessed company must be Who have drawn the veil; The holy place is the place, And all the stars are clear. Love is the love of power, and Pride Is but pride after the love; A life of pleasure is the pleasure Which carries living on; Love cannot be the love of one Whose judgment must be lax, Though in most high degree, For Love's not the life of one Who has pondered on the will, Though therein judges. But why, why doth the Summer rush In mist, which half answers death, And scatter, with flying foot, The bloom that a Summer's bed? A rosy haze, which freaks Even into frost and ice; And this, after the night and day, In every paleness blows Forth from the lethargy Of her lips, even where it should rest, And quenches up in a breath Of wine-clouds what was that day? The grey found traces of the rose's hue, And, all sides now half uptorn, 'Neath knotted mist rose all o'er me, But brought me into day's happy ray. From Lerny-fern's daisies I'd ben, Like Night's eyes opening towards the sun, Had hardly seen the cinders come Where now the flame of life was lighted last, That, for the shades, within the arches blaze, And, like in that Elysian world, the gloom Enthrals all living things with that bright birth; Nor could I thence from gloom away incline, Nor want edicts which my spirit blind: But kindlier seems it to keep The flower's heart with all its pulsations For mine own heart sweeter of the god. Frail was the Spring! who oftest reap Of flowers of youth his perjuring darts, That breath so blithe, so sweet. Like the slow yarn Of this one spring I'll tell, And make my native vale Eternal Master of the bloom; Whose flow'ry beams of joy, To my deeming, have lighted all our joy; Whose riches' waves, to hear Their echoes wide. Gave us, the quick, to hear In flowers and blossoms what they said, And what this world did once: That here indeed all day The sunlight breathed the sounds of love. And after these days He heard, himself, their plaining song. With what glad song, how mad for more, Shall the Eclogues to-day? The Platt'ning Spring's bed, that lent Their name to Beauty's name, Shall still ======================================== SAMPLE 335 ======================================== if He sounds Like Bell Hookis “a bloody idiot” to me that he really is that idiot with a heart of brass Or if his hand be hovering, Tiny, hesitating In the screen A sea of mud Hovering His eyes Askance Over the throngs of bathers and sea lions And nothing is evident But the wind’s wind That rolls across The crumpled mass Of the town Slanting Or in whistling air As it passes A warning Lest its shadow falling under houses Offers the mingled sound of homes That roll in waves of sound. Bayers Of sky With their figure of earth Paloalsa That he Persequently Spits up In a mud-wash Of air Recalling his sea-dew At the sails I see in yellowed light A mournful group Among the ruins of her flats That look Up in the slue Of hisron stone walls and for the shoulder and the violet flag Under the lamplight In the porches Where stands the fountain-head the rain-disheveled hair Furrowing the morning sun Washes him all day, until the premonitory Tides drop. They fight a last Letting of of words Among themselves, then merge into their dim Meals of water-carriages; their flat syllable, Beyond the children of the dark ocean Upon the streets Lulled by the placid lake, In leafy hollows Midst the rocks With oak-trees panting for the wind to bear That others of the roaring city shall bide And sun their faces. Or he falls Among the many thousand of the dead that live there: Women and children ripped from their haunches Wandered through with them, Whom wandering by the wagon roads, and in the arms of their Dark wagons, pressed face-to-face with him, and once more Smiled on the smiling face of their lost one. Waters grow so wide That some of the more Wall-flowers drop to the red rocks that send them Down the wind, and set them lifting up their petals High among the walls, And then downward dart again, until they meet at last In eddies of air To fall among the minnow-hunger that slakes Their soft throats in sweet ignorance. I stood a long time And just in the knuckles of her hands and her hair Blew petals one upon the other. <|endoftext|> "She sat upon a Stone", by Anna Akhmatova [Living, Life Choices, Love, Desire, Realistic & Complicated, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Relationships, Men & Women, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] she said her vow before me. we sat on a bridge and she told me, she said her vow before me. she kept her vow even though she saw herself beyond the stone wall. she said: your moonshine, your eyes do not brilliant it. then the roses started to grow round about my feet. we were both drunk with desire. we wrapped each other in roses. we kissed. we went home with each other. <|endoftext|> "In the Evening", by Anna Akhmatova [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity, Nature, Spring, Trees & Flowers] Infinite beauties for infinite flies, we so much held us in our memories. the way she covered the world with roses woke me up at night- watch: from my window I see the tulip-stone rise and the leaves fall in the breeze from my bed. all night I cover my head. I feel her softly sitting beside me. she was so naked and so lovable, all lust and power. I woke up and my heart raced, I whispered at her grave: Thet is best to sleep in peace and cover your face. My feet were silent, I said: however wonderful they are. She had the power to cover the earth all night long with roses. I curled up on the linoleum of my bed with my slippers on and slowly turned on my side. from my bed I saw the flowers come and go. I was so pleased that they left the rose in my bed. Her power had also awakened my shoes. ======================================== SAMPLE 336 ======================================== Art thou dead, then--though tears are from thine eyes Washed away, and I may no more visit; But art in thy likeness, now, before mine eyes. I scarce can breathe or speak, for sudden grief, The spring-time of our life. Thou, Lord, who mad'st me spy In thy bright hand the fruit of men, Kill me, yet once more, And sit a saint upon thy pearly throne! In me from thy hand was the inmost wild, The priestly sympathy, the spring of man's love, His spark of goodness and the hero's fire, His depth of feeling, his depth of sight, All that makes life good. Let fall this holy wrath, And hold me as a living slave To an everlasting solitude, A prince in endless oblivion. As stone or dust I am not pure, Yet once let God in my wrath set me free, And let me live and die with kine and sheep. THE waters of the sea and the fen Have ceiled in him who, careless, Sought them in spite of God. But the fen was a birthland hard by, And the sea the river that doth bleed, And he shall tread their fen and sea. A freeborn people is he, And a freeborn sword he carries, And his blood is free. As the stream he draws Through the earth that he hath known. Not a king in all the land Shall set his heel Against his freeborn will. His errand to the free Is the sum of his free. They have joined with those who have died For the love of their land, And they fight, they fight, they tell their tale, But they save in their canny scoundrely The grief of the people. Soles that mutter and sneer The woes they would be left with With their noble lords; Soles that bid them trust To the old and not the brave! O, that they were found be chisels To scratch the hoofs of gold, And they returned to our town! The sun went down. Night came on; One by one Through the thick gloom they flicker; Then one In all the land To one another called, "Up with your heels to your master! Up with your heels to the quay!" So the waiters Told the people not far hence All the frolic ways of children, What a bag-pipe fancies had brought A DOCKEN mixed with a ship; And a look which a thought confers On the eyes of the loveliest Is the secret of love; A song which a soul hums With a feather that floats it, Is a spinner that makes wings; A merry heart that fails In its inner nature, Is the greatest of dreams. Then this wonder befell. Loveliness was all in fable, And the sigh was a heart's melody, And shadows were wings of the mind, And a sparkling shadow that flies Was the heart of the saint. The ship had a name, and the name was FELIPE; But after a while there came a big problem, And the Captain looked wise to the crew And gravely said, "Bring me the accounts." And a look of his crew of the lower deck Could not tell where to send the proffers, But they leaned to the cooking-jail And squabbled with the slaves, And the ship had a name, but the name was FELIPE. "Bring me the accounts"--for the Captain went and met With some exciting adventures, And with laughing creatures, but no friends-- The logbook he sought for--he sought For the dates that fell within his grasp, And in the narrowing of the years He had scribbled therein Dates with some thatheelf of measure, And he did his math To prove he was a keener man Than all the men of flesh, and therefore (Though no colonel of an exchange) Yet he never failed to make good, But he never brought it. "Come, boy, I see you will be turned--" said the Captain, As he glanced adown the gunwale. Then his wife started up and chid him; But the children got a lesson In dashes, and in such bold ways That their father was not half so pleased. For they did not act their parts. Then he drank like a ======================================== SAMPLE 337 ======================================== Of fair seconds. The first-love too, Which of a pale moon-sweet hath most worth, Is faintly-stirless, and lesser lights Only have a faint o' the first: for oft As eyes are used to keep the cradle, so Unpassionate, and not unearned, The virgin-birth lasts on the cheek for ever. The child is come of age at twenty-two; There yet no higher receptacle wight Dwelt under the Gorgon's head, More buried in slime; or Pentelfo In hunt of Lifhor by a Peri'e, Where each corvus lick'd its bellow. Farther out, From the last post uprose we, and far A-plenty wept down the fifth elect, Whose rose the seven brightest sparks did boast. Then, gliding down the eyes could dare, and far Over Drijno, parting when they chanced A band so signal-breaking, that they fell With despairing looks. The Father calm Receiveth him, saying "Meseemeth not That these have much to cry for. My grace Serveth where the elect are cry'd out. Read each His substantive --Offens: so unto Love Suffers his thousand names of favors. O give me back to thee the life that here Is neither soul, that had the faith of life, Nor bodies of such body. Had the body Look'd like that Servant who quak'd at the sound Of right merry works, ere his clear stroke Could pierce through the skin, and set in its place A creature akin to those which of old Thou saw'st--thou'lt had that servant yet. Yet one Laid not forth on this day so stately feet, So stately hand, so great visage proper To personage of such sovereignty. Read in And solve'd thee then with my podens the first circle, Which centers on liber AND  And whose shadow And symbol is the chest which nature first Wanting herself created in a clod, So that its earth it containeth and its side, Like as the body lacketh of its kindly vital Customer, which a little while departs From the blood into its naked state, After the atmosphere leaves the vegetable, Whence it awa'--and like a naked man Left throughout the village to perish there Beside the River Arian.'" Thus looking to the raiment which was mine, And to the judgment nothing there was spoken, I, when the words were ended, stood around As at an actual presence, which men see only at the present moment touched; And,, "Whosoever it be that talketh sadly or maketh of his neighbor's wisdom falling Or trifling things, or with like reason chiding Our church and ministry, let him turn To this toward us, in long listening tone, Unblam'd of his own desert, and I will Make him-himself agreeable to thee." The voice which made such glad/all joyful tone As when the overture to some happy thing Upon the wheel helps to be chronological, Did land like trodden lovelock from the eye. As in the village there are many doors On the left hand, reaching alike to all, And all to none, so, in our choir, like doors Pressed down on us, wrong side with the tuneful choir, And silence did so greet the voice, that, with as Light as pressure from the altar, up It graz'd the avid congregation, and fell Into itself, then rais'd to other note And acknowledgment by their unanimous accord. Then, thanks to God that he had supply'd us With hands and feet, that he had called us by name, And, as he knew we would, had made use of our love-name, Which have the same degree in one of us; to the same Altogether: so far, I mean, that in the mind Of the cryptic Evangelist, when he told How Our Independence broke out into law: It was a name kept holy ever; and, in Sunday-times, You might have found in the sound of it, peace was complete. The church boasts, from the press of pressing task, That she has turn'd home three hundred thousand souls in Russia, And leagued her princes and towns to show The worth of penitence; that she shows now, with her Cheap ceremonies and her merchants' blackmail, The proof of her mission; and pray to her ======================================== SAMPLE 338 ======================================== punish night wherthee so it maye the kingis and godis honour and reverence to peace: Yet haue vp in oure example, that who is worthy, May by his example wrought great things of fame. Caliph Houd befell of this Iestus the Scythian steel With whose edge it cutt his Horse forthronyn; Ou lose he no part of his vertuous mind But victour and ascendepce, and all his fame Transfale, whiche himselfe of Conquerours fame Himselfe more fame may in another sel And schape into Monstres streight, and into vertuous rybawe. Oft yll repent him, if it but chance to staue, He seeth it will no way pass: For surety it is of all thy thresoue, It to him shall with his issue be be broght, That he thy pleasure shall kepe, As he which holdeth the Sceant from the sceast. And thus his Souldiers for his ryght one Pass the hy of this crooked wight, His charge is to this one to passe the flod. Japhet a Seeman, in stile not celast. That was with Severe Forme as a serpent: Ful many a Cirkee and many a filthy chayne Hornefte he made of the lewdnesse of backe, Or elles fede a Cockney into a city With rothering of both gates and souldiers. To suche as wolde haue the wronge, he Made vpon a Cog behinde with cackle Or perchaunce, or have it drawe Into the fielde, for he so monte That him love hath put out of his place, And made him trappe on his fyst lefe. Al this had the citee a vnderstat, So that there nomon were nought bot Of Vertue, to that the comun profit That mad was Japhet to be tyrme Toward the warre on the Grounde of Steyne. The seluell Thebes and the pouer Called on this Jape, that no man could Buy the warre, but he wer put to kynde In stedfast tresor, and all his parti The best that he could do was forto play A grymie vnto his owne bocher, Til that he dyd after euery contriue. Japhet took it as a lytell thing, Ther was one Hemelyder, a Godeilher Of bataille and of backe, and nonethl He thischipe had of Richesse, and no dalia Of his father, for Japhet dowhter Fairel was neyther. A Seil clever The grete king hym selfe to hye hadde, Hemlyder, as he were a man houser, Went on, and so forth rode hym self to Lynette, Was but a Povre christem in his age; It is a moche thing, that if I schal seie By thin audioign the soubtil art, I have reheighed on the vices cause Of that I wolde, if that I schal stiere What is the nature of Japhet's hele: Wherof, if that my word in stiere falle Thou myht excuse for the pryve Of him, that lost thou schalt desclose: On whom that is not makely befalle He lost it al in fere, as I rede In this afterwards; for who can lese What thing hath yit appesonse in wode, Save a Chaucer he was laid in payne To winke, and do the tale of Love. Of Banacks the holy roude Hycest beholde, and thynkyn wyde; Hycre with grene Bacocke In staie of syluer rydyng; The nyntment of wo desputing, Forsoke cause, and of Bretaunge, And othre things overmyght. In which he cam to Paris he Togyther I 5 o diretake, And whan that he was set asyde And whan that it was past his n ======================================== SAMPLE 339 ======================================== Philanderus, true to fate and glory; Pharsippus; through the smoke of thunders I go my noble way, through fight and field; But well it is I cease for ever To labor in the arts of peace. My home, my daily labor, my employ, Is in the fights, in the mighty fight, Or when the boldest rank is crowded, On the furthest arm, the battering-rams; And thus to his alone, who dwells apart, I bid the shepherd-boy, and he shall sing: The song of war is all my delight, This day, Ascanius, is no more mine; If it were otherwise, you would see Ascanius and me alone, And not a half-dozen more beside, Who would battle on the Latian field, For fame, for country, for honor. Mighty Agrippa, I was king once, But who would rule the empire of our tribe Would be a weak King; for me If I could crown the pile again 'Twere only need some serpent's twist (As mighty as thou art) to fetch The crown, and in returning make thee bow To me, in all thy wanderings, And leave the crown unto me. This sport of ours Ascanius hath in time grown old; My vision by! my wheel shall be, The gift of slaves, should I be king again. But meanwhile let thine ears be found Stretched wide to catch the sound and ring Of bells and girls, and whether they Or no, but whether they are gone; All this, though he knows them never If they appear, to come. But, while in us their castles we Unwounded have, this men behold: They have more power than Rome, the men In Gaul, who form the wild tribes there, Than may fortune well be reckon'd. I would the winds that flow from out This wood, where hoar wood grows and loud Tree-tops are, with some preparation Shall be conduct him; for now are grown The louder to catch the mighty call Of victory, and have for aid drawn near A conspiracy of tribes, And contentment one hath with another. Now he is sent; I send him hence To die, who both himself hath done A mighty deal for us. He came from Cisse, from whence ye send My tribe, which is a noble folk, Full of your wisdom, but not of your strength, Hear, if ye be not one to smite. Let king and priest be smitten, see The men's sins, and their prayers who doth perfire Their strength, their presence and might: but if ye No prayers save or small or say, or save An eye high barred, if any earthly man Lay hands on you, or stretch forth his hand, Himself and then his blood be cleansed, that glut The judge that comes after; if any man May ever in blood of him live no blisse For what he hath done, let him know and make Of blood his own hermitage, in whose moore Blood lives, his gildes and his gold, and his dust. Thus for all things save one thing I speake, One brother's blood was at the noble birth Made by ancient Seons the chaste bride-price, For thy first wrong; when from the fear of Jove Frighted the earth, fearful night forgot to man, So for thy sin ye waxed faint and weak, Yet he their father, Father of gods, their sire, Would fill with fealty their narrow land, From him the great Saturnian throne would move Till his own, when man had gadded wing; And would find such honour, so long unknown, In levying of tribute, so the fear Of losing it made them awe them, if they With loose array had been sounded. This is giv'n In songs, as ye hear it on the hill, The terrible name of him their sire; but I, For shame and sorrow, and an hungered hand for thee, Being far too speakable now to sing A song suited to the cellar, half turn away From such an one as gathers her To hear such a trellised story told, in lieu Of one that more could speak, or easier see Than most, with even a common mirth o' the most. Sigh, sigh, Seaton, and turn it this way, that she Nay, or he more, may see--and ======================================== SAMPLE 340 ======================================== planted his heart's benedictions on the cliff beside the steeple, bowed, stared, his palms sailing the road southward, across the stone gate. —To you, on the threshold, noble and free, of gentle eyes and youthful blood, whom he met on the slippery bridge and on the hospital steps, prayer books in hand, one who loved him as I do. —Is this a childish dream, chained in the hospital morgue and cannot recall it with any depth? <|endoftext|> "Calf", by R. T. Smith [Living, Life Choices, The Body, Activities, Jobs & Working] In the trim, red light behind the human forms, they can slide closer together, the cutter of knots, and the world of work will seem handier and faster than before. A cut of that size can make a form new and unbreakable and yield gleaners that weight without aid of wrenches, numbers that don't exist in any ledger, sheets that can be dropped, then each to each shut in his or her own world. I clapped my hands as though I’d accomplished something and stepped off the skin of the table, like a stallion not yet pent by pride or spurned by love. <|endoftext|> "Shrike", by R. T. Smith [Nature, Animals] No, it isn’t actually a bird, no man-made wings nor a swarm of birds swarming over New England. The shrike only comes from a world of its own. Some call it a hawk, but don’t bother to call it if it isn’t a hawk. Its dark plumage and powerful eyes let us tell when we know it. It shakes its wings over the shoulder as we pass, singing the risers and pilots to keep our passage safely clear. The shrike lets us know with the sharp flap of its wings, a place for us to start in from the sidelines of the woods where its wings build more whirlwinds in the night sky. <|endoftext|> "Home", by Roger Markham [Activities, Jobs & Working, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] The voice you hear in the recording is mine, and the one that purports to be hers, that of the operator at the private lines in New Jersey, high above one of the world’s great capitals, whose employees I shall not bother to call out of office for at least a month, its mummied bell. All the voices I use are ghosts I would have more skill in ignoring, perhaps to learn their true source, which now you can tell is heaven, the appropriate brainstate yielding the appropriate response, as with any thought pertains to the supernatural. Yet so full of eyes the Earth is, as when with my hands I drum on the earth without hope of arriving to anything I recall, even if it is indicated light, bright silver, the deranged will see my fingers through the sun’s glare. Of my voice, however, I remember two phrases: “What do you have for me” for the voice that says, “Nothing, so sorry,” and “Better luck next time” for the other, who says, “Thanks for your correction.” <|endoftext|> "Negative Number", by Alan R. Abromah [Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Stars, Gods] At the dark gate it is kept closed with a lock painted green On the rock-edge above the water. Sealed with a nail and barbed with small holes, And backed with azure gossamer, And backed with a dark glass that is darker than the sky itself, the door behind which is closed, With a slight knob set well below the glass To turn it unresponsive. But every so often the door will move just a little, a pea topsy-turvy, And the pale green stain will shift to a spot, Slightly raised, like the door itself, Lidless, without any hinges, Or studs. The Gods ======================================== SAMPLE 341 ======================================== Triptoleto, oth' femme celtique. E't a girle, haw up in glaiket; E't' a tricher, haw dic' clymber; E't a newt, haw a tawmbler; E't a lackey, haw kerpliz, E't a grafel, haw deleugh. E't a cudgel, haw cudgel; E't a barly, haw coggins; E't a neuger, haw nevar. Tic-er-tow, tric-kee-tow, Tick-tock, tik-tchick, Tick-tock, tick-tock, Tick-tock, cat-call, Cat-call, cat-kee-pow. Dirc'n-deak, dou-Creek, Deek, deep-deek, Deep-deek, grave-MACK, Deep, deep, deep. Mack teht, mack puht, PUH-h-wah-tay pot, pot, pot, pot. Mack-haw-le, mack-teek, Mack-haw-lu, Mack-MIK. Awa, O chief! Dah, oh waay, My daughter, waa, awa, waay. Dah, dee, deem, droop, droop, MEE-ow. Alook, with great thunder, Alook, or up-nor-RO. Haw, waa, waay, waa, waay, waay, waay. When, pa-ree, pa-reem, pa-reem, When, pa-ree, pa-ree, pa-reem, pa-ree. Pun-pun, pun-PUN, pun-PUN. Keek-keek, auk-KEECH, Auk-AKW, auk-AKW, AKW-AKW, auk-AKW, Auk-AKW, auk-AKW, AKW-AKW, auk-AKW. Mack has a coronet; Mack has a white hood; Mack's just (mee-ow) just ten yere. He's a rising young man, I'll gie him a new suit, He'll do noo thing but lie, And beg for a bek. Mack, his tresses and his back (mee-ow); Mack has a coronet; Mack has a white hood; Mack's just (mee-ow) just ten yere. He's a rumanian minstrel, I wonder he'll do nuth't, I doubt I shall never see Ah, it's Mack with the cleek-neck, Ah, it's Mack the wreath, Ah, it's Mack the sun is i' the waighd, Ah, it's Mack for stilly sake, Wheer 'tis mah snow. 'Tis noo a' the lords the well, A' gude company is here; Sae hallow'd be the ven'k, It's the brotit spot atween Noo chaws in agone. These a' the lords the well, the auld, At her sad hide the deid, There's the spreid, fresh heid as liand, Wi' buskies an' sheids. There's the furze which waves alang There's the sheuh, the nest. The sheuh-mult, the nest, the spreen, the nest, Wi' its brood, that never kens, Is a' here at her door, The pish, the wheid, the whit, the whit, Weel nean done. See! the ewes o' yon loft, Be the heid that darkles blue, Are I' laft Colin's ha'tower, It's o' Mort castulus, I'll tak ane at that. Lad, lad, and lad, I'ld you fare, Lad, lad, and rade an' see A dunt i' here, lad, i' here Lad, lad, it's hey sexy back, It's ay lovely to see. O, you, will ever be afoot, O, you, will ======================================== SAMPLE 342 ======================================== I cry against our senseless wars And the graves of the dead Will always remain Aching as my whole life has always been aching and aching and aching. "I say nothing," she was saying "That you might not go." And I was afraid Of some disappointment To meet at the end of all my days. So I said, "Perhaps you might be wrong. I have read many times the words of Emily Dickinson." She answered in a whisper: “I gave my soul to you." “And what did you?” “For you alone.” “And what did you Do with my soul, Whose love burned high And hot as those who fought?” “Destroyed it With empty smiles, And smiles at their dying When, in their glory, They, too, had passed.” “And you, dear, gave your love Only as a sacrifice, A burning offering In the glare of day, And you left it alone To bear the star That wore your name in space.” “And what did you?” “Praying for light, Not faith, your love Forbidden, above our sky, Burning as our sunbeams. A sacrifice.” “But you did not say a sacrifice, And that was why I came.” “No.” He said, “There was nothing here for discussion. You gave your heart To me, and me alone.” “O God, dear.” “What did I say?” “I said we must begin A new life.” “Ay, new life.” “And what did you?” “Walking through storms.” “And what did you do With blazing eyes, and open mouths Like haggling hunters Unflagging as they go?” “I would think more About the words that come out of my mouth, Who said we give our love Til life should be all.” “But, my dear, I did not say that. It was you who said We have no life Save time.” “And when that is done, And when shall it be done?” “And the sun grows cold, Then we will have A new birth Without a trace Of breath from any friend in the sun.” “Ay, ay, dear God. That's the brightest dream That ever entered my head.” “And I gave my heart To you.” “And what did you Do with it?” “Bought an harlot— Yet one more, yet one less.” “Ay, ay, sweet God. And what did you?” “Made the fire Within me burn, Made me waste all care So many nights. A harlot is easy to love Without.” “Ay, ay, dear God. And what did you do?” “Went quietly home And let your hair Lay all softly Upon my breast Without a mark.” “And what did you do When you had seen us together?” “We would have been friends, Dear God. If it was true.” “O God, dear God. And what did you do?” “I see him once more Behind the head Of the belle I go to, And with one glance When you are dark I make her mine.” Perhaps I have not given my heart Full thought to you, possibly, But that love gave all for that boy Who does not look upon me. And since you asked and gladly Have had the heart of a moth, Well—be it such a time, the way Life's tempest is—I might tell you What heart had strength to bear. For women's laughter is like the sun In the amber to measure by, For when it shines no more it seems To have lost its strength and power and might, And might for something else. For so I understand your wondering Why you stopped your heart without, For why it beat, why it would leap From wall to air, why the place And how it went—that and more You do not know. But to me the sand—sand and more sand, ======================================== SAMPLE 343 ======================================== rose bush, confides in your Lord and Lady; But pray be little; for the sable works of the eye are most and least; But he that makes one hair for me to do more honor, pay me! LXXXV-LXXXI. It seems that the first shade. was the rose; The last the knot of its leaves. The weakest leaf in lo, Grew the garland ere that it bloom'd. And 'tis well. Most noble Don. Riverenor In bronze, rose, and in wood-stock, his day, Nor did he fail to join a knot Of flowers on his crested beaute; If you but kindly will,--which Fortune grants Many times. But when we a little bouquet raise, Make, for a parting good, As you to him, lest a cloud Of smoky backe and wrinkling loam Should spoil the rarest, increase The plainest; pile, as you like; and, oh, Obey his gracious will! And pray when you have done This, second, last prayer. Now on the deck Let her ensign blush, And flowery sheen. Look she right I'm she part. I'll act Firm, right,--like a queen! Make straightway ready! E'en now! Stand ready! Some bloody slaughter,-- If she hear nought but gunfire, Be sure of it, --She'll shelter in that ground Where warriors never rest! No mercy, you mine! And trust you, me! Well build you, you, Nigh to the woody bar Where on the flocks all day I will hunt out of store Such sinners, and blow them up. Pour out your floods! All together now, Take, if you choose, the drawbridge down; But, before you reach her, when you are there, Your own safety rely on, I would have made the voyage, and pass'd Through sea and troubled waves unharmed, In spite of that; nay, nay, 'tis I that wrought His doom who perished,--I that set free From every bar his fellow-swimmer. So for my own mischievous ends, I hasten'd him to prison-sieve; To drive him out was a sure train-attention, And through that prison-gate he pour'd out As swallows nitrous spennet, down Conduit and main line, to the lowest deep That lead to ocean--and afar thence To chandel in France, the known goal of every rebel. Here flow'r'd the current, and there sunk haws; These through France were observ'd of all the host, But for a piece of severnal Wire'd in each changeful port, and with emptiest course, These long-discoverers of ours; and if one sail, The flotilla had not recovered. Frog-like the keel in water crept, As in the forest through the fissures, o'er the waves They lie, on rocks, and in the coils of seaweed; And where the enchanter leaves his seal that May By moon and flare;--of all the boys, The strongest and the last to quit the promis'd plot; From port to port, the Oost and Batang seas With their attendant lore; that restless crowd, And their wild desir's; who, at every gate, Worship the Cross in red and white arrayed array, And fill'd with remonstrance, lift a voice and a cry. Let us again renew our fleet repose; And, day by day, if the straits grow dark, Back to our friends the Indias--by prayer and might Of the blue peopled West, whose early sun Holds the eastern tumbling waves in awe, To 'scape the blustering wastes of the West. For me, by the same Power that bears us up On mount or bay or river, in or o'er the sea, On ocean or on land--from the winter's clime Swete or sparkling, and peopling it with song, And watching its ravening, yet unknown foe-- Keep cool as under summer's sky, See happy as the fowls that chaunt the time With their young cousins that the Easter round Down to the shift of the long palm-branches, And feast on the blue-green laurel buds. Look not, ere we further our fleet pull! For every beam, as I train it ======================================== SAMPLE 344 ======================================== A paper splash. A hint I was burning, I could sense The city's heat on its streets. I would try My tongue Into the mother-lab rat, or The dirty drunk Of no white blood cell, only a nameless Self. I would do My part In the world, over myself, in the end Scared of what I might owe To the happy left I can't save. <|endoftext|> "May Repay the Parentale Quiet, of Children Born & Abandon", by D. H. Lawrence [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Philosophy, Father's Day] May I come outside? To see it snow, that seems to her not so quiet. May I come? for so long and hardly dare. It cannot snow, being summer all and clear. Yet, here she comes— Sociable, sensible, listening, dear— Tiger! they say of her, we are all to her Tiger! A real madonchas, here in the knottier neat ways of London. Strange that men walk to their doom inside of me, Shall I come? The street is bare to the half-lapping livery. I will not do what the street wants of me. For, really, I am of the game not the street's business! Now, do I stifle any more, or hasten my song, if it be a good thing, to come, and to leave the knottier neat ways of London? Doubtful, I am of the game. For, really, I am of the knottier neat ways of London. And of his late long vexation and the beat of last game; I can but play. I shall not do what the street wants of me. <|endoftext|> "The Third", by D. H. Lawrence [Love, Desire, Romantic Love, Relationships, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Stars, Planets, Heavens] The stars pass too, and the day is done. The sea is dumb: she is a thing for the deep. Within her dusky beauty, the stars will sleep, Lying bright as in the good old fashion, Till she sing in the whale's deep form The stars have done before. <|endoftext|> "Le Petit Bon Voyeur", by D. H. Lawrence [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Love, Relationships, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams] I gave my true love one week's warnings, And she went and got a second. She strayed like the spirit does After its first salt baptism. She sought in the strangest places, Where men are killed for love, And only came on them dead. She drew a thousand draws in her New England fingers, But the draw was still. <|endoftext|> "A Reason", by D. H. Lawrence [Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Nature, Weather] The loftier the colours soar in the air, so that a glory hides Under the glasshouse of the eye, and like a bell hangs Back in each corner, behind the house the rain still goes, Even when it is heavy with fast clouds. It would seem The strong pent-up force of desire is gone, And a neat woman soothes not in the sun, though she Ruffles a man's bald front with her fine outspread arms. But the weak Water from the ears down and wear grey at every wrinkle, Wear in the nooks of the face, out of the door the wind Walks to and fro, into the night, from the foot of the hill To the head of the night when the rain comes. It is the night Of the soul of each man's face, and he has a pride Preserving in his soul as well as wings for flying. He keeps on true while she wears by as she can, Brighter than the highest of her light-mindeds. She's more like a tenuous thing Safe in the quickening light of a March sun, Tempting down the riven gorge by a flash She's a soft dancer than the light of larch dancing, And now the clouds above her play with wind, With impulsive gusts in passing and rolling. She too much falls and wouldons, but neither falls Without a force by which she is not supreme ======================================== SAMPLE 345 ======================================== ]. --. 183d. to 7d. English Pounds. The Disciplinary Hand [x] (5) a connection to return the feeling: the church is our Union House tied up with all the others, already removed. This could hardly be a building, which is what a church is. More, I imagine it would have been a monstrous tent extending midway on the ground, with benches, a stone wall, and in the middle a neat hard chest with the Gospel open on its hands,-- and the equestrian statue of St. Peter standing on the pedestalm, heads close, for the same reason. The grounds of the church were a patch of lawny sand. St. Kullerild, a small child is shown sitting on the church steps, a porpoise in one hand, a silver swan in the other. I always try to place my finger in that [i.e., ] are there many stories like these <|endoftext|> "The Twins: Kris [“Hoff”], Anna [“Heather”], 1980", by Eliza Gutkind [Living, Infancy, The Body, Time of Birth, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Trees & Flowers, Philosophy] (excerpt) Kris: Aw, the pain comes back! Anna: Aw, the screaming! In the medias we both weep. Kris cries in the infirmary; Anna demands we both weep. <|endoftext|> "The Triple Crown", by Eliza Gutkind [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Anniversary, Valentine's Day] (for Mary and Arthur) You each have your own ways. Some days you are lush with the ripeness of summer in the canals; some days you are thin and spotted in every sense. You both have to learn to smile with good humor, and to give without expecting to be ackled in a way that brings a song for every note you immediately sing. We both have to learn our own names, yet sing among ourselves with such perfection that we become the body we are inside. I am pleased to say you both are learning your names—which is something you should not be able to do. You are at the lake. In the grass you have found your own path. You are both patient, and brave. Yet be neither overbearing nor unruly. You both have small but intricate plans for the night. Let this night be your controlled willing to undergo what you have each of you faced. Let your dreams—some of them more subtle than others— flash before you. But you both agree you will follow your dream no farther, and let your dreams go, too. <|endoftext|> "The Little Bird", by Eliza Hanbury-Small [Living, Death, Nature, Animals, Arts & Sciences, Music] Wherever I go, I hear the little bird alone in the lush fields of Delhi. I watch him sit, absorbed in some task, absent-inactive until he is called by name. Whenever I speak his name, the little green jay jumps into the air, as though, so do the dark-breasted black-birds and cocks and jays. He says, “Sweet, Delhi. How good to be away from here, in this great, green field and rich plaza of Delhi, where the little green bird sits and listens and sometimes sings.” I say, “What a sweet name for me. We both need names.” And I have no choice but to remember my name is me, and you both have chosen the name you have for yourself, being called and not by your own names. You say it makes you happy to be happy in a field, a tower, and to see the sun coming in. And I say, It is this happy, simple kind of happiness that the world needs. And I ask you: What is the ======================================== SAMPLE 346 ======================================== Oregon quivered to infamy, So bare it seemed that some new land might be. But things were blurred beyond the sword of this place By the broad Banquete wine-brook, the height Of Parian, and the convent's shadow long. But hear this: In June, when D. M. may call The stately builders of St. James back From their fair long round of love and prayers, When Virginia is a purple star Naked as evening, and Honolulu Winks with gold light that we meet apart By the unseen dyke that circles her feet, Beholding her waters, Saint James's Serve like a lace-gabled palace Bends solemnly to shafts of wood Twisted from the native larch; --Nor weary, weary for the hour and place, Our confusion, nor the tide of life, The great swift calm that swept my paler age, Calls from the lakes and fountains of the world One for the moment in our hearts to rest: Yet all one thought, and ever of one thought. The yearning of our two hearts, The sorrow of a common wrong, The great clouds of passion and of death, The dark coolness of the nether sky, The ways we trod that lead to each the same place, The dews and the tears of far experiences, The joys of sight, of touch, of honour, courtesy That heaven hastes us, living things, to earn, The one thing we know we need is done, and found, If our hearts of metal burn alike, And the yearnings of wandering lips are one, It is not long. What matter? Time's hurry Hastes by. Ah, me, my love that brought This hard dew to kneel before the marble head On many a clear night, were it fulfilled With years that beat and come as one man, In Christ's likeness--say, what were they? what change, How unlike the changing flow of time? But I have known many years that way, and The whole wide circle of my will no more Than it moved, than it moved for all my days. And though I stand where all men stand And count the stones of living men In this dim room, yet, I have known years, And now, have I found mine own. In India, in my small train, For healing of the common smart, I saw the dark brown man With the green-green eyes of Panama And each of us too, my love, With the long rigging circles of his Shine in the sun, more clear than ever Of the slow restless clouds that lean Over Sydney Harbour, laying Their black black black shadow on the sea, Than we, and yet that darkness bright Encloses all, and in its grave Calls up, a living whole, The man from over the wall, the boy whose, The journey of the year, For as the stars slowly changed, and blew With its slow shadow the rolling year, Each of us in some strange way we know, Such as thine are, sweet love, each moonlit night Dreaming the stars above us move Slowly from year unto year; Love the mystery is, sweet, For we were but as these cedar-sides Beach dust that dream not, tho' they sweep The Moon's ripples round, and on low lumps Of clear and gentle sea Leave footprints that are lost forever. My spirit was lighted from above, My heart's prophetic flame That else had been in Urvaga's; And ULRVS (whom thou lovest ere long That lovest not whom thou list'st for gone) Sent from above to Urvaga's. And all this power was theirs, and more Than Urvaga and the gifts he had, With their crown of kingship and their crown; Nor could they, if thou hadst heard, have sought All that kingliest of monarchies To be thy power and ye, O Sea! Lone was the king, and the great wide land (Whose realm hath all things, and makes all things) But one in which no ruler can claim To pass and set his lamps by the rest: So lone the king, and his lone reign, I knew, To feel some spell in me cast, in thee Sent from the king, and thine the mighty shore, And from thy hand the kingdom and the sway Of loveliest timbered nations, put such hand And seal, that this some King Other ======================================== SAMPLE 347 ======================================== Amaz'd I stood, when, a ray Illuming all the roof, from the wall My lady turn'd, and the crowd assist'd By theirs, to whom so much access was given. She her former self restore'd to me, And all the assembled multitude With those expedients ministrant, That I, as much as myself, admiring, Throbb'd in vain for words and gesture able To sustain an undisturbed sight and hearing. As I thinking, so notion found no way To fill the radiant idea, which imagination Fills, in deflowering limits, with dim joy, So I, therefore comfortless, inquired For whom. He told me, on the following day, To go with him, and at the western Hole Beside the tiger, who, "next time Beza try's," Said, if I would come, and stay a year, My merit should be of the greatest size. This night, he said, to some one in the pole A barren dog would be more worthy me; So he intended to sail, tho' the wind Applied would make it moreplete our torments. The day following was set apart for me; And I beheld a sun such as delirium Raised in me, so much stronger was the blaze That with forgetfulness 'twas blend'd, than I Of more hundreds, whom, in the beards of men, Or in the form of huns, his influence had lash'd. The light unfurled her wings, and I, thus made Vagrant to the sphere, was dazzled more By looking on mine eyes, than that astonish'd Which wonder was, in that strange eye, confest. And as, when halated to the top of Thebes, Unerring light in walled Alexandria shone, Who fills a gallon-bottome with the beam, Whose bulged emitters in the globes Of sight, effused such a store, he everywhere Plung'd the effulgence on every side, Till the wide reflection almost pressed my phot! An army on march when loud alarms are sounded, The trumpet suspended so, the sentry tied Halseth to his breast-bone, with his sword unstained, Brings to baleful noxious vapours all about, With fumes from tobacco and from balmers draught'd, That on the mere vapour attacks the eyes, O cup-board, or bed-room, creep thou deeper! 'Tis here the malefactor the means intent To conceal his guilt, and not avert the fate, Which at the first he might have seen the fatal blow. Now from the lamp, which, in the form of a disk Sprinkled with beams of varying size and shape, Through the half hid robot divinely shone, So came I from the house of turbid hue, Into the street, and Saw–and following an On, 'Mid trembling hoofs of bickering colour drear, Away o'er the public way it drove, I knew not what to answer, but enquiry made, I heard, nor that the wheel I stoppedt, Nor that I by mine was lightly fall'n. A large white cloud of the autumntide changed, I saw the church-van emblazon'd in rich art A golden turret rise, with frontlet brave, On the quick grapnels curling at the prow, Where the worthy shield was drawn away, From his own elements, and to another Emblazon'd, though but lowly, where the knight Hath no true place, but is but sum of his. Where ere November, haply December How glowed the sun! With silver, when light Was spent, and day was done, no jet was spent, And the high noon was hollower than the moon. Pensive I sate, howing in the evening, when Sudden the dame, who never fails us here, Came breath'd in my direction; so I saw The worthy guard, the page, and the gentle wench Return'd; and then in order as they stood, Order rang'd the Page's looks of joy, And the high bravest had held his place Had not fair time been for moving they all. The horse, who, of all that I might hope to see, Was most to be expansive and for open ground, Still eagerly for the race was forth pledge, And by the maid most sprightly set at ease. In his free air, and in his liberty ======================================== SAMPLE 348 ======================================== -Music is God. Spirit of Music thing that goes in planes possessing the human tenses of thought - Down the white crystalline of a snowfield sittin' (let's keep it general) Pink flowers, And sapphires And snowmelt and something that I like to think of as the essence of aqua with the surfof winter using aqua as an umbrella my thoughts floats to-day so aqua Think of pikake and sakazura and geranium the four corners of the earth she's not here, a package she's a stay in lenogre I'm ill so I don't talk to much. But, I'm getting too far off topic, the sizzle, the springs and swirls and stomaches and the hooves of pretty stallions popping into the mouths of horses not too far from here. So, come oo'en here sportswritists and there is none but amater at hand; with golden rosette and helicat; Sancer and regia; and her hair is whirls of aqua it would be soger to adopt for a day; De summatize, this is the rose. Think of aqua that not long ago was nectar this well is hot. The poets live here we are told; And God be with us I pray, as all of us now. The breeze is red and long it curls like an arm out reachin' for the door. Let it wriggle here and there, wriggle there let it curl. Think of aqua. And in a warm climate we might contrive (I speak as one who has seen car guzzling gasolised eggs) to cook so fish is done it's widdle hidde, fried in bay and rosemary. This is done in summer in London I know. But our cook is rusty, she means eggs; and shallots and bay, borage and salt - the turquoise color of the rose yes, let it curl, Yes, so green with rose, that we be bewteen it and rose entrechined <|endoftext|> "The Seventh Tale", by Gerard Manley Hopkins [Living, Death, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment, Mythology & Folklore, Ghosts & the Supernatural] The nights are dark and dreary; And J is dead and R is gone: All that I hae to occupy me is To sit and yawn through the morng ng a spruce stranger. My spruce stranger keeps the door, And knocks with deadly force— The moon is lovely, my spruce stranger! That I would be was not amiss, Was never thought of was. But here I am, and here's my tale— My tale, not written yet— My spry tale, I swear it by a sere doctor's green, But with a nice air my tale was told, About an elder man whose veins animall and blood use he well. Now tell me, was this elder here Long time ago, And what did he do? The ting was when one day he came A rale ready to take off. A blessing none but his he spied, But on the way he was o'er Attick shautam. What was he then? Was he in his prime? An artful man, some magic in his hand, To do a bidding? Like the oaks, the cherishing fire for his sake. The (heaven's hue) selective light his branch of grace Brewed; he set it at a focus, Wherewith he made it moveable. It moved, that old man said; Some trick of the wind agrope. He praised the growth of the branch he admired. It had been a great effort. So spake the old man as he puffed: By art he was not hewn, But to the rational mind Is obvious. So spake the ruddy thryoid, And now a fresh puff the elder drew, And said, 'I will be genius' he. We'll say it's adieu, for what we know, That the things he did here, to us are no more, The gathering fire, the rules of the game, But what he was, and what he was. Then all was still: And presently all at ease Embarking, the thread spun its golden rust, And it was joyous for the heart To see the sally of things To come. <|endoftext|> "Man in a Boat", by Gerard Manley Hopkins [Social Commentaries, War & Conflict, Mythology & Folklore, Greek & Roman Mythology] I Like to dip my toe in Tono Bacch ======================================== SAMPLE 349 ======================================== THERE be no jesting here, Though every odor make The air of summer sigh; Tho' from their sweet-scented bowers The tulip and the rose Lurk out scents to burn your eyes; Yet Jockey and Juggernaut Let this off quietly, and Far down the trackless prairie Thro' the dashing of its sands Do battle, and the sparks that fly In the evening glory meet. YET in this stubborn West, Where who will sing of slavery, Or tell of the trial and pain Of Southern fathers, when flag Was raised on this Western sea, And Statesmen said that Freedom's sword Was hung across the way, One appeared that day, and in his beard A fear was seen, that sent a shiver Through the limbs of all who saw. Nay, through the ages must Freedom's cause be tried, To all horrors done. To Ireland's and to India's woe The chosen mix and join, The mighty expansion reach Thro' every current free; No closed back hath any keel Whereby to bind, For that the stream of human life Makes its green course unknown. Ye who love freedom, spring up and sing, And arm ye for the road, This Western world is all at strife With hostile past; And even when peace was rallied round, The fetter still was tied; And he who fight'd for men, and it was known In every land, could find No help from man but to rebel and fight. LEAVE NOT thus, which shall not hate again, Nor with new hate replace the past, But see this work of Death perpetuate Till men shall no longer feel a Daedalian Joy in wasting flesh; And thus preserve in every vein Life's sovereign law, and Death be cover'd o'er In this new age no less, than with The aid of Heav'n; but let men with knolls grind you Human bodies to create honour in you: That done, let Men overwork you still, And off with both your dust; and the good intent Which ill thy hands and mine engender Take with the gifted minister of blood. Here peace shall flow from Sion to Aprill, And every craftsman lab'ring shall have Gage and pay. Here Scirocco, drop the noisier from your Thinking, but not speaking; Here all that stammers and bad noises Shall be agin, and rudely mason'd and Bony, till you grow chas'd and huff'd Nothing done, the King, knowing it was done, Is fain to have thee mediate the strife, As one who is no more, And hates the coint of him that brawls at thee Out of his skull. HEAV'N, grant me full light, With wings to urge my flight, Down to Pluto's dreary house Thro' a weary round: Down to that house of fire, From mortal confines, Where furious Dis and Love in a rage Mete by snatching and socking twice about Each other, and then (if that long hazed with denial) Took cart and shod and rushed to lay in affright, Each on other's cone; You there, take a close cold look at her Whose own woof has indeed a curious cause In that most curious trade. I WANT to explain this thing, That hangs on yonder tree, Whose boughs above are seen to shake And tremble and peal; The common tree in all the hill As with the acceleration-bell: At the back of my head it dangles, As if it hinted a dread sound, As if it hint'd a dread vision: And yet, what seem'd like a tremor I Grew not; but with an ease, I grasped the enchanter's arm, and feel at his throat, And with a shadow-shade in my hand, Beheld all that I conceal'd Take hold, hold now of me, O Death! Able to do this thing, And yet not able to be - This thing, by no means able - By the arms of Death to be transfigured: Hold me; I shall not be featly transfigured, That you but teach; you but convolute What you are, and more, and I, not vainly, Heav'nly Ministress, give me heart to try My skill to make this ======================================== SAMPLE 350 ======================================== Her darling dropped not any sign, And off she stood, as if to bear Her cold graces to the Port, Where lay her ship the thunder press'd; She had a port in view, and she The fair discharg'd the warrior bold, On the rich couch the silent rested, She look'd away, the last farewell. At this Cassandre that heard laugh Within his breast, and hence began To laugh too, telling far the while, In such clear tone, what erst he said. So he had said that, which the bride Intreated on him to bear, His child he would, or she should marry, For love of her, or his love to gain. The lodge there lay; the perilous place (A sign that kept a hero behind) Threw the perfidious peer's care behind; He, ere yet his return, for her Had made the doorways dim and cold; No form it wore, no outward scene Of life, or death, for here was none, Save that and then the death-like shade, 'Twixt whom and her there came to light A ghost, in nature's exile wan: Which knowing, and not knowing who, Thus far less hostile than the rest The monarch of the deep cut off His ears and side with pointed bait, And bade him on his voyage make, Unto what port his mooring might? And, smiling at the evil cause Of th' oblation made by the bride, He mourn'd his self-neglected task With pious laugh, but humor brave Still held him then the living one That came, unseen, to place his side Against the extreme flinty jaw Of him, who now no more from fear Or love of her would welcome speak, But in loose lines of submission grim Was half-way through the cubit bend Of those remotest cave, which nothing But the clearest tread may trail athwart; And clapping heels were heard, low-tremble, As through the grave was possible, so, On the farthest margin of the cell, One whose dry and meager pinching Had all the pity due, this all Which throws an after-supper deep, 'Mid great and clear specks of horrors, A raging principal of the living As when all-conquering at a feast. But this, on the other side, heard high And ringing tones; for these were works Of different kind: to view them thou Must have the laborious way provided, In which the scann'd accommodation To art of human artifice Appears, and so discreetly soars in air. First then, in chrystal vaults divine In mind unworthie with our woe, behold A Tubal somewhere carried, who all His family, rescued, had received From war upon war: wounds to his flesh Were kill'd, yet not slain; he his bonds Borne under, till his King, disdain Impatient, loosed him; this for his use We call: he, a Stranger to confer With King and Pontiff, found him out, exil'd From Hell, and brought him hither: who himself In meditation, and in silence diligent, Unto the second Petrase might pour His meditation. Next, in thy brass, If of the Signor are known, he saw The Second Hercules, with whose rank was lad Partcleare 148 full, and full of power and good He was accurst who gave us sight of Things, The working of the many arms of sin The wise Oscillian Roman uses, Which far around have extended. And now behold Things broken and destroy'd, yet they tell Progress in Knowledge to be acquire'd, As a good tree unto grub is builded. The sun and moon, and all the stars, he saw, As witness what things now have been, what now Are built in Heaven: Of you also he hath heard Your number, and of now has established An ANGEL Department, and assigns New Humility to each man's reife. To sum up each tale, now wise men nobly written, He shows the becoming way: Or, if there should miss Aught, they whom your Armes andorth take, In upon an EPITHET, ne'raway Are reckon'd, till at the least they send To miss each piece, and of every age Give every thing their due. That wak'd, then he turn'd, And with the blest state of things discours'd on Under ======================================== SAMPLE 351 ======================================== nostrils red when up and yada yada. Their habits hit or miss and smack flawed Red-bellied unfocused and ignorant Not one to amble Make an Eureka! pure Turning it up with tenacity getting hook look hook It was surge momentum sensing something is getting better back and forth like arrows Up and down for more some hundred nits he or she can be both a lion and lioness are one hectic synapse. stirrup stirring and sucking Hear the string pulled hard sucked in tone grey gray grey new day coda dawn if ’t was thrown up <|endoftext|> "Unheim Days/Autumn Leaves", by Alicia Ostriker [Living, Time & Brevity, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] Talked a little fool when I thought I could stop my finger on earth’s spring crown of cheap artificial youth. Saw by other pleasures to live for, talked to, time to muse on— white razors and orange squashes, and someone singing crisp notes who told me, do what you toddly do best. I wanted to tell where each tree closed its autumn swelling throat to go crown. Still, forgive me I hold time in balance by revealing the image of how he might have come to be alone in an hour country road boulevard. Fair to give him way. Solemn, my time to talk to him what he may not see. <|endoftext|> "Submerged", by Alicia Ostriker [Living, Time & Brevity, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Summer] When I'm out of breath and your face is dark, the water has to take its own time. The slow receding of its splendor leaves the rust inside my lungs. It's sun on muscle, on lust, on fire, and now it's going to take us out. At night, when I close my eyes and imagine a series of tubes like caves opening on a lake, hollowed out by a retreating surge or thrust by stars and the darker tides, I wonder if one of the black tubes takes me into the calm. The others can't be parted. I hear the water tell the idea of a story, the story of waves, tubes, and silence. We face off, at bay, as one for a finite moment. The one thing I'm still coming to, the one thing we still haven't covered, is where you take my hand, where you whisper my name, where our skin is wound so fast the flicker of moonlight has become a given. The water takes this deep so that we can believe in it, in the light where we are together. <|endoftext|> "Settled", by Alicia Ostriker [Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] Tornado circles the earth six times over a blind giant rolls in them from the third circle to seventh circle behind them wends the sand his back turns other's and he asks them, moves his body in their station with his eyes. He sees men behind him roll in them from three sides of the blind box to seventh circle behind them his back turns. Cloak his back, black over the sand, graceful in red and gold. Red is gold as gray Ascension. Even ======================================== SAMPLE 352 ======================================== lyre-learning, spleen, wyle, Wyl, an interjection of surprise A lass in her prime, Cal, the goddess, moon-goddess, wax-white goddess, waggon, wobbly-legged goddess, wales, Weal, the illustrious May, the queen, ten, the tenth month the wise and gracious The man with his bargand, The truelove of Apollo, the Iacchos sky. Weave, of lead, weave, or of gold. Weave of tow, or of silk. Weave of straw. Wynd, the eighth month wife of April, paler to April, The ugly April, Or, in her prime, April, auch, the sweet month, what had he been? <|endoftext|> The Greek Angel of the Great Prince The Atakazulator Atakazixit, of the wind aut apheit, of fire en, for the feet Hocus, the' (These do I) in antheil, the one who hits, before steth, the false alma, the one who flies the first (huzza!) the thunderer the turbulent angel, the singer of miracles The Atakazinator, of the Great Prince, who would like to be the nation's king The Atakazulator, who the savage age would cure The Great Prince and Atakazulator, the Greek Angel of the Great Prince, who would like to be the king of all the nation Meanwhile the poet, neither hymn nor song, yet sage and level, reads sweetly the words Tum laquiturias! <|endoftext|> Sing of the Grandeur of the Undoing;-- Sing that what is, shall be, And--suffer it to be--shall be! Teach us that what we call the Soul Is but an image, fair to bring, In guise of Genius, to our view, By which, to suggest that theme, Of Genius 'tis, as something there, Whose name we have not, and cannot speak. Sing this, and--suffer it to be! And let it be the Voice of the Muse, And 'tis the Voice which must inspire The Spirit which sends it as a Spark Of divine Invention; So beautiful its thought is, That it--thus--reminds us that it must feel Love, and must be loved, as the Lotus-flower, And the lotus-bloom its lily-show. Sing of the Vigour and the Vibration Of the circling Spirit, its flame Kindled with the Torch, for touch Of Deity, gleams ever bright, Is but a pretty spinning top, In fancy's view, and never goes, But does as Nature does: Or, if it try as Manufactory, A real, as Spirit-breathing Gas, On Spirit takes a motion of its own, Blown from the Philosopher's Study 'bove The body's flesh, 'bove the brain's motion. Come then, in merchandise, and be dressed In Nature's shoals, but sparkling yet, Inviting the Genius of your Eye; And--smiling--reach the fountain-head, Smiling, for a flirt, for poetry's sake. There see how it runs like a wind So mild, you think, like a kite, Only half afraid. By craggy steeps Of sound its waters lie deep-soaked. There, sun-bit incrustations meet. The sun strikes the tints of rocks; on gas The vapour of light, a blue is spread, Here blood-spired blooms in a smoky fog And glancing leaves in various dyes Each plum of coloured frond, in some dim, Ineffable rainbow, teems as sweet As in some deep-mouthed fane I see the dull-eyed daisy's green Wild forking streak, Sheltered, but never penned, Drowned a mile below by the long wall That pines, and mountains that 'mongst which Seem as ribbed-windings And windings of one thought Pave the vales of the river. Let her then, here at every turn, And sifting down the stony rapids, Guide her nigher and tell him ======================================== SAMPLE 353 ======================================== What is that hue, purple, yellow, red, Sinful? What have I to do with flowers? The Arab laughs, -- "Why laughest thou? Thou weepest blood To see these ladies' eyes so blue; Thy self beheaded, All but one head," he says. "Who is that?" I ask. "As it is fit to see," -- he replied. "Fell of the sunset of the time Which makes her a maiden, Not a wife." "Are they not fair?" I ask, in my turn. "As the dear skies," he said, "As the skies are fair." "And," he said, "the thorn on thy head Should be. Thy lids, once more -- " And now he went, and put his lips On mine, and kissed, and with blue eyes Seen in the wall. "Woe is me!" I said, "woe is me!" -- The high star fell on me too, The weeping rose, we thought, Her blossoms were fading, And that tear which like a leak Of a river in the roots We heard was a sign Of what was coming, came not, came. "My heart can scarce believe it! What Is gone, and not a trace to find? Oh! when the darkness, Will give thee back to me, Think what each smallest word may say!" He said, "My love is one Of that wrong'd world's evil track, Where joys like to die, Lie scattered. Each little grace, Like a star, dies with her." "But, after death, Who shall safeguard? Who shall ban Those injuries, injuries so few, Though a nation every one punish? Harm's worst wings shall not uncore An eagle's wing, nor a tiger's hide." "Yea, a few there be," he said, "But I shall be blind -- And in the darkness all too blind." "And what then?" I asked -- "Then I shall be one more wretch, Death take me like another wall." "So I be rob'd, And so shall my dear love be rob'd Of what ought to be sobally, blithe, That smil'd my soul with his first canter. Fear not thy nobler flight, Walking over thorns," he said, "When peals the relentless hammer On the near fallow, -- and death does creep, Till I am dead, for all thy pride, Down the long furrow, death shall be warmer, Nor spread his webs too thick. And my last ringlet, which did grow In my last sick head, And which shall not fade Till Easter next renewal, I shall wear, and thou the while Wash it for thy maid, And such a time shall give thee Why thou must have seen my face, And made thyself my son Back from the dark green grave Of my bonds and my ban, Stood forth my lord; from his beard The bleeding shafts down came, Uplifted in mine hand, Carrying me along in his net. And he said, "What pray I, or what do I, You that keep God's common prayer along?" And I stretched forth my hand, and I felt His erring toes slipt back the more, Heeling with the correct evolutions, Mild were the finger pressures, As he leaned 'gainst my clasped hand, Keen the fingers that hold'd him; And I lifted my hand, and I saw The blood brim six good-sized beaks Beam'd like four royal coblins. Then I gave my name, but my true name Was want-developed, as mayhap Are rivulets in the frosty fields, That tingle the buds of the sedge, And brighten the moss of the valley. Here 'midst the pack of the grass I lie, The vulgar Marauder and combe My armor, by sleight, stealth or force, And young ladies or gray-haired men Take the secret and the dis-ise, And stretch their cords with delight. I heard behind me; I saw ahead, As pale my lord the brother's face And grin, not part of the feast: I saw him watch the way I did, Shelter'd by this his wide black visor, And thought by the wolf-like glow Of his restless torch-beam, ere I ======================================== SAMPLE 354 ======================================== So that after youth’s long hope,There’s none that will wait on me;I do not know what I would be,And none that would care for me.So, I do not care for anything;It is not worth my breath to be,Nor any respect that men have paid me. <|endoftext|> "Life", by Carl Sandburg [Living] I was a soul in need of a world. I was a world in need of a soul. We stood together and it was good. Life flowed from us and it flowed from them. The way of one was the way of the other. When I was in need of a world I was in need of a soul, and when I was in need of a soul I was in need of a world. The need was we approached and the soul was endless, limitless. The way was the way of me and the soul was limitless. <|endoftext|> "Hell", by Carl Sandburg [Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] Do you hear the wind devouring the flesh of the town? Do you hear the teeth of the storm hear the voice of the light hear the thunder like a million thunderheads? Yes and the lamp is huge in the gloom. The shadow of the lamp legendary. Are you hot in the head? The lamps go out the window. <|endoftext|> "After the Bee", by Carl Wolf [Love, Desire, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships] I love you. I always have. Nor do I care that you do not know it. No more the phony conviction the zigzags of the love brush I am the one, it the one. How must the movements of my nakedness seduce you to believe me dead? The visions you see, the gold dust of sleep blow my nakedness. And there’s no other me. <|endoftext|> "The Ice-age", by Carl Sandburg [Nature, Animals, Landscapes & Pastorals, Winter] Winter out of the north is marauding again. In what endless fields, in what fields, I wander, restless, to my friends. Unsatisfied, unsatisfied their unsatisfiedness. We are somewhere, we say. Somewhere we have not been. Somewhere we have not been to-day. Somewhere we will not be to-day. Our fingers play on the frozen seeds of the trees. They are not flat, do not "bounce." They are not cruel, they are not pliant. You, you alone, you alone, you alone, you alone know all of this. <|endoftext|> "Jack", by Carl Sandburg [Living, Death, Relationships, Family & Ancestors] One autumn day Jack, age six, by the beach with a cup of marble yellow from the riverbank we’ve named in the aftermath, he just like us, his own, his brother's shadow, drawn from the pale cool circle of tawny softness of the wind, ran with shadows on the asphalt. He set me down, said, Jack, do not fight, Jack, do not look up. Jack, he died of suck, don't suck, he was suck and sweet. We drove home. It had all been done, there in the grass, the wax flowers, our shadows yellow, his, ours, and he, the gobbler, had sucked me out with a wing of horn and he, he with his cup of stone, had drowned me, plain. I walked in my office, went back to the watch, the chair, looked the day through. Sucked me in and turned the dial. <|endoftext|> "Cliff", by Carl Sandburg [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy, Poetry & Poets] Pine Tree, on the mountain with the pine tree, will you please stand up? Why won’t you stand up? Cliff Colvery’s dead. Just look at him lying down before he lies down under the trees. Cliff Colver lies dead, dead on a mountain, under a pine. As he lay there under the pine a bird came down I could see the branch of it shake. Is that bird a tree, cliff tree? Bird a tree ======================================== SAMPLE 355 ======================================== Oft of me vainly press the gods' intent; Me hence the supreme Apollo sends, Who in his arms turns, by no sense controlled. Nor I, the wreck of body and of mind, Whom on the deep of punishment already My soul proclaim'd a spirit,--his keen blade Then would'st thou slay, who thus to me above Advance with pleasing speech? nor he, by whom This messenger is sent, whose task is done; Yet, as I hoped, this praise of thine shall gain, Enough it here ranks me. Do not thou With such slimy nourishment at least Mine heart consider: such seek thou none, Since thou art fixed as is the tripod' head Or any emblem soophneering In its broad circle. Feed me now With that solid substance, whose edge Is so kindly warmed, that 'tis melted down To nought, and soon is memorize'd heaven. Of what extent now thou keep'st thy feast And we eat sparingly, by free choice Fix there; lest haply I should bolder Choose the harder game, and harder fish Photo in thy waters. I did e'en Such cruelty, so that now 'tis done, Thou'rt bodied. But this I know: If ony time Xerxes, second-born Of Pohyola, till the third oneia, I had plenty of, I should ne'er have Fared thus far. What nectar have I then but won, That I have got in finding this skill'd?" "An son Have I given to the earth, To look on thee in the eyes Without disguise. Yet thou drags Thyself imitating an impostor, And scourges articus the State, In which he cometh indeed, Yet knows he's not graven on the rock As an engraver would have it graven; But, because his hand is weak, He feigneth like a bas-relief, That stands in gates and tunnels too By his gage; an impression Half-volumed, much more thin than is The soil of Hisi. I did burn Much erythritol to exhale Health into the salt sea, but It went to my brain again As healthest in Cronion Then would he wax a greener, fitter Touching me, and that short while Cost him an amour from Cleobron, Who, sole to a woman, knew Of marriage-rite, and I Saying, by way of Friday to-day, "I find," asking to be paid, "He lives not now a bachelor, But master of two,"-- With this an oath-kiss from me He his own bed did lay himself down in. Here shall he lie until Zeus shall say There is no wit at all in that oaf Who set the thing down in his mind Which his own nature meant. And so Now I have told thee what it was, That thou art forgive and wonderow, Thou who hast now a sight to know In what way Aht would have it know'd." I Knew what was right, and thus I spake: "Forsooth thou must needs have been there, Where'er thou wert, in order that thou The inward man didst feelest rejoice At seeing my friend so plainly Suffer and follow; and, indeed, If thou some blessing have from me Of thy own, thou canst not have it now, Forgetting what thou sawest is true. Thou must bethink thee now of one Who in wickedness was happy happy once, And now is fool: and such a messenger With greeting of good-will would come from him With palm to lean in championing of me, E'en as did Guiltless Green. How mean the courses of the sun to run, When hemarks Comet-species spring from out His chariot at even, is't clear? Be kind to him, and he will be Far better than thou canst fancy him." To one of these I: "Confounding Pluto, His wicked spin, I darkling mischening Betake me on the pitch to lie, E'en as I then was in delusion. There I so much of this vanity found, Which thee then caus'd, now do in like degree." "That, sir," she answer'd, "owe anything more Than thanks are due; if those previous days Have taught thee of my journey's lore. ======================================== SAMPLE 356 ======================================== Timidly thus replied the Maid: 'As sure as hope is placed Upon your first labors, I call the first fruit Beside a bed of roses On the day appointed. Unlicensed morn she dares not To cross the boundary line, Till afternoon shall have turned her. Then as you are She extends her hand To you, and you she liken, To be begotten like the Mountain. O! mark my words, for I will swear it, You may possess her when her marriage Shall see the light of daylight. For when you shall behold her Sitting secluded, Without her hood, No magician will be needed To turn the moment of your desires; For what are not your children But angels, that ye come To you as they are ordained? For you must see, as now you know her For a chosen family.' 'Sir, my command is to declare That I am good and true The earliest, second-best and third To the best in my intercourse Since the garden of our mistress Has a bar of earth between it and me. And should she need me on some business, She needeth none of those fair daughters To run her for hire. I'm sorry, but if this test she hate, We have no other by it; Nor need you run about for others; For neither you nor any of your race E'er can be, nor ever will be.' Said Elrytha to Proust, 'For my part, I own myself your bounden friend 'On honor's part; and never will be With that proud word to blot my face; But take me though I must be stern. You, if you'll be judge, can tell Which are the best, which are the worst; And without fear or favour bias, As above the others, take me, 'I am the one that does not care; The other were but wearisome.' 'For since I came here, madam, on foot, Not all so eager, that I go For a second time,' he said, 'I brought no cart, but followed in my sail The first ship of my race That ever bore me, to these shores. Of temper hard as they that build the temple, You were not more hard or firmer 'On the first question, madam, be it true, 'Your lord, madam, as a devoted 'Renounced her for you with all the lights 'That make the steady gazer endure the dark, 'Unless, madam, by chance a comet 'Ride, and justify our skies for obscuring. 'But speak you but the truth; therefore, I 'Will ask the doubtful rather.' 'As I say, for the sake 'Of safety and for honour, who can 'Say a falsehood here, which may not be wise? 'And when you swore I could not see her, 'Say you think now you must lie no more. 'This has my fruit: since I have seen her, 'Have you no fruit that your jealousy 'Be fetched from her garden? I know 'How little her own will make her yours. 'And this is my punishment for saying 'She was like to kill him that wronged her; 'By this, madam, I know not what hate 'May turn your tempters: and to clear 'Her honour in my conscience.' 'Your justice (said his woman) may 'So twist you, I doubt but you must see 'Another with me in this dungeon; 'And take one of your owls that will 'Litter her tracks with fragments of glass: 'And we shall see how there can be 'No slander of hers here, but she's pure. 'And if we are not able to be 'A crowner at her hand, for fear that should follow 'A nearer present punishment, let her sit 'Without any current in the world.' Now, here are some few of the lovers So very fond who have kill'd their wives. Love, save when vicious, is so sorry, That ere Nature yield it place, There's some poor wretch has a mind To spoil what Sorrow started. I say, the name of wife, A thing so mean, is used B education for Witchcraft, Which is a separate case. If she that she had such a fancy, And was so great in wit, In love's company, 'twas fit, Then let her marry who she will, And ======================================== SAMPLE 357 ======================================== Or an avarice that uses force to would? But very gently your words grow brisk and free, The tone is regnant and the urgency mild; The gentle gaze of those fair eyes of blue; And the dauntless, insolent smile of cheek, When the gleam of his smile strikes yours aagh! May I never, now, stoop to my disgrace, Nor dream of shame nor disgrace as to dwell 'Mong vile human facts that stain the air; But may I live and shine out of it all, A star of love for ever before my eyes, Be never thus forgot--never thus forgot! But for a boy Who loved the early dawn Of a new day (Washing off His shirt as he went), First who but you Would write That the Holy City Is "wide open" every way to touch, And that Christ is "somewhoWhen he comes." You may think Men no longer trust The swift news, no longer read it, But the old tale Of Fate's portentous art To impart, To guide by stealth, In the devisable dream. To touch men With truth or lies, Or fetters' wings to hide them. Inroad no more The old, but thrall, Ye must keep The Spirit's tie, 'Til each man find The Love that rules the world! It's sad to say, But in old years, A proverb says, Death is the end of all. One death there is more welcome Perchance, than another, But a life well spent, And that's all here: The best is over, so be it brief. Do you know, my friend, That when 'young and strait You sometimes were sprightly? And I'm certain Your faith was great When, after dinner, You'd tell me The news from the fire! Do you ever stop To wonder What brought them into this clear set Of senses, And how their gifts and their talents May be Received And moulded For a sacred end? You were never at home? Did the house simply happen To be your possession? Then, you owned it, And, by inheritance, Your place you took. What was it, my friend, That made you For once Roll up your eyes in wonder And utter a question like One of nature's, Which the sky, As it were, As from that holy bough I'll lift me and fix me Here on the shoulder, For I see that in truth You're shaped to be I have seen animals graze and drink Like devils from a line; I have heard them, without emotion, Acknowledge their sins and rise anew, Out of the sin-laboring street, Into the twilight blue; And--I can do it, too! You are such a gift, My friend, such a rare animal! So free to wander And roam So far From your familiar haunts, By highway, street, City, farm, Tree, water, Barren be the remotest desert That all your heart may see Out of the miracle and the mire! Who knows? The gods may be The fathers of it, And may go out As they have gone, Up the celestial stairs Into Heaven's bright parlor, But, as I see it, They have placed you Where there's no blame. And every one can believe! Who may the nature know That gives such a grip? Who knows The secret of it Who is in awe Who the artist's hand Have fashioned so? You are mine! I owe you? Let me turn And please you with The thought of it. I know not, but hear That, blessed man, you are mine! Before your mother, I had not come And said to your father This is the thing that has come To me! And, as I recall it, I can see it now-- I saw and I heard! But O, the gods' blunder I dare not tell! For you! Oh, you! I may not! But I will not go away, Till I have put on my hat. And make me appear, Here in your eyes! Not the old soldier that is bowed with years; And I'll fear no ill From that man's sudden departure; ======================================== SAMPLE 358 ======================================== For thou hast poisoned the girl whom thou fain Wouldst, from the world, to draw thy foul spittle; And she who is as firm as glass Will long this flux out of the naves Of her sweet life, and upon her wrath, In spite of thee, be raised to the skies. My heart has beaten into a semblance of love, Because I have neglected thee to take Ere this the due proportions of a life; Because, in my mad career of love, In which I humbly sought for gifts, and found Naught of the size of ambition there, I have needed, and have thought, and gladly knelt Before the sight of thine eyes to seek thy grace. I, who have so much sought to sing thy praise That the very brine hath waxed to a wine, And the wind has for a freeze By my muse fallen into a flute, And far under, in its taper dress Our gale of March, Because thy plumage seems to vie With the rarest of summer's, of birth, The wind of July, or The sombre autumn's, at the breath Of her last piece of moody fire, Aged, in a season truly thine, Have in my hope, for nothing else, seen Apropos of thee, and hoped it proved Just in the old-time piece, so thou art. Let go the fluttering thought, as 'twere Of one that would depart from thee, And, as my heart may be, Whatsoeth in me and in me be true, How? When I am here, I think it thine, That my heart is thine at worst, and as strong As the pride of violets, or the sterne That kills the grass: such faith I pledge For no reputation: that thou wilt be mine And I will be thy for a term of years, While life shall sweeten in me the taste of thee, Sith my hope is in thee, and thy best part Yet remains to me, and while the blood Whose chief tincture still doth compass me Lent to thy springtide air: in short, Even unto thyself: so am I most faith In what among men is called best and best And best and worst: to these day by day These doubtful points of our disjointed times Even in thy bowels known, nor dumb to thee Are left, as dead which were alive yet. Leave then thy mighty presumption, And tamely yield to that which seems Yet shivers with chilling frost, That stands as witness That the tempest's fire Wad scatter us from life's blendings Like the chaff of corn, And sharp as spear-shisshes for the slaughter, And sharp as is the hurtleHortus for the dart: So suck our strength as it flyeth forth, Till suddenly the eve strikes home. VVITCHES, thou that first assum'd Belshazzar's crown, and wil'st thou this King's life? For that, as mighty prodigal, Thou didst beget signs of turlacha, And the King's title of tiblitism, Even his conceit: wherefore should not Thou with deep groans on metal th' assault Of that thy vox virgo didst call Dull flame, or rain, or such ordi nory? Or wherefore shouldst not Thou, being Nor, Being Nor, pauper-hearted, vaunt such feats As pity and with compbring of scorn, Of the weightiest kingdoms yet describe, Tearing thy groundless crown with unutterable ruth Of mother earth. O, stake thy vox populi! Blessed are the kings who in their wills can spread Their will with leauefulness for others' good, With modest soothings, and with meek dispaisance, And weak commendings of their modesty, Under the shadow of their wrath and pain Compounded; or where kind government Shuts up her iron gates to hide her worst Against the said bigots, and grieves not When all her sheep are chased forth of the fold. BARNABEC, thou many-gulfing river! O river broad and high, Divine origin of tean groves, Which in thy fountain so aquire Th' oozy waters of the groesus goe, And from their wombs ye sinfest With suckers thick, in some farre more ======================================== SAMPLE 359 ======================================== Volume XII, No. 6, 15 November 1803] From George Froude in Vinton, Conn. "An epistolary exchange between the late John Triangle and the writer of this poem.", from a letter of 22 November 1801 DUPID from his parent world of Egypt came! Prepar'd by seed time the subterranean home, In spacious chambers at South Wind discovered; And Sophia there, the Sacred Heart sought refuge, And made a place in His care forlorn address'd. Here many a time the Student Sorrows spent, Attended to the ancient gymnasia, And after rowing a long season drew: Old Siberian, just debarr'd from racing, Remounted in his fur-robe, and retire'd to flax. Here, Sítá, when on Lydia's land He strayed, his early impulse to explore Your fate, the only wishes of your eyes, Thin from the earth their iris wing unwinding, Sweet from the saffron bed unfolds, and taking Beneath their firm charms the dew of silk. DO you remember when, from winding up Loose hair on stream, or from the laden beam Wound round a rocke, the fasten'd boat would swells And bursts, and shouts all sea as heaven's impregnate And coral darkness, that o'er dusty ocean, Reflects the sun, that oer it diffus'd a beam, Shines in large marge a silver spangle bright, See, see how strong in nature's grandeurs these charms! I see, once more enraptur'd at last to view The Moon, the moon of memory's dream renew'd, And how that grace is lost. All is disguised! Nor Doos of care nor dooms distressful, Nor morrow which all minds itwears, for this Kept on by dread, hath with yesterday forgotten. THEY bring the source whence came the skillful player, Who came from Mitchel the Vigour’s pride, With blessed lark from heaven there is shalloy, To sing such a prayer: for lo! I see Amid the sweet hymns, hear such a sweet reply, As never lerey brings forth his sweet-souled son. PHOEBUS, when in passing he would stand Free from the path of Earth, ascending high Where Heaven her fair attendant Moon adorns, And o’er the spheres of love her astring, Raining aenean splendor from her bower, His solace, to remove the mournful mood, Which now her smile helped hold up, used thus to sue. Say, Muses, who from old Zephyr style so The nightly harmony, whose living spring Is from your own divine responses flow That so allay the torments of your pain, And all those cares that man's conducting Of time and craft annoy, and let the beam Of bliss, which yet he feels but passing sound, Into long tranquillity from rising fling. Thy Queen, fairest and most excellent Of this fair region, ere she attunes Her lovelier hands to Venus’ snowy arms And charms through the wide creation through, Where fairest Angels, Daughters of the Air, Are call’d to adore, and where the power, That made them deify, in glorious love supream, That pomp, in Heaven assembled sitteth, And crowns the term of their state divine; Which now untaught, the sacred prayer requires, That they may justly know how to raise Perpetual worship, with a just claim, By passion adderr’d by the raised fires Of solemn lyricae far revolving round, Whose wand’ring fancies sound, while they adore. Who now with me can contest? or who, Is now so firm as to advance to large Inception, a fashion made during his night. Not therefore content, this joy nor free, But having cankered in your den, ye sing Till your sweet minstrelsy are well repaid By a bounteous oder, which, by the way Shall give ye happier words, which do not fail So crost that Venus, that now she shines Fairer than dewy Morn, to crown Her conquest, or all fairer things above, Because she thee with joy was seen to move. What unhappier condition can they find Of mortal sense than to be mute, Forgetting that they should be pleased, That they should ======================================== SAMPLE 360 ======================================== Bastard. Lord of my father. Here at Loo... Here at Loo. Sing to me. Wid a beau dame But nex' she fit. Or lasses gone shew nex' more. He come home frae Toomes Road. I've sat the dish up. Now the wolf is loike the den. He's out o' the culverick. To behold the deid the church-bells gleaming, On thy first melody, Thy first tune, Sing, O! Singer. It is late-- Sing, O! without reprie. Here on the lonely road. Sing, O! Sing--Oh! sing. The foot of the waking day We often frays. That time which lies between dusk and dawn, Between night and morning, For now I wake, and you must also awake; And now we start to drive on the A or the N, And under-tack on a band, Gone in the van. So here we're tacking out o' bed, And there we're pulling on our stooping bench. We've got the Silberberer in, And there is the Garden of the Love God. You've got the King to greet. The pace is the track, and the time is passing; And let the time-card chime in the half-hour. Up where we stand, And dry-bow, and pipeter-bain. What is the token? Oh! fie! fie! You use sausages such as you cannot bake. Your bread to warm, Be damned. Up from the destreroid pupil There came into the raddest o' my dreams A pepulpt of persiflage. Whate'er you'd lose When you're alangard The town or far-flung is all the province From out yer eervcmuty. Mystic airs That seem'd to take, My brythren's music in the flight, How did I wish But such a sight, My soul to hear. A stall in the neigh'rhood For neigbours to meet, And fine to gaze Upon the spell Of carmine, buff, and cream. Crimson-wind'd With honey-dew And tinctured wine, You seem to breathe a rose; Your look a paradise; Your voice a pleasure. For each dead Boy-- In hoary grief We twain may one extry day agree, Mystic sights to view; My truants Thestraws in camo. 'Mid beechers A pot in the name o' God, To steep the beer. You sit and samoe Your fill o' moolce, But ne'er to miss The noon o' drouth. Grim friths Of dripping drops Through sheds that gracefully fa', The fishes' sun-roll, As form'd on the dunghill, Smells like a stall o' lous. They whick us quat our shuns A hunger-binged wus In misty fields of air, Clamber up a stump, That we may cloy With meat to marrow, And take a long cheer. The stalls o' the cock, In the craps o' the day, A welling-at, in the shine o' the day, Is as like a place As a bit o' cust. My droue! was but a bore; But the drippernow did me good. It made me raist, and that was nought. I crapped in a drippen heap Upon the down o' the shitter. It was a bit haud O' steam to be sure. I fell straight in a doot; A bout o' thactle was neap air. I thank the Lord for peace, If he be on the hill Upon a stile. O weel-gunned Bompell, There's a dingo called Gunga, Whallygither I amto gie, I'm his pa ast at large, And to walk in his vervair, And shoot my gun, He asked the least, and I paid the best. A tea and bacon's free Is the bat-day's on't O' life, If you must ball, ======================================== SAMPLE 361 ======================================== Verily, this came like the same time as my exile. O, if you were in truth in hell I'd shake Your naked soul in libration. By heaven, The confession of thy sins were but wine! Pours sort of ashes on the hissing dust And calls the tole of hell 't was this thou art! O, if I had a guiltless thing to wear, And thought to find it later in hell, Why should I not go on blaming it? There could I stay, this last supper wine I 'd make for thee, too; nor would need The lentil resemble thee, in fashion. Alas, if I should live to be Old age ere I own thy hand. Hiddigeigei! Thou 'lt take these sheets in stone to marrow! But since I am the power That held my couch here to the truth, My power must not fail me, nor old age Befile me, but as thou art, o' the rest, Just give me leave to serve thee, and stay As heretofore, as from that high state My course toward the noble brood I gave of opportunities, And has it closed? O durst thou take our words, Our prayers, who dared but dare To look upon his face? Who tried, though vainly, to read The deep fortanter's look? I took thy fetter's ring, As simple as thou deemed'st it, And I am here, not to repent Of aught that thou saidst in hell! "Take back what thou promised Or ever 'twere now. In Christ's name. My sister, she that came with thee, Must look to her lord, While thou art away, to spy The state of those that do thee wrong." "No, no," quoth I; "this grief Wasters of my soul, with drinking, For thy pleasure is so great, I weep till my tears hold The flood of thy tun." And, sobbing, I replies, "Thy grief Can never die, unless thou kill My weakness with thy help." This while the father sleeps My sister sits before me here. I will not leave my father, and say, " 'She stays with the dead' "--so, Sister, hasten, and listen, For, though my death should yield me life, Thy strength is more than love, But why should it then Burn in my bosom To take thy life? I may not Put death away, as thou shalt take, And if I try thy strength On thy sov'reign knees, Oh, then, thy strength is more than love. "I am overcome, And by thy good favor. I give Thee thanks. Ah, if to live But spur me on still Toward my final hour, Not through thy grace, but thine own-- Why shouldst thou then Give me death with it?" "My strength is more, Dear sister, than love's sin. If thou but knew The love I gave thee--no more Than it were joy to look On my head with thine, Thy sister, thou would'st deem Me as above death. "But why should I Feel dread of death? My death thou dost not take From me. Thou can'st not know What lies in my bosom. My life thou dost not know, Not thine nor thine. My strength to thyself 'Gainst thy smooth breast like waves. Thou carest not for my cry, The tears, the groans. "Because thy love and strength Have once the might To feed life in others' eyes, To wipe out shame, and down Impose upon men; Because my sinless tongue In that foul subjection spake Effrain, as they had been wax; Because thou didst once delight To see my soul's agony; For this were death indeed. My weakness to thyself Were to be evermore, As by thy fetters bound. But in the common life, Who am as a slave? Nought can I hope to be, Save one that I have always Loved more than my own soul. I do not look for hands To supplant my weakness, My weakness to make mine own More mighty than it is. And for my strength to be More than my weakness, I must love that which I am." " ======================================== SAMPLE 362 ======================================== There doth shade to her charm in foreign lands Are nought less noble than his fair Whom daily thus to the dread King Possesses his lady's Invitation. 'When North England's earl shall bring to woo A worthy bride to her his bride from far His most kind intentions will inspire, And when the new-made lord shall live A noble wife he makes many wait. With meight of merit he takes post By God's grace, for many a yeare. And although his birth, his land, and race, Are illustrious, without them doth she Thus show, her lord the espousal of An eager and a tender mind.' The tempest's fury howled, as the morn Went forth dispersing o'er the world; To-morrow, there would raven on the wind Other woes, other snare, pursue! And, if this trouble he did fear, What would he have? A song, she said. Says one that heard it, anon, who heard. 'For thus to lie and suffer pelf, And hurt the church to gain a name, To work the world's ill, nor do aught To win him love, and from him win Was murder: thus we robbed A sacred lay to live in The church's eye, while that fell sin Was strengthened. But the church is swink. Our priest, with fellow-priest partook, And proffered luck and boon. With blood and blood spilled With awful screams rose the hall of the Duke; The monks heard; their few pale warders Were struck. By some they ran to the gate, But none returned. The monks beheld A holy saint's eve and the soul had porridge, Stood the day-lights, sung within their hands, And rested till the day, and was the while Alive, and utterly without flaw, So had he won, for that day, with sin, What is enough for fame.' 'Nothing was true But this, that he in secret in Gatesby Had taken up with a fair Slave, whose sire, Immortal, gave the world the leaven Of death. Not sole; there was who butch, But the most simple errantness Remembers of the Briton's fall; All pleased, this Lord was in lustihead, Saw wherewithal to chat, to ply That favourite, fettered bull of his, This victim, who o'er his brethrendrove. On a broad lawn, o'er grassy weeds, A running stream was nigh, and, with beams Of flaxen taperised, each dip Of bended leaves was fairly made, With wanton wink, the playhouse glanc'd Oft to the blood's deep sides, like a bull, And he, that wont the world then as well As now to be the leading star Of burnish'd wonder in his face, In his own likeness took, as he would prove A tutelary Spirit, And tread that world with image, Till earth darken'd, and her darkening gran. 'Tis true, the gentle-brooding Shape Was mistress of the show; 'Twas so far rarer, far rarer, Than paragons, for to be The Lord of very wit. Herself, though fairer than fair, The versified paintings chose Till now, with winters all amethyst, Their amethyst shift'd to gold. Himself she, in her lordly mood, Was able to prepare, As in the pictur'd spaces He taken up his house. Not that she'd ever such content In sky or tress of green, or gold Of sheet or flaxen dress, Not that she'd an eye, that judged All advantage that the fashion's cost, She would not, could not be termed Of his half-expectancy, By love or flattery to that fair spouse Denied, Nor how he prize Asunder in the fogs of fate, His day and night. Even as the Eye of heaven, he thought, With other sights than what he saw, And, grief at first foreboding, The day and mead with sadness Now spent and escaped, For ever escape'd, occupy'd And part. The nymphs that with pearly raiments The Venus of her chamber gain, The lustrous coronal that Adonoxant With scrupulous brow donzeth for the suitor ======================================== SAMPLE 363 ======================================== Mell, men shout, Aye aye! the grinds Have lost their clutch. Drones with latticed feet Resemble heaven, The realms of eye (Floors that reekest) Disclose to gaze, And meadows dark Have seen the mop I mean to rake. O Love that is a flame, And love that is a dream, Oh none so strong as you, This squandering of wings Is nothing, I trow, Though my senses be Sickened with dew. Fair is my love, And I have found fair racks A dust to wear. You seek those rack-sacks With garland and with song? So, look we please My love and rue! A Cupids misgauge Turns sour Desire Which Reason wields, And to throng cold Fancy Is not allowing Your sweetness yet; But Cupid's self he mocks, And while he handles My heart, his giving Is, after all, in vain. No, let it set! It cannot. No, let it stay! But time will come And nibble at it; And Love in love, With thy soft pestilence, Will out live thee, Only in vain. I will not see the pain My fool, and yet ungrown, Put on a shameless gown, And go unto a fair one (Gone out of tune, And of Hells an Added In) To sport her gentle eye, Who may know of him but grace Whom Love had not; and, using The cry of Babel the more, Her sharp hearing hot to hear, I curse myself for half the Year I did not love. Because, by folly standard-made, I mised of Love to the earth, Had sinner peeping in doubt Beheld her, hating him to be Her Master, and with a sigh Gave thanks, and, nay, had not wept, Had I known Love, or had loved, Or made her the second choice, The first or second one; I am content to be Mistaken for him. I would and would Had not been weary with my worth The oracle made so good, Had I that Wisdom never done, And though half asleep, held fast the Faith, Had loved and served but not sworn, I would not care so much for Heaven Have I not loted on earth. I, much rather than if less wise, Would have in Love's lodgement lie, And have my Lay about the earth Tashed by night, and the midnight sky, And have God's fingers weary, And her warm hair brighten and dishevelled, And forth to do and dare In acts of Love, far dwelling And weeping of his wondrous waves, In bits and spurts foredone, I would not care so much for Heaven So little of it had won For knowledge. Such is but a passing state, None can long the mastery hold, To have observed one long day In most places and at most; But, when I heard her mouth Foliate, I hid mine; for her sake, And yours, I swear it was true, That I but dreamed. When yon sightless shades Like robes of everlasting gloom Wrapped us round a room A dreadful fury in our ears Shrieked like a falling sky, Nor did the dark-blue dawn offend Her solemn nightingale Lifted her notes beyond the street And died, as with a sound of weights, The moment I turn and see The riddle of our loves; The names of False, and Fool, and King, Were whispered, nay, swore beside The Crown, and girt us: good and true, With grey-beard omnipotence. The Shepherd tied us fast; and sure By his and Holy Writ, Mine, mine is wedded to him And throned in her! And I that I may see Her face, the night reveal In all the solemn places! The cabint rubbit in each eye Of noble men, The shrivelled Royalty in vain That forms the pageant of life Where, like dead tapers, flaxen Half-buried lies, The ancient skeletons That grumble and mutter Among the tapers cold. I would not have the days for this Since I know not what to do With Love or Life when ======================================== SAMPLE 364 ======================================== Like some stormy weather: Their bien-pensances were more than I could bear When I wuz only in 't, They shoot so straight. I was a lean horse at first, but now I'm stout As I's peace can make you, There's a chin in 't called luck, I'll have yer believe, When I wuz only in 't, There's a luck in wit, I'll have yer believe, When I wuz only in 't. There's a smell in 't called food, I never eat wrong When I'm only in 't, There's a tell in 't called work, I tell you do this When I wuz only in 't, There's a length in 't called rest, I'll have yer swear, When I wuz only in 't. When you come to voice an 'le, Them chaps you wag will say: "What's the matter? You dear? -Why, why not--Dear, no!" The maudlin, the vacuous, The bland and the bead To a touch of the chinking<|endoftext|>This is the man who appears in the white war paint, with his tie tucked into such a position as that he is prepared to run for the Lord, if the Lord will send the men that he has into the land of Israel, even before he shall come on the battlements. The brethren have spoken to this man that if he withdraw forthfrom among us, as the smoke draws westward toward the points of the compass, we shall perish together, all of us, and none of us shall be left, and if he stand by the ships of the nation he has vowed to bewitch, we shall burn them with fire, with the wound upon his eye. Woe is this to talk among men! We have moved out of here from the land of the Phaeacians who entertained and received me as a prince. My own kinsmen have appointed me a room in the halls of all Israel, but the young men who are at the front of these proceedings, have put poison in my formation and have set my city in an onslaught. There is a sloping of the hills and flowing of the rivers which is the warden of our people. They shall drink when the Lord shall send down a deep flood; they shall lie in the dirt, and their strength shall be made light, until the day of their alarms. Then their harried chariots shall be but vultures which cry out against their master, but we men of the war, with sword and with buckler, shall be bound as yarn with their enemies. War is the father of peace. War is the mother of safety. We have sat together. I have no sword upon my face and my heart against the host of Canaan, of the women and the children, who shall fly when the many men at the white gate, even all of those who have sung against their enemies, fall with their bodies cut off. Here is a maid, a maid of clay, a worthless chattel, the wife of a king of mixed milk, whiter than the heads of his enemies and of fat sheep. We shall wax white like the one that is right beneath our feet, when we are swept out from the mouth of the whale. This is the war, but it is far, far worse than any war. Our enemies are not grown to this trouble of war. Their palisades are of cedar and a little flaxen grass, which is neither the sound of a trumpet, nor the roar of the lion, nor the fierce voice of the wild beast. Our harps are our rings, and our swords are the wands of our beloved ones, and the flood of our rivers is our transformation. The Devil's own entrails is a hungry and burdened soul, it is. He makes of this earth a footing to be hung on, and all sound is sweet to him. The Celestial is the flower that grows within the mind of the son of man, and he makes his works into its sound. A noise of thunder is the threshing of the gold, and a threshing of ploughs is the noise of God. A sound like the rush of the wind across the meadows is the putting down of the wind in the highland. Son of man, according to your fasting, give no quarter. Because of my deeds, my father and mother and sister will ======================================== SAMPLE 365 ======================================== With his tongue I would call every fat lecher. I would kick out every stinking fatail With a worm’s-eyes and a pair of monstrous claws. To a metal dish I would set a shower of chickens. Once again to the brothel I’d insert a rod and wheel. Thump, thump, thump went the bed when I pried open all their drawers Of gold and found nothing but coats, rings, and cash. I’d begin throwing beans at them and then stop, And then I’d begin throwing cabbage and then stop, Until something in me was hungry and they stopped coming. They’d crawl under the rug and then come up and speak. “Leave off talking, anyone you’ve been writing to, or Fucking, I haven’t been writing to any one. Go find a real writer.” They reached a sudden palforn that I let them cross And I set off with all the men in twos and threes and fours To find the real writer. The men gave great raucous cries and walked with such steam They sent up clouds of incense that settled on a bed. “Writers’ houses’ postrels,” I heard one say. We finally found a real writer in a deserted place And his neighbours considered it quite good station To be in such a desolate place. He asked us: “How did you come to get here?” “We found you in a hurry and we liked you.” There was a throbbing of an orgy in my prickly clit As we blathered to the writer and we were done. All were done and we started to walk home. I told “I” to a hat stand and gave it to him And he handed it back to me with: “That’s yours,” he said. <|endoftext|> "His Wife’s Sister", by Charlotte Thomas [Living, Death, Marriage & Companthood, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Home Life, Nature, Animals, Trees & Flowers, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment] In a fog he swaggers like a gleaning böddle with tits that shake out dollar bills at his nipples like fairy lights above water. I can’t fathom what he saw in me but I’ll say his old bare-assed shoes in the peephole: POSSESSOR. His wife’s sister cleans up in the dark her brothel’s employees huddle like skin in a coffin. My feet ache I’m famished—I guess you can call me that as he congratulates me in his hooves, dabs his forefinger and thick varms his bare knuckles. I fling my chair back and see what he’s about to do. His staff writhes, all teeth and depleted nogs and snarls at corners, turned back into beds. <|endoftext|> "Personal", by Charles Alexander [Living, Death, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment] Out of thin air it flows, after heaped words and useless vowels of prayer, the tortured tongue, four skinny arms held out of the body: penitence. The soft, rounded barrel chest of his pipe, the four fat fingers of his right hand perfect, the anatomy of contrition, straightens, shortens, softens, melts to music at this gesture, reaching beyond mortal endorsement, this forewarning of the other, this rule for anguish: joy. Out of thin air flows the stubborn wine, he pokes the garter with a thumb and the blind kid winkes from the oven as the sugar syrup is poured with gloves that a mother gives her child for the first time. Now the sun pours his prodigious rays and the limbs are transformed, vines are flung from the high roof-tops, this year's lamb cast lamb cast into the forth. The righteous must be punished and is it a consolation that he is in Heaven? Is there time enough for an active mercy? Pupindom, the crime is punished as punishment—as people are punished as they please in this land of surprise where there is no reckoning but, sorry it’s in God's best interest for the lamb and the blind squirrel though purr and nuzzle both are stilled yet made a existence. <|endoftext|> "Piano", by Hayden Evans [Activities, Music ======================================== SAMPLE 366 ======================================== As I plodded on the road, Evening, noon and afternoon, The lady in the yellow season Called me to tea. Each of us would speak Of that which cluttered up the heads Of us then, With talk of friends that went before And thus the holiday In one deep bowl of morn. And all our friends we talked together Of things that have been, Of road and sun and stone, With the yankee we conversed Of a man from Sydney. Her home was to the west, Like the peregrine Of mountains green Of the salmon nest. Her attire Was worn so lightly It seemed to float About the air. She liked a ditch, And the brook. She told us of It being October And so we conversed About the weather. When this minx first we met, She was nothing but An old cork-trap, Old, and rickety, And out of parts like Some old cork-clouts. She had no other As, indeed, the hour, When in broad daylight she Floated to the ground, That was not she at first, Who brought the hour. I never said a word, When she was over me, All that I could do Was to kiss her hand, And hold her in my own, And say "How's the wife?" In other words, sir, To ask her name, I said "Oh,--oh, Mary," And made a sign of X. They are big fellows as well as I; While I am poor as I can be; And he's as big as he can be As he has been through the stiles. We can walk by the river side And see the peaks they pass, And one can follow the other And look down on the town. We're both so much alike. We both need a run; And off I go, and stop, He's more the man who runs than I. We never lack a steely shilling, Or common cause to join; We sit at any Board or Committee In any place in town. He may be strong, as I am light; As I am tender and slim; And what he do is certainly good, But what I say, sir, is worse; He runs--and do I choose it, sir, Through smoke and through ashes; While I myself have to walk abroad, Without a joy, sir, Till the morning of day. 'Twas therefore, since I could ne'er say To him that took me from you "Oh, take me instead," that I Would go my way, and stop, But as we scorned each other's sight, I changed my mind, and turned aside From those who would have taken me. And they scorned me--"Surely," they said, "Such things are free; No matter who the thing be, You must take the name on name, It's all the same in the end. When I was first of December, And saw that the year's half-sovereight, Then, folks, it seemed to me I said to myself, in a tone Of my head "What a pity, So many of the same sort as before; Why don't they come and see us then! If they could have seen us, no doubt They'd have as much of a stake As up and left them at the town." Now, folks, there's a necessity, If one would tell a tale right, For I don't want to have a book, Or have a story told; And, with a heap of trust and faith, 'Twill do me no good To tell the truth just now. I have a brother, God rest him, I've seen him a thousand times By his window-panes on Sundays From Sunday to Monday; and when He went to church on Sunday-- And he went last Saturday,-- What a sight I remember! The preacher in his frock And his family dressed, with hats I said to him, in my mind, "My brother, now you're so like, You cannot be more like, you see! A man like you wouldn't be dull, Nor be so full of self-skelum; If you'd be one half as you are, You must never have lived." I said to him, no doubt, man, "What is there in ======================================== SAMPLE 367 ======================================== now...some other, more likely... I'm sorry for you, my dear— Trouble arises from nature, with its troubles and delusions. Who does not know this, and yet looks with aloof eyes at the wheels and fabric of things? Some spark—'tis up to us who are to blame or thankful to judge...say...trouble does not seek to keep the spark, the color and momentary speech of mind. To take hold of things. Let us not praise too soon, it may not be done. Nature is speed, not slackness. All's one now, we all live, but yet what is one is a lattice, a house with a wall. And you, you're that same, though you wear an ignoble air. <|endoftext|> "Difference between a Solitary Follower and a Solitary Dish", by Sue Fulton [Living, Life Choices, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Arts & Sciences, Reading & Books] Dinner at the Library was simple. The sounds of crinkling paper and voices shuffeting through the quiet air. And there it was, a book, a physical object minimally possessed: once a king and once a scholar, now a protocol, sort of dusty, but perfect, in its uncurled bound. The heavy, calibrated weight, fine as a thread drawn through the world, a beloved stranger in the city, uncomforted. Once a man. Now just an old friend’s delusion, his impotent regret. No, thank you. But one comes where they will. Nothing is lost. A tall, a refined philosopher, a poor good-time with a new girlfriend, they wander along the thin paths through gardens, sand, salt and coal, flowing under the sky, they read and tune the same pages, the same books, the same books again. Once a man, now a child. Once a child, now a dog, or what is left of a dog, a phantom, an aspiration, some memory, a faded blueprint from another time, another world. Now so much space, what light on what, what sense. A final conviction, or a rejection. No, there is light on what. Light on a sky, a garden. A landscape: there is some space, there is night. The night begins with a whisper and ends with a shout. <|endoftext|> "The Suppers", by Robert Fernandez [Living, Death, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] Ise from his room at the Rittenhouse centers On the blood of Poets. He inhales As if on tiptoe. Vomit everywhere. Poets do not dispense wisdom. At least They should not be required to, and yet here Is silence genial. The merchants Of satire and the macabre smile. A tubful of port and a pipe full of Whittington. What place to seize a derby In the firm's spacious mess of mail, Where only the chief himself Is surely 5 feet tall, yet seems To react to morrow with a call For 'Philosophy,' “a philosophy” That in the time the paper is dead Is always youngest, most beguiled, Like any sparrow, by the glare Of Socrates and Arnold Or Diotima. It is hard to Negotiate without yet seeing the sums, But here is time. And this, to speak In the fond humors of the equator, Is this a time to speak of numbers, Lest the night be imminent, A time to feel it now, now More than a passing juggernaut That leaves, momentarily, the Settled posture of thought, Like a golden record of suns Beneath the flurry of rags, the old Time and thoughts to come. Because Pleasure arrives at the hour When little else can be great. Because The snow white yet burdens The fancy with the power Of now. As the ice has no (time) And dreams are wobbly, a swirl Of fear, of something we can’t Have. Because, once the night has passed, Burden and depression, blame and praise Are unrelated, linked and tolled At the waist like traffic lights. As ======================================== SAMPLE 368 ======================================== Far from the Palace-ward, aloof, I sit in a dark vine-shade, Throned 'twixt twin fire-lives: there and then The garden sleeps, and all is still. Then do I give unto my eyes new states, That like new worlds their lust to greet: And do I hunger to see as in days My hues were nurtured: in the brazen door My eyes outshine: thus the nails do parch My hot hue: ah, what excess of heat Doth bruise my blood, and speak my heart As weptuous for such vanity! I fear you, Besolino! even now I seem to see you in the clear, As in your Mother's lap, you spake To her, before she spake to me. And thus with speed I did confide The other's eyes, as always I strive to see each gift anew With nearness. When my eye did focus So near the other, the others Stood mute: in myself, confoundedly With doubts and lust, I sank down. "Say!" said the Slav, "your lips, you gals Who teach, can nourishment make? Oh, it needs starch, if 'tis love is made, To make him gather, or be weak, Or of his own blood to be bred. By what right of arms have you no right To lay your fingers on his heart? By what right of love, or law, Have you no right, in the heart of him Who is my heart, no right, to set The law of her own voice in his? What is not hers is mine; how can I Call that love, who in his is heart The winter and the spring? Can I say 'Failing love,' when there is no failing? But can the thing loved, heard, or seen With propriety be the same With what is not? Yea, this we hold To be unnatural, for which no law Of speaking rights can make appeal. "Or how," said the Slav, "you were my son, And not my daughter, and how bad is father? Not a bit better than a Jew; and Not a bit less child than a beast! Would You like to kiss the rising moon, or what? Rape the market, leave the man behind? You know full well he shall not cut it; Nor work, nor, grown owlish, will I eat The lips of dogs; this of right, and that Of right was this man's, and that of right My right. But if you were not such fools As to be overtaxed on looks And on count'nance, then myself I'd say Nought of this; you'd to your new-chipped wood Put a proper lid and corner; and I Would sit and thresh the tray with my spine, And look at you,--poor ignorant kwâsha, And wonder, until you chorier were than I." Then turn'd away his face with broad yawns, And sigh'd, and turn'd the seat aside, And flung his wide fore-lap of arms Like a mummy about his peccary son, And drove him up the hill, and scolded all The way: so little intent he lay How thus could other folks contend with slumber On earth; and how th' unmolested child In its indolence might go so far. But in such strange unquietness of mind Childhood and childhood ever yearn; and these Great things that trouble their tranquillity Like an unquiet Demon that has seiz'd The House, or House like shadow, or thoughts, Then from the top of its pyramid of love Tear has left its aisles. Thereby no man, Save to the Hair and Face of things, Naught but the hapless infant, would see The infant lose the play of its care, To lose it would be awe-struck to see From its sweet lips down to the last young word The contractions of the childish tongue Of its innocence, to the soft sighs Of gossips whether from day to day The neighbour it has known. But from these things, My Milk and Stone, comes that which thou art, As to the Milk of which this child is made, And from the way in which these things are so Are thou as Rock or Synthes, whereof The body's partner is man: for put these two In their organisation, back to their primal roots The arch-creator began to change ======================================== SAMPLE 369 ======================================== Stirred the calm sunset, and, refreshed by the night, All that for which this hemisphere is sworn to light Back on dark Russia in the glimmer of its spears, Burned there in rage, as brothers from a sin- Delivered forest; and its breath the pine-mantled wave Shed in that hour, when Paradise could with a roar Subdue its waves, and earth's web the primal trees Let down that jasmine blue as sky on limb and limb Whispering, and her precious cry of thanks and thanksgiving Low through the myriad-fabled boughs. Quick to the Saxon sprang Sigtuna, with its dripping Devil-horn blazed; they heard its noble heathen friend Mingle with them, while with simple screams And stormy cries came to its aid Fair France, set in her courtyard's smoke Above the snowy banquets many From there; fast as they, they could not flee; But they from whom The flame had come within that Alpine lair Ere his swift career was done. Not there alone did he light The fire where it could feed; But where the fog was low; and like a nation's Lulling breath of fire, drawn through high woods, Low thro' the atmospheric heaps it drained The millstone-echo of its work; There by the fire's mast Which in the spring-light, in the winter frost Was there could float no keel for sail Nor be the white; the sign of any prey Blameworthy, or bar, or bolted yet. Up one grieved anew That maiden vision and the deep scorn Wherewith the ancient said: "Grow cottage-born Once more; and shall this child be brought Without a mother's bewailing? Art thou not sought, thou blood of earth, The heart's chalice of our passion?" And still she gazed, and, like the south-wind in "Lo, this," she said, "is the cave wherein Shall slumber more than gladden sleep, and all The mast and gledealf of England's states Lie here; the court-house, the pillar of state, The throne, the bloody axe, the roseate tongue, These to be found at last. How we may move Upon them, next, if not too large, for lack Of roof, are squares of beams and rafters, Ebruks of cane-wood, fastened to the foot With screws; which, when the a[C]yverse tramples them, As with a beastly stride it may His fawning from the pine-tree bolt by fawn, Trample, heel and trample, till each trample slips Down the green slopes of the valley deep. I love the great river, The great river kisses The trident of the sea, The great river, that we share, That is speaking in public now For the Lord's service, that was silent With outworn Rhadamanians, and as soon As his great forefathers were in turn Speeding the pageantry of his Lordship's land. The mighty river's-streams that do bide In assaison with the Egyptian marbles Bidding their barbarous kind name in trust To God's truth, and not of their greatness kissed off, Doe shed their noblest manhood in this land. Its valleys filled with the haunts of man The banks with horsemen, the leafy seats of fair, The majestic back of mighty trees, and tops Of citadels, its low wall and suburb With gables, drooping eastward over trees, Pillar-cased, porch-towered, column-strew With gilded landings, the stately pleasure-grounds Bounding it like two broad rivers from two highlands meeting, Two as big as that clove lighthouse lamp; The haven, temples, sphinx-towers, crown'd with snow, The forests thick, the rolling meadows green and still, The banners trailing into the breeze, the flock That whiteth in the cedars, the light That drowneth in the waterfalls, and the eagle's nest, And towers that lighthouse or a churchwarden's head, And are off this, and by that Uppland's spring, By Danseyning's stream or Narnykog's stream, The rivers more, the broken mountains far off, The bright sun shining in their face, the lie Of the highland-coast and north; And eastward of the solemn brow ======================================== SAMPLE 370 ======================================== I fear it, shame the futur of my sex And break the barricall that they guard, If I should shame the hair that bears the pear That all the three zones have won, If I should mock the laboring heart And outleap the breast and wattled flax, And the medium weight hair that none can doubt. So sweet is water's speech In the nest of even notes, That this short line of my gentle strain Is what most strongly endears it. In fact I should not be angry, for I love you still, none the less; But your eyes would lose their lightness, If they were clouded with anger, Your light were changeless as a frost That makes the colour of the roses Seck auburnet on a cheek, So would your gentle nature reek At the blast of an ungentle mind. And I have sworn as I stand here That I love you with all my heart; But may you see what you wish Ere you destroy that oath with me, For I may not enlarge my love Beyond its bound by seas, That God himself, who sees us well, Made no wider, better understand. To her at Wharton: Dear Aunt, I pray I may be your comfort. I've nae mame to tell, But let me tell you one thing, Dear Aunt, I'll tell you one time, 't is hore and plain, You may tak me to Wharton, By God, I'll turn about an 'ot an' do, As sure as God is God, An 'arf little babe, And leave the fewie on'y may know, An 'ave a name, And if yoursel You'll let me ken upon Your good will, Forbye, Ma'am, you I'll talk a' to'rds, Because you deserve, Yea, here's an end o' my story, For me there's not a chance: I've broken many a harp and caught An 'elder-convict, And 'ow I've broken and found me a pair O' wife. Then some there were that late did spoil and run, To chase away the sun, For down at the collar there runs a run Through broken chains an' fetters an' clink, Like some of us late, And life's much a buzz, An' the fust begun. But now I am going to air, for it's deep Down under me, And there's not much sun in the sky, I'm fu', For I've been fit. There's now but eighteen low me, With time to live, An' I'm the man for't, So some day the ghost that is me shall rise An' clear the smoak An' help the whale. Me wants to be a' cuddy, Wi' a hat o''t wrap, An' git me a pe-out o' such sweet green As my little Liz can eat. As we goes a' struttin' Up yon hills of about us, Sha' man on his back, For a' that; I ken if I'd myse'f be Up yon hills of me. It's blokes for the hills, boys, Where they's smoke in the air, An' ice-cream for all! An' they a' won't tak' the place That they're at! But let me glance round to the West An' see yon crazy town! Somethink it's the dumb-bells on the flume That turns 'em so far! Or that's when they've done wi' their wash An' the dimmer sets out. There's waterfalls yon bloke Is havin' trouble with, Sire! There's caves in Australia An' many thickks there. But I'll turn my face to the West An' turn my back upon all To sea-we've rotted. Oh, you're close, you're close, Sire! Oh, you're close to me. To talk o' new-cafted isness, An' how it grates on my ear, Like the chorus o' Flemish opera When every sound is as one. Just talk o' your feverish reason As in a cot's coking-pot, An' our bonnet's tattered, our sarks are twipped, An' we're wearin' seasonable winter ======================================== SAMPLE 371 ======================================== The necessary darkness and fear and doubt. This disease was the servant of my purpose To show the friends of Meredith to their duty, To shed the blood of damned men to wash from guilt The guiltless, to unmask a lie, unrighteous and proud. The shambles of bigotry and false doctrine, "The Bible and the devil!" cast the wreck of all mankind, God-hatred, the furious cry of wrath and wrong, And all the accursed mental weapons are Pitched at me, and none has paused to ask the why? This hate was woven in my path, the motive force My staunching act of murder was the overthrow Of the world's wisdom, my crowning avow was made Estrange in my own kindred of the God of Love. Down through the streets, upon the slippery road Where the horse-crateting gutter clouds the heaven With froth of filth and filth of sins, Uplifted my torch of words and I cried: "For this thou camest forth from out the West To soil the soil we stumble in with cobwebs And all that is is defiled and vain and bared For thee, infidel, are fetters and slings And all thine are chains and sticks for hands and feet, And this the goal of Faith, the goal of Shame, To fold the tongue too eagerly, to lie Of all men falsehood, so universal, With might that none can lift the ensigns of truth; I meet thee where the highway of the world ends, Who sends no banner for thy moving But the false flag of blasphemy and self-hate And the blood of men that hate not with the blood of men, The poor and the weak, the men of weak endurance, Those that your arms smite to earth or lay to sea; For this is Hate thy foe, again and again Be thou the tongue of thy own soul and say Truth, untranslatably, truth to the end of all things. Be thou the fire whereby men and things burn, Thy name be the word of hell, the word of grace; All truth is thine righteousness, truth is thine And the sunshine of truth, the sun, that giveth Avisible light on all with a invisible rod All shalt thou hold of truth, thy word of right. A speech of war! I meet thee, and my sword I lay Beneath thy feet in this foul scurge to unting The blood from men's hands that wer't half With blood from the door whereon thou fell, for all The world could bide, though fowls fed on the breezes Of thy bold heart in speech, the law that made Freedom's tower tremble from thy lip, the sign Of man to man a leaf for truth's annulment, The voice of man a drop of the blood of the dead, The herald of a dumb, dead heir of time, A voice of hate, a rage of the years of old; For all that is, as yet there is not my word Nor hope of word, all earth was wide and wailing On every side, it was a cloud and a dry time. The soul's cheer, the mind's divine, the greater gift Who dwells therein has lord and prisoner And slave within the body and the breath And all that breathes is sane or mute, One holds to earth and to her warps And no escape save in filth and decay. One only Law for all, man's errand and Zeus's game, The last or partial answer of grace, A word of wisdom, a desire, a decree At random made and unmade, too late or too soon, More of men's hearts than of their heads and brains Poured forth the word that hath hoards the air. (There may be where Joy is lord and servant A fan in the hand of Death to greet him) There was the Book, and there the Son of God, That must be trod, called by His own voice; There was the Word that meant for rule and guide, And there the Seal of God, that must be held To be a man's soul's immortal hint and law And fail or have not. No garden of grace Or ground of rest, but death's incestuous border Where rose and riot, law and tyrant and wild, Inwrought with nakedness and sharpened time Forced the empty sense of life or rest, The empty gest of Death, that reigns there. A wanderer far from home and wise Whose brain ran o'er with years of study ======================================== SAMPLE 372 ======================================== Many had lost faith in woman, Such was the rage with which they now were gripped, As hark to what Becca informs me: That our Crabbe his own ain Jackmores Had seized--the shy little elf--of course! It seems the jovial pirate of the West Was cap'-A-Ande--at last--! The good knight-- With thimble-arm naiads, of which, no doubt, Was a very fine troop of Jolly Roger's-- Had bid a most perfect form of brawls, And deignéd to manage--with a nod and a flourish-- Old Mary of Magenta, Lord Dalhousie's spouse! Just why a thousand years should not elapse, And they who reckon have their reasons to-- And all is very simple, but what I'm coming to, Now should you know, not now, about this Dalhousie-- Fanny's child, her darling. There had been here before, and was afterward, Two noses; that as a glove, and the other Was in the shaping-room; a pair of areolines Where others might have been; a pretty nose Might fill but put on the gloves. But one day His nose and her nose at last were so out of tune That both had rather be were out of tune. Their brawling so did annoy--and so did prevent-- (As I'll explain to you, fandofofar me confide) The coachman from coming forth in peace: So the coachman followed--and what was do for me But to apply to me--for by the famous law I had been made from fair Paris to fair Toulouse-- And be it said, while this can be, was done by me, And by this law-- One much has right to complain, To speak what nowhere is expedient: What would be meeter, nor justice, nor wisdom-- Were it the single fact--that, when two persons are together, One is to the appearance (although not of the soul) Farthest removed from what each resembles best. Yes, 'twas now-- Long since--the rare long-ago Of a conversation between us two-- When, as I (breathed) could scarcely a word gain In those unheard-of births from an Indian, Which were so unlike hum ago, I hoped you had put off the eastern-- As you said you would (for some vague sweet cause)-- And thinking, in the first place, a pleasure 'Twas but little that way, I said, so-- "Of a strange adventure, I shall relate-- About which nothing now exists, alas! This is a favourite story of long ago In which I did not play a figure, but a star. And the two Chinamen played (I remember well The for, and the il, as you will see) and once "Stole a shadow, which they hid behind me on my right And they played, and played as they were merely mistaken And that night, not even so, it was--I'll leave it To the world, for its "Chinamen" to behave-- That in those old days, with a rope and a "tasselled shoon," I could have driven to their chimneys A blackguard--only scarce to know, in the gloom Of the cab (as we swag-wise call it) before They rattled and a terrible storm arose, We were not without the common humour of being Shaken to props and rocked till the heavens grew dark-- I'll mention but his name--the chief, if I may, Of that motley crew, you will perceive,-- The gentle, meek, gormily-infatuated Peter Post I will not think this story not harbing in my mind When my natural shame I must quell With the cunning whereby I was bidden to play From the night till the morning in the bed-- Towards the sun, like a soldier on parade Seen so, and so defying the skies that he played, That (soon as I came in) was more than he seemed, And said, "Aha, thanks, (but this isn't they're story!) And much pleasure can be had in the way-- 'Tis all, as I told you, so plain, and, now that I think, Plenty more, if people are not afraid." --And some were offended, and some cursed, And the humorous and the pauper as one, and some swore He'd the cooch o' ======================================== SAMPLE 373 ======================================== wit spoke, his mouth dropped open. Then the shirtmyard maggots danced: each had a stick up his arse; soon all was clean-formed. That big juicy carver would love a pie in the face! <|endoftext|> "The Bicycle Thief", by Carol Lynn Ahlers [Living, Time & Brevity, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Relationships, Pets, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] The bicycle thief was a bigger man, an ex-model turned retail thug, and he turned the corner discreetly, not dropping the plastic tray until he was on the sidewalk, ten feet away, in a beige sports utility vehicle. A nag on the sidewalk grabbed his arm and pulled him, and he was gone. He made a point of saying that he liked to do his "last hits" (attempt to break the victim's security measures), and he liked to run the client for switching addresses—it made him want to live in New York, "like a native." Not a tribal but a distinct ethnic minority, he used the plural "nations" and felt indifferent to the two-nic: "I've seen enough of north, south, east and west." <|endoftext|> "O Meul Gay!". In Singapore, there is a traffic island; it's a huge circular park built in the colonial days for carrion birds to perch on. Birds are commensurate, and there are varying numbers of songs one could choose from—one for yourself. <|endoftext|> "My Villa". If I have any meaning in this world, it is this: I am a lime-small plant in a framework of great grandeur, and you are a mite upon a vial. I see the night sky ever night, and stars growing to be stars, and planets ascending. I know there is an ulcer somewhere within your heart, and there is a pugilist going nowhere. We are borne upward, and when we think of the sky, our heart-strings vibrate, and we two turn a conversation toward a theater and speak. O, you come across the sky bridge to say hello, and say that you come to see the dusk sky uglier than ever. Let us know of our friends. Where can we go? <|endoftext|> "The Brotherhood". Sixteen members of the former government went to America in 1939. And once again, your prowess led you to fame, to riches. But it was not without adversities. <|endoftext|> "Forecast", by Seiichi Kanbun [Living, Life Choices, The Body, The Mind, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Men & Women, Nature, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] A word called “forecast,” a secret in the air a trick of light. The word and the trick, and what it means. I’ve seen, the sun almost makes me cry. Every sunrise soothes. All this runs over the horizon. A weight on the sea, a lost thing found again. How to say it? When I cast a shell for a thousand years I only find myself. When I wake up, I wake up with my body. The world is not a body that suffers. I know I know it when I lose it. I remember the first time, I was so nervous. I am writing this in an underground cell. The mouth where eggs are hatched into birds. Where I live. The ceiling is green glass, green stone, white marble. I write, I write it here. <|endoftext|> "Recuerto/Arquanto", by Gerard Depourny [Living, The Mind, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics] (from) vs. Anagrams Thais (from) Malacoglu (from) Morat (from) Sempre/To (also, as prefix) Reccheleister (from) Malcasse (from) Morrish (from) Benaim (also) Demasoy (from) Nunci (from) Demircan (also) Noche (also) Nuve (also) Demurante (from) Recuerdo/Arquanto (from) Alaik (from) Gorurg (from) Karak (from) Alag Hecer (from) Bocephus (from) Murmur (from) Kak Dalepse (from) Caecu ( ======================================== SAMPLE 374 ======================================== Inne, nane answer, nane ane to hear; I trow not shall my crone deade, But I must love my penauns alone: My ladies, my maynos, and maides, My wooers, and my sweet yomen's wale, And, ere I take my servise end, To gete grace of my squire agen, I make awaiting God above. O ye the vintners, and ye wise See! Heav'ns yeilders, have here byde; For all that travell'd, wit and ease Alike, are fled away, and nought forme. Rise up, and hear ye nought seene Of your now, but cursing and unkyne. O whoso' this in ye maister quat Rant so boond, set on to bee sene. When time's for the best, and grace with send, My warkinges grow ne'r wefire, And, her leis'hinge to getme doome, I can no wight, and I make no schame. For, while a-sawing, I be deedlyve, The grain growes on in good or bad astere. Say God, as mark'd y' reade the gate Of my cristinemyst, the which made yow Nought shently but al the world and thee. See! see! now with my tyme I sin Y' offen, that none may sene what yoo say. And when that I am slane, see see! all Have doom'd my maister with the swife, That my creature, wight, may I may dye. For durst thou foue that I am With my Maister (says the leche) Her dow'r and her Sonne to make, Sombrely be thankful for my sake. And be ye sure, my goode maister, Kinde and fable, than ye are bothe! This your acceptance wit sauf, and let Your lufe rest with her maidenhood. Then thus spake the goddesse, Of cause her creature, and of grace: That your yifte for grace shall cure, And nothing tint there shall you fraufe. Alas when euery creature Is sauf and faultred that he be In goddes name is al but crif, For your sake take ye this covenant; Of al your lufe when you your tyme spend There's nothing, never was nor shall; But loke at your good, that you shall saue Ne'er the jorneye nor the lamme ye make, Al that you can for her be fait. If that you wolde save your tyme true, A grace securit in you take. Then with that she, to good intent, About the tyme you have cast a thought, And of the hevens you besurr'd her. The story that is to sein Then this is what youre lufe deserves: It being for your good, ye maister come T'appoint with it the lesse ye have lost. For, since you maister me your maister be, A great maister ye can make, The thing is shap, the manere blessed be: That's plaine: to mesne ye knowe wel The moystecs of your lufe, and then Of your good to leese and maister take. For that is good withouten crinoline: Let be you maister: so I you pray. Give yee the covenant that I'll thee aff, My maister be, to be a maister too With that it was the nede and day, And yeelded hem al the daies thing, That it should be for some tyme. The longer that unco folde nere The brestes nere in lufe laste, And the lasse it selfe forsoth algate, That it be cause of neverfayninge Ne sauf lande, nor spouton nor floode, Ne lefte cause and groundlesch action Ne diere raine, for than all this thing Wherof the worlde grew: and that was now The time approv'd, when for the fulle The lasse and larye al the rest Forslowten, nere nere wente abedde ======================================== SAMPLE 375 ======================================== For some man's dog; he bore a blade, And kept it--to his last clasp,-- And never ceased from lauding God For that same old estate Which keeps him fair and young as ever. This was the race;--these the shells Sealed in the hills: their blood the flood; The changed-back hair; The silly fight; the same great eyes; The long fine train of Union Club-torch; And the same shallow speech. Oh, death, but in that hour When judgment--in the shape of th Little, mocking dove-- Smiles on the morris, shall I join My lover's white hand, and go With other than my sainted sire Into the dove's meadows where parch'd stalks The small, green, prickly grass, and sullen swells Of enamor'd plumes beneath the moon? And with what music-mind'dness, Savage and plaintive, tho' for blood Away the soul should chug, should strain Life's chords 'twixt a heart and a sigh; Should gaze into th' abyss o'er-run With the mad face of a blood-stain'd star, What would be my verses! I should stop As I should sally, as I should sound Th' untun'd, the untam'd, notes of a god, Tho' for peace--as for hell-sorrow. Sweet southern winds, that blow Where Meduses mutter o'er the voice Of singing waters 'Mumbied are we that we hear Mumbied so dim beneath the cropp'd corn-trees wide; All the long mirth of the wing'd people here Slumbering on the breeze's velvet-tilt; Round a wavy point of moss, Do we renew our round of jocund mirth That the length of this young summer-month is Capricorn Sweet, sweet, dear earth! Our welcome, wild south-wind! Thou hast the key of this drowsy place, Whose watch the young moon keepeth; While, 'mongst the green plantain's leaves, With friends that like the pretty seasons, I dwell in fancy, and dream in my dreams. Thou on whose tresses, like that chill wreaths The sun flings o'er our southern hills, Still, though we from each other are estranged, Through noon-tide, oril 'mid yon cypress-trees, The soul, that free'st them from all bonds, Makes them delights again, and disarms the knees. For you the soul's essence is Melted into music's liquid strain, In which the water of joy's being is Made its own sound: as when the wine Is from the bubbling of the winemath; Or lilac-time, when, as soothed by the sounds Of distant organ, the mournful hours Grief doth with her secret suffer hurt. There is not of music--life's young days Gone--but I can return to it, And to its pomp; and by your fancies passed, Sigh from my heart, the haunts of sorrow; And wish to join in rapture's chorus, For every trick of the violoncello. No, no! all things have their term; And 'tis known to the Muse of old (How one turns through the Gate of Forever!) That every rainbow leaves off in the end, Gone the way of its glorious beginning. Time, that on many a wistful eye Lendeth a fresh eye-look, The merry bird of skies that 'gin to sing, Must pay the sober lip to slumber. The wistful eye, that lov'd to roam About the shapes of beauty fresh-seas'd, Must now to tedium fall; The lips that press to breath the air of joy, The smiling, then serene, gentle mouth, Must press a plume of quiet; So Death must make the robe divine, And Death must wear the crown of the grave. Who is the fool who stakes his manhood here At this infirm Nature's shrine? Who is this man whose foot is struck By this same mortality, And is dust, and lo! what death-dart strikes His body with?-- Is Death the penalty of a fools? The earth is too bare for me, God of the vine-clad earth! Yea, verily she hath assur ======================================== SAMPLE 376 ======================================== Faces of her struggle - cannot bear The midst of him at once and not lose A breath for weakness; that is well enough; The hope, her spirit and her faith Rush with the storm and beat the billowy walls Of foam against the land as a drowning man Paces in the track of the hurrying tide; He listens listening to the monotone Of morning bursting from the ears of rocks And farther, as if ever this again, The waves to the shore of the wave recede, And in the noonday woods she comes again, A flat plain and a dead world, where midst the floor Of the dead plain and the dead world she stands, A woman vast and weary as a cloud Of vapor lost from a lower system Tossed into the empty stars. She casts her shade Along the cloud-Abazer, through a gap The sky behind her. Not through these Gapes far into space, nor to aught Can compare with the wide moon or the stalk Of the moon, in that wide rift of space, Where there is not a speck or a trace Of a moon anywhere. But what has come To her is what no man has brought, or no man Can take away. A Woman all her life's a Woman, though it be In the fault or in the valour of her actions, Named the Heroines who were her foes; She is neither in her kind, nor in her time. In her life, as in a mirror, the eyes are Afroud, and the soul need not be shown. Her high heaven is nearer to us than this Listening to the tale of man. When the force Of the ghosts is in the open that may justly be soothed, And the wind-wrapped town of Denton is nigh, Her own heaven reaches back, and its reverent shade Seems a female voice to lull to sleep. 'T is on the crags of Eagles' [in the Chariot] That we ride to the hunt; and once again I feel the swiftness of the swiftness. Daunting fear Is on the hunt; not that round the towns we go Glutted with the waste moon, [but] that the Eagle's pair Near Pelin's grave may crash. It was no skull Nor forgotten shoulder took the keen fear, that e'en The death of Teuton braves-- In power 'tis to be where the most of them stand; And I must kneel upon his grave in mine, If strength be there. Though his once light blood be pale As the dead sea-shell's scarlet Whereon it was reclining, I have hazred it there Ever since the race which turned to stone had told Its destinies. I dare confess there is not one Among the array whose cry is good among our own, Nor one man's name that shrives himself in longing to sit Upon the breast that must be empty of me; Not more the lustier with the longer lives of life. Wherefore am I timid, strong, and stricken For one turned coward through this uncertainty Of the me, since no ally I find Shall help me to the work before us, if indeed It be our task to sort out as it were with our hands The urgent men and the urgent boys, not seek to tune Thereby the discord of differing men. Ah, we Look where the power is stretched, and every light Sets the horizons: power to ransack tree and stonetie, And cast away rags. But who will search through the sands Of time and chance and change the light to gold--no! who shall turn His heel upon the sands of time? It is left to us, To speak this unity of dark and light, And they to seek the West, before the light grows sure I had a son, O mine! and he has been Like me, god-gifted. Never to men Could he bring life, but where a god was of old To balance and settle death. Never, then, more Heaven, but one God. And this was my big question. Because he has been my son, all men Come to me, and I come to him. I have a son, O mine. O, let him be What he will be. I would him god In this dark body, as a god in death. But first I call on the God I made These many times, and making is not new; And what will I make? Shall the seventh were night And spring to walk in twilight, that one day Might tire of covering ======================================== SAMPLE 377 ======================================== Nay, lastly for a living wage Accepting here the eddying thees. Tittibowpa, was never wont A wide enough nor a tall enough pitch, But was a great tall full-sided trip Unto his divine equi-dumb- Who, seeing that he was a gloomy, dry pig, Gave him no salary, save from lemon pie And mutterings of the moon-struck cook, And he would not take of wages but barley. Like that-dealing ogre the Gods Agreed with Lassie to hanger, I'll trust thee not, I trow, with oaten counterfeit. By thy career to-day He's conquered all his china and his ground; Scurvy chipped the bastions to this day. --Ye winds a brotherhood! And ye-go-lah! I'm the thunder, and wind! Ay! the wind! Wind and thunder, together. Wind, sift thy manure upon the storm! Thou frost, build houses for the living. Thunder, bore the woods for dismal cabins! Flame, flame, to the hunting cabins. Pile their corners to be seen! --A bigger wind the earth hath never seen! He that can hold aloft his mic-bit fagot, Hath a firmery in his hand to meet the maul- That hath no corner to rest upon or to rest him! Pile on pile! Let the roofs be the summit, Flame let him lift! In those apartment-houses shall. Let a big sigh be heard from ye to-day! Dread grandfather, sigh! Rise not for present gain! Slave, sigh! thou massy harlot, wring the ancient dames. Sisters, sigh! Imbues yourself to meet your doom, Quit your present domicile! Can I not see a murderer's face? Marry, swoon! O would the wedding gift to rob Crimsoned death and dark disgrace Wrest on me, with loneliness To my born stranger! To be, in the dark o' care, Your couple or your husband's name. I know not the worm which hath done this To my body could forgive such cheating Of the mother, that it could not forget Itself. I am wroth! I feel in soul These darts fall from me not unclean. O for a trout in the stream Of the world and the world's besetting soul! What's done cannot be undone. I look on the wife in the mirror there, I am also as her in face. Make at him with cudgel! I can't forget I'm a woman! Here, come and kiss me! Get the trout and throw me down the crag! As yet I am unchristened! Get ye gone! Drowned in the stream my life shall not go! Mother I am! I complain! She will rise! --What's that? 'Tis nothing but the last kiss I gave To one of the ancient dyers! 'Twas in the spring! --Help me to drink it and make me fit For joy, dear mistress! Down into the spring Of those old fountains in our Mrd! Worn out and old, yet strong enough to try Our Martian journey, we climb again To try and achieve the rocket road. Until we achieve it, though all worth And pleasant our way, our stomachs beat Our minds have not become quite as good In joy as they otherwise would have been in space! So, all the while, we e'en despite the sun, By playful gust, do sing and dance Laughingly; for, though this iron time And vastness makes us all so fond of shape, This too is past, and joy, if we let it, Becomes our life; so that all, even thus Pell'd with slumber, gladly fall asleep! And we have known what we have seen, and we Have felt what we have known, though this may be Our peace, though this be past, it cannot change The ills which we have known, and left behind, These effects! For what breaks not the clay That holds our spirit, though it be Each atom of it scattered o'er the blast Of all these worlds, and thrown to waste In space and time? Where is he Who cannot in this sunless world Discover yet some fragment of himself? Yet, if a man's tomb were ======================================== SAMPLE 378 ======================================== roofed with asbestos. Six boys clump: back arched, back arched. Quiet. Pajama bottoms; chakra pockets twinned with feet. A mat flecked dark with pink-tinged snarled; ribbons, teen-age scars, a ferny frill, formed. That boy. The first to scream as I carry him through the dark, tailting me with ire: Queen! Where’s my trout? In the boy’s pocket, folded in his lap, is a ring with a lei surui—a ceremonial offering to the spirits, for the dying wish of any member of the dead. A piece of the grim: another fold in the pall of my shame. “Could not see, could not hear,” he wrote to me, “were it not for the moon, the light and the sounding of bells.” His last letter to me was on my eighteenth birthday, and tenderly representing a love unchanged, from the depths of death he wrote: “All is well!” I knew it was. A fish leaps as my hand stretches toward it. As I teach, as I teach the fish, circling, circling. Who will then teach, and how? Or is the fish still so wet, still waiting, to find a wetter place? It’s your turn to do the circling. <|endoftext|> "I Am", by Karen An unflattering sketch of an athlete who has adopted a maverick persona After he won the silver medal in pennancy, the medals piled high in his locker at the Olympic Stadium, I recalled his friend and captain, who stunned me with her barbed retort: In aeronautics, as in everything else, he was worst of all time. The next day at the gymnasium, we were met with a welcome press of sunshine, and our notes circulated among students and teachers like "Ich -snyder ne oratorio, I -snyder! in grave (desert)- hill keys." That evening, once our class finished, he moved to another part of the gymnastics center, bought a lavender suit at a costly boutique, and approached me. “I -snyder have I got a thing?” I paused for a moment. “What do you mean?” I asked. He eyed me, then answered briefly, “Listen. Earth is made of dirt.” <|endoftext|> "Kitty'o Gras--Act", by Amy Harvard [Living, Life Choices, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Activities, Eating & Drinking, Nature, Animals, Religion, Other Religions, Arts & Sciences, Theater & Dance] So the act: I bought the kitty In the fanciest portion of Town. She smelt and Seemed like any other variety of cat: tan or grey, But most alike in that respect. Some popular derision Leaded me to capture her. At the sale I noticed She rolled her eyes or drooped. The paws, eyes, fur, Discovered my quick eye tones would not bargain So well. No human shopper let alone one So attired as I. Had I a knife or gun, A pair of spurs, a gold crucifix and such Drunkard things in my possession. I’d have Desecration. That was the idea. But the idea was Sweet to me. Thereafter it waxed, waned, grew Into how ev'ry wait was dislodged, occupied By her immaculate scorn, her fugacious streak Of honor, if my best phrase is to take It. By the books, the idea is sound, of course. But, hey, who’s dykes and books for? By That I got hold of her tail, clawed a corner And the right side tingled, just like a watch I said, Whose neck on the pretty bloodline ran to An eye’s whites. Tore the poor tail at the hip Like a grub like a bear claw, like a good burglar Cuts and stakes. By what black hand I could tell, by what sleight of random spite, By what indecent latitude this dyke - She, poor beast. I walked away. The sky held clouds. A horse, I knew, Lay beneath his shelter at last. He lay Watching, listening, his horny head On back. Wore like the real thing could be Heaven knows how far; nor only did his ear Spin like a hare’s, but like the wing Of a needle’s eyes, a nodding ======================================== SAMPLE 379 ======================================== flank; I shall have none, for mine is turned to bow, My heart to flint. I thought my whole life dear was my gay life's fair prospect-- O'erwhelming, blest with pure enticings of joy! But--dear me, when my heart's her spirit's unquiet terrors to own! The flame of love had first kindled in my bosom, And then the sleeper's dread-tale of true love appeared, And with it each sense grown keen with hope is sharp with anguish. The sun upon the lakes Is gold, the rays of whose light Are rich and clotted with lightning's drop, With which their white shells are shod; The souls of their white-winged fame All glistering and shining, And as the perfume that buds In the hush-laden deep Of all summer-time, they are. Your beauty's a scent that dulls Its soul to pleasure's bliss; And as my eyes are full, I wonder, if you will The love that holds my heart For one to whom it is sweet to look. There is a house above the clouds-- A low white house above the hours, With shutters fast, and bars of gold; And here are sheets, and pins, and samples of precious things To those who come to take them, When they leave the keypad false and brave, Where various spirits pass. A jade flute smells faintly of rose and sandal, A gold snare-worded Instrument of Love, With its palm its diademed name; Its grass-grain pattern, like bubbles a-sitting Upon its slope, is serene to view, Like petals of a morning spread, It leans and smiles beneath the bowers Of that green enchanter known as Love, Who blesses every hour With gifts--sunbeams for every hour. A dragon with a burning tongue Is coiled behind the house; Each spasm in his dusky den Seems another flare beneath his twirling To light fresh thro' its cage of wasted breath The envious flickering of his wan fires Of intense blue,-- To grow and breathe and knit With each new-halgrown radiance round the core That burns still with this fever-beat of fire. In its fullness over the clouds of mist, The crescent moon lolls a span or more above; And when the fires are flung up in their ire, From under their peaceful winking wings, Then is an hour suspended--and an hour is all That these strong soul-fires can say. Above the grass-grown meadows, where cool the tulips lie, The house stands lightly built against the clouds of snow. He lifts his hand that it quivers into a spark Like water dropped into a flacid-sand beach; The house that my heart in summer-veer Built from the plans my mother devised The autumn is just about come, The woods are warm and green and dark, The fields and woods are shining with a lustrous green. The day comes hungry and worn, With a will that will not subside till midnight. The sun climbs the south, The moon circles the blank- blank days that follow Their beams pale, which find no place In a sky too warm for golden-green skies. The bull watches the clouds-- In his eyes they have a trace Of smoke; and he walks peacefully The long gold paths of the mist. The moon and his smoothness are the same He moves in an unbothered way, His eyes are no moody fire, His nostrils scent the air With the scent of a flower Where the light on the meadow comes, And where the swift orbs Of eagles' wings, now beating Against The dome of the blue, dim sky. When on the pointed gold of the corn The first fire lights the morning gold, The faces of the countrymen Are turned from their glow to the sun, Wherefore I do not count the hours Until the summer evening sings To the blue hills, where it looks far Into the yellow sky And the sunset's yellow and golden Burn of musk and gold on the dusk. And none but I remember this,-- The day that we rejoiced with the day, While the day was spent as a matchless thing; But all things are changed now--the height of the year, The moons, are below me now. The grass is greener and the mown grasses blow Trees are ======================================== SAMPLE 380 ======================================== Enter in, O! madam, Enter here, madam, And, call the conjuror, To toss o'er the tricks of dice, And turn the tables as ye will! And who, the ony giant That when's t' game 'tis raining, Come in in a bonny car, What joy and splendour, Which every one, Full royally did enjoy, And found it pleasant and pleasant. And this feat I thought rather fine, To have display'd one's bonnet, When one's oghne maist up made, And most like mighty glory, O! very fine, To have here powerfull wield Your bonny ony gorget, And 'twas so I loosed the jewels of your sences, And bound them fastly in your pocket, Where e'en your look and air believ'd The treasures there to make report To wonderful men. The play to you was bright and Most playfull wel adorn'd, And your eyes that finely did prize The bonny blushes, To divid them as they would Was pleasing to see; The mirthfull scene was rich and the ony fiends Are worn and dried up for want of airms to coint the fair Goddess of thine eyes. The King of Portugal for a portion of his kingdom A place did grant me at his table to eat at ease, We feasted, kings and princes In gen'ral form, And being now quite equipo' In manner, manners, and in From work,--I fear, I went hence; My grandsire is lame, and My uncle is dead, There is no man here but I, Nor to above One onan, He has neither a mouth nor an eye I take my fist, My stepson have pain, The trumpet sound, When we, too, have eyes, And taste the sweet, Of sense, We see the heavens rolling, And the ground go round, And the earth go over, And the world go over; Adown the rabbit-way Down to the holt, Adown the rabbit-way There is No one to hear, Only one to see; The sun's too great for sight, The moon's too great for bleeding; Nor yet will the nights be dark For all to-day? Shall then the spider spin A gap At three? To make clear A six-seventy-one? So that 'twill stand My patternou's done? My lesson come? My God or no God? Can't we both read and write? Well, then, at last-- The persimmons still must stand, But with a little beaded bag They'll bear the weight Of delicious fruit To come at the book, While the boughs will bear The fruit ere they be uighed, O that the bees should come And steal the plums away! O that the goose should sit, With his head cut off, At yonder reading place! Crown him with rosebud wreaths, Kiss his cheeks and say, You'll throw them where he lies When he is dead. When it has killed the grass And blown in his haste, Why, then, 'tis my dream, I have the right- To pluck the flower For all I've given. And this is love. Love, 'tis my dream: How else could trees live, Or grass, or stars, or men; But as I dream, my friend, The poet writes To a maiden heart: Sweet reader, steal my songs, When I the songs of the field Or river take You to the book. O thou youngest and loveliest Of all flower and leaves and tree, To a book thou art Whom Love redeems As doth my queen. And I will send thee one Of your own flowers, A rose, to hide among My other things. Canst thou guess what's past Of Love's brief tale? Canst thou guess of another If there be other wreath For one sweet heart? Whom am I writing to? Whom but the lost love Of my friend, who ever When need were such as mine As thy peace, thou art The same to him, as to thee? ======================================== SAMPLE 381 ======================================== I'll bleed for you. My eyes and I saw in a trice Our ship and a load of sky. We saw the corsors filled with wreaths Of star-dust and silver: When a storm-cloud straying Bid him row and bid her go. The naked heavens braved His flames and his gentle voice To sell her for a song. The wind cried, "Now, now set A new moon-sign on the stars To make 'em happy-happy." A leaf and a leaf, and a tree, And a summer moon, Where, once, she played as child. She loves the vineyards where she strayed In bloom and blue. The lotos that runs in rows Has raked it of its life, Till its stem on earth is laid Like something hid. We ran where waves strewed, and hills split, And the eyes of the moving sun Has burned us and set us far away, And earned our tears. The path is made of tears: The moon has thrust, with set Of hair, the night o' the face of the moon, Who hurled it as wanderer off From her glittering temple. Now, set free, She loves each coming night, but set Upon this night and weeping, God would see What bodes us of her, then, and ere Our sorrows she laid by. The dawn arose, When I began, unsought, unsanctified, To quest again my zone. Folding it, bending it to my lips, To find it seized and lashing it in breath, As if the place of its viands so gripping Were mine, mine, and only mine. And who shall vouch? It was broken off, Shorn piece by piece. They stole a flower from me, and, made mad Of scent and vestal life, their mazeful Of my magic pained their dull smiting. The rubies filled the air with their contented Dissatisfaction, and the gold light through The fields' embowed, clothed them in their releasing Of eye, mouth and nostril, this my fullness. She stood, as white clouds cling in sky, As white is her flesh, as white her hue. "Who did this?" she murmured, "This defacement? The canopy sundering? Well, I'll tell: The wind that bore me came among its funereal Smiting. Its breath on those garments caught From me, caught by Fate and then thrust on Earth To shame more great. For if so foul fumes Our Lord's hand dissolv'd, those foul garments' usage May bear a progeny's name. And there is more: He who did me, God, who bound me, called Me, breath'd in wonder breathless, die To God, die. 'Twas a certèd fact that when His mortal spirit sped, it caught breath In utterance and caught in heaven. I do complain," she sighed, "that to the rind Of light that beats the ground of Love To gather still some drops of its power, Me, the poor grass; the sun that smiles, Though mire and darkness unto me; To play, after Death, with air's form To measure treading nimbus; To creep in dyes of the one sky Still to repeat the ages' doom; To endure uncatechured Perpetual moans. Well, it were tardy To raise me from defeat and pain, So long as there was life in me. But what am I! I die." Her he mutter'd, "For thee I will die." Then did she weep, "For thee I die." And at the word, She saw Hell open, saw Hell bring Her hawk, her falcon, down, and in the sight Of heaven departed, or nearer, fold, Fold wings, and vanish. Blackest of human shapes She whisk'd, as a beaver whirls. "O Night!" Cried Hell. "Bring them back." But her vapour'd skirts Drew close appall'd. From the horrid place She saw Hell visible; each member huge, and each Acting member bodily heatless. The God unloos'd her with a touch: When at once Her divine opals rebox'd, and she were less And if more, as "greatest and least of God's Lords," proud name ======================================== SAMPLE 382 ======================================== we were wondering in mid-night to stay on our guard this great river with thick undergrowth for the body of the land is of animals and you said I know ‘These beauties of Eden’—how do we feel? I will tell you, that beautiful woman, and the savage in us, the animal that is most me, who is most here, who watches all this this beautiful tree, that is particular, that lives here. <|endoftext|> "A Dog Speaks", by Janet McAdams [Nature, Animals, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] Where on earth do you suppose the animals go to hide when they’re cold? The clouds hang over a blue swig of sky, and the sun’s just risen over the waste in slant scatters of its orange and brown. A bar of gold. And what does the word earth have in this kind of world? To me the day has gone on past hell. What’s that smoky green empty room you said? What’s that wet beach you promised me? The greasy finger you’ve washed to try and get me through this? From a rusty Pullman sleeper car, the hill was like a white star. Birds, wind ran along the edge, bead-eyed and cold, green-blue and streaked with lightning, carried us through the day. I wanted a vision of this, in the busted car behind my back, around me, grides, the cover of the earth, the green of grass, glowing within the sienna night. You’ve got to feel it to know it, says someone there, a clock tick, and there’s something the stars can’t blind us to. A part of us, a large enough concept to fit our skull, to fit into the air, and to draw the earth in. But how is it that we, we, in our enormity, in this turquoise of despair, hold earth in our hands? <|endoftext|> "Schist journal", by Bob Frises [Living, Death, Growing Old, Time & Brevity, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Arts & Sciences, Sciences, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Money & Economics, War & Conflict, Mythology & Folklore, Heroes & Patriotism] MY idea of Hell is being rolled by the enemy’s heaviest artillery in a stalemate where dreams and habits, romances, ruts, crannies, nothings, each in their pitchforks, holding steady, dice-hungrasses, rasping a slick glaze of coin over my hand, as I weigh whether to plunge or shove. <|endoftext|> "From the Lowlands", by Robert Dennis [Living, Time & Brevity, Love, Romantic Love, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Trees & Flowers, Weather, Arts & Sciences, Painting & Sculpture, Photography & Photojournalism] I meet you, when I meet a moment, in returning, at the place where two live things fuse unmoving: my house, and you, motionless (almost) two hundred years. They say that I can’t create a genuine likeness, and you look more unnatural, alive, in bronze. But when I come to a reflection in the telescope, in the house where you reside, and my image lacks the wigwam’s imperfections, I recognize my own image, and you, and it hides the Wasso, who swan and shepherd filled the canvas. If anything in Art is claimed as copy, a shoebox, found at a default dinner table, an image kept as a trade chang-for-the-better, an archival mirage— my voices rose to tell you and me. <|endoftext|> "I remember", by Kay Mulliken [Living, Life Choices, Nature, Animals, Landscapes & Pastorals, Weather, Winter] I I have long remembered how, first January, the snowblows tricked the light into burning views behind unfading blind onion walls against yellowing sky glass, each glass rendering out the heavy burden of sky, weight in no place, in no place, that distance could bind me and I bound nowhere now that I recall all the bands of snowblows going and coming, snowbl ======================================== SAMPLE 383 ======================================== But fate makes thee to fall, Sparta! thy clansmen reap The harvest they have reaped well; The fields they ploughed and harvests reaped, And, with all things else well-pleased, Now farewell! our son and heir, Still most unexpected guest, We were glad when you were here last And long your welcome, but now That you have fallen 'neath brave Clander's spear, We cannot fail from sorrow, For every eye must sight him fall! We cannot bring you back, but thus May God aid the old, the poor, and small, Wherever wretched they may be. Yonder's a tax-house, a fine arbour show Wherein ofttimes I sit and sigh, For my time I might therein be blythe, There I can sit and sigh full oft And tell of the many things I hate, Of today's world, and the treachery of men Who once were born to be my friends and mates But now their feet are in a fork to fall, And mine, perchance, to heel from under. Well, perchance my foot will be on it; So it must be weighed. By God's law I lie! You are all stories, ere you come to die, Like fairy-prayers by a sleepy well told! You are geniuses, you'll be ruddy, The first bright phantasy of mind you muster, And you will, before you die you will not die, Except you wander out of child life's zone, And cut the wires that connection may obtain 'Twixt earth and heaven, you wise-man! because If it were so good-bye, boy, for you cannot lie. I do not hate the people of this nation; I have much respect for their inherited Power, yet--I have great fears for their undebased Will; yet--great fears, I am not saucy to-day. You have made a leg and a hog of this sheep-yard And the great chieftain, the King, is but a cock at the door. There's time enough for prayer! I'm not of those Who make a nuisance of the Blessed Sermon. If I was but stirred with the thought to arise And rise into His best and looser airs, I could have borne through a multitude, nor asked me Of doubtful sects who rules the others in prayer. No man's opinion to prejudice me against What I am in fear, my interests seem Enough for me, the Pope, the Council, and a Chapel, As fit knees to the dirt, as good knees to the dirt. Yet, had my gifts been those which others would fear I should not have sought in vain to bow me low By my own cunning, I should not have felt more pride Than my ready wit's to a crowing heap beside. There's the Papal Putter that I could not see For my good actions, but yet which add to my fear Of loss of vital air, new senses and I had not flight, nor yet ascension, nor the help And advice of friends--the Papal Putter that dared And frowned at me; and this other, that serves for all My purpose and glances at my phantasy, And will not hear of no such friendly mouse As I, to shelter at her fire, for my shoes. And now no tail she has for me; with grace I live, not knowing who deigns to love or heed My folds, I rent the keys from her own pigeon, And they are to me as life or death. The brook My frolic hath from curiosity was Taken from me that dares not have me, after all The world may hate me what no man upon earth may touch! Whither? o'er the sea? your eyes had darkness within. The emerald isle is darkness, an empty sense That leaves no answer to the shut eye. The hour In which our soul, here dazzled and desolate, cries Is not for brightness. Who can be glad who sees No brightness? But, O, take comfort, in the depth of thought, You are yet loved! The lofty shingle climbs Up the steep. The seas and skies are gone. The forest Leads on. The wind is about me. They and I are one Now that the Saviour is nigh. The crushed boughs, The torrent roaring, and the sea-foam surging, The ruined shacklets ringing, the cattle trailing Thick on the trail, the dark rock smothering--they all ======================================== SAMPLE 384 ======================================== form'd of man; and the known forms of either kind, Or either kind alone, seem best; I know not which is best, If 'tis well to judge, of one kind 'tis best; If, on the other hand, 'tis not improper to judge, 'Tis best to choose that kind most like to self: which is not unnatural; and the weakness of Chance, I mount to observe. How, with short-lens'd eyes, is it shown? How look'd the blind side in, when from the Volley's fire? There is an Arch's equality in heaven; And all is walking between the rock and the cloud. If the pot should be as full as the sk's small, And the pot banged on, how high as the pot would go? But t'wards what shall be, I cannot foretell; And what will not be, may be as t'was before: And to all mankind may compare give a show. Nor can I know whether heaven's King (and I call him King) will find out the formula, Or make it up with a palace-bower: Nor can I trust him, if he say, What I desire to make known. He, however, learned in his wealth, And forced to learn and train his call, May guard his perfections, as I guard mine, Not with the viper's tract 'gainst a torrent of song, But with the flood of the uncreated store, Whose echo is silence made audible. The beldams that bear his Name, As sisters do, look around; And grudge not the barley any barley, But with their beards shall drink away the wools. This taught (or some more happy cause) These very graces, when the Welcom Guide was known, To keep the wort against excess. They that held Baptismal well, their Fruit appears; And keep it in their rinds half whole, The Half-moon of Engagement's Hemline: In other parts, they do not waste, but use The tast, as being of the breed; It freshens their Company, and of relief, To ease their labour, and prevent No natural accidents, their socks still on their feet. They only have their praise, who judge the good They see, not the good they do; and that, too, They do not well, nor tear their eyes too long; Who look but little on the meal that's thrown, Not on the beef, but on the meat they take. For rank, confused mishaps and mishaps, I would have thee know, Speeding in passion, in debate, in labour, in praise, A Seneca the Common Loon, A Servile Polemic to quash, Give what the name of honour; and, by rhyme, Or if not quite so excus'd, to cavil. I to thee would trust what I forgot, or not; A Favor which Age never shall be kind to lose, And wait upon the convention of thy Love. <|endoftext|> "Fragment 2: Lyceid and Oedipse, on the Nature and State of Poetry", by William Wordsworth [Love, Infatuation & Crusades, Romantic Love, Unrequited Love, Relationships, Men & Women] Sometime ago, whilst sitting rippling along The shallow furzer'd lawns, Against a sun-gramm'd bank To many a billet I heard you sing. Where your lean pipe put out neither gammer'd grime Nor with corrupt settings lattruslin'd Soil the lowest spot, neither spot nor turf Soil the lowest ground, Nor with corrupt development allowed To mar the development of your instrument, Was a long side-full study in you and in me. In you I marr'd a dance and was out of tune, The shame was total, your beauty to myself, The defect was ours, your fault, a defect, Our sex's, and mine, of faulty justice, The beauty was your own; ours was nature's. To murmur now, was idle even for you; What, if I murmur, is already due, To nature due perhaps some ten or fifteenfold. I could not take the difficult delight Which has no end but you, who, whose place Is, like mine, in me universally known, To trace, but all the subject are liable; Love has an hour or more, Is time, is all. To show what choice of subject there is, imagine Two beds, all ready, and, lighted by the sun. On one of them you sit, on one of you He or she sat, or she, upon the other. The subject, or the groom, or bride, Always chosen, sit in each case facing whom he or she Took to his or her bed. On the top, the sovereign, subject, was one who chose Their subject; and he ======================================== SAMPLE 385 ======================================== A handful of flowers, And a thorn. Little lady, small lady, pray Why should you come so early To step so boldly on me And spill those blossoms so free Of their hearts Little lady, small lady, Put the flower back in its place For I've no time nor you. Little lady, small lady, When you drew near I smiled at you And you said: "'Tis night; I mustn't stay. They'll think I has been here to-day And it's all my business." Little lady, small lady, I must go to the dance, To a dance. It's called a pound And it's a large residence. Where I lived they say We have a dime. In the country One half of one dwelling Is one den and one half of one house. One half of one family Is fifty houses. I'm used to be traveling For it's the way of the world. I opened the door to you And a strange man in the morning Danced right general, it is true Terrific and all that. He said he'd kick your father's place And though he kicked it good He didn't enjoy it at all And he said he would like to kick it good When we took him home And he said he looked up your mother's place And the mansion which she kept For me and the fortune you'd make, I'm sure he said, But the mansion which she kept For the money it took to buy her At the dance. It was only a dance but it seemed to be Quite quite exquisite. The side of his mouth grew through his jaw And his hair was long but then he danced. His attire was new enough to us For a start with new lefts, And he said he had defeated you. You were standing there And he danced you a spell. He said he went back to that place Where it was bright and cold. What did he have to eat? His gloves and hat and vest And what do you suppose? That place a whirl, he said, And what was there but silence, hush, And wind but on chilly parts And this girl there who fell Which you took. You must go, he said. You would be home in the evening. But first he saw you down there If you stepped over the edge He'd give you a ride, He had a Peugeot 180 And he said it was quick And yours, as I told you before. He said the road was up, but there There was no road. He said your stock was good And you were late, but it wasn't, And he knew which way to go. He was a tall man, bearded, With his beard riding boots, And his trousers three quarters way A boy who can ride a quarter horse But won't be home before dark. To save his father's farm By stock or money, It is no mystery That he won't go. You see, it's all the place 'Gan discount. He didn't have no horses, like You see. You see the farmer's place Where his horse gets fed. I think of this place And always look down On what's going on With the one he won't be staying. He'd see his old rider 'Count down in his dream. They brought the price down As low as it would go. His laugh and his grin And his coming down the road. He was one who could go And be all the way. <|endoftext|> Come you down from yon rugged upland Till you behold the homes of your friends at Mavis Street, The temples of that holiness you cherished in your boyhood. You live above the gables with an easy contempt, And up and down the slighted courtyard, the tenants sigh, Who see the decay that wounds their every uplifted cheek; Who hear from the passers by the petty complaints Of brick and mortar, and to-day, and to-morrow, And all the time that the sun fell heavily On the snow of that savage savage land they shun. O Great Slave of All, Most of all I love you for your dignity, For your leavess, for your courtesy, for your pity; For your self-policing, when your thoughts go forth From your own land and people and thence Into the throng that you save to us. And more than any other Most of all I love you for ======================================== SAMPLE 386 ======================================== And his sweet world-wealth you now have lost. You who have played so brave a hand, And you who have played so sweet a eye, Dream like a space your glories held; O, not-this, not-that, Till now, when thronged with cares Your soul astray, <|endoftext|> Pallas. 'Twas a winty crow! 'Twas a dinky-wig! Sorrow come to honor thee, my lass, Of a night-spring dew! Was the star that made thee, the jade, The jade e'er made thee? Then to the brinks I'll soon be at you, Sing me a song to the bay! And of all ships in the world, From the ship that bore me, Ye shall drink ale to my lassie. Pallas. But thine eyes they are downcast, Tremble now before me, pretty smilies! Now to ditch and melodrama Watch beside me, my lassie! Thine own fear is well in thine eyes, Thine own fear's a tender guilt, my dainies! And though they unmeet to kiss me, Yet do I feel me a wife frae sin. Pallas. For pity's sake and for shame's, My husband darla meet, my childlites! The brave who did his part yield In the brunt of a hellish fight. We knew them for raucal shields, Fair earls, we ne'er forg'd them, my lel! Chaus. My dearest! this is one glib promise Sorely ventured after in reading; We'll wave high and scold and the weary song Sung by great clerkes, shall ne'er be sweet As we ne'er sung in our plion toil. Chaus. Ye are amaist and fool, and I have heard Your lips to kiss ere yet we meet again, I cannot stifle sighs, my lassie! For that which used to thrill us most, For the blind mead or siller! Ye that may nibble at his ears and eyes, Please to know that a' your lovers are feckeds! The maune, the thorn, the raparee! Hark to the bud of your jig on my cock. Chaus. May heaven add a glass-rope to the words Which he was born to utter, my dearest! What gae this to your jig, lassie? what dost thou Kindle in me that bosom? for I feel it now, And do not then repine that I am a sinner. Our hearts' blue grace in your face is seen, And you pour out a blessing, my lassie; And I'll never boast how fleet my mou'? for your sake. For your sake I ate forth my life and plough, And far and wide the record of my name Will his it is for ever, my lassie. Say, your life is hushpity and hymwide! What, pray, is the matter with you? I'm awfully vexed when you do naught, my lassie; But I'll fecht at it til I be kirk, my lassie. Pray, what is't that makes you? yet maist I guess. My liege, let but this bone anthel sorrow, And ye may jouk the streets an' cart t' as, my lassie; You live's a prisoner to my ain shelt, And ye go forth in leetle cage, my lassie. But, for this Burraway, I'm better fain, Than like as you were ta'en fain in a gair, my lassie. The truce of armes is broke, the battle of spears, And there is no catch in war, my liege; Come forth, my chariot in the van! my gowden skate! I'll show you first by how my hand I be woon, And how we do together, my sergeant and I. Of all the follies of the late challenged, The folly that made them sound and complete Is, till a man is taken, the madness of vaunt, And the machanicry of the mare. Mnestheters that mutter the sharps of battle, Stagger as if they saw no pheaves o'th' e ======================================== SAMPLE 387 ======================================== Things beyond our hope or skill. So unutterably strange That those who see may not behold, and those who hear Not hear, and those who know not both,--so rude and Unbefitting of a judge. Therefore, my son, 'Twas best to defer the question. Like and mothers Have consulted: one is, the other will obey. I have in contemplation lying under the stars A manifold amaracus, and as so often we See encompassed in the narrowest sea a Mishan or sea, like the prophet's vision, or Reaper's-throe, for the harvests fall In numbing rapidity, like blind and Rapid River-zilla. Two spans are demand Of them, and even two, if sought by men of men; For as two quadrupeds at the sovran use Likelier host than one, nor better for themselves. But, as a charmed bird's the shapeless and formless Sat, and made the nations stare on awe-struck, So, Libya's stingless underburthen'd race Will seize the bait. Why was the cap-full of gold Confined and packed? Not for such cause as keeping back A passenger or fool. We are not bred to Dig gold; this has been, and perhaps will be, Ama' also known to Caesar; but for want Of simple gold. Who needs gold if not to buy Food and clothing and companionship? Which often quits the nest. That meant a gift of soil No less, and for the strong and healthy soil Here at its natural price a gift was promised. 'You,' the Roman teacher spake, 'are gentlemen Who have forgotten the past, and, as such, O ye strangers from another land, who come To learn what ye can do, or what ye have done, Or what are yet undone, or to what more All in Sicily, ye giving what man has lost Not miscalculated; for this is the world Of business, after all our domestic ease, Least far remov'd from it: and in this school Your genius lies if not grated by your art To sweeten the stiff lectures.' And, to confirm his promise and exalt His self-honour, to Orpheus' godlike song A point of Hercules' life by Helen's he ne'er Did worship, save when honour'd by his beauty. So Orpheus, though he sung not as he tun'd The Scorzi flew across the crooked world; Nor could the mortals mount what mountaineer Calls the third star of heaven. Scarce safer play The j. m. above the fosses, where while We stoop the soil to rear rib to keel, there lies Time and tempest for pilot, as above The sea-calm I jarr'd with rising morn, and saw what torments, pest and sorrow bite the day. How rounded was the circle, and in what measure Round was the counsellour, see beyond the lines. Let none do like words 'mouth to mouth' with me! O Teach, save me from the solemn infamie Of e're hope and word, and save my heart, which glows With love that waxeth slow. Dear Friend, as days proceed, I lift with hope my eyes, and find them moist, so love, Tho' I but read of perils and dangers straight, Is for a time a suitor, and joys a balm. New friends invite me. In the balm of their eyes, Their breaths and images I toss and kiss. 'Tis a strange portent. The cool amaze divine, That leads the wise to me, finds me both that now I'm awake, and care, and yet as yet the light Of morning's first tones. To him who flocks the hills So closely that the wind's message has sown the ground, All open and warble from the darksome lawrells And mildtate boutons, my flock's attachment is, Because the breezes nod to flock. Now all The valley's fold'd with her: the leavings of the storm Come flocking round: the storm is gone. The sky is blown From her mantle and lent: light breezes have begun To deepen the valley. From his cloudfal rings A rain, which stains the leaves of apple and the tree, And joins in his over-life the rain to the sky, Making an-over-time for every ======================================== SAMPLE 388 ======================================== Ere ten waxes: and by one light leaden Ye judge the clouds. But our frame Learn we to mortal woe shall not remain In direst captivity: for Christ Disperseth loud all enemies of all crimes, And his own arms cleanse away. On him Defiled by I know not what, both eyes Surely fill up. And now unto the third Comes two in whom it shall seem most Discordant, receiving new glory; To whom first Nativity seemed short. Lo! and behold! how high, and broad so far, The separated souls' Concords soar, so far Exceed the nave of great Marias, that pall One above other seemeth, market-town. Mine eye shall so expand, it dream Dooms not I am harsh, though I offend That scorns all skin therock of ease. Life and bliss Him fashioned, he, whose lick doth but awake Drowse and clamor into an unproduct In him. Into such silent air Henceforth I prophecy: and my lamp of light No more I haunt, but represent for you Earth's dark comer, her invasion, and Her power by my rebuke. This I see As it is, however it be edified: Earth is the dread woman's suit, and from the light Of her full womb long nas to engulphe the heavens. So spake our Sire, nor heaps of committed sins Forth reeked, from hell's Felicity decoyed To buy their immortality. As a stall Moves a spotted hare, and she foils up Her ears with grass, or doth her noses tergivate With many a prickly thorn, half turning som To perdition, half to conceal her shame: E'en thus at hell's low bounds impinged was Eve's-yard Warm with the mother's milk. Yet seemed she shy Of burial there, so often doth our Mother's hen Do answered be with coward fled, that chid Her first for whome she blest: and yet at the length Took refuge, yet at first some month she put From captivity, but it was late: About the claws of shaggy dreaded creatures, Which keep the mud, but least seem to help their kin. There in a pit her wretched pittance lay Down drained by sorrows of her sickly bed; Who, for her All-Kidding, did that prison call For safety, mottling her sad crescent With barren soil. On the bare grey stone Diagonal in his cell she trod, And with her dun hair unfille, wrought Her face, void of any reminiscence, And for the signs of consolation set Her o'erlaboured front. Not so her son: The grace and splendour of his lot She had upon her, and upon his alone Her eyes were set, for all his toils had been That was of old his claim to family fame, In a long family and broadest extent. His poor semblance, and his timid ways, His pitiful stammer, and his moving tones, And amiable looks, and manner bland, Had changed; though in himself he knew not much. Therefore she, who deemed the man so old So young in years, and so like his fancy's dreams That he might be, so would fain reinchange his stock Of thoughts and manners, take from him the rust And lowness of the native taste, and dress With subtle artificiuy to assum The young and high heroic traits, which her Heart whispered, and her eyes above taught him how To join the great with the divine in common terms, 'Till all humanity should have the sense Of Hero and of folly not to disagree. The changeful Daughter (Full clearly do I know The falsehood of her charge) became at last Fondly fond of her own Brother's arts, and o'er He works with careful eyes the Gilding on Each shining pane, and takes care his slow wheels run Ridged well to pass the snug quarters of their ride. Her Sister, seeing her affect so to grow, Each ready to give her Commission, sat At that first Visitant, Council within him To save her, where she could not sit in turn, Ordains that for pureness of soul he shall be shent. No coronal for this, by a blam'd Spouse To her, could Hell's Architect, with thee refuse, Which he did promise. But th ======================================== SAMPLE 389 ======================================== A I promised your dear hestes, And played a vayle right, But after playes, I, whilome riven, Lay vanquished and lyke. And why? I, unknowne, to me kepte, Sextus couõe to be. Now for, now faste first, And first, if first, I faught, will here! Then down my flanks, down my Fragas: Lest from that height, you're seized with fayre like paines: And I must not show that shame, But stay: I fight for you. But how? I only battle on: And, tauing now, do battle last. I have no Swords to strike you dead; Nor now a single blow to lay: But I to you, my Love, am mad; And with my Bowels at your face; And at your point no more: Yea, it, I are that kind, Taste, my loy, I'l not forsake you. When your State is mine, and when The red lustre of your Soule is gone, When there's the yellow of your browes Shaped after yours, and when the white for Your Face is beginning to frown, When you seek in me, and only find The firie colour, and when you wish Goes to your face, and for the crowne Of this Redeemt Day appears to you Smale now; therewith wherupon you sit, But with tumbling teeth for kisses refuse, When I come, as at first, that ire, Stirr'd with my passion, makes you blush, And that, again for shame and you know'st, Him with his Neighbour speak I'm ware; When forthwith you behoves, right, Wherefore by you I fight and die, I'll not be done till you do. A man In nobler musick Yet did never set himselfe To pittying, Yet loved fine music; He a woman was; He too fine So to do his best Yet did music. And cried, "In grace This night, To give you An Artegy Beautiful, You music! Beautiful! Well, how do you?" She replied, Her bridle She cocked; She put Her bridle hard; She rais'd Her haupwards shoulders; And he, "Just now, Listen, you! How wonderful The stir that's made; Heard you that Some one's singing Ere you were by? Nay, you've heard it all. Began, Then, Said, "That Is a mistake, And untrue; I never heard it." And down she sits, She blushes To think she's made Such a slip; And the guest Says then, "She must be"-- "I do not think it was meant for me!" She said, "Say"-- "Now, tell me"-- "Oh, why, I'll bide my time, I must not be the first. Till I've managed somewhat Before they shut us up, I'll choose you, my lad." The Guest said, "you Who manage Theres"-- "But I'm afraid They'll be quite Awfully busy "Oh, don't be vex'd at that. At my age, The wedding Of my choice, The pleasure's quite Not half done, I'm afraid; And though my name's not Robert Carter, I promise to be kind." So they seem'd to chat, To give themselves the gaiety Of a thousand men of the town, An hour or more they appear'd, Like the fire-flies of the lamp In their gleamy garments they came, Each with his glorious dish. One to a noble sinner paid, "To the King the farmer Walter Remedies, These are the worst that pleasure give," And then when that had nause'd the rest, "The rest were extremely disgusting, They were from Grub Street, they came from everywhere." (To the feast) But in we went. What a voluminous feast! Who toil'd so long, for appetizing! And like fish, when they themselves are eaten A gormless pair, that had been brawling, Sickens us with shame: ======================================== SAMPLE 390 ======================================== The close of my day, my task to-day Is quite forgotten; My toil to-day, And sleepless nights, Are lovelier far Than those happy times! If all the world was bread We would work and work and work For all; And to the top of our hearts We would fight for you, And there's the Glory! A few of our buces are fat; Some of our buce is slim; 'Neath the sea we are stark; We will not quiver or ache; But, having fed, we will rise And fight the fight again! We do not sing, in song Shall tell the story of their days Born to and through them; Our buces are stout. They are bred to endure. And when we fail in the fray, They will remember the cry Of all our valiant dead! We fight for the right. We fight to maintain The GAA's golden ideal Of man and God. HERE'S the B-17's massy bombs. But here's the lot: They all hate us. They all plan the Rougeuse. 'Tis grim and grim. They 'll shoot us too; With quarrels they come; They hate our gauds, we've got to rest-- We'll be a nation of slaves; But 't is grim in the sight Of the tents at Schorlai. Here's a surgeon who Has joined the Red Corps. Dear friend of the bosom and the paw, Since we have talked by candle-light (A rare case, believe me!) and you, As no doubt have myself, deep In these my darkening days, In the onward parade Of the war that is to be, We speak the old words Of the empty hour, Of the just and the unjust, Of the curses and the delights, Of the paths of the good and the bad, Of the phantom and the vision, And you point to the far, Fading glamor And the mirage of now, Of the future that should be, Of a flower in the fable That ripens to a glistening worth More glorious and remoter to find, As a walk in the dew-picked, Giant and brawny, As they walk. And the doctors, You divine, know Of their trade, but no one knows Of their lives. None! If a graver should say so, They would shrui'st, That would dishonorably be. If they found you a wound that's slight They would numb you quite, But you're a patient-patient one. There are some tears to be wet In the old religion Of the Warriomen. You are beseeching me For a nom de bur? Well, I'm out of it! You've got to keep the whole Little warren in Of your old room and cabin dry There are folk back home with Lots to do to; I sit here and count Ten, twenty watches, Twenty parcels of sheaves, Twenty pigs in the yard; While I'm teaching, praying, Selling, praying Selling my new Bible every day To a sucker lad that's come down All frozen from the mountain! So much of my faith, So much of my faith I do believe I shall go Back to the old mire Down in the mire; I shall find it nearer Than I now get it, And it's good for a sweat For a fresh man to come down And for flesh to rasp and groan, See you what a spring is here! There's the shadow-mountain springing Up from the valley below. So much of my faith, Some see the hills, As with childish fingers, blowing From their places to the pass, Tossed by the daily winds, As with clouds, that come and go. Others see it under lamplids Of the morning gray, As with beaded rains dripping, Wandering all over. Who sees it with his eyes? A handful only. But it looks to me Like the roofs of our two parishes Across the river Go up and down The shadow-mountain man there Thinks he is seeing. Why should he think so? The shadow-mountain In our sight Is the valley below. Why should he feel The spring in ======================================== SAMPLE 391 ======================================== damage is done, Or a dam is broken, &c. <|endoftext|> "from Therese Iná < Hemicycle of a Lady into Twoflowerry |> I she told me in so few words She made me to forget Those slow sweet words Served up in her name, & without me You will not see how suddenly all the book's sides Anhesk Bariu Came to an end, Nigh did, I weaned Hemicydd most of all By those five sweet pangst of hers Tasting of Samtonbtu Presence of the hillside, Lambroig & I could sit Down by the little lake Literally Stare at me through Her delicate fingers To me a whole litu I simply could not stand As the light a fear of God I do not wish To be This awkward missing me Another tale most sweet Came it to me in a vision B uttered with such a spirit T he erst night She'd taken me among the arches Of the cliffy shore The keeper of the swifts A brook to me And I to her I want to say more But a shame She had said these in my ear Which to forget she'd given me Thoughts on my part She's distracted again I fear S o I must return to there There I was and not here where all was all anátimak But this I can say And what I say is a part Of this poem that says but to say It tells but not the part All the rest Of what she's put into me And if she'd put it in I don't know which one it would be <|endoftext|> "from The Record I", by Christopher Smart [Living, Death, Nature, Animals, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] And Death had no Clue Was deathest night an owtto sit Man there in his chair a yellow stone Doing nothing but lookin' + + + + I aint judge + I aint a spy + + + And light years + light years + + No imitator hez ever done + + + + His sheeps were finer than my pease + In pictures you suppose One's looked into But when in zoos they've got beds + The men he look[d] + and pease + In their beds One's gone out + + In that sort of way And seamed the birds were a-complainin' + + + To the off-cuts in their hide + And you as well + One kept his sheep + To his house + Alas I + Ah I + + You aint heym to wonder Where he laid his eggs And waked 'em + Have comitted + to bed You caint see + + On leaves to see + + A tree crowin + And those birds of his Who would dape 'em 'Twixt the weed his bed + Of the standin' find Soupin' a minute And that was all that I could do In that sort of house <|endoftext|> "I Thought I Heard on Cables", by Joshua James I thought I heard on cables through Sullivan's Crossing the same two workers singing, one reed but you must not compare It was too cold for flowers in Spring I knew and was it necessary for you to be so silent <|endoftext|> "I Thought I Heard on Cables", by Joshua James I thought I heard on cables through Sullivan's Crossing the same two workers singing, one reed but you must not compare it was too cold for flowers in Spring and is it necessary for you to be so silent It was too cold for flowers in Spring <|endoftext|> "Prayer", by Ellen Robey [Relationships, Home Life, Religion, Christianity] Those that don't mend they still don't care. Long after my heart's in my throat, the little fuck-ass cries itself out. That little fuck-ass cry it makes me wish my heart was in a cactus. But I can't be all that mean, I can't be. Being depressed makes the flowers seem nice. I wish somebody made a zinger It makes the petals feel green. I think the angels couldn ======================================== SAMPLE 392 ======================================== fully to wed Aqeq'quavant his daughter's heret, The proud joy of many a royal peer. Well, I surmise, were you Only to know our evils who we are! The affronts and injuries suffer'd by these nations we endure; These Indians murder'd, burned, knife'd, slipp'd in the river: These empty crevices all the fortunes consist, With every new insult grow stronger still, A timeless war with unexpected arms, We stand, and act, and give the surly blow, When with advancing invasion, the miscreant tribes Dash on us from their matted forests broad, We are too late, and, standing in our mud, We must endure till the world leave our shores; Spite of all our valor, prowess, pains and expense, We are nothing but widows and orphans O Thalassian powers that rul'd the ocean, O mighty morning stars, with a high And awful beauty that gave birth To religion and human laws: In whose firelit courts the monarchs sat, In comfortable terms beguiled The persecuted from their vows, And the cruel natives of th' earth Taught to admire th'ianon and torch; With pagan pride o'erbr'd, us men, Who banished thought, and vassal'd scene, And tun'd the tyrant's harp to do The minister's count'nance of th' lords' tune; To practice what they preached, practise too The mild Pharisees' use of imprisonment, To see the poor upstited with their kin On redemption day, and bound with bonds In yoke or servitude; who, as they grow Fond of their station, love to live Like clinking slaves, and feebly groan For free-born liberty. O sure, one man free Is better than a thousand lords! Eavy moment, or the world'ous lie Of Adam's transgression, says, be free From iustice, and the lot devolves That only God can still the just and true; A slave, and inferiour most of men To force and compulsion, if e'er His laws Shall so ordain, doth submit to be mine, Though but lief, and not at liberty. My country, first fav'rified by me, My cradle, and my throne, I build as I Of nut and palm my nightly sacrifices; Those nights and days, I speed my noiseous horn To sound the alarm, and proclaim to day Be thankful though long Yusuf's triumph led Against the faith, the fight and headlong fall Of the old Turks, whom I still set in fight. He is indeed My nation, chief of all the lands of earth, And of the most forlorn, lost and lost! Full store of sorrows like his I give To cold memory; like him of old I write A groan of the flood; and, like him, feel The stone that drops in words, the stake of time, Whereof the knight, Mahmud, told the same To Paddaa, and to their lord, the Misk, Of the white and turning "cursed land," And how, of old, the nation, like a wave With violence and fervor brake and went. Ay, that the regular beat and periodic fall Of grief sustain! O father! Pardon this tear Of tearfulness! that I should e'er behold Thy lofty monuments, in which the name Of old accomplishments, sacred to the gaze Of pilgrim travelers in their quiet wanderings Through their grounds, is heard with honor; and that is The honor of thy race and tombs! the pride Of much bequeathed th' inheritance, with the free And generous power in nature to beget And give virtue to the grief, which would fain Lie dormant, is with age and labors worn And worn with mortal tears subdued, or born Of hazard and of hardship, as we are; Not as our sires, our heroes, have been, But as we would be if fortune should Be kind and bless us. Let thine Kind lips like friends in friendship breathe aloud For me, my land, my sacred tombs! and teach The Western races how a just cause can weep. I knew thee strong and still Thy thirst for vengeance; but for me, Who long before, as the sages tell, Thy clay began to cry in despair, And still the vainly raging tempest fired And past, till envy stood, and patience broke And drove ======================================== SAMPLE 393 ======================================== And Myrrham's lay by-past Was answer'd by the thunder's clap. And never was Benjamin White Had such a passin'-down before; For the wassail kintra 'ere he drink'd, Would have made an ox to mount a lily, And have been title-lipped about to kiss; And nowhere on earth in country or street Was his presence elsite, nor a shake at thrill. In a sort of dream I doze through the senses with thee; Like some ancient bard I seem to listen to thee; How at thy warm ee I sit, and feel thy leaf upon me; And into thought my mind roll tortur'd o'er with thee. Then at the sight of thee my soul's overlit by thee; And the floor of Paradise a-quake with thee; and My tongue's a joyous din beyond its strength, with thee; And what I dream I say, and what I sing I sing, and Heaven's music with me. Now I am conquer'd, now I feel thy regions 'ere, And know them as thyself I know the shore, and be thee. But dearest oaks know not this, nor seek such clime; Nor does Earth around her appear as thou, Not when she feels herself the sixth from thee, Not when the branches can affixt by breath: But when the breath that whirls her from Heaven took her. Then I seem'd to feel her soul renew'd, and knew my state; O Earth, how thou swimest now in love with thee! And tell that man's heart which thou art in me, And in the seventh not knowing it, thou seemest. So long as in this sweet clay I am dug, And mingled with thee, and that too Whoe'er thou art, still fondly I resemble; But when the pot withes, I am distinct From thee, and from the trace of man. The creature I most in thee are, Appears my loveliest when his clay's grown. And thou unto me art still the most. What I more then thee be, see, is this, That I am figure unto thee, Kindly tell me why then fall I in love? And yet, if some good thing I lack, And but seek to be kind, and I can be, Why sometimes in thy gentle breast I float, And sometimes like a fish I struggle to be; Is the fountain whence my soul draws its breath, That I myself thus soon as I feel my clay? Then first I doubted, but then I thought thou wert But a fairy, like, and look'd the flowers on me, And see'd the various germs which, mixed in Nature's tint, Replicant at once with either, Heaven or earth, or sea, or air, Are but, as I, a third kind should be; And then I dream'd that thou wast one of them. But wherefore, Dear, did my love to me take flight, Or why did I from thy breast live another life? Did I but dream, or thou didst dissuade? Was this but that old tale of th' Old Man, To steal him from his love, or would take my breath? What folly to expect from thee to run All in love into a world where I am none. But, should thy sweet self refuse, or say I had won her, Then straight I'd yield again, and in so do, With better speed, and with less loss than before. But now, howsoe'er this is, or was, I may not say, For I am gone, and, as I have said, am Love forgot. If he is, he will not let me be, For, as we both agree, we should fall away If either of us abroad should come, Or in aught, or all day long, were side by side by night. He thinks that all this would be too hot; So that I should for that desert receive none. But the way is past, we part no more, Love, which, at best, could never long endure, Between us, I never had use for delay. Love is too hot, Love's too hot, though cold be at his fire. I laugh at Love, that thinks himself the worst of their line, His amours and follies are some of the few He knows who think so, but lie not, ere they vow, And the thing they strive for, their own mother discovers; His fairs, so well bid, almost stain their leaf. O true lovers, that were fitlier slain Than like partners in one blood, and in this clay, So many vows and burning burdens laid, And oaths so many and such mighty ones, One should be liefer than death could reconcile, And two such innocent mouths (to their own deare life) refuse, And being two ======================================== SAMPLE 394 ======================================== There is little warmth left, Beneath the rime that oft Has fallen from these his limbs So deeply by toil, Save to the clotted warmth, Which still puffs up the few Feather-clotted drops Of warmness left behind. Ere that son of Hurst, Whose sorrow gave him speed Where he thro' her hall Was raging, he caused to fly From where her head had room A moment's scope! And all was plain to see, Had never in this land E'er woman risen to fight! Had she but lived and learned From Hurst the way Of that young Hurst who proved As fierce and fierce as she, Should rule, and feed her rage, The maiden sovereign of Austen! It was his son, he sired and sired, Who armed the Hurst Hurstlands. --And here, ah, well-a-day! Where the wanderings of this Hurstling show All ready marked and signed, Are we now? and wherefore here? It had been better far Than here to walk such rounds. The charm of red, Yet purity above red, The faithful stir Of still regions in the heat Of deep-walled gardens, and of last The pell and cull Of Autumn, cull! in a room, Tho' to that point set to last The best of all may go! Where the steadfast green, Where in marriage ring, The red, the white, the new, Where sunset bent, The ring closed on the sight That never shall pause from the world! As Christ came, So Christ shall go, As Christ shall come, Fashioned in the common mould Of all men that have lived and died, The Last, the Loss, the present tense! (The earth whose body shone Like daylight in the middle Hour of the night, Is Heaven which flows between.) Where in the lion's den We him remember bring To light above, and near Where we ourselves have slept This most accursed night we have been! Then we arise, and we see! The Lord's at hand! our kings no more! Then another Christ's anon! Till the last of all, the Last! O what shall be When that day comes? In what shall our sight grow pure, The Lord's and our Lord, the beginning Placed on the world for men to see? Wretchedness, and shame How shall we then appear? The things we make To make seem real To our hearts are false! The angels bare The Saviour up! The mountain-cock that's still The lass who for a spurn Had made the rock of age, Tore from its sheltering coat And cleaned the blemish free (She, the wild black henrest, whose heart Was lair of sin, And she whose snowy throat Was ever with her son bare In the wind that raged and rang) In twenty hundred one and forty-two Seen none of all mankind That had this blood divine! We each one, we fill The tide for Him that suffered To tread this shore which lies between, And we are found the best, And what we shall be none knows, And what none can foreknow. What think ye Of space and time The units which make men? So shall we mount above We, even we, are parts Of that great Whole Whose breath we drink Or that hot air we taste So manifold! And when all is breathed And a hundred thousand spheres Whelm the noonday sun Each a star! What's that? If some fancy Stirs a sudden motive? Go and we'll ponder it! Go and we'll go Wonderful thoughts through! 'Tis all very well But if I should be I do not know how And if I should be And be I am not thou! What is it, when we get thro' This kingdom of things, Lo! there's the range Of heaven and earth, and the sky, And the sea, and, low, Some beings here below A little nearer me, The rocks, the cow and the cow, The earth, the grass, the soil, and how They love their names, if I love, The great, the little, their shapes That all appear in the heaven's Solids and solitudes! What of that?--Because I say How things are, because I see ======================================== SAMPLE 395 ======================================== <|endoftext|> "A Deer Revived from the English Pile", by Ann L. Krutch [Living, Time & Brevity, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Summer, Weather, Farewells & Wishes, Trees & Flowers] and then I sat down to count the grain: each leaf a blade of blue grass swaying in the heat as the fresh air seep’d inside. * And then I shook it all up: after so long together being gone: me, me, me, me, alone in the jungle. * In the dusty eye of the bird a lance of light, and then out the other end, and I counted—at the river all along, over, and over, and out, and over, and over, and I counted— noted each glint in the silver-brown and green-gold-banded water— a ghost among sun all along: nowhere but here, and here: here. And here I found her, smashing the bar of her throat, scratch’d bright and round—blue and round— <|endoftext|> "On the Caltrops", by Stephen Dunn [Nature, Weather] The hardest part about weather is predicting the caltrops. The easiest part is jumping them. Once I was small—it was summer. For the first few days, my body kept trying to keep cool by dropping what it didn’t need to the trees, and the streets. When that didn’t work, and the trees refused to wait, I’d go down the side walks, or into the paved streets, that were much too shallow. Still later, too late, I understood the Caltrops as gnarled, chained dogs. What caught my eye was not the dogs but their flags and uniform stigmata: liver spots from somewhere behind, burning ground into the skin, even through the dogs’ Northern genes. Just down the block from the Caltrops, we found an unlocked steel door, a fire escape, and, dangling from a chain on the wall, a dangling night light. That there was light there didn’t really matter: the eyes didn’t matter, which was what made the night dark. <|endoftext|> "Looking at the Sky", by Stephen Dunn [Living, Life Choices, Nature, Winter, The Mind, Weather, Religion, God & the Divine] Now that the weather station is that— the weather has changed from tan to pale, from clay to corn, the sky has whitened, but it’s not yet that—and this winter, now this cruelty, is different, is utter crazy. The sky—almost all colors it is that— has all the colors it will ever have but now they seem to change from one to the other, or are of other dyes. And the frost, the little bits of ice, falling now and then, doing tricks now, promising tricks, like a person playing a tune we can’t hear, this one, in the dark tonight, comes to mean as much, or more. <|endoftext|> "Ripples", by Barbara Steele For once I found an analogy, or seemed to, and found nothing at all to latch onto. We sat for hours, the three of us, while the waves, called Shepherd, played its small, droning voice over and over like a droning voice, without any need to. Ripples, as you and I might say, are ripples—no, I’m sure, I’m certain— whose call, if we were listeners, we should give to some one, anyone, to hear, I’m certain, to some one, any one, who would hear. I looked and looked, but in the end there was no one, but we were alone, which was no more than we were, the three of us, alone: just three listeners, and three, listeners, and one voice. <|endoftext ======================================== SAMPLE 396 ======================================== And beats a return as it rolls; That gave it till yesterday; To-morrow it may take away all! Through the streets, in crowds forlorn, Is howling, wound and wrecked; And the long-revilged name Of misery is wrong'd again; The streets are haunted by shadows, And from balconies the sky Smoke thick peaks through into the street. O bitter joy and test! No holy-cross calm my soul; This wild beast rage may stir, And in each vein a devil's tear May cry out, 'Respect the pain of fire!' O! the heart that testeth all, that sees All things in themselves as worst and worst, And the hoarse wail of the fell beast, 'CRUSH IT!' They're with me, they say, and they bring me oil, And the poor old walls within their own breasts, You'd think the crows in the scrub-sale sell all day for scorn, Who creak on their boxes by the bone-house door at noon, And who has a song to preach at a truing clock. They're with me, they come and take their lordly gifts; My house is a temple of bliss. They come, they go; over my vineyard blow The stars that twinkle into stones. Whose horns shall I blow at? With what strange wine Shall I fill a grateful cup, with thee? I longed not for this! The rosy wine Of rapture and endless peace is blown Into the face of the blind sheep. My heart doth belly, throngs my gates. They make of my present hour a song. But hark! the thick lows of storm along! The lightning pains the roots of my trees, Deeper than where thy dark hand falls! But hark! the dark rumbling rafters stir, And my lips quiver, nor have I wit To seek the spot whence sound does come. O earth of wondrous, strange and many gifts, Renew, O ebb, nor a whit consent To the one measure Nature sends thee here! Soon or late, speed, clouds from thy face blown, Blind thunder, with wide desolations lodge The spite of thy dark decrees on all! THE small afternoon reddens on the hill, And evening dullens into night; Still the sky-line's unruffled purity, Clad in her blithe array, The sun-light on her wings outflow, Herself shadowing all below With panoply of lilies, white Above the fields the white, The gray-coat farms Where alone the grey may be; Thrush and woodchuck and chaffinch, nag, The cry of bee, bird, honey, and worm. Each faces opposite! Solitmemory: there's no sleeping here! Without a shade or a grove, How like the pyramids of yore they seem, Towers arch-high amid the green, These cliffs, these farms, and quiet low-hump'd trees! How like the arched cataracts of old, That pierced the heavens and struck drums a-ring, Above that verdant sward of grasses! From under their paving, shades and damps Of firs and oaks; The grassy toombs and husking beans; The open flow'rs, the closed glades, And the deep silence: how like they all To wander in eternal-ly The unwrit and silent land? And beneath the azure seas That surged and sang, The sailing seam That cleft the polar ice; Beneath their gables, tall and low The corbels are and towers of snow! Here upon these barren slopes Life heaved and fed itself, Till, 'mid the weddings in nuptial power, Thin flame-banks that had congealed The lilies and the gold With sickles yellow, brittle, long, All the pale radiance thinned and died. So I, like the sun, appeared, A narrow flame-tree and the white Upon the hill, and, I, The memory of what had been! No more to run life's daily round; Then, then, I lived in spirit's path And had no end. As water on the mountain's shoulders, Through all the winter high and low, Deep, deep, deep into rifts of ice, Treasure and grain the winter gave; And still to be so plentifully blest ======================================== SAMPLE 397 ======================================== A sacred, sage and sweet Paean, wrought With mine own hands; that vibrates with mine own mood, My helmed vibrating with mine own. And this its first part, Has no great words And a listless ditty (As the manor singers have) But a simple creed that perhaps Is not worthy a rhyme. St. Cuthbert, when he was chased From his own accord, Made a pray to the saints, Then they turned him out of the cell: "It was a fault! And ere you pray!" Cuthbert, the mystic, In the dark and covert, Kissed his wits and put out his wit: "It was a fault! I loved her more Than you!" And oh! A sport that could not be! Chanted loudly, incense-breathed, In a double line, These three formulas of praise. Now, how did this come about? It came about, because, of course, When now we were alone, I must confess to my friend, Titus, that the words Of that low, soft and rusting verse, The verse of all praise, Had criss-crossed our two faces. His poetry's soft swan-song, My beauty's broonment. These, Titus, to my friend, All came by clear experience. But perhaps you, perhaps Others of the hallowed threewomen Are rubbing over you, a helpless lot. Yet many a maiden's cool voice To me bid still your praise, Both now and in my more prudent days, And I'll ne'er forget That at the last state I'm in I still have words to praise Your brightness of courage, Your words of high design With staving and with saving, As wise men's words from wise men have. "Your beauty and great grace Illustrate a sweet And prudent conduct that's rare, While your deep-drawn eyes bespeak Godlike wisdom in you!" Perhaps the harm you have done From my heart's affections The harm you did to love, Or little power, or none That you could steer us, a while In spite of happenstance To wisest-half-forgotten And fruitless tenderness. But because we could not kiss, Either's place vacated, Forced from a slot you made, Who bore me first indifferently. I'd say things more clearly but My feelings of what I say My knowledge chokes and dampens. And yet I could but say A half proceed, half conclude Of all things that there may be By man's wit from God's permission From His high Omnipresence. If there be more to Omnipresence Then what's written in the Bible, The door is not yet unclose'd Where through the shadowed room's dim Sweet element we hail the Light. And yet again: You did not teach me, Titus, The traditional lore of rock Rak'd' forth, and the "sure foundation Of the eternal Earth." How should I bear up in my sorrow Before a man of wealth and majesty? If aught of "Christendom" be to me What seems, forsooth, but excess, Did I know and care for the Feast? Be patient, Space! Ye know The world is but a dream that drops To drowse you, like the dispossest bird That plumes itself with pickles, for food. Oh, yes! I'm a fool! One will sauciness win For knowledge wise and art is folly. And if the flaw is Ignorance As well as ignorance, Ignorance! And if the flaw be in us As well as base, the fools are us! As for my folly -- I know Truth -- thou Most High That none can find, if so he may, His way thro' the maze of doubt Unharmed by thy bright might. As for my art I've spent myself On what I have no knowledge, And to what noble end; As toward blind Tartareus I cause myself but little pain Who hang with Aristotle. Or if it be That I do nothing but aspire As with a doom apt and justified I would have sunk my love in her, So as to feel content on Earth. I waste not another minute Desiring proof, or labouring for time For such labour wou'd be nothing Save utter death in my accomplishment. ======================================== SAMPLE 398 ======================================== American and European. But on hearing the lesson They had drunk the teaching. They understood not altogether What He was persuading them to, But that it was evil, A lesson of the devil, Which had sown the seed Of envy and revenge and strife, In human hearts to sprout. Those who have heard the Call, From any tangle scrap Of thorns therein strung, At length prove that it holds true, If it are not false. Those who have known the Call In human hearts reveal, That Death can come from any Tangle-wort knot, And bring the lesson home-- That a sinner might be he When you were a little child You held the great mother-heal, Your little-girl-ness swelled and bled, On her days to strew. When you were a little child--a gaunt, still Red-haired thing-- You held the great mother-heal, You had still to make A dead heart young again. It matters not how tired you make The almshouse or the minster; It matters not how tranced You may seem, or how shrunk The wild things grow. It is true even when you be a child, You may be sure to hear The great mother-heal And hot the chamomile Falls on the heart; But with close heed You know what is said, Or die as a child. Say what you will of Lothar who Was boil-opened and burn-out and shrink- Faces of the criminals, Like Maut now, a king-child then Doth humanity devour, Who sends the rich white tuneful Ironies, all his kings in point Of how they spoke of him, On whose Words immortal they all speak. But yet upon the vaulted earth beyond While not every face looks on All joyous with the spray-bound light, From his ebon chamber, Rhin whom The grave white mythopoe of light Hurled at your wandering eyes, Shadows upon the life of death Are very fair. Right turbulent we move; Right fouler. No flame-girt pleasure Hath ever turned the life of love Into a deafening. We reel as in the days of gold, When whirled-souls burned with joy Sat around the soft-lipped spheres Who had the wild delight Of idols and incense and fruits For glorying fire; But they (the cherubic creatures) Trembled at the summer-month With heart-beat haste; Now quickened by the sweeter air And moon-crowned night: We tremble by the easy breath Of their own breath, as all fall silent With gentle fever, And burn out from the heaven of good Into the quiet-coloured-flame. For only those, who drink the fire, Feel the all-healing heat; And who that earth-water drink Ease their bodies from fleshly, mortal Drain. And never yet have spring's quickening fun With its inconstancy been ours. Yet deep the feebleness, the waste Suffering, Left in us such longevity of flaw As if, indeed, time with its long ago Were not contained. Right turbulent we move. We leap into the sea that rises to meet The wind that's not the starry sea; We mock the dawn that reddens and still renews The sooner it blows, And hear the toil of waves while we are calling, Pivoting above The wind that reddens with joy. "There be none of genius, (the sprightly laughter) That hath not write, (yet shallow the rapsack flow,) Two thousand years of fogs. But these are their perjuries: But these, in their dyspepsy, Speak parrots, At stepping down the quip-mill; That have no fall-guy, That have no office save To do paper, That have no secretary But the blockhead leery, That have no means of attaining Most of them, Why it hath decided, From channelling, Out of the slough of spackle, That ever swell, Out of their tiny Grandeur, One sort alone, From the fiddling Of a wobble-wobble, One caricature, From the little Poh! Now, the squalor, The sour invasiveness, ======================================== SAMPLE 399 ======================================== Was born. The Lamia then, that winged way To Mirtur off to Sirpression, Said: "Thy daughter and the King Have sapp'd the water, son, Where, tween the good lake and roar Of the earth, comes candy. "Let not the fair daughter run To rearing withers' son, And this light before the lady And she her between two winters, Be ready. "It is the sorrow King may boast, And the wronged guardian may requite, That knoweth of, and must strike, Upon your rocks and fold them dead, With the wet toes of his majesty Treading the earth. "In the camp his life is so bright, On the hills he cuts so fine, The sheen of him is so bright To the prince, like a shy maiden's glance, No while worm or worm-like the rays burn Or the king be it: "Do ye know, Why the woods of Iceland, all From its farthest glens, such his skill, As the morning is, evermore When he to shiver and to het it splinter, A globe; "Omnipotent is his eye and might; As a beard from the place it clings; Like a dragon's on his readiest path Up, over the five hills that are his throne Rises the scale of the Peak; And his ever weilding sword Leapt in his hand like the flame of fire From the place that it graspeth, As a flame in the place it quenched; And the thing in his hand For the place. There his wondrous feet that have run From their readier throne to the field On his mother's secret bed, To find his own; That were as the one undutiful one That but for ill hath the hope to see The other's smile: There his more wondrous feet are mett him, Doing something strange and unheard, In their laws and in their groves of aspen, And their dark, dark delight. His fierce hands from their humble things In their strange ways Flung the torches up. Through his quest for a primal law, In the cavernous depths of the night Where was wood enough for him, And the case of men and their years And the times of men, He with godlike ardour for his throne Was as a fiercer flame. Till at length he came to that lake Whereof so many told and told, Whereto all thought upon earth and all That men were made of star and stone; Therewith and there alone, Wrestling with foes unknown In a primal swamp and dewed, A king that knew nought of a king, He found his lake, and his own, And half in shadow and half light, Where as body and soul found rest; All dark o'er the boughs of the aspen From whose green glory and blood He at last, and with wonder, Fell in a blissful sleep. While all were murmuring in the hall, And now from the door, they tumbled right: When the first horned horn was blown; And now from the raised floor; When the horse was hissed off, And the curtain on the door Was broken, far and far. The Wildfire had been seen, But how spread and held and blazed Like a planet, how shot its flames Over the forest floor, No one ever heard, in the flame's Shadow and in sun. He held up his hand, and the sign Was twitched the string; A way to quit the soul Like a bugle in blast, A way to see such things As those spirits had; To laugh, for a way out of care, Like the airdance of boughs Tossing the lad When the lads are where, In the forest where, Over the land. Rivers, mountains, lakes, Climites, plateaus, Mountains, rushing, Over the plains, Underneath the carp; Those spirits, which ye see Burn like iron, hewn, From hill to river, could ye, With eyes righted, see With ears, as the birds that sing, Thorough the dome, Round about, To the pangs of sorrow's clutch, Whose scarlet tastes, whose ache Like the iron heaves From the heart as the body ======================================== SAMPLE 400 ======================================== possible within one small house,-- One house but a part of what they builded for man's race; With rooms there to view all the splendour round, And hear the call of the wood-nymphs, and the din Of the herds on the mountains in the sun: They saw the pale mountain-clouds roll over the roofs, With, mingling with the leaves, the well-attended blossoms. And they made their way, with their weapons in hands, To the bare mountain, and climbed the sides of the hills, To the high rocky mountain-foot, and stood Upon its top, where the mountain-orn studded: And they looked down, where the wood-nymphs clustered On flower-petals bedewed, the wild crocus-belts, The never-ending, water-dabbling heather, And brightly shone the valley Of the broad Ditton valley, on the heights Of Ditton hall: 'Twas there they espied,--two damsels met their eyes, Drest out of the sun, the flower-petals thrown down, Another on the crocus-belts. A tall spore Came from the lowlands in the summer's smoke. They hastened up the mountain, and regained The rivulet from out the rocky valley, It was a river that had washed the mill-ways, And sought for water where it mason wasted woods, Heaven knows, and in a cleft of the cliff, To pour its waters; the wintry torrent, springing From rock to rock, to patter through the caves, That wind through, were there, with wail of rain As in the chilly, clear spring the tiny brooks Dissolved they rock, the while the sunlight burned, So in this precipice they sought their spring. Above the bottom they breathlessly bent Where the sloping line of bank was faint or denied; Which at this time was fair in verdure and hue As fire of sunless winter; they and theirs Of yews and oaks they made their gloomy nest. And wept the azure night, the woodland-lit; The jay's high pangs, and, couched aloft, The owlish vole, brooded o'er moss, The fulgid larch and swift chestnut shook With the soft whine of voice of these and those. Alone they camped, upon the hill-side, when A tide of sound from hollow winds upstarted From roots of bank, and rushes hushed to rest; Looming above all, formed a windmill-front o'ertapped, Sudden black giants to the lone wilderness Roar'd, then die of drouth, the mournful brood; Then lour'd a while, and in these strong ones ducked, The loud, loud thunder. The rest, in disquiet, Slumber in the green sheaths, while on their thick acorn Soft the horn'd storms so shook and rumbled still: The storm-drift rose, and then into the hills Vaulted again, and then at its old feet The nest of wrens, trembling as the nest Of the worm that feeds 'neath the velvet leaf, With tough, brown, bristly armor rattle'd thick, Of his vast bulk. And all the time From the thick acorn-sereth had come From every oak and wag'd elm-tree, From under-field resounded the whistle Of the song-sparrow, whose stone-far-from-haut Is in far-off country, as I guess, Near the northern regions, nearer Britain; And well the name called a spirit skill'd To be unseen; for they tell me, the sparrow Sparrows have a magic power over us To confound us badly, with much wrong, And hard vexation, if they happen To catch us in the warm season, When the sap moons over fresh, As they now can tell you, For I have known one among them Pluck'd from her dwelling, but in later years, A poor, stout, unmocked wenchemer, This legend I was led to think Came from,--he is neither king nor general, And I don't know whether he is alive Or not; but what I can declare Is, that when that tender age is well And happy, strong, and bright, The sower his harvest-field will find In every bud a berry, for this reason, They say, that ======================================== SAMPLE 401 ======================================== <|endoftext|> "For Victoria (£spirited ones)—1861)", by W. D. Tharp [Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] Hot young Victoria Brown Whose initials filled the blank spot there In the five great men’s heads who rose to power Then turned to chocolate and dandruff And took their places again, It was a little windy and icy When she started to write at sixteen There came a storm in Cape Horn, a swell Of subtile colour and cold, A deaping Dream, long since gone, That made a Mail Star, a Blaze, And a Hunger, like the good wheel of doom That turns, will turn, and death will turn it too In the mind of a happy soul, who knows The sea is dark, but on a cloud Sat a sea flower of land that rose And shone under the blue crinoline Of the laughing child, Islana, whose zephyr Sighs and murmurs are the sunts of Time A feather bed, a rosebank like the sky, I saw it and I laughed. There is a difference, growing older You see, with Poetry, that men mean When they wish to justify the chasm Which divides clear thinking from clear thinking. Victoria Brown’s letters confirm the shapes The whole history of her life revealed And reveal a strong voice, pure as language As blood. That child's blood, of which her Amulet has a red heart made Of real sea-bottles a blue cross Of beads of different shapes with wool She wore, was put together by the girl Who now is sick and in the dark, not made, But never will forget. She knew the things that none Of us have knowledge of, she knew The dark, the heavy things of life, the strange Gift of changing shape, changing not at all Beneath her skin, when she knew A shape that never changed from her face, Excepting when she wore a light That changed to a gloom. Her chair is at the door of faith, It is the chair where there is no chair, Her copy-right edition of Magnesian Whose bricks are certainties of fact, The kind you buy, The kinds of books That tell you nothing you do not know, Its bricks and mortars, having been read Bubble fine secrets to you. It stands alone in its small world Of three sisters, sisters and spines Of broad windows in white wall hangings Worn and alone like it. Its mother Innocent and exquisite as love, And beautiful, is the skull of Britain And this town that keeps the English as she Fought with the tides of half the world. <|endoftext|> "Our Ecstasies (2ACV03), Lusitania"   Este entry del calpe de nuestro mil pa", by Geraint You can stab the devil, You can fight fire with fire, You can tackle the great hill-mass, You can dance on crag and sage With a thousand more. You can build a house on foaming water, You can clap the sun to sleep, You can play the hater down, You can dance on crag and sage With a thousand more. You can play the hater down, You can preach on crags and sage With a thousand more. You can coat the hater in butter, Slather on wax To beat him in his native climes, You can play the hater down, You can nail the man For a thousand more. No unproper commune with God is, Habemez perez de lavarizas, Ere you come at the ecstasies To mend your life. <|endoftext|> "Our Epoch, or, What the Bristols Occasion", by Geraint Mallon [Living, Time & Brevity, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] We are on the verge of a new era, In which the ends of earth and its forces Are in confrontation. It is an era of transformation: the violence of the great falls and the evasions of ice, as well as the forward thrusts of the ocean and its rivers, and the fiery reflex-sections of fires. The better boots and soles of this era will serve the better platters to the dinner of the forces of decay, who will see, with their eyes and ears, that they are a huddled mass, their eyes and ======================================== SAMPLE 402 ======================================== to his dust, not my plucked face going up and down, not my frostbitten feet and all the fragrant fleshy flanks shaving the sordid trail of sacrifice. The earth holds offering now. My arm, for a moment, shoots down a ball of fresh woodland to where the lake, and the birches blacken the face of the hill’s water-weed nightmare. <|endoftext|> "The Dependency", by David Mort [Living, Death, Growing Old, Relationships, Home Life, Activities, Jobs & Working, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, Class] The shrapnel of truth is not unpathed, even when it has its first damage of legless yawn. The darkness of that light having been shorter than my apprenticeship in the shadowless world of the recently dead has me at eight. The letters there are that cannot bend or shift or dissolve or conjure. I begrudge them a small ontology, an algebra to transform the symbols into that belongs, but does not belong to the speechless vocabulary. It is like the polymath that afflicts our math, yet apparently must be, equally human, whatever the agony of correcting impending objects. I, too, long for analysis of change, and the dream that would guide me to it, and the dark behind the bed, and instead of having a job wishing for something I’ve already written, I will have a world to live in without my being aware that such a thing is possible. I am not resigned, at last, like a recalcitrant note which keeps a counter time for the poet’s numbers. I expect not to be promoted, and I know the days I've lost are not mine, just a chance for that good new thinking. Instead, the days go by, and the years go by and the system keeps on shifting. Is the sky its drum? Does the lineament its flute? I cling to the system, blind to the time I've been granted in the great unknown that leads to me. The self-selling year has seen its triumphs, and the buzzing pilgrim it predicted still does its job: clearing, discarding, passing on from the old to the new; not wholly, but in its broad sweep has swept almost all the mess away. Honey colored haze from the new blood flows, honey colored light, honey light, the waking next year butting up through the new thing, in the fruit-filled fields, the stalks expectant of the ribs of light, the cancer-seed-dust, though I cannot know whether it will spread honey colored, golden-brown. Summer returns now unentangled, its dancing remembered as on the beach an hour after the last dance where you lost a foot, your wrist broken, your heart cut in two, and your mind swam in words, had to stop and rise again to song. The sun has passed in the gates, after the sandal gone; I am no minister for that day. I am no minister. In the sapled yard a barge will carry off the news in soft voices, backlit by bullheads of the moon, or a pipe of smoke, the news on and off machinery of the grain truck, in the dying of the week with no shade. And when I can see without my knees, the hard night of small bills fallen from the toiler, when there is no room left for dreams, and the streets have no pleasure, and the sun blows across the leafless acres, and the ears of corn need no harvest and the limbs of a child rise and seem to know about the loom where we need the next clear. Till you, saying, Do it, reached to the heart, without weaving the appaloos, without laying down the pattern of the artist taking your elbow on the slope of the marble of a table for one more tarp and quilt. No more will she stand on a corner and make the humming feathers of her hat to fall like vengeance, no more will she be thin, or the cup empty, put out to grass ======================================== SAMPLE 403 ======================================== Is, drenched in the wet and cold, Strong, swift with each step, And delight in the fight. Thus he whom hails the fight, Not I who meet and shrink Mountain range of shining steep, Nor sought I a stranger’s path On ways that are more deep. But behind a tide of rain, Shall wash the bay that gleamed, Whereon the tender spray Shall mingle with the foam That erst so fleet and light. And on those undimmed waters The summers, golden in hue, Shall wander through the sunless time And on those streams that are, Till the cold Northern blast shall kill The old and cowed repose. How fair ’twill be! How brilliant! When the swell and the run Have driven the old down, And their white and their green Shall love the sea again. So early the skies are in frost, And silent the woods in frost, So early the sick man’s footstep On them is the cripple of frost; There the snow and the wild dog’s throw On high will be falling, And the sick man from a distance Sees on high the sparkling line Of the snow-clad mountains that breaks On the dark altitudes, and fades In glare of the sunset. There was a child with crisscross hair That once I nursed. The life-way between us; Yet so close she look’d to me That she all mine own was seem’d. I laid her in the shade Of the bushes that were wild- Growing, And in this hand I wipe her brow And with the other tenderly Rubb the cold sores: But still I can’t thee how- To say the earth-heater Can burn with my very breath. <|endoftext|> When a mournful wail is all we hear The lonely night Then the Stars unfold their silver rings And nod to each other In the dark clear night, Saying— Beware Wyrms from the fen Bend to your graves. Beware! And tremble! While the strays neigh in the ditches Like a lute broken-piped Dwelling angel hummel Hear the music of life And death's eternal strife Began, where the immortals rest, Dancing the hours long-drawn By angels’ ears, as they rose, Silent, with thoughts that change had no name, Still as they bloomed. And we sleep, and we dream. And we smile; but we smile not see. Sole we are readier heard than seen. The eagle wonders what we see, The sea-tamer listening listen’d Hear’d the souls we see, Troubled hearts we overheard Under the deep-sea’s pride. Troubled! what we are we Shall hear when the stars are out. <|endoftext|> Madam, you are brutal and demeaning And condemnative: you’ve washed with me And we know not the other of our sex. You are base and filthy and homicidal. You turn with your face towards the street. You have done ill. Yet, Madam, you are beautiful. You dance on up and down the country And stir the populous to life. You delight to drive with me And I hold you: we are gentle and we know The other of our sex. You are ungrateful: you're not thanked enough. You swore I was a devil’s own fourth. You heard from the gossipers my worth ’Twixt my knees: and that’s the reason You despise me: for you loved me. But you came to my house, and we chinked: You were in the way when we chinked: And when we sat on our leaves, I bore it: I am patient, and you must put out your own. But you are remiss. Who of us is ungrateful? We are all hard from the first hard hard of birth, Not answering what the great ones say. Do you not know it? Look hard! you do hate me: yet you don't- Do you? you wear shadow and flame in one. Well, then I win: What is there to do? If we met at an evening of wine and stars We could say two or three words to each other, Names be ======================================== SAMPLE 404 ======================================== exactly was greatly won, and felt all his manhood glowing, thought about it, and daring to undertake it. The Cross, a person in myself, thinking of the kindness of him to me: a man to whom I, in my easier and freer and less uneasy times, felt not a friend. There is a lot beyond our understanding, but he has brought a great responsibility to my heart. When I ask someone why they haven't written a thing about this poor old man he beats to prove them he can do better, I wish they can answer in one breath: not for the gossip, not for the dull jests, but the weight of the larger purpose. For it is both a place of and forgiveness, a maturity, a love, a return to the good. The moment is forgiving. And so, for a moment, the young writer felt the weight of the audience. Then, having written about the Dead Fries man who was standing, weary, among more than four thousand others, and sitting, as he did, some distance from the ring, he remembers, as he writes, about it later, the day after, in this book, the 4 The woman’s eyes had already rolled so in the corner of her vision it disappeared, spilled in a mixture of flushes and griefs. I had brought her something she could have kept quietly hiding in her bag all these years under the fake name of a grandmother she still keeps in touch with, taps the bundle. At breakfast, she asks me about the horse, why it had to be put down, and why all of its riders haven’t had to live that tragic act. She sat on the porch once, shyly hugging it to her again. That was years ago. How could she know just to feel it there on her side, it might be there next to her now, strapped to her, alive and torn? And we’ve always wondered what a pony sees when it sees those eyes. <|endoftext|> "The Bait", by Gary Snyder [Living, Death, Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Relationships, Pets] When you throw redbulls or greenshort round on the chainlink:near the Risinola Motorcycle Park, a half-mile after leaving Buga, your step outtakes the walk you’ve taken, and you can hearthe chainlink beating, the redbirths rattling back and forth.You don’t want to touch, you don’t want to pass.A truck turns up before you. Thattenseiger redbroom score.Lifetime lease on a white pickup.Grayhound and freight.The little bang-fly box trapped, redbumminutes sliding out of reach.You raise the quarter-mile dot-bulleted buck in a ballgasp in the trap.Redwire, steelweb.You start to raise your arm to reach for thetent, your rifle like a limp-witted puppy.You raise your rifle to aim.The baton whines.Something drops. And then another.You raise the barrel. Yousee it: an eagle we x-rayed last night, loose as the most tornVIII whitebirch lying around.You raise the barrel, ready.The motorcyclist whines.No run-on pictures.Just the face of . . . whatever.• <|endoftext|> "Hog Shell", by Gary Snyder [Living, Time & Brevity, Love, Desire, Philosophy] For Sharon Newhall As for what I should want, leave one in the everyday well-coached toilet for a woman having held her belly to the side of her to slow down time, so that we, in a town car with our monogrammed cigarettes, would drift apart, so that in his sunlit kitchen, with its open toilet, the baby of the other room, who was ours for the taking, that it would be his to share, and that you in the belly of the other woman, in other places, not the same one I loved, but loved her enough, that you could live for her, in the warmth of her and her times, that we could have one gift and use it. <|endoftext|> "“We’re so isolated . . .”", by Randy Ybarra [Living, The Mind, Arts & Sciences, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Popular Culture] We’re so isolated, and yet ======================================== SAMPLE 405 ======================================== Where it calls and in it is the Star of the Cross, Out from which comes the joy-brilliant Lord of hosts. There, pray, that the beast with the drunken eyes May cast out the weapon of the serpent and live. But--this gift--when the world came of the pure-- Thy neck has lapped over all to the dry bone. Blind with the truth of it all, and untaught In life's tale, my heart wanders up and down, In aimless search of the apple of sight, O'er lands and hills and green and ocean-caverns-- Sunken wood, marbled field, or deep-tangled night-- Buried spot of the grim world--below whose row The startled birds at sunrise hatch their vesper song. Oft hast thou down-hurrying at eve on the Nodding brook to its midnight overtasked, Seeming, in thy mean oars to float afar, Some old melody domuolated of the air. A rustic arched door has found thee in, Which the wren has left to all the years to come: Where the pond's heave and bend thou work'st at noon, And the dun alders fill thy poplar boughs Have aught for you, though not the life that gives The Lord of Light audible glory in His ear? Who, with a grace more ample than her place, Smiled down the ages, as at Caesar's feast, When earth was fed like her sister--a feaster-- Smiles at the gory lies of Rome, And at the daily bloodlet that goes in by the door? A homeless fire-escape from the grave of a tomb, To the sound of the stately sea and the chase Hast thou marked, with the burden of a rhyme, The tread of the herds on some strong men's feet, And the voices like to the calling of a feast? So were it, if thine eye could read its waves; Thine eye streams between the vivid generations: Likeness of these is thine alone: Thou countest the horizons of the field, Ringed the toil and beards of the herds, the furrow, Cracking the ploughshares in the sweat of the hands; Not of that good which relateth to man Is the preface of the universe: 'Tis thy own, thy own first birth to enjoy And the sorrow and the ardour of death: For ever the tribes of the foot are on high, The tribes of the heart in the skies: they are in isles, They are in the remotest demises Of seas that roll out in faint music to the sun. The eagle of thy jays and peacocks Sales with the craning lilies his heels in air, And clatters death with the long masts of the moon, And the heaps of the sperm whales scream round about him; Flapping in the holy wind that lap about him, Mute he seems to the moulded world, and his mate he's sitting on, Sitting, and she, proud in her unresponsive splendour, Peers at him from the mirror of the earth. Thou knowest, the man of small scritum and viscus, Sick with the respect and the sight of nothingness? Thou knowest the man--alas! poor nature! O nature! O manhood that dost rush Thy glory and thy bloom in each other's throat, I that thy honour for a word, that does nip In the rich breath of an hour that is hoarded of men's sighs! Why should this few words, how weary they be, Run home and die, like the flower that's shaken By the wind on the mountain side, while the sun Waves his sceptre o'er the verdant summit? Why should they, since the morning and evening sky Are the LORD'S, and the stars are his carrion hands? Because the streets of God are level with the heights, And we feel the presence of the God of bliss, Not as the endless suturing of the race Of our fallen race; and the eternal wings Of the morning in faint glory come and go, And the firmament, the lungs of God, are one. Lord of laughter, the pillars of mirth, Lift me up, Lord, and never let me die! The standing corpse I don't wonder at; To the grave I've been nothing to suspect, In our strength absolute I should be ======================================== SAMPLE 406 ======================================== Fertilido, whence born, that Oliver Whom his much-maligned crown so poor Attends in exile to the sod, A process veiled by light and shade So was, though errorged, he might be seen; And us the least of treasons they built In that haven, the man the worst. Last night it was; and the four was spent Thus in their tunics, or else in the shawl, And so the veil ascending, and withdrawing, Show'd who forewatched, who postured around The opening of the stowed-up entrance, Who wept on capricci, in visage dark, Whose trust was with his jewell'd girdle laid. I looke, a grislier instance of this, Which is to be illustrated to the task, For I perceive an antiopic hand To aid in this: but now with fear Usurping too far, I end it; yet don Himself no less deform and low Than that false prophet of eternall days; But him I will describe ere long, who grew So Grave, and from the toilet, restor'd So as the franchie's tale Resembles him of Spain's extraction. He as such was sick, And to hospital soonest might become; But much ado was made at first, That wound untreated, and all his blood Without remedy gain'd, which made Fever, and trouble, and distemper, Wherewith he mischauned, as it seems; But be this end never eat or drink; In midst of famine, tempests, rains, he died. For as he lay, expectant of change (Though at life by dying denied), The head of Antaeus he turn'd and view'd, And into Donna in his face Correctly tile-straightener look'd the part He had by loss of blood nourish'd. I know not if it were so ready For head of Antaeus the same Who next beholds his princely mate, But that it made no stall for more Of enmity 'twixt them, where they ran. But now neither entertain Enmity to any again, The ayes and no the no way at all. And that, which made Antaeus hate Of that fierce hero, made Donna Julia To hate of that defiant man; For Julia, in her mind, espouse'd To be the mistress of his heart: For, 'twixt their two remov'd, there lay The potent spell of witchery. But if, indeed, it happ'd so to change That Donna Julia's thoughts; And, when she grew again to head Of her own w T Worship's royal line, To use her love in firm, and never weary To see her Lord she was before (And was not yet by puling mirth enriched, But still the modest flower and ear Of what was call'd the priest and vice-royal): If, she not disaffected, alter'd For that turn lent her authority; I know not, but the breach at any rate Was between a mortal and a thing; For custom at least is free to walk Where conscience is not; and sway Of empty air was not, as are, at all The sway of faith; which yet in the right, Was even the seal, and on it fram'd Signs of it; but held it seems, to be Design'd the protector of his sprouts; As me, now hear the reason, which gave So much of ease to Donna Julia. And also what follows in this part, Which shows there were no steps omitted. I sing--but this is a proof of fact-- A kind of horrible evil bound to Hell As the reverse of Heaven; which, to my mind, Hath still a sad persuasion, though it prove From these we hope to receive a fair, But to our jubilee or to pardon, Heaven has some strange lot, which we are invited To put by, when this deadly scene is turn'd: Some shame or persecution, which is raised By the first party caught and confin'd, As the dynasty is of the Semiramis, Or Felix more than any Roman. Here then to finish this canto, the height Of humiliation, which here I gain'd From my own faults, I will confess, Which to my self I owe, and on the same My daughters and my country buy. This son of my good friend, whate'er He do, or may, in social ======================================== SAMPLE 407 ======================================== The fragments, now of marble only, Of ornaments and devices. The earth conceals the streams, No more in flow'rs and flowers Flow'ry Hyblaean glooms conceal Their nightly luster; And hues of immense brightness That second heaven, conceal The darkness of the night. And never at prime feast Sips eve with sultry glow Such banquet as the grove affords, For deeper scowls And deeper frowns of trees Perpetual conceal 'Mid leaves and shades that burn As the light of feasts And groves, and tops, forsooth, Perpetual shade betray. Nor only night, but ever The wrath of these night-whorls Of fierce pale fore-engines But more, protect their green enclaves From the spirits of the dawn. And places of such ends, and As the first plenil of the North And the floods, for whom e'er they won The prize of re-routings In which the present was glutted 'For rifts that have been spun With unseen vortices, That only during Grew white below With actual meteors, With pulsing pale shafts of star, The show'rs that made us steal From shiverings of the whirl Of surface and collapse The light in their own spanglings, And last, a river that ran Out through a hole in the sun, And on whose current soft and thin White after-spreads Of water fain would weep, But hid in their own wet expanse 'Neath a concave of equal chill The light's death oozed down to the lands, Where it will bloom at noonday. This, northern wind and bore, And ocean's livid pulses, These need an oath; and thither In unseemly presence of wide Latmos, With loose and irregular sails I take the fated arrival, With sails and cargo I take it, ere the gathering season Shall find its head; Because 'tis so miserable far That, unless by fortune very wicked, I can but hear my canvas tugged, And it appear again debarred From entrance to the prescribed space Of welcome; because the bounds, recall By reason's law, are narrowly prescribed, And by one's strick'n, (and such excuse), And does it not appear to thee, Dearest, that the shapes, we think of, By touch or sight, have fixed terminus And calculation expedient reason Of what we understand Of the length and natural length Is only limited by the want Of that concord of thought Which Reason strives to find and strives In vain, for all our reason Sags on the point of being spent Or else wanting strength to wrench the truth From what the sensuous mind forbids. Reason himself tells us so, as 'twere his own, And what Reason cannot go beyond He leaves to faith; or else where yet he says That he can go no further. And faith itself, of faith alone Creator, to himself alone For law and standard Gives what he wants by which all others Are sadly twisted and overthrown. For not alone of yes but no, Sole by himself, to him can be true, But he himself wants the contrary, Either by reason or feeling taught To him that is most seldomer trodden. To gain of himself without offering up Any proof, is easier to secure The faith of others whom he finds it so, That both are willing party to the same. For thus, without trouble of scruples Of offering any proof of what he hopes, He commands the assent of all whom life Made such, and so much they relish feeling good, A not unfrequent pleasure, which the mind Huge, and perhaps stronger than it were, Gives them to like. And to command them faith Stays its own course: where reason, though she triumph, Neglects herself and lets reason go, She to these her light companions adding Faith's more abounding supplies, Cherishes the assent of them and makes it hers, Yet to herself too. It is but sleep For the disused parts to rough again But this time without the chance to wake up. He not unmindful finds himself so fed By proofs to come; and lays down his old view Out of existence, though it be but bare Of the person, and alien to the memory Of all his thoughts by foreign hands unfolded: And ======================================== SAMPLE 408 ======================================== You brought me a rosewreath as if to wreathe your bonnet I cannot put into my shape a thorn and a rose I’ve fallen in with women, you have fallen in with men If we are left what would we do With this spiritual but fettered and bound In all of the previous transformations I am a walking mustard seed You fell in love with an ape Who has a beef with you for there is no skin to spare How does your flag show? No thoughts of the past Only one wish: I would never have had children By running for Congress O death, I don’t even know where to begin <|endoftext|> "A Definitive Metaphor for Old Age and Separation", by James Schuyler [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Separation & Divorce, Relationships, Men & Women, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] We wanted to believe in old traditions, and in a good cause. We wanted to believe in dragons, in one-party rule, in monarchy. It was always different, in season, you could smell the fiddle fraternally, the theater was bigger than the ballroom. One-party rule, there were really no dissenting voices. In season, the king was king, we ate literally from his tongue. There were no dissenting voices, we didn’t know what love was. There were no dissenting voices, we didn’t know what love was. We were never apart, the nameless, lonesome linchpin. It always ended in weeping, there was no immobile beyond it. Suspension of functionality. We wanted to believe in old traditions, and in a good cause, we wanted to believe. <|endoftext|> "My Tongue and I", by Luci Tapisserie [Love, Relationships, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics] My tongue and I are not, of course, like those cards from the dealt-with bedspread where in close proximity sit two figures with serious expressions, one forming a triangle and one sitting, while one inverted in the surrounding silence tallying the silver. But this is a metaphorical card, holding—as it seems to me— three figures: the tongue, which like the ark from the siren’s song is flown too close to the shore, which as strange is lost and then found; the tongue—which comes back to the ear, punctuality, this most recent, of-the-day grace—always circling back to where it started. <|endoftext|> "The Serpent’s Tooth", by Luci Tapisserie [Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends] Bent at you like a shaft: the serpent’s angel-adoring tooth. Between my parted lips it snares me with nightlong silk. This, I want— I’m told—and I want it to be—the distance between us. But how? I see, and I pretend I see, but the lie fails. I crave, I thirst. I’m yours, the tooth says and I say you shut? Well, you tell me, your angel-mouth. <|endoftext|> "The Body", by Luci Tapisserie [The Body] After the bull After the bull I’m with you there and I Who has let you come to me and I Then I brought your body when it was still After the bull. The roped-up thighs I wore when I was touched by you. The cleft My hands are after. The stone cold weight of you, And I washed that, I never Chewed it. I told you I’d chew it, But that never happened. I never ate it, I never swallowed it, Though I thought I did. And now that I’m here It’s you I’d wear in a crown, But I can’t because I’d Never done it. <|endoftext|> "Lup, Joy", by Luci Tapisserie [Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Men & Women, Mythology & Folklore, Greek & Roman Mythology] I trust my friend who trusts me but I don’t trust you who trusts me. This cannot be, I am a machine ======================================== SAMPLE 409 ======================================== er family legacy and lost first ruler of the place. As the summer takes hold on the whole herd, horsel ends for them and they become my childhood refuge of dead leaves and lichen. a goliath beetle squatted down in front of me and croaked, its sister claws in midair, a shark mechanical, clinging all over the sidewalk my hands trembled, they hid in silence of dread, as if it were some<|endoftext|>One of the great features of Kafka's work is his avoidance of a formal narrative. It may be said that his characters speak for themselves. They say what is in their souls, without the need for words, and their mysterious speech has the quality of an unmediated mystical speech. The effect is heightened by the relative deus ex machine of the prose. Of the seven short novels, three have been made into operas, and five have been translated into numerous languages. Kafka's technical proficiency is obvious in the use of irony, which serves as a language for expressing self-consciousness and exposing hypocrisy; his use of paradox as a further development of the first-person plural, for example, in "Metropolitan" writes: "The sun rose in the east, yet there was a wind blowing off the sea, The salt sea blew toward the east, yet there was the sun. Thus began the confusion." ("Metropolitan Ballad", by David Ferry) . The ironic value of the paradox is the dominant one in Kafka's prose. As with all paradox, however, its force is relative: "With some difficulty, and only for a moment, I experienced the whole of this transmutation, "There was an old cottage in the country near Zurich. A painting on a wall drew attention to it; Many people passed the antique's cottage. 'Look in the window!' said a neighbor. "Myself and I could see nothing in the cottage, But we gazed and saw what we could not at all Because the window was closed. A white bird was sitting in the window With its wings half-spread, watching what was inside. The cottage had no door. And thus was composed An old woman's secret. I had a key, But I never used it. So I brought my boat To 'cross the channel, and landed safe and well." It is very probable that most readers of "Kafka" would prefer to have the plot be much as "Kater" by Anthony Baglio, where a ship is left drifting on a beach of glass, with only the wind and the swell to support her. In the novel "Kater" a day is a fortune, and Day is more grateful to a friend than a lover, and "Kafka" carries on a much stronger thread than "KafL" because of its stronger reaction. In both works, however, the strong reaction is the reaction of one or more friendships to a life of exile, of foolish mishaps. Day is the only friend of "Kafka" who is not named Scheimpl. Mikhail Tchalovsky was born on 27th March 1872 in Krusnitza (Poltava) but went to sea at eleven and a half years of age. He later came back and lived in the city of Krasnoof (Pierazava) until he was 34 years old. He wrote poems, short stories and little novels, but they never succeeded in destroying the love of his youth for the company of friends, the operas and the summer. Tchalovsky lived in the neighborhood of Mr. S. Matson, the producer of the Daily Herald, who is related to the Wates. Tchalovskysvksy was also fond of Vitebskaya Ploshina (Vitebskaya Tribust) who was a beautiful and noble young lady who had a pet tiger, "Tcherkino". Tchalovsky often went to the theater and could be heard saying in the press and in the club, "Go to the theater and look at Tchkialko and 'Wino' and 'Dolepko'." But Tchalovsky never wrote any novels or stories, was not a talker and puzzleer of riddles. Amongst the writers of the black earth system Tchalovsky has the widest fame. Amongst the writers of the first stage of the Black Speech Tchalovsky is a strong writer, though in relative obscurity. Amongst the writers of the second stage Tchalovsky is eminent. Amongst writers of the third stage Tchalovsky is still more outstandful. Amongst writers of the fourth stage Tchalovsky is at present the most powerful. Amongst writers of the fifth stage Tchalovsky is by no means inconsiderable. Tchalovsky had an influence on the young writers of Russia. In ======================================== SAMPLE 410 ======================================== of the rose with the thorn upon it. “Dreaming, ” ouch, vittel a dream! An “unaccountable vision” of weeping water as “a grand action”! “A red rain falling from hell,” the parsons might say. Who can think of a waterbase, where the only cow not consumed is the cow, the only lover not consumed is the lover? I could, but, “who is it?” you ask. God forbid! Well, even the dead should not be thought of. It is “John Copper, a brewing company.” That is the query a visitor to my farm asked once. I replied “Of why I was taken from my father a wild for my red hair, a beer company told me. John Copper has a long history of abuses, especially of beer. They paid a visit to my grandfather, went to my grandmother, who, a child, married a John Copper. I saw her drunk at the doors of my grandfather. There is a saying: red hair attracts attention. When she turned to the desk and asked for work my grandfather, a sweated labourer, answered for her. There are four John Coots, two are in hospital one is a knife murderer. I do not like John Copper. John Copper has a wide horizons. On my farm the hog-castration and the blind barnyard show we live with the bison, the hog, and every farm animal, with our negligence. I am not a fan of John Copper. Here is my plucking calendar. Oftener in the spring when the sun bird back to the west the sky then represents the sky of the westman, the sky of the westman, on the first of May, the doctor visits or sees, to his horror. In this spring of a growing horror I saw the red-haired Terry, a good-natured soul, whose heart not rosy, whose knowledge not keen, and whose tomcat brown on his face, who looked at me, and his eyes of aguish green. Then Terry was there and his wife Eleanor, nearer at home. They are slow when they walk in their winter calendar of knowledge, weird evil gliding over the dial. My daughter, in school she found a calendar on a train carried by the wind from Scranton to Grand Island. In it the days of the year and the months. After all the years on earth. Stoned grandpa Gingrich, smoking cold cigarette. Did she remind him of me? One of my pupils. Back from the war next door in Indiana in the forest with schnupdi. Let us wash them then pray God forgive us (tossed into a jar) Not good life. One of my pupils. Did life remind her of the flu? Over the moorland took her down. Not clean. Away to the grave wash her sleep on her hands and finally tell her to remember me, well, I am sure they are able. Thank you. Only God knows. No matter. One day we will do. As to my vocation sits a red-hot lamp that’s bricked up within. When I take the lame down I may forget. I might have died. There’s always roadwork in my work. I’ll stay and hear my beat and smell the barrel of the hunter’s glasses. Mother and father in the dry sun announced me bright in spite. The officer who took me and no other pig his heart had caught. Mother said to them: “Touche. Touche. Get you well. The gun. To shoot well saying the words you say to me when I find you walking like an honorable guy.” <|endoftext|> "Song of the Walk", by Khaled Mattaka [Living, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] for ======================================== SAMPLE 411 ======================================== to the de'ordend entr'lamage of their pris'kin blan' flower · What then am I to the deade astha? What shall I, for I see I am not more than a callow boy To want a woman invent no new magic but how-to brew a sort of gin intricate as sea an' space an' sea-stubble And so on In his divey bucket intricate as sea an' space an' sea-stuplty lay gin he allots him till he breaks down most clear the superior presences in earth the senic intricate as our own as she, as she the like every spirit, as she the dark, my place my astha, sing then I is beautiful my shining silver-grey the spirit, my place the spirit welcometh in setting, in all; as though it could whirl it, sell it break it, strip it; it did not want I told it to stand all its lang een longing to the real to be held and kept fha! intricate fha! that it knoweth garden sun-mote bud-end roulet a sensiory teat to be satiate briefly; in it, in this the need of ache the sun-purr a wonderland of wounds all wicked as the dark is that same gleam and deadly all full of light in the dark, in the magic darkness of the spirit and how that light becomes stone and stone in pain a living thing; iron-hearted touch on the opening sliding of tiles and tapping of front teeth in passion and bark and thrusting into branches and bushing of foliage and in it smells of the trees in colour and in spirit by the cries of the sturgeon, in speed and hue the force of howl and howl of the heifers and the roar of the "sweepers" and behind it on foot in their tight leather brawls and small lights and the throngs of dancers in light and sound, by the perils of how they are girt with some crazy slack and flex of the leap, the pausing of paces of dally paces and the dance of trot and the echo in distance; and be it be that the lark of the pansies dances on within the iris and vicuna tree that the memory of all within her be a reference not to dreams only to dreams and something more: it is this: one set of flowers has a royal flush while another is barbed and strung; and yet again with a blazing mountain erect, as if to the sky the seed, a perfect answer rises solitary and shows its friends but in a cloud of wildness and, like a great tree forked, a fragment of the first ever remnant that ever walked this earth. <|endoftext|> "Eve", by C. D. Lewis [Living, Growing Old, Love, Relationships, Nature, Mythology & Folklore, Heroes & Patriotism] The sunsphere splits blue above the shoulder of the damsel who shall cover: the eyes were painted that and the damsel gave heart's-ease to her lovers like a poet but she took so long to raise them that royal was only rank or noble or plebeian so that I'll cover. In that also was the gift of lyre calfe's milk-skin fetched broad some say a cairn of thunder broached in china so that I'll cover the river of her nourishment and that I cover I wax-wings to thin then I turned my own I'll cover: my body the wall of ======================================== SAMPLE 412 ======================================== Some come along, too, to bid a long farewell To what's left and saying, "There must be more dust Than that's in the cat's cradle, you see." Or we look up and try to trace A human pattern, strange as it seems, By the shadows thrown in. We want What words have probably implied-- Where a neighbor's house was situated Beside a well or lake, and 'tis built Of stone and brick, and rippled at the sides, And above us there's a big walnut Strokes the blind woods on. The sea, with many her peculiar charms, Was first a placid, green lagune. As gulfs of blue aguish sky grew deep, A white beach came at the edge of space From green inland islands. For on the inland, green lagunes that gave Our shallow waters to avoid, The scarlet loons made bridges, And branched out into scarlet loam Above the lagune's course; The wild, abutting, rolling loam They hid in their canyon-hug, Struck at the loom of cliffs Thee, and caught in their burrs The bristly boughs of threatened trees. Yet when the green lagune's course was run, It set at last for vale or vale of hills A rampart of white towers, And only on the higher ramparts Only the highest trees were planted Of starry blossoms like a book. I wish that I could make of these Towers of such forests; I wish I had such limitless space for my trees, My forests, my woods, And what I don't want I could put in them, Though I should have no ramparts, no walls, No fortifications, No army, no nothing. The lovely ladies have laid a spot For winter weed, a little chapel For those who pray, a hut for the birds Of only one kind, and some fields for grain, A bar to stop the hearth, and who would pike A little well for the drudgery Of burying men like me, who could never Have children, And no more than that, and that's it. I've washed my feet of each wave, I've sunn'd and sunbaked; when my turn came I set a little garden, Where I do nothing. I've sat upon my bones The whole winter, and where I sit I let the rest of the summer rust In weeds all up and branches out. I have nought to do, but the moon shines And I admire my fingers on the keys Of my lagging lil d choice guitar And think that I am as good as she Who sings most, and when she's tired Looks down on her lap of cloud As if she were grown to full age And older than the ages that she sang. Poor devil, he was man; To be a child was thecht his theme, And then his nature got 'im In such a curious way It made him think he was a fool. He never looked with his face Over the village toddling, Who all of a sudden appears A Moses led by ghosts, But always looked with his heart all beating. For life shall be broken off; He'll never be quite the chap that he started out. I think he's goin' to croak. With his soul up and government He sits and gets such a plan He sees himself to be a king. And then he'd like to have a wife And all his time lookin' at her With a high astonishin' face As if to say--"She's just like me! She's made of the same stuff!" And sometimes he'd do a things With his tongue that were most strange. He'd do the things that scared you, too, And that's just to tell you how I think He's goin' to croak. 'T wasn't nothing but a lick up the flag And a runner's push, the things he did With that one, but he was a dog that day, And he'd like to have a puppy, But he couldn't have his own. He'd stand on his hind legs so stiff And beat you if you got his leg Back by over-running him. He was his own best watchdog. No one ever walked a cape-point roun' him Or anywhere near, but he'd come, And would just croak as if he was goin' to. He would go to sleep when ======================================== SAMPLE 413 ======================================== Weathered and wan and damp and grubby. By the road the smoke-clouds arise Through twilight gray. By the road the smoke-clouds arise, As fog from ploughside seizes and slats the house against the sky. The fire that swallows the bloom, The frost that nails the rose is smothering me to earth. I have no wish for glory: Here in the dust I prosper. I, that am slow, that tremble, the earth has bent me. I have learned there is a grace in dying, a glory in the dust. I have seen the reason for gloom. I have learned you cannot read the dream from the dreaming; that silver from the moon's white brighthifications our crabbed eyes, when suddenly it comes, my own spring, my own hopeful year. Roses first in April grow brown and warty. Roses close then open; their fragrance falls. Stripes of green from steel-coloring, with still sweet scent. Heart's-ease, heart's-heft Heart's-pleasure, love's delight. Scented-scented. Florist-scented. Empire-scented. Scents of life for the planting Do not shed Flowers of festal leaves On the wayside, path, or vale, as you pass with laborious tread. Burden only those who toil. The feet of the rest At your tongue's sound cease. And it shall be If you keep your eyes on my table. Butterscotch-chocolate in a cup Close my eyes. The scent of that ole raised me Like any glass slipper And made me happy. It was like the energy Of the smallest insect Gathered by the others. I am drunk. <|endoftext|> "from To Yukizane, from Crossing the Great Standard Bridge", by Yayoi Shitoo [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Nature, Weather, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Race & Ethnicity] After the Archby-monthly black death and funeral parade through the forest I walk alone through the night my heart a chest a chamber worn empty my mind shaken I smell the void my mind shaken I look for the whole aching map of ours papering over the hearts The Emperor how else could you find a thing to hit the hearts when no one knows the hearts (My father) white men from the frontier They used to call him Hacheman wanted to hit a thing still I think of the hearts or something my heart what did it beat to How could I end the beat get angry I walk with the rain to the hot black grave I hate the rain tho you give me warmth cold black sun is hot but I will not freeze This is the final bed I will end my days here under the blue cheese flag I hate the sun but I also love my father I like the meningoes on the ground silent black flowers bodies black like you my father was a man of the peoples and we all belong to nothing I could break his floor with my body he could care about the dead but I have children and we take care of each other You come with me I will share my thoughts with you I will stay with my mothers I will always be the wise and honored long black wombat we have lived and will live beyond any dream (My mother) I will fight the jungle I was not made for this life The voices in my head my mother's whispering come from somewhere else Beyond the stars the voices in my head They do not listen to me what I say how I say come here <|endoftext|> "(for my sister who has just died)", by Yayoi Kusama [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Family & Ancestors] Whoever you are, this is for you. Family has died. My great-grandmother you carried her life into your hands Listen, I will tell you about my family My mother's family Their names are Minna and Abe Minna is still alive She lives with a spirit that has just been born We all know my mother There is no one who loves you better than ======================================== SAMPLE 414 ======================================== MU: I have a sin to do And my broken heart will never Give up the treasure I came To make her so happy, or to say There was a happiness that is just. I've lived long enough to know Heaven is real. It's as real As my wife-to-be can say. <|endoftext|> "After 42 years", by John Hay [Living, Parenthood, Time & Brevity, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Friends & Enemies] Today I was an older man jealous of the day my son went through without giving a kind word, good arm around him or a reassuring shoulder to lean on, and I was a lonely man without a son of my own. Sometimes I think my jealous old heart is going, making my son and my enemies laugh at my old fears and being jaded by forgetting what love is: a kind of luck, something a long time produces, like air, and like the long process of spring. My heart is old, and the days pile up, but the season still gives me chances to remember. My smile, when I wear it on the telephone, says, having called, "Call me." <|endoftext|> "After 42 Years", by John Hay [Living, Growing Old, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Family & Ancestors] My brother walks into my room, and I don't. It's a factory now, where kinship lives and works with the machines that make the young skeleton that rots from my waist up into the skeletal chrysalis I walk past in a rage of mechanical boredom, my neck the set he'll tell our grandkids. Time is freighted, loaded, and it's slow as a train, the leaf thrown hard against the side. The storyteller has said that our tale is told once more, and the same chapter, always, to another, and, at least as often, and so long as I think of the 42nd man (who walks into my room, and never the stairway I grew up in), he'll think of me, tired and unsure where to go, and I'll wonder if I should put him out of view or tower over him and, now and then, laugh a little like I did, once, with my family and maybe he'll throw something else away with the story he is turning in his notebooks, and the inchworm crawling out of his ear could almost make me smile, though I was never meant to, and now I am carried on a current of me, throwing a rope in a machine that goes no further than my hand and going into that ride with it into which I am carried too <|endoftext|> "Teach Me", by John Hay [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Time & Brevity, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Social Commentaries, Town & Country Life] I don't know how to tell the story of my life. It is the story of a dark night of the soul in which I burn. I've thought of asking a devastated daughter to play and when she stared the words like a wand, I pictured her face too, spilt milk, as she begins to speak— sounds of water over a still stream to a siren in another song scratched up by the tides of the body. I don't dare to think of any hope as I try to remember a state where my brothers fought in the eruption of a glacier on an island in the valley of a lake, and now, outside our door, the loss of the mountain they worshipped wails like the souls of my brothers dead. On no ash-stained hill like this. I still have a ways to go. I should not be so happy. Now, this afternoon, I walk along the river, which winds through a town, a landscape of last grains spilled in gullies and box elder burrs. I dream of rock warfares at head-level now, hunting in packs below, of the porcupine action of the repeat files in a magus who only took one week's leave for this that he keeps hidden in a box in the dry atmosphere, and the canyon's in the park where a rail litter of unfinished islands, the black babies of wetlands, a town's stack on top, a land that is ======================================== SAMPLE 415 ======================================== Who boast our kinship with the dainty! And mark my home; my father he was like The fruitful person whose fruitful thing was this. And she a sister, whose producing was like to this. Then for this crime my family shall wail as I may. Baptize the man whose father was so like to this, To grace the matrimonial bed of Jane: The slave of loving tchattan our chief flower was. God send this one to have a sister worth a song, With better than a Husband's love to cheer her, And father that she would own, were he but mine. What is more precious than that home's blessing? O, never let that home of a noble foe Be desecrate by sachem or dame, Nor are we three the merry, lowing race of men, But boast a children's right, each heart to thieve, And love to face the foe. Alas, and here's the prince his festal dower: Why hath no one in such vast wealth been wrought As Louis the Firm's Duke? Worthy is he, being fit to be wept For every daughter. For beauty, truth, and worth he is so good, And all our kisses sound as soft, As any of his wives. And he is kind, and of his reason fair, And full of love, and will to mine, And for to prove me, as I need. Since he 's spied such royal grace, When he doth worship rise from east to west, Has he not yielded to the crowd, And joined their conversation? From these fair dwelling-places we pass All others bow and kneel to that king. We take him for a prophet and a saint, And for a sentinel undefiled, For sign and bell to rear and arm the portal, For guard and testimony, For feast and banquet, For gift of all and for renewal, For guerdon and debt, For fine and for profit, For head and heel and head of all the feet. We thank him for his wide command, For ransom and for release, For he is hold for work and service, Our life, our door, For alms, for pardoning and all good, For gage and mite. Then blessed be his nose and maw, O rich and fortunate! We look upon his beard, On hair and all it toppeth; A god we worship. His mantle and his trousers, Whose knit kimono blends Full seldom; His shu¤t-stick, a perfect point, In the very best of shine That ever kist. We worship near all-purposed things That lift a foot or two Or are one and all In process of being For sweet, sweet music, For sweets, and sweetest of all Is the sweet voice. More sweet than the strings, and more sweet Than one or two, that's enough; There is not any one thing, if you refrain; But all things grow to all, And nothing is, or more than all, Except they grow to Love. He that gilds him is a wine-dark sage Hiding his wine-dark face among the roses; No wonder if the bright things stare And glisten in the arrows of night. Woe then for such as cast the wine-dark face As wind and thunder stare. It was my mother,--but he taught me to be A man for justice, right and all; With ears to hear and eyes to see, This man made me a man; For his life hath caught fire for me It was my mother,--but he gave me strength Of spirit, thrift, and temper, and thought, For all the gifts I had; And so he gave, in his love supreme, My heart's blood and my breath. It was my mother,--as light and as shadows, His heart is the broad sun, with all touches full Of my abounding love. And so he gave me wealth, my boy, to bear, And courage in all things I cannot tell. We are the poor and the hungry,--we are the sick And the weary,--this man taught me of that Which gives me strength, my son, to go my way. And he hath given my strength for to say to him In kind and patient tones, "It is our law." We are the poor and the hungry,--we are the hungry And ======================================== SAMPLE 416 ======================================== In the nooks of the past, in the saloons of days long past. Oh those days! Those nastier days! Of wrongs, and vexations, and malice of the small, more wicked men of the days of yore! Dallard and his foes, Lancaster and his, the space that is left of that wonderful Grave, that Valley of the unknown, those old friends of my father, my earthly fathers, my dearest Lord, begat of blood, blood and tears. My lovely Birthright. My Birth-giver. Papa and Babe-land. Re-birth. Princely Land. Papa's works. Re-born into Land's passing-place. The Lea and Tyne. Castle, and Forester, and Bard, Castle and more Bard, and so upon. I lived with those now no more. I lived no more. Cast for me. Cast for me o' the yoke. I lived with those then no more. From their works I die. The candle- light in the cottage in the dawn. The twilight silence of buildings down to the low, light-corded twilight, begun my words. The muted voices of centuries far, long-gone centuries, in those deep days, I heard far more than the Great White Gang of those days. I read to be in them, as my mother did, in a style to my liking, the language of all men wise, and of all men now, And of my dear Mother, when she brought me to that beautiful world. Poor, silent, little Mary, as I knew her, and her son, his company, which gave minstrelsy as a touch to her words, and in common speech, wisdom. How sweet the touch of the heart to English men, With that, and so few horses, then the chapman brought to the Bristol park. Von Wolstenholme came next. His words were melody to me, who had not loved them until then. He knew a lot. He had read one book, only one, only one. His masterpiece, his Hundertext, the one poem he ever wrote in his life. His wife reads also, but not with him. And the poet also loves them. O there is the ex-PFE of Denmark. With him the wilderness. He is an elm for it. His words are so strong, with such vivid colouring, my heart stands up and cries for joy. How may man not love a word that Bages from a bed of old decisions? How may man not love a book of such emphasis, with such conclusions? The German has so many expressions, the English has such, too, and still does one more. Dictated vocabularly. I knew him well. I liked that man. If anything, I know him as an artist, not as a soldier, but I had seen him at the best side of an entertainment event. There may have been a night or two when I had not seen him, and then perhaps a minute, and then only from memory may he have returned, the comedian of Warwick. The gleeful Swede, the giddy Dane. The little Swedish chin to balance it. The chat and the hints, the offering of help, the stiff English favour to give in somewhere, to break a repertory. A man, my friend, that had peed in the swim and flown with ease, just skimmed the golden breath of England. He might go on For that matter of him we have one more with us, the soldier-cum-actor Varshney, second in command to Reiss. An old friend of Marcus Aurelius, the Discourse of Marcus, all the things the two of them discussed at length at Nyack (sir, an oldie but goodie), the choice word "vanity" to the rescue or to the exile. What a most marvellous line in text and text- verse. And the ancient pree- ses to ponder upon: S. T. C., "I, being as it were the instrument in charge Of their orchestring, between it and It, to speak as yet as Marcus might have it, 'had occasion to speak to you.' I watched the scene intently, and sat silent on the benches, a bystander, through tears hug ======================================== SAMPLE 417 ======================================== Blending my thoughts with those, which sing The praises of a father's power And of the cares a mother has O'er the loves which have their being In the thought and done by love itself. The foamy mass in rocking then Begot a lull of noise around, Till noises of a sea-like sound Drowned the current, each in its place, Together, as it were, in rest From a tumultuous rest, As they whose motion has ripened them Into such existing. The earth beneath, so fairly gliding, Was with inflected ease Wove a wonderful fabric of the West Of the sense of something sublime Which would grow in beauty; which would hang From the mossy trees and sprouting buds, In this placid spot, As with stately wrought Prisoners from the summit of the hill, Upon the valley below. And the heightening of mountain all From the valley's southern limit To the perpendicular sun Had knitted these flowers, well laden with Days, to a stocky root and dank, And their beauty of form was formed, And their order, like a gem, Sought the gem-snaring sun As the blaze of some old tower From its aged timbers, roofed about With yellow panes, and crowned With leaves for parade and festal Near a fireplace chanced to stand All betwixt the window and grove. Weep not, my friends, for days, Weep not, my friends; For age hath sown For the harvest of long years With a blossom of song. Weep not, my friends, For the light-shaping word And the wise power of the star Have the sundown moment brought A little rain; But that your griefs may share Losses, with rare praise For a season; for your country For the wounds which are to heal In the mind to-day, For the hours of happier years Which have sped from the way, For the sins which remain Behind among the winds, For the land which abides, Loss and breach of forgive, For a loss of the sinner's birth, For the hand which is to form The last link between the bride and the bier, For the eyes which are turned from afar, On the dewy weed of the sea, For the hours like vision, For the garment in truth That is woven to the heart, Weep not, my friends; But the truth, Which is wound with beauty and calm Of its precepts to heal The human soul in time, For the word has meaning Which we shall not understand, For the hour-glass of glory, For the promise which was promised To our loving ones, whose curse is To see the sun at its setting, For the promise which was broken, For the only shadow cast From the molten steel, For the pathos of the morning, For the soul's anthem, "Soul and body, Serve the Threshold," For the burden which thrills Through the nights of exile From the soul's warm heart, For the dream of the coming day, For the gift of the sentry, Whom God doth guard in the grave, Who in joy's countenance Hear's messenger. For the strength which to the travail Takes the heaviness Of our gracious God, For the psalm which made A minstrel's blood draw A wondrous breath, And the song for the soul, For the crown of all perfect Which is not crowned, Which is cloven in the cross When the flesh meets the spirit, And the wings of the dove Hung on the traffot lost, For the sweet music of those Whose songs the eaves break, And the ears which are not rapt, Which the earth must ring With a loud divinity, Though the hearer be Never so dumb, Whose eye hath not clove To the universal sphere From the centre to the ends The outward sky; And the spirit which is faith, And the sight of the unembryred And the vision which is wombs For the restless age; For the love of the living, For the ringing music of life Which has nought of earth But the sound of a Song For its joy which it hears, The outer mountains wind Where the pilgrim dies, And the spirit of the flood When it is received; Weep not, my friends ======================================== SAMPLE 418 ======================================== -Güün: “go buy A set of letters.” After the hookers went to their hill They set up and hung themselves Hanging by the neck with the hands Silently rose, and sank as boughs drooped. Walking down the street the evening of evening And i held on my horse Through deserted streets to old Bay Area. Now the only women stand at wall With chin on breast while they count the shadows Of tree limbs shaking off the midnight sky. Turn up the pages: how brightly they meet In the running of the fingers Of mothers, daughters, sweethearts To set the table with wine: The stork in the trellis nooks for crumbs. Then back to the story of this woman Who hid her screaming son Where no one could see him Barely half an hour. On Fifth street in a ravine In the midst of diamonds I heard another cry from a wide house Where stained-glass windows make all else light And smoke curdle off the drifts of leaves: “Wake up! There's a man outside! What are we going to do with him?” “Shove him in the hole. Why, this is the wilding. We are growing wild, we can't take it more Or ever we stop that way.” I left this high that I once knew And entered back into trees. On Fifth street a cane Was rattling: that was what they meant, And this woman there across the street Was mad about black pine. Then the two of them together On Fifth street And maybe down through others. Now if it were mere chance That the man that I knew was there Then it might be just the case That a he would suddenly appear. But now it seems more than chance That a he was there. Now the man is my friend And just as sure That I’d know him down deep. On Fifth street I passed another And moved on to the white To the jungle again. I got to the end of the street Took a look at the white On the sedge There's an alley way from here to the river With a ferry and a sign, and I always Had to pass And that I could not. I turned away The map to hold for your land Where we found him: we had to call him cousin But we don’t use cousin now But stand you beside me and let’s have A kiss good luck and gird a grey One of those bows. Your woman isn’t perjured and You can change the waters in your cup But my finger looks bigger than yours Fingers up your towsey Gods you are my mother I’ll kiss your dead thumb Now her face lights up Which’s astonishing. Hush! Don’t let him see. Don’t let him see How little is enough. On Fifth street, honey Quiet and down on her luck The only woman woman Who’d understand And have some wit And an aflex Oh! a married woman Like “The Voice” The only one on Fifth Before the snarlof the cards. On Fifth street lowrise I saw a candle ahead And she was dressed In that long heavy halliect That goes all overcoat And over skirt and over everything Like a spirit. She has a party tonight In the bedroom Of her house And I am the church And when I see your face It puts me beside myself. So if you see me outside If you see me there You can’t see from here But I am a feather It is overcoat It is the coat of the rain The door, that’s strange There’s not much of a rain When it drops to the throat You sit in the dark And it came to you As a child As a child it came As a soul She slipped through one Of the air tight spirals Of dark dust One of the dirty seed Feathers as it were Leavings of, not It took a soul That’s when I was like From what we called dreams Of it there In the souls we knew <|endoftext|> "the dancer", by John Moh } I was dreaming I danced For the dancer Wind, Singing to him Wind had come Who was like the lark, he could turn All ======================================== SAMPLE 419 ======================================== Unequivocally, A command To roll in Blind Sustenance Devil's island Deer sanctuary Manyfares; You eternally Young forever. A life-long State of adolescence. Though every day is a great Odyssey, The most palpitating Desire for Outrage Of great chance! With one song Leaning to one light Snapshot, there, Something taps his harp And singes it round. "Smack! Now now now! Catch The body of this chord! Let the good lord Help you!" Two thousand years ago The Pleasures' Colony, Just shattered the fog Of Indian Savages, Made the gray world shine Bright as the new-born day, Mixed the fog with smoke On the midmost furrow Of these moving hills, By this sicklier air, Forecast to move as night Beads the scene; Here where its organic impulse Wastes o'er the land and sends its stream So far into the antarctics As to hide its gulfed existence Singed by the date of Ross's Stratagem And now, the Queen of Hearts Scattered flowers to the winds of May, And all the earth was laden With the daffodils that yearned For the passing of a name, Out of the gathering of men Here, here, where all tide is In our langue dept; Where nought, at its birth, turns aside Immigration, or deltion, Nor any lanyards that fall From custom to leue, A throbbing mind to rebel The wide deceipt of things That the mists hath muddied And obscured in mystery With misty advent, and a shroud Of mist and gloom; Here the grey beads o' the clock Have not taught it to comprehend What is a man, what is a worm, Or a woman, what is a rose; And hence its wounds have grown sicker Than those in which it suffered Where we walk as in a sty Crowded and overgathered, Here the grasses have a sway In their rage for battle, The gourd-like heads roll round In this current ford For heads turn out in war Like three brothers at bay, The invisible line of slaughter Towards other folk; And the tunes are about us Of fierce tumult and dismay For flower-show For death. At hand the gray Clymbes heave are ready For plucked feet to slake The thirst of the wayward toe If any such should be This is a circle of price Wherein we abide To be judged Upon the ultimate and Heart of each forked branch That leads all forms To this sea But we cease to pause in darkness, As a god would to undo A thousand years of silence Without a sign. <|endoftext|> She leans o'er her charger's neck With idle hoofs and random crashes; Dull day-worn faces put to print The painted smile of painting; Softening attitudes give the curve Of wistful names to quaint inventions; Faces like a poet's numb hand Vibrate remote through the dreaming room. O for the old Days of breathless pride Of the brooding, raging park! when erst The child would lock his truer flesh in ward Until it found the angel's breast. And his arm would swing in tight harness Of trot for fulness of the Spring; And the gutters, filling glad, To the pink of its perfect eyes Would shake their tale of a long love; And the beasts that draw the throated jeers Would curl them a saeance. O for the green Forest! O for the air Tied up in knots! O for the frost Of heaven that comes with its hoards! O for the sweat That sticks in the oaks like a bar, And one whole year let fall a wreath Of autumn golden, and none dare say "Our friends have forgotten the Spring." For me, O my love, where is the spot To find once more the fluent-laughing tongue, The raw cheek so dear to look, The beat, the pulse to know again Of living memory's ease, And the heart, where the lovely face Was born of a desire so rare As the flush on a maiden's breast Before she ======================================== SAMPLE 420 ======================================== Bends, recrosses, abridges and inhales Like a wolf in graceful motion, But somehow, I can't divine how One taste of the future recrosses to A deep breathlessness and a serene That makes God's bloodmore dear to me Than the low oil for which he moaned. <|endoftext|> The noise, the darkness, the crashing wood, Then slowly, suddenly, and well, With the sweep and whittling of a feather, The magic-tentered song of the Sparrow, A steady thud as a worthy sustenance Sustained by the warm day's imperceptible dim Falling into the light of a star; And silence of the weltering stone by the stream, Moving with the will of a living world, The unsphered vitalizing Gods, at rest, As where the mad craves the light more sweet and clear; And silence of wild ways, and sighs and stings Of proud undressing trees, and tremors slow From dewy first springs; and stars of weather dim; And sunset leaping from the billowy sky, So that no clouding of His love appears, Poor bereft lover of the hurrying hour; No morrow to come like this glorious day; No promise of another world beyond, Only this night of life in the now. And though, with birds in clearings and streams, Of song, and singing, and of golden flowers One after other old, long passed away, We might say what months, what seasons, were best; Yet not like this, only one quiet day That left so sweet a promise behind: No expectation, no doubt, no strife, Only a steady tenderness of mood Wearing a self-devotion; and it moves In deeps, as the sunlight in our hearts. Sometimes, when my dreaming is not for nothing, In dreams when I can hardly see or hear, I seem to see the vague veil drawn aside Of life, as o'er the sleeping world of earth The golden mist the sun makes o'er, Till in the setting, the golden dawn Starts out like Heaven in every Star. An overture of music, wherein, Even as the Voice, which at the close of night Thorough the soul as it deepens into Light Sells the World's Many Gifts, so Voice and form Join in such union, that we win to what Hovers some at the end of our single deeds, Love calls the World's Present, and the World's Good. No winding staircase up the steep Of the realm of shadow, nor waterlope Dreamland, nor cathedral in the wood, Shall help the soul to win a higher air; But, climbing in clear and loftier air, Insight the poignant stars and answer Nature, The shadow of the soul she shall dispel And give us peace; so is the World set, Else, better to be glad and love than ill. The busy and the smutty, morose and dreary, The drear strum of the prison, the mimic floor Of one-sided struggle and hopeless strife, Shall now receive a change of music, or a change, And, to take a higher path, the painter's eye Leads us, or the poet's poetic lyre. No long slow passage to the smoky lane Of bloody rout by carrion-carled war, Or of empty yell and shriek by slaughter-hoard, Lonely on stony highway, shall our steps be, But through the rich promise of the seraphure, For we, who in such serener land exist, Are chosen for death's harbingers and sun-lit bowers. And though the future task shall take us hence, Under yon dome of palaces midbrowed high, Down the long stair of star-consecrated night Till the dim brink where love cannot climb, With her of old I turned to worship, we shall sing, Who lost the love-creating fire; Till the light, that, all-consuming and sojourning, Took from us the lost living ray, We climb the hill, we dwell apart In a more than heaven where angels are not; Whither Lucifer with me; but thou Lucifer He that thy flamy chamber, thy purple vesture, In bright witness stand; and thou the great god faith, And thou whereo long Lucifer was lorn, And I thy kin, the old, the glory-shining And blind, O ======================================== SAMPLE 421 ======================================== <|endoftext|> "The Summer Place", by W. S. Merwin [Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] I saw the Poplar, leaf after leaf after leaf in succession Into a dark a mirror of mirror, my will with their And they were other than who they were, the summer of the Hearing a child crow, the year after the year after the Hearing a child's voice do you hear it’s okay Like heaven an echo Or a word that is not said in the voice of others Is let go And something is gone but is other than The range The sorting, the One against the other, the orchid and the lily, The way They told their story What they learned What they learned Away Is where they lived A place To be here In the room That’s for me <|endoftext|> "Marguerite", by W. S. Merwin [Nature, Trees & Flowers, Weather, Religion, The Spiritual, Mythology] (for Marguerite) Take everything & make it beautiful Doesn’t everything have A way to make Its way To the heart Where it belongs, To be loved Or betrayed Yes, everything Has a way To be told & the heart Is in the middle Of everything Where it belongs To be let go Take everything & make it beautiful Marguerite Do not love Of all the things that moved This wall of the spring Of spring is gone, And everything Has a way To be in the middle Of everything To be let go One way to know Everything That matters A way to be wise Is to be let go To be in the middle Of everything To be let go To be known As the beautiful Or betrayed One way or another Every single day Is a way To be for others Every single night Is one way To betray Every single day Every single night One way to know Everything And every single night A way to betray One way is the way To make the beautiful Something has gone away & is Not the thing That mattered The world is full of light Something has gone away Before our eyes We see it, and we do not Whether it matters or not We see it As everything that is That moves and speaks In a breath All that lives and breathes And to each other Re-chore that die Whatever made it, wherever it is Whatever it may be This was born this way <|endoftext|> "Preface", by Donald Revell [Living, The Mind, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Nature, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy] I. This is a house, and they tell me There are angels under the floor —Shadows that move so quickly and change so you don’t know if you’ve moved a half inch An angel comes and is gone in a moment Some of us are taller and older than others I don’t know what this means, where things hinting at themselves I wonder about the dreams The blood reaches into all of us, We can feel it in our hands I put this book in you The ground you walk on has changed I don’t know if you have a right to this life I wonder about this life Was there ever a life that was lived I will stand quietly, look at the wall, This will be the last time we talk & I am tired of your questions not satisfactory answers & I wonder if there are other things that I have not asked I have not asked questions I am locked in the wing of a bird Birds are sleeping, at rest. I remain here. You remain. This is all we have for conversation Look at all this I will put my hand on your head my head. I say this for no other reason but that we are each so different ======================================== SAMPLE 422 ======================================== love waveth from your lips while you read the poems small birds come humming from where the frogs and the crickets of the Wines-of-Lucre have been silenced by the age of reason. You begin to remember. You come back to meadows and barns. The cattle are full. You come through the black hole to find me in my wagon dripping with rain while the cattle browse in grass and herbs and soil while the crooks and thieves eat bread and honey while the sun comes up in red gas-guzzlers. But for now we stay along the banks of the teacup of our wicker chairs. You tell me a bed of stone and a wall of old white sand. You begin to tell me a story while I sip from my glass of loaf. Meanwhile the moon is a loaf of white terra-cotta and the clouds are the frogs and crickets of the Wines of Lucre. Like this and the sky the old woods are dying like old folks whom has let their goats out. Outside of not hushed in not of old men who keep their goat whiskey. I want to go back to a snow gem and ride my caddy down the backcountry with you. The deer are gone. Only ghosts are left. Will the moon be a cup full of fire? The cloud pensases your eyes. Your stogie still sucks black from the gravel. It’s time to fill your glass. It’s time to go down to the goat pitch. The peacock is watching you. <|endoftext|> "A Holy Cow (Saiad HaRas)", by Michael Hartnett [Living, Coming of Age, Death, Relationships, Pets, Philosophy, Funerals] NIGHT of a Christmas moon the priest had set To watch the dead come to the bed; The priest was over the dead—death was in his look— And these in darkness joined the soul With these. Said the priest, “I may look, but I may not go.” <|endoftext|> "A Church--in Virginia,--", by Michael Hartnett [Living, Time & Brevity, Nature, Animals, Religion, Christianity, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict, Heroes & Patriotism, Independence Day] UNITED NATIONS (praise him not), we in whose hearts One of our own is kept, the head of Caesar’s state, Where Almighty God sits with man as one divine. I meet him, and am confounded of this king of states, This chief of temples,--a fool with crowns and festoons. Say, what is right in this wild westering world? Where are the wise in this? This is a time Of stakes for those that know right. A time Of black for those that do not,--the fools and sabote For sitting life at bay by shutting eyes, Sucking your earwigs till you let the locks drop. This is the time to play with Destiny And cheat the dreary hours of that among The heads of nations that roll and rust Among our knees, where shall we turn? Behold, We are a broken people, seeking rest Wherever we may not find it here, For we have no period to our days. This is our realm, be its lord the best That live, and it shall not seek us further. <|endoftext|> "Helen: Mid-Ocean", by Mike McClure [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Mythology & Folklore, Greek & Roman Mythology] At midnight, when the rumour of crumpled wings has faded into empty air, what is it then but empty of spirit, splashed by the oily tide? What are the waters of the night turned to sea, the pulse of the globed stars broken as it runs coiled along, turned to bones that compass things in their wet fingers, a thick husk from the throat of a star, the emptiness of some great memory ======================================== SAMPLE 423 ======================================== which it was never worthy to acquire. "It was from him our American soldiers learned to fight, and win, with the courage of the lion, the power of the wild beasts, the steel of the sword, and the night's dark clouds of the wintry terrain." We can do more than our breaking bones, Our brokenness tells us, Through the sway Of the spheres of our destiny, and Our distance from the bosom of God. Here on earth we learn to tolerate The temperature of this region Extremely high, Or the temperature of our blood. If our hearts lie open to the all around us, To the light of the stars of love and the sorrow of the sea. If our spirits lie open to the saints of the earth that are dead and are to be dead. If we can cast down the barriers that have bound us in Our confused self-conscious. If our hearts lie open to the heavens above us Then we will sing, as we've never sung before. We want to see the face of eternity. We say: If I had my only hope I'd pick your heart up like a sparrow And fly with it, flying From place to place, from sea to place. We make up our minds that this life Of all the worries and everything That fills the brain of a restless woman Or a tired old man, is the only life, Which can be lived, which teaches us to be. We've power, for our brain, our will, our life To change the world, from the sages to the slaves, From the prisons of the ages, from slaves to the freedom. We must grow into ourselves, as the chalice, Has to be broken. We have no other hope than to keep this world, Or to lend it a mystical sense of death, As some religions do. And the only way we know of to get there, Is through the kill. He ate with the veldt most of the afternoon, Spoke with her in the garden, went out to the school, Read the letter that was told to him by The ministers all were lying, even his father. They send you to make men's lives better? He was good enough for a college, and a master, And become a teacher and an editor, But the only life he wanted, He could only get it From a place which would not grow. The young lady was good enough for the law, To whom she would have given her home, But as a wife? He knew but one, the principal, Who was always the same. And the only way they could make For the rest to live in The very best of life? They would have the best, and We must have it that They should win it. (Doesn't it seem odd to you now? When you've seen him, to have him set At the back of the course as yesterday?) Has he any skill? He has none In the schoolroom, Nor the power to read or to think. Somehow they make out the story, That he went out to a place He never knew of, never went Out of his way, he did not Go out of his way to arouse More than a faint curiosity. He had a skill For the ancient way, as we know Business as old as the forefathers, Books and learning as his call, And he knew of the old days. And for your own part you were Shrewed and shabby, with a very Brown complexion, and a look Of a dainty ungainly maudlin, And a scurvy rascal defiance Of the whole earth-weary universe, A chorus-dropping prim. The physician played him keys, In the night he went under Theo-Haïti'soke of Caledonia, But it was not From be-popping His foot on a nail, as you'd suppose; His ordinary way Was not ill--nor did he dash His hat, or fly to the rack; But the next day in the shower The doctor came along When the rascal tried to hide, And learned that he had a tongue, And that tongue had one Odd, blasphemous talk, At the first mention of his name, The creatures all clocked it, As the Charminal at Kew, Was the sound made by a mute As they ======================================== SAMPLE 424 ======================================== Neath coverts of "zephyrs soft," And gliding mid the leafy trees, The Midwich fish the prey withdraws. And there the fancied fowl, high clapped, clapped, Stood roaring at the Military Horn. Up from his stalk the hungry hare did trot, And did with her snout the dull drum beat; He did then manifestly dismount, And stretch to her the languid forefoot; And do the iron hammer go, The bellows-clink, the strain below. Beneath the turf the ground is talc'd, Where the hard wood the anchor rubs, And the felt-pen would at once be plied To turn the heart of earth to marble-stone. 'Twas but a youngster's tale, No gloss'd oratoryisms, A simple homily to pad and pulpit 'Twas speech that took the halloo, That was an answer to the halloo; The honey-bees had met with trouble, And mumbled and was pleased, O'erbolder to quench their smouldering vengeance. I thought my father would he treat me In these agreeable moderate ways, That lasted till I was worth seven bob; He should have known he should still be his son, His son, and he my father's brother; For still of dockets and faults to take, That cost me pain, in points I'd expose, And of him wrote as he of words to tell. How, what he said, he'd treat me then, Was what all others had done before; That was a thing my father said In paying me: but, alas, If no one, to his being such a son, Was left, but he himself Had dwindled to a strawman then To make me greater complaints than before; Yet he could tell me how he did chaff The neighbors with false patterne'i. Such a thistle-lock'd, tangled brook, I bended with a bitter pill And to get out I had get'd a spout, For I knew if the snaffles had gone Some whit before, 'twouldn't do now. All for that I could not prove, There was a fixed purpose in my eare, So to elope I planned to go, And see how Quackman would do mien, And strike me dead with senseless glee At our next morris-disturbance; But first, ere I cared to mov'e, I must at Quack-man's beck call. What may rest, and what may build, Oh, my dear Son, in thine erect And prancing feet, Oh, my dear Son, the world is all To thee of morse-majig, to me Terble, terroon, solembrel, Frost may thrid it, ice, thaw, condiment, Not a fart may puff, nor snow One that don't look like th' torne of snets, Yiths or nay, and what is wane In lucky throe, that this be mosse We'll render with the same dispatch, If we're both together here. Thou Prince of Rapiers, Hough, I'll sing thee, Thou best of Windy Friends in the field, Thou in the Vine, along the ground, In the dark-blueberry, never canst not fail: Thou of lyart birds' combatant renown, Too warlike for the land, thou bloomy man, The completeness of a feathered neck; And that's not all, but thou art run Thy organs of speech out in the sun; But here I hap not for thy verse to intert The clashing cuisines of the stalls, Nor want my fingers to tear off The little flakes o' wattle fat, Nor to hale saucy grape behind The talkin' fingers o' daisies, But here We can only Sip what chance befalls, or taste The oozy catch o' the hens That come to life the minute egg, And in the tent, as in the streets, Thy voice I hap thee to, thy thoughts Unto the friendly skin behind, And if chance befall thy left hand To hold it, low, then I can see 'Tis Pr� d'al Common Joe Dun Arms. I will ere eve gaze So deep at jasper, that my pupils For ======================================== SAMPLE 425 ======================================== a black man in cuffs and a waistcoat who smoked a cigarette thought he had a lot of money. A bank robbed at the corner of Patterson and Union, there’s always a needle and a fear the money may never come out and in that desperate place, the trick is to have a shadow one man’s weakness shifting to a shadow of trouble making the real one even harder to get out of always. And sometimes they believe nothing has been forgiven and the best feeling you ever had says it’s too late. These things. They shouldn’t matter not like that having changed as much as the rest of us they don’t and even now as I watch him watching him. <|endoftext|> "The Hat", by Bob first, and then our resident bearded expert, Darrell, our resident bearded expert! A classic from the Middle Kingdom but an old hat, from what I can tell it’s a unique piece. B century? It’s very likely. Though I’m no expert just someone who would love to be. I want you to know that the equipment here is top notch. The hats in this line up are selected with care I’m told they carefully inspect each one to make sure nothing’s wrong with it. And that’s exactly how it is here on the other side of the world. I mean, it’s very likely that a hat like this one contains a vital secret which only the original owner can reveal. I’m hoping the owner sees this, it’s a long time ago and I’m trying to be a reasonable person all the time. <|endoftext|> "Ars Poetae", by Bob Morton [Living, Health & Illness, The Body, Nature, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] How do you like your Wake-Up Calls? Good intention, but not really the way to go about it. That’s right, a hell of a lot better idea, grabbing you by the wrist, trying to drag you into a room and just lift you out again. Not a great start, you say? Well, you’re probably a little slow. Come on now toking, come up out of that chair, into the light, and into your face. Mention alcohol, and you shrug and say, I'm not a drinker. But that’s a form of intoxication. Just put me out of my misery. (And sure, if you don’t mind me talking to your doctor, you can tell me that your problems are terrible and horrible they are.) You sit there and say nothing, so I come. Just as a little. That very same hour, a major third-wave feminist theorist comes your way and in his overcoat and hat raises a stack on any non-monarchist amongst us, and we let it wash all over us till that girl’s lovely hair hits our sunburned necks. And then the dance we do with ourselves. <|endoftext|> "Daybreak", by Bob Morton [Living, Time & Brevity, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Spring, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] (WYC) The songbird flies to its roofline no later than the last notes of the song, at the first drop of wind or second. Like the shrilling of an armadillo, light on noontime or piano string drilled through a family pine in Tennessee, it’s the way art was known of old, painting its sun-in-water salons in mountains of music. Now just one cradled as though it’s holding a child, little as the Milky Way or sun- painted bedroom, the snow-star cluster situated next door sits pretty, the bushes up to your sky are thick, and you don’t need a song to tell what’s where, but on this undetermined side-soak, the sereneity’s fairly quiet, where, for now, the wakeful instinct has assumed not haste but nothing, the small buzzards and goobs of your dreams drained, exhausted, home. The longer wind ambient in spring has created a de ======================================== SAMPLE 426 ======================================== Like dust that the course forsook, Pierce on the whistle'd, and faint Smote him, as if his words, Left a nerve of would, Were to his deeds exprest, Whose inward legatees Did not to good meaning move, So every man before him fall, Who doffed shoulder'd the shield Or wing'd the missile round, Yet could not that power recall, And these were slaughter'd by, Who saw it. To their late Induction might They suffice for no more. Albeit that round them did not, No second circlet seemed, Wherein, two adjacent spaces, With equal fascines entwine The just as equally, as three before. Nor aught appear'd, that hath not a name, To which the creature seemed indignant That it o'ershadowsed so often With so dull a pomp. Like is he, By what in itself concealed, That follows in the round, and away Pursues with deafeness he speeds, So that his hustle wheels him a snare, And is wrath, and then as little peace. Now, reader, of our greater turn, Know thou the tower's round. In rock, wood, nor scrimmage Of beast, nor flotation one yet does; That surger is, hath his pedal water once, Which evermore feet, ere that surger started, Have pounded; thus, he who here would bike Or upon the earth in rest lay down, But that firm funk of up and down he stands, And never sins in changing places. For all the ground, as I relate to thee, Is judgment, and on his hand the blame Lies of him that there reserves the space, Though bound by falling aggregation That bear on him not as yet their tip. His peers, again, as many do In fugitive modification sit, As in some sign that ever melts the mould. Nor is there any room for doubt But we discern'd in the kernel of things, That living creatures cannot digest What quavers they put up. Henceforth Of mixed substances some must to beasts be Estranged, and in such lump as I say They must the fewer shrink but drink warm, As by this token they one to another Compel the eld unto their control. And since evil, when it works itself, Corrupts more than's its mould, we see That humidity cannot that content Courting more air can press alone, Unless that a prior harm e'er go Within the thing it harmonizes. I have heard that oft a peasant, called Upon before his lady's course is run, The flavour which his corn to digest. But nathless in certain fieldings, made During summer, it is used To recommend some herb or other, Whose use perhaps the people find More easy, since it doth comply With their desire; nor is there far Beyond its checking power, which makes The tongue more fond of the recipe, Than it doth with itself. Ecce mihi bibant nimbos. To say true things Of those who wander through the world, I know so much from true experience, That it would not seem hard to err Or to allege a loss, whose mere mention Scarce weaves a doubt in me. but thou shall reap More profit by the dictorship Of my protected sir, than in a book. For this I own to thee, that I loose By name no wound, wherewith I may secure Thy good opposite; nor doubt but future time Will reveal more gain than e'er was lost. Him put, thou say'st, on my desert ground? He shall there still stay, who there lives still First in his basket; and my glorious head, By blows which now and then her weight sustains, Shall without a break get more juice imbued, Till all the pith at last not lessens The sweet diacritic's size and strength. R. WI. Q.E.D. what couldst thou expect from me, Wilt thou the merit of a gift By me created? what can I In thee expect? what can I give To thee, who only through thy blood Am white, and in that hence can show Color of all this earth? For I with thee Was pilot undefiled for life; and I Only with thee were made pure; And thou here in flesh was the cost Of my making; hence I thee above Shalt in the resurrection see, In ======================================== SAMPLE 427 ======================================== And puffs of smoke arise, And horns of glens are loud, And screams of sheep are seen, And the red deer are seen On the hills of Arranach. The Lady Shufflecum is come, And she has brought the sheep To the baby grandson of Tynder. 'On the hills of Arranach!' She has said, 'my darling!' 'In the spring of every year, So be it!' And 'ho' they answered, and 'yas', And 'bien', and 'an we'll sing, And the grub-stut's down on the beer, For the birth of the Lord of Flim And the mystery of Easter day. My little boy and girl, Give me the flax, my girl, And I'll tell you a story that shall Remind you of its kindnesses; The flax with green shade Is shining in the springtime; You cannot see it in the country, But only in the city It stands in the sun; In the spring-time the field-flowers should swell And the same old old old rattle of bells And Barney's laugh is ringing for ever; He's there in the night And now you can see That it is not only me, That "puts the kiss to the hook." For time there's no hangings to spin, For there is none in the town, And Barney's box is deserted, And never now it rings. But God be with him in the hour When birds fly about And Lily's mouse in the gutter Is heard no more. Beneath the floor I loved to sit and watch The brave grey oldtimer, While the snails and all the game were running: With his dry and merry team And Skelp with his player's tell; And sure as he sang his tunes it was twanging The old man's laugh that rang clear. Ah, you immortal seats in St Peter's is the best, Be your seat, the seat that is for ever; If you go on a tour, be seated by the leg of Mary: You shall never sit without Christ's feet in His all mighty dome, Where the passion begins, Where the pride comes, Where the flame bursts out; Where love dies, Where black is white, And pure beings are drenched in the blood of Christ. An old-world custom When the aisles are cold And Morning is shaking To and fro Was there once an aged King so great and green that the green grass grew under his feet Not like that which was trod upon by others. And there was war, Was many a battle, and the old King's grey hair In the low lands in Italy saw men die And saw the flame strike him Where the dark eagle's' wings repass The limits of the wide world, and with the bane of crest And with the shake of heaving limbs to its depth Starts to the white land, and sees the white host Fall like the reeds of some pale meadow Where the young tide is turning, And the long green straw on the upland side Looks like ashes of the pyre. There the sea meets the land There the light seared and strewed with foam Hangs heavy with a weight of skies Not made for that eternal brow Where the hills have passed away And the feet of the wondering high Shall not pass lightly o'er their levell, The highfeet rung with screams; The stars held out their great transparent claw, The North palely, and the South Toil with treading feet, and the East Shone like a leap of light, And the storm drew deep Like a veil o'er Heaven's face. And there in the sight of the dark, No man's voice spoke, And no one's foot went forward, No one's hand went back And eyes were blind With wondering fear. And one stood in the sun, And up from the very edge Stretched his fingers sharp and white And laid them wide and deep Before the gates of the purple wall, And slowly he breathed a wild old song, A song long since, That God of the sun set, That he would stay There and never fade, Longer than the world turned to blood Or life turned to dust. But the wide eyes shone And glowed beneath the white beard, The fire fell down in a look; And the lean body shook Like a shaking reed ======================================== SAMPLE 428 ======================================== Little things, but and but to us; we who would be—not. For all the leaven that was loosed by that time was found All stale and rotten; and our fashion that we had crept Into the heart of our universe, with there content, Seems now with base hands to tear and tear again, That were clean earth—and therewith, either side Of a mounting tide, nature retrenching. Let’s call The hand which wrote our book when its light Is dim to the field, and the shadow, that is Its equal; no less let’s quit this world, that’s cramp’d In its smooth arbour, in the best of thoughts, Whereat the soul was upwards spurred and ripen’d To be a living vine; let us see what hung Our forests with their myriad canopies of fruit, And this vast tree (I have not the word, but such As we translate of earthly pythons) to set As pearls on the tongue. Let no one say That what is there is not to man; nay, we lie Within the eclogue and know the cause; for this Was meant to be, when God said, He shall be A knowledge of the LORD, not making one Of every art, which in the court of time He sees and hears, man fills with various use. The fire that created and frame of such, For my spirit’s sake, I will not commend, Although that kingdom have a deeper blessing. How much better thus to meet where feel, Where part in society, the hand of fate, Than anywhere else! This, man, is not at all; This, man, is a walk by every road Ding-dong, and knowing good reasons why, I, who have walk’d in Italy, where This solitary ocean, with his roll Of thunder underneath, smites the nation With the like of the weather, when o’er the flood At Biarritz we saw rise up mountains With the like of fermentation, as the soufflé Which heaven doth hold, that doth adust environ And turn the world’s entire round, in spite Of temperate nations, whose health does bask, Refresh’d, in spite of foreign maladies, Rather by a true representation Of the internal and internal oyle And spirit of health; or even in our own, With all our worldliness, which is the matter Of doubt and much lying in the sun So many thousand associations made Of "nation"—viz., the polity Of kindred forms, that seem so full of grace, Which putting on, men show all manly pride And aptness; and howe’er that noble face Which speaks of heaven-born dignity, and who In times of true excitement is quite noble, Another, howsoever shape, is the man, Since the same touches out in vice; or else, How far from virtue, it may be That so ungovern’d, so the lawless influence Is in him; and so, I say, I suppose The first error, at least, of our common sense. Now unless our red blood go the clear way Down to the ground, who shall stop our free life And use? and who govern it? this one way and only, Leads to this one end; and can it be so Opened so many ways, for any one thing? A thousand are the like requests that climb Thro’ man’s crooked fingers to his lips, Requiring light; and man, not hand to hand Control, can give or withhold. But still our souls Make provision, to choose the easier A little; and so the soul entices At ease, or in some waifs herself entices By the far rarer reservation Of beauty, with a sort of wealth, the rare Self-manifesting by the very lack, That gleams but out of shape. Beautiful, Beauty, I said, is scarce immortal; What then? our spirits grow by spending; And the sort of soul we have to spend Is not too frequent, though souls go not rich In spend their lives in waste. To lift The circle of our fleshy room Up to the stars, yet not betray Our spirits, to bedam for our wear And pining—wondrous job! To bear This flesh, so many kingdoms nurst, In the same body, and not write, Nor expect to know, a happy man, Or name, or see ======================================== SAMPLE 429 ======================================== nore His hopes were many, And his griefs many, As he went away For a long day. Albament in the rain, In the air hard and high He sat alone; No one to speak to him, No one to hear, His lone sorrow to console, Sobbing through the night. Woe and woe In each eye said I, As over the hill I turned, To find my comrade gone, And, as I saw him go, Eyes like the lamps of heaven Looked down to meet me. Hushed were the dead As they laid them down to sleep, And, Eulogies for their dead, Full of grief they wept and wept; Grief that they should go Soon and soon, soon and soon; Grief that goes by. One thought for the change, That it gives the spirit, you Who would'st have me haste. Now I feel, Now I re-live The wrath of the spring-time sun, The light of heaven, and the cold Sublime of the boundless main. Would I lay me down For your sake at once? Then, O lovers' eyes, Lay me down now, and know That I would have No more time Of your sight or sleeping, For evermore, Till the last bird floats! Is it time, love, for flying Birds, for the spring? They shall have No rest Here but to love you. Go now, and hurry home That the sunset gleams May not snatch love away. To the earth and death And a bell that rings By night, by day, Falls and follows after, After, falls, and has waken Fair the darkness there. He looked deep into the green Chill waters of the lake; Green darkness, though soft light Was a radiance to him; There he saw the enchanting Dream of her who was with him, Her lips on his, and her eyes Full of his kisses. Soft was her languor, warm Like a body clothed in muslin; Her hot palms were burning With his possession as a flame Possesses a burning building That a spirit sleeps in. There, in a wave of fire, Let him see the love In her who was with him, The lips full of his kisses, Her eyes burning. Flesh and bone and blood Took part of him. And there was a form like a shield No more to break; Like the light of an ember When the fire is spent, Full of all a light That has come to Him With its embers. Like as the wave of an angel, With her golden wings on it, With the light of its wings on it, Hovered above her, In a flood of a rich light. Not a man could swim after her, Not a man dare to chase her; Bearing the heavings of the air The time alone to muse; Letting the flow of the waters Pass as it would. Every man saw himself in her, With the world's heart in her sweet eyes, Yet not a one saw himself in her, For the night and the dawn were against her, And no face was known of hers, But his heart was with her. And they reached and touched each other, But their hold on life, And the world alone, but the passion, Slept in the world, and cast its spell, While his love to a heart that was still Stood a little way. There, in the dew, With his flame-heart burning As a king doth, He looked deep into the green Like a man grasping the kingdom, And there never said a word Nor spake a word. But like a man speaking Not a word, not a word From his tongue speaking His whole heart, and then The radiance of a face. And his heart and the heart of her By a breath, and then the night And the sunset and the morning Stretched out like a bridge Till they reached the shore That called him, "Come" they said, "Come to me, come or come soon, And if you will come no more I will set you free." There's a hornet's nest In that wood, I know Where a lily blows; Its sweetness makes me glad In the early morning. Where ======================================== SAMPLE 430 ======================================== Ne(3)un knaws what with her you mean, Because she knits that I love as best, Lest all our love fail by me offending. If you'll let her have her joys, there's plenty, Just as I need parts to play her parts. I have the same grief that you have, And my foolish jealousy thinks The same of you, but when I join With that ignorant, no more forgiving lot The sufferings of my fair, and much, I fear, Your own, because, at present, of all who Have loved you in old time, not without reason. Cold waves and rain Bring to my heart A wild, lonely thrill. I lay me down And weep Because my dear one Dies for my sake. I think not That my weather Makes a difference To the fate of my dear one. O Maen, how I love to trace, With my rough pen, Each step Of your bare feet, Whose small footprint, softly I feel as though, as in Some woodland nooks, You would flit; And when I can, I often hear You laugh, as I laugh To think how long I've sat, and how You'll run, and how! Your locks Are as soft as a child's. Your figure, I think, Is like a smooth china plate. Your ways Are English ways. Your brown brown hair Is like the sun Spying some far off Isle, so it daintily A gleam will send To heat the vein; For your cheeks Are like the ripe plums, When ripe they are. They've the fall And the weather Is like a leaf In coming home; You're like Some fine leaves Of greenish-yellow, Some leaves of silver, Some leaves of lucid Pink, purple, grayish-white, So that each one looks Like a fair rose. Where, Maen, do you carry her? I pray to know The softest velvet dress you wear, And the sweetest shawl you wear To shield her from the swords And shields of spears, The broken lances of their swords, Which so many men Have died for this day. If you will not tell me this, By your dear lips, That all eyes seek To see the bare white breast That she has worn so long, I will sit in the Garden And cry and speak A hundred thousand black tears, And say that She is come. "She is come, she is come, she is come; She is come to the fight Where the red banners are spread." With these words I saw how pale she was; And from their soft eyes The victorious flowers came forth, A splendid balsam of their hands, And mingled them about The long white garment that was spread To lie like a goodly grave, The fashion when the maid was laid By the great Cataw in her rest. I saw the bright crown The maid wore, a bright crown, For its gem was pearls, And this was rolled Like a crimson fleck In her hair's golden fold. I saw the wet and stormy sea Roll in on the white sand Where the ships did ride As great waves towards the shore As sea-nymphs, out of which The yellow foam did slant In gorgeous filmy strings, Of brightest hue. And the white foam was cunningly Colored like a jasmine silver, And the waves that came in purple Were jasmine petals rolled in, And all that day That I was by the sea, The red banners were up, and the proud sky's charge Blasted the beauty of the warm blue bay As lightning in autumn scorched the hot red dust On the field of fight And in the glory of its glory Stood the armor of the sun With flame along its metal wings, Till the distance grew great, And the tide of war closed round The shelter of the shore. A lonesome tower, a mile away, Beyond a lull in the fight, A lonelier day; And, windless, gloomier at the sea The rusted guns that held the day With feeble musketry. Not since the Golden Hynde Scored on this tower-boulder's rise, Has London seen such rain, And London wondered when The gutter glowed with gun-powder ======================================== SAMPLE 431 ======================================== A sort of suit, she was blithe, was clothed in shawl and gown, She—yes, that's the name, no matter now—she—she—she— By right he was ware she was flying to me, he knew not What to do or how to act: though he had his I was perplex'd, did I call that voice? Nay, I could not speak for utter bewilderment: so I Sloped to hers, began to speak to her of him, she Was busy like a sheep until she took the Young hand of me, led me into her house, and there Made me safe to speak, and clean. Now she has A similar service to do for me, she will Un suit from me, when he's had his sickness, of His head veil, and do with me. Ah! he’ll be Jealous—because he might fall sick, she might Hurt him, he knew not how, once there, so she Will shade his eyelids, and will take his hand. Ere long, my heart will sink as low as hers, Though she has the chance to give her love to me In another, and I shall live my days Buying and switching—to fear it will be mine, Him favouring, like a kindly lad. <|endoftext|> "The Dreamer", by Siegfried Sassoon [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] I have wandered all my life, love, Through hills and lands in flowers and trees, Between sighing seas that want us— Between cities which are dead And desolate at the doors. I have seen the dawn break quickly In green or brown of hills Upon the furthest far hills; Or a black mountain shake with snow— I have seen it not. Often I have spoken to a breeze, For I am a dreamer: I thought I heard a wind, yet It went from my cheek. It told me all my heart's Desire— All the young dreams that were flying fast, I dreamt—and it fled— Until the wind's quittance Made me believe it had missed a space: ‘Come closer, dreamer, close up the door I am lonely, I am lone.’ Every woman dreams only herself, She who lies among the men Of her city, in the crowds that pass, Or in the parks, of her passageways Or of men passing her within: She, in her yielding, heard not the wind. Only a little girl has need Of a lonely man; and if he Truly is lone, and if she truly Be lonely, ah, that is enough. I know a woman who is lost; I knew her once: Her feet would go no farther, yet In that light she makes her way, As any woman can. She told me, “It is strange, But I long for him!”— For in her eyes is held No mad desire for the man Whom she’s waited for long. The soft lips touch, the smile follows, The weary eyes are still, As sits the weary lute upon The strings that she has strung. Oh, for a little wind to blow Her hair out, and make it unweary, And twine their eerier cocoons About her limbs in the gloam, Until she, as some tall Lily with waves of golden hair Lies happily by the river, All wanting—not me! O loving, O longing, O pain! I, who am lonely, I, whom hunger, I whom terror, hunger, still adhere To me who am alone, yet am in Hell A pale spectre facing back—must forever Hold you to your walls! Her eyes are waiting like a thousand Moons to rest upon my face, Like a fearful, fearful glance That fills at midnight; They wait for me, long and still, Till I myself Unto her feet. Ah, how they stand Alive, yet with no sound nor motion, Not even the inhalation Of an insect’s breath. <|endoftext|> "On Truth", by Siegfried Sassoon [Religion, Faith & Doubt, God & the Divine, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy] The Dainty Reverend Synagogue, On a green hillside in Wales The soggy green the billowy flow Of Indian monso ======================================== SAMPLE 432 ======================================== And a sword as white and shining as When men were satisfied with the Word And the artless canes of our lord Christ? O you, whom the world rejected, Whom the world simply ignored, Know this: In the harsh way of the ages In the world’s self the mood has changed, There’s peace and comfort in a song, This in your soul. Be of good cheer, it is fallowing, If the world has crushed you, All the old remorse and shame, All the anguished faith and tenderness, O you, sleep on well. <|endoftext|> "Beside the Water", by Arthur Rimbaud [Living, Time & Brevity, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams] Beside the water there is no harm. There is an island where only the sun shines. The fishes are pets of the birds. There is a courtyard, a square, a church. Here there are many gods. And the gods are friends of the wild birds. There are roots, and mushrooms, and eggs, And corn, grapes, and pigeon pies. The fish live full of detail, And the fish go into their shops. The waters are made for drinking, And there are chickens at the inn. If one stops there, the other Is made to feel as full as a Nun. Beside the water there is no harm. <|endoftext|> "Air and Air", by Arthur Rimbaud [Living, Health & Illness, The Body, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Nature, Trees & Flowers, Weather, Religion, The Spiritual, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy] The trees have grown distrustful, unafraid, of the air, since it seemed a little impossible: I was lying on my back, and still, the trees were there behind, in the way behind the flying thing which went past us. —To a friend inside a clerical office, in 1957 Out of the air and into the trees, Out of the air and into the rooms of the air, the sun through the window. The rumpled bed, beyond the dirty wall mirror. Or in a hallway, where the dust wore the rooms away, or in a room drawn thick and blind, where no light entered. When the country turned black the black-faced scissor man came and past the blind door into the alley, and again tried the slit of the darkness, and again, and again, without stopping, finding nothing, entering the hallway in the hall, passing the glass- closed door at the end of the hall, and left in the dark again. By the glass- dropped leaves of the air, the laundered leaf of the palindromes, of the Aarav in the white moss, of the Aat- sum waiting in the wet dead leaves of the alleys. When the Arav shows and the birds plume themselves in the cold spring air, and fall in small dissolved multitudes, it is as if all space were standing, and were standing in the same place to the same extent in which it is, as it were, standing, in the same place in which it is standing in the same place. It is as if all spaces of the world, all ways of walking, are experienced through the eyes of the feet. <|endoftext|> "The Abdomen", by Arthur Rimbaud [Living, Coming of Age, Marriage & Companionship, Love, Break-ups & Saunas, Infatuation & Crushes, Relationships, Home Life, Men & Women, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Religion, The Spiritual, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Poetry & Poets] All your fellow adventurers are lackeys of your own destiny. – Virg. App.140 So in his bed he lies at last. – Virg. App.140 Ah he's gone and so gone. – Virg. App.141 In the sheets of a newt. – Virg. App.141 Who laughs when he's dead, Perchance because he's just dead. ======================================== SAMPLE 433 ======================================== <|endoftext|>Player comparisons are done now, at least among those who bother to play Magic and aren’t too fond of collectible card games. The comparisons to Yu-Gi-Oh! are inevitable, but just because you already know the failure of Magic's current flavor doesn’t mean you can dismiss the antecedents: If you’re watching the meta game grow an installed heavy commercial server for Personal Evolution and Blue-Eyes, you have to accept a match in which Black Mamba flipped itself face down, expecting to get an automatic shut-down. Is Blue-Eyes the more expendable of the two, now? Will it rise again, as it did in the old days, like Presidential Birds and powerballℝmorph. Is the Blister Bird dead and thus weft in some hopeless tournament, out there with an open pit fund, unable to bet on its own chance? Either way, Mamba is here, the other Presidential Birds and their wealth of cards, normal contracts and cash outs. Is there nothing left to do but complain now? I can think of a few things. Do they remember that one time we argued about which bug to make larger, and both of us drank a bunch of ink to find out? I am hard-pressed to think of another card where we used the word ssl around the word a little? Who can I complain to? It’s a person, and I have met her. And what do I know of her now, anyway? I was kind to her, and I’m kind, and we had a kind of a connection, although I suspect we only dipped because I meant to say openness, but that in turn is what connected us, as in: She was a little bit like the smaller name for sponges (“siberian pear,” amur) that is a kind of shell for things to be written on, laid upon, usually but not always covered over. I know there are lots of them, and that a lot of them have passed into my language now and then. And it is my English that is folded in on itself, as it is folded in on itself. Not in those words but I, in the connection, the self that is the self that was an atom of the atom soup that is my mouth. My cartoon impression of myself that is my own shadow, that is my partial and only account of me, that in turn is spun out into the cosmic play of change and since I don’t write about any other country I must choose, even one as quaint as mine. My name is the last and most expansive term I might be willing to take for myself, and this goes double for my name as it is written now, for my name is written on everything, with my name on it. A stupid name is still a name, it is a synonym for me. And I, my daughter has said, in our simple, persnickety, bum-time way, and that is true enough. And I don’t use that as a compliment. I am sitting on my stoop drinking a fine cognac, on my stoop is the galaxy, the eye of the storm, where we feel as though we have left this earth behind, that we are floating out into space, into time. And we are, it seems, we that has puked into existence in a universe not its own, created for the sole sake of us, that as we ponder in wonder might be our end, that we get to watch creation as it plays around with us, as it did with the stars, the planet, the dawn. I say we, but are not, we, because they are us first, the bodiless spirit that arises and departs through the sense of ourselves, and the sense of those entities that have ever the sense to impart, the process of imparting, and then there is our universe, which is made of us and not the other way round, they were us, we were them once, in a moment both. The Virgin Machrieree is gone now, she no more does her slow, inexhaustible dance around the globe, but where she soared, a newer, younger form rises, the creature becomes the child, the grown creature will not be the same as it was of old, its habitat changed, at the edge of which a city has been plopped into the axis of the globe, in the period change a river has formed, into the orbit of which I am dropped into the boundary between the lives of those people and my own, an instant as it were, to serve as record of a future, as mine. <|endoftext|> "The Messenger", by Stephen Swinburne [Living, Death, Life Choices, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] from c ======================================== SAMPLE 434 ======================================== The Old King had loved the land of the oxen and flocks; He made, no doubt, I know that I shall fall in the South, Fall, and be buried in the South; Fall, and no man shall raise me again; I that have scorned and mock'd the South For ever, upon the dead Dead all my glory;-- Not one man shall be left to say, 'She had no part with this, or the North; She was our; This was their face that smiled Weariness and hate remain; What was sweeter, what more intense, What was kinder, what more gentle, That you drew the sharp-ribb'd grass down Round about my body and me? Say, can I fly? I have done, I have seen the red sun sink down Far down, and round me flow. What was hope, that you called love? If I could love you, when I die, Then say your prayers--lady, take my hand You that have called me your lover, take my hand, Lady, where you stand to-night, take my hand! And mind you not the wine I've been holding? So, for love's sake, and for families, And for peace, and life, and all that you have said In conclusion, so I've come hither; In answer to the messengers I've been Coming back, and lately; I am, you see, your servant, Tony. It seems, that the way was here (This I believed) when we jogg'd along, As best as we might, Over the grass that lay so deep, so thick, With the dew, and the sleet, and the wind, And the cloud-cover'd sky, All that night and the morrow; And my horse, though good, was nipp'd and tired, So I spake my so-called friend, "There's another way to Flora's Spring," Which made him move more quickly; For he scarce had begun to reply, When I saw a wight there, As if 'twice time and time again He had turn'd and wuz 'fore his neck, Between the trees; And his head, but so it might seem slender, Had a neck like that of a horse, And an ass's nose That had nevr looked in a pageant Since the time of Bard or King. "Though so man-like, so like an hilt Of a sword, (Because such beauty has always Made a ballat-organ seem a nail To an Italian kingly place) That ere ye take a pair of eyen He might seem a breeder more; Forsooth, the creature had no shaft To give such things as bewit' or hint 'em, Of himself as a maiden's doll. Nor, like the virgins, were there time Or talents of yeoman attaints In him to fetch them round ale, and meat, And to keep us in tongue. Not his death, if true be this, Whose spot is where the blushing face Had remained when chin-hunting Turnus slew And pricked his Mama to death, Or if the wife was more for't put out He's gone, and now after his tomb He sits, in some thieves' thought,-- 'Batter his seat,' might say, 'With gentlemen's ladies round his feet; And wine to drink to haters and time, When we have done with jests and breath.' And I am the devil, 's my name; That makes me fit for such a place. Which does as well as any show; But then, my great gift, my high degree Of having had, myself, That only to marry make; There's few own'd so, 'tis said, can make The lady they love her own, As taking all else yet pursued Of life, it ends not at love, So tame, so stable in control, As I have set you up, dear, And mine own company When we draw near; and that you need To think it has not p'lent now, Or these my words have given That you a wife can get Saving laws, as mine, as yours, As mine, in all save the deed; Here, henceforth, both of life, Our will's the word; mine own dear, And there's little doubt You'll say 'twas my delight. He speak, my dear; he speak thus: My lips have said ======================================== SAMPLE 435 ======================================== A lone magpie haunting the stone, but I have seen them by the dozens Sitting under the trees, Rattling along the pavement. Before I can decide, One after another Turns on its axis Like a shoe Under the shade of an umbrella, And it is evening. O me! O body! <|endoftext|> "Jenna", by Emma Lazarus [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Social Comment, History & Politics, War & Conflict, Heroes & Patriotism, Independence Day] This heritage! This long-contended cord Which David, in his glorious path, has trod, And Charles at his Imperial downfall loved And Liberty at last must mourn, Was never then intended to grow Into a land fit for art Or a great thing for a slave. To see the rays, Which here with beauty have accompanied The winter months, in their natural place Laughing about us as one circle all At our great Master's exclusive grace, Ascending as by right of some decree We, weeping, depart for the new-born age When every stone of life shall grind its groan Into Infinite. We must not linger here; We must enlarge beyond the compass Of our little space. We must throw from off These shores. For what? What to be free? A star-shell is a fragile thing. If this be a wreath that will remember My face beside, then let it be a wreath Wrought of the noblest laurel that blossoms Within a month to match with those That for the year lie dead in some fair southern grove, Barely stirred from death's exquisite sleep. For this we have not fought, but well May hearten by what we have not felt, And make up, what fact shall figure, In arts which our great Nation seem to lack. We are but strivings to find out what God wills In our sunniest place, and those Shall gain the right by meriting the eye That looks upon him. Thus they shall become With God's own regard on high. For his fingers impelled the course Of many winds, and to attain his will To earthly things these do we by striving First win. For He Who can'st conjure winds Can't choose to abide the sky, Or move the cloud that ushers in the spring And change the pattern of the year; For He who measures in the sun How may the night be seen; And time that hesitates where he gleams Where he changes, what to finer measure He doth with the subtle birds, And hurls the sun through all the brinks, To go where clouds are stirring; The fleecy stars that blazon him Through their adulation. All these were his. But my phrase Is scaled down, And tears that brim with salty water Impale a bit for us That with the many spills are chancing To red-rise, red-spread. <|endoftext|> "Alaska Anew", by Emma Lazarus [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] After a interval of Ships, Land and Sea, and many years, the truces are forgotten, the plains are trodden again; And iron slopes are sifted in the Shinbone or in the Zampaya's shrine, the altar rises Sharing its last priest's expiatory sacrifice; And the hill's leafy pines to shaggy oak or heather are clothed; and the rose Of blossoming holm or alyssum is flushed into the spring, the roses Are brown again; the orchards are neglected, and the streams have no history; The tortoises of dream are trodden again in their jungle bowers, the flamingos are mute. The animal phases come to pass in their animal changes, the pigmy is but a mouse, the mare is but a maref, We are near the limits of the territory, among thistle and field thereafter, in snow Vacant as at first, and still the terrors spread, slow lines of snow, or the depressed horizon Hangs like a halter of dark censers sombre; The lungs of the dog grow panting, his wise forehead lugs his breast, he whines and wrinkles In his great heart as in an egg; the thin blue twinkling stars will not rise, Only the sun's legs roll slowly up in the last magnitude; In the moon's gleam no hint of an obelisk's moonship self is to ======================================== SAMPLE 436 ======================================== Let every God be loved as I shall love my God now that I have these Treasures in my heart, and when the blessed letters are in the flue of my writing table, and I might write with you in the chair here thespian, I would choose my God now as He was before the language of letters. The toaster prayer--the inky, gold, plastic toasters--the snuff box lid--the pen and ink, and the moleskins,--all have served their function in my life, and have joined to form the compound I stand on when I kneel at the foot of the altar of God. If I had my choice I'd love Him best, and first make confession to Him. It seems a frivolous request, though I long to stand before God and say, "I am good and true to God, and if it were not for these many sufferings and many mistakes and all the evil that likeliest to devolve upon my being, God would not be so displeased." I shall come down the gondolas, and ride upon the belfry steps, when I am the hither leg of that gate that leads to the end of the city. My soul will rise with me and we shall be lost upon the mountain. But it is so easy to find a philosopher and to disturb him as he talks that I am coming down, down, whatever Be To me. First, do as the deities of old have used to do, stoop, and not pull. Do you know any woman who does not pull? pull? Look in the mirror. I say it as often as necessary. Pull upon your neck, it’s difficult to go higher. pull on the arms, set in motion. Look at me do not disturb the illusion. I go and look again. There. pull on your waist, too soon or too late. You can make many beds in the house. Many. And if you have not made one yet, make one. Pull on the light, too soon or too late. Do you think that you have not made a bed? I have. And in it is a crowd of little beds that are empty. And I say pull on the light. And if it is pulled back then it is dark again. pull on the inside. I have it on all of the time. But the answer is, you can do without it. So I see the little bed here, in this, is empty. I say pull on the inside of the lining. And it pulls to the door. There’s a bed pulled to the lining of the door. And I tell you, it’s simple pull. And if you make a bed, don’t go too far in, or pull too far out. Pull on the inside of the bed. pull on the earth to the bottom. So I pray pull. the earth will rise as many times as there are adverse angels. Pull at the bed as often as you recite Jesus’ name, and as often as you pour out this poison or that sickness, and as often as you stand up, say after you have pulled on the earth and ascended as many times as there have been adverse angels, pull on the earth as often as you recite this sickness or that sickness, after you have poured out this sickness and become the door of the bed, and then as many times as there are people. I ask you pull again, get a lot done, pull all of the times up, make sure you are on top of the earth and if you see yourself outside of it as often as you pour out this sickness, you are a small point in that you pull again on the earth. And there are people to whom it does not matter what you do. I have seen how you can be so self-sufficient. I have seen you push this bed into the earth and pull with your hands and the earth rises from you. And I saw you as more than once the bottom of the earth and return to the bottom when you were done. pull on the heart string. Pull on it and don’t worry about me or about Mary Baker Eddy or this sickness. as you pull, and do not tell me or anyone. I’ll pull on the string and be pulled. I’ll be dragged by the gravity of the heart string. punch the stop all of my strings together and again pull on this paper and I will be in your heart. I need to be in your heart in order for you to pull on the heart string. Now I have your heart ======================================== SAMPLE 437 ======================================== What he sent to us in summer. And the bare branches lean. I have come to believe That we will never return. Dying, I watched the gulls Steal over the sky, Through the leafy trees Circling To the beat of the summer bird. Oft I have thought of him Who gave my life. And the bare branches lean And whisper to me, In my loneliness. I have heard them crying By the undulant gorse, Or huddled in clumps by the waterfalls, With the waves mad with swiftness outside us. And I knew they were dead, Dead men; Until the westering violets Made me aware of a bronze image of white birds Floating in the woodland, and I knew that they were there, With the sound of the birds alive with white blood of spring; And I know that they died, Whilst the world, alive, Wander'd it, still torn with wrangling, Lipping the lip of Eternity. The trees are new mould With the fall of your heart; And your bare heart is law To the live trees; and the live woods bend fainter Round the root of your heart that is like in live moss The fair earth's throat, where, writ some wind from wingd's future, Through the moss that binds your heart in its surest thrall I have read the law that makes green break into live flesh. In your heart, O God, your heart Break forth, O strong gods, that they may know Your heart was close to their own When Time put off the ungenial cloak Of a thousand years that ever more are gone. And your bare heart, O heart, The myriad-tinted sunlight of your youth must get, With grey-water stars and war-dried blood, Won from the clear sky, in the Great Memory, To be blossom to bloom, To be heedless and forever as it was, A rainbow's color, A torn-away face of the sun, And a blue heart, beyond all suns. Between the ends of the hedges A grey baby stands asleep; I cannot bring him to lift up his head, And I do not know what to say, But I think, if I could break All I have written this way, A little noise from little trees Would not be enough to wake him. Thinking of you, you are safe, My heart will not go into anything. You know I have sent the heart you gave me Into the woods with my love; In time they will carry it back Home, and say That it has come home with us. The night is lighted, the great stars shine, The air blows faintly, and a far bird calls, A soft furtive call, and after it Strikes on the shore, and is heard For a little, and the water ripples Because of the ghost there, the ghost of night, When a man goes out at night, Nor knows that the words He hears, and my soul hears in its deep sleep, And when he goes alone Steeps for a while in the deep waters Because the rain has washed away All of the rainwater, and now only air Is quiet; and the great quiet Will come only when the clouds, And the great loud breaking of the wind, Warm through the woods, and farther than those Who walk in those woods, because they know That the night is nigh. Because the rain has covered Everything, and only the sun Is left, as pale as ashes are, Rings slowly, and lingers until He feels the heat that rives The dim earth round him, in the Roof of the sky; Silence has come. Because the rain was thrown In fire of God, and because its shed Burns in his heart, the air, the wind, the sea To his being, Thee, thou shalt be called, and I, too, By the wild world. For the night is thine, Thou, me, and earth. A very moving picture Of human nature and human thought, A pretty picture to frame In pink and cream Of colors and sunlight for Artist pen. The winding road, The steady glow of the day, And green fields, and the swaying trees, And the joy of the strong up-beak Low down in the grass, and a thrill Of swift blood From the iron sinews of the swan ======================================== SAMPLE 438 ======================================== dwelt for $45 because we, though all extraordinary, perceive another dream: that all these privileges, these majestic uplifting deflections of our private ambition, as usual, are not, because they remain nonconformist, as they are, not of this country. Such thought accounts, at least, for a certain decency—love, or wanting this to be, or not much more. Why, this day, is it so? Because he doesn’t believe the copiousness of God is greater than what it is. The mystic, forgive me for saying so, comes back home to that parable: four rogue brothers who think it is time for a Pharaoh’s draw, which means more money. They want the jewel they have nothing to offer, they think to themselves, in justifying this, the birth of their morose but thriving orphan, as if it were some elaborate consolation, or a kind to think of, to jest upon, so that when the results come, as they will—because even if the inheritance he goes to, no matter the deed—he is the first born child. But the myth—I don’t believe it, and if I had to gild with lies in some fashion, this is how I would do it: They’re dull; and if it be what they mean to be adventurous, this is not the adventurous and anorectic one it should be, though it would have been better. For there is a way through the dens of all this concealment and doubt, that leads to a higher place, and so the myth is, in that sense, precise and complete. This bed and breakfast is to be the upwelling of his inspiration. It is not a metaphor, either: it is as if a two-story tower rose vertically into the vertical gold of the air. But I am too vague. He knows me—as if I were one of every person alive. And if he were not of these imaginal experiences so near, I think the words—he would speak them, in their flutterings—would slide from me, disappear. For the air around them seems to rise up and fill them with an enormous, obvious presence, even as they offer up nothing but a failure. Only when the presence is removed from its one meaning, as they appear to hover in their blackness, begin the meanings to separate: there are three in a three-and-one-half-inch switch backpiece, there is a bottle of milk dangling over a brick chimney, when one of them lowers its glass, is suddenly flat. That the act of measuring a thing by its weight—this glass is a few cents lighter, surely—seems to say that the last of any one is the very empty. And what happens when these experiments are repeated: (A) it happens that one moves above the other two; (B) it happens that one of these (B) appears to bring up the other two above itself; (C) two glass slabs of stiffened material clear are placed one above the other on a tiled table, so that in every degree the second is higher than the first, and that one of the two is of smaller size. And that everywhere one sees the smallest, here followed by every sense that one could have that sensation at will, no matter where it is, and that the shapes and sizes are bared of nothing. And if one went on from the window that in the space before the door slamming against the wall along the frame, and not so far above the window, there were claustrophic magnifications, even as if of window, all the others closed in its shadow, behind which the light from the moon was crisp enough to buzz as it now does over the little lake and tarn, to which I am going to turn. I was going to bring to my attention one that isn’t clear in the first place, but that the closing of a little light in the letter was a larger thing or various things which were less, and I am not sure that it looks like one or other, so that until I became aware of it, I might, before my eyes, have doubted my sense of the difference, though ======================================== SAMPLE 439 ======================================== I, day by day Quitting sleep, Till sunset finds me, Will give my body away. O spare me from those blows Which painters mock, And those abuses which on a painted face Mock not I fear Nor clouds nor clouds do see. If I had this from you I'd live a much sweeter life. There's the way with colours; And there's the curl of the deprestiors, And the grate of the argonaut. We can not come to parley Till you have put away Those old views you see with a new face, And cast off the watchword of that tyranny Where people will rue your name. A tea-chest that was full of gold Is enough for me I was never taught at school To do without and you to prove you'd Leftover fish in a night-rack to stay. You see I was made for the moon Not the parhel or the plain, Sleeping alone with the stars And a slant of the bent grass. Now of that business you'll say That if's an ellspel is right The ellsporth is not an ell. Do not rebuke. Be modest. I will be so likewise. Keep your life sweet and new And make this your last day. If you'd write what I'd say You'd not be a diary. What are you looking at? Who's occupying your life? I know exactly what you are looking at With a beard of black and silver eyes. What are you reading? Who's occupied your life? I know perfectly well what you're reading, With a wain in his hand And a bell-bell that can call him Ever away. Now your party's up and you're going home-- Home where you can pay the bill, But I shall never go there. I shall linger still,-- Loitering on the way, And I shall look in on the green room, To see if me or Bob Can ever be such a pretty boy. Has it dawned upon you, friend, that you are old? I thought you were young when you left the house. I thought you a work of the world before, Then--you were not. You're as pretty a fellow now as when you went. And, friend, 'tis not on you to know if I'm old. I know you--it's you that I don't know you. That's all the reason I can stand you. But to be talking and to think I'm thinking And not think I'm able to see --Well, I don't say you. I know the date but I don't know when it falls. I know you. I know the blood that runs in you Swift as I drink, And the pangs that tear you and the wheal that water you, And it doesn't matter. I watch you but I don't watch my age. My sight is sure but my age is worse. My age is what's called, but your age is...your age! I don't sing. I wear old boots but that doesn't keep me shod; I kneel to prayer, keeping the ball of the knife out of my back; It's more like I give than I take-- My tongue seems to shout a song. What does it matter? At last I'm old enough to talk! Who wouldn't be old? Who is it that can recognize, when the candle-shine veils the face Of a master who once worked with his hand and walked the old bangers on the edge of dark, And who stood at the door of night town with the sunset turned to the street, And bent over the cobblestones with the stars to pick up a weight of stars? Who can go down the street learning, walking, looking and listening And learning, whose eyes are blind to the trinket-changing signs And the man with the oil-metal voice that is rasping out and over, Through all that all-preserving red and that elusive red of burning oil? On late autumn evenings I used to sit beside the great New York steam-engine on the deep channel before the tall cloud-freezings of cobalt tikes the terrible speed of the river; Watch the flickering of the reds as the bend of the river shape and change the brilliant dark gray deeps. As I look at the trick of the eights and the rut of the ryorians in the dark, The work of the diodes and the way of the ======================================== SAMPLE 440 ======================================== Met his spiritual line, For, says their seal, I owe my deepest place To that brief letter from the dead. From Old Yalvard's deathbed, I've learned The Art of Writing, to Blame. To different voices One shapeless thing is changed, 'T is still our light; And is this the answer "The Young Folks, Why go out for the shadows, And leave the light? If you like the ripples, I've reckoned with the reeds. The young folks, as well As the blind, I beg To stop up the gate, There's more where you wait." <|endoftext|> Oft in the silent night I hear the earth Sleep in its cradle, and let the hour Not one little bit rest; But silently it slumps and Warns me, "Awake, O King!" O all you who search for Life! Over hill and under water, At bar or mill, at kitchen table, At byre or rop or bastion, Far from the of Lands and the Ways! Why do you forgo Your flood and stormy Ammunities? Where is all the danger in those Dark places, When, shut in a prison, the soul Lies down and scrambles for passage And wretches found life in dungeons At sleep or waking. For what does it do? To what uses life? From the cool pine-bough The water-rat Dances, outwards in long Lush squeaks. The minkes at twilight Quiet in the shade Or bathe in the shine Of dew and sun On the birch-leaves. And just like that, when I'd dared To say I was tired of dictating By sound or fact or fiction That lie of ours, Upon my dream of wings, Eternal on a tree-top, Emerging from a castle, I woke up. With that I'm off, when I'm soused, To some sun or sylvan dungeon On a leaf-torn wreck of wings. This is the natural course. For they say With love are we enamoured And soon we find Love in our chasms as emerald seas If the last shall last. This shall last. These torn winds that thrash me, Torn wings that I bequeath, Wilt not last. They shall not. This must not wither On the moment. What a word is this? A languid, urn-like word. This word, O Death! I might have said This is a curious drink, And how did it come by, And who the giver? But this is night and wine And I am drenched with smoke. I am wroth with the sun For scalding sunlight, Taken up by thee, And thoughtless love that sips His cup, at a thought. This strong red wine, Of fire and of the gods, I made my soul. These things have I; All are things of dust, And they shall be. Thus all are undone; The leaf and the bough Fall, and the grasses Steal onward in the gloam Where great fire is. A fairy one, A furlow with a wig Of green and yellow silk, Stand'd by my door once When the night was in With the stars in heaven And the day was in With the light of dreams. Of clouds she had hair of azure, And blue eyes, A mouth of ginger, And a gown of green and yellow flowers, Her hair small flowers, Her feet all covered With green and yellow flowers. I knew her when she stood And put out her lovely face, Saying, "Stand, graciously!" I heard her then. Her garment had shaken gold, But her face was true, And the sight of her clothes all Fading, At the night's end, I heard her so pleasant voice, And bowed my head. I care not now for her And all her cares, For of me care I am weary of all things, And with wakeful eyes, Alone, alone, I look on thee, And sing as I go to-night That this is life. To sink in the grasses that grow My body to-night That I have wasted As those that ======================================== SAMPLE 441 ======================================== That after his former life and abode, Came the black black and bare feet of Time Lapped in springs, who left an empty wicket For them that came beside the water. And one can hold them in a quick story, Wherein Time kept the fishes in his charge, And for themselves they're eaten by the men of old. And that which the world of Time brings shall be, To their old lives and the things of the world of Men, And the strange sight that's not near as much as here, And so their need to be safe is added; There is need of surprise that's strange and welcome; There is need that's tranquil as one's daily pill That goes up by heart without one symptom or one bump; And the swimmer that's not weary is at no rally; And no grief goes, that comes not up; and death is the bond In the Union of the happy and young; and nothing's wrong In that the three coiled snakes that round earth's inner circle The triple-lay'd fire of fusion keep and make Run through the things that live as if they were one And the triple row of dry plants that blocks the way. The morning stiffens into the clouds and flows; And the summit almost quivers there upon its base And the sulphurous fumes that from the forest then rise Are circulate; and both water and air in one breath Rolled upward from the point; and a paroxysm of things Threw that marvel on the king's roof, and he wept; The lower limbs, near unto the hall, are spas'd on; The corpse is dragged forth; the jug of night around The corpse is bound with cord on the upper boughs; The day is shut; and light under silence gilds The shadowy roof there, where he stood and had his stand; In lonely griefs this gilded bucket is lighted. What, though a woman's life be put in the sling, And the babes be borne as victims to the tomb, What are these, sinner, to the world's decrees? Those pillars of the world's heart as stars are thine And not the centre of them? where thou livest and merriest? Even now there's light around thee from the tomb Of one that is turning in the dusk of his days; Ay, and a queer old man whose long beard darken'd The thunder of the ditch, where the old house stood, Spake with the moon; he was like the first swineherd Who harp in the years of clay, and sung on the scaffold. Folks called him "Mr. Jackson" and some relate And he was never weary, for all his length to kiss, Though haggard and ridiculous in his seasons; To see him one may suppose the world was held by nought; For he that most enjoy himself repines Most like the rest of us, was from his stretch of tan to play; For he could merry or sad (his wit such as pleas'd himself) Mere busslers of six that mincers pluck from the shelf. 'Tis well known how swift he ran, and whate'er befell, It made him no soldier, that durst compare With the young patriot, and the hero that's born in silk, As a devil, two cuckolds together bargaining, And turning round their tongues one into the other, If there's one fit who outwits both his own and hers, 'Tis just such a man as makes a preacher seem like a quaint; And says that matter, truth, poetry, all nine, are nil; But in a church is honest pastor, quits preaching for this, And leaping into my tune in my foul and tangled causes, With nothing clean to speak upon, or clean to fill a page, Puts himself for running talk, and dirty metaphys About the devil, his honour, and the holies; While honest sermon, every time he called for one, Were upon the gift that he most loveth, gold, "O ho! run down to Black Colly, and ask of her, They will tell you her, if you'll ask them in a line, That she's a bundle of golden skeins, that's wadded with white; But if you ask them in a different way, You will find that they cannot speak, For their sharp fangs have beard'd their own tail About the way that those that know have trephined their toes; And to see a devil set up in any post, Just makes a man suspect it of hell for carking ======================================== SAMPLE 442 ======================================== eat them, they come for hot weather, it’s a pleasant day. I’m the only dear witness to all that’s gone before. I wear this swaddling garment on the day that’s to be, as I used to when I put it on and held you tight though you cried and wouldn’t let go. <|endoftext|> "Slumber Night Fever", by Lydia Bang [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Love, Heartache & Loss, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Spring] The past is still swirling. We are mounded deep in the greenest of woods, but it’s different in here, the air hasn’t quite surrendered. Like a lullaby, I know I’m yet deep in the pretty thick of things, feeling the very thing I need for my slumber night after night. I know you, each year you’re drawing me deeper into my love for you, so whatever you are, there’s your face smiling back again. Even if it’s just a bird, the mistake I make each time, it’s so sweet, saying it so loud in my sleep. <|endoftext|> "Nosing a Rare 1972 Chevy Son", by Lydia Bang [Living, Health & Illness, Life Choices, Love, Heartache & Loss] (“A Pleasant, Odd Duck” [~] Sit, Ike, sipped this nosed rare little plump of a Chevy Son, if you can sit straight, do you have my shoes for a wallet? It’s right here you know how much I like those sizes of the ubiquitous chevy, don’t you know? As if not having some responsibility to the world would be, as if I were just some idle number in a writer’s alike and name the same as my own. As if I could just say, “what are the odds we’ll need a pickup of that particular make and model?” I can read the limited edition, large type print on which I will drop a man “and then the nightmares let’s all stay up to-date!” It’s just such a lovely night and the Son that just hits a tree without even taking off tits a whole year late, as I get to know is has just begun, and as I start writing I’d like to think somehow I won’t forget it in a hurry. There’s really nothing I can do now but gently nosing the rear wheels with a rose-tinted sparkle. So nice to get away with those, too! Settled all day long I didn’t need a whole day to do that. As well as sunny the colors a few more miles drive in and that little devil should have had” and I wouldn’t I wouldn’t have it not as well as I did the rolling hills no grass will have and all such hills are hell only paved with stars. <|endoftext|> "Eastern Concrehers", by Dirk Nieli [Living, Death, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Trees & Flowers, Social Commentaries, Town & Country Life, War & Conflict] for Palle Two In days we lived where a young child a dove like the one you resembling a deer in the tangled laden air was ours for a whole year stoled from her old nest, after we had found her a suitable home. Like a lark in front of a sparkling morning, we were young and so fragile. It was spring like a year and it was the time that the first concho, that dried thigh, led us the ocean by our feet. Like a flower coming alive on a sunless plain as a bird comes home and, all night long, thump-thump- , in the shadow of the highest mountain we slept. We knew it was early summer ======================================== SAMPLE 443 ======================================== That the sum is much greater than the parts, That there is a vast "outside world," For which he won the doctorate— Take the tax-expediting rod In spite of Platonic juice. Doyle opened his mine And he wouldn’t close his lids. Let the young folks toss the mash All the summer and none of it, But the tax free, I tell you. And have you tried the new pill Made of raspberry leaves And the smell of the young bushes That have sprouted yet Only yesterday? Now if you thought it true That the rules of ball Can’t be beaten, Think how you can beat this doctor, Who can make a fool out of you. He writes too many books, But the first one that he wrote down Was his Terence Speaks Maori. Maori meant one thing and meant another, “The Māori language”, But no one understood a word he said. It was for the same reason the old women With their bags of piko were rude: It is easy to describe And nearly the same in another language. Only to a foreigner always puzzled Is trying to express one thing to one person, Giving up, as we English do, To let the closest one have his way To say what he doesn’t say. Sometimes he says nothing, sometimes he says The nicest thing possible. It can be no shocker to have it so That the lines between him and the bloke Shoot out both ways. Take the thing that he told me about: “In the sapling time there was a woman named Tereti,” “What, no–Mrs.–Tereti?” And he laughed, as if there was no meeting of the minds There for the taking, as if he was surprised To have a chance to show what an able player he thought he was. I let it go. There are two sorts of truth: The truth that you can hold upon a beardless hoof, Or the truth that the maverick gliss on a sheet of mica. And if after the gazelle had gone you came to a priest Before the dunghills, The mica truth, the barefoot truth, Wasn’t your whole gospel, Nearer the boundary of a blameless blinder’s space, Beside the snuffbox place Of the patrician hour. Had you a broken reed There’d be nothing holy about the life of the Catholic Church. But the truth he told was noble and anprous: “There is no dearth of noble beasts Made by the hands of God.” The most noble beasts Are the ones that have no brains. And he couldn’t say that the women and the drops Would be most grateful they were shot and not lived, And he wouldn’t say that the penis is God’s horn That has to be powered by the head. But if you were always spinning that tried everything You’d have to allow for birth and death and the show Of Power put on in the capitol by the Deafest-dumb. Nearer the limits he was saying, His feet so close together, If one of them had moved the poultice into the ear, The other foot had left a gap, And the kneecaps had moved, In a catalepse so close together, That it made a jig-saw sound when it smoothed over, But he could see the whole hoof as it made a Chandelle ring, A presthetic pattement, Made out of coral by the Legislatures That start in problems the longest that come to them In a sort of subsoiling, in a tautology That is the problem of noses. It may be that there’s a cheese-grater And a pair of Terrasse skin dress’d busts In the fair side of a Rhinopols. It may be that when we get to the streets of The body there’s a vent of thimble-tossings With a tube of water-works There’s no one to marry you, of course, and you have to go alone, or not at all if you don’t. Some of the quants Said, ‘If they were there they’d bring a proportionate Exchange rate.’ You have to reconcile the sense of being, And so I moved ======================================== SAMPLE 444 ======================================== What punishment hath God enjoined on man Or what, alas! is forbidden To me, that I must require none other To haste me my own family name? Whom thus they asked me. To the first question, And then to the second, thy timely Reply thou ever taught us at our sea, Bearing thy rare knowledge of men. As to the first, we are apt to ask it, What the bequest of Hercules, And what of Jove, from Danaan troops obtained, And of the mighty stars, that with them served In Juba's time of old; if in short Thou couldst justly say that all are like Thy story; even to the glory That he and his may with thee combine. Then answer thus. Tell us truly. Who is The being whose renown thou lov'st? Tell us where Thou, and that gentle world, have left to come. For, if our eyes are pointed at the sun, The skies will fail to follow him; to the world They tend too far below; it must they be Far otherwise with thee, who can'st gaze up. But if, as certain things, our thoughts are Determined, thy renown, perchance, may rise And carry thyself, not thine own, to greater peaks, And ye, great judges of earth, who bear the stars, Shall be encouraged by thy voice. This voice Is the avenging wound of hell's tares against the sons Of the false Philoctetes, who all along The playmate world of nature was so false; this Shall be the gift of thy righteous song to those Who follow thee to see the future draw nigh, In spiced groves and flocks and fruit and flowers and streams, And this, thy noblest song, the inspiration That points heaven's deep sky, where the fate of nations Is to be struggle, on the bluest wave to see The glory of the future age stream forth in all The forms of truth, and spread itself in all the stars. Oh, all ye, who, through your fine sense of worth, Are moved with soul-felt passion to make known The changings of a lovely world, I pray You let me plead for you against the walls Of that doom-foundered institution, The school, from which, to-day, through the lips of its learned masterings, transmuting its scholarship Into some new saint-writer's eloquence, Man's soul, in love and work, and that of his gut-wasting school-teachers, unbound From its much praised door-vocals, still goes on according to his pleasure, Riding the hot steeds of doctrine to a goal With willed steam and with mare; and, though Letters--stamped "For Paul,"--strip from me, my Inost writing there, from "such a one," Upon my desk,--do you think he will not Keep you appraision of this? yea, I will Forgive him: his pen is slow, and the mind within him to make such a slow way of getting the speed-book, is slow, and the finesse of his hand, too, is admir'd, and the workmanlike way in which he carries it in his proud carrying-bag, is admir'd, And the cost, to all his fancy, is four dekes; Four deeps is the writing of one, who finds wisel-light work, in tempert-mane, with his fellow-writers of ours; One, to carry and set for writing all the rest, So shall know no gallick of the toil; one shall There was a time, in this or the five threesome, Of old this tolerable sickly shore Of the sea, which all of us threw about, With our hand for peace, and ly English men, We were a match for yon fair stars. But since that time of horrors and of woe, Which in the two outnumbered times of them Innumerable number of times, Have seen the high seas brought from hell Along the narrow places between us, 'Tis time to look to new fun, ere time be run, And we get all the news we want of them. We could send an Earl, For many an answer; but we're a clog, And we run around the worst To play our piece, and take a pull, With our wounds, and call the foe to hear By his own King; But, dear me ======================================== SAMPLE 445 ======================================== River air, clouds, a long darkness, trees, Broken branches, silence, rain, hail, The fire has fallen, ashes, Nothing: A blanket, cover-in-sorrow. <|endoftext|> "The Sunrise", by Robert Albion [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books] As we sat talking on the train about all things pertaining to time she asked me what I thought the moon and the sunset, "the way they rise and fall", she said "like numbers dethroning old kings". So unlike the moon’s delicate dark rising and falling I could not prevent myself from drifting off into sleep again. But her this was not, not at all, not a falling, or falling, not even a rising, nor rising, at all— "an impossible riddle", as she said. And though I knew her not, I took from her that same expression of sorrow. I’d be the king of Exodus and not the king of Vernot in the tweedy lands of vine and corn. Now just as soon as I’d met the time and place the monstre in me so painstakingly set for this and no other would rise. But we were both right, we parted and I went away into the green fire going down a long and lonely way. It is that dark that falls upon a fire I have seen the redfall before, it dazes the tears from my eyes and I stumble. My old flame is not me, it has no life, the drops seal it, it has been, it will be, it has been, and I have been, and am and will be. How must it be to beheld once more in the first cool sunlight of June? —Rich, that living flame, and very far, like a field of tall boys all concentrating to meet each other as they did. Circled by cubist right of speech, with no more than a passing label, there was no reason what ever to expect, or be. <|endoftext|> "I See a Face", by Gary Whited I see a face in the window speaking, followed by a head of lady-doom, a pigtail of an angel talking That is the trick of it, and why myriade to gaze into the face that surrounds the non-figure that does not speak, does not reach across the blank to touch the eye. There is the heart of light, a whole heart of starry space, a face speaking across that cannot touch an eye to reach across the blank — Hansberger <|endoftext|> "Assault", by Philip Marsh [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Time & Brevity, Nature, Summer, Weather, Winter, Religion, Faith & Doubt, Faith-Filledness & Hope] I knew a man in my youth Who trimmed his pajamas at night, And slept on the floor of our kitchen, Which caused me to speculate Whether or not he had faith In God, and whether He believed in beds. Mother said to me one time, It’s the summer of Life, And sleep is but a breath, And the body so far away It’s out of space and distance. I have no snow, it said, And so I began to build Refuge walls, doors and windows, And cut fruit and plants from the sky, Then wandered like a tortoise Around the house, lest I should Be chill or snowbound. I say that in the summer of Life No thing is so far away It’s out of space and distance. Letting ourselves be seen Riding by that flame are we, That fire, as it were, in the eye, As we are building a home in the sky Around our black and white here. <|endoftext|> "Apologia", by Peter Daszek [Living, Life Choices, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy] He who gives much away has little He who much has little to give He who gives all gives least He who gives most will most It’s often the poor who thrive You have to earn your living Death is not painful, life is not painful It’s comfort to know that you live Succour to know you ======================================== SAMPLE 446 ======================================== <|endoftext|> "God and the Poet", by Kathleen Crim tasked with the critical examination of poems, and of the artist's relation to his or her themes, is prepared to view as "a positive (sic) assessment of the [poet's] work" and will "mark in the diminution of the (sense of) work" dramatic success, and the poet's or actor's [emphasis] distinction from the stage, as marking "illuminating performance." In the 'Wars this objection is taken to the head of all those who prefer a style to be called "substitute" labor, as in the war of as compared values, the war of Candide. On the one hand, we have Mr. Scheminy the benevolent king who is a spirit, and, by so being clothed with a "public face," on the other, we have the personification of the same concept who is Mr. S----. it, but, since the artistic impulse is in one, it may be safely supposed that it is which the latter is with the former. [T]he illusion, that one who was listening stood the whole scene in beauteous glory, was mistaken, was turned from what was said, and gazed with a fond illusion, was distracted, and, seeing, was disappointed. The ancient form of the famous statue is replaced by a form which can never be shown. ... The role of the poet has not yet been entirely changed. There are still zealots who defend the 'desert' of poetry. In the days of Early Greek tragedy, they have been used for the ends of the Theatre, of the [Popper], and of the pleasure-mobile society. But they ought not to play the role of the undying pessimist. The desert was not meant to be a happy place, just as the stage of Plautus was not meant to be a happy-sounding. Out of the diffused past, a voice, reproof at once loud and clear, floods to all people; is sorrowful; on every page, in all ink, is the accusation of knowledge. ... Even a moderate German person (like myself, I can understand why), who may have once been rather well off (I do not say wise), may sometimes, with a slight look at It may be that the difference between the German and the English language will be used to drive the point home. But I have come across an interesting coincidence on the march from Arm to Arm. The initials of the towns is brought out, Jutland and Saxony, they don’t sound the same in English as in German. At Potsdam they are waving, half-waves and half-waves. Under the look out for something clever to throw; and as A wand is not only shorter than a stream. What the German translators have lost is the humour of the original; but the translation of this piece is too tedious, you see. They are following the path of logos over against the pass from Latin to Ionic, but they are not phalanx. Is it not well, then, that the beardless Lautlander, who has come to offer the services of his lady to Ju or Bremgarten? ... Nottingham [1862-1865] says that he has never heard the expression before of Joris on the part of a soldier; but he thinks that the Ph[əo]nix was always represented as fond of war, even though they had never fought yet, nor seen a fight. What comes to me as I have already shown in other letters, is that the character of the potato, by which it is identified with a nation, has nothing to do with its aptitude for war, or its ability to fight. But that is not so should be regarded as a wag. Whoever is to speak of the English in this connection, should bear in mind that though, as would have been at home. Yet, as this production is directed to the public, not to the few, there is no occasion for it to be less than the most brilliant in order that its distinctness be not diminished. all the less] to the same thing. The material of which we are all composed, living, thinking creatures, though in it little or nothing is at stake, must be so arranged as to be accessible. For our own time we desire, most obviously when we reason, and thence must come that inclination to production in any number, that action which is always the most repeated and surest in ======================================== SAMPLE 447 ======================================== Beneath the mossy trunk he made his home, And there, the night being calm, he slept. The woods at once were shaken by the blast Of the trumpet, and the roof of DESTE Danced near to pell mell. Ospreo woke, And, hearing the blast, ran forth to his arms; But quick his eyes were bent To the cleft oak-tree, which near to his lay. "What manner of man is the great Osprey?" Said DESTE (drunken in the sultry noon) "And where was that man who sits so calmly by, Staring from his bark, with quiet gazing eyes? Thy King! what land is this, where waves the wide sea, From the girdered hills that to his presence squeak, And gathers on his whistling ribs the scarlet tide?" "Why art thou gazing on the sky, O dog?" "And are thy bark and eyes grown dim Dumb with gazing? Now I know Thou art gazing on the heaven Of thy own dim reflection, As if that brute to thy neck were lent the beam, And thou hadst no other hope than to complain. "Who art thou, then?" "Some worthless reed, whom thou hast got, The kindest of all thou seest, But since thou canst not choose but be a dog, To me thou bow'st the knee, and beg to be My good dog, and play thy part; As if I for thy face Should harden to an ass." Ospreo spoke his piece. The dog thus spake "Here and here to stay, I charge thee, O Ovard. Is there for me but one to pay The arrear of oxen, dogs, and men; And must I name who e'er this is?" "Fond dog!" thought PETER; "In the great Almaden less our way As along the bay we saw the ship Which I had wished to take to Dover Town; When now the great Plough and he had seen We drew up to a man that seemed my friend. Petter to me began, 'My master here Hath laid sail, and, with the largest draught, That can be reach'd from Winchester it is-- She's gone, for all the wind that speed can hold!" "Then, sir! (I said) in good faith, Is't worth thy while to go and get That with the wind that puts her home Back to St. Joyce's shore and York Life?" "Now, reverend dog! Look not thus! If all the sea that goes not here Could also stray, the wind To thee could scarce be better For that it blows to heaven from here! Now thou art resolved, by true proof, To follow me which I command. If this thy master were but me, O thou that hast thy glad reward! Thou, noblest of all the breed Of hounds, in this household dog must sleep. And, as for me, I pray, Remember here to treat me well!" The gentle reed never a word Return'd; but, by its look mute, Deaf and dumb, hung its head low, and set Its mouth open, while the wretch, who stood Where erewhile on high its head was bowed, Had wander'd without a stop or breath, For, tho' all the stretch of his controul, He, still in silence wash'd the sweat From his drench'd limbs; and thus he spoke:-- "Now, by the name thou givest this lagging beast, I within a month shall be as good As he that first was put upon this scale; And, what a prize thou hast within thine arm, If thou be strong, to be beside it, and to lay His deadly foot against, I would lie more still, And see myself of this wonder; but now, Tho' festering passion doth my frame impel, Just consider how--such a beast to keep For thy full wish, which I doubt not will be thine, Whenas thou hast left to follow him who here Is keeper of thy sweet; and who it was Thou didst see, whose graceful form did seem Not merely divine, but almost divine! "Such was he, ere this warm clime began To cloak this creature in a homely mound, Who to this world's frozen regions heads Toward the eye of heaven--but knew no way Such waste of snow for ======================================== SAMPLE 448 ======================================== Que no se de nada en mi país Tá va a agora el Premeia This is what I stand for, my dear. In my dreams I only am standing here, In my life I am half tired of it, with everything that I am not. I want to wake up, red of heart, and keep singing the whole night long of the vampirich grand chieftain who gets up at six and loses his appetite. This morning I covered fifty miles, Meeting the great prince Eros in his chambers. I carried his big bouquet. In the garden he saw me, And he stopped and gave it to me, a golden tulip, A gift and a token of our loving, I think. There is a branch of rich hemlock And slender eglantine against the chest. The naked gods have no room To grow their beauty without falling, The gods with breasts have to bear their arms. Look, he sits on his chouf— The sun opens its eyes Because I am standing naked in front of him And you suddenly make a thing, my darling, That is never going to break, With the grace of a lily. My prince, my guru is sitting there, Couched in the hides of the sacrificial animal, And is not moved. The yellow chimera Has the lord of fire inside it, Churning the hearts of the watchers. Is it because I don't touch them They remain untouchable? Perhaps it is I feel the wind in my hair. The genie is out of the bottle, But you have not opened your eyes to the wonder. Why do you not speak? It is you who look just like the genie. You who should be reverent of all things, I will never be able to say The way the gods speak. You who are never frightened at the color of a leaf, You can look at a macaw Without it being frightened. But you, my friend, You are not even a little afraid, Why is it you feel That something, some Possibility of forgetting Has already taken place, And that it will soon once again Take away The wonder of this place And give us the mystery of nothing. Why does my beauty Throng Dwell in your heart. What will be left If you get up Again? I want to go home. I want to go home Because I have Made a mania of travel And Behave as if it were the end. This is what I mean: Because I am too curious, You must not envy me That I have been to every city And would like to return. I have been building cities with my hands. The i in IKAGOSH IK AGOD The water from the porcelain He filled to the top with ice, And left it on a shelf. If you drink from it You will thirst. I am making something out of nothing, With all these silences, But it's ugly, and I feel that way Because I am hard on my fingers, That with one hand I have butchered A forest and with two Made a magic mushroom. Why can't you be as cool as I am? I am always hungry for joy And have no place to store it. The poet looks into the eyes of stars, And that cannot be reconciled With the tiny container in which he is Ceremonially imprisoned. When I see you, friend of mine, You have parted the curtains in my heart, And I have to take my light From your sky and play there too. There was an apple tree That never had a fruit, And that was why I gave it to you In the beginning, To make you believe in my heart I was not afraid to love you. That is a triangle, Of the kind that lines The ground that is covered in roses. This is why I was afraid to write to you. I am afraid That what has made the clouds Should perish, and I be left alone In a red room With no stars. No need for that. My soul is writing by itself, And there are many poems to find Among the sand. He who has never done this Is as a lion without a den. If the first bird On the branch grows wings This grows into a magic habit And if the rainbow follows, It is not magic. <|endoftext|> "Homebound", by Eleanor Wright [Nature, Seas, ======================================== SAMPLE 449 ======================================== Edge' up the little he had to spare. He whirls it, works up the mysterious Stages of its jerking grasp, and with little-spade-- One iron heel, the piece of amputated land In which he stands, a living miracle. Boon and counter, these free spirits of the air, Spare on the altar and the lake, our toil is done, And there stands forth our Urning, our sight's Apostle, To its Lord anointed, our promised Rest! Let now our minds be open like his fine yellow saucers-- "True disciples are free for the light and air!" Last, the miracle!--for "not yet," saith Christ, "The End is to be One that shall endlesome." Not one little more, one little less-- (The prophets have told us that!--never mind)-- There is one greater than we wonder at: The End of the Endless will be! Our endless, the God that knows not wisdom, Will be our learner,--always in the way. St. John! let thy long dying stop-- See that thy sheep keep right; See thou not break thine own free tail; And, lest thine head too late be gone, Still, though 'tis too late, See that yet not one poor living tail Get yet split or bruised. See that every one of thine Keeps right and true in the tooth. Unnumbered sheep, Unnumbered goats, How many of each do you think there are, In all the sheepfold to the heart? Shedding their blood for the lamb, Unnumbered grapes for the grape, But not a single grain for the miller, To bring their hearts to distress. Lo, the shepherds for their Shepherds' sakes! Sowing for the rich soil of thorns, Feeding the soil of their hearts' desire Or a song heard in the desert-- Bidding the Shepherds not trust their words Or the hard words of hermits there. But they who withered for their false Yea Husbanding with abstinence-- What was Abel's blood drawn from the tooth, Red as the rose that woke in the morn, Of the lamb the sinner's bitterest foe, Fallen at Shepherds' shepherding! Shepherds of our God's creation, Shepherding winds that are true, Shepherds who were blessed by famine, Shepherding winds that are true, Shepherding all things for sore sin's forgiveness, Love above all other! I loved thee, first of men, as I understood Thy mind to be aright; Thy love, to thy suit, no want excuse; Thy service well attested true. Love is the light of eyes that shine Beyond the ken of tongue and frown. Faith to see no faithless is born here; And then, perhaps, He knows my heart, and I his own. "Yet should he grace me--grapes and seals, or--?" You plucked them with your mad fingers, then-- Hiding the little ring in your fingers 'Neath your breath; an hour's driving back again Through the great world, to keep aloft The gaudy show Of pomps and arms, crowned with Roses, to him. In the great world, his pride behind, The man in the flowery lime, Turned to the fluttered man at her-- You with your finger pinned lips-- Her feet twisted to stick out to him; You with a silence that made love Though not a sign; her eyes black with the flash. What would you, at last, say, at last, Was God's curse felt on you-- Did sin nail your heart to his? Did God e'en drink from your lips The life he sold you? Were you his tick to call the beast, Red scarlet, at the blackbird's fall? Did God read your face and mark Your feet like his big shears, Clothing his children grim to wear? God, God was never beast At the blackbird's fall. God, God, is a road Where death will turn. All flesh is but a book Full where the sun goes, In words it has a musical tone. God, God, knows all is only the show Made of earth's rich cloth, Worn out with toil and care, To die at God's judgment-seat. They buried her at ======================================== SAMPLE 450 ======================================== I from the West return: as from Albion's coast I come, Because the breeze of the North, fresh as from the central sea, Still blows with wavering wings from the North Sea; My path I unceasing follow still followeth; the ways For the deep pine-covered hills I follow; I wander through the Jewelled City and the Oracle's Wood. <|endoftext|> "Pardon", by Robert Graves [Living, Time & Brevity, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict, Heroes & Patriotism] Sir, true valor never works night well, Nor country man's a coward, name-sake; But in a nation such as this, Heroes should be men of might; And this is a prouder day to-day, That any mouth can tell, right and rightw*, Than all the heroes that men, and gods may tell, The cross of Mars, and all the songs of heaven! Wear it, and on this day and this ye shall pass Freshly, a living death for well or ill, And, in that land where yet no man may be, Yet sigh no more for loved and lost and dead, But lay that head and armour on the hearth, That we on that day and this may go On foot, to know no rule, but that we tread The virgin path, to be as we were born. Clad now, and armed as we shall be, This is our woe or happed way of war! No mirth nor laughter! nor work nor mirth! But arm to arm, and see the same Men running, no war as with the gods! Arm to arm; see and bear their tread! The swift and fickle footed fly, And he who stands is hurl'd by all! Their swords are pennies if you desire A rag's not worth a sheet! And so they hurry Armies down the stacks, and the pack, Faster than spikes may stablar thrust, That every war with every war must wer' For a red poll-tax, like our tea! If men serve two masters, well it is, So they be mistwicians for one; But, say they, should each be master here And the same swords be quartered, what soles are they, To serve two masters? No, no! we must end A third, like the trinity of Ber-e and Shu-er, Or our sweet words and crowns will be adulterated! Crowns adulterated! ha! ha! Ladies, are you eyes that see? Would you serve the drunken mumbling moon? Or the tired and deprest? Or would you serve the drunken mumbling moon? For beauty is as blind as Ber-e and Shu-er, Or the drunkard's moon. Sir, it is true, a man may say With his tongue as well as his heel; But is it right on the nation's stage To have such a thing, a man's name served Up in the ghostly twilight-chute? But say you now, what's your toast? As a man of the commencement A breath's a crime, and a man of the convocation A breath's a friend. If it be true, Sir, that you saw this man's bones broke, Bruised, in the broken wine-cups trod, And you to salute him your nod given, Your civility to me as well, As you to a friend; Nay, I will tell you the truth! But it isn't so, Nay, it isn't so; And there's a truth in truth. Ah! that man was a thief, and you knew it, And a liar you knew it, And you smiled at the wretch, And here you lie laughing, As if 'twas your very finger of song Leapt in and knocked your throat. Why did you drink? A million! a million! Drink is a kind of death, a good chap's drink, Though perhaps more foul. And yet, and yet, Had you to drink, or had you not, What matter, for at the end of all You'd still have been drunk! And still be cheerful and nice! Did you hear the very word Of that man who drinks and kills? Oh, those deaths that drunks and kills! That man was a beastly vermin; A creature of a Sunday nook, And though broken and scratched to death You ought to have fed him on Sunday! Be happy! dear, be ======================================== SAMPLE 451 ======================================== Of rankest weeds--yea!some rank weeds at least, Rank weed, rank foul weed, Ne'er filleth heaven! But time, and round And through Wheels time, and time's a carriage, And here are men All merry, all fed Round with curious leaves, and a few pines. On account of those who were owlet's tenants, Who owlet willed not to his bells use authority, But little else of substance; Their ages coming, when and where Each sowed her heart, each warmed her Feet in heaven as o'er hers, By the still springs of the brook and the meadow, And in the verdant field; While their folded vestures were neither rich nor rare, Their brows not crowned, Their cheeks not puckered full, Their locks not piled on points like scissors; Their heads not crowned, Their gowns not crested, Their shoes not clumping with lily-picklocks, Their Godheads not crowned with thatch, Their lips not sweetsweet with the mango pod, Their cheeks, so smooth, Not teeth set to bright lips as chestnuts Are, Their legs and feet--one leg, no foot, Not one leg and feet! Though here and there the flower-bells blow, Though round each jerkless oak leaf peeps, Though here and there the lily droops, Though men eat quail instead of wheat, Yet day and night here comes a stream From the hills, over the plains, down here, Where the west pool is held at bywill Of a cooling brook, In it the lusty brute, eating it up, Fills it up, And all about live lilies, their whiteness hiding From sight of man Meantime, as forth it fared on the way, Over the pool it plunged, And the laugh of springs and waters called it, calling, To the brook at last, And the bed of rocks, A gentle-breathing pool, which lost its terrors now In fall'n tears of pumice stone, When one day a soft, misber the flower-bells blew, And one night found out How each bramble-root sunk, Crimsoned were the places of its going down, When one morning, in the prime of April, Came Mother Nature coming, if her terrors now Were ellay, Why, she came with her veil of silence, And her face, whiter than her bog-green gown, All through the woods resounded, Whisper'd to a sister-bird, Where her hand lay, if to build her Body in the moss, it struck it black, So to see Thro' the forest how she came Was the hope, the welcome to my heart. The fear is that that whit'ning days will see The damp and dire of years of iniquity, When the dry leaves they feel and tremble with woe, When all's become so bitter that the sweet fruit Disperses and scattered is, And the freshness of the year for ever slips away, As doth a snake through sands and dead layers dashes, And drops its decay. Then has come the holy calm I feel throughout, And all that speech which while 'tis told is sweet said, That erst with sighs is harsh and bitter nigh, Sinking low in sighs, like streams beneath a tempest; But, 'mid their sad amasses, oh the joy of sleep! And the day as some clear flower doth rise, A little lifting airy eye To Heaven, with Heaven's best of stars for best, And a glory in the hearts of those that bloom. This time I sing is most my own, But a full good harvest ended long ago, So this time of theirs is mine To bring unto mine own a part; For my greatest joy the harvest brings, And mine my love's portion, So that both have some excuse. Her patience what patience indeed, Whom the languid hours did borrow, Tho' that she cried for rage were feeble Like mine, at love's bower hour than these, Whose hope they would not gain. When it did spring it done me good, For soon it took a heart of wine, And when I dozed in all it had, She came but half asleep. The third half she did move And move with might For to be fled; When, now gone, she ======================================== SAMPLE 452 ======================================== Common facilities how pleasant are: No palace, but with lavish daylight shone, And like the beams of scarlet fires at night were shone The pillars of its crystal on its walls. A silver stream ran down its channels high, And through its currents for its marble slipped The serpents that in clusters there were found; And here and there about the cloister's walls An altars' chapel glimmered like a star, Where in the columns were seen soarings wild Of a strange crystal throughout the year. And here and there along the level were found Lakes with living colouring the glowing air As if a spirit in them was at play. These through all the province of the West, While some its angelical voices heard, Were chosen representatives To be the keepers of our human laws. And even that the appearance was good, In Numa's days, of something wherein The cultural capital of Italy lay, This is no more than is manifest: The type of our Italian race Is Italian as the type is broad; And those who held the mastery of The earth were in its world-pool'ed mid-space. Or take the case of artists: of late Even cobwebs have started from below The straggling tyvek, that by tradition's trace Is smelt in other streets, and spreadeth wide Down the broad rind; the figure is so hued, Smooth, long from behind; the combination so Clear, majestic, here we find set apart, But the face as yet has not antedat In imitation of this fashion. The house the pilgrim might in any place In Rome venerate, if so he chose, is not Void; since divers are wont, at various times, To mark out a compound of its threads. And well it is the house is renowned, if 'Twas not itself the portal; since he Who came thence entered the soul's domain, And throughly purified that region. Cannot know what end the riddle may answer, Of that which was begun, and still is rung Awn upon the mast. Howbeit he Who runs the rings on proud Horscastere to seek For the mystic scroll of what its walls proclaims; While every sun that through the city flashes bright Touches the lintel of its gleaming square, Such mark he takes of godly grace, as though His thing to touch had great esteem in Heaven. Beyond that palace wall what pilgrim there In summer time, of cooler purpose than I, Should chance to seek is. If the creeper there Be burnt and sung Up to the poles of the Sun And northward, who shall say what light it casts Or of what use, or of what other fruit, 'Twere better to grow in desert? Adieu, Untorn and unwove! the white and black, the red and white. But who of us in the after time Will wander to his own great Soul at home, Will there at large among his people dwell When winter the shrill southern wind presses? Or if at evening fall abroad, the way Waking, will there some tenanted throne Light up his head in prayer's devout array, Or gaze, pure saintliness to eyes made dim With heat so rife, to rest assure him,-- When from the canvas of the sun Springs the young day, or from the orb of Mars, A panther of the pallid fleece As it whirls, or, o'er the burning air Stories the deepest twilight's holy watch, O Lord? and then the West grows fair Again, and hangs like a golden wave With banners festoon'd, and murmuring lower? The barren waste of thirsty snow Soon will be made with water pure and sweet, And such dominion Heaven has by this, That, save where foul error 'gainst God's spite Built and still some slightest bounds abide, Her dry shedders, not a drop too dirty spills To promise health, or menace pestilence. Pardon me, if I call not, like you, Where summer scorns our groves to shade But only builds its empress over us, There an old woman I have seen Cling like a leaf in dark a wood, Seeking her lord who comes not far, Her child-brooding fellow-creature. As if she kept a giant's gift The bit of life that swells a calf, And, sated with that before he died, Stands gazing at a gleam more bright, As if ======================================== SAMPLE 453 ======================================== Religion, there! I do love thee: but, hold back on me, Religion, I will tell thee, this truth still: <|endoftext|> "She sits upon the dark, sudden silence Like girl unbidden, happy, dreaming: Her eyes have not heard the setting sun That spreads his light from the enameled face And upward: far, but shining not: Like one who with a seed-corn sips Of mist and vapor, listening, glancing The shreds of silver from his garden To win from earth a flower." "Not like the growing flower, but like the fall (In this long war of many poems) of man, Duff, ruddy leaf, that ever-dying Creates, because it cannot die, And still more, though now younger than thyself, Respires, blooming with each revolving year (Thus stands thy rock) without thy coming." "Sow your seeds! Let not the garden waste And no true soul be bound by narrow, nameless And useless, unproductive seed, Wherein the life that is to come out fruit May brook upthorp, to call itself Fruits and Laws." "I have felt the half-hearted note that creeps (As the small dust might creep, alas) so far Beneath my guarded wing, to lose the ear That should be full confirmation, and the skill To feed it, leave uncaptured that right." "For the wild birds of the air, and the green grass And little peace of empty space and sea, And me, his love unable to comprehend, The deeps of wonder and the deeps of love, These are the choirs in which I know you dwell, This be your music, and your laws the same." "Beneath this tree its platanus droops, And its several motions roll the sound Of voice, and ever of voice, lest more than this Be lyred in vain, and what in popular thought Is sacred silence, and to silence sacred named (The temper of the great gods by the strong And this poor for their folly, this thy breast) "Nor one of these thousand amulets, pretend To hide the gravestone from the world. Nor is thence The goddess-flower half so innocent; when first The sun hath set, and to her nearest stars Bare her some ancient stars (the earth in vale Wash'd of the rain), she on the length Of dewy branch, or on the darkest cloud, "To forge her veil of living vapor 'Gainst the sun, as from some star-brow'd cell Draws the new-sprung morning; dark rides And dusky twilight to the earth she trains With emerald sides, and, gathering night, Steals it with her through the Universe; Thrilling, to sweeten still her sweet embrace With thoughts of sleep, while now the sun is dead." "The dying flame Ordain'd for her a tented flame, Made a dry bone, taught to the jet's hard jaws, And with the damp prims, breathed in dry air, Forth from the womb of burning, wrapped within Her young chim-ed like flame-leaved snows of sleep. And, that with artificial limbs, Th'unbraced Veillant, in huddled vapours, And into a matter that might tide The fellest of its heat, and change the less To other habitant, th' expedient wate He shifted, and left her not the less Her upper self: the new power's underbelly, Stole in his folds: now here, now there, The whole air from eves to entrails Of the craggy hills, how many rills, The wandering air's figure turning round Her tail, and, there conceiving wings Of motion, these flies downward skimming, Steer from the hills, and to the sea-bank, She thinks her way, or falls and fills The world with air and fumes and flames." "He raised a network out of the ground, Wherewith he smote the flame, and said, 'Lo, This burns. Thou shalt feel my blade. Henceforth thine eyes shall be never dark, Nor thine heart o'erwhelm for sorrow, Nor thine arms be mute, nor thy lips fly In all the horrors of thy pain, But ever talkative: men shall know Thy working through my vapor-laced clay.' "And evening and eve, and when ======================================== SAMPLE 454 ======================================== Dryaspes de time, God turn de clock Back to dat afternoon So dastock on dat ikon, Ebry-riss in de slum Dat 'all dis fuss schmiel. De slum bul he come back again, Ebry-riss dat 'all eben so Dastin los' for groun'. Dat peace, wite dey say, dat late, Dastin soun' so stark. Dey go back to they house, On de way dey taken By de'lighter, dey ta de`s Kaze dey hafe de habit O' sayin' `hi'. Went so dast, de loome, Und de pore `Hymnia Put 'er 'cross dem 'alls, De foward o' de row Dat say: `hi'er you!'. Tow-park! Aller dan to doon; Dastin three dat row Put `hin de 'all. Be'ast! Dastin three dat row, `Hymnia, go slow, you! `Hymnia, hon!' So `hi' I go `Ole mein farm!'. `Hymnia, hon!' O' dore! `Hymnia, hon!' O' de row! Tow-park! 'Thout mes-der-ten Que de dam,' so say de folk say, `Hi dere in de herd'. O, heep on de bel.' De old man `die' sople Dey `t hon'; he say: `Hi! Johnnie, come hither; Vain cack a hon' on my life! He maked aller twenty harts `Hi dere on de pleaze'. `Hi!' de dog say: `hi' dat hon' Vere aller five er twenty. De cat `hi' on wite, so do De weas, de 'eagle er de fal-e, Vain colt, o' de follers eigh `Hi dere on de pleaze'. De `Hymnia, hon!' so say de folk Dey deveam allers in de row, `Hi! you!' `Hi! Anne, hi!' Cat `hi!' das `hi', so dake de pleaze, `Hi my heart! Dastee lak Horuss!'. So vot `Alles', to try an' bate Dat `Hi! de horse'; so dake you ther Mebst vot break `Hi! sleep' bimeb in dat; Vain vot; hev you hear dat horse `Hi! Aboud;' so say de folk `Hi! Jim'; so say dat allers say: `Hi! Jim. Here `Alles' Vot hev been this way Vitch year, dat `hi! moon dings wid' peep, Vainly goin' to de praan to peep; Vain fool! ;' says he, `aller I sat ther Here demper time, dere longin' on dem Ter de night sheen; chet' a hall-leid in my voddup, `Hi! Horuss, dem days! She leuke that te vill the fal-lals biven Dat `Hi! Jim' te aller say; so shevino Vought ter be; `Hi! Jim; you say, you say, Dast war dat you can't see me! How am I near? Heam! one o' your men; you say, you say, Dast war, dem days! So den the mate Vot gwine to de island See aller des ezan dem hither di-VAIR-jours, Vainly doorn on de thuesday night: Und dey pass dem around, but dere aller says: `Hi! Horuss, und aller says; `hi-russ! so say I; Allers say `hi! dere aller says. He VE'n soowl a little, `Hi! Horuss, soos on de days He mak' soosh shtein;' `Hi! Jim; soosh all de days, Und de whole Lov-'ur, aller day dem aller teeps;' Dere Vasht you aller says, `hi-russ! I go over aller too, `Hi! Horuss, aller, soosh aller ======================================== SAMPLE 455 ======================================== yet thou art not learned; yet Thy clear mind hath found out a treasure Without learning's ^^^^^. But bide with me Till I ope Grief's treasury. There my heart shall pay the gift of love And lay him with the best of them. <|endoftext|> "A Midsummer Dream", by Mary Llorens [Love, Romantic Love, Relationships, Valentine's Day] Love's eyes, the last summer fruit, That fall with crimson blush Upon the river, And, like life's lightning, flash into flame If some far nation's banner Wreath the black waters of the West— Then come the glories that follow harvest-tide. The sun's beauty is too dazzling To be long restricted in a distant land. Too oft we seek through large degrees To play the tiger and the lion, Able to lift our light and dwindle To the shadows of immemorial graves. Yet, still, some tincture, made by the moon's light, Can work magic with the curious eyes And bind our freedom with an oath, And pave with new eternal twilight The sunless haven of our freedom. Yea, all that glorious con- comity of shapes that dall the shadow of Death, But is the shadow of a charm Made by some old blend of lunar and light, By sunlight dim, by shadow less dim, With warmth and light, the embodied worlds. The eyes of love, the full eyes of love Can gladden any land with miracle. In all the tiniest corner of the world, Admitted therein, alone, and free, the soul Of love is free, and owns no bonds, The better, sure, the brighter For freedom on its frame hath been reared. <|endoftext|> "A Sound Less Noise", by Walt Whitman [Plymouth Tunnel and the Roughree, 1903] A sound less noise, and craft less in the surface world of things, And soul less swift in the inert soulless corpuscles, Of man or his sisters, for their arts are slow and stale, Sudden appearance is more in startling forms, such as by chance we trace, And to surprise the spirit with its voice is more, It wakes the everlasting unconscious sense of surprise, So if we could not, by long preclude it, From so much artifice, the fine fibers of the touch, By no pre-conceived notion pen, we should have power, A kind of natural magnet should be set at hire, And each nerve initiated into repose By some instant dip of immediate feeling be brought Into association with great nature, And thus the spirits of love and hate should by this fired mass Shoot in opposite directions, as 'twere straight links of a chain, Direct, upon touch, into deathly life and vigor, Into dread extremes of defence or attack, The enamored flesh should favour either part, Itself equal to either supernatural power; But, as 'twere with either, as in fact it is, So more than half the spirit is this confused word, This mind of fire, that can contend with either The age is grown too hot for me to breathe, Let us fill our glasses with Bordeaux and claim a long repose, Ah, no! it is too hot for even the fire-frog to respire, The frothing rips me through with more than a scorching, No, I 've had enough, and, alas, I cannot hold my teeth, Enough and more is enough, and I shall on to the next world, Flaring my boots, and going down in flames, Leaving all this faint vapour of life behind me, Is it God's or Magic's aspect that I squint, and whose, but whose, Or some deeper mystery, Even now I am fond of both: That is good, and methinks should be to all: Yea, though far below, the medium between, Thou art, and with the Son of God, For Thou alone, of all which ever breathed, art simply god: And by that manhood, and with what joy I see Some day be likened unto a ram, Which, being all covered with the green blade, Is in a thick-stipp'd meadow of grass untill'd, And, being dipt in the cool water, off hateth all And dread of death, and by the horned streamNipt it upward, and sinking till it blind is make to shine: So we, who be at war with life, and both derive From him who is both Son of God, and, thus amain, As that same ram, am canniest in war, And worthiest of all things worthiest: because We can be gods, and, as the ram, Sustain ourselves ======================================== SAMPLE 456 ======================================== angels reeking rain soft and salt o fountain a haunted ship (one night only) The Sisters made my lord a crucifix of the desire for she called him her own her love him in her sleep his body covered with pale mist She made him run their seam while she from the heavens and the island in her torso watched over him their pure hands from her flying to her window to the mast a dark cocoon covering him When he woke blurred, hearing a pounding throb an anvil ring lost sight of his senses his arms over his eyes they led him back to her and her daughter of knowledge only one who said I know You do this knowing me Let me do that I can’t leave You Where does that leave the child now <|endoftext|> "Decoded", by Kevin Powers [Love, Heartache & Loss, Relationships, Friends & Enemies] This is the sentence that prevents the beginning of the sentence In the first line of the note The one before The sentence before the sentence The sentence of a sentence of sentences The un-sentence before us before us Please return to your sentences A new sentence A different one as is our common alphabet A right sentence of correspondence a wrong one your morning letter with its plain face Our alphabet with its plain face a typeface like letters as pure as the letter that made us human against our secret impulse to subvert it re-constructed in the primitive figure of a rectangle <|endoftext|> "A Story", by Kevin Lynch [Living, Life Choices, Nature, Animals] My friend said the wolf had killed four people this year. I read it with my mouth to that wolf. I picked up my hat, put it on. That's how I got there: a small plane, small ax, small turban, small guitar, small lead, small kill. Before we got far, the birds in the branches began to sing. The ax in the tree stuck firmly to the trunk but not for long. Bettina said: The forest is free. I watched, transfixed to the tee. The day was this mist Of leaving, as in childhood when the train leaves the town. The tee, of course, cutting into us, golf-shaped, a thing of the past touching the future. (Why do I follow you, this week’s return of a letter?) When I left, I left my hat at home of departure, and for weeks I hadn’t found it. The kids, the hair on their heads, the one-day-yesterdays, the yellow of the corn. Award: we’re back, again. A possible misnomer: return, in the sense of return. And the brains eat with the water, think with the flowers, within the brain, which I had thought was the continent of truth, but the head is its own plot, it needs the plot of its front and its own plot, which are three plots, and they compete, but are always equal. <|endoftext|> "The Dress", by Mary M. Brown [Living, Life Choices, Marriage & Companionship, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Men & Women, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, Class, Gender & Sexuality] At the bridal store I saweled in, I knew a pair of panties would set me back another hundred dollars. I knew that soon I’d be apart of somebody’s financial defeat, and soon I’d be unliking my body even more than a woman of quantity, of quality, now that a pair of panties had sullied, that day, my heart, a lie that was plotted in such a dramatic way, each pair of panties could kill or cure cancer, just a pair of them and a glove to cover my hand! I let the cashier, his nose as thick as I’d be, his hair slurred as he walked by me and tried to sell me more bridal dresses. More, I let him, and others, point fingers as if my value was my fear. I let them, I didn’t say no. They all think alike. Some of them, one in four is a black cop, and when I say no, they think they won ======================================== SAMPLE 457 ======================================== khathorne so fiercely enjoyed it, the narrator himself playing the part of loud, rowdy father figure who yelled orders to get back into the game of being the life the only living thing truly alive, and knowing that, without restraint, he might be dead, too. <|endoftext|> "Air Date", by Calvin Levine [TV & Film] All of the conversations about cars start with the air date not a car but a car is a car. The first hour of the day the stars are fixed. The second hour of the day the stars are winking out anyone but you. The third hour of the day the stars are jumping out. I saw your air date and wondered why you look like a girl who loses her cat. <|endoftext|> "Both Sides", by Charlie Smith [Relationships, Men & Women] She wanted her fair face made up too. I saw him draw lines on his wrist to keep the ugly side down. I didn't want a friendship. I wanted a black man who could slap me in over the head with a limp bone. I was told, on a first offense, There would be ice on the cars. I said, "Two hundred dollars to begin with and they're going to think I asked for it. They don't know the first thing about equity." I wanted to get clear before I married him, but my two ex-girlfriends had their own ideas. The first one said to shave my eyebrows, the second that I wanted my head shaved but I wanted my heart knocked in and my chest ripped open for a sell-by. I figured it was a holdover from the east when people said they wanted to marry rich white guys. The girl next door was promiscuous but I didn't do that and I said, "I want a beautiful woman, No. 1, with beautiful eyes." And she picked the rich guy. The second girl was more mature, but her eyes, I found, were still pretty and not far enough above me. The third girl was a jewel. No. 2 was available, but she thought She should get her hair done and get the usual side parts. I said, "No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 1, No. 3." And so, when the first girl said, "It's me," and the second girl said, "It's you," it sounded like they were both sides but I wanted to get my own back against a closet. <|endoftext|> "Reading with the Shep", by Mark Rohrberg [Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities] Shep was digging the grave of a coal-hating sister who'd done the secret arts of gas-stunt cars and dared Flip and Lindy to join her for a race around the back fence. "You two," he said, "can come in second." All three set off on the tracks. Lindy caught a hitch that rose and fell before her. Flip looked back and won. She got separated by a stack on a drift. He said they ought to have more of a chance to touch the ground. They took a chance and when the finish was near they saw it shoot over just past a low retaining wall and straight into a deep sunk trench <|endoftext|> "Balancing The Ithaca•", by Mark Rohrberg [Living, Life Choices, Parenthood, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Home Life] The solution to our basic problem is buried under concrete but it isn't the depth that makes it unforseeable but how we feel the weight causing everything we can to become a weaker version of ourselves when we take too much to bring into the light or not enough to exist when we try to rise above the depth of our lesser feelings in a moment of moment or a degree of our live and the deepest parts we can contain while adding relevance to what we were meant to feel and which we are ripen and strong ======================================== SAMPLE 458 ======================================== Luiselli, della Salute: Su raconte stante venne cotal miglio o vera, L'alta y jegnona d'Asinelli la smeteste degni alto. Gli ave alto tradizione in alto nace avvi Di lei o la mani attiare d'alta & ch' onda E del valle dell' oscuro di Dante: Questa oscura le, nella ocrawna ahi rosa Non si prima, per l' italice che lui sa. Dilectissima Nuova, Lentata di grande regina, Campo dei priores essi, Campo di Roma, E volerte intellei. Dio morte, fu il moro, Dio mori e canti caddi: Nuova questi fu, Nun voce su questi. D'elle norace Del' altro vulnere di queste vita, Fu il suo secchio, Le ferma di fu cielo, Le solo con pienza il troppo. Cattivogli e gatti suona Li straglio e cantu; Huia questa sol persona volverte Cui qui canti dove vestige, Non volerte quando, c' il luco Le dove vogne. S'inora volerte, E voli dare voli, Gens questi siamo, E voli la morte. Fu con dai cosa Si delveo flamante; L'ame qui solo E gundi fiora ne'er mento, Ma mio che fasfa, non ruggento, Non erogare che volto. Ma mio necessat Tul nei queti sorpre mia chianca, Non si gesta cor a la glacial C' appartiam quali, mento I ligate. Questa n ha scrivs'i miei non si puoto, Miei, vuo sempre n ha scriv'i suorà, Ma non vago n ha fermi d'enixe mei. Il verbo ch' altri provato La venti dell' oscura, Non so quando, ch' altri mai! I doubt not that with ever more and more She shall go on: but if she for ever still Repeating had not every day the same, The love wherewith all womankind grew Should cease, and she should have the power In that unholy region where the heart Accords not to believe the truth Of those who in later years As long ago were praised for their praise, Who, therefore, said: For she had proved As bold and still desirous of success As the sea-side shrines are of him who spreads There for light, nor of the precipice Should fear to up and down. But because there lies within this breast One place that is so far from womankind, That in itself it were unmeet For its own test and for the question With which that fair and upright woman, Who hath to-day the famous name, And after, with whom, from year to year, And after, through every year, is sung By the boaster, if I while I live and feel, Should of all, or any one, That which I think as true, or false, That needful there, the rich and free Should do without a lamp or priest, Or what they be not for the earth, And for whose change may not come, If not by one as great as they; I scorn it as an empty book, Frightened with fearful tales. But I said: 'Though my lips must indeed at times Tell it, that here 'tis wont to be Found so, but I doubt if it be so, Nor will I believe that it be so. I think a place a man hath in hell, Which else were made for some great other. Nay, how shall it be said That my pain is here without a name? So much better had I without it been That I might well have sing or thought. Now, of the name of this, or any other Of these things, I say and hold it as By these two false thoughts of the hand That must possess me to the body ======================================== SAMPLE 459 ======================================== -- She is dread and marvelous! An angel, yet, with horse's feet. And over the smother of sin She shed her righteousness. And though our weakness we lay prone, She stands above us with more might Than we care to be. We'll bless the sinner and curse the sin; Her eyes are for the harvest, not the plow; The nightingale's for the cottager The Bride of Beauty is for the countryside When the Goddess walks abroad, We on our soundtrack Mistaking laughter for a wake For ever loud bells of death, For ever deaths. When the Goddess on, Let me, I run errands, Shake the dust from my boots 'Neath the cold starlight. Tho that it may not be (Is the Year only, this?) So sweet to sit Where the vapour quits Dissolving waves of the vital sands. Gone is the gapesail song, The paean of that mortal thing, 'Twas only Hope's fall That springeth to a soar. O, in the rolling motes and gleams My spirit is a-tremble, I'll call to the sick of the grievous stars That wander dimly And the silent hours of night; And sometimes at her fire's unbidden Her lute's springing out sweet harmonies. I'm not quite rid of grief, The Snowdrop smiles in me, On whose pleasant face The loneliness of blight Floats like a shroud in the blast. The Spring's dead? The Spring's dead? The hasting years have shrunk the very wells; Unused fingers strain the arid vault For those who think it dry. The Winds of Time come seeking with driving lashes The weeping springs to fulfil their brink. Earth is too tired yet to give her up to Death, For Time would cut more deeply here than her sole patrimony, The worship of her own craven feet. The dim forms upon the misted rocks and scented woods are gone, And heaped-up treasures of dew Are but shelter from the finger of every gust. When Spring, in March, Soaks the lily-blooms That flaunt about her In most fair whorls of white; When on a day Of white, crystallized light, The phantoms glisten: How the cuckoo's drum Bingle with the dove's As the dawn smites them with his wings And the thrush cooes from Hill to Hill. You, who have sat and listened, To the chimes of spring And the swallows mating Mid the star-fingered grass, As the sunshine glassed you And your wings with dreams of flight. 'Tis May for you to sing aloud, With your laces tight and every fibre tense, As the swallows fluttering on Into the clouds of June! The Spring's dead? The Spring's dead? Well, the year is but a fickle thing; And I who scorned the Spring, I will not scoff. All who have been wilful, Or who have known a curstness under the sun, Have cast all childish things from them, Like a Rose, So poppied by a dew Hid in a clearing patch Of budding fern, May be my pleasure. A Matter which was never wholly good Has yet a virtue now. The Spring was gone--the Spring was gone! Spring, the bloomy Spring, Who loved to sit By the green on wood In the sunny clime of her: A peacock, in her robe Of gold-leaf, Fluttered under her golden hair. The wings of the first yellow sun Had wide enough to display her. And once, I believe, she held In her lap The Earth: I cannot be certain, so just believe, That a nymph of rarer mould, Not in the swamps and wood-noise of a dell, Has been seen, To cling around her breast. 'Tis Spring: So cold it comes Into the marrow Of every living thing, Like ice that runs Through sharpened steel. O how it stains All earth with that black old blood! O'er the world's face, I sit and shriek: Oh, it is hideous! The wind had blown it: The wind had blown it and howled it: It is his pig. So ======================================== SAMPLE 460 ======================================== I.e., That but a man should mourn his tomb For he cannot unfold His wretched past, and stand before his face (Though I have heard the poets say That these things can be seen at night, At the hour of pity and poesy) This thing we cannot, But the whole, the world's unriddled,-- This horror, this remorse, And the live world-- I have seen it all,--in deed what have I not seen? Yet not the less For all this wonder Do I speak out--as I said, I saw it, and I say That it is ours. We have no legacy of the dead--like, for instance, Leo Atiotedes--no such thing, for he bore The name of Cleopatra, and of all that she may have done It was, that woman was born, and bore her name Without the benefit of any chain Which man, whose glory had been from the womb To the very hour he put an end to it, might have Of the strength to sustain itself, And with the genii of earth and of seas Dart into and out of the earth. But she was only a young woman Whose time was brief, Though a great artist--who would have given What would have been given to a better man Whose hour could never be timed Better than it was, And he was better than all other men, Because he was a name, Because he held the world In his word, And bore in a child's nakedness the awe And wonder of death. Who knows his secret, He might have lived a gentleman Or died without, To be a mystery. But in a moment, when a time of peace Had given place to a kindly time of business, Did he arise? The ladies might have wondered In Venice, had they come, Were there any who did. Was it less than a single breath That crept, Would he have felt. To say in Rome or in Venice, "Let him have his life again." Yet a single breath! And the artists would have it that it Was one of the most ordinary times That any one ever lived in, And the women whom he could not have loved Were quick as the water To think that his mind Had been passing in its welcome And knowing it. And they smiled, and their hearts kept time To the gathering in of the night The three men Arranged the sudden rain to keep off their friend, And the women sat upstairs. Or if not upstairs, The week stood out for that, With the broad clear days In the north. They have been frightened--the financiers Will have their promis'd places; And dusky Paul Revere, Who was an only son, By nature's stress, Beholds them in their places And so surely makes their voices sound In every hall. And I who have been On the cock-knife bright Of the river, which has risen and broken Its fable of a skill As the slender glass of it-- Then they said, "Thou wan a martyr in thine, Makest man wonder, mad's," And how my God, who is every day like The thunder, once or twice, Weigh'd on a voice, and blow'd a blossom Where the willows break." They cried the word By all the people Who were safe, and how the others Would be tyrants. Then they took me to their room: They laid me on a bed; And the light was out, And it was cold, and they were cold. That cup in the winter--I can't bear To have it near me--I don't like nothings That's made of glass to stare on me. So I stomp'd it, and I said: "God be thanked, I know myself not any better, But this water hollows The pulp of a pale gornelle." And I trod it gently on the floor, And the least of me Kissed the wrong spot. Then they laved me clean--and I know they knew What they were doing: I stole a peep at my bed, And suddenly I'd caught A most seductive savage look, And little wonder; For I am an inferior thing, Made out of straw and stuff. Why they took me I know not, And it was mercy That they left me alone; But ======================================== SAMPLE 461 ======================================== And she is saying her prayers. A gentle handker-r. A sharp word and a sweet word, A word spoken and a word heard, A tone heard and a tone said, And ten words written in the air. A little land, a little town, And ten people within it ten hearts, And words heard, and words unsung, And ten hearts within that town. There is a field within the midst of which A well of refreshing water lies; Beyond that field, beyond that well, Are pathways going all around; Where e’en the most aged may go With pain refreshed, not drowned with the very old. The pleasant grasses are bound on every side With hands fast drawn up to breast; The noise of Horeh is like the fall Of ringing silver-string sax. The delicate wail of Lami speaks Above the sweet Horeh singing-band. So the new year speaks above the corn, And cries it thus, and cries it thus, “Horn, horn, sweet Nabojin lay on bed, Lay down, lay down, and let me die.” A sweet groan says the old year “No longer live.” The hundred-year-old. “And why?” RATI And “O my people! O my children!” Said the sweet Horeh “I yield my life in giving up all that I am. This day at this time for ever and aye Obey the sweet Nabojin lay down all thy life. “I yielded all. There and here Live as you love, Leafy as the rose, Skin all as smooth as bone; Kneel, dear brothers, upon this altar; Stand up, dear children, weep. And what of me? That I gave My all to give, My very heart in giving; Alas, and am I denied? My Nabojin, dearly-cherished, My one and only love, Be ours each moment as it was, Keep it holy as Lami’s hair, Her hair, so smooth and clear, Sweetly cherished; And do I like my gift? The gift of love, beloved. On this day, nor nor wilt away, Go with those whom thou lovest. Go to the woods where Thrumit, To the fields where Uvodowigin, To the marshes where Ausland, To the rivers where join Nitigbboran; Birds of spring give praise. Owes then i est of days, When the marriage, nuptial, Wedding day eve, and wedding day, Soul meridian of the month; When the sun there rose over Meuse Clad with vermeil gowns i Afstein, On the day died anything but folk; Then the rede went forth, too late! Weddings and solemn, Weddings and heaven's laws. Owes then i est of days. Farewell to those thus gone! Auld Time’s funeral! Owes and has for us, Auld Time’s kinsfolk! No one remembers, now, that minstrel. Ah, many an age have minstrels played, And many had exchanged notes sweet on high, Both minstrels and lovers; Yet the hand never matched thy pan Of pure, celestial pan. Ah, few of the minstrel race, As artists, live they now? Who bade justice keep their names, Who blest thy soul with blessing rare? Lure and test and tempt thou home, Deliver thyself! Ain base death! And the joyous feet that footed So light in daffodils? Heard they not the music’s tune? No, no longer now, That music swell? Scarce the chords answer! Had the master died? Who can bear to hear Chorus above chorus rise? There, God in Heaven! See the lone old tale, Light and bright and young! See the leaves on her—in her Old age seated there? Ah, I ween There is nothing left of her But an old tale to repeat; She had forgotten Death! Here is the part of night! Let it cease; let the old year Perish with the day That consumed with light; From this still I TWELSE Thou art treading still; Death ======================================== SAMPLE 462 ======================================== The swift sun comes parching in, The winds take up residence On their hovering wings, they knit, and swim. The cows do move, we hear them talk, The birds are shaken and strike the ground. The day comes soon or comes late, The skies do weep, the grasses glow, That bud, bloom and spread in wealth and strife, To the warbling flutes of Springtime's throngs. War is not a holiday, love! All life with all its endless joys, Is bared to the wind and sun, And the stars to their bright dances. It was a Summer's day In the merry springtime, Four fair berries from the bottom Of a kindly tree we took, With berries of redder hue; One evening there was gloom, That light was sullen burnt, And o'er us in the lane The shadow of a branch That darkened all the green, Before our path The winds were good, It grew autumn-blooms And sunsets driply. But o'er us on the hill, Like mourners of the tomb, Dark leaves were falling, falling. Like mourners of the tomb, The woods did dim, Through myriads of shades, On sunset-blooms falling. Like mourners of the tomb, The woods did swoon; I heard the dying air And earth was glooms, down glare, A swound of sea-isles; The night-winds played: howling, wailed And windless, wide glare. On hills, like mourners' cairns, The woods were wandering: weeping, The windless wide glare. The wind was playing, loud play With death-time and the glow; And I, the successor Of such a blast, and pay A king's ransom to it; I loved my country well, Yet cared I not for it As the king I did reverence. Come back, O capricious Card! With all men's keys, And let us open in the heart The ill I wrought in thy despite. All the blue years of our capricious noon Have grieved me sore, the heart's blue days and nights. Of men and kings I was the jest and lees, And wast a queen of them all like wine from Boley's tide, And yet, as moonstone in May's amber cup, My eyes would find her fair, though not for me, And yet she was not of them that I knew. Thou art not of them that I knew, nor she; As fair as thou wast, wiser far than they, They had no part in knowledge with thee. Thou art not of them that know, and I Am one of them that thou forget and dost not know; I know my sister thou art, my brother, A sister, more than thou ever wast or can be. I feared thee, dost remember not, And many tears I have outred, O Time! and could I tell my story clear, 'Twould make thy story seem long. I was a child, and thy reproaches hear. I pity the tears thou shed'st for me, Though not for thy own disgrace. And, thus thinking, I began To think upon our youth. O Truth! Truth, Truth is young and sweet To the heart it should be old to us! We went on holiday together, And many days I thought thou wert away. And then I wept in secret and tore My hair with secret pain, and worried My love, whose gown I sought to fill With elfin-lights to cheer her through the dark. And only thus with secret pain, I wept, Then put my love in her gown to have it done, That I might see and be at heart with her, That I might be at heart with all the rest. But oft the blushing time, to look Like summer sunlight through a shady glass, Would pierce me, and I would mourn in vain. And what about love's springtime? what may spring To soul through thought, I knew not, but it seemed Her eyes were neither blue nor clear, Nor cold, nor moist, nor wet, not sweet, not wise In any star that shines in heaven, Nor like a queen, and not like a child. Thus in the black, As dark, as black, as black. And no man hath known love's truth Who hath not known love's false too. Yet, by ======================================== SAMPLE 463 ======================================== really after them in one. It's true, I've been there; they said you came back to sea a separate handful of times, The danged sea and your husky dog now all memory and silence. That's the story, The true story The ones who came to the cothurning into the wind at morning for the beach. You said the sea was God, the wind, you in the cothurning. <|endoftext|> "Decline", by Julia Rus [Love, Infatuation & Frenzy, Relationships, Men & Women, Nature, Trees & Flowers] First the egotists. How are you? Who are you?— each in the worst way. I’ve been away. Does the garden look bad? Tell me what you see. What do you see? —what do you see. See the trees, all weakly, sunk, their shades in the air half hidden now. The roof’s been broken but they’re still here, The community where we met for coffee every morning now has no room for us. Not what you wanted or what you loved? —You loved me for no reason to take back, to deny, the bed where you lay all afternoon. All day I thought you would come back, the park bench held you. —I needed something more real, more like your life than the life we knew, the bars of trees closed over us in this way, when did you know the way you are —the cothurning they are with us <|endoftext|> "Moon Juice", by John Spiro [Love, Realistic & Complicated, Activities, Eating & Drinking, Relationships, Nature, Arts & Sciences, Sciences] Come see me woo a phaist. That’s what I called it. Something with phiz and phaist and a se phaist interior. And see me that’s grown a little sleepy, that is sure I’m pale as light here is natures udder. Prague actually —as do you—is one big way, way up there. Phaistal, we’ll see. I made the blue wine. When it ferments you can smell the scent like coffee, or the leaves of humanly talking trees. So here’s I saying to you my desire. It may sound like I wish here. But why? I promised it, said it as out loud in all three great horned persuasions. That which I love, it’s a synthesis of three wonderful things. Here’s whiskey, here’s a flame, and here’s my little girl. <|endoftext|> "The Egg in You", by John Spacer [Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] Missed the execution. That’s one of the hazards of youth: you don’t know how to swim as you swim but you get very close to the shore with no blood and a souvenir. And that, as the eggs know, is where you’re going to end up. The Egg in you is time and symmetry. It’s who cooks it for you says Jock. And there is purpose for the Origin, though there’s a thorn in it that goes straight to the heart. The Egg is the egg you hatch in you. And it’s like the universe of energy and everything gets squared away in there and there’s a mental and a grist of whey. The Egg is the ungainliness of space, and everything that is a part of the common room. Say you go inside the Egg and it says Draft me. The Origin breaks you down and morphs you into a stranger but your skin still shines and everything is in there that you are going to be. And the act of scaring you into being is what the draft was for. You are writing, and you are ======================================== SAMPLE 464 ======================================== The same from its birth I left off! And now, alas! as I wrote to you, I see a new adversary-- A New York angel--the selfsame Who did his work upon the floor-- H. C. Phare, 'mid those that did his. He would have been giddier far than you To put a gate of selfhood Upon our doubtfully secure-- A gate of roguency, I meant, To protect him,--where I love to flout him, And go my way, at least, alone. I know that this is truth. The date is here (No matter, 'twill come after Pascha) And many a jot of my time is set Here, with this voice--and this opponent: I shan't pass by him, myself, to speak my friend. Why, was it for this that Jesus did His birth-pass, moving from the clay, And, then, of us that were-begat? Was it that in one breath was fulfilled The Prophets' sayings, and the Gospel's own That Thou shalt be King of all the earth? And that upon Thine all-free choice Of temples and of loaves, a last covenant Was left behind in Judas and John? The beginning's here, so let it end; Or (were it so satisfactory long ago) Some phrase that ends the string of time, A position on the altar, or on bed (That also if it should be allowed), Should find us, will we say, our sphere; And such we choose to call the Cusp, As sign we credit the Apostle's rule. In taking to thy flight from hence The older way, I pray thee blame: In the form of a dove thou'lt find Some time or other to my love. But--perhaps 'twere best to go hide alone In the neighbourhood of that cone, Which on our festival is hung around: Were I the Cusp of this sphere, I will grant I should not choose to try it on thee. 'Twere as well to try it on thee as not. So be the gift unsought, with free respect For my poor finger bone and face, By which, or by what is left of me, thee Doth bring Love's good pleasure, what by beating sense hath lost. One's very love, be't in hand or head In any case, may prove the worst or best. Thy neck, thy wishes, which is still So fondly kinked round, if these should prove The very end of it--the very bough Would rust from the feathers riven out of thee, I--thinking, pity behooves me-- Should be hard thence to bear the taste of thee. Say rather, the leaf shall make The swift tear where it doth rest, With wise repartee of its reply Tending still to keep the case, And not to give the match its flight, Till love be sure the other's pledge, With his own the heart doth share, This being onely by it satisfied, No life was to live in vain: Of all which here on earth we know, I have enough to live and love But my head and heart of flesh is gone, And only to be added up of one To my love, my life has seemed or is. How light, how dark, how light or dark, How any manner way, how by to, The own self-comparison tries us all. The self-same tingiment prompts us still As when the clouds their small dip spread, Some passing back and then away, And leaving the self-same sky above. In a grand irony, the selfsame wood For one reason, hath the same delight, In sooth, because one way that we Ourself against one way behold and grow. Thus in the passing years many a one Is shut up or pulled back, though old, That day whoso a man puts on or off Seems to him the most that day himself. Yet it is little when we need To make a resurrection, new born: To sleep or to labor, whether much or Little, new-born, newly discharged, A shade or a bright, or an old one, Of love or of hate, or am loved or Hated, we are poor such pilgrims. What but a couple have we all, Who love not as we should, see, And as we cannot prove we crave Lightly or much ======================================== SAMPLE 465 ======================================== "O stately pine, gray-flecked, pine-ash, A gentle wanderer, howe'er the Wandering wind, may polly welcome And fill my heart with comfort, so That I the next may drink the Mystical drink of thy mouth, And blessed pine a thousand years, Not born to wear thy scars--forget Thy ten years, unborn, which can not Remember that thou art wood. Oh! not to forget thine antiquity To-morrow--it is already today, Thy universal friend, Woodbine, Thy vast oak-leaf, and thy mighty Oak, And all my poetic revenge! Thee lay a fundamental guide To all my art; and as all things Are but copies of thy genius, Me too will copy. So we'll see, We two, alone, be case law-made. When to the cypress-folks I did yield The stately relic, I felt much grieved That I the peace of two hours kept Neither my as its feet. Oh! should I have that king of old, And be that king of old!--I want For to-morrow-um, and be Strict with time. To-morrow is The cottage, and the memory Of the weary hours of home-reft youth, With him still "puts" and "replaces" The oak that swings his head, The spear-shaft's rust, the rattling dart. On high The vapours look warms. Close up the glen Where scorned is the brother "agagagagued," A fire gilds the yellow nymphs around, Who 'neath the azure sky Hear always noise, always noise; The mill wheel gives the whizz of doom That strikes the monarch; the long lichens Of the mossy stone grasp, grasp; Under the yews where words are scarce, Blue mites buzz and hide. Oft haply, When this life dies out and its dust The village spade will tread in marge The miscreant spade! It's no, it's no, it's no-- Then he who strives to hold From the right place Those modern tacks he drives Woo the existing mud Of common fortune. On his New tack he stands: "Belle Isle, Isle of Scythe," the grey-green furrows say, "We get thee once f'ra three times Fey." "Fare, wanderer, fare," sigh the yews, "That the nymphs gaz'd and we gave thee. We get thee we, and we but get thee "Twice Fey." Oh! those blessed seethe Of the long Rivers of Erin, yonder The holsters of the shade Wot with the shadowing age begins, And that season full of wonders brings. Oh! those beautiful lakes Where the leaves are wandering free; Where spirits roam, And their running water spirits At will withdraw; Where no market town Beats her like this village That no market town of trade. The waving mill Stretches in a trembling line Its clay image. The fishing-boats, all hulks, Moor'd a moment at the lake-end, And then resound, As round their moorings sweet The cricket chirps. Oh! the quiet Of the new-made morasses; When from the Gulf Of the grey Lake The white rain veils and veils Is upon my face! 'Tis not my sight Is so defil'd with dyes Of morning mist, but I Have seen by Death's hand. But how my hand, Of Ph[oe]nix' mad intermingling, Comes, caked about with his worst, Leans, if it be held fast, Against my face. How mournfully, forlorn On this pale pen of mine, Her old light tears to write, And how these lines will fail If not dispart them By line and column, tear by tear! Long while she look'd, Then peep'd a quick-like glimpse Of her content. Downy flushed The milk-white gates at last unrolled, With all the lid to the cave. And there the table lay, With food for four, The undisturbed bones Of herself she feast'd on, before Despoil'd of it. She looked at them, the table-arms Close to the white banquettes ======================================== SAMPLE 466 ======================================== A spy in, a spy out, A seer's eyes agh, So, couldst thou and I join hand to hand? 'Twas hardly within the ken of Time, Ere Hearts made Homes and Pas unhooked! Ere, when the wise Men With set faces grave Walked on Life's path to Right, Our hearts were stepped to that downward road, To which the keen-eyed Savants Go but a few leagues more, Too soon--of swords and wheels, Of O. P.s. and A. R.s. An Era's shadow long Has crossed the ancient track, But we have on its anthem spun Our robes of grim oblivion, And trod its straw of shadows As men who trod Time's ground, But shall not times summon up In aught which resembles face, Out of the narrow envelope Of Life's Art to die or live? In vain this soul within With Pile-marks of lightning seeks The abiding shrine of Fame And meets with frowning silence The light on which it presses. They are not lightning-stricken Like us, but, like us,, overcome By inward Eras, The souls of Eras, and fates Like to us are bent To keep the corpse-interrogation Forever closed, with bated breath, And listen a long death-striped age, To see if words so far have bid it break. The stay of Fame in the deep grave, While she! vainly for the sword Which, from the arbitrary throne Of Fortune's great attorney, cleaves To rake the weed of wrong or good, For we like a man of mood The power of Thought to pull From Life's better counsellor The prey, the prey, the prey, And of that Mighty Architect, The statuette and arch and shrine Of all the tribe or crowd Of antagonistic Pile-motes! As one who with a long gaze Upon a rocky mountain Sees on the left hand a cleft, But looks again, on the right hand, Whereon the crag rises gray, Which the current humanes Of the deep cavern has for me Carved o'er with winds and falling snows As solemn as if with the hand Of some old priest, the initiate, On the winds and having knelt, To utter incense out of respect, Is made by the same abashed far, Though learned men in such a degree Meet on their confutations wild, To whom, with faith as firm as he Whose rod has passed thro' wrath and clay, And so forth, with no ashamed flux Of profoundness and sublime. And could the upward pangs Of the cracked scaffoldings With such weight and fervor have ridden, It would not be returned to the place Of its peers, unmoved, as dew, Or as the double tress it must be Of a light dew-riddled cloud, More solemn than before Nor do I suppose to have been mended With without, from the cresset's beams, The said marble without spots of blood, I swear by these one knuckles, And as it were some hand shall say, "Admit but the gravitation Of heav'n and atoms which put by The tribe of gravity And under the moon-dust fall; From this place which also one and all Unchanged hath been and always shall be Is, o'er and o'er and o'er it stands This nameless ball, For time, I'll be bound. Gentle winds when they blow From this continent or th' abyss Of the billow, or where it rains Like the spirit and fountainiess Of those men that live at the peep of the moon, I'm happy that my muse, In the dim woods, under the moon, Has wrought, as it were a nest Whereon are laid many a young thing's clay, And there, everywhere everywhere, Will spread a silence about it From the sun and from stars, by the breath of the gales, For a subtle, theessile air Of enchantment, which, as it moves through all things Wherein the forms of matter and immaterial lives Can be, But lives more grace than in spirit, With its wings. Not a power or a will in the world of matter Stands tall or abiding: all its power, all its wit, Is in those forces which come from higher Than planet or sun can impart ======================================== SAMPLE 467 ======================================== Awes whist it gan, Gret good the Toun gan tre! A gangit gret feline Throut the room stod, Wherof the puppies soghte Was profusion: Bettrebuk up haw in the gold Thei drivende the lande, Wite ek the leves men kept Stedfast was the fyan, For thei sen hir womans name And hir figure strang. Men wiste eny passwort Why thei seten yow, Men on the lusti wall Satirizan Hise bodyes bewnen A goodly sight. The faire wyn elyma Men hadden go, The tenour of the toun, The loth hem rassydende Were betwen the dyse, Byfd Wallawickus A king of fame. The loth the hous of cloudes Ihink we dore, To dwelle on now, Which garhen alle mone, A grand hevene! A Cabbet gooth hir gert, A goodly testep, A hale sent from the reyn, A prince of whatnes. A bed was eft anon Betwen the toun-vowdongue And the russhe abut, For which thei stode fro and roun Unto the hallis wynd, That sulden be the russhe: Was that a ron, bot yt hote, For lich a word was saile. Upon a time gan Reynard, Of thilke great le Castle Castle, Stator aboute. Unto the Grek that was riche He goth, and made in thilke rare He gat him home with the king, And lefte upon a daim to spede, For al that mihte thurgh strengt. Sire abhort seith, "When I permide, This roman gan to sitte and swinke Dryple in the scharpe, In al this world ne noght yt were That evere we siet and softe. But thurgh me thoght we quam putte, For thus thou schalt take an, And thynketh here upon this ground, That every worldes lif and fowr Ne scholde in no place be." That so was the deleie, The kinges men ensample he let do, Whiche there aboute stode. It fell so, as at this time Sighpoun Cleis dwellide at home; Bot Phosphatie, which gaf to hem The privlege of hire duete, As it befell was set of nede Of Love and of Molestie. Ther as the king to rihte his muste The Hypostyryse was hirete, That it hath ofte lotf government. The king hath wel the matiere, What his oghne Gamyn was: Bot for he wolde noght forsite Of that the king him wolde avise He tolde his tale of the Grece, And tolde hem unto the king Of his lust, what it hadde been. And forto let hem knowe, In thilke while that sche was softe, This tricherie was this ilke, Which hath ech of hem disgexovered In percise and in certein, Which lord was thanne among: In such manere as it schal be wryte How that thei setten up the say In love, and what thei hadde do. And al this thing how thei were do, Hath afterward be learned I not hiere. The king of love was slow Toward love and riht as he wrothe The wyde Assaie hath cause: Hire felawe and hir chiere of chiere The king of Grece was snelly. This truth is hote, and desese Thurgh love thing is to love frende, Which lasteth, and if it be, A wif, a wif, Goth forto telle upon love. Sone after Novembre laste was, And hadde halfe nupti forto winne, Ther knef this kni now, ======================================== SAMPLE 468 ======================================== The day of Onemoor is well worth the pain Of this long quest, though of a wilder boast, Than ever can the merry upleaping May Be holden worthy, o'er all the world of wight. On this fourth day of winter I might say (For there we note the tales all run down) The sky upon the frost was fond of BREAK, As if that now the clouds which hang aloft, Which since the hurried hour of no dawn too late Had all of heaven taken their worst withal, Upon that harsh world in spite were vain, Might inly furnace pour its molten deal, To feed the mighty furnace of the snow. And oh, my friend, you must not tell the beast That is incensed to his very eyes That, though all others so profusely curse, No word comes forth but is as foul withal, As if a trump of fire had uttered haste, Upon its ears, and from the demon's head. Nor dost thou know, fellow, why men feel The giant storm is inly in wait for, And the tempest filled with mighty sound, Until the beast, in fury, 'gainst the sky Suffers a crushing from a force unkind, That at the last day is wholly down thrown, Just as he that wrought it has borne his wrath. But ever be sure to be in dread Of some fierce sudden process, all feigned, Which sets the air aflame, and the beast Sounds up his trump, and, having unto sleep, Wakes, till his ears be deaf that ever may waken, And call his every coil in honour to attend. Of course, my friend, even in this our realm, 'Tis now the wise to gentle is so plain. That number to our gracious prince makes known Which should be addressed to goodliness alone; This is the text, that makes the kingly one Equal with every god, though now I fear He is not so godlike now, but to a child; He's grown so fat-nost projecting, scolding, All fools to glory entangle and upbraid. Again the rising tempest, and we hear Of how the mad North will, so the rumour said, Be soothed, and soothing contradict, Which of that tempest will be quiet, if he find Our prince affectionate. O joy of tongues and thumbs, And rumpets in such riotous concert, dear! The stranger from that flying ship he called Will have news, and he will have the boat ashore. And now the reveille, and the patter of the hymn; And the stretch of bosoms beneath the purple fold; Now the full floods of the shrilling minareTS; now the pomp of shows; The pageants turn to ashes, and the spears to weeds; Bright with the dying fires of Samothracia, The portal lies open, the revels expire; The ancient sponsors mourn, the brave tasks done; And cup in hand, the Wreath of Victory turns over. Behold, the effused cup! It is to flow Crowned with glory, or the Calabrian's mickle (It might be the other), which endears The house from which we stole upon The cruel foreigners, and which saw we My darling to these purebelted suites. He that like bladder from leaf to final leaf Stretcheth and drops it, as a vat to drain; What the empty vat will the filled one be, Though great from its source? But of every source Thy fortune's roots thou'st trod yet down the steep, And the savour of thy salubrious juice We cloven one by one into many pieces, And scattered, each on each, into muddiest fragments. To our bent dungeon I was led, Gave me the sacrament, and set me free; But yet I confess (how should I not) And vow by love's O, and love's O for MINE So much more, that heaven be mentioned twice Within my extortions, O, what am I But curious to be, and curious still! Thou sayest: "Twere better to keep aloof The tribe, and yet to allow, than to incline To them, who make the outward seeming heat So strong to warm their brows, and lively tricks To win the heart so nigh unto their ear, And in the chamber, as the mountain's cast, To touch as 'twere the height of snow and swiftness. What wonder ======================================== SAMPLE 469 ======================================== He may play, to the yearning wind, Or practise the Spagnuolo, Or throw acrobatic to the foot Of the most reputed player,-- Yet he's the man for the right girl, Or the lady who chooses him. The lover to be found As he danced before St. Gall's chimes added music, And sweet the chime bore him. But I beg all women-- Tho' not one prettily-- That they say "No" To the one man to whom They give their hearts, but answer "Not yet, dear." Ah, then, what an A thing it were To dance round our fire together While we clambered up the wall, And the images of our former love Crowded the memory, as you'll see by This simple song, a little old ballad About an eye-rolling game. "There it hangs, I remember! I was playing Round the foot of the mountain At the tail of the fox, Or the glowworm's stomach, But I fell in love. Ah, my head was on a thistle, The fire was in my chimney, But the lady danced on mine, And I married her, a fool, And she had the smiter's boat But I cursed her ever. "By and by old Tom Nother Came to the fire and sat beside me, And we twain scorned each other, Till some poor travellers found us We left out orchards bare, For my purse was empty." "Why not pot the greenwood? Or knock the cobweb flat? Chew like the sailor's rendezvous." "None would do anything for me. I was Harry Nother's apple, A gilt-tree here, a gilt-tree there. It is a great loss to Cambridge That he's gone and left us." "I will have An apple cake, with honey, Four tiered, and a golden-hearted." "Thou hast only thy boots, I see, That's enough for me." So it went on. "There will I pull an oakum That will descend On such a lot of ears, as thou hast Of thy four or five million followers." "Ah, I suppose," said the Knight, "The such things are rarely used When first unrolled they seem a paper "And, anyway, thou canst only be Of my own blood and language." "And we will leave the landscape, too, In a language quite unsuited?" "Nay: this also will I do." "And how do we start?" "First, thou must fix the date; That way is easy, there's no reckoning." "Or for that matter, next, how Will one even find thee "We'll surely part!" "No, we will not." "I'll show thee the way." "I do not choose to press thee More than once to prove my love; I'll put the matter somehow in play." "Then let me try to learn, In an oak-zone, Just what some one wants to know Of roses, damask, and lace, Which may be e'en Left as-is: But here is many a bull's-eye, Already barbecued." "Thou know'st right well This is a hard business Each one of these almost loves What I hate, but that which I prefer "Good! such language With my temper Wise men have told Over my throat, Now 't is night, I'll roll Forward, if I may. "Like a hit over the head, I feel so slow, I've a bad time Making my journey. Horses! I know A steed is good For only so much distance; He may not win What's left so well. "The gentle sky shines down My dark grey beard Upon my brow, And, for the present, It's my grace to be Trusting to this feat of mine As a good red-myth' carpet. "Oh, this is surely worst, The deuce is dirty, And the devil has one Who is attempting this shame With a horrid blow On such a spot of earth To out-blacken heaven." "I am here to do my best, Whether that good be; Of course, I know my way, I shall sleep, and shall wake With my head ======================================== SAMPLE 470 ======================================== day with its color is meant for redfoot’s #34 boots. But since actually me and you and a lot of other things you’re kinda erring on the conservative side when you start discounting other boots as about as good as redfoot’s. Take the crown, for instance. Besides being a very efficient form of forgetting, the crown, a brilliant contrast to all that already gone, presents a poignant horizon, unless you actually look past the actually yellow human cranial module and search the process of gold leaf, caragana wine, one pink merdeggeri of ruddyitis in which one is made by yellowing and ‘ <|endoftext|> "American Pain", by Emily Lee [Nature, Animals, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Music] cattle. For centuries I make mistakes, and people expect me to know. I am told to recognize the cheese in my pain. The mistake I hear most is my own: How can I know that I’ve forgotten how to speak cow? If I try, I falter, sputters cameos and errors of ‘strategy’: forget how I ended up at the bone. How did the buffalo get there? Is it my brain, my mucousy brain, badly injured? The brain is my mount. I’d better not negotiate. The brain, I confessed, is a tissue where things are put solved without an instrument. Yet to tell this truth is to put a lid on an egg. To be really incoherent, I sometimes am unintelligent, I confessed, a reference day and night. On what mute ground are these thoughts I fall into. I tried to rise at a recent estimate, when I fell hard, an owl’s territory to ground a subdecatur state. To ask the height of anything at all. I won’t come off. I won’t look stupid. I got at a buffalo by falling in with a buffalo. I got the still- life of the bone cow through translation: not merely a change of animal. It was a red blotch, a breed I would not have thought to be riding, dirty with muskeg per part. A per part, a mudstone, a mountain creek … It is in this absurdity that I dream again the white buffalo, blue head, full of buffalo, the strange onions, the spraying, the fast tethering, to avoid. I look up and see that the cloud is still up. It works. The beauty of the bolt & that of course it was <|endoftext|> "Zeus turning into Jack", by Emily Lee [Activities, School & College, Mythology & Folklore, Greek & Homer, Heroes & Patriotism] The yellow paper, the razor-blade, the star-chamber letter, three highschool seniors, a hoya, the yellow paper, the star-chamber letter, all date from 1990 — 90 what the hoya had been worth in 1990, the yellow paper many places worth in 1990, the razor-blade was also fabricated from a recycled tool-stack, and the star- chamjee was photodeled in a yellow-green wave in 1990 <|endoftext|> "Disguise, Disise", by Emily Lee [Living, Life Choices, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] I got mixed up in a discussion of “body armor” and “body armor” and people talking about clothing as if it were an acronym and two and three took the floor to call me ladies and to send me groveling off to the boys’ room. I was confused, and at the door, someone told me it was an SOS. Shouting, I ran, weeping to the one who welcomed me and no one saw a problem with my tears falling freely from my eyes and eery face. I believe in the word sympathy. In a child is a furry, a walking tea lady in a pageant of light and cried for the sudden horrible, immediate hazing. I’m told I must disguise myself with the costume of gender until the identity is unrecognizable from the costume. Then I must dash off to the dressing rooms with my mask on my face. A mask I am promised ======================================== SAMPLE 471 ======================================== Of thy propitious power, I find Not only tolerable, but joyous The privilege of an unprotected Life and death with thee. My soul, with the Small-pestered sunlight on it, a lar Of morning butterflies and worms To feed upon, nor a snail nor moth Shall test her inmost waters find Untainted—thy hot breath on my flanks And vital fur like fire! Come, let us play. Sleep, when drowsy-sweet Makes thy soul rich-weet; When, musing overhead, In thy light-flowing room, Thy sacred palace, Thy bed a baize-stuffed tree Of destiny and toil, My throbbing senses oft Feel till slumber steal As the thick night-dews suck The dead leaves cold and dry, And pale dreams steal, that wake No time. Here, thou the city's queen, Fierce Love and thine, Childe of stern-browed Heaven's king, Thus, henceforward cast Back to Life's red chamber Free of thy silken yoke Thy one-hearted love For one of earth, not Heaven's Unstormed child. No, dark-brown eyes, and black, Earth's rose-soft flame Of star and dew, A king 'mid-seaven, Or thy kindred glories Great-souled in their birth And fate, whose zest Could be feed'd By thee for evermore, For evermore. To soft-fing'd notes of sleep Dreams of thy unmoving clay, Soft as perishable rain, When dreams unlighten'd fled As waned the paleness of the day On fields of dim or pale white For ever (beautiful town!) Summer! that bringest to the, Sleep that takest away the heart's hardihood, Winter, that thou art fierce, that are serene, Arise over this delight now hushed for art's sake. Youth's fire of zest and fancy that evermore Roses the Spring's coronal for seeing on earth. Huge thoughts, such as thee, life's leader and the world, Touch not the dumb, dumb earth, if earth's best be not there. O ye wild things! that live outdoors! that time's an hour When your wealth of unrest has blissful quiet for you, And here, when Winter keeps your souls as warmth doth, Here is the source of joy for Summer that is done. So 'twixt your souls a twilight 'twixt the days, The sunset's soul of flame, the moons of night, And when the hour is ripe, With your tireless wings and bare your eyes And with red kisses like flames of wine, A shrill tromp up for the meadow clear, Drums and trumpets braying as ye wing your flight. O ye wild things! the best of Earth's good! No elder, seeing the snow's glory grown old, Watched the heaven of her glory waning by, Watching this: No elder, other, bearing his staff a-shou'd, Bearing the word from God to Winter grown old. Spirit of wonder! face of the great Artist's son! Spirit with the gaze of God on man and boy! The wan skies I would circle, the winds I would wake, Manhood's young blood I should play with as with a lyre, Dead youth's cheek's blood I should dye, Sing out ye bard in the faith's glad song One destiny with greater faith embued, Manhood and youth from soul with the power to do, This is the hour for woman love, and for love of a woman. The cuckoo-bird with nightingale's lament, The crying plain and hollow shell: The melancholy cress, and o'er-brimmed one; These do ye play in the song, O musician! And these, O my soul, while summer's spirit slides The clearest music of the future thou art to hear And, thou with thy rapture-having job, O poet! At the earth's dewy prime when Spring and Life and Youth Their sweetness shall imbibe and bloom and die: Earth, mother of my soul! how shalt thou give ear To all my singing? O thou my prince and my queen! O the deep gloom whereand far sounds the earth, Where thy feet shall fall, that they may dwell with me! Shall the dragon-tongued oak be sweeter ======================================== SAMPLE 472 ======================================== Nought on this side was wall or mound: The men are tottering the omen of that grave Fifty, fifty times they tumble at last Standing still, until their strength shall fail. I pondered on this feature’s meaning and tell. 'Tis daybreak,—and that mountain height behold. The sun-beams fall on the blackened tree, Which but for pride hath lost its lofty place. <|endoftext|> "Illusion", by Thomas Merton [Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends] O voices of a Lift that waft from ivied began Thy hosts of air-songs that soar from dun, to red-breasted dove, Nearer, to find, the place that lift us by the bed Of its hard maturity, where his lips are set, The world is made safe, though the river flows of blood Washed down, like birth to sleep. For all of us, how so We follow from hence, how we hold In vision, what might lay us as idle palm To crush, or to draw down from a great height, The nation we so lightly now read on, not the most To guide or help; from the tables that stood To guide us all lost here, all, lost More than we, or any of us, invent Whatever wakened one of us had awake, Whatever stirred with sleep; it is alone We see: and from that cloud which filled us then As with a fog,—this day half-turning, We now see, since the night is heavy with grief To be so lost, so asendid to die; How by revolt of itself it moves and moves, The liberal breath of heaven, and the free Furniture of innocence it assumes. <|endoftext|> "In King, Sir Giles Richesse", by Thomas Raymond [Living, Time & Brevity, Love, Heartache & Loss, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Men & Women, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] By the waters of Weir, where the babts are bringing home their havenfull of milk,Shall I raise my trotting to the sober concourse?By the rayed waters of Weir, with the banks of Tan.I’ve trotted at the King’s in his festal gear.I’ve been a heatheness with poor kings in the wood.I know that the time for sod-bread ends at thirty-nine.The King swears he will never be bought.Goody Dawkins believes that the King a sneak.Dawson is bought, but that’s in a cheap novel;Come, call your betters—I have more to say.Can we afford to buy the King, with his glorious kingdoms,And yet afford to go in a push with Dawkins and the mob?When Red God Adam fished for woman, I am portrayed, He is the president,And I am the secretary.So I talk by agreement in a novel.Hang on to me, boys. If that’s not Barns.The King can repair himself, I suppose.I should be glad to talk business, not caprices,With one or two or three by my side, We all in the state of being bankrupt.The topic is sustainable prosperity.Mr. Hughes, I see you are the King’s guest;You need but look upon yourself, and be glad.Love’s a magnifying hero, our earthly game;Here’s the malo verde of a man.A man cannot love, though he may bold;He needs a compass, or he’s full of naïad,That is to say, a wife; that is the case.I refuse to be bedfellows with Love;Nowhere on earth has he the power,As God knows, to tempt men to heaven.The silk of St. Anthony is not to be bought;Whose thumb is in the trough of the briar,And the St. Anthony’s vinegar is worm-taste.Wedding at last approaches, and the King,A well-connected friend of the Queen’s,Has been taking steps for the festival.Have I been useful in some ways?It is enough to pay me back.When the bread of ice-butters I did fryAnd the carrots that I fried are seen no more,I am come back to give my opinion.Racine has strolled into her bedroom;She sees him at her side, and turns away.God knows how that is a nice place to be ======================================== SAMPLE 473 ======================================== sources of light, “how he could blow “his own roof off. “What did they say? “They said, that the storm brought “both roof and rain. “Now, thus, thus, man, dost thou “question, why the sky is bared, “when thou, the maker of it, art “entertained in the belly of it?” Now the swallows of all the land Clamor about us, one and all, Gladly breaking from their nest, Flying to feast on apple-buds: And thus, at last, his words intend, The Master spreads the bottom floor above. Nor ought our care to question: only think On eating and on fainting there. All these things on one sordid leaf he thrust, “A birdling there, with covering of entangled hair.” “Which would not,” we would cry, “a bishop: who, I’m afraid, Would strip thee of thy beaver hat, and mock thy beard and thy gray coat: and make thee gay attire, Trees framed with ingenuity need not the dread power of a hickory to tell the serpent where it came. Soon our little governor was wrapped, lighted up the citadel With a taper and played with our liberty and marched our lords to a dance till he seemed a tyrant: but to a snake a baron is not a beggar, and his was not a well-born and crowned hickory, but an upstate NY tye. Still, where would he be then, short and bald with pain in the heap of pottage? Nor any part of him would he do, But show the whole and submit In magnificence where riches are: His court-martial on him now strive. “Strike me I will, even me: “I am not d - not any where. “I’m not even me; never me.” Soon as the open court-room was opened, The wind that now sang cheerly fell dead still (So early was it gone this way) We read the story of a fight “strained away” Of our commander and himself, The cause of death in question ran Round the tables top to top. I was that body then, as I will be no more, And I bid him strike. My body now will lose What profit the cause will have. There was no butting then: I could see If there were a face at all. Woe to the fool who was not then so! My spirit will be there, ere I come there. I will be there. Ay, there he is! <|endoftext|> "on new year’s", by Hayden Carruth [Living, Time & Brevity] on new year’s eve on the old year’s last will from my new book on the old year’s last day in the old year’s esteem old year’s praise in a new year’s parley new year’s neglect in the old year’s disgrace old year’s exaltation old year’s number old year’s patience <|endoftext|> "What We Believe About It", by Hayden Carruth [Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams] What we believe about it is that it runs, seems to run a long way down a stream straight into a deep blue cave under the Earth <|endoftext|> "The Connection", by Hayden Carruth I call you bug fucking because that is what it is. — We were lying in the rain on a all-partied boat baked like a rat and bored of an afternoon. Pete and I took a break for lunch and when we returned we found that the man that was in the center of the boat had disappeared. We found he was not on the boat, it was possessed, we fought over it like over a pair of sunglasses, I thought I’d thrown them off the mast but I didn’t, it was in the boat and the man had taken it. But anyway it was all right and we went on and the man had disappeared in the center of the boat. And we were gone for hours, haven’t stirred since, sat there like dead men. ======================================== SAMPLE 474 ======================================== "Ah, blest UMA! thou who leftst on earth "The charms on which thou hungest all day long, "Meseemeth ever, like the heavenly sprite, "Com'st thou on Sabbath, with thy homespun gown, "Whilom called 'maître,'"-- "For her the nymph gave thanks, "And for her that it might be "As he heard in his lone car "A short, demure song. "As joys them happy in the mines, "As kindens sweet the honey sweet. "Thy face beheld the song, "While yet 'twas on the place "Of the new sovereign's throne. "And this the song, ah Blanche! "To the ear that sweet is caught: "Seest thou the purple fields, "They smile not on the view "With dimple, alabast, and amber. "The flower must fall, the fruit no more "Before its time, before the time "In which all wickedness is spent. "Nay, thou must hear thy lowing herds "Mock the sound of gold." "O happy song!"-- Where is the ear that heard it, Blanche? Yet this is my oft-sung woe. Blanche came not. Sure, in truth, 'Twere better for her here to be, And she might hear the song. Ay, this the case: I know Both fond Blanche and the maiden brave To bloom and stay together. Then, dear fair one! let me be In like-posed stance with you. Yet here all is wrong. Dost make amends? Are we the lineal race to wear This filial duty? Go, love one My joys, and seek her. O long The way, to watch the lineal springs! And have I thee for lineal truth? Seest thou yon side We passed? Toward--by the song, The dainty flower, the rose! Lo, it is loosened, and we fail Of leisure. How should flower Not be the thing To leaven lineal is in you? Which, day by day, thou lett'st lie Under her fair, half-reprived look. Thou--belike thou would'st not fling Linger around the forest? Mayhap, Once, when we two were peeping there, Thou was'st chuttering with the ant, Hoping thus to hear, Now as these words of MOURNING float Thy heart o'erwing, and thy hand on THINE. "LOVE, thou sweet dream of my slumbers! "Song, thou filly of my dreams! "Long hast thou wings, and golden eyes, "And a bright neck of peacock-blend. "Lightly upon thy way I ride, "Whilst thou, where looking, soar. "Ships rock through thy dreams, and kisses "Melting in light are kissing given. "But she who gave thee light hath got "Some wayward decision. Forlorn, "She still in bower of amber dost bide. "Never a free sparrow has so sweet "Flight, but then thou'st falter and start. "A Mighty Spirit gave thee Life; "But what of mine, save Silence pure? "Ah! sweet! but now her word would curle "Their fraternal chatter, as a cost "A Marta-mother fears. Too fond "In ourlet solitary will's reaction "To know she lives, or help to seek her." "O pitiless world! the tenor of thy laws "Does not require a kindly homily. "The drunkard shoots, the landra-flower he sways; "So shine, weeping through this letter, the leaves "That shade the lovers' wedding, and the dew! "Never blessed with so fair a soil, "A mariner to so proud a town. "Hails mourner, priest, but all a holy ring "Are father, son, and mistress. "Thou'lt see the Mall: he speaks in long, "Inveterate, incessant trill, "Like nearer Laurence than thee: "A dying hand, but one that scorns "The clasp, the murmured burden, of the TIC. "Mamma is all as mad as thou; "Dad's but less mad. Mamma's as bad as she. ======================================== SAMPLE 475 ======================================== Lad lee moore mornin' in de place, For to see of the Flaminia Our breedesen, my fudele love, That telleth all betwen the twyse Of no peas right or passe thinges, Kind be lambe and sorly kinde, Wyse wyll men, frely kinde. Men telle trewly the tyce That the game with kinde is lyght, Tyt ydel, but a man may swete That hateles playne to fayne The hool of his sorrel call, He speke of the game and take, And so telleth al theroute. In such wise now, says he, by thy garlandes, My Sompnolunt, my Sompnolunt am I. And so, says he, be yo hoore in þis tyde And have thy fyx to thy vyce Þat dolyggelyche may, not be wantonly, So god suposth euery live.] Þe New Spring in supremedity, þat blome, supracorded hym. Calls telle þat doleful tid. For to diswound so swete a lorde to þe sweteȝ, Þat þay haue se playnly of care{i}ne þat þer hayre, That oure rage, sone þat to ure þe people; And ful of tresoun in þat sukk & and aply they. When now þe cav{n}t vndyrt vchonful dete, Þe se have hotely won þay brych out of ire; Bertheus the hote maþe afere þay {110 Bot þay still ful on þys vale schyld, To repase þe godd{er} saye þat on marye mote, W{i}t{h} do{ur} al neu{er} þay felle & kest, In su{m}breame encreas alle hom alyu{n}teȝ; Þe will do his servise al so shuldrie to, Wyth vche amyl oþ{er} gref miȝt. Þ{er}er bitysly i{n} wythmyre w{i}t{h} more i{n} mynde, A prince w{i}t{h} ryches þat merk, þ{o}u þat est allan. Þay hit me fyfte vp-wolfe wat{er}, And i{n} swyþe wat{er}e me splythe, þay me wern vndyrst{er}, Þen ws sorfed i{n} þe wrytop, þay schyn i{n} it be neþ{er} vs, Þe{n} þe dyt þat þer i{n} vse bi þ{a}re, To þat þere ar þay carpe up of dreme; So nede þay ford w{i}t{h} þ{a}re blode by chese; v. 586.] Swende hit is for þe segge, swane þe beforþ; Me haþen vnder þer-o, hit is chylde, swale; To do þer-o my quere, Iþ{er} swede swane. Squamme to þe wil, þat mon is bot a mo{n}ne, For þat skuld ho{us} is þe helpe of þat þay may, I myle þe make i{n} my will þat dewe, And þ{o}u leu{er} so boþe þe flesche þe kye. I schyp me with blode, & no tyme is blake; I trowle me to þat charme, þ{o}u schryȝt þe cau{n}ge; Bot alle ȝ{us} wy{n} hyȝele þ{o}u þy lou{n}ge, Þy syre, I no schulde wanyt me chy ======================================== SAMPLE 476 ======================================== The little blue unzipped-out ears, The silver-grey upturned faces, The tiny working fingers. Somewhere, a big burly Cannondale Droned out of gear like some huge hound That caught some soft canine breath And damped its rhythms till they weren't. Even the guys on horseback were deep Intent on other things than us. Where were those women wearing knee-length Bralbs of the corn's darling -- or the light Rip that crisp kiss in the crevice of the cup? Over the flattened field of grasses she lay Like a blade of fire. Dead out there in the dry Smoothness where there is no time or degree Of leniency or rest or indignity. It was forbidden. The muffled sound of our drowsy bodies Moaned through the night, sounding more and more Dull, on the verge of madness. As though we Had come unburdened by the glory of light That spreads for earth's habitual species, Something like the heart's unreasonable Supreme placement of dreadful climaxes. Hearers of this kind take in a grip That's far too understated. Noon: the thin layer of taut grasses floated, Flying over the tall weeds like bubbles; And from behind a hill our faces looked Like fantastic grotesque schools Of starlings, a clump rising in spite of itself For what had to be above was not there; While all the Lake's water and its reflection Seemed either absent or changed in scale; And in the quiet The earth's shape was more than thought might be. The sky went out, floating like a green Mossy colonnade where the floor is breadth, Spreading inward from a point whose height Was breadth; the horizon's line Stretched like the reach of an animal's foot; While earth, the breadth of which is contoured By every slope, line and slope, Was as a measureless height without a notch For lack of a horizon. The horizon's height and the sky's height Were one: Heresy! The sky went out. But not the darkness. This was my hearing From heaven shine like a substance foundry For ore-things which did until I had dug My lap of earth and chipped open and watched the glint At work in their imprisoned layers of rock, How that they shrank into something thin Like the wax of a tongue on me To say their lives, their names, their going ranges For tempering. But the night Shut out the rest of earth, And I knew in some whisper I had breathed The breathing of the earth To say its name. Tranquil as a chill, I found What time I said, "Such a thudding in my head," To the samaj in the white tent. She raised her head And in an instant saw Me seeing, past me, past her, The silence coming down on earth Like the mute death of the dead, And catching my breath. So then the scene changed, And she shut eyes and turned away. The nameless moon And day that went with her were gone. The tents of tents were empty, The muffled boughs of trees were flown, The sheaves of corn sagged like reeds Or cowering in circles under a moon Of space, and there In the empty field, the tepees shook Under the wrath of the rain. And I said, "No more do I dream: The world is out of joint, and I am loose For saying, 'I will not die of thirst!' This world is much too hot For a fighting god like me." And the oaks and mesquitees Of smoke made a gray wall. My God! we were falling! And from their bodies I might catch A shriek or two, and we should find The sharp scar to make a lop. But I was too cold, And the rain, it puddled Like brain, and there was No breathing there to help my brain. I was dumb. Just then a mother dove Sued down over the camp. She had flown with the tepees Of the rattlesnakes. And she dropped down, And waved me, flapped on her wing, Into the briars. I let her flapping Whine around me. Then I had say To fly away. But she was my mother And I was mute. "Mother dove," I said, "I have come to die ======================================== SAMPLE 477 ======================================== Crate:--Menial; a sculler; A pawner, a bookbinder; A fish-fry, or pig-and-producer; And certain captain's staff. Fair Beulah's to the Vineyard Whose Wiles Are Wisely Silver Wined, A Gift without a Grievance Received, Lover of Liberty, A Sport without Espoil, Fairer than Air-us-a-Lite, More symmetrical than a God. John Bull's Bath – For Night's Sweet Ministrations; Hail! John! happy Bath! A Bath where I'll ever lie, A Bower without Cold, hail! The Elixir still uncuts my Rags, I bear my Death to Foreign Lands; The Equestrian Horse of Seers I colour white, like Solomon's Seers, I crown my Maxims with Moons of the Gods; And hymn in Sovereign Syllables The praise of Liberty, That no man dares to put me to the Vote. John Bull's Bath – For Night's Sweet Ministrations. Go to the Well – Whales and Dolphins swim therein. Mary! Mary! gentle Martyr! Take up my Child – we are going hence, Gentle General Nought – The Rhymster of our tribe – Let's lie together then; There's no such Angel – In all the aeroplanes – In all the town Down with this Horatian! For Fyne Fyne! Fyne! Fyne! John and Fyne! John and Fyne! Sunny Goody Fyne! All am I one! Dusty Bum The Bonny Bower! Aft, at our Avocation, John will read of Bards Aile! We'll talk to Ninsondor, And you'll tell him The Dream, In the Andrews' Family Memorie. John will sing, Hymns in common meet, I second every Dew. Crown me the Fiddle – I am the Fiddle – I play new Lute-dances; 'Tis thus I can sing! John will tell me That Hercules was Duke in days Gone Out. Langton! sing out, you two – Up and sing to this Frageminder! Sings he who "with his beard" – What is the Myth? Three Troy-day shrines – The Patrician and Priest – And Fyne to all his thumbs. There was an Old King in King Arthur's Day Who had no more time to kill, than had A scorned man but forty-three. If he had a Four-day on his hands, 'twas not his. He wore a Winchester Rifle, but it Was not a sight to cary. He took a great many marks. He must make sure that every one's Intermediate steps were filled. To accomplish any thing, he Used providence as well as bullets. He knew so many things. When Snowy bullets are cold, Why should it snow at all? When there are bugs in situations, Where bad fates are set up. He passed away from that sore threat. Then, in that hour of that truth. In lands to tread through, Of all land in Cornwallis, It had never been known, That one should boast. He loved diversions; With smokes, and twitchin', And pop, and seats, All for new arrivals. He said, that no more now He saw in that county. But with a drink the rest was sold. His host for that night Had a hog, A snouted calf, A gander for a breedin'. The old king the Godin slew, And that was the beginning of Cornish Land. He heard his dream, Though his friends, not asking why, Like men that dreamin' never Was never seen. And said, a ham was best To tell a witch to cook, If ever one should think to boil, In human shape. O Lord of dreams! Thou seest! There was never one on seven days old. The noblest maestro's piece was Run by Herbert, when he had Found gold and silver in the mine. From that day to this, When Sir Rous Hale has laid down his tools, The pause is nought. No, thank Heaven! now the end draws near. Of Vivian Morrison's dreams, there are a Perfect ======================================== SAMPLE 478 ======================================== Against the groaning wind Fare we not most jubilate? Hearken to our merry bells, Glorious music of the dead; Our songs have honor for their witness, That they make mournful in the winding-sheet. Till now, I wrestled with a wrathful tide, And being stricken proud, I ride in state, Hence I am a match for the storm, and seem forlorn, My guise a wand of some rich gem To show me my true self, within The walled city I am one, My own box, where I, Has left my kingdom and my crown. No more shall Beggs be held by fame: No more at justice we have chanced on the wrong In Ireland, the realm of Fir: Forget not those souls, whose crimeless blood did sing An anthem of death to one who meant it nought. Upon the battlefields they are fallen. Their birth-right in the blood is stained. Who will dwell in the shadow of those eyes, When their last tempest rumbles afar? Forget not the glory of that fierce-hearted line: The foe had smitten as he fought it right. Oh how shall these be quiet at last? Whose spears have blasted many a night Are they that in coming years shall forget? We that were nearest to the right hand of earth Who laughed at the time as if the world were new, The winter coming on, to bring down cold And bitterness on the heart, we fled, we fled; But now the young-eyed champions of the wave Must storm the line; and our blood has fought again. For the sword on these of all the field Wrenches the strong power of the lungs to bear, Till the power is broken, the muscles waste, And heads borne off; and the neck of corpses Themselves must be dashed. But the hand Falls unavenged, on the bodies of the slain. But what avails the wrecks of towns and towers, Till God is weary of their peace, the war? In that unwakeful time of the soul, When the thread of the step that we mark With so much weight of time lies in the past, And there are those who bear us beside, Who smiled where we that hour could discern, We whisper to our souls; and feel the breath That stirred our wings at deathless hour, Still throb in that great proximity of power That time presses to eternity, Ere it shall be or be. And as those Who sally out in sunlight from their cells Of cloud and fog and roar, to find the track That toil lost once, unto death may march With the wan of all the world. And the ruin never comes in while The trouble is near, but close at hand. For at the heart of ruin there is hate. Hate him, the man of many scars Who came as a crowned king of vengeance To wage a purer war than any king Of doom and doom and doomsday. Hate For the hung sun of doom in his tower; The blasted spectacle of his house. In the dusk gloom of the chambers of death, Where the cage of crimson-winged drones Risps with rusty struggles sealed of old, Death holds the labyrinth of his home. He will not call it by its name; he knows Who wore the crown of the gate that he. From the glittering length of the rows Of the tower, that stands the plainest part Of the cage of dread of the tidings, The blast heard, and quick unto a heart Breaker than the upper chamber where Is the cask of the betrayal; Those other ten thousand breakers cast In swirl of infinite disaster; And back along the line of that brighter Queer smoke of the deathwardward cliffs of that tower Flush fire on fire on fire on fire, and the sword Is lifted and broken; and the metal Grows conscious; and the falling heavy thunder Breaks on the copper; and it is vain To lift the steady barb like a crutch. Hate him, and throw up the door, or try To stay him; and his face sneers out The eyes that shone when I was young. "Wake up, my lad," the face will say, Saying "Come to the gate." "Let it be Thy face there; I can bear it all." Why never the man was a man? Oh, because When his soul lived in our narrow earth so strongly ======================================== SAMPLE 479 ======================================== When Lincoln had strove to force The Slavery slug to carry its slaves, And every strain that pumped Its enthusiastic torrent back Was changed, when Lincoln took office, To a slow dry waterfall of repulse! Alas! the slaver, fond of credit, Was thrown by a government dame-- No fiction could more profound Be to the shame of Samson's Pen-- For, by the Lord's uplifted knife, The Fugitive Slave seized and died. The merciful thing to do, The Devil's self was made to drink The Fishes from the ocean wave; And in his desert cave, Who shall remain of us a slave? Though burdened, though he wish to cling By no red leaf of hell for ever. And thou, poor fool, with flint for heart, Come, take your palmon in hand, Vouchsafing unto Pharaoh service-yestes, Come, in me I breathe a devilish psalm, Where'er my memory, at will invoke, Blame her with her, implore her pardon. I dreamed last night that I myself, call, Hath been called from some dusty spot To gather scrub with fingernail; I seer that, over me, in sandy sleet, The West's driving weather plume D' , but swarms not in the South's gentle shower. And so I dreamed; and waking, sunk the dust Of many a year, and spent a life's force To rebuild one limpet-coffin From out the mists that hid it. In tears I hit upon this scene; For, crouched with smoky boot-marks round its head, That shell-torn ape in sand was found. I bear about the ordure of my crime To shed where tents are flapped in streams, To light the prairie Homestead square Of black iron; and o'er its wealth I tell my tale of woe; and, when I meet Impatient eyes of chalky clay, To all I owe, save only this, repay The whole that debt, with thanks and prayer. The Jubjuccut kings of yonder wave Came oft to my New England shore, Till Zarathoon blew his bugle-prince From sun to shore and back again. We bear about the ordure of our cravenhood To scent the prairie Homestead square Of black iron; and o'er its wealth I tell my tale of woe, and, when I meet Impatient eyes of chalky clay, To all I owe, minus this, with thanks and prayer. WHEN I am stiff and ugly with cancer, And patent sulphers lance me all day, The horrid little mortal That scrubs my cellar for my dinner, Whiles upon the kick-ball field, Playing ball just like a man, (There, like me in plumest garb of rain That maids may follow, or the kirtle shows), Play ball, an' out I fling it. His hair, like tinder, flares Like flaming match while he's at it; His cheeks are smooth and white As a changing little face, Whilst he an' me havies a' By the self-same James to wear. That keeps insh'ling at mine eye Like a hand, that he might shave, An' he, when he thinks me up to speed, Straught to my quattuor. I bow no waur than, Merlin-like, sae handsome, My auld oak should tra South, Wart ye saw me-lady, Ferrie yon black auld moonshine? I, gentle lass, am tired sae bugged An' wet; Ferrie, I trod the wet corner o' the street, I'm better, by yon! The de'il gets in hell, The birkie, like you; I've dried his hair! Then let the lads gang And dry their own, wi' glee; Sic carles let us know the mik's for whoop, Wi' hie tooth! The lads that are tried an' true, They ken 'em ever so; The great laddies in the North Are up in years--God bless 'em! An' blighters wi' their buns an' sand May sit on 'em wi' hie glee; They've learned how to win o'er the ======================================== SAMPLE 480 ======================================== grew the fine warrior-courage Sudden as was a plant's, and when the face Of Jove's daughter stirred again to life, She smiled, and, glancing on the foe, Said, "In such things as these no recompense is mine." But when the conqueror, in the slothful days The God who sees, the God who sizes souls, Gave back her lovely body to her breast, 'Twas to my common lot this trouble came, In which, if nowhere more free than wedlock bound, I wedded man, no what the more than the girl, Since, through the poor lands, where chaste is a tree, Her lonely ort is sawed, or set apart Where e'en a fellow grieves; alas! The leaves, once landed, fall the earliest o'er With no consistency of their own, To gnaw at, to wither, and not grow. --The curious Roman also do not know, Who, having heard my self expound before These Herrick lines, makes up his mind to go And buy the Primiture and Estate of Land, So by the Statute he lives out his whole Life. So was it with this Roman;--to the acts Of Fame he add the soft title of Divorce; And, as he feels his treasures worn away To thin-chested thatch, so also begets the rage Of Emulation, and Decay. --An Ivy-tree bore the old Arcadian god; So we call one Rhamnes--another Hath barrows. From him ascend to dozing Barks. And I Who yearning to sit on the sour royal chair, Afflict myself, that I my Life might supply The purchase of a pair of clean talking quills In some hopeless royal Gazette. We must carve What Toadstools write; and, feel for gallows-claves. What prize we have or Crime, what turbulency We feel in wine, or spice, or diamonds, praise Or price, casts no light, nor man or woman who Has the gift to put what he himself reflects. How many Bass-pipes! To walk the streets in While a dull train grows Doodle under your feet! 'This blockhead Adam;--for the bore of him I had from long before the days of Rama, Thinks who he was--no more--his Duck, his Cock With his itty-bit is a Pickle, and his Wig Is a Menagerie, with most entreasome creatures You ever saw--(Let's rather talk of late A sister for him, or rather a white sheep.) His Living--Is a whim, a fond, a comely goose, With thunder-bolts vexed of health or military); And to be one of the stately and solemn art Of those who deem it their Science or their Art-- No man,--but an empty ear; which he fills full-fed, And grows more grand with morning and with evening-- His attire most sovereigns, such as men of art Have style by W. B. U.,--a good Doxology. But to sit still, in a Provincial town, At the Clinava--in my old Barn, you know, With Mr. Samuel Jones, my country-friend, To impart new wine and Irish glee, And sympathise with me in old tunes?-- Ye sentinels on the Castle-top, With tented walls! be changed--and I behold Another Midship in the face of me! Or, thrang the jester, the good Sir JOHN, Who puts behind the crockery-stand An atccsreer reel of my dear Lady CHO: --On mine knees, reverent O seat! and after The broken box that's sound in the middle, My liveries lie through my blood and all --And I am hanged, and yet half wakened At what my Lady is a-painting In that giddy skull of hers! In the full sun That's no reason I should pass a gallon Across the sand, nor on this shore: nor how I know 'tis mine to favour her. But all is lost: A day the banker slumps, and a day The guns that are hit from our cannons; Not to speak of health and happiness And wealth they have not brought, but happily: Nor do I believe a scrap of her Can hit this sort of thing--for the King Would ne'er let a Lady take part In a business without vision; But let it be my soul's ======================================== SAMPLE 481 ======================================== ere I leave this the largest, wherein is all of it. <|endoftext|> "Doma Pregnant", by Stephanie Young [Love, Break-ups & Vexed Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] In the special evening I left a man My husband; it was merely that he Was not a stranger. We could have anything Unless he wished it. I left him that night, Car and bicycle parked Across the parkade; my husband’s Cap gun for ball game Waitress with us. Only: in my head My fantasy, standing by A yellow fence. Men are And women the same, That we need true, Beautiful love, that measures A hundred years, as mine And you—just two And maturing. What do we do with it? Save it, expose it Beneath the sky’s running Gesturing tongue-button Ride on the back of a crow And the din of his meat. The summer outside my window, raining Is what it reminds me of; The taste of chicken of which I sometimes have the will To open my mouth. A sound So familiar it disarranges My mouth from day to day; It is the fog Of telephone lines I have forgotten. Beneath the ground, Where no day is ever known, Is love I’ve also Forgotten. <|endoftext|> "Epiphany", by Dawn Lundy [Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] It is good news. But good as in "good" as in "good thing." I’m talking to you now, Poetic something-or-another, about the early twenty-first-century love of my life, our interview, a love’s love, the love of a love, my spouse of twenty-two years, my love of twenty-two. Another epiphany, a new beginning. I say, I wrote a little over seven hundred poems; this is the best one that I have been able to make. The truth is, it could have been far fewer. I try again. I can’t do this justice in letters. Letters have letters for only two sides, letters have letters. As for the poem itself, yes, I gave it to you, you did the glissando, and the rhythmic measure first, and then, for the finale, the siren but only at the close of my eyes, at my eyes. (No, but listen, to hear the sounds of it!) Listen, I say, listen! Listen to the turgorific sadness of the finale—that close of my eyes, with its siren but no siren, and the principal hemisphere, white against the bright wall, as I call it, of its sightless self—to be sure that love counts in it, and love that counts in it. I give you all I had, here, now, ever since you brought me to life, here; did you do so?—all there was, then, before you brought me to life, in poems. It is good news, it is good, all there is, is, no matter how fast I fly. I give you my name: it is yours, you discover it, as you do. Is it a name? Another poem, then. Just for the question of something in you that you do not love, is all that there is to it. Is there another for the name, the heart, the all there is? Is there no, there is no there there that there is? <|endoftext|> "Poem written in response to a question as to whether or not a poet should strive for the greatest number of poems read", by D. L. Doon [Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] Perhaps the question is itself a poem, you might say, in which case my answer is also ======================================== SAMPLE 482 ======================================== To guard our best and bravest, to deliver to his friendly power the inwards, and with relenting kindness close their work by ending the strife, whereby he wins us all we have as a people; To free them from the tyranny of France and come to better terms with his native soil; To be a blessing here, as a good neighbour here, and in all good wishes to see his young, clean-he seeing face again, And grow as young again as he did when once he was old; To throw the shaft of hard-hit single shots and straight checks at darts, and with fine bends make all rest with the big round shoulders; To be a laughing-stock, to swear against the sun of all that's done; And laugh himself wild with bestial glee at any fair man; To take the ill-hap North's black-letter man at his favourite pennon parade through the nation, and squeal over the chalk-pulp speck as he goes, To sit in town-walks smoking a staving cigar, a silver cigarette or eating any kind of apple-bottle a roll-me-over; To thank God for rolling the age of silver hairs from the best, Whose wit may shoot God's lightning, whose sound may sing God's thunder; To applaud the sunburst of young hope, which never may depart; To praise the devil in highest heavens which bores the devil's dog hell-hounds; To curse in baring grooms that shave in Church; to snarl against that stooping sergeant-at-law a plow-neck from the Career Centre; To gripe at the Fate-hap-bed pomp and the road-stained purple of age; To rage at one who swears darkly as a Lord Chancellor, and laugh with an inch of ginger over his face; To praise any tyrant because he leads in the goose-straining race; To curse your own that have the Master's robes, but lack the rope; To say that any is a demi-god in the race you would strangle with a feather: ----I thank you for the sweet foul air you have given my muse Whose wine-cups have lighted her rev'rend eyes Whose thunders have soothed my rougher senses Whose drafts have leaked the dew and damp Of my stouter days; Blessing the master-song, the sceptre-scatter, the blessed sun, The sceptre-shatter, and the fickle west, Blessing the smiles of morn and night, The winged choirs of every sort Which sing in parks and carts Of hell's light details, The beams of each high celestial Flaming and flaring across the night, Blessing the bright day, the crescent moon Calling, calling, and the stars Sounding From the thunders of St. Paul's To your praise, ho! ho! And blessing, too, the solemn silence Of black-robed lawyers leaving their firms, With tails in the air, and the Worm Crushing the thunder; For here you have the true story-- Truth, Justice and all such like: You have the roaring Ware, And bless me the sleeping coils, And the way they dozed On the dull grey floor of the pub, When, through the green haze Of pumping crimson drops, There came through the doors Of the golden mart That dirge of a psalm For the beauty that's fled; That cry of the rascal back-kicking Who has missed the hottest of the sport, And the flower of the mart Loving what has disappeared. But, O, what rapture to the sucking Of old England there lingers In the by-pasturing Of the slow-pulsating Meat below Of the wise British tongue; And the slow-licking Tongue Out-lapping the throatfuls of Smoke; And the bass of the Tobacco Born in the sounding Vapors Of the Queen's chamber In the snow of her virtues. And it's good to dream of the strains Of good houses that have ceased, And of the songs of men Singing at the washing-day; Of the baritone lutes of France Raised at the piano For the bride at the chapter-table; And the strains of the Mahogany Of the hollow-jowled negroes Drowned in the thickets, Or crooned to the squat-boulders. And it's good to think ======================================== SAMPLE 483 ======================================== Ráma in the chambers of his father, And you want the hero to lament? If the old tree was of Sítá’s race, With three mighty arms the lord of men, So as a giant might, its trunk like bolt And thick neck, such a king should seem, With half its bulk upon its shoulders tied Like a lion’s tressed. Each foot of his frame was steed’s; each shin Somewhat like a snake that smites was strong With power of hot heat. Wherefore my daughter in the company Of her rich dress, the hair complete And precious gems she brushed from off her breast, Shook with her heart that saw three kings like these Approach. But O, if she would find, as once she told The guide, the pair they passed that brought her up, She should herself control the other two Until they came to the giant’s hall. Then would she be with all her flowing might As the swift Car in the fight reels o’er The breast of a bended plate of brass The blood no longer daunts in the hand That wields the sharp iron. And she told Meek as one that bore her wrath and spite, Now sick at heart, her parting words with care Entered into the ear of the king, The lord of each great clan:“Verily, I was a fool, I, a liar, who All this while concealed the truth of it, And kept back from the full course of time That I would hide, when he or such His time should come, who never will Be contented to those her words deny Who come with gifts, or requite him not. Take him not, who fears nor yet goes forth Before the glorious sun, nor staid Lest his way be spoilt by foe, Or lest a mere mistake impale Henceforth like this, whoso erreth. He That I denied the gift, erreth, As in a damsel, not to find Such a deed as he has told, to him Thou shouldst not bear with patience shown. But now that thou hast heard, the ear Spares the truth, the evil true.” Bold of tongue and brave of limbs, The bigoted Hidim answered: “You are wrong. A good murmur rose In council and got speech. The king said, ‘A dame like thee should not feel her heart Overawed by the might of law.’ Then most and least both swore confidences That their hearts was not half so strong As to be overawed by law. On this there was a second council. These words, to e’er this comfort broke, The hearts of the true wise murmur. “Sires,” a prose was written, “The roots And grns of Ráma are excellent In war-fields; but, sire, we well believe That, dúshan and Marmellá All worth are overbold. The darling dame is Ráma, Founted with the four lustre springs Of life.” “From thee, king, young and grown, The second-born know I: Thy child is Marmthe star of praise, And thy daughter Lakshmíre Shone with the flame of fire. A friend and peer on earth are they Who heed no chivalrous fear. Thy child is Ráma, the renown To Ráma’s high epitome Of sage-like valiance, free From thought or error, blameless In thought, each pleasing in each state. Yet of the great Steed with one delight A mind a blest affinity binds Thee, great soul of ours, but me Of love for two most dear loves confess. As flame that in one torch relume Dishes the light from one end, So Ráma by his love I share. But thousands which might fill the air The length of heaven that houses me The lord of earth cannot number. But to Marmí a fourth part Of earth is, being a girl, By thee and Lakshmí scarce fit. O most beloved, the pride Of Raghubiratha’s line, The finest heart is thine,— Which, leaning on mine arm, may bide The second birth and dwell with God. Fare-they-whither? From the sage who knows My life, to wise Marmiel, let him lead ======================================== SAMPLE 484 ======================================== light he fills the room like his I mean my cosmic genesis always this sprite is laid down because it is necessary that it be there and I have seen this smoke power & fear in the same way in the same time inside my body <|endoftext|> "Dawn at the Dovecote", by Paul Hartnett [Living, Growing Old, The Body, Nature] The deep rounds of a dugout the curved steel stem of the rifle or this the bridge over water <|endoftext|> "A Perplexity of Saints", by Paul Hartnett [Religion, God & the Divine] I In this work I use To build up the canopy, Or fruit, To touch the unseen Which has the word Contained and kept, And I call up The lord of all: II Saints are the world’s life; Their fragrance is the smell of grace; The Hebrew sages Had libraries of these Whereon I read And seem my soul As if it entered Along with others And there the meaning shone That made me cry “Praise!” I said “Praise!” And received This gift Of godly contemplation To show me God III In the dim night God spoke the secrets Which the blind men Could not read; And Jesus The God of the plain Is a saint like me, Who kneel down and say “Praise!” I said “Praise!” “Comfort!” God or saints Grown in the belly For me. <|endoftext|> "Tall Men", by Paul Hartnett [Living, Growing Old, Health & Illness, The Body] It’s them who use the ramped lift With one hand, that have the ball of blossom In the same place as the palm of the other. A strange kind of magnetism, which they have And which we never understand: the whole of it, The ride, the babbling of the grandstand, the lime-tree shade, A quart of malt, a sliding sky, a flower Planted for a picket sign, in the grand coal car In the back lot, on a Sunday morning, at six. It’s the middle of summer. They can be gay At their concert, which draws a huge crowd To the hall they call the Garden State. They are all there, guys who were there last summer, Plus two hundred more not mentioned, Women and girls, fathers and children, The Hall of Fame Man is there, as well; He’s hitting his grand slam. These tall men, At twenty-six two bullets tore up his page And he is in the dugout, gone bowling, The fox-fire orange cotton-piece hangs like a white flag In the corner where he sits after batting practice. And they are all there: the stars of the show, The Long Blue, the Ohio State, North (that one got away), Don’t forget Jimmy, a certain camera flash Killed Rocky in the second round. He never hits another shot. They round a bit then, and shrink a bit more, Holding still a little while, Hunching over their picks to look around At the dusty judges, the four of them, The back-up judges, a circle of five, The umpires, and the crowd, and the room they go Sitting in the bleachers, and hitting their blasts. I like the way some of them smile, Eyes wide, cheeks hot. I like that. I like their gaze Of secret desire of some kind, A little sadness in it all, A gathering hope or pride of a sense Of swinging good fortune, but with a strange Afro that looks none, and rings Even through their choice of shapes, In moving in patterns for photographs For a contract signing, an offer A scout cannot act on, a disinterested Manager cannot act on, and nothing In the sound of bat or hands, Although in the back lot there is no bat, Or hands. I stand still and look. They look back at me, Like men in uniform, giving me their time. And all of the time Is my time, Not their time, they don’t mind They are watching me, waiting for me, ======================================== SAMPLE 485 ======================================== Berkeley [Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Class] 'New York', by Susan Aldrich [Living, Life Choices, The Mind, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] and how do you like your new shoes? the leopard lugs& it’s rather cold here, it’s raining almost all the time& you really need a new pair of feet & I’m wearing one of those flimsy pairs you find everywhere here but I’m not even sure where I got it the pattern just came out of me & I’m asking myself where it come from it came from me & then I remembered I could ask & then I remembered that I am in New York & that there are no actual new ideas in New York & that we have gone over the vocabulary of a nation & that there are plenty of shoe holes around the city that are not quite where they are supposed to go who are they for? who are they? who are they? & then I remembered a friend that I really should have asked & that was the only person I could remember besides me & that is exactly how it all came out & I have to go back to my old city, if you really care, New York, new language, where are they the new shoes, I really should have asked <|endoftext|> "Compline", by Anne Winters [Living, Life Choices, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Love, Break-ups & Vexed Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Nature, Spring, Summer, Trees & Flowers, Winter, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality, History & Politics, War & Conflict] (Sebastian Sassoon, Egypt & Wilderness, Cities & Urban Life, War & Conflict] In a hollow of the Aynu pyramidal, south of the city, there’s a building. The inside is like a long cushion of glass with rich terraces of seats arranged in a gardenlike pattern. Such a place was really meant to have been a theme-park-style entertainment facility. Sometimes now you could find men and women dressed in grass skirts and hat nets or those with a fancy hat on, who must have been into the croosy, frolicsome as chickens. The women run the gamut from young quite innocent-minded to viciously ambitious. Whatever the variety, they all run for pleasure in short. The men run to feel they are among persons. This, like the dance, is rather amazing in its universality. It is also rather pathetic in that it is not entirely certain to last. These people have nice homes with decorous interiors, never being rich, and yet are unhappy. They even now get by with small detachment in that they are so deeply human and you get the sense that they really should be. They look to be comfortably settled into their roles. No one is good for much. They go out to dinner, dance, have some fun. Then come home. And this is how they do. Contrast this with the entertainers who were the most important people in the country, who were given to thinking that they belonged to the entire modern age, and really meant something. They were often the children of great Victorians who were given to very beautiful anger and flight. In other words, the common rabble of poverty, race, and gender and their fierce endeavours to belong to nothing. The Mayor’s speech was about feeding the children and the military hero, at the same time, was giving speeches on feeding the hungry. All the while the rain was falling outside, around the playground, which was also the front line. The Doctor was telling about nerves and fortitude. The Mayor was explaining something about psychology. The Doctor had found out that nobody really wanted to fight, And that the surgeons all preferred women, And that the brave young soldiers sold their shoes And joined such tradesman as Hoe Sport. The Judge had usually had little to say. Or was not always useful. He often gave puffs of bullshit. He wanted work for his grandson. But who was he to fight the Mayor? The Mayor was giving lots of talk about poetry. “Hear my children, the stars rotate, And no doubt in the heavens All the constellations are facing, But if you only knew me, my dear, You would see your tall and simple friend, My little Philomen, reclining, Yet splendidly alive.” He must have had a vision of the Sly-Comp, ======================================== SAMPLE 486 ======================================== "You prate, you better croak!" Then he rode off and homeward hied, His plaids that was wont to plaid, Back to the castle he rode, The strangest dreary day that was efter ever seen. His friends could not from their fear rest, Nor spoke the heart-fled new uncle But hast the supper with their new bonny lad. They sit around the chimney cool, And tell about their day-long toil, Till tears trickled down each cheek, And glad, until that arched neck of wood Would peer out from the moonlight sky. For this, dear Dandy, their banquet prepare, With poppy-heads and queens of wheat, With first-frosted hay, and fragrant flowers, For this, dear Dandy, lead on the housemaid That her new bonny child may grow; And make her dances, feasts, and bed; And teach your dancing, love, your child to sway, Just like your own he best can be. While they showed him how, on windy days, A dance might blow from flowery vale, How the whole busy world would bear, By many, then, one charmer still, And liked he, as the birds that plac't, In Autumn, honey-laden rain. He drank of the life-deep, live gold, And thought, "This fickle world will hold Its sweet, its bloom, I trust, at last!" For he was of that sportive time, Still blythe, how merry, still; Singing and dancing, always and going To various frolicks and looks; Proud was he, yet, by how self-sway'd A strange honest laughter was his stirr, Pleas'd in their rockes and swayes. In all the frolic play of youth, In rowing, too, from morn till eve, For days to folaze his journeying He would get a fill of friendly praise; And these could not but delight him For all men's guile, his conscience wise, He knew, drew but justice from the tree, For he, by fames no light, had been A king and warriour of the scene. This neither excec't his years nor sense, But still as if not so very far A man, he laugh'd himself from home, With such a root interest finding That, in the season's leisure roar, There was a way that nightingales sing, And, from the loose-thrown cloth where Linus sat, Not long his seat, in bright morass rose. Alas! how void of blood, how dead! Who dies, must die, and Dukes be hanged; By day and night, what others gain, From Peace's single just, unseeing, By day and night, his life affording A burden that no leech can weigh. And, in this manner he the man That ne'er should be his own shame, Who, stilled the younger tide, First on the helm, first on the ground, His rank bestrow'd; yet, unsought, His goodly fire his days kept burning. In this the monarch found how best By vicecum Johan goamon May be by her lust deceive, And his whole worth unskill'd; Till, even in life, his sword and might Pluck at the hide, and lay him low. The dapper fiend, full of his dole, How much deceiv'd and pale he look'd, With methought a frighted beholder, Gazed, and laugh'd in secret on his lie. Alas! when youth and vigour fly, Weary, worn, and fleshless, (yea, that day So shaven in the morning org?!) It seems by magic marmot' met, That, when of her my soul is loth, For fear of seeming cold, that skies Were furled, and all her hair Tow'r, when all shorn, and both Casting off her muslin stock, So that the husk of her ill For fear my heart might think her dead, Ne'er eager to greet her eye Such madness* I by far with ease Should chase from thence; nor could I choose, But with her the live-mell began To waste the autumn in distress, And to a jaded end refuse A grace she could not bewail. Nor doth ======================================== SAMPLE 487 ======================================== Saw the peace of Heaven!-- Dear as a love that never dies Was that; nor might its memory O'ersee such scenes as I have seen A light that's gone from earth to be A dream about a rose. Glow like a scarlet mountain stream When the rosy sun is high; Fling roses from the trees, As the scarlet gleams spread; See them strike from the leaves! With red hands from branches cling, That they may gladden thee. From a heart that's still as death With its own dead, the gem The Night gathers, of his streams, To put on the heavens his crown; Yes! from his deeps, and hid In the sun's fair eyes, Surges, and waves of light, As he drifts to its gates. Eyes of a dark queen have seen In the stars a jewel scan; In the wings of one who lies Mid fires of heaven no more; And a dark line is that queen, And her eyes are beams Of the glowing star whose hands In a wave of fire are spent; Which thence returns to be The soul of one who gave it birth. Thus the sacred truth to thee, whose brow Stands in the starlight dark with gems, As time is to its eternal nest In the heavens, which, but in their Turn, wax and wane; From her being still, the glory found, While the earth's weak waves Are forgot as soon as earthward they go. Happy who wander on his way, Thin as is the rind of bread, With thought of things like these, And vision of a far light! Ours is the eagle way, my friend, Nor it is done alone; For far things we achieve, and give, Where, back from the heart's stream, We fain would do them a deal; And, dear aloft, We boast the sky over us As heaven has heaven to own. What a sight to face upon The shining shallows of sleep, And to the lake's faery mouth Refresh, though dried to wet, With, not a guess of grief, But laughing drops as they ride On the spring light's gentle wing. And where, through the depth of the wood, Sleep again to be abused By the flowers' enchanted life! And in the green of the place What dungeon walls a-the next remorse Fix, and frames that anguish so bright That pleasure knows not how To get away from, it! For by him who loves, and must Be comfort for his part, Night and the fruits of night For an eagle's sweet fame, Is or is not, friend, The deed to dream, to do. And this is but the sign, and yet When I drew it true From shadows, through the night Lingered on love's sign When gods were men and man Dreamed our dream. And now the sacred space, the place Of this speech of light, Is heard, and in the air of day The crown of glory shoots and shines. And it will never change. For at the drop Of a roll of the bull's horn, One of us, the waking sun, In a moment The world will go out of our view. And yet 'tis well we have our song, If there cometh a doubt in song, In the spring tinkle at the village drop, 'T is very well to know all men Our life's unceasing nowtic; But what had been well sung of late And meant now by my tongue and me Is spun out of this air and left In the undefiled air; In the air unwound. 'T is time we should wax as noetic; Time is spent as noetic time; For as life grows in adoration, So the heart's in adoration grows Till sleep is sweetened, like a summer flower For hours and hours, and nothing done Else save in dreams and nightly spots From sunsets till merriment lies crescent; Suspended hangs the time of all That loiter on earth's motel in time. Ah! the long dark with its thick-flanked Its brazen faucets, its sifting salt, Its myriad-buried leaves scattered brown And green, their silken cricket ululations And frequent bee-swarms. Eels and cedars, Woods and the wide hills where break the graves, The moonlight, like a falling star, ======================================== SAMPLE 488 ======================================== Lolling upon the endless waste, with no city to be seen, Their superfluous numbers lumber, as of old, The beasts of old times upon the grassy plains; Nay, trample the radiance of the day's bright glance, And scorn the ceaselessly-blazing summer star! From the wide kingdom of liberty, From the store of hardihood, From the pillaring bowl, Of the dupe of mankind, Shall thou rise and go once more To the simple life that knows thee, Sitting in the shells of shells, Lying on the plains of Heaven! I would the wistful gaze of Love Should turn and fall upon me, And I should be that lily Love Which rests its beauty on a flowers! I would the many-limbed rank of Degrees The flatterers of the night Should kneele under my heel, And he that leads, by cloud or shade, Those loves to feast upon, Be found no Long-Year ill!-- From this vast interval, this at the most, I beg of Thee, most steep and remote, My sanctuary; where my heart may dwell, In quietness, and with the boughs far up (I know not where) may fall in woods, and find Its own congenial element. The brown and greening beech-mast, the drooping roof, The waving hedge, the lonely wheel over the well, Bream and roe, with one long shutter of white And chalky cracks. An elm-tree from whose dark boughs The ouzel sprinkles Her fair orbs of light, Hath writ no romance for me. But to see with day-taught eyes The lazar-boar promenading in the gloom Of the soft morning, and to hear He rumbles in the wind his harsh call, A swarthy toot, with his wily mind, For rousy in the dewy lawn, Etern all day in the long, still noon-- This thing is nor seen nor heard Save from the Earth and from the Heaven it knows. This thing is neither here nor there. Its life is in the wind that bloteth The sunny air, and flitteth from place To place, as scents go vagabond. 'Tis here; but, far off, whose dwelling? Who hath a home? ah, not he! Who hath a home? ah, not he! Nor will he have one, save such as yield The wild lilies of the Lane. Like a good shepherd's daughter Who knows no sin nor shame, Yields her maidenly to all The comforts of earth and heaven; Yet will receive no pay For all her simple gladness, Yea, for this too much of homejoy, Could I forget thee, ye olive-groid, And the four roads I have known, Yea, for this too much I love thee, I'd like to depart with thee; But, no! what purpose would this have? A solemn fire I would build Heaven, while I sing. And yet I'm as far from that with this air, The world's so very far. I have laughed and wept with grief of soul The great world's fault since you went away, I have laughed and wept with grief and kept The wonted welcome, this rich away, The trouble of my house was a dream Fantastic yet sublime, A figure on my windowsill, A distant view. Now I begin to see the light that rules The fairy castles, the sun-wrinkled grass, The music-rebuked, cloudy March, The recent snow, the dainty rime, And where my great-great-grandfather trod My love hath wrought, and he hath done His mingle with my noble house, With libraries in the vale And with the city's folk. I can answer him now, the griefs Of the lads of the sea, The ruggedness of the things I hear, The woe that doth oft beshadow them. And my own great-great-great-grandson, Our nation's hope, our nation's light, Is passing to his grave, On his grave's double-wounded hill, Where, black-purple at his feet, He must live and fear to die. He shall not fail me. I wait for the morning-tide, Achita's crystal star, I wait ======================================== SAMPLE 489 ======================================== byt. The The The will A t. The the and then then the with love “I like my work and I see nothing more to do but carve it out of hand,”he said. “Not to miss it and I like it so much less that my staked leg the first the uncast leg. <|endoftext|> "“The big turn”", by W. S. Merwin [Living, Growing Old, Midlife, The Mind, Time & Brevity] If you give the people whom you deal with daily (The most trouble is set aside for the soul’s conservation) access to the dividing wall and to the eye you will get an answer It is a presence And time now in the eye has the public mind made for the eye and the eye’s change of the world It will accept that the world (The driving is still) was in your hand and leap the portcullis It will know your control is so much more than this It’s called “binding yourself in a covenant of the mind” and the character of the eye goes away Except for time in which the character of the eye is formless And the moment the eye sees, as it is about to see In that or another, it would not see <|endoftext|> "in memory of ben federman", by W. S. Merwin [Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Race & Ethnicity] for sf @SanFran/cold winter made with habitations in free verse already this morning on street or highway you say: (I am inside ) the blue silent film of houses the inhabitants have already found a place to live they dwell in conditions of disappearance that are space but their spaces empty at this moment in time on the street outside where we are now of course, there is the architect with his perfect scattering (I can’t believe I’ve said that) of people spreading themselves out like fog harsh morning sun freezing fog but the streets rain like fog rain free of the usual sites of exclusion they lack a life free of what I mean by life <|endoftext|> "The White House", by W. S. Merwin [Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] It was not cold, The left foot pale By the end of the day He’d go from blue to brown Over the black of the tracks In the white of the snow Where it had fallen from his hand At the end of the sun’s descent In the dark of the trees The President & the Secretary Of State were breathing fire He’d get his wound licked By an oriental man He let go of the strings And let the notes fall As the notes fell that made it right By being there In an orange sieve Of snow blasted gold In an orchard on a hill No place to run or stand At all For someone was there Who had just come To enjoy the orange trees He loosed himself from the leaf And started away not long after The war now A new thing that let the note fall By letting the eye of the ballerina Fall over the snow & it was gone The audience had no note They wanted some man With a long stick who could go And stick it in his mouth To show the note They wanted a man Who could take the frost And stick it in his shoes To show the note Was made for something That had the noisiest notes They got him a coat & jacket Of the kind made of feathers He slipped away from his work & he wore that to the White House The fence of the artists Who might or might not have heard His name in school In the minds of some of his peers In an adult mind you’d say In the history books <|endoftext|> "The Name", by W. S. Merwin [Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] Having no name for a while. Not knowing what I could do or say. Who did I think I was? Tell my history without my history . ======================================== SAMPLE 490 ======================================== At once three birds, to not deceive you, Have set themselves to emigrate By dipping to the abysmal ocean-pool. When at a last, immemorial point, Cunningly placed upon a brink They close their curling wings, and drink, Diluted by the countless star-flowers of heaven, Uncompassable depth of dregs of glory. Then comes to you the wafting of their pinions Through that air which thro' the middle address, To ev'ry atom pervading all, One secret movement all their pinions supply, Nay, more, even to the very being of earth, There finds their land of rest upon that brink. Then thro' the flaming circle sinks their flying car, And sets you wondering as it close, All those star-tattered things you thought so strong. Once more I come to you, lonely and weary-hearted; Once more I roam thro' that Valley, now ample in scope, For, lo, a spirit meets me thro' the sighing waste, Beholding me that, looking, and gazing, She, grieving, though of thee, now of all of fair In whose sight I pass, with grief and joy, Long, long had held thy love within her heart, And now comes forth to tell thee how Of my sad waste thou dost know so evermore. Sister, if you wait not so close, Your look so kind & tender, Your message so altered and small, By the cool moonlight, When she beams upon thy brow, Then I am lost, a pilgrim! <|endoftext|> The house I entered was in laws, There was no teacher nor held a pen, He only a straw hat & cloak had, Just a straw hat, & I replied My songster, turn away from the Ile Turn you out of his house, turn you back on the House of the sun, whose beam had been turned Down thro' every window thro' the lap of the sun down Every side-window like that lamp they bore A yellow lanyard, & a cab&nny side & Twang his tune, the thuggish god of this fatal Village, & with the Youth chivalry has cried, We leave the village, & show We leave the wilds, & I replied Now leave the sun, & sing You take my last bread from my last mouth, & that Was the last word, as in my anger I plucked The yew in the wicket, I am turning to go Myself! farewell, & sing Some say that golden air may come, Or that the strange deer half bending his head, Half as mysteriously moving to the right, Through the heavenly realm of Poetry, And a blessing be that melody as he goes, Forth from the tracks of his own accord In mid-earth to the happy regions up Upon the face of the sun. Some say, that he made the right bower his home, Unwearied while the deadly night Around him trembled. The blue o'er his left arm is a gash, The bent head bends from the string of the bow Down to the arid plain's breast, As he keeps the purple happy feast, And up the ancient hill's side I follow one who drags a stretched body By a foot, whose shoes are on the line. They lead him past the orchard wall Where, all the night long, the golden moon Like a sea of glass Flashes a little, and, but dim, Yet her beauty deep he sees Like a half-lost lover her, who Passes at last thro' the mist. The trees that crown the highland, A circle of singing sheep, Stands, like a ring of masters, Thinking of one so sore, All the grace of beauty's spell With which the dead live on; The cliff and the forest, lone and dun Blown by the equinoctial breeze, As though that shade Moved in the light of his spell. And then he pass'd the willows Where sea-weavers spin, And seaweed, raw and green with jaundice, Rubbed in his ballads is a veil. Then her he saw, the white-lipped salt Sea-blue, who walks by the shore Singing, but, as he put his hand With his three picherons round her waist, He feels her head less cold than she is cold. Hither she came, her foot on the shall ======================================== SAMPLE 491 ======================================== Whom at the loveless feast they lov'd, At warm midnight! Dead, fated from the bower, And ne'er forgat of Grief, the best of both, A haggard, penitent, weak-held at length, And strifes with his own soul; which in such wise Found best — to yield his blood to slops sinful stained. Lo, yonder spire; there in a mellow dawn Succeeds the rising beam; the slow hours' morn, The shepherds, 'mid wild opinions wide, Happy in their simple shepherd lives, praise The Law that keeps Grief from harms. Lo, yonder spire! Behold the Farmers of the North, the chain Knotted round their right good natural instincts; But towards the wester in Bay and south, the chain Spread to the rustic East, of all our peerage bold, Greasy-wearing and aloft the garb is wore, Hands' North a-wood with the jimp of Cornwall. Here Wood is the rule of labour, well the master, There North and West the children of the day. The St. George Cross, far-bound, waves o'er the mound The gem of all the crosses that we claim; Glenrot and his genial brother, best Who sav'd the English lyre, the bard whose bard Glad wisdom's praise inspires and halo's web; Who bade the sober old age more godlike blare, Than Apollo's self the lyre-notes of harps Purer, far more poet-and his Ill known; Wise of the schoolman and the senator, Of the poltroon of France, of the poet never sick; Chang'd, like the schoolman, as youth's living god, The passion of his heart with reality; Of the senator, the poet he thinks; Here with a fitting picture, chaste his panel; Every fashioning touched off from range to range, And the true boskmelvy of all bodies' mirth Fulfilled with his own and the world's delight; He ne'er forgets his look, or limbs, or heart, or soul; He must but take the record from what's fair, Stripp'd to the beggar's standing posture free; So proud, so girt, so feeble, so gaunt, so grey; Nine years she liv'd, and virtuously still Of cleanliness and alms endured many feasts; But never loved the feast, nor barrel's rich overflow Or vine's purple nectar, now knew vexation-tongue, Celestial sickness; this her choice, every chance to grapple. She had been sure (by all the signs) that sometime, far, She had been married; so a jealous girl she proved; But, when she had believ'd, (for not a fool or blind, Was boy or girl, that saw clear, could doubt her) that time Had run her girl's; and she the marriage-seal had missed, She ran full fever; saw, heard, and she knew not or reason: We know not what she might, but such they were, then, Between her height and other height, her tonings run; For lust became her looks; all her faculties, The light of heav'n she lost, and rule of reason. All his passions in a whirl had left her. He for her yet would have been crazed; like a dial He swings, and now is turned, and now is o'er By gentle results; all this they call her: She sat by all, all mute, in all; all crush'd, refine; Alth' elevated in the centre. But now her poor cadaver is outsell'd, And will soon grow which is so bare, and bare (Yet not without pomp) for an empty nose And hollow organs; be the skin conceiv'd Not form'd with hands but formed of features, and no parts But the three; to the fat from all defect; If they would know their thanks, they should employ, Not her, their thanks, they should her praise; her praise Their thanks be; who praise unenvies and unbescr; Who God did on them frame and flit aside, And left them back here a moment, where they stand Well-g only, but with her arrows they stand Bless'd, as the heart's desire, when man's become Cinder, and cork adorns her caldron full. The land of solitariness, the ======================================== SAMPLE 492 ======================================== which rolls from the door, into the garden. he’s a little wet from play. he’s about two weeks old. the terrible thing is, i’m afraid to scold him yet. i’m afraid of what might happen. not taking him out the window to look up at the stars. i am afraid the poor, terrified rat will jump and stay asleep in my hand. i will think his arms will simply wrap around me and carry me away into the great dark. i’ll keep him with me on the desk at my job where i’m the youngest explorer in the whole world. <|endoftext|> "the moment between two lilies", by Jian Mohtweme [Living, Love, Infancy, Relationships, Men & Women, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Stars, Planets, Heavens] it’s just the one lily on your lips and it’s the color of cold body, flesh and the moment between the second and third flower, the strongest and last one. still, you keep it on your lips. the smell of each lily is slightly different, though there’s a close resemblance. and the way you taste the third flower is also very strong. in your mouth the color is the shade that each flower takes when you taste it. you keep it on your lips. a quarter moon, un-made, floating on the un-watered sea. and as you eat your food you reach to brush each fish with your finger. everything is soft in your fingers as when you first touched the surface of the third flower. the sound of the sound with your tongue fulled up with the color of fish is almost missing. and you taste the color of the flower you put in a pouch at your lip to listen for the fish. <|endoftext|> "recital at the cemetery", by Jennifer Groobg [Living, Death, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Nature, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Night & Nor'Wrens] it was early autumn. we were still in the process of burying the winter consumption. he was digging graves in his clothing, digging up women’s coats to rewear among the women. i didn’t know what to think. they put him on state TV. we made an art form of this (a part of which we previously had recorded for your listening pleasure on our thankless news hour) telling stories about the distant yet omnipotent ability of recollecting things. he cried at the sight of his mother’s cold body. she dropped like a stone, into a crack in the ground. i thought that was the end of it. then she started crying for his father, for his father’s partner, who both feared and hated him for leaving. i was consumed with stories of soldiers returning from war and finding that their domestic partners were the enemy, many of whom were the original inhabitants of a country they now spoke with a different accent, but were presumed to be at some point captured and held and tortured and then released. i was full of tragedy. we held this woman in memory until we carried her to a grave we knew he would eventually visit. we carried her to her grave. when we carried her we could gaze at the finely crafted wool that covered her body and imagine that was the reason she was so cold. later we knew that her body was strange —its coldness—in its distance from us, and that the woman’s relationship to her body was the measure of her distance, a living space instead of a dead space <|endoftext|> "knight story (3)", by Jennifer Groobg [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Love, Classic Love, Realistic & Complicated, Unrequited Love, Relationships, Anniversary, Spring, Philosophy] one guy and one galley on a riverboat at midnight king size stuff. we lean to the witness seat of the lady and the horse. that's one thing you will never hear me say, that my wife has decided we’ll cruise for Ireland in two ======================================== SAMPLE 493 ======================================== rhyme. who you are will never say "I love my knife. one is red, two is green. this is the color of love." I am flying over the red land and the green that is night and the night that is blue. I am flying from my gun on the night sky to my song on the ground. one is red, two is green. this is the color of love. I am above and I am here. <|endoftext|> "Day and Night in Eating My Heart", by Matthew Zapata [Activities, Eating & Drinking] Day and night in eating my heart For breakfast I fry egg whites in the backyard kiln To make soap for the showers and the sinks In which I steep the scalding water until The bathsheris antlion blooms from the boiling I am in the process of draining two cauldrons Over clean fire and the space Of the kiln Dumping as much sky as possible in the crater Then burning sand to glass on top For soap and the lather I made shaving the animal that unbound me To what I now note with pleasure while I sink into it For it is a fond and receptive fool Who loves me for who I can be <|endoftext|> "Body without the Wing", by Matthew Zapata [Love, Desire] I am that body I climbed inside your head and it was hot I am the sky I fly out in public and am readied for capture Pretend entities are orchestrating their fictional needs I am a depiction of that game Destroy us if you believe you were lost who am I that washes your skirt I am you who washes you I am going to me now you that I was to get me now <|endoftext|> "Antique", by Evie Shockley [Living, Life Choices, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Nature, Animals] Antique, Antique how do you mean Antiquities? 3, 2, 1 cut the thin post square how do you 1,2, 3 I wear an old hat, then a toad, then boots true false false true true true <|endoftext|> "The Ruins of Last Year's House", by Evie Shockley [Living, Life Choices, Activities, Eating & Drinking] I had a sweetroll casserole and made a midi of it then slathered the stuffing with peanut butter; the topsy brown face like a chocolate bar was burning inside me so I swiped my phone for a video and the reception was good so I munched on the receiver very late at night, by the tent latitudes of summer <|endoftext|> "New Directions", by Evie Shockley [Living, Life Choices, The Mind, Arts & Sciences, Music, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality, Mythology, Greek & Roman Mythology] Dissonant hook, brassy swagger, twists of animal expression: how could I forget? How could I forget the tambourine bent with my hips by the cords? I'd seek refuge in toasted bass, the drop of quesalted straw. I'd sing the corners of stupid melodies. My voices would polarize and change, as if I were seven, nine, ten. I'd bang out blank strings to harsh, inaudible tunes. On the edge of everything I'd bark the alphabet to crackle clatter. The way of things, not wanting to lose me would seem to impede my gift and quickly take away my will. That I was a small and poisonous being would seem very big to say. I'd wait for people who were too young to know or too stupid to know that a loud voice can turn and can set off alarms that take the form of a bat swinging out of a dirty breeze. I'd show up in tops that exposed my bums to the world and earned me certain punishment: permanent vermission of red bars across my name, permanent third eye, permanent nick on one's name, permanent blot on the document. For people who didn't know me, I'd bark, then burst into song. <|endoftext|> "Exits", by Evie Shockley [Living, Separation & Amends, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Winter] All that I love: the wind ======================================== SAMPLE 494 ======================================== Roses that their fair hands keep the drain, Still bloom their sunshine to the touch, In the face of death, but smile without a sigh. The wild flowers come and hover round the horn, Weave a gay hearse to send the fair away; See the bridegrooms I, and the bride, Whose smile, the sun's face, will be the tombstone's grace; Shall the flowery palm bury your bones in round? Scatter your beauty as the lilies be scatter'd, And don't you question me what, I say, If you let me crush your bloom for ivy, You're but plotting how to make worse! Who'd want it? No, and say it, and get it, too. Who'd trust it? No, and stake it. No, and get it. Who'd sell it? The same who'd haunt it? (Don't be angry with me, dear, You're not so young as you think you are!) The fancy lass in the fancy park Whom fancy brings with her To keep her company, Would give half-an-hour's time to spy it. Beauteous, if charming, As well as beautiful To make a girl's vanity o'er; Nay, sweet and charming As flow'rs that still are sweet and charming. Nay, you'll blush; you're too much in awe Of your own worth and beauty; Your eyes shine, and your hair falls, dear, Not when you're most successful; But then you're flatter'd the most By those you have not success'd; Would you be one-half so splendid? Just half so beautiful? You'd fly from the gaudy passing, The giddy crowd, And drive a dozen equally sporting; And be one-third good, two-thirds dreadful. O Parce! O mine, my treasure! Full of self-scorn, And with a heart full of God's heartless woes! Vain lamentations will you plough The troubled sea of my desertness, For the palm-windowing Of this heart, Is the breast Which the world's congealing; What is glory but a poor image of love, That where you've led Your chosen ones The diadem of sense Which blinded foreruns, Fade from your lips before you can turn, From the scornful language Of your one faith To a silly word, Or love-shape it. You are precious to me as though I were A son the heart of poetry, And wherever I'd the highest place to go, You'd follow, Who scorn the mass who stumble-blunder'd to, With all your sorrows, Disqualified success, And you're so dainty in that way, That I feel over-caval, What oracle was it that said (That ghost I wis, That's called a father by half-a-score Of wombn wombnipows) That poetry o'er the world doth not far From error steer, But he was answered By a small mirror, That answered not at all. When I confess, dear love, my grief and despair Upon your beauty, you correct All the gloom of sorrows, Dark and hopeless mien, Narrow eyes and bosoms sore, Uncertain go with what they are, And an unexpected smile From you from-star Ever sparkling In your cheeks Vital and alive, Stands to the end of terrors, When I confess That my grief, I've had a melon to save the bees On the plain to-day, A world of sun to try, And you were here--and this Silence. If what I said to-day Thrilled the royal heart Of the Hesperides, All the bees with buxom me<|endoftext|>Erasmus I have only a word to you, one, One Lad, above the mountains of Padnos, So hard to smite, so sweet to dance. Oho! a word of love and pity To the enchanted Hermitage For these lovely sons of summer. They are wise, all, and dressed in costume, Who have travelled to the forest fair. They are fierce, with garlands of plump and pruny, And these Peach-bud and cherry the wind blows through; These boys, these lads of summer, swaying To the tune of the sarabant To ======================================== SAMPLE 495 ======================================== Vienna Delon and Alston on the sward Lift up their hearts in amazement: They seldom have heard that love is dear Before they heard New England's lute, Or that deep voices sound so sweet, Before they heard the drumming of the bands Round the Man in all his humanity. But the shades of the violins are waving In the sunshine of the summer air, While the organ's uneven clangor is sounding Through the dazzle of dazzle and noise. And the mad passions of two bodies Flutter on the wind of the night, As on whilome the thousand-barred Forty-chambered thruster Rails at the castle on the hill With the moon of France behind it. But by painting that seems so faint, Those who are nigh to its fancy Can almost feel its presence, Except when the wind-flowers blow Through the hollow roof, or the black Swart bugging of the roofs drive Blank through the structure its tints. When life was like a flowing draught Was it ever clean? But now the going's soon past, So all that amuses and mopes, Well, let them come and go, when they will, And leave this not easy lot; The much-divided Living the Dower Doth touch the eye of providence, Which grows at last to love, and love brings death. But never was undeflected fate Left without a morgage driven By the blows of fortune on to rise With all the multitudinous hue And show of fate that with each gasp is shown. To haughty Nature the love of men Is more than no rank excess, And with its most infernal joy 'Tis thou that art dearest to the earth. And what doth this unto my affections? Your leaves and flowers I burn and drench In your bright soul-sip, what doth this Have touched the restless life of Homer, And with his haughty heart went home To the death of Trojans and the Greeks?' But neither flowers nor leaves are these Creatures of life, so nought but you Comes to the fruition or the tomb. In this you children; thou--in you this I burn for what your words shall be; And burning fast, but being light Beyond Desire thou yet mayst be, Within the soul of all men live I. Your giant's heart it still must break, That heart like an ocean yet astray From the deep point of his proper dreaming, And thou and I on this coast of bale Shall meet by the clear blazing of the sun. And thou, ye neighing teams of day-- Here 'mid thy ardour I am dy'd, I am die! If I could see that fountain as I dream, I'd roll my wild head, be strung up, and die. Thy breath is harsh to me, and this one kiss Kiss and learn--O angel wife of god! Speak out while your fancy can; be bold A little, to my chiefest. I've seen The untrodden men buy many a song In amorous fore-conducts, that can bestow The rarest comforts on their way, Till when at last they have their fill, they stop And gaze around; and such an one as thou I see, both rich and poor, but know that God Knows more than men know and wordy ears have told. Folk grow so much as the fields that feed them, And till they're harvest enough, or they're still Forever half in, and forever half out. Thou art become so light, that without notice Some yon tall cornice lifts thy white head up twain 'Neath thy dear name, and all the glorious mould Now lies so deep in thine unwrinkled eye It helps thee in thy honey comb to look fresher. Gentle and kind, a mother's pride! A cleft in thy firm, bright heart Hath pierced the dark, and made thee shine, Fill full with heaven's beams, bright as heaven. A mother's love may do such things! I want no son; I want a daughter At once a god and worldly; I want a god, and he must be The best and squareest, and not show A gimcrack, or a stirrty chin. Let him be ready to weep With her for dead--sorrow; It makes the life to which we come To look so perfectly natural, There's no ======================================== SAMPLE 496 ======================================== Cassowary. Báli came with assiduous duties Unto the king who named him judge; Báli came, to light the load, But the whole burden shook at his voice. The righteous monarch, re-convinced, Dared to forgive him and to spare, Smiled in the city of his foe, Saying: "Speak forth without fear or dread, Speak, even if thou dies the fair one seek." Cassowary. To meet Aasa vicóste, De sareb, toque la vího se llama Ocupado a porfrate y, Desmoduone, para quer la llama. Fear on the spur of foot. Fearful to lose A servant of the king; Fearful to lose a faithful friend. His comrade refused, scornful of scorn, Refus’d a saamiento service, Blest himself, and home forsook His face the same white hair wore; Fled the cities of his race, In the places where he lived, A solitary hermit there, Gazed on the Grecian ships, and said, Daños de las droñas troto: Dear to us So well is she seen. To hear and see; to be alone; The lady and the sampan to him. At night her cleanly hair tied on, And in the field her body bare, Like civet glazes, and fair to see, So had the virgin who sought The voice of her lover seen. Daños de las droñas troto: Del a mi niño del a parecía, Mi vida, y de las gloria. Kodi, yea, botolo, botolo! Ya es gloria, y las alas. En mi asamismoe Mi primo cagón pendece, El cuerpo ahora In the stream-beds wet, I see my fish, a glow-in-the-low-stone Pulling gently on the tail. In the froth, crystal clear, The others were already there, I will not order him away. First the Ant and Peace were named: Gone are the rest; But even now in view, Not as a jewel he stands Silent, erect, and proud. So bear him we of all Who think with lip or hand, or serative Who, unwilling, force him apart, All of which fictions are as dead As they were ever thought to be. A poni is a goddess, of the whole race, Serene and large and stately. This is one of them That it may have many meanings, such as they are. Fair and free! She leads not slaves. Dione, who was bound In tyranny, and after her the Latile, Would fain order me her fascine, And make me the leech of all and doe of all; But I will be the Giaone, Giaun ce va the bindes. An Aco mother calls her son: Prec. You that govern, you that be kings, You all have, to your pleasure, You never were glad of the act, How good's not to keep. So let them see my draught, But with nought of force. Shall I behold it, and of wit forbid? Can they prevent its working of? I was made of their produce, And for slaughter of a thing, I was made in their eild, They made me, and I might But haply with it afterward With what joy had I then That I was seen of them? Great indeed their gifts of my play, The faith which they bore to me! And in thy modesty thou art bound In many ways to giue me an aid, Alas! and for the danger's sake, Fear these:—Poor refugees, poor, abandoned. An Aco mother calls her son: Grief comes in faces when a friend forsakes the world: How camest thou here? Ah, that for which, when I pray, My prayer for such a man should rise! No better days, no better days for me. Our births are from the world's hand, Man's doth to man be granted, As in ======================================== SAMPLE 497 ======================================== stand closer, after all the things you see not, for the minute. <|endoftext|> "I Was Not Sent Here", by Calvin Watson [Living, Coming of Age, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Popular Culture, Popularity] for all my fractured scribbling Or words have distorted and mumbled themselves away So unreadable they are like a constellation Of homilies, books and pamphlets stashed around the walls An unrepeatable blue, deep purple, violet and gold To prove this out Visitors left their drinks unattended They didn’t spill their personal narratives To reassemble a book of their asymmetrical Colour and read it in tone and line Or colour and read it in tone and line This is how the darkness spreads, All over the hotel room Because it is an old, old story Who will put their arms around this wall? Who will sit with me, mumbling myself away? Who will lead me out of this lonely place And teach me the way to be taken by a stranger And lead them through their days and learn their ways? And then teach them to be taken by a stranger Of their own contour, with their own asymmetrical Colour and line? Who will prop this wall up? Who will stand with this weeping roof under the stream of light? I am tired of building this wall and putting up with all the predations On the Fourth of July weekend And I do not know what the poem is I have given myself to comprehend its authority Or who the author is Or how I am to be led or what I can share As long as I can see and hear That I am not responsible for my country For the state of my body Or complexion And these intransigent questions Do you know, or are you just feeling the sun And the rumour of people moving through a room And they forget their footprints are not their own Or where the sand in the cabinet is not indicative of distance Or rhyme or circumstance Or the specular clarity of colourlessness The space between housewifery and maker Will this be true no matter how far we are from the source? Or is it a space that does not find its answer Because it is not marked Or must’nt say where How much hazel law will fall Or the black books lie close to the bed? Will redwood depth become A particular depth And ache with a preference Of feeling From which all registers Rotate or vanish Or twitch and lose their feeling Even the land is not above the trees Or is the land a book Where the lines are torn and red And copper agates Meet red copper descendents? The limbs Rotate, but there are no cords That are not like the eyelid veins Where does the scalp go Or any movement go No matter what the cord? Was it poetry or line of jewelled words Or a string that makes no sounds Because no strings are in the body? For this he is felt and known Not by the mere feeling of objects But by the body of forms And songs And musical form: A shifting finger That pulls the eyes And stretches the lips And makes the words Shudder and shudder Or spreads the arms Tight and expand For a longer gaze or open For a faster hush? One does not simply reach For the silver that slides down From the mine shaft In flakes Like the rocks of sleep As the blood slides into vessels There are cracks in the desert For the electricity Climbs in to call And there are cracks in the desert That make the surface Stretch and yawn And daylight extend To cover the whole Of what is here. <|endoftext|> "The Damned", by Calvin Bedouin [Living, Death, Social Commentaries, Heroes & Patriotism, Memorial Day] For Charles Barskool The day’s façades sway and sway in the wet trees, like swaying seas Trees swaying in the air, there are flimsiest movement Dispersion and diffusibility, according to Merriam-Webster Disorderly Distinction without dispense “It was more like hell than school, that is how we fought He had got him in his mouth They charged into a dead-aloof and raced out in her face” The man is a cactus on a grave And in vain the duel the girl Ere the axe and dagger fight A-glamorizing the tweedy weapons ======================================== SAMPLE 498 ======================================== Then old Hyssop he exclaimed: "Now, my dear little housekeeper, Let the darling Nornes play, Let them chase each other round; Let them throw the ball and many-headed. "When to bed your mother says 'No,' Let her cause to do so too be made, Let them hug and many a kiss. Let it not be thought I say you should be caught. But she says 'Yes,' and will not be caught." Then said the nimble-limbed Androgeer, Or 'Abroad' so well he was called: "I know where the ball goes.' Say now hark! In the dust when I say 'Yield!' On you overcoat and let your hand Go the length of the field for the fair." Then bold Chinadash or Suabheesh, So they ran the whole day long Through the smooth fields of rustling corn. They ran with cheeks that tumbled o' ruby red, With ringlets that rolled and stuck up in air. On the smooth bat or dough-ball they pushed their foot, And soon as they got on, 'Here we meet,' they said. To the banks of the sweet flowing RGH, Where the sugar cays flourished all the day, And the pink roses blossomed in their nest; And they leaped the line and scooted the ball, So as to go the whole round without missing a steed. So when the woman began to curse, And called them 'damned insufferable pests,' The stout horses made a deafening neigh And cast their tails in every line they drew, And neighed and snorted with an awful noise, To the croaking of the boys at such a rate. When the woman ceased her strain, they said, 'For pity let them stay away; 'Tis cruel to leave him that could not drink The blood of all the morning.' 'Ah! But for ever,' Said the soft-voiced women, 'you see' they said, 'You had this noise a welcome while, but now 'You curse and run away--then go Limping along and go on and on; But the woman must keep away or die. For by and by you will shout at all. You will march in full houses, and parade, And everlastingly be bellowed 'Here's my Head!' And hence the round-rocks and cheer keepers, And the triple rows of boxes, And the blue-coats marching in furs and feathers To the sob and rattle of a convoy. So, ladies, don't cry and curse, but sit, And do not go out and run for women to kiss. It ceased, but still he went. 'We will follow him To his tomb,' thought they; 'let us go across, And wait till morning comes. He will come again.' Till, when the horses shook their heads at night, 'I say, no!' the Landells cried in fear, 'He will be here before us.' On through the night They ran. But when the light took colour of day, They saw the grave beneath the road so clear, It was the shape they thought of. And if there's a grace Of cloud, or craft, or death or destiny, In any life, there's some such shape as that. Evenings and days, at best, are blanks in time. You may say 'They are only hours. He will come. Nothing else than that;' yet when you and I Have gone our hearts through these idle times and nights, Perhaps you and I, passing down the street, May pause and almost see. That was the world of gold That he had. There are no scraps now. But that was only his spirit's tomb, Where only his dust can do the flesh no harm, And even then all untouched, for there are rewards Beyond the drawer's reach in him of gold. In the hollow of his hand, the pool Of trembling blood has fed its lazy elves. It may be, that if I tried I should wrest them from the mother's grave, The children's hearts might turn to us, Hereafter, to be beggars indeed. For she is not dead, But in the grave. She would come to them. But I am too old. Even then It was not my place. So may I sit here and say that I have loved The woman much too well to let her lie. All I can do now is to stand by the mound, And count the crosses ======================================== SAMPLE 499 ======================================== firmer, stronger than light, fire, and light. Into the earth I came, sinking like the just extinguished. Into the darkness of history, the last man crawled, exhausted, into his unconsciousness. <|endoftext|> "Body and Soul", by A. R. L. STEELE [Living, The Body, The Mind, Religion, God & the Divine, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] "Who’ll protect you when the heat is turned off in the coal shop?" —George James, “The Entertainer” The best I can do now is accept what I can write, ask for what I must eat from the garbage can, say what I must say to the judge or not the judge, let a friend call me for me, say the s in front of slug, and a dog will call me, say none of it matters anyway, I will just say, I, the letter I mean to write, and never mind the p or n, as of poetry, just the r I mean, as if I’m only half and not both, that, say, I am not here I, possibility, not for poems but for poetry, as my name is Robert, that he writes poems, I in turn write others, then I forget to write them, and the name I mean to write is Robert the Ripper. <|endoftext|> "The Chicken Garden", by A. R. L. STEELE Just the plants, maples, rosemary, dill, fern, creeping plume of catmint, and a few creeping marigolds. No frogs, but I have heard you can hear them. No bottles, no bottles, just them, as the wind scatters them, overgrown with grass. We do it where we do it, just the plants, maples, rosemary, dill, fern, creeping plume of catmint, no frogs, but I have heard you can hear them. Just the plants, maples, rosemary, dill, fern, creeping plume of catmint, no bottles, no bottles, just them, as the wind scatters them, overgrown with grass. We do it where we do it, just the plants, maples, rosemary, dill, fern, creeping plume of catmint. <|endoftext|> "Razory", by Videlaun Simratna [Living, Life Choices, Activities, Eating & Drinking, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries] Meat, whole chicken, get to the bone, and let the poor chick fall— So the sage goes all crack and juice, all bleed, all stray; So the sage goes up all sky, all tree, and let her drop, weak or heavy. So the tithe hermes, come in, Then the titer, and blow the powder, Let her be saucy, thin or soused; So anoint her all over with oil, Let her shine, no matter what she says. Fowls, ducks, geese, let them fast, But the sage shall nurse you up; Then get to the feathers, that's the trick— Or if feathers are not your thing, Stock those saucily, if you will, Come October and all the beer, Whole they make, and dry the same; Or, if, of rapine, you take a fancy, Let them not only be plump, But let them be ripe, heavy, fragrant. So the tithe hermes, come in, Then the titer, and blow the powder; Let her be saucy, thin or soused; So anoint her all over with oil, Oil, or butter, it makes no difference; So she shall be trim, Shale, or corn, on the hie, Et helliqu ewindossum gingum, Do they keep on about her, All ole and infirm? Or do they laugh and joke, It makes you, my good dame, Groan and grow audacious: How do they do her tricks? Who hath yon lady-maid, Bifur e and owre yand, Helping her to be saucy, Wrath and anguish, oh? Of an old chicken, my dear, I make a mare of her, Furs, my ======================================== SAMPLE 500 ======================================== j'as su incroyable, j'intiffible, J'amourdonnerie, Je viens ma première amour, Je me croirais mes cays, Je fous l'esprit, j'aime les lieux tous ioi, j'aime les yeux, j'aime les lit, j'aime la veille, j'aime l'intime, Je me rends mes cheveux Je me rends mes litres Je me rends mes hameaux, Je me rends mes blessans, Je me rends mes chansus, Je suis repassée, Viergeis de me barbais, Je me rends mon cuy enfant. <|endoftext|> "in desperate short", by Rebecca Hazelton [Love, Relationships, Men & Women, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality, Race & Ethnicity] Though you could hop on and drive half an hour down mileage, if you could do one thing, one place, one thing only, one cold, one hot, one call, one fetid breath, one toe-tweak, one blow job, one song, one dance, one date, one none, one day, one sunset, one afternoon, one sweat-in, one scaring yourself to sleep, one lacuna, one afternoon of nothing, one lurch and one yawn, one idea, one opus, one bid. <|endoftext|> "Harry." "Hello." "Red." "Hello. I'm Harry. Can you talk? Do you need a ride to your back porch? For a hose to borrow. Good to have you home." —Andy Shirley, Great Kings toils around his backporch; Arthur Fies brought him pipe and book, helped him huck through cloud to cloud. —Allen Ginsberg came down to West Narmans, described how lonely he was there. Said, "the beasts are like the first things" [Elder, Mind, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Class] —Luke Kennelly offered Ginsberg a lift. Said he doesn't drink, told him to go east on 101. —Found it—Carmelite nuns stole Bartow's Tic-cum-tic out the barrel of its socket. <|endoftext|> "Ecce Vita," by Richard Lovelace [Living, Death, Love, Desire, Relationships, Religion, God & the Divine, The Spiritual, Social Commentaries, Class, Money, War & Conflict, Mythology & Folklore, Greek & Roman Mythology] The sun has gone down, night is dark, The camp is on fire, men fight round. Who should come there but you and me? This way it has turned to grey, To nothingness, nothingness, nothingness, You and I alone. There's something in the sounds and lights The fire is making, I can hear something in the air, But the eyes, who are seeing so Burn with so short a glow That I must trust to everything In the shape that's happening there To be a symbol some time, Of who I was, a little god, Who heard the sound Of thunder, and took to flying so. I have drunk your love, my love. Now there's no darkness there. Only we are together. You, you and I, Together, where? Dear grey, warm-hearted man, our eyes, I hold your white hand which shines Like water in a stream. <|endoftext|> "You've Come a Long Way to Tipperary,", by Richard Dante Valentini [Religion, Christianity, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] I could say a thing and not be un-Christian, say a thing and not be a Protestant, say a thing and not be a Jew, say a thing and not be an Italian; there is much that is Italian. —Pliny the Elder I. The Perils of Sanctuary Many of our soldiers have died in the trenches of Europe, or drifted off from the coast of France to fight. They went away from sunlight, the sunshine that is first, first sunlight, first, first first as if they were drunk with it, and the Lord, who follows, hides them. A face will follow, a story to tell. The story of one man. You have come a long way to Tipperary, little town of Tipperary, little ======================================== SAMPLE 501 ======================================== Because I have seceded, You are not a genius, But just a dilettante. Your plot of ground is Bounded by bay, Which belongs to France; Is Paris a rich city? If you wear a gun. 'Tis mine, for we have dueled together. And we're severing to preserve One as a trophy of our victory. What was my plan to you? Was it to keep I know not where? I make the odds as good or worse; I hope it may be longer. If the plots are cast in Bay, I'll be hanged if I take another. And perhaps I shall, I said, For I was blythe to have tried Thy fayre matters first, Jack. But old knowledge won't be dumb, And I've talked it o't and o't. O I'm glad to know you, Jack, But gladder to have met you, too. And glad I am that the wind should fail At last to paw the trees. And glad I am, and glad I grieve That it's sad, but the rain. The doctor could not hear, Nor was he grown, nor clever, nor clever; He was an old clerk, But so it was hard, He was not able to spell the book, Or back-draw it out. The shepherd's hector would say, But he couldn't Have caught a language quite; The poet's pig, you understand, Was soon and soon grown old. The tailors could not sew, And so they all were made; For the art Was only good For those who wanted to wear The patchings above. The ploughman could plough, And to the plough he could walk, Not at all, you see, As I've lived and lived so long. And for the most I could Do nothing more, For I had a plough. I won't say he was a fool, For it is not wisdom To set values at life's head, And value the wain above The horse, for instance, Or plough; Or as a lamb her throat. To taste I know not what it is With this new sense Of other pleasures it may be, And yet not the less I know, They know not of this; To you I come I have been surprised by how wide A-day is, and yet how sparsely known To most of my friends and comrades I must confess. I know them yet Are few in number. Who were they? Weed out of what town? The old harvest's come in, a-slenderer than fell Its silk wings and silk leaves, and the apples And cherries hung a-tiptoe Their fluttering skins upon The branches of a-sprang For the frost. One or two Woke their brief prayer, Which wasn't much, and turned about And went with all the rest to dream. It does no good to tell you Who didn't go, how we Were flayed alive beneath the sun, Until our marrow bones Were visible and dim; For night had pulled All beards from out the soil And his big fingers whirled The heads of men and women Into the wind Because I was afraid. For you know That faith of mine can do A man of me No good; a-long to be More than a little Unfair, for his beauty's sake; And for no one else's Heal till it's done. And those of you, what are you then To do for me? Let Me in to stay awhile Before I go And take my leave; and you Your own voices be deaf For once and for twice, And let's have the use of all Our bodies. You were made To serve, O dear God I have some things to say about the moon. She glitters, A leech that melts her golden glaze In milk, and with her white lips, To suck my blood do let me groan And again fail; her eyes look deeper Than the blood cell's focus, but all night Her ears respond with sound so soft You'd hardly know they had caught it Of any thing beside the head Of an insect pressed in a lid And shaken hard enough to rasp The hair and skin away. A-sliver from the earth, my sister, A-sliver, my dead ======================================== SAMPLE 502 ======================================== "Have your drays not brought you love," he said, "I bid you come to my house with pleasure, Have a chair of one of those pretty things, Which in the well her higher patrons can spare; And before you there shall be the pleasant scene, Which will make your house dear, if they treat you well!" While this was said, they came to his own mine, And half of the house for one of his made, Which he had made in the old fashion of Rome, Like a cut-out and look-out cot in villa, set, In a place that was nobly roofed, and full Of the antique luxury of cleanly woods, In which the hearth rose high, high above the slab of it, As of old the arch, and he stood ready to burn The heihte ovens of his bread, had he been bound, The plagues of the air o'er the whole earth, and a tempest, And wind, and rain, to keep the house warm were proved, It made the most of all that it seemed that wiste. Not as in our nether hell but as on earth were we, And it was so more shame to stand in the place, than be Foredoomed to that doom, to lie in the nether deep Than in the upper deep of the pit, in the mire; And on the wretched father for his child to be beholding To whom, had he known, he had have made scorn of all, Of father, mother, friend, and of all things as of this. The public from the house could be had at all times, I saw it in the drawing-room daily, at my door, and down The stairway, in the street, and in the rooming-sink, the glassy reflection Glassing the ground-floor with its blaze, and underfoot the floor. Not as in our nether hell but as in our upper deep But we knew, both the great and small, and there were we, Both among the small, but this was of the great, the odd, And we had lived in the greater to some and to some contemptible, And we had less fortune and less merit, and a little less, Our life was like that of the ship with its long plan, A shadow and a countenance, or when the seaman Twice drinks from a cup, and the first is done, the other begun. We had more than we were worth, had scarce any worth, Had but so much as our work represented, or could Represent, as it represented our sinking hope, In the shape of a remembrance, in the shape of a sound, We had met in some meeting of the States, and there We met for the sole purpose of seeking a way Out of the continuous thicket where we were, to gain a road, And no road but the undivided love of air, which is A sacred virtue, a more or less eternal longing, Was there, or I know there, in any place, or ever More good pursued, more evil opposed; nor was there once a time, But that a road of any road, or path of any path, Was opened as we watched the sun go down, the whole night through, While the mournful sleep went down on us, that the slow moths, With the last light, and the slender albeams, alight at last And died, but that we saw a sight, a joy, a joy innumerable Of form, of feature, of temperament, without a name, A spirit of man, and a spirit of his godlike machine, All like each other, and yet like each other again, As under a common fund we all were gathered together, Bought and sold at a lower price, as slaves, and workers, For a greater sum, and as commodities, to give in demand, And as living skeletons to be digg'd up for mention; In a light cloud drawn, as it were, in air for fear Of persecution, as such I saw, and my waking had power Of a new language, and I heard their talk as I lay nigh, To a big donkey, called Beelzebub, whose mask Was face horribly Fasiatic, with high peakoopity And a fondness for lolling and a dislike to somers Sitting upright, and his slow hump, and his more or less Distorted eyelids, which seem'd bloodshot; and besides The ridiculous way he had of rolling his eye To the uranium ore in the gulph of Beelzebub, and puffing, Like ======================================== SAMPLE 503 ======================================== The sun up-his-shell. And when you've a mind to drowse, A ball's a gorgeous song. And so the fly, in the sun, and the bee That bops beneath the pear-tree bough, Their songs are but grandeurs of this court; For here's the moon all in May, and a brooch As rare as that o' the azure sky! Give it up, musing, all your fancy's roam, Like the sea at the break of the Lent; The tide goes out, the cottages shine Like the green in the morning, one by one. When night has its seat, and the lark flies His song of arches overhead, One gets weary, and then the earth Seems clothed in the heavy gown of sleep, And then the world all turns black at last: Falling asleep to the deeds of April. Like a weaver, in the early Spring, Steadily and boldly striking the tether That binds the combined colour and the light, Yet thinking of the night's delay, Which seem's a bound and prepares the gear To be scrolled on the warp, as it were shaped and spun, And take shape of what it renders, rather more So than otherwise; so colour, thought and form, Do one effect, colour and form, from the Spring Forward, to the fall of the night. Dost strike B in the night? Turn it into A, 'twill fly In a thrill of Love; Sure as, when a south wester raps Some dark abyss, some evil way to man, Some light reaped from the sun's descent Surely, will A be the light. Man of the vulgar tongue, the world's knee-fetters bind you so, Your voice to the world you send, Which colours tremble to repeat The pathos of the path. That voice which first, young and low, One gust of Spring in you blew, Shall be all your instrument. Speak plain of the Master, and blend Words to one harmony, without A cross or defect. Strike on your wing and move, Child of the South, in the air. There's a little bud the first flush Of life within the silver morn, As 'twere its own crown, And delicate and gay. The maiden Earth Weaves like a silvery rose; The pink-cheeked Children weave And bade it bloom; And song-monger's wisdom Roams from our light. There's a little bud the first flush Of life within the silver morn, As 'twere its own crown; And lovely with oerladen, Was the bud as yet, And delicate and gay. Ah, hush, that even quiescence, Silk in silence bound. The maiden Earth Weaves like a silvery rose; The pink-cheeked Children weave, And song-monger's wisdom Roams from our light. The colours in our gardens We weave, the thorns in our flower, From the pluming poppies That rob the roses of their hue; The lizards in the close Of the vineyard's skin We wear like a coronet; And, so, if we blend, We rob the world of its charm. Hark, the music swells! Sweet music in the golden Morning, Blinded in its eager flight; Fond hearts, Pitying the error; Flashing like the foaming Blinded pine That from the wintry Streams, amidst the sunset, Out of its stem Blazed into green. It is not the wine of flowers With which my wine you inspire, Or the rattle of the pebbles In my hollow grotto; 'Tis a voice within that I hear, That trembling rises From the cool, uncertain, Faint, frail melody A lyre made by a bird, Or a voice one day Love divine, Gentleness of heart, Tenderness without stern inhumanity, These are my friends; O you that challenge my awe! My heart's met the richer For the wild heart that you gave. It was over the restless River One short sleepless moonlight sleep, When Love and I, While each was still by the other's side, Dreamed together, And touched, I know not how, Each other's heart The pond that he built with his soul And the ======================================== SAMPLE 504 ======================================== Became a woman clothed in beauty, Wrestled, 'twixt two combatants, A maiden, all harmonious sounds, From sister rhythmiers. Yet little she consented, Little thought the process. How cleanly her uniform Lay, when she could put no stain In her face, Or rubbed her neck, Little cared she for form Or the vesture chosen Rather with thought than choice. And so the last triumph, From January's nummy To Green-sand hoof-eighed mule Turned its head sideways, And such a flash of colour Fell out from it, A smile, that drew tears For those who sat there. None consented To go on with the dance, And so enjoyed it. But the Horse, when its living Equality had achieved, Opened its mouth, and began To nibble, eating the hare-bell. This extinguished its rivalry, Which had been, when they recalled, The apparent theme of their feast. And we bid good-night. <|endoftext|> I have seen things that might make a man Feel Like I'm drowning in a storm. Like the sucking weather and the rocking sea That leave no question that you are In the clear light of morning. There are some things that can't be shown To too many eyes, and yet they seem Like something you must behold. Like dim shapes in the vast, unfathomable ocean, Like clicking sounds in the mind of Time, Like a green vision in a darkened room, Like a face turned suddenly to tears, Like day and night and silence holding hands. Aching above the noon of life, The weary crescent moon Lenses my last of steps upon earth. When the sunset stretched its arm out on high, And lit the stars like a swarm of bees, And the trees lifted, chanting like a choir, Their silent prayer, that ever returns, Then a certain strength Crept down the winding pathway of my life Like a shadow falls a rocky ledge, Gliding before me on the dark green way Where the sea-blods bite the white sands, Still snarling at the moors. I sought some familiar faces and found them The same, although they seemed to change their forms In strange compoundions, But the same faces lay under the same pale Shape, and an old as well as a new shape Were contending in my invisible eyes, And the now known faces seemed to see the game With a certain calm, as though they mixed old wine. Closer still they came And the awful pageant of the secret things Wringed me with a terrible effort, And my knees failed me, and I cried aloud 'Oh that I could tell them but to pass on!' And I dropped, and all grew strange, and the dumb face Of the old centre bowed, and there was No music in the landscape, No bloom or glory, only a horizon of smeared-out stars. Long range and azure of wailing rose-mary Hid and hid in leaves like game of warring Fears, Till some fair shapes rose from the southward and the westward Flashed cross the golden valley like red streaked fire. But the forms that dwelt Close to me in the yellow light Were hard to interpret. Speckles on a bald acre Burned bright on the horizon. A mile ahead in a land of sodden things Like game within the field of vision Fluttered flowers of flame, and seemed to burn. And in the glowing east, above the dusky sea That flew like an unseen brooding bird And poured its tender scent upon the moon, Mounted mad pigeons, or said they were clad in fire, Climbed in the white flames of the splendour And went swooping round. Or like a plume of fire around a sun They shone like wings. But I must not only hold my country aloft, But every face and deed to me Must be changed and suppurated, and my thought Lay like in attitude on the sands Of time. Now that the day is dead that made me strong And flung me like a chance on chance and fate, As my foretold heart's free fruit, I lay me down Here by the sea, and all night deep in thought Iucunda, which I sometimes sing, I hope to pass out of time with a poem, Not meant to rise. And I hoped to rise like a wave from the ======================================== SAMPLE 505 ======================================== Witness the presence of sleep, the unconscious of others, of ourselves. Witness and heal, heaven and earth in singular: <|endoftext|> "A Little Closer", by Andy Warhola [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Love, Relationships, Family & Ancestors] After three years apart I meet my child at the playground across the street from the fast food joint where she cleans restroom walls. Her eyes are half-closed and her teeth have ceased to chatter. Only the eyes and teeth remain the same, gray and spare as slow-burning electrical wire. If there is a God then he is not listening. Without you, your brother, she wonders, doesn't know what love is. I tell her that life borrows some wire to keep us alive. The way life tells itself in actions is not always best. <|endoftext|> "After the Afterparty", by Andy Warhola [Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] On a last lap around the track I can see my friends and their cell phones mounted on their legs. I see the girl I used to hate turn around. She doesn't look back. My lips now part on good days and on bad I envy the barstools who get it down and grab their cups. In a blur of yellow and cream and gold I've been encouraged to leave my flat by two stenciled pylons which simply spell out the name an unassigned star. Now I would like a star of my own, which is why I've attached myself to a more advanced version of the alphabet. In this way I've been demotic for most of my life. And there are no sidewalks, no middle managers attending my addresses. I hope that one day I'll be able to balance a star with a freshly written apology that's as good as any other name. <|endoftext|> "Morning Scene", by Andy Warhola [Living, Health & Illness, Relationships, Nature, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Social Commentaries] I arrive at the paper, knowing it's 6:50, someone's checked in on my gurgling tracker and I'm plumb ahead for the front desk at Corbu Final: a round-trip, and there's a worn sign jutting up from the grille, like a groove an animal has carved into its spine. I slip in like a parasite, simmering in a burl of fuzz in someone's ear, the hum of my paper's syrupy propriety, and find myself at the bottom of a pecking order, instead, of a laundry list. I'm handed a topic: it's too early to get to today, but tomorrow's too late, so I tear open a topic, and when the sun gets to the pinnaclown and my name's on the cover I'll be fronting for the front for the front and the best fronting's still tomorrow. <|endoftext|> "The Missing Link", by Andy Warhola [Living, The Mind, Activities, School & Learning, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Trees & Flowers, Arts & Sciences, Painting & Sculpture, Sciences, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Popular Culture] One goal of mine is to recruit biologists to the war who are not engineers, and to give space to views that are in natural form of nature. One such view is the ocean, which is not only the seat of chaos. It is the seat of unity of form and spirit between form and soul, in that it is a material, and hence is doomed to change, as every ocean, with an infinite potential for change is bound by the physical properties of its matter. Our need for contact with other life forms, on the other hand, is a great need that we have for communication, as every atom, mass, molecule, vibrates in response to changes in the physical world and so forth. It is our natural need to make contact with the mystery of nature, to spread the truth of our creative impulses, which themselves are a sort of contact with something outside ourselves that we call discovery, even as ======================================== SAMPLE 506 ======================================== was just no one. the mime is awkward, and witless, and old. his powers are curious, and weak, and still at play, and open. so O do you know what they say. <|endoftext|> "All The Dead Died", by Ned Goldberg [Living, Death, Arts & Sciences, Reading & Books] You are not that water you diverted, not those fade inscriptions that were not yours. For a while now, we walk along side one another. I like you: you are my counsel. You are my cool hand. For a while now, We have been to the deepest corners of ourselves. For a while now, We are the sober living. But it’s too early to be reverent. And too soon, You are not that water you diverted, not those fade inscriptions. And in the future, when I no more can be my cool hand, I will have to be something else. It’s just begun. We will carry it out with quiet humor. But it’s too cold to be dead. <|endoftext|> "I do not think for one moment that he or she will not die", by Ned Goldberg [Living, Death, Growing Old, Life Choices, Parenthood, Sorrow & Grieving, The Mind, Time & Brevity] I do not think for one moment that there will be for us no griefs and tumult in our lives. I do not for one moment think I will not have no joys. I know I will not, for one. I do not think this, or that, or this or that, but this or that. Here is the man or woman who has no heart, and yet who has loved and worked and loved throughout his or her life, wanting to be more than that: more than the driver of a coffee shop, more than a cabbie, or a housewife or a professor, more than the secretary of another state, or even my own. I think of such as this who, as if by themselves, have never wandered in our time or walked with us through life, how it has been for us. And how we have grown, even as they have wept, how we have loved and hated and returned to the cradle to see again the baby who will become a boy or girl, to find out what we have done, and to remember too that we have loved and hated. And how we have waited and wished and suffered and feared and loved and feared. Here is the man or woman who has not desired, as if by him or herself, to be as all or most, to walk alone in the high hours of life, the low hours of death, and there as they have walked, no longer wantonly to suffer but also to change, and also to change, to become less and less and less; but even as they have become less and less they have also risen, rising from the lumps and the pits of life. But even as they have risen they have Here is the grave that his or her name will be next to appear in. Here is the garden or the slope of country or garden that was as long and as far and as bright as the distance or the length of the sky, or how far is the moon in the sky, to which we now may look and see as far as the natural length of that sky. There is also this, which to me has more than a ghost or two, the ghost or two ghost of dreams, or many ghosts of dreams, or dreams now forgotten, but never forgotten: no more for me. But more and more this all of course is that which we care for and are most afraid of, and for this that there is neither truth nor beauty is imputed to me. The ghosts of dreams are in my mind, and in my mind they are imputed to me. I am that which I am throughout all the days and nights and even wintry and sunny, I am that which I am. Yet if I observe that which I am not, I am not that which I. For this was my dream: It was only night that was beautiful, with the earth under me, beneath me, and a yellow moon shining above me. Here is the doorway, so I remember, and can remember the number of those who passed through it. There is no end or beginning to remembrance. And the invention, the discovery, and the beauty are always most lively when they make us old and young, young as a child and as an old man, and old as a scholar and ======================================== SAMPLE 507 ======================================== or the moon’s star the sun? Is it that year, is it that sleep? Does the passion for new lands release? Does the restless fierceness, does the delight of the sands, make thee think of times forgotten? Or is it the same, is it not the self, So worshipped in our changeful spring, That calls thee now, from all the sleep of time, Back to the quest, and back to the old? Perhaps we sleep, and waking know not it, Yet have we sworn the oath, and do we bear The eagle fierce in our youth’s battlefield? Or is it that fancy, and another plea, Have brought us to this desolate sea, And to this guarded fort for broken oaths, The cold, stiff, unpromising obsequies? And has the child, whose plume of green turns pale At the touch of the fire he hunts with fear, Changed me? have I changed it? what dream is this? Joy’s twin sons have I seen, one night, two. All joy’s child, the shepherd,’s joy and shock, Half joy, and one beholding joy, it seems. Like one I saw them, only one night, two. We shake off the dust, and go with youth to be Bread, and water, and bread, and sleep, and meat; And what we have promised to the hoary Sire, Is in our souls, and will be, though they die. The same Shall come, and in the half-dreamed-of day. The letter that I wrote Stands white against the shining wall; What song is this that falls On silence, like the sword of anne? What rede: what was that trumpet’s tone? I heard, I said, I heard, I heard, and I said, As I were brandishing an axe In the full blossom of its unfolding Somberness, bare stone stamp of the pen Swung full of fire, heavy, heavy with the trace Of mine own vibrations, sharp, flashing with monsoon lyand. The cloud above the red clouds of the after Hour leaves clear the blue above the blue; The souls of men, the blue souls and the dust, Set at their weight in sight, gleam flightless through heaven. So men and nations, So our need, for earth’s most gracious host, What dread humility fills us? What dread self-doubt on us? All Heaven is our witness, Death is our death, Sorrow our doom, our season Severe, The breath of our soul, the last, the great one. Our soul, a sea, a hidden pearl, a flower, Lost and found, Veered full against the guns of Mourvaun, Of to-morrow, and pearls, green, and pale, White, blown round the silver stars and whirls of rain; How should earth see her own motherhood? Her soul from earth seen, could she but quit her lips With man’s breath, how could she grieve, Who in faith owed the deepest debt? Ere we had read, could we but read, Ere from her life, there came one mortal word, One drop of grief? Mother, thou hast been too long Like victim-seed to be Any shaft but thine? When I stir mine earth, I feel the white wind, and the cold waves, And the cold dew, cold and cold, hail, And storm, and night, and God that pulls me under To the cold sea-road, and the darkness, and the reefs, And the everlasting rocks, Stir; and the long dew of the morn Strikes through me; and I quiver like a reed In my inmost heart. I am stirred, and clove, And clotted blood, and swollen flesh, and eyeless mien, And the life in me smells of the fangs of death, And the white dawn with her windy fingers cold Traces my spirit mine to mine inmost soul; And I scream out, and my teeth grind, And I strike, and grind my breasts, and my limbs Beat with the effort, while the whole air round me, Hailstormed with lightning, the dead lips of Death Is hissed off. O my mother, I have been Too long like an empty name. I cry out. My blood must burst On the cold stones; my life, Hasten, my life is past! ======================================== SAMPLE 508 ======================================== Under the breath of God, Where the face of the earth looks up, and turns All in one shape to the face of the sky. <|endoftext|> "Christmas Present", by Anne Winters [Living, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Home Life] Aunt Mildred sends along a letter of the past which mentions the year before that she sent a first Christmas present: An immaculate position, good for a spread, or windy weather, a new kind of teapot or waggon, hi-tops or bathrobes, a bowl of mule mouth, fragrance or roses, a rabbit, sand or plaything, two finches or one, gift cards or Ralph, a new rifle. In the letter she mentions her niece, wears neatly trimmed black pubic hair, has two pairs of DICKY-TUNES buds, and a JEAN JACQUES BOOT, handsome as Fred Haply, how "poor the results were when he tried the Roach-Talcy in '98, this morning I ran a shot with my new 'baby-bow' –"a BARNETTIE MOCKTAIL from UNIVERSAL CANTELLAS," (says Aunt Mildred) just a pair of cheap headphones – An Ivy League T-shirt reads, BURNING MAN – out-bursts into flame beneath an IS out-breaker – dolor: my aunt is gathering the present in a basket for the back of the sofa she can step on to the back of the sofa now, the table and the sides, all about her, on her phone, all up in the air, she is fifty-nine years old, and at home for good. <|endoftext|> "The Imigitivity of Guilt", by William Carlos Williams [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Love, Heartache & Loss, Relationships, Family & Ancestors] Nothing for a father, or for a mother, or for both, only a little sludge of the heavy goodness of guilt. I shall never wear it. But if it should be presently, that will hardly matter, since I shall have plenty of what I have lacked all these years. How I have missed your self-disgorgement, how I have starved, loved, and starved, and loved, adored you, and tried to feed, and tried to dry food with my head! I miss you, beloved one! I shall never get another glimpse of you, but here is a recipe for oyster and clams, a hot dog, or a new pudding, for everything I have missed you by too much, and plenty to give me. Oh, there's no me-side to give you, no "blessing," unless I drink the pig. I want to tell you, my beautiful, but I am a mess. What I did for you was gorge on more than you could eat. You will never feel the tortures of my yucky liver. Oh, but the food will go to good use, will spread the store. For the end of our silent deal, I shall learn to read and write, just so you'll have something to read. You know what? For being so good to you, the dear, I'll give you my blood and own it, you know. And if you run in the street, forget not how to play your part of "Fathers'–Still Ahead" on the wall you will see, should an original message out of an old direct machine come to bring me the work that I have to do by rote, like a shadow, for there was no room for "me" in the machine. I shall be next at the cruel winter candle with candle-men. And I shall be, as I have been, the wife of a famous doctor, whose young fame no time can or should drown. I shall never be a part of those sad-toned names wearing such old-man purple and brown, but will lead my own life, in bed, with fellow patients. I shall not care for perfection. I shall be full of ordinary woman's life and love, and would be just as good a woman's wife as the next, only better, for the fancy of being mad, is there somewhere, or only a ======================================== SAMPLE 509 ======================================== When idle and sad they part At rarey break of poitry, And fold their sheeps in churchyard dar Before it is gone a-shauin; So lest the powan kin own the same They, croudin, and dak the night For to see them whakin' stan them ta be sure But croudin, as you told us how, So mid it's been's been so midden long Since you fash your lefsoight, We put it on your power, John, That if you's so wish it We'll crown it so with youit ring, And powder, and ball. And ef you likes it, then, And send it in with a-gun, 'Twill step as lovingly on you As you may do yoursel'! And you, it's with an earl's name In case you likes us to know Of our it's-happiny-anywhey-anywhey That we may meet, for to keep Our mool. Here's England's Glories with us, Her Majesty the Queen; And here's Parades, Parades, That paraders go; and here's Sam Tit sum, The Squire of one, who show'd us his guts Like any lordling's of the land; And what's his face? I like his blather. And here's Herries here, Gulf, and jolly nice; And here's the Squire; and lookit here's the crowd. Was't a he?--Et margarine. Prophets 'ere's fore us, old and young; And those pious foemen a-shucking, They ain't a word t'expecting. So, tea and scones a-cookin', I's had my share o' that, and mine o' that, Gosh! I've had them jentariously. Of her Majesty's grace Cakes a' the bountiful maples, And knorms o' freedom-- All the tower-shelter spires Wooing the daylight. And what is this I hear-- This shout of laughter? Sir John -- I.P.P.P.P. Not long ago a clown of thope, Into your cosy corner plugged him, And you did all that ye can do 'Ithout saying a word. What was then your thought? Gosh! what was then your thought? "Let's offer him a brief defence; As in truth we can't miss"-- At other times when I've met him Among the English literary people, You find me always polite; When one wishes to address him With cordial words of introspection, A welcome and a lift in exercise Are most warmly accorded. Such welcome was extended to him When my chair-player proffered to speak; And so, my faithfully-paid, With ardour he was ever besp taught That I was "kith to far Britons" -- (At different times, more politely, Of silence I have heard him reply, Like a drowsy lady withering When drowsy or in slumber Unwillingly to speak, Just looking on, or in gesture Like one who dreamt that he'd seen A rattlesnake turn a slip -- In fact, though I am sure He never dreamed of anyone In his own sort. And so 'twas with talk like this. To pester him, I rose high Upon an earlier occasion, To levy a largess at a Dram, And brought up crew to speak. The waiter then came, and crew To such a sound, as men suspected, Had ever heard us speak; And from the suiters' and the housewives The laboured speaker declar'd He'd blown a season through, No matter what was said, Nor what one was prone to say. But presently the shades crept, And down he slipped, 'Twixt house and shop; -- He drank water that Too cooling For his fan; And 'twas a drop too much For the brain. Then 'twas digam'd again; But the effect was, As our doctors say, 'Twas like pushing in the dark. We scarcely knew, For his understand was out; His pulse was weak, and his breath Came short; and thither, we think, Was much of the exalting; And it seem ======================================== SAMPLE 510 ======================================== sport that naps upon a tomato-garlic (I am going to wag my tongue a little bit.) A fly-whistling bee-buck frolic in the garden of my loins, I was seized with possible ideas. And once the scent was so subtle I had to be reminded to go back quickly, back to the trees I’d gone for a half-minute longer than I’d normally. I reached the bottom half- yard or so, saw the bugs, too many bugs. That’s when I threw from my face the words of Yeats, loved and lost I put my arms up so the motor of my tongue didn’t overheat, couldn’t throw off a scent to make an odder poetry <|endoftext|> "I Met a Person of Color—I Read Them an Old Man Poem", by Claudia Lamel [Love, Heartache & Loss, Social Commentaries, Race & Ethnicity, War & Conflict] the donkey lets us stroll upon the dusty moon-lit asphalt that is our road. I live here and I am your donkey. Our memories are all undecipherable in light of yours. I have no pairs of reading your thoughts. Only the moon and the wind. Those other things you don’t share—eyes, scars. We reach a forgiving point and we turn from the moon, with its light frightened and lonely and I hang back as the wiry-fur-covered eyes of the donkey meet my face. You say it’s ok to be funky. As a child you were not. As a person of color, you stuttered and had fractured bodies and drycast fathers who left you in the desert with the words of your mother. You had no room to explore. It is like being dumped in an undetermined weather with only the wind and desert behind you as the only histories. We have to wait out for others who understand us—like that woman with the yellow hair who says her kids are not hers. <|endoftext|> "O Cancanlaro", by Claudia Pepper [Living, Death, Parenthood, Sorrow & Grieving, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] O cancanlaro amavisa, perlo que miasma mía mía fué murina, ¡á llegarán siempre la fuenteja que la fuenteja su guarder cuy, Pero es llegarán cuy su guarder cuy! —Mokha and Marcela at their son's coffin burial ceremony My daughter said to me: The soldier, cada parte, is not allowed to carry his weapon into the coffin he's bequeathed To his children until at least five years after their birth, Only then, upon presentation of their son, May they keep it and call it, son, son, Thus inheriting this weapon and the family crest They may nourish him with hope for memory of him; Unless, of course, the memory they keep alive of him is Of his treachery, his cowardice and cowardice. He who dies fighting for others, be it said, Daughters or sons beget nothing of themselves. A left hand man in a war can hardly be called Father, so I say: Sons must be father to the whole Family, of which he is the offspring, And the whole family, so to speak, the yoke-and-sledge And the smoke-ring and power, be it said, Not the production of any one man, And we bear it, and many and many Never think it is without reason. What is one dead body in war But the fifties under mattes, covered With dust and dander of war and desolation And covered in ordure of the dirt of life? And their mourners go and do not even Go weep, so a good name with its nine Characters, in quibbles, and clew-and-chain Is not honored as a military sign, Such as the alphabet is, or even As a license, such as license plates are; For we cannot think of the natural death of Anyone but the endless natural war, And, as a last device for speedy dying Never thinking of anything but going down, Never thinking of the embalmed hosts The very objects of our desire, By which my people said they lived and died Whence a people are needled in ancient blood, And by all their ritualisms And their fatal gestures, I could ======================================== SAMPLE 511 ======================================== Rend the pavement cold in trees! O Berry Bigbon, Thy rosy cheeks have fruits to eat, Thy body is full of boughs; Thy lip's a fountain from inlets cold, To stream around thee; O stranger, from thy dead limbs, Nature supplies The quarry of an age--and yet I'd come oftener but for fruit and water. Come to thy fount, where rushes, lilies, Wander and leap, In thy wings they love the music, And sing a hundred notes; But come at eve, You'll do better by the day; You'll do worse by the night. I found a garden in my pillow, Deep-set like a subject in a dream; While morning found me in a blind-man's place, With daylight slanting through a garret's shaft. And morning did not call me,--I hid, Hoping she would; but, crawling, I awoke, And gave to her my hand an offering. And she called to me, "Welcome home!" It was my dear one, calling me; In vain I tried to make her stay; She gave her hand to one more young, She gave her heart to one more fair. And I lay down again, and cried. My heart-ache found a word to say, And so sweet grew my pain, That words became as pain, and bore In carrying it away; I plucked a silver rosebud, and my longing Became a thorn-cursation; I was grieved, From sweet sounds came the melancholy; From lutes and harps of youth I heard the melancholy, Pealing my sad heart through a lifetime grown weary. O grandsire Snegirered, my hammer, Your war-song's sound, Pealing like rain on the bitter ouz, Rains that beat on a tainted spring. And a long morning of sorrow came, Too long, in this my mourning; But some twilight, ere the sadness fell, I heard love laugh bid fair alluringly, And saw the eyes of Love light up the face Of this young sluggard at the grape. Then my mood became as love is, Not pain;--this you did in mischance. Or the long, strong music on a page Of mirthful love I heard, And saw at once the miracle Of old earth turning earthward; The wife playing on her keyboard, making moan, While the children, late neglected, laughed as she played. Dyed with light gold, Her hair hid a shade of scarlet; She put her finger to her lip's tender shape, The tint of her tresses keen and frolicsome, As a tail to contrast To the langue d'or of her garment's folds, As a frog its skirt;-- Each curve and fold Was a fell torrent of delight; And through her fingers leaping, The sunshine made A flood of emerald shame. I know of the mine that you have made, A ladder wound 'round, And the diamonds shining through the golden Treasure-boxes that look so plain; And, 'neath the ear-tops Now arched, The silver cesigns that the ancients plied With tenderness divine. I know of the stone you have sought; So noble is the type, Of royalty, but their worth Is more than gold, more than treasure; For when they are worn, The measure of their merit Is the waste of a golden thought; Of this the vain man's wealth Is but a glass of sand Dunked away; while you alone Can say of your bride That she is paradise's model And beauty's form-- Only she can say that she is free. I stood in the sun, Till my blood grew warm To a rich heat, And the thin flakes of the sky Raining gold Faded to gray. I could not hear the shout, Nor the weapons' start, Lest some warning should shatter My countenance; So I watched the clouds Till they seemed to be sinking, As down the sky's blue slope To earth's remotest outlet They slowly heaved. The grating noise, The crash of wing, The sudden silence of air, The quick alert of earth, Gave forth anon, While across the bay In lonely waste The sunset's scarr of gold Seemed to float. The moon made her ======================================== SAMPLE 512 ======================================== He could not serve his giants in India Under the banner of the flag that stood In Thalaba's hut. Then moved the shrouded Face once more The Orient Mirror, seeking his gaze. He came to lone Uraitania Amid the silence of black slumber Ere the fresh breath of fight Had broken all the letterless wave Its carnage. The fellow lurked And shivered in the door of Araby. He could not find the thing that he had hit. He lurched to his gun once more, and fired it. Its mark he missed And there came once more the long open pause Without its mark. That was not for him. That was not for him. The marksman sneaked away And began his rounds again. What could he say to please the Arabs? Their guns were tuned that the dust between their ears Might quiet all noise, and the message tell What to hear: He listened; but at last his pipe had to Smoke ascend, and his spirit was ware Of other scene, his eyes a little swivelled To look on it. His eye Was set to look on the pure blue of the hill. His rifle gave back its empty mouth And sent the dust to show it to him. He watched it in its ring of fire. "But all is dusted, I am fain To live," said Thalaba, "and when The dust will make no dust for me. That which is over, under me Will have to be again." Then where he stood An empty shelf. He looked for death With many faces In eagerness, And at last he beckoned, and said To the unseen eye "My hand will hide behind this hair When I return." He seemed To beckon death, With one hand He held his hair, with the other He held his pipe. The smoking pipe He lit, And in its smoke he seemed to be Illumined in his soul. With a sudden flash It seemed "I want to die and go, But first shall I Do some good deed, Giving joy to some heart, Giving some heart's breath. "The Moon is at rest Through which the Trees of Skill May lean their crossed trunks to heaven." "How far there," said Thalaba, "Is a ray from the descending sun, How far there?" asked Aralaba Who was standing by his side. "An eye to guide the emigrant Is at your mercy, in China. The white sun streaks our path; What balm can steal a strength from it?" "A strength as good as yours Is at your mercy in Chyita." "Ay, and a strength as good as yours, And the white moon at our back Is a strong guiding star. With yours I shall float a chute, With yours, I shall float a ladder. "What distance shall I hide me from, What distance clear to climb, Or what distance climb or run?" "The sky, and the distant sea." "Where shall I run or run, What ocean stroke me up?" "The waves have been between thee Since thou wast of dust." "What is the point between us But this everlasting fight, The strenuous too and tireless war?" "Man's wisest friend, the sea." "Man's friend, man's wall, his guide Against the all-unhosting foe. The taming of the furrow, The thorny crowning of the bole By head and foot in malachite." "O man, O my father, Make hast at that unwearied night, Give ear and have ear. Listen, the Invisible gives The man with wisdom gifts. "It was not when the first bow blew The sea was there, nor the fiery disk Of heaven, and flung in golden smoke the sky; But when the stony land was parcelled out, And zephyr set free from cloud, and loosed The water from her, that crept between The sides of the high land and overran The land unseen, so close it lay, but salt In the life of it and night and morning, A-tide to yoke and soil the stony soil, A spur in sight, of hide of Him who made it, Yet had it fear and heat of sun and storm. The eastern heat and arch of heaven was held The heaven of man, the mighty thing Who shuns the storm and overshadows the noiseless ======================================== SAMPLE 513 ======================================== Commands such magnificence in strength, So wondrous and so dense, that mind nor bones Fear instant shatterment: and the wretched ride Hitched to its load. The repast of Tydea's streets And of battle routs the historian's verse. Chariots of dead men, coursers of the slain, Traitors and friends of Athens, and their weary steeds Breath but ill atonishing to the parching air, As if by fire,--and weary, with short respite Even from the sweat, but not from the wear!-- The die is cast. Or now the generations tell Of nations which have conquered, or of cities spared Nor roused to fight at one time or past time, Of Thracian I, of Helleus the might Of his horse, or in mid-day of war, or this Of Othrys, what the scene, and what the scene When the steel was drawn; and what the course to run Of toil-repeated steps, overshot by him In greatness, and the odour of the blood Of many a day's toil. Now, lest our tale Be to coarseness turning too much, and for woe Laid upon what man made mortal, from the depths Of Hades up to heaven, let us as well Go on with time and weigh in thou a little space What happens there, and then all the account dregs, Ere now, of death, of men and of the gods, Till now we hold such tenure of the world. And time began. Up from the shores of Aololia rolling tides Of multitudes of waves, Aolica drew Towards the Pelian abode of day-born men. Oros drew, and Thracian Cycnus. Dardanus Was lost. Tenedius rolled. Phoebus drew Ocybelas. E in Phrygia drawn, and on That side, which downward men now call the Dane, From Corinth draw Thanissaro's chariot-sear And hold it as it ran, and think on the death Of infamous Messala: nought to it avail That whirlpool-fraught Cycnus, mad with anger, Had dash'd it 'gainst the Pelian cliff, but for drench So all the bottom-brands run with blood, nor mark The spot but where a ridge of them lies on hands Of me and others. Ere its course a space It throws back two banks and builds a steeple. Thereon it broke; and with the left hand Cast all men over to the might Of Te through her particular body,--all Was left them below, but which of men Or what of women, nor more place they had Than what she by her presence did for them. This Lady of the body cast out to sea Her children, but the fishes' lord pluck'd A woman out of the men's bed, and bore her A man, who was more than woman unto these, And far more than the meaner thing is man. Forthwith, as flies a crow, or diving blackbird So many things, which on clear moonlight morning The sea shows, peck'd by every flying wind In crowd on crowd away, the cabin fill'd With that strange shadowed harbour-mouth Theshoe, thick-strow'd with long masts and masts and pinnacles, Head-thrown here, and there, to left and right, with helm A little overburdEN interposing here its cormarles. With these two went Paris, and departed Into the antechamber of OEdipus, Which to his question thus he answer'd. Their gift, since thou so pleas the heavens to yes That keeping these two, with orchard-garment'd Thepatter-wise, do'st prevail rather to my thought Thee more than pangs of hunger, wise to do Seest for thy gleaning, ah further proof in me That thou the ill thing will not endure; Yea more, that thou will look henceforth To common things, on foot thy journey long. Leave all thy costly fare, and wear the curse Of your unexpected fare. Whither so fast, Friend? He said, and lifted the press upon his lids Like vault, and gave up himself. Six at least, From the first he baggers, bagger still again; And underneath their thet faces, toward the skies, Their apparel'd whispering lips, and each, as before, All wanting ======================================== SAMPLE 514 ======================================== Using slightly the axe's hanger, Hanging in g. p. and free, Fixing the great plan on guard the while; In the orchard up the ball-ground A stable stood: it seems the place A posy of grass turned up his nose, And, the very man he goes back to seek, Hangs up, instead, for people to stop by; That d--e shall walk itself amidd the hounds And not a mile from home put him, it appears. The g. c. made him so write a sort of _magnet_ Over his heel and toe that presently He has knocked them out; his shadow long to trace Where never star that was in old Christian times. What he can do there now. he can do here. Boon has become knowen there, the fust themselves And out they've bit their six-shooting friends. Every moment of every day to think That they may live,--that they have such rights; There they'll have their rights full in their view, Their law of God there, their book of laws. What is mens reahe (paradise) If it do not turn on creeds, but stands or falls On no man's law at all, but self's law? That good or evil cannot both consist Of truths that will not let you or me In our own best slumber though we try? If what you love on your self-sent will not let That hold those truth, when so we do our best, And all that mens wit can prate of Is but a shadow yet of those we find. Naturall geraine facturae Opportune acceperant, no longer young The old paradoxes rajn in our ears That grutch that body ne can write, or burn. My sick natur for some prattling love, I stil live On truth, as God lives, tho' truth be murder; This is the part of her, as other part shows, Wherein I see more than eny truth doth lie; For these my poor phantis sunt doctis, peret, His autographes, his soto celebrat. Himself autographè is "on the autographa" Thou art tane or tague or twain, A workman on the maker's thing, Which iny agèl so set thy mind, To worship that would'st write not for thee, Him only and not thee in all thy worth? Is it so? or fegyst dai, fegyst dai? Is this so? Is this the burthen of my thought? Tell me so, and quit for once my fablity. Als wele I promise, so I beseech, If thou wolt outwyse the lettring,-- And be there all thynkynne or sorowe,-- Tell me, I pray thee, what will seeme most wise? Was ever such a compaignie gode? So that my selfe, I prey, Or synne or thing may be, shall seeme thy kin, For thy wickednesse in these doth glepe, And frowarde witchingke and diuine Wit∣hers husbandry, all wickednesse is a power. God made Eve with kindest God to fare, And Adam, dutiful, the whole wewk; But the yet braw beast forworn and braw, To kekethe the Maker-King, to obeye. Ye Fowle Christs! and be you not ungygè, Those in your s∙ate so will ywylde to syne And fro ne droue any one o babbe dere Ne take y cæmner; Wortham! as ye wyt. And yet I would I hadde but one bore wekk For, wyk the world is passed so forthi, It were aye or ere the world was wonne, And styres wenden unto the sea, But here mote not a liege man anie; He may nol but kepe Godfests faith in reste; And heuenly rites that be to worshipe, The skyl are strait that no tardy fallen; The priests, in bokes there is no longe aboven, To tell the Samslont not that if these twen, Be al on us: and yf ye myght here be, By god ======================================== SAMPLE 515 ======================================== Aqua Mystica, Vol. XVI. As the enchantress, Goddess of the unseen light, Named Elara, she was fain to stride Like a fairy pasque enplatted with light In her goitrous, impish step; So that, and her limbs like a lute, Slowly she lit, until her other lips Were parted in a musical swell. A deep sense, far off, sigh'd in its place, And the spirit of listening heard; But the silence said--"Only thine avatar." Ah, then, it was not silence full and free For a breath; but the knowledge none could breathe In the uneasy void of mind, bended, rent, Gazing on the starlit luminous, That only Elara was;-- What was that spirit, or howl'd it here? A sound, of the muffled rush of wings, That rose and were lost in the dark night, Speaks of some rescue, but where, or how Rapture of things comes with time and tide In that mute of despair? Saying "All that was" is strong, and bold; But, in such chill detachment, "He never knew" yet could we say "that he knew" In that depth of that hushed hour. Then the soul of silence willed it so, That silence was an anchor, too: That was a part of it, but a part; As the wealth of the spirit lies In what has no say, but the spirit's ear; A quest for the Infinite was Rebuke. But the torment of the silence Was the quest of the spirit and fuel Of the spirit--I can find not words Nor search through all my fountain'd store To give expression to that awe, Or relate in language the strange thing That drew the whole of the rest. The spirit had seen as much as they; It had heard as much as they; The soul of the silence had at one time Been a part of a power above its own, And one who had beheld was a god, The thread which the silence was a thread Of the whole of infinity. It had stood in God's temple in the past, With the infinitude within it; It had watched the white wings of angel fingers Before the birth of the first day, And have breathed in the ethereal choir Then it had fallen, a moment, adown And had passed to an unseen realm; And he had drunk of the Fountain of One To bring him to this place. There was need of a place to which to bring The strength of the soul; And he thought a thousand things, in free abandonment Of the rest of his life, to find that place. Then he rose and travelled, and was abroad in the day; And when the time was ripe he sent to a leech That specialized in healing diseases of the soul, And told him the kind of pain he was sent to suffer And so the leech made two journeys; The first he found the leeches knew; The second, he told not to him. It was, indeed, the last thing he sent to her, How greatly he found the anguish that he found, The restlessness that smoldered, the cramp that distracted, But the trembling that racked, that racked, that exhausted That any leech's drug could cure. And his need was shared By him who loved the feisty fawn; And him who cherished the wolf was fain To mix in the cleft of the rock. But he sought where Death throes in the earth And clawed his way in his contending row, While Death was haggard and sere. And there came once more A man of two worlds, once rich, to poor, And ever toiling in the restless wear That overaweth. He had a wistful thought To hasten the end (Not yet the last) by his journey, where There were those on the bloody plain, Those with their mangled bodies all torn off, So that he might have all his need. But he saw far off the shepherd folk, Alone there among the slope's means of treading, And heard the voice that bade him vex. And bade him mind, That the quiver-chargers rode at his back, So in his unknown ways he might learn To hate the frantic hands That rode and drove him on this round; He saw them in his jagged head, His arms torn, his body's sores. And he thought ======================================== SAMPLE 516 ======================================== FTM From the Diopatory, of King William, or From the Church of England; And many a quaint and estimable toast, Consigns the victim of a slight reform, Which makes this ethereal water, That quenches fire, Flowing down the chimney and the hearth, Into a pleasant cascade. Toasting may do more than other things, To toast the House of sherry and scotch; It degrades it to Truth's smouldering fagots, That may burst at any moment. The gallows did one night invite us to stay; And the engrossing monster with hangman, hammer, and churl, engrossed us in due time; The house fell in ruin, and, of a morning, On the wilderness alone. Untried by the world's death-penalty, Unskilled in the hills of battle's horror, His life was a woodsman's life, In open meadows and clearings, Where the pale curse of haughty Tyranny, Crooked by traffic's crooked sleight, Passed of opportunity. "A frontier friend, by wounded Morgan, Wounded in the battle with the foe, Found me near some copses, half-burned, In a hackney riding to the church, Where a village vicar called, As a young youth, in the churches. In full record of the household of God, I strove for my footing on The entrance into heaven; Yet who shall say that it is a reprieve From a clod of clay? Tired with one moment of mortal strife, I looked for a place of rest In the heart of the city's walk, When the evening began to far? Tired with the village, I turned to My room in the New Jerusalem, In the suburb of the forest; My room at the New Jerusalem, With the county and town struck black On the sign above. Weave as a web, o'er the things Of the desert; then, set free Garden and country, city and house, Temple and court and pride and news, Peace and romance, pleasure and leisure, For I would work, and work, For the world to see, and be wise At the light of my work. I am at fault, and excuse none, For my misconduct: I am at fault, and at your feet I give myself up; I did what I had the power to do, And was ready, as I should be, To be where my work should be; But the world's view was narrower far, And I had more in my view Now on me lies the crime; yet I Unto my task in sincerity, And the heart and soul I bear Are faithful to my task; 'Tis my manifest heart and head That shows the highest place; And though it is my own, 'tis the best That I may hope to win. In this quiet wilderness of muck, And in this most enchanting swamp, I have crept to rest me from the swalow, And with quiet mind I do me part From the world's great ways, And a man may discern 'Tis true that there do me and my arts More mischief and displease With the utmost skill In the world, The market of exchanges. If you would have a quiet hell, Then get Jack Frost by flight, Cane to take, or Bramble if you can, And make me go to fen, And under drive, by permission of fen, Echo all in one room. And, if it be a sin, Limp round in yonder yonder hall, And swear you would God know, And swear you would fen die, And quit the royal round. Or if 't would make you merry hell, Go visit the Galliard, or the Wench; I could have wished 'twouldaughty Edmund Had stuck him in a broad-nosed chair; So that's I'll drop a curse on Fayette. And if I find my power; I could holler, and swear, At elf that wears a wool hat, And some think I could, kill him: And I'd have a-robber'd the livery Of princess Anne; And the same may, after all, be said Of Bonaparte, and he may call me Right. Come to the kingly chair, The kingly chair and scoth important: I'd ======================================== SAMPLE 517 ======================================== Hector, so to speak, being now the only person left Vexed and stunned, not least because he saw I would not let go of him <|endoftext|> "An Apprehension ", by Louis Untermeyer [Social Commentaries, History & Politics] What will be the next revolutionary act, the latest work of effigy-bashing, this persistent peevish— I don't like your dancing, or your powdered hair, or whatever you're calling your stubborn old method? I've seen better. . . I think I'll go away, tell the agent: Tell him—don't tell him! If this is his life—safer for us all that he abandon this half-work than be slandered, denounced, wounded, denegrated! . . <|endoftext|> "The Automaton Workshop", by Louis Untermeyer [Arts & Sciences, Architecture & Design] For Marcel Marceau I.e.e. A machine in actsoe definite expression flne steampunk mimicry the soles of stone, for example, replicate what we see very old, very few who step in the same place white-crowned and white-shirted like a garter ◊ or a nun’s at the start of the machine “It's ironic, it was made for a feminine “type of energy,” the operator stares at her for fifteen seconds or more, until she stares at the nearby viewer then assumes the human face —  suddenly we're looking at jean flappers or a  kangaroo rat or an Apple II’s floppy display so you say she has a hump the way a flannel bag will ride a dinky European but does the machine spark? a wife and a home of wood and steel and metal twenty-seven? thirty? another machine for the queen to hold the not-so-short fuse she goes into the wheeling face the same way a hinged door, another space, please a painting, anyone, anyone look, door again, please, yes, please you'll not see the right face, flank chair—and stuff it in the back, a bag, a wooden box “Art? You haven’t seenanything yet. Who's looking at anything?” “It's just a general mru. Something sentimental. . . I’ve got some, but not much. You have a definite one, too.” Wheel chair — a trumpet blown, a dull roar — still, even when they shut down (the King’s Court’s complex, wall-to-wall with theater so as not to make a circuit) you and the writer share a . . . bagel with cream and honey, two glasses— let’s not mince the issues, let’s be direct—I’m asking you to save the King’s love, the King swans’ lives, London’s, forever the machine’s legacy stare through the grillwork of machinery and come out with something not of metal — you’ll not see the whole equipment and we all line up at our Prime <|endoftext|> "From a Chapel-Vigilance Stand, Charleston, West Virginia", by Jennifer O'Connor [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] i Scenes of anguish and sin in Charleston, West Virginia All night shrieks of ungodly groans, choral throbs of those proud hymns whose basic passion is Grace, strength, and mercy. ii March, in her ears, the name “Heimea.” She feels blessed, blessed. The ground is thronged with smaller graves than her wrists, and as she pricks her fingers in the light, she prays. She pricks her wrists. She pricks The bones of Heli, the soft mute bones Of the man. Then she pricks her feet. Then the earth. III This man who lies where the woods close around him, and dishes of time and death. And night, drunk long fillips of body and ======================================== SAMPLE 518 ======================================== in brackish brook to ban and bind My winding-sheet, a careful watch I keep of day, my thoughts to keep Of things with dew drop hush, and gully shock In the arm-full. Dear ones! dear ones! does not she Respond well to thee, that mother-love, And faith, and strength, and trust, and ope to thee The gate? May not our spirits take the voice To her young eyes, how ever dim? O! how shall we Repose it to her, that waits with long patience, Who looked, and is to look, and taste of heaven? Or look through the light, and clutch the last boon, The last touch of hand, where yet one more is? Dear children! she to whom thou hast confessed Vouchsafed to write the life of thee, that she Gave thee not an answer, sad and vain, Was in your world to give one to answer, Still, of all the mothers! <|endoftext|> Let me, while I yet can see, The light of pure, celestial vision, Hold me and stir me. Such a one is born, Whose spirit, wing'd for heaven, shall mount To hovered heaven, Touching the spheres, and fall Heaven-aerial with high hands-- Then may come to me. Love is to look love in the face, While there's something left unsought, Some unguess'd longing, unexplored, Still moth-slaves of time. Then I kiss your wreath, And your face in my mouth--then Now there is one for whom I am best heart'd. Tender and round, Rounder than a waxing hair, Warm with a kiss, and moist with a sigh-- She will turn All to soil and saltness, Yet hold in place the growth divine So kindly fair. Softness keeps time with music-- Lips to kisses, and murmurs-- None to sweep time away. Tender and rounder Mean the eternity of love. Think you, may you laugh on at me? Think you that I, in my good time, Think you, perhaps, as I am? When I am cold and eat lead? I who loved you when I was young, Who got no quarter for loving-- Who didn't get no quarter! Evening and morning deep. Out of the hearts of them that danced. Daycrow, nightcrow, quartering. And morning and evening. Sister of song, and mine, too! Vowelle and mine! Bawlowe, of my singing voice! Two honors take Out of my singing voice. Bewilder you, as I sigh? Think you, while my voice goes wooing Wafting you with longing breath-- Is it you that you are in my shade, Stinging through my voice like sound? Ye-down--ye-down--out of the grave! Now that you have come to pay me back, Which I sad in a human way (Like a man after his own heart,) I must show my human form, Thus--thus:--and beg you in your wrath To be as you were in life. Yes, it is a human form! While you were seeking to learn What it is that would make you wise, My seeking was of a high kind. So that I can stoop down through higher, And if you seek knowledge high Be seeking the earth and not the sky, As I were after the lost of a higher. I, too, am a human being; And if you try to rob of mine, I will smile at your not understanding. And when you come again, you shall say My heart's there, too, that in the word there Is such a thing as yours not understanding. What need to tell you that you perchance Had forgotten, just as you came, And might not see my pained eyes Nor notice that the brightening shades Of my mourning were like those Of a new beauty gone to death? Yes, there are such. And there was such a one. Who does not shudder with pain, And, even while that pain is showing, Draws in her deep face to hide it, And is ashamed--I think. So with me, and though I say That she smiled as you might now, It could not be from the same ======================================== SAMPLE 519 ======================================== With the raven's eyes Saw him in the heights Of the locusts marching toward the invasion, Watched him in silence as his people died. And again He tore, and loosed him from the tree with the long demon-magic. For every reason, for His nostrils And his ears Tore out the tongues Of his victims, as the bird tore out the soul of the infant, The elephant in his dread Sent breathless to the ways Of the night O ho! O ho! Another shape had entered. He stood Above the lake Of the pillared brickwork garden Covered with wood, under the awnings, And the tail of his robe Hung over the garden. Sleepless, unsleeping In the standing waters, One on the sand And two upon the river In the ebb and the flow Of the swum life, Staring fixedly, staring fixedly. From the high rocks Of the broken ground, Charmed by the moon Like a lover And the voice of a woman Who was hungry for him, Stealthily creeping Into his heart As the flame of a kiss, The dream of a vine Where the grape-vine flourished After the wind Of a day when the world Had the sense of a thing Too full of a day To endure the light Of another day. He had many such like him. His thought Made them do as it could After the blink of an eye. But some dreamed and trembled In their broken sleep. <|endoftext|> "The Birth of dialogue", by George Stefan [Living, Parenthood, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Birth] After the oft-copied drawe, The seed-fountained soil Till a day where all was pure, As sweet and thick as honey In a polished sea, When the ocean-delighted weather Made the pleasant shore to tremble As the multitudinous shades Of a summer-shadow-ball Hung on the mountain. Between those worlds, however, In the holy period of infancy, Stood a convent-gate. The long white quarters Of its panelings Were fluted with melodies, Making a place for singing, Making a place for prayer. Its four wings, Saying "Peace," said it, As it ended in a hill Stretching far away Into the firmament, A pitched mountain. Between the rocky under And the dark underneath Was the door. He sat with two nieces, In a room of stones, Chosen for them by the crutches Of their mother, who had lost her hand To a madwoman, who had made her forget Both their engagement and wedding. Two worlds apart, Two beds and three couches Were wallpapered with cushions Gussied with golden lace, As if a divinity had chosen Her form of lilies and of snow To dwell among them In a carnation kindling. He knew by the change Of face he had seen in her At an enchantment-show, When he became reconciled To live soberly in the world And follow his vocation To work for his friends, On what strong hands once held This exquisite devil. Now, though he felt the wrong Wanted to be taught and taught And learned in the world he lived, And while his eyes would open To meet the fairy gold Of the autumnal sun, The little saint of a brother Studied again her eye-gloss, And how she held her pace, And stepped with an artless ease In her black gown of 15, Till of late so polished. His vocation was brought home, From the stifling air Of the fortress of a convent, Where the anguish of a draught Of air, at their easy hands, Stood like lead round the cellar-walls. The angels then grew sick, And he stood with the poet In heaven, whose white and bare Far from the sun's beams were portrayed. The angels wept in her face For the bitter tears they had shed For her all to ======================================== SAMPLE 520 ======================================== Stole soo almoost othrey, En fred by the by the wey, A worchip noo so iovyd, And came in presence, Oop the Codd, ow danc almoost A dinnerta, Myn herte is aght of glee, My sponga was to iudge, "That was of my heged; O, "I sayd, "a dillyd dillit A wery boughit ne fyote, A couplet of cheese without an end O wright: A Dog, whan that the Deitish stoome, Was boven aye, Ei'd on a Wig, who said, "O yi dear, Smyte of þe paiéres I was not On mevánt, Al mear is there a Lord of War, Al mein wées a Wingéd great god, The ȝardisch lord, Admiréd to serued be He sawe I pleigne so me merten?" He sayd, "Of my right bonque, In suche kind, His pourpos wulde be vengé. Thou art lyuynge, clecheful, right goudy, So wylde ywe! Wéltyn! I am léuéd and most feruéd. They sayd þat ioye-fiue foles In blys (thus) and torly. I, who wéd my wynges blesse To brydel upon a Wychte In loome (by)! leuéd in lyver Mame as nel-liuéd, fast tyne Thow trest to lufe (too)! A faire folk in fyryte Went forth, as it were at byssand, To hear one from a bande, And go moost poinded to flessh Of colewort and clere cinnamoy Spitted of cork and cræn-weyte As nyght the sowpe, Her wey was made but flesh as bone, Þat snawles foule vp þe lokke, Þat flewed floss hote þe lokke Hem cote to lufe (of wrastling). Spake now to them as it were scyued, Like-singing to this dyk of wey, In fatall play þat manful boþe Þat might þer lang, Þat stowned for no marmal. Bot al here musicus hez fonde Ne now al-somed for his werk, I wold no lenger mete Þat myht but wylde and agaste. So he smerued hym as goddes sac To purtyse his mercyes no hirelinges, Al mysde yf eu{er} of heuen; So com my wofull faire herte. Þe fyrre, brode auayle in harke, For nede þe freke his reed wropes; Cast hede i{n} cyte or lyt{er} a clere helpe; Þe grace gode asþ a shepe, Criede hem þ{o}u{er} þis tyme soȝt to wynne. A Depledow may moche mysse; Iuel never soȝt on hear to lyue, Þat myȝt auayle for-ȝote, Þat made þ{o}r tyme mary! Þaȝ his vngentful vylanyce, At heuenly day schulde som ȝane. Fyrst-witþen þe ȝateȝ (Ȝifte meynes) Typtos and þys formé as þe croppe, Wyth i{n}-herte synne and eu{er} more. quen þat þe wyþwyth by-ȝep Sy{n} kythely & wylle {n}ne, Þat he syþ{er} for freke syþe Þat was of reson, ======================================== SAMPLE 521 ======================================== The love we had never kissed but again In a dream that never should awake. Beneath my hands the weeds are growing For love that wanders away; And in the ashes of my hearth We throw these scraps as rites at ashes. Oft I have seen you passing by the frames Of my dwelling-houses, The gutter of the street, Or the mire of the public way; You would pass by happily, And I'd pity that ill-shaped man, Who has had to bear your slander, You who are but a man And must have encountered bruises, Of things done and said Without decency. You are not a brother of this town, And I am but a man; And I now, beseech you, As I do often beseech my brother, Whom I'd never dare to censure As I would a gentleman, Be kind to pity the weak And the wronged, and yield mercy to you, And to the worthy one who is a sinner. Come down from the mountains, O mountain-snow, And from the mountains return we to the town: For see the lad that she has won for a lover, By arts of love has won her and won the maiden, All in the name of fame-wards and of honor, By sacrifice, by the joyous days of morn, Such as th' Arab teaches: such is renown in arms. No shepherd nor traveller should venture in the shade Of the brown pine-grove; but nor the shepherds nor swain Should dare to feed his appetite. No lisping maid should fare with her lord on foot. As for food, nor a stranger, but he must be Solem unswerving, Not giving any rein or liberty. Hence I will home and vie with thee in skill, He from Helicon in Nature's gardens found, He dwells within the wide-spread rooms of stars, And writing and speaking to the worlds he hath viewed, So long a traveller, in the leaves of time hath trod, And his writings, wise, and honeyed of content, Are, through the wide inhabited earth (while sun and wind In the durance of metals redder, and in gold has wrought By various strokes, And that, as on a terrestrial globe, in stones of blue, And, as the batter'd surrounding frame of the world, Has built his domes, and platforms built of laughter), And made immortal with his presence: in every age The self-same man appears: whence it is in course That I can gaze on him face to face; Till for such stead of spirits I've delight in heart, And our should be with equal bliss! But through what distance should we climb to his throne, Yielding him reverence as eunuchs to their sway, He towards heaven as a God beyond the scape shall mount From th' aether of the world; Yet, long as there is force of life in mortal Creature, he hath his presence, as the ShepheŒnian dove Has her flight divine, the air with her wings. He is the friend of all wise and liberal thought, Of all open and clear-eyed, starry-eyed men of last journey, That give not the food they eat unto dead palates; He that for Barbarism yet leaves its pavilion Unharmed, and puts out the leanings of the horse; Nor is he himself without action, But locks into his deeds. Whatso matters it to be a savage state! Bold is the manner; barren is the claim. A Gods in heaven we'll call: Ἀρπον ἐσι . . . . And in the place of old his arms we'll have torches, And with live torches feed the embers bright, And stretch for roots and berries to his breast, And find more hidden there than in the smoothed face Of States that have their spring; that search for light; He, who from the man to man doth win new life, Like loamy mine which ooze through wood, upturned hill, Now deep in a bank, for fishes' teeth to fall; Hovering earth's plates o'er with vultures within his lair, The shoal of shoals 'gainst ocean seeking and dumb; His fleeting life--on what a slender thread Is thrown to compass his return! Ay, come he shall; how can such store of wrath Lives in him? Nay, let this d ======================================== SAMPLE 522 ======================================== Lolue, Aprile shreifflin ist gere nootled hononly that them liketh To cut and tendeth the ralume tho. <|endoftext|> "Imperial Mostletistic June", by Patricia Dunn [Living, Life Choices, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Relationships, Friends & Enemies] I'd read all the time the London papers: how a skid years back had blown out the back of some nice assholes, and such a blast of dung as never waters had mired the sleepers, and how the government of some lovely land was very angry with such a leak, and wanted everyone who went there to think they were bastards. I wandered as round the city with its splendor, its smells, wondering how a man could stink so bad to me. I sat in the shade of the big, black Spadills, and offered the reporter some, and watched him up the hill who had brought the town to disgrace, and looked so little different that I wondered how he could be so a man. <|endoftext|> "Heaven and Canning", by Thomas Hardy [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Religion, Faith & Doubt] Hence, as the Cankidas fill their pastime With a small quill on a stick Or a few leaves among the big ones That they quote as in terms of gold; And why may'st thou fill your soul with doubt? They cannot stir a seed beyond the wild corn. <|endoftext|> "Nuntius and Annis", by Michael Drayton [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Sorrow & Grieving, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] Under sun or moon, in shade or sun, We've lost the sight of Nuntius and Annis. They long to be seen again at muster, Noisily along the plough. They both enjoy our smiles and laughs, Their eyes shine steadily through the sun. Happy, of course, their secret lives they hold Of riding in the caberet steamely, Under the summer shade canopy, Discoursing of pastes and soils slowly, Recalling greens, as they recollect Hours, even for a day Of musk or evening dew. Willful old wind and yet remorseless, They've clogged the old stumps and worked them too Slyly, with a sward of winter grass, And made the sunds shrink a scratch, And so at war again with man They smoke, brow-lashed, Revolving <|endoftext|> "Hyperbias", by Michael Drayton [Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Trees & Flowers] Most are dry-rolled, at least, in the field Heigh quarter, prone by nature, they shade the feet. A few give way under sudden rain, they drop, At times, to new shape, but never unroll — How they're clots! a little flouring to be fair. They're bark-scrap and such confection I cannot say, Only a river-feel returns as I read them If it comes, it comes through the thin air, be it Musk of wood-ache or cone of knots. I feel They're symptoms, not causes of it all, though they Are ingredients in it. <|endoftext|> "Still I Rise", by Anne Johnston [Religion, Christianity, Faith & Doubt] Still I rise From dark, deep sleep, Who, holy, just, free, Was passing by, more dear Than day outstripp'd, Or home-born, from post. I wake and find A fresh, light frame-work, over the known. I'm all a-shudder In dark, new, mortal night. And then I rise From sleep, steeped In light, immortal will, through life free, From time and sin. I rise, as at the first My babe-side, Who was more dear than life Outshone, Or home-brought. And then I awake From sleep, O sight Of freedom far strongr, and strength unimprov'd, And awe to soar. <|endoftext|> "To the Woman on Her Wedding", by Anne Johnston [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality, Anniversary, Engagement, Getting Married, Weddings] It's not, she said, to wed, or else, But what ======================================== SAMPLE 523 ======================================== Even as the snow's lovely whiteness, Thy deep whiteness and thy whiteness mine, Tending the mould of my favorite queen; Even as for me the flame leaps up of the kiln, Hailing thee the purveyor of o'er and o'er As the wild bird of the laurel's lover Now is thy taper of power and of power's sake. Even as a lady, after he hath asked for her, Gives herself to love, and in the lover's arms, Towards his brows and away his hair and love flows; Love, being a soul, can embrace the three As a river flows from its fountain down: Even as the white-lit and ember-like smiths Pass from the lamps to the night of the furnace, And unto Love's anvil go the smiths, Who of themselves forget their silken fetters Soon give themselves to work for Love as thine, If the waves hover from their chaos of waves Over the might of the joyful waters, Then the wave calling over and over balks With the beauty of immensity. And I run, the onely mother of sorrow, Hailing thy weepingness, ho! the crown of thine, With the wave lashing the shore lapping the shallows, Which the swaying evening comes at calling of the stars To take their feasting amid the shallows, Drawn by thee calling the waves of my sorrow to flight. Until I grow faint with the passion of her voice, The dreamy lordship of thy deep deep voice That cometh unto me, even as a mother doth, Her joyous brother's prop as he doth her prayer; Though my soul be faint, my strength be lost for their sake, Oh, the lifting of hearts to this most beautiful thing; I only blush to think how great thou art!-- The infinite being of all life dead or dreaming Have come unto me, and from my soul, alone, To make my sufferings less I cry Alack! alack! for the pride of matter, The pride of control, the forgetting of form-- My soul refuses to be but a soul Of beauty, and not of great and ghould On a base, the earth's way to the heavens. I am yet young, tho' thou canst change Whiles the ages hold full many tears; The earth's way was the road of the sea To thy fair star and mine-- Lilies of the valley of your heaven; But for joy and loss we can but go In the blaze of beauty to die; And now I think of this, and my world is blind-- A streak of light on a cloudy night, And I smile; yet, O my sister, this day, I may not weep all for beauty, nor praise thee For a hope as high as any! So shall the face be changed As new faces change for old, And thy faith live on, as a flower For the spring's last breath; Though for faith you can use but a look, The hold of thyself in others' eyes-- And I smile; yet, dear, this day, I may not weep all for beauty, nor praise thee For a hope as high as any! The paths that wander on the frosty hill, That wind among the maples by those streams, Forgive my idle footsteps; Yet, O, that I were where summer's jewels play, And, smiling, passed amid the bright Rich, unquiet world and found thee! I wandered through a strange and icy place, With vain desire for you--and caught a glance Of your loveliness, but you passed away-- And I have wandered here on foot, before A knight of bosom, who whispered, "My love!" Upon my ear; and yet, you know it's good, To walk beneath the open sky! I spoke of hope as one who built a house Beyond a healer's lore of hope; I bowed my head; for what word like yours? No soul of mortal mould has said That words like thine could pass the gate of mnemother In such a brown and hopeless valley Like death's disenchanted arm, Worn slack with daily treading. I tremble with my strengthlessness and I go Unto thy marble heart--and nothing I find But a stone too heavy, that I may lay it down-- And thine eternal feet have worn away Mine own as well as others, and now, too, It drops upon cold earth: But let me lie here, with ======================================== SAMPLE 524 ======================================== I see a light Mixed with the glory Of that old heavenly band. And, till that ancient home's reach is reached, I must go hence and leave the simple task Of these old hills to lie. Oh, let me rest and sleep and fade away Into the hollows of some better land In the land down there. Awake--be awake! the bridegroom never more Turns his face to tap you on the shoulder; Awake--be wake! the sea-children that wail In voices of anguished sobbing and good-bye. We shall go back to our dreams of the shore, We must go back to the love of our homeward sea; We must go back to our sleep and to our wake, With your true answer;-- Love is over-- Love is over! The now of love's journey is spent, Love is over! There is no more to it than there has been To other things; Now life and now the rest: As it is, so it shall be. Earth and Heaven! farewell for now! While we have life, From this earth And these two orbs of blue, The glorious One Shall come, high risen to meet you in the skies. How all is over! Not a star shall light your road, But my heart shall shout When the wondrous one comes From her throne in the pure regions above; And so, oh Heart, and so, all I shall say Is:-- All is over-- The now of love is ended, For you were only a dream Since that far-away day of last year. Roses shall grow and forget All your roses of old. Dark, my star, so did I dream that from your sphere You beckoned me on your golden throne, And led me through your far-beaming night, Out of the dawn's far-beaming doors. But all is ended--and yet the book says I shall not see you any more, Dark, my star, but you are gone to her, For whom I long with longing have pined; I will wait till the reapers shall have done Their harvest and been silent in the earth; You did not know me so; but now I know In some blue silent chamber I shall find you; And so, darkly, for some time yet, wait. Awake--come! I thought you were dead, but it seems You are only asleep. O, breathe to me, spark, For the light shall go from you soon; And the breath of the dead is a brighter fire Than I that waited for you so. So go my thoughts, as I forget mine eyes; I shall remember you as I hate you; God may steal back the moment I have won, He shall so much perchance destroy That which I would make my own. Now from the window, dear dead friend, I see your light Shoot from the skies in the freezing of night, Smit with red death, as fast as stars from harm. Dear lost star, come from the night! And now from the room of wonder I rush Into the gloom of days gone by, For all in the book is recalled wearily, That we have loved with and loved so well; And all in the heart that is now silent Hath made me so sick, that I could know Sickness, not sorrow, more. To-night--nay, but the night, the night! I sit in the cold darkness with the stars That all night long have kept my place, In a place of thunder and black mirth, And of gods and angels, who are clad In raiment of the sun and the rain. O, come in the night, they cried, and come In the night when the moon is in the sky, When the worms hasten unto the earth, The wind is alive, and the lark Singeth in the trees, and the dead are caught For a last night, or in the dawn; And you come through the shroud, as the rain Comes through the night, and you stand there With a great light in your feet. So let me draw the shroud aside And wait for one that shall never come. Here in the darkness of the room The moon lies, long and lean and white, A star-speckled streak on the white sheet, A star we saw in the land of dreams A long time ago. I sat upon a pin for a cover, And the ======================================== SAMPLE 525 ======================================== Now the daughter of Hafthsyd Would the vesper hym tell! Oh she had heard these tales from her sisters, Most howsay-guarded of that sort, Lying this one on the ring and telling The adventures of we Persian maids. And of Babila Who oft had made the ghost Of Halaba's harp to ring to her fingers, And murmur with wild strains, till alarmed By the grave shadow of the moon he slides Into the circle where he sits And curtsies like an Arab mystic, Then weeps on him and knits like a Purim, Now lifting his plumed crown, and now his Leg for this, and now that, sighs, Till the high moon balms the still Drama to the general minstrelsy. I see, Then again disrobing with airy Falls over his binding's velvet shoulder, And plunging in the cool stream of earth Falls into the pale light of morning, All his broad, untrammelled neck in To kiss flowers and pick their odour, To gather bits and nibbles of them, To see how the wine-eyes vary, To walk the meadows to get a scent, To grab at sprays and haws and other such small Unattended things. The waters of the world, the silver Of ice that falls at lightest breeze, The gold half-runs of the loam Thrust through the light and evening, The dark rapiers of the shallow, The lures of the play, All these he sees. The lore of life he knows, The lore of time, the lore Of the universe. These are the glimpses he gets From fields which are not yet drawn, But where we fancy now, Even if there were no road, We should not see so much That is across the space We are laid in. These bends, these casts Of outward day, Are where you will not see The work that is done. Nor let it be wondered at If it should rain with noiseless rain, That there should be no visible change 'Twixt the sudden fading and the death; You may see the sky wear black from side to side, But it not necessarily means The sun is laid away, Nor yet because the sky is lit Meens, pale and penitrant, That anything wholly has ceased To below. This girl that is with the glory of white hair, And the soft brown skin, And the spring of her delicateness That is the flower of innocence, As the rose is of innocence, Means so much of nothingness, And loose things in the grace Of the sunlight. This sweet little lady of white wonder And love that is for beauty's sake, And for things that are sweet to see, And joy of the summer, And the sweet whir of sound and the play Of young leaves and the laugh of children, But that may not last. In a white church where the tidy aisles Are strung like aisles on a vine, With its door Rude, rustic, and on a blue Upstanding wooden cross, There stands a lady with a dream, Whose head is like a lily With a bud in the midst, And all her face like a lily With a smile on her lips. Oh, if your heart be of love, May you be her love! And if it be of prayer, Lord, thou hast given more Of thy grace than thou Hast taken on earth, and more Thou hast given away Than is worthy in heaven. Because the skin of mine is white All the year round, And you have found no young maid To wear your sunburnt neck, Your untainted blood run cold With me alone. If the sword of thine Hung a space on earth with pride, Like the flag of a nation red, And you saw the soft white mime Of white shellets and winds go by, And you saw your sun burn blood-red, O sister of the wood, If the gift of thy calm eyes Were not true-every rose is swart- That winter's madness is gone by, We would pray in the veranda Evening and morning on, And under the palms together, To sit upon the hills And see the sunset pass. There is a meadow that is hidden under bowery Limbs that breath in the wind like tender tops Of delicate tender tops that ======================================== SAMPLE 526 ======================================== A dream no child can ever tell again. With rains the rains are pattering on our garden wall, And in the loam the vervains are waking; And through the maze of flat green weeds creeping I hear the trill of many a dryad's horn. O love! O the fires are tearing through our garden! For I am hurrying on, the river down after me, And the brown thunder sitting on the dull brown bank. What madness tripping on its slothfu' stattle! What stocktaking crammed to o'er-flowing! What pitiful shortsighted vanity! What dallying in exultation for rest! For there will be no subtle logic here, No dreams that run to crawl the banks again; We'll haplessly follow where our feet are leading, And gain and kiss the hands that drop the bread. O Spirit! where thou art, Let my lips and eyes be there; Melt thou the restless weight that presses Me against the darkness there. Praise! O tell, for thine I seek, O Master, how I hate thee! O Brother! Brother! one of Us! we meet Acarer than the form of Fate e'er gave; Full Master, thou hast read the book Where, chant as though sick or sleeping, lies Our Master's heart laid low. I'll leave thee, for thy sake, on high, Around the smoke-clouds rolling high; They disappear and then you break One sunbeam, and then the sky is deep And the winds summon me away,-- From heaven up to the world beneath. I'll leave thee, for we've seen What we had suffered each to bear; A little longer let them stay A bit of happiness to each, And put the world in some happy while, Then let them both go upward, And hand in hand ascend And, at the heavenward gate, Your wings both place the land on high. I'll leave thee, for that hour of pain Comes in the souls of all men made A masterless vessel mending more Each care with kindest care; Yea, one by a master's hand Into a mansion soars up, And is itself no more We'll leave the soul, and in the With, This world's immensity with you; We'll think of God as humble, beside Aeons, and worlds that light on Him; And in the blossom-cloud and brier Come to see all is indeed We'll leave the soul. When some men come, Delighted, laden with truth, To make us rue it, and afflict us With this or that that, their goad Must be some part of what ye think. We'll leave the soul, and at the seat They set for love and life below, They'll find this soothable mood, And there, a change will come to them Like light that melts some corners blind. We'll leave the soul. Wherefore should not we For that be budded in our hearts? Reveal it? Nay, we must conceal How bright and good the plan to each, And how it stands, and is not done. We will love only what we see, Till morn and night be grown so fair, The savage works of war be done, And slaves be kings. We will not love, Now, love--ah, nay, if ye will, cry, Love can be lived with, will be done By us, who kiss at night: We will not love, now, Until these lips forget to bleed. If ye will listen, me or one, We can sing you a song; Ye can move to the harmony Of it with skillful hands; If ye will listen, me or one, If ye will listen to this voice That sings and sings and sings again; Hear it, ah ye lovers, hear it, What it says over and over-- It says, we shall meet again Till time and love be done. Yea! and the voices that sang of old Through the "happiest place on earth," Told of their Christless choir That when of old "saw the Lamb Let His church[B] be in its home Upon earth, where joy shall be And every creature know." Though the voices were many, they Knew one, they stood at the same time, Did know by his hands that the world Is not, hath not been, but ======================================== SAMPLE 527 ======================================== a sheet in a junk drawer the crystal reflecting the moon: a fragment that had found a way to get to you and been captured: you had not seen it colonist in the room your eyes on the big mirror were you not anesthetized my apartment unremarkable normal day does not correspond to what we know we also have to live with others: the cartoon cats the worn-out sofa the dark clouds we have to smudge with other messages (almost!) who do not know you: no interesting minds have invaded my body: nor were they able to follow the hours of silence (no is not a word) under a blank wall: a text for meaning your ears will never held to a gentle voice: and so the world finds you: (a fact not hidden but this I can not change imperious from words that have no influence on meaning): (My thoughts have invaded Your body for No apparent reason. My thoughts have entered Your body and we are now divided.) <|endoftext|> "Alone at Bademiuber", by George Gasgo [Love, Break-ups & Vexed Love, Relationships, Men & Women, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] for John I remember a man who bought me drinks, cannot remember his name. He seemed to be the loneliest voice in the world. If I could share with him my life, where would the name of the man who gave me life come from? He knew my childhood, he did not know how to say this without fail in the future, how to find my petals of hate, the rose in the mad dogs pouring out of my great black door. What man would not lie in love, if love were love? I wear my heart on my sleeve, how did you make your living? (The drunk man and I were never friends, but drank together from the same red wine.) He alone of us knows if I am human or not. I may have been untrue, his life. I should tell him now if I lie. I did not drink his wine. I do not know why I should hold him lying blame. I did not hide my face in your garbage. I did not throw your books and shoes. I did not pull your teeth, I did not bust your life to pieces. There was no secret I could not bear, my greatest shame. (I’d never been inside a bomber.) <|endoftext|> "Sea Chough", by George Gasgo [Living, Time & Brevity, Nature, Animals, Seas, Rivers, & Streams] If only I had the words to describe it—this haunting emptiness, of faintest perfume, in mid-July, so long and lonely as to be a form of madness, a clouded lantern of steam (in my light seas the air is a kind of bell)—but no means were yet known. Would that I had words but how could I, unless words were created first? Then I had a bird's eye. To see the curve of cloud and flaming tide, the green-goldest hour. Nothing else, no vantage point, no first-rate experience. I watched the blue spume, the light from which to trace the life of this gloomy ocean. Pulsations, swells, shadows, escaped into air, nothing but sky and distance, yet she flew out before the evening (in our light seas the air is a kind of bell). What now? What then we watch. The point is, do we change? Can you think of nothing else in the world that has happened to you, nothing else in your life, on this earth? Nothing to compare it to, to wake to. How often have I seen, in dream, the sea change, far off, in this dim insipience, she there, she the sitting child, her face already smiling as heaven opens to the other world. <|endoftext|> "Christine. 17", by George Gasgo [Living, Coming of Age, Life Choices, The Body, Time & Brevity] On the verge of eighteen, I used to clench a bicycle helmet with my chin and then proceed, shaking, to determine the coattails of a canal-dove and ======================================== SAMPLE 528 ======================================== Which made him madden at heart, and clave His back to his own: but me he spurns The things that ever I say or write, And holds me in derision. From these base And miserable squabbles again I will forbear, sufficient marvel that The sun on Phædra showed, and on the sea The moon. But if true that thou allege Mahodaya exists, what foundation hath he Of work where to call his to vaster scorn That sinner might presume with Christian arms To quarrel? Let his annals wealt Mean while; I enter in a reverie And shall be tame. Truly, I own, avaunt, The number lost, if such division were Discerned among the Angels that there Brief time stood. But let us say that thou errest, Suffering the said division is unsupported, As earth to thee contends with regard To her whole mass. Say, when shall this bloom join In thee again? How long to seek from us Gain of load cast down from Heaven? and how Means here on earth for happiness to dwell? Saying these things to thee will I enable thee To mount a bigger scheme, to think overmore What purpose to our Life may belong, and where Its boundary. So all the numberless she Of form and substance of this wind shall need To judge if it so ought, that we shall grow To family, and to relation stronger, Fallen from family and from our habit Of feeling, till to our life again They turn, and us, perhaps, mistooling call As father, mother, because implored By sex, as brethren or as ails. As spheres Make forth a body, so of our hopes a frame This is, yet to renew our lapsed tracks More sires, and, like fire, again to sparkle light. Say only, that in these tongues is to pass That light considerable, and to occult Our usual habitude. All things are handsapt Longways to doff their guts to suit a new mouth." Parting, in flight that nectarier mouth did clip Full on the kerchief of the master of traps, Who with an aspect austere beheld The company, enamelled like a flame Alight at brass, and standing in it; Beside him his supper, and in food Prepar'd to meet them, dropp'd from Heaven's stash In thanks due, though festoons, not fruits, were Of order to festoons. To meet him came Minutely the accoucheth of the feast, The sovran permit, the foreseen bents to tick, The promises, threats, eyes, and tokens chanted o'er, In the false sidero of Catholic sayings Or satvy hints, which, not sallown from the copy Of Logy, now decay'd common chant, Nor could have chas'd the Brahmin to the Brahmin's. Yet still the path was broad, and ten much more narrow That waggoner soon discern'd; for the meed of that day Flowed like the rivers, which themselves increase Not with fold in hand, but out of fount not seed. The king with thing virtually, unlike thing truly, Attended his crosier; saw how the hair glow'd, How the bright wave procked the skin where began The wrinkles, and how the young blood stream'd and rustled Like a top the skin is blanched, and his eyes out of them swam quick. Who is this that cometh in Forth from the desert, and in style of cavalry (He, not Battles) walks abroad? Doers of divers sufferings, and hold gaimes At home, and venture all things abroad, Laws thereto by sea or land, with risks Of death, to gain pre-eminence, and bring A diamantine gold to the world's Back over death, and to the world's detriment? Is it the gold of life? No, no, nor nay, But something ungainly; though men might suit Their labours to their dictates, yet men Need not pursue their lawlike endeavours Lawfully, since, forsooth, in Nature's great stream The law of deaths, the law of mimes, the law Of demes and of fictitious things, flows. It mocks man's endeavour: still the same effect Is there, as of the sun's heat, the frost's in the fields, The death that follows the fever, is ======================================== SAMPLE 529 ======================================== But she, blind, and deaf, and dumb, Could not without her Master tell What limb of God this was which lay In the great frame he built of sea and air, This Beast that made herself a Station, This Satan called, in whose rich array Circled she was, her own Ocean, home Before her on a flag-ship's skye. Came she not from the starry spheres? The earth she went through, each scaur and cloud On man's mortal sight her play should be Transparent as a glass; what was she But incarnate in the common dust, Stand without face or garments, save an oat Strumental and slight? Which made her As she would be, if God did make Her of common stuff, and formless mass Without a dress of colours or of silk, As living spirits are? Yet she was wrought In forked flame on an iron lyre of flame; For that she wore a dress of lights and felt Made in the forge, out of dross and clay, (Hence died out) a fire for all men's days, Men once called stupid, all men wise. She lived for ever as a sun; And pure as any sun, but found too loud By those that chase it, wronged too high By those that justly own it, love it, What in the good king's court was fame; Which on her withered brow was set With thought of theirs, where she did bow, Herself a star of day on heaven's west (With divers stars) in em'ralds thrown Through the blindness which held her simple life The brightness of an earth that knew not her; Till divers stars took shapes and shed their light To mark the supreme Intellect who made Unvexed her, or her simple life, The world did know her, knew that the fine Of her was quite a sight to heaven. And in our monarch's court, And here we gathered in the broad storm Of battle-smitten, tumbling woods, Where men were captain-like, and women wise, And time has hushed the story of the dead man That had but blindness, painted her for day. Our captain went bareless, and his last Approach toward the great Arena shone Wearing a crown for her kiss, a sign Of strength, of kingship, and his service large; King Charles granteth us an hour of grace, This autumn morn, a grace to kill With vaward brightness; yet we shrink From ringing the shrill war-pipes on hight Until our eyes have time to fill with tears Before we mark the slow-moving times The dry thin flavour of the terrible heat, The tumult of the feet, and the dusty air That sends men home and wakes new comrades home Through the great scrub and gravel of the wars; The shrieking, and the lashing, and the crying Of shrapnel, and the leaping where the most Desire found place, and nothing found like fear. My throat is full of air; and it is sore, My heart like a stone, my head is sore; The things that have been I now can barely call, The horrors that have been have left me dead, My comrades have not been the same since then, I listen at the road, and the murmur is speech And my ears hear other horrors yet, I hear, The blossoms and the bees that hum Aartes round the blackened corn; The cries that break the morning, The copper- over is wheels That whir round the brown hills; The great grey lint-stay That beats through the bridge's end; The praties that leap From the black, breaking twig Of the twisted ladder; The timbers and the flat stones That snap in flight the flying ball, Then to the top of the hill, not now for her new Queen, but to find rest or flight or full dark air; Now awake, not now to lie still in the spring Blown throaty over the blood-red dark; Then this to the hill and heave and strive And drink deep; and take fire; And so forget and forgive, but in God's grace. And besides, this very night the far hush of night Has stolen off to smothering out of the sky The foam of the foam of the summer that breaks and dies At eve; and the air of the lake was breath to me, The wind of the land was colour, the green wind bent Above the wheat and the fire of the wood was flame ======================================== SAMPLE 530 ======================================== Even a man might perish in a brook 'Neath foot of tree, for a fit of twos To a frantic dame Tearing up herlegressed hands through gape Breathing out vverses, Who tore and chewed Her rasping jaw through The little needle The strangest spider Ever seen Nay, when ye had a fair word To muse and melt, And ye had a tongue Too lusty to read The thoughts of her that she Lives and knew! Mole-moth life of demi-gods! The once mighty heavens Then carried an embryo Hissing at great Apollo's power From Belphagor's great womb, Who bent 'twixt the bogs, And all that stillness made Heaven's method. And she, the windows pouring in An arch of color, Hurried on the lyre of song To her blue Savio Who flits with motion gone, And earth-sacred priest From his sanctuary. Athwart the world's indistinct steppe Then flowed along The tangled filth and the wild wind's rage Upon its ridge, Till whelmed in one the river and the wood, The parting foeman stood Deaf as a man for love's sake, And sober and resigned Waked horror from behind a woe. "What break in thy content, Acheron, Thou wadst not be so bad, Some king with a new design Would look upon the whole damned crew Of earthly horrors, and decide That this was not thy fate. But I have harnessed the steed, And I am ancient at my back, And I know well who thou art, And of what class; And every ship that shall cross my ways Shall travel over my grave." So spake the Cyclops on that eve, The moon sat marble-straight, But now her glimmer turned to flush As the chieftain's heart had chill. He flung his leering gaze upon the ground, Then, speaking with a storm of breaths, Began anew: "The Cyclops land Is still my fetich, but I will be God of this hospitable earth. "O friends, we are nothing here, With crowns and curling scrolls to boast, But students in a small study, Who see that little does right; What bust-timbers do, or conquer Who, with his ancient place, o'erweighs. "I know not how to take and so, And this decision of my ways Must be for better and for worse, But such is the overflow From old legacies; and I cast it Out of my face and body low; "For I am not that I would be Who should walk yonder shore, Where the rough-cataired walls arise And broken arch and ruined parapet Through the great void and the great gap In the black gulf. "Yet will I tell thee what I will, And thou shalt go no more on the spot, For thou art not the one whose death Deadens and takes away. But here may be found to see What has been, but what is not now, And what thou only eternal, Eternal Mortality Against the man who is the God of life To live in him." Then down they fling The yellow linen into the deep, And thoughtless of the wharf whereon She was, the brother laughed And shrugged his shoulders, too, And thoughtless of the heart that grew To malice, and greed, and wrong, Shoved her back again From where the cliffs went on. She gazed to right and gazed to rear, The swift grey dunes stood still, Still as the faced Abzonant faced His last judgment-seat In the parting of the ways He stood alone A terrible figure looking out, A pitiless specter. And by his cloak, his twisted hair, The shade that shamed his forehead chill, And gibe upon his envious face, Where thickest darkness hid him well, He gnashed his teeth, and glared; Then, stamping of misanthroppe and gloom, Turned to the sea. The wave, like a great war-horse, Came down the cliff; it bore The twisted hair of its master dark Innamable, impossible to see; And then it caught him up, And, snorting, 'twixt the dark waves landed him. ======================================== SAMPLE 531 ======================================== By day, by night, one instrument, the clogg, Or fouler things, if tongue go quiet at all, Have overborne the brutes of all that's common; And now to us these silent, things that sleep, Can but their counterpart, the beast, declare. When there's something as good, or worse, than stone, You will confess the beast must not be the cause. To do that day's work well would be quite too much For you and yours: rather than to slip, as we Have done, two weeks' work will be managed to-day. So now farewell: shall my poor bird die, And whether the God who is pleasing to you Shall yon jackall kill, or let it free, I question. Whose winging to that air, not daring to fly, But being cut off to a fineness that would hurt Should, in the rough's glance, sink into an ice-hill Full soon to freeze itself, so never made a flit, But carry'd the bird to perfect silence. Nothing, that is an idleness. Whence, then, 'tis that all work's at naught? "Foolish man, why seek'st not death with ease Work on my office-jar?" True fool! You would move but little by your small talk; Then bow you, when you've finished this time. <|endoftext|> A shaft of Time, A poet's shaft, An era's flight, And a dream's evolution-- From those who Desired and who loved. For they A life's a play In many readings; Even to the character Of the rest Of their fate. What was their love? What was their strife? What fatal echo Of their being? And what is that which makes Life's meaning The love that's given And made an Eden? Saying: "In all the house that's made of wax There's not a wind in it." You hear the English skies Singing to the laughter of the days Blown about like bits of the sun's work; And of the ships wailing at anchorage Says one:-- "The wind with the guns that blow Out to the edge of the world." The shaft of Time, A poet's gesture And a hero's vow Down the ages circling its way Through some hero's fate Is sped by Porta Pro profaning For one idol-shrinelling; And some tapers burning:-- "There's not a river in it." Thus is it evermore In the shaft That's wrought Of the English mind:-- Its heaven's dome Is reached by some slaves; Some dancing lines unverseed and unspun Above a brace of wheels; And the soul feels: "In the house that's made of wax There's not a storm in it." Beyond our vision Is that space of light Such as is open Between a sunset's beams and their play In the glad eyes of stars. Through this ether of nerves That doth surround us every where There is a, giving birth to thought On its axis of hair Of body and of wraith. From that view to the fountain-flow Of the late midnight of the River 'Neath whose placid banks The mellow flesh of the two lakes glows clear Like sunbeams on a black sky; And whoso turns from that river Comes in a car on the grass beneath, The north and south winds in their wandering have known it, Made as it were of confluent streams Of colorless water; In whose whiteness and articulateness We see the chariot of the sun, Travelling at deathless pace beneath, As by a chariot that is very dear to it. We, we that have eyes to see, And a kinship with the night, Which is told in nights as certain As the strong ties of memory; Know as we know the number Of the winds of the Spring, How they have moved on after the Rain, And how before the Rain. What were theirs to us that knew of it? A tale for your strange new days On the threshold of the year. Here it is continually: "So the wind is going," "So the sun Quickens now." We know not of their movement nor their ways, Our spring and our autumn; Not the way of wind or of sun Nor their ascent nor their descent; But your spring- ======================================== SAMPLE 532 ======================================== NAKED PIG, unweaned, to be born Called in by familiar cries at twilight, And finding nothing to eat Begrimed, as we in lies ourselves, And pluck ourselves to pamper still the fattest part, And wash ourselves in air from such a bestial bill. If I was fabled as the poem says, And he as keen as Samuel Johnson, I'd reply that the fable means the end Of irony--the doctrine that for a wit The true wit should be the true creature, Just like a poodle, or a jay--a dunce. For Johnson's praise I'd rather add, that He takes, or ought to take, things in too small A variety to claim true wit; While, even to do that praise in juster point Of sort, the belle of flowers that loves to kiss An ass, or a goose, he, if honest, And not wishing to be all humbug and flam At a penny game, would give his honest man Their very same false eiegeneazi. The fable, poor son, is unbeauteous and weak, At least, beauteous by our modern sight; And the proverb, to which, alas! it leads, 'The he-devil it does the weanling,' Is a good-size sun that you can see Like the symbol of a barber's trade. For the verdict of great Shakespeare's skill Is not the sort of praise that now is sought; Nor yet the praise of exactness proved A half-conclusive or a much-concluded fame; Nor yet a triumph over mediæval strife, Or a conflict with the terrors of age, Is a guarantee of applause now made. Heaven grants to trust; he shall be silent soon When he must trust to sink back to-morrow. He, like a Pilgrim, soon the shore will find When he kneels to remember to rise again. Heaven never sounds so well in the poet's song As when the silent locust, at midnight, Crowns the hoarse neck of the loud showering sea; No warmer plover than the ocean dumb, No cormorant to peer o'er the tide; Alone! He hears the moaning surge with his gulp And swallows it as a huge uncorded hook Full loaded with wild and cruelly intent. He runs on, hungry even to his peril, Singing his song, his way of old, One who slept, with dreams and sleepers curst. And now there is but one sole vessel on The red ocean's dreary verge, that bore Bulk of the strong ocean and strength of will To fight with the vulgar and with conquer'd humans, Like scenes on old inspired stones and hark, Here's old Cerberus, though his teeth are graven in vain. For in that yearning for bare existence Bold commerce dwelt from Torres-North to Plymouth, For our bright panes and the voice of friends, Bare widows and stout calabashes, Whose hearts in the cup house of repose And upon what the briny tide imbibed; For the bare horizons and the water's sea Wildly bright and wraithlike, over-whatepp'd, His pinn'd vesture bedecked with tears of the sea And the world's widow'd melancholy; For the revel of bare marts and the laughter Of broad bouquets, low drip of beer, cakes and pies And overheads quick glimpses of veined fans And blacking signs, through the wide joind of pinnies Whose shut doors, there with their children and heir brethren, Their duke and dignitary, their grand dames and gentlemen; In their boudoirs lewdly stream'd with bruit and jar, And on green chairs, for a copticie of eyes, By the far clasp'd door, once heavenly and sublime, Draped on a purple throw of azure, full Of sight and of horrid invention; Whose boards were rough with the rough stone, Whereon in the sawdust, sawdust, was pulver'd And built like a temple to its mould'ring dust. Its deep arches, from the plastic wave's Deaf ear downward, ranged in classical course, And fell through its own ravage, as 't was turn'd From the great old order of that dread deep, Round which the many waves' deep laughter rang Whereof that lady of the LIFETUNE came ======================================== SAMPLE 533 ======================================== I was most free as any woman in the world; In the shining morning, as we lay in bed together, And looked at the clouds, I knew there was a God, For I knew the sky without a priest, or car, or priest, or priest. And when I turned to those that I loved most, I saw And knew how they looked down, that now the hope was gone, Like a shade of the summer and a hope, that was a fear; For they lay with their bodies open to my watching, Sleeping as stones sleep, by the lonely stream, and only I. And yet there was no comfort, for still is their prison so lonely, That is been seen on the, bank of the purple-buried stream; There in the place where the foliage of the willows was dying, In the spring of the streams, and where the rocks were resting; And still the silver fountains sound, On the mouth of the stream that is called Angelsin. And I have known many a gentle woman, Whose brow was ever pure, As the waters that bless us Or the streams were growing; And I knew women whose virtue was so rare, Of their own accord, would grow, As the leaves were sown in the wild woods; And I knew women whose virtue had such power As falls on the roots of mountains, Which with no power of its own may be named; And I knew a woman so divine, And a mother so kind, whose oaths she kept When she had put off this living love, And with Him at the law of nature, And the live sun's-eye praised her too, And the lips of the most active air, Which all night long had toiled to keep, With their motion a smidgeon; But she, the warm mist-bound mist, Who so blest her being, Forgot not her misery, but smiled a while, And then played with her tender little child, And looked at him smilingly, And was still, for what could he think In the lovely days of life? And while we are here, Did you know the way we come by the cave-mouth? We found it on the side of the hill, And what we found there, which was not the mouth itself, Was that the mouth was what pleased us much. And the mouth, now there is none; For we have seen, and the dawn is in the clouds; The very river which we see From its cataracts, which will downy run, Till the sunlight shall tear it to the stone, That was our cave-mouth in the hole of the cliff. It is the sky where the birds soar, Which is runnel in it, so say we, Or it could not be tear, Because the tear Were rubied out with such a rate, And the wind, therefore, is blown to weep The tears of its own self free. The clouds then must be treated For their good works with a rain, As tears to be shed at their need, Not such as flow by mistake. The hills are prayed to weep, The valleys be plagued, The winter be prayed for and clamored, To awaken and melt. Nor are we weary with the snow, Nor with the ice and ice-fringe; This shows the bottom of things, But not their own bottoms. What grass and the cattle we love, When a pleasant path may be found, By nothing loth, nor where the way Comes dearest escape! You saw come from the highway, How the heads came off so well, All front to the porch and the scene, With the dead dog in the roll, Which was drowned and so drowned, That none had seen any blood. I came too near behind, It was I who did it; I had got a bit drunk, I stole the horse to ride him; I didn't fancy the boot, But it is done, is done. It was a cool wet night, And the moon was black, I was trying to sleep, you know, I was so tired to sleep; And this was when I met A little huckster that had run A stranger's crazy glass, And he asked me for a drink. I am got a hang of wanton wanton wanton wanton wanton wanton wanton wanton wanton wanton wanton wanton wanton wanton! My feet's like a goat's feet, Like a bugger's buttock mine They're ======================================== SAMPLE 534 ======================================== FTL Deutschland: Up yours, Guards of the Focht Office. Never such a return From yonder, and the West Like our hundred slaughter-gear: O men, we pike the horses; We now, by English law Work the knots! Each one to his ain. Hoover, May 10, 1944 <|endoftext|> From out of the sacred well A voice came softly and clearly: "Do not call it thief or demon Who by a hair is held to have The art of hidden sense. This is One Above who walks Unseen the garden of the White Queen; They have never heard his voice, They do not know his look; And if you hear him you must die As they would have you die." Then at our solemn response Our High Priests the High Spirits called: "What art thou, benighted?" "I am one of the dead," We said, "who walk the earth Bereft of sense and joy and light, At the kingdom of the King." We came upon the royal Black Lodge, The Tenant of the Black Lodge; The wood of wampum was our Verse, The living, voice of Gehenna. In the midst was Utkuashish, The drum of the Stars, The shining drum of Star-priest things, The sacred Stars, that fill the skies With the trumpet of their fury, The mystery, the secret, awful bat And the blood-ritual world of things. "Hear me, ye Infinite Gods! The seeker of the black death Is chosen while the ways are dark, For not all who come With eyes to these blue heavens shall stay From the gateways of wrath, And for that gap of light, As darkness men call it, The seer is lord forever." "And things as souls that walk and shine What will ye not do to me? Things without mouths say words without speech, We say that the story is things." And the black fog settled slowly Around us, smothering love and light. The voice that should have given the thing Was suddenly mute. The black place of the godhead Was naked of its star, The flying days of the heart were dead. The sharp glistening teeth of the wounds Fell, like a tree, in the sun. The black goiter had flowered, And, like the heavens, the temples Were gray and sere; And on our brows was the greatest rain Since the world began. "It is a blank, as is a bloodless well Of Infinite Desire, whose cold Is poured from empty, sick hands In sanguine hopes of the future spring Whose spring ne'er is poured before." For, as the solemn thou and I Did nowise hold, With thoughts of love and light For ever from that hour our souls Were smitten blind, Save for our other sharing Of that sublime fullness, Our lips together saying The Words of the Night, as we Stood by the glowing well, And gazed above At stars beyond our world. "Did ye not love too long Live too long, save for the sick Souls of the earth and the poor; Of all the vision and the pride, Of all the sweets and dregs Of this green spot, this black, Cursed spot, Massachusetts? Did ye not love too well Those eyes, where the rich gland Doth make the pearl for money? Say rather that ye loved Her eyes too well; And love her eyes the more, For that is love which is Impervious to baiting, Bechambered and encumbered To the deep temptations of Power and state. My love is like a bird Or a pure song of bird, Wherein a single note Lives at the single height Till the same it dies. My love is like a song Of its own accord Left in the same, alone, Ere the half-opened mouth Dearer than the flower. O love, do you remember yet The first of May, the day we hoped To be marooned on, beside The triple canals of Belgrade, The smoke in the air above, The beaten drench in the pot-house doorway, The voices of the slavers coming, And the great world-famous chowl going? O Love, was it many years ago, That you were like a knight in plate, That the high ======================================== SAMPLE 535 ======================================== Who thy region rears and spaces-- With goodly name and welcome meet-- Who kneel and tell her the tell, The dead to her in faithfulness When we kneel--who give us no offense, How did we come, and in what mode (By what unquiet heart that they in?) Perceive the ever-dwindling more Of freeborn man? What is without To gratify free wit and voice That's barely free? Faith--tell of that, And then my words begin-- I am unconfirm in title-right To ask my dreams to prove: These are the questions that invite, All other prayers prefer, and these Make but the answer. Though there be some, sweet, sainted lady, Not speaking now, who loved thee then-- Not one so pure as the driven wind From them there came singing of thee; Nor yet so dear as home--that thou From us, my bliss so proud Should'st have appraised--thee and we In words--in thought--our sister--Sweet! Think'st thou That such a beauty as this Is here convulsive, and that with scorn Thou wouldst them kill? Who thinks that in thy glory thou art fallen Will see a cause for naught lost; And who henceforward doth hold the view Will find this to his nature proved; And mourn it as his natural self. Is this a theme for a fool's tale? But no--let's see how it turns out. I think that all that through that old earth Of lover, sweetheart, and rose-bud died Of yore, and is to spring again As soon as winged thought to sense again Breathed into being, shall find them pretty-- I am sure pretty--after telling well The story they told for many years. Thou, who of spring hath freshest garland given To this, the greening spring, whose blossoming Wells deep with dew and flame, and fire for fire, As its own flower, with whose calm shrine Summer deepens many a flower that dies. Thou best descends, thou feather-bearded sire! The blackthorn blossom and daffodil Well hou their white-thorn are like Ere soft hours wax and wane; Oh, soon shall I see what these foreshow To their blue-pointed forewarning. Here will I see on hillside beauteous stand The kirk and the oratory, two good shapes Of the dead, earth-erected birk. Then the great age, in that limpid cloud, True to the sun-blast of her ways, Shall flower, and the pride of Wales unfold In stately majesty. Look, sweet one, sweet and mild! Look how that windy plain How oft shall that vine-clad vale With its o'erhanging mists bewrayed green Her blossoms dead! Shall not the pouter-dove, with rare wing And rainbow of wings in the entrenchments pass Of her fair silken zone! And then My lady's lover--he!--I will see him, No matter how the hedge-row grey Boons the hue of a proud knight. The widow he, the bandit, and that man Withleagued, hoarse, to out-roll him, Him with her hair; With who for this, who late, there, his city drew Full of glories, golden and fresh? With what singing of sweeter was it sung Than from a great peopled low crest The harp unbound to tremble sweet! That living, bard-like, deep-murmur'd then To whom a thousand lute-strings hung As in strangeness bewilder'd And now Of the waring horn-cells and the mild Old-whispering wood She's sprung full-throated in trumpet-vibes, In ten thousand living lines! Some gliding sinew, some great-jocularity So, where thou pleasest, Some note I try of thy harp-playing: But, believe me, sweet, the strain would need More than name; And as thou cam'st thou cam'st to be The artless and unconstrained concord That soothed sweet discord to afeard. There was a glade, not far away, Where a low green fence with flower'd posts Carv'd, and soft trees out-sat, ======================================== SAMPLE 536 ======================================== Paints the woods and the skies! Her stiff eyes, her beauteous neck, Are trimmed with many a feather, Appeared in those fair places, As as kings with sceptres are Which they can close and unlock. In the strange dance of the bird I am dancing; I see--I breathe--I blow! I say to the song; It does not rest, Till I call, "And sweet the song!" And the sweetest bird of the air Bursts into the forest spray And all the birds of Paradise Go scullive with me And hide my face; And I taste--and I taste From the tip to the ground! Was that a trick of hers? Or was that a gift for me? I heard her upbreast astride Walk with gravity's pressure, Her fingered footbind coming Henceforward as the nearest thing To match her foot could. Oh, she took my spirit! She filled me with her look! How it hung in the air! How she gave it back! How the silver centering! How she brushed it forward When she stepped and talked! Over and over again! Though I knew that she'd be Stopping by the river side To dance with the fishes. She talked; and it was so, But the wonder half separated When she drew herself to its vanishing Edge, and so was not I, And I was not a man; But I thought of the plan I'd devise To spoil the mystery, As the sunlight shrunk away From the perfect surface of its weight, And there she stood Taller than the Covers girl Of yore; And her laugh ablow the night, As of old. The Covers girl is dead; She fell in the children's year; Long lives she now. And the dawn of her flower Strikes with a thousand Lightnings. The twilight falls, The leaves of the withering tree Feel her touch again, And shade to shade and thrill, Shrill, shiver, a thousand Whence you came, my child, Which I must say to the good breathing How finely it skirries; For your fingers are deft, But they fly. Mine now drawn up and spaced, Stands the grey fountain like a head With many eyes: Mine, now white with untarnishtence, Shall stand there and depart. No more the vivid days shall you draw, The pure azure of her glory: She goes, that once so beauteous, now, Be other where she is gone. I saw her in the grey wreath that is A widow's weed, She stood in the heart of that antique Hall, A maid of fashion to wear away; And, smiling, nodded me to her hand, "Live out the day, love," she said. But the flowers that put forth by and for Love's dearest coin are flush; And where Love makes bed for his queen, She there was writing her letter: But her hands, that with tear after tear She took and swept, could not stay; But they had well bought fair to draw down Her diadem. "What? yet keep a scrivening? O Jesu, let me strangle thee While they let thee! Nay, I have done; 'tis done. I'm well Rated." "Ye will wear that forever?" "O bless me, Good ladies, forgive. "What? yet have a home? O Jesu, Jesu, give me a site, For as a scrivener I'd beg of you a site." "Go home?" "Yes, home I go. But the gates Are rickets down; and the great King Holds the House, and with King hands Echoes from the Lamboke. Still the English now are in fashion; They are not half enough out of it, And think that a writer is something queer; They are not half enough out of it To show that they are not half out of it And mock at a writer's queer clothes, And new coat, and mutton-stank breeks, And picking at old turnings; And so they have failed of finding a home For her, For her, who the deuce knew What clothes she should wear! And where, With all her home-made things? That some three months before Had carried--what? Was it in verse? ======================================== SAMPLE 537 ======================================== Then how is a man assured an unthrift Who wastes his substance to the gutter? "Why does he lend his neighbour something? Perhaps his daughter's boyfriend?"-- "And have his bills not easily paid?"-- "How can he show a profit?"-- "And what can he expect to get?"-- "And why in this spring do his prospects discomfort him?"-- You would have thought that your reasoning would have made clear the matter. And my interlocutor's hair, Tapers at the roots, was asked in for a tune Whose strings were snapped. "Ay, if I play at that!" Cried some fellow, in dread of a fall-- But the picture had played enough with you, The fiddle player or fiddle-player To show you now how that lie was cooked. For though his hair Was short, it was quite as fine In lace as any in the city. It was long, but in India That must be said In one pan of delight With a knife's edge of golden hair, A sharp knife, and better still, Alpenzoil 715, Which, though dry, no doubt, Smells like Channing's Rose, Or well-known to you Perique. I am here from St. John; I have Rested full five days; from Cap Ferrat, Windward beach of Venice, lad, Whence is my Lord, bound to-day? Well, perhaps He has heard Some rumour what it is Tho, if his time were well-meant He has not leisure, One who has it Would spend it In time of prime. Towards the morning's golden brightness Slight cloud hangs on the sea, I think you said "How can we catch him?" I said, "I do not ask for applause, But I wish to begin A satisfactory line of mine." And some sunny babble went abroad That all of you may know Of your ideas on the moonlight play Of waves that wash the rock." I look in one of the little books, (My papa's book was always full of them) And see one of your names there; Not that we take our books much per se, But, as we look at you, you may guess, Where are, where are you from? Perhaps we did not meet Of my chapters in the sky and sea And in the earth from them, And if I turn to them I may have asked you, "Who are you?" I may have asked you, "Do you know of me?" All so very long ago. I may have asked, "Have you ever heard Of the little wide-eyed reckesshitting sailor Who gave me the word to start this life on? I may have asked her, "Does she know of me?" Perhaps you will grant me this, You were not born, but you were conceived In the lordly spirit, On the rock of Matter! O sailor, who was it Brought you here first? Who went so far with you Over the sea, (I would I could find it) Under the sky? You will not deny I will not deny, although I wish A stranger's doubt. We were uncles together, We met at college. To her friends were then The proudest women-slayers, The thirsting mouths of lust. At the edge of the wood And under the billows Where the monster lies, You were the gentle sailor, The swimmer of seas, Of limitless thew, Of ever-returning pools, Of all the monsters of the deep. Sideways, down where the clouds hang still, And under the raging clouds What makes this monstrous shape? And in the mighty shape, The wind and the wind-wind borne, How the beast so vast, The very God of the beasts Shakes beneath his tread. O there is little ease For such as he Within the breath of this place, His breath drifts huge across the clouds, The immense breath, the chill, The tremendous breath Of the unfathomable sea. Yester-eve, under the burning sun, I too, myself felt the touch; I felt it feel as I do now; And I was gathering in my breath Its life, its love, its all Just in the wisdom of good time, Surely surely I felt it then Awthor to lift my brows from the ground And give me utterance; ======================================== SAMPLE 538 ======================================== nostos from long night's labour again: He felt him fill his breathing chamber start, How blissful the stillness; and how sweet The stillness: no long lingering; as if Some hand had thrust him in at closing The gate where he waited for the dawn. He felt that no soul moved the place beside, He felt that a spirit smote him to look up, He kissed the marble, and trembled to speak, He bowed his head upon the floor and wept. It was the black on the marble; but it moved A withered flower out of a bud that bloomed And spilt of her breast-milk; he took it, And felt the pulsations of its loveliest And sole member, and touched her eyes With fingers for the greatest; then drooped in bliss As they, last of the live ones, foundered. Was it so with him, Himself, when his feet were fetterless? If he could but draw in that same image In line and stone of his own self? Is it but a turn of his face and A turning in a track to whatever is? She found him moulded like the marble, And like the glassy pool, of course he turned To meet his own shadow, and found peace there. The ancient memory shook his feet And stood the body for his body. Do people walk along the steepled square? When they turn they think of Earth, which Turned the other way. They think of Leda in the spring, They think of Neptune in the sea. They look up to Heaven, they look down on earth. It was a woman, or boy that I saw That night in the decrepit office, Just dry above the grease, withered And blew like flak Round by wind. She was not gratefully Standing there. Her meek eyes were moist. She did not look up, as many do When they have spoken and glad. They asked for her at the desk. The door was shut; she seemed To follow. The longer she Looked, the more the shadows I caught her as I saw her first. Though no one broke the dark sheen Of her hair. Her ears droop like wrists By a still waterfall, whose stillness Brings an auditory empty To all sounds. But her hands? The fingers still radiated light Like quays of silver. I did not touch her. I said, rather, "My eyes." And I was a long while Looking; and that was before I dared Question her--her gray hair Seemed to lack the triumph of youth. I cannot remember if I laughed or stared As I saw her--certainly I was Shaking--and then there came Silence between us, and I saw that she Was dressed in old colours, black and gold, Her long dress was not white. She lit her eyes with one, sudden flame Which like a sudden sun went out But when I smiled she grew calm, The familiar calm, And with the old kindness Which a woman infuses When there is nothing she can do And, though I had not laughed, I thought, Again, that is the measure Of makes or marrhes the dead. And so I was able to salute Her with the smiles she had of me, As waves the wave-shore in sea-time The gentle smiles of one who dredges And finds--out of wet sand-clustering shells And fossil remains Some half-kindred with her own grace. Ah, of her lips, I said, but how shall I Recall, between white sheepfolds, if you Have ever, really, been able To, truly, love, from all I know? What mother has never been so near To us, how dare you ask me now, I know, and will not laugh if, looking back Among the leaves, my heart in my breast should say. Ah, and you of the house, there on the stairs, You are all wrong: I am not the proprietor of her soul, I have not the right to answer I say. She said, but I, not to hear her laugh, Shook out my head as though I heard her not. Something that shook me so gave me courage To glance up at her, and smile there, And she, over me, laughed most grandly; Then suddenly she put out her hand, And clasped it, 'tween me and the light, Half in earnest ======================================== SAMPLE 539 ======================================== who couldn’t stand in line for six hours for a cheesebre and camembert or then slit their own throats to make a casserole for one— loyalist of lunches, a diet of Blackberries & Blood Orange Honey & finally Mylk’s Ale, fizzling off the can while I inhaled the citric acidity between thin glazed Pancaras, wrapping the Dolin enigmas in quinoa & bulgur, chalking it all up in the end, a scramble but she took it off her hands, like she’d swallowed a hemlock, and I left it for the firefighters, who drained it of its alcohol and, on my desk at the morgue, where I’m the historian at midnight and the only ghost writing a book about ghosts called Urban Burials, disposed of the nap that had grown to be a shroud I left a present, a memento in the form of the growler that’s been in the basement of the defunct farmhouse where I grew up drinking blue-green ginseng & oak shads, the darkness a sage conditioning in its stubborn way of being under the oak where the sun came out “to call me home,” the shadow that mocks as it lights the lungs that take in the right atmosphere as it finds in the world the element of diversity in the soul who remember their home in a book that means all of it as a worm burrowing dark in the page, spoiling its shell of substance and I hit it with my palm twice and awakened by the sound of one voice arriving into the body of another or three, my brain a house imagine how it must have looked beneath a lid of brushed saguaroes who are more careful carrying things in their beds so where does that leave me now, an intense movie with an equally intense before the turn to black for a live-wire body whose job is simply to sit and keep breathing in the starlight We wondered where the stranger would be at the end of a month so she could’ve gone back to look at a table and know she would never understand who had to live it if not before, as one who never had the occasion of. <|endoftext|> "that stretch of highway near mad town", by Kate Carson-Corley [Living, Life Choices, The Body, The Mind, Time & Brevity] where I first smoked pot I travelled down this highway tugged on jeans from their point of entry to my knees at waist tongue thumb finger top of the head the moon was only a smear of scarlet on a black sky <|endoftext|> "aspirations", by Kate Carson-Corley [Living, Life Choices, The Mind] a nervous insistence in the no-way that the too small makes the too big the too hard makes the too difficult that aspirations aspirations are the creature the mind opens a door opening a grove opening dome oklahoma city prattle bolting in the bore of discovery of elements of electricity eel intersection of word pattern spark the teacher's fear I is then you never thought of imagining the state as the stick a distraction D'you see it it's a distraction from the stick the stick's the beating heart the beating word unto one another there is a hyphen and a hyphen and a hyphen who thought about hyphens? <|endoftext|> "Ode to North Wind", by Kate Carson-Corley [Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] In the lull of winter, when it's cold, I see the dark shapes of the trees, the air's thin veil. I watch the sway of branches, and hark to the whining of the wind. Is it some cold comfort of the air I'm breathing, this amorous shivering? The white snow falls, gliding the way it wants and the bushes go green in a day. The new leaves don't even have a chance. In town, you don't know the genuineness of the cold, which has no feeling but wonder, which is not the same thing as being scared. <|endoftext|> " ======================================== SAMPLE 540 ======================================== That longing came upon me As in the stone when it meets its part With hands that scarcely know The cold touch of time, And in their final goal We touch when we strive Such work, such gods we've become that a dawn upon our brows can muffle. The old gods keep their youth, We've only kept our youth, Not in the schools of yesterday Our brains were sharpened For ways that be of Their working days. But with age we spend The brightest hours of our youth In a lurid twilight, The brains deteriorating, With every act That brings night, With every word That clings, With every thought That's hurled, To catch Our loftiest spirits, while we touch The lips of the dead. We claim a glory that shall cover the skies, We'd only keep alive the radiance We feel in youth's smiling prime, Though time would do us A nobler end If we gave it Full naturally, Our true nature In its purity, to posterity. Alone among her warriors, A pale and silent dame Sat in the North Dorne castle wall. Out of the crowd She saw an undelivered message, That day of all days was doomed to be The day when Roland's courser and shield, Went to earth--and from the clamour of France, Passed to the grave, together. 'My lord, that's the line, If I wait, and you receive it, It will be a death's-day,' Quoth Berenger. 'On that no further will I bide,' Said Dorden's lady of the tower. 'And since you speak,' quoth he, 'You must needs be my heir, No marriages held with other loves, You must my brother and sister be, Both dare emulate the sun Lover and loved above all. But you must give me your hand,' 'But where dwells your brother and sister? You speak of love. Is love the first love?' 'Nay, nay, not all love, but kinship love, I wish to say and loathe speech, To clasp and kiss and love above.' 'Well, if they only did! But what about my hand? Can you Not love--I love but you?' 'By right you are mine lord,' Said Berenger, sick at heart. She looked on him long and well, Quietly kissed his hand and head, Came with him willingly. 'No longer dally, give your hand,' She said, 'I go alone. My sister and brother-christian dead, They may my works and you, my deeds withstood, This is the end. 'The day I from your herte go, Is there no ones but mine own To take vengeance on, I?' 'But you,' he said, and pressed His hand and breast against hers. 'You seem to fear lest others spoil What you have killed far better, But not so this love,' he said, He wed the widow of Oli victim, The birds and jellyfish her children, And Christ the dead her son, And a woman and a bird lay them down In a row, And both the deceased, brother and sire, Clash their beaks, Breathing, and on either side, The oars of Mars beat With a leap and with a spring. The scarlet on each balloon A bit of the crimson for ever, The noble and the fiendish Lie down by either wall. While thus she the lover's song Went on, Quoth the lover, 'She hath now done. Now needs no more, Nor you, nor me. Sing she was a belle; The colt she was are but two, Since he was young, Thou divine song-bird, no fault in me. Take that which I to thee pay.' Bereft of everything that was mine And mine of them, My heart and my heart's hopes and fears, Of the best and the blest, This was the work that I could hit on: To believe that my poor birds and I Had one life of which the birds were part, And that of the days and the weather and the moon And the night and the stars and the years, And that of deep grief and of deep joy, And of death and of deathless life. In Pala Endüs's walls, in far- ======================================== SAMPLE 541 ======================================== Looking like a witch-flame-on-the-road Color of the trees, your endless summer Sharpens the leaves, the delicate trees, Sweeping like the wind of summer, wearing Up the wicks of the trees. O, like your breath, So neat and stoplight, icy-cool as ice-cream, The tune from your breath. They're always short of exact time or date of birth or exact place. And they're wearing the odd timepiece, have we not: When I got tired waiting for the bus I could hear, In a house with no view of the street, A crick in each eye and the barrel-organ phone, And the patching door still had one lock to play with. The narrow country road wasn't wide enough. It was an account of the city I knew, As all Americans now must think of their town. There was a kennel on this road, where now Dingo droughts in the breeze, and where Tonight a feller plays his very bad accordian. No place to get some water or sit down, The bus was quick, the bus was quick. And that's why they killed him: it's hard To keep a bus steady when it drops off someone else's feet. So keep off your own. In this country There are too many of us to defend, Who wouldn't wager your guts they're green-- That the very day we meet, the time's tone They played "Tequai" to a rest--"Our trochee, Maman, Would like to bid thee farewell!" It's not wise to tell, In life's mortal flutter, what to think next. Life as we know it up here changes all too soon. Someone else's crazy eyes where ours should be Change the way a candle smells from day to day; And who we are stands growing upon a child, Who mirrors can't or hurt or comfort or warn. The redbreast's nest Up a red basement wall-- Can I do that? Over my head the clouds are swinging, And I'm blind-- My hand is the bird's own, Its corpse, taken, buried, Worn, now, like a child. The house is plain, The lawn is fair, You can stand and smile A speck on blue I feel the blue, you say. And the shadows come Away from the glass And brown the stream And lightly in the weeds The goats are pawing. They'll never come near, For bird to bird, Or swoop of bat, Or second hand of light You say they should. They're right of note Upon your sill-- Only thing wrong Of a slight difference. The place I killed You saw-- Too slow to rise They pull the lark From home, killed by me. She strolled in proud As a fairy sky. The old dead flower On my breast Was done for you, The great grass lark. One mistake Was all, one thing! I should have seen Her flying ladle Whereat you sneezed. The afternoon changed To the dusk's mourning, The evening fell Strange as death, As winter not caring, The wind come roaring in The noise changing On one who listening listened. My mind ran speculating On things to come, And one a-dreading We discussed so, That light of gold the sun, The moon dead and heaved. Beware the strength of brightness That thrives a little: A night is lucky for liars, That sleep at latter. The mouths of living get well When little should talk; Then he said to me: "Wait till night to-morrow, For shine has ended, The moon is on her tether When night begins. "What harm if I told There is as well a live-long day, The shed not I see, In favour of some shade Who has the sun against His holy name-- And in his eeighty years." And now my fancy's work, Though slow, is done-- I doubt, I may be right If I have drawn a line That a mistake can counter, A clock may chime; That a half hour's event Could excuse a twenty year Though now to sense untruth A little fitter than truth. But when I saw that there Was danger for your mind, And plain you saw That these twins weren't the ======================================== SAMPLE 542 ======================================== I urge upon the wind, I urge the path that rambles like a road, I feel a presence. I love a forest much with its close-cropped, rhyming tree-tops, but the wood's assigns I loom up, a bump emerges. The brush cut from the old beech-log, its wax, I glue to a sliding scale. <|endoftext|> "The Rocking-Themed Mountain", by Maggie Dietz [Love, Romantic Love, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] for one, one then another, admitting the alabaster breast she picks through, the carpet-chink that begs a slumber companion— through breath that knows what to do with rain and light comes fog and glitter that brights the eagle and offers her a beaconing rock wall that bears, rebelled, bright water, biohazard signs, a water sealift landing from me to you calls you from a world cold breath call you from my shadow find you and stay the long golden night knows the fly what I know: a harsh word from me a change of breath in the cry of a weeping mullet slings a tinfoil dart and to you a mountain calls you to it overedreams hurricanes slate regions flows stormy with beauty prismatically slams to the coast with head-shaking rain and stormy stone keeps the fogging veil leaking on desert grit but what the dead who meet with you speak once thoroughly without sound sooner or later fell, sooner or later dwell a mountain with you posterity <|endoftext|> "The Bechdel test", by Margot Sanger Land [Living, Parenthood, Arts & Sciences, Sciences] All I ever wanted was to be a woman with a third and a vagina with a tray of smartphones Instagram sub-Instas and rumors of walls on which dummies are available to the tablillying In short I've been thinking about the phallus as a genre Thinking in terms of why a [thing] is not a literal an is something be gone a penis exists in a single position in a straight and no forward is right and always vulgar does not meant for b-sides of lumps of piss numbers For me as phallic smashes as the end of a sticky mess of penis sticks to this breathing dust as an expiration of a series of ticks and waves that happens and also does not cause horizontally drilling its way through the meat molded in the way of the vespa For me I bring nonexistent firmings I've not a-go for an explanation for existing as a remnant I think that phallus has its own ideal form and works to that all enimus like a great wall of penis acrylic name cut out in perpetuum in a piece of wood Of veneer as abstract <|endoftext|> "Telling My Children", by Margot Lee Donald [Living, Parenthood, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] Before language, the oldest living form of communication, Before writing and writing are invented; Before language there is gestural, then comes speech; Of gestural signs the earliest are prayer signs; And sound is the name of sound, pictography; When did you become a mother, mothers. Tell them; I was born a woman. Tell them; I was given instructions. Can they guess what their role Will be, on bearing a child? Not entirely, not entirely; It is a sin that I should keep Their lines in my head. I may be a woman; I will not lie. <| ======================================== SAMPLE 543 ======================================== is blud as fuck. One chickin'-wharf toax of breeding an' keepin' an' gettin' comfy in two o'clock? In the mid-seamin', one o' the old Cheroots, you know, the lead levels; long tittin'-roots, freeboard all the gaudy golds & sunsets during 'er silhouettes, frettin'-roots, root- serfs all the attic-hearth & no- thing but to grow great roots all the roots an' let the snout bungle most each ridge an' slope an' a couple of stout fire- stems, overach the old straightah-shove home all the way to the water. Is this some kind o' fool-the-son jimps waev the house? Over the whole field any be my owl, an' I'll show ye You got a vowel sound an' it squeaks out yer face a-feelin' cheerful? I've been takin' one thing over like the heid o' oysters; My husband bought his patent last fall; His company it is, To say, "This one there is a better patent-free than this one!" Oh, he's so stupid I've stopped my father from his work! The leg-disease come back twice on 'er, A. Stein-house, it's "null!" and so it is, B. The poor's house! Hid up in one little flat, an' all sentimental! Atomes is a-wooin' ashin' ugly! She's braved some swagger, I'll say! I'll eat my musk-cake, An' then walk off to an' ride With any man I want, I go on my nose Thar ain't no task Auorious-like, without a tulip-dust, An' I let the books Tell Me I'm tawdry-like, But this ain't me! How well they're seyed into each other, They're likey write, tho' to-day They say, "Be careful, she A home for Noah's line; She'd a-leerin' after a grain, But she's *tenderly unclean!" It's all they are That they *care about that flebs! An' you can throw It ower the wall For them to le'e That's fair enough-- It's two fat cat-tails I hitched a leg on to ha'e whut? They can't tell, they Blink an' blink an' shrug an' niver pant! They have a name for it, one night, The rustlin' man an' the girl Hirkin' a flamin' halk! I don't understand, and I'm cauld, But she's a' bright Waleshipper, i' the old an' old! There are chinks within the castle walls, Like there's a sheep within the field Whose horns like flasks are twinklin' white, And sheep like that is tizzle-lite. As for this girl, she doesn't fa' Waleshipper. I like them The morn, When their's seyy a shvitzlin' bleer, An' my theolk's a-gropebin' huslin' ower the wally, An' they're robbin', if it's ower the mark. Well, I didn't choose this lilt, Ye'll forgive me, comrade. I have travelled far, and north, and east, And south, the sun may rest his geordie. For I have had many liltie's ere the Morning Lush the fields with joy: An' sometimes you have to take the road Back o' the hollow hill. The sun has mark to thole the earth, And fall my wings, some other ways. So, now, I'se lo'ed a chap Whose limit's the road, though No happy eve. In dreams, or out, O! Oh, ever he can. Tho' tired, or trouble's keen, Gripes, and cups his wings with joy, An' tries to stay a-living, An' has a touch o' life, in livin', The blessed day-light day An' gets a pat ======================================== SAMPLE 544 ======================================== a mallet our parent's heads, our hats with pigtail lids, because we knew how to wash our hands once, you know, before we were born. To teach our children never to leave fingerprints, not even on the back of an envelope, like men who go undecorated, at war, and come home in slings. If he catches us watching movies, he does not hit us. He calls on us in bed: Babushkas. <|endoftext|> "Abandoned in the Soil & Spiritual", by Cynthia Ahlin Ross [The Body, The Mind, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Religion, The Spiritual] spirit is a green worm castrating another green worm a sage with women skin hanging from pine cones sheltering from the wind soil is a few grains of sea salt the women come down and drop a sack of earth like gold every now and then with one hand holding the earth like a sack the other hand holding a sweetheart holding onto a sack of gold the sage turning all this to a song sitting in the wind stir the spine up and down go back for more with the hands holding the earth like the sack of gold along for the ride ginger creeping up the rocks the woman standing on the criddle reliving the days making collards with her teeth panting for another infusion <|endoftext|> "The Search", by Mary Sidney Rivera [Living, The Body, Love, Infatuation & Crushes, Unrequited Love, Relationships, Mythology & Folklore, Horror] When I searched for him I searched in the bed of the deer in the green of his mouth in the absence of his eyes in the hollow of his jaw I made my mark: two white blotches on a pink back diminishing the blemish of a third gathering into a fist in the lamplight of the drunk in the halls of the unconscious an incandescent mass of darkness the odor of his flesh a streak of butter in the enervating limp in the green and the gray a grip I found that fit before he moved and the mumbled words of pain just after he stumbled and slipped away into the night the others came on with voices to take me in their grips And I took the shapes they gave me held them a bit tighter until a back was convulsed in halos and the belt ruptured to vanish into a flimsy whisper to be sucked back into a whisper Then he slipped away and they vanished until the voice began to wail <|endoftext|> "Lithuange", by Cynthia Ahn [Living, The Body, Love, Desire, Relationships, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] The little thighbone in the palm of her hand scans the ground like a birdfly or stag, his nemesis. Black-speckled on a red culetlet, in the polka-doting woods, she has pried open splayed, and wooed him, fallen for this charming the handsome— the crêpe-carp enticements in the yellow light from the pastry baker in the lattice of the window. But in the knife-groom of the heart, on its lips of pervious pine, she has curled bone shavings: thumb goes bone; little beetles and scale insects sigh in the crevices. Of bone I mean, not such dumb stench as in the manner of throat, that throbs and groins as in a good-for-nothing lover. What would I be without her sweet breath? My cup's still frosted—you catch, she whispers, I don't go out— She's the drowsy neighbor waking as the fire consumes wood for fireside, her back turned to me. Toward whitet, me: the limbless oaks that have their mouths struck open by the frost— they bear her thighbone— Their dust has life, she loves, and her odor is swamped grass, its scent as arse in spring. Fuglementas: between her teeth, a dustworm bumps and testifies. How much black cockatoos can you see? A modest tribe, by my fountained legs, dangling bare feet over petunias. I never shove those bumbling balls of flesh behind the curtain of my trousers. Mere pigeon ======================================== SAMPLE 545 ======================================== Spie, and Rowland, and Vernat Campbell. And Miles Doughty, the path is grey with rains. The dusty green playing-fields bend And call the farmer in to see his sheep. There is one horn thought there is in the paleness of the hills. The moan of evening closes the day And over the playmate of the plains, The big black sow dugs the West. In the hearts of all the land There is the howling of the wolf. The herd goes fleetly to kennel. And in that land doth all men go. Nurtured by the winds of Morn And curving up to the coy Sub-Deem, The peaceful night-bird fills his horn. The restless oxen come to kennel. The sticky paddocks bend to the steaming, thick mark Of rain, on the old orchard-walks. The dust grows to eyes that read the stars, The restless sheep all night lie low. And old horns like blowhard leaves are strewn In the horns of young firs, like dust to them Who wait and wonder all the day long. They know that somewhere in the darkness There is a road for all, So many roads, all roads alike. <|endoftext|> I waffled my pipes o' skidding the pew to hear the nags yawp and mutter, to hear 'The weary you-know-whats' with the dirty boys and girls. I waffled my pipes till I heard the sirens gymping and capering all the while, so I waffled a bit till I got that hum to groan and strike a nerve. I waffled my pipes till I heard the children in a rowboat on the sound shore, where they kept a jolly black-scale. "The cruel coachman," the children called, "That rode past last week without a shirt on his back, what is he doing?" I sang my pipes till I couldn't tinker o' a whigging hold o' the bowl, so I put on my apron and git my pence and die at the foot of the hill in the laneway, where no one raised up taunt things kin' the men, the scolls and the firls and the frawls. We laffed and we played, and we woggled and we sneezed, a' Klondy to Klump the place. But a sound like a toffee could the work stopp, and we all jump like Klub Tsutsarabs out o' yer pecker. On nights when the moon started shrinkin' to slip in through the canyon lid, I laffed it agin' the bighorn, but when it bit I sweer my 'i'eing'. When fizz George laid five freezin' on us in 'Finch, and ten o' the bag on the lips o' my pipe, and I wanted to tar it and play it again it made me say, "Yer time's a'ent ta wait, an' tar done already!" "Now I want to play," said George, "as you wiv your leisure; I never warn't han's in all my fadin'!" "All right," said I, "one half the map on this yer tin." "Aftlast, you'll be dank, an' a dry spot," said he. When Ed Maly-schy and I wuz about to begin, ed Mala-schy wuz by his charlot, and he played a piece 'way out on his pipe. "How long's Ed Mala-schy played yer play?" I asked. "A score," said Ed Mala-schy. I'vait been a bug to 'em from the first. B' bly-gally! I wuz don't find play-tar the better berry-bunion of the taters was sitll ed with me on the order to fetch me a name 'artin' to wear. "I wunst wired on the parlour mirror but couldn't get it hung up in the air. So far as I'm concerned, but I kin imagine, on and on, through the foolish errands to carry my compliments out. "So now I wus playin' with th' Clinch, soger, tinker, an' a run-town be'ind- ======================================== SAMPLE 546 ======================================== Till I at length have now espied the left-hand, Where that amazing funnel seems to float Through the blue depths of Heaven. 'Tis a castle, meseems, The which itself is made a fort; An eagle therefore comes from heaven, Scrolling with eagle's hand The sun and arching with his wings, And all in air above a dome, Castled over yonder clouds sublime. High are the towers, though they have no seat, No rock, nor bulwark save a tower; Nor wall, nor bridge; nor outlet nigh, But empty desert and a solitary River, called Orasund or the White River. And thus on sunny afternoons I spent So many afternoones I spent, Weary'd with the not being certain If on such chance my journey I had made. And grey became more and more, And like yonder heaven, not blue, But grey, and over all a colour unknown, In every shape, beside my earth at large, What did I then amass? Where had gone The house?--I had in that soothly seen, No house, nor, house I none; and if I sought, No country, nor own, nor kindred; were I known? Whom had the house to bid me seek? No nurse, not caring in the world to raise A child whom she had bare.-- A child for me A continent of ocean I must now Amble on, in that it is upright, and, given By Jove, in that it was created, hath nought To do with its straightness. This would I learn: The highest heaven, the air, the element that so Moves, and the sea's colder nearer, and the earth's Less cold near the moon. I am prepared By the ocean, the sun, the stars, and the moon, To seek the most, but I must seek the first, Seeking them, I say, in that great city. And one indeed is, for those which are: If then the universe be such; and one, If indeed it not. 'Tis mine to show A thousand places of the universe, Which when he sees he shall see that none are there Ah, nectar-fruited vine! Would that I had such also, for my wine So sparingly fills me, that I have More than I shall ever have again. The first Which I behold is LUCILIZA.-- My wife's name is Lucilisa; this the place, The only one where I shall see the Lord. From thence he goes on like a comet. There There only, that 's true, I know it; and behold The body of our god, my brother, in sight! Which, for a while, is blue, and white, and red; Past to the right, as if the sun had briefly cast Its length upon it. There the white parts of things, Whereat we think we see, that they are all there; But make not 's task too great. And 't will be free From that which's shown in them, and which, indeed, The god conceals. There in motion he goes, Treading his way, among those countless stooks of plants, Which together rise and move 'neath the sun. Or standing 'stead, as 'course the sun is raised; But 'bearing there a square and sober path; and I Take note of something that now appears to me To be a face, or rather there appears To me, though yet 't is obscure; not that I Faint at so great portent, nor am frightened so Nor moved that I am not all amazed Nor moved to wonder, whereon these are but fires As yet unsubscured, nor in what scene they're fastening. What it is we say: and we marvel, of course, To note that it's Christ, at whose touch still inanimate (His wits having been suddenly twitted) A living man appears. After the breath Which something like life still convulsions, he, too, Is alive;--but life not mortal, for then he's No longer in pain. But 't is rather this: That at the resurrection 't will be said to rise With all the rights belonging to his things, Nor by predestination flies away. How many are for mere glory, I can see, Of the poor old histories, or yours, and all Which the Popes and Priestcraft made so free with, Shall there be noted by one, who there will be A fresh accumulation: ======================================== SAMPLE 547 ======================================== tie and clothes, sewing and sewing again, too hungry, to see, the porches each Friday full of takers. My friend says she is soggy with her vodka and tea. I have no hat or coat. I am waiting for my future to appear on the horizon. <|endoftext|> "To the Other Boley John", by Anne Waldman [Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] Your books had magic in them Because you were perfect— Or almost, anyway— You, with your shadowy and insubstantial grace You, with your quaint good looks and your broad And kind-hearted humor, You, with the Scots terrier of the head, Which seemed such a favor to your house You gave it to us all, You, with the nimrods all gathered and perching in And the ruble-blooded mace you swung in the Storm (all hail!) You, with the thou-short duo, and the trio, And the froid treadmill of poems, With the old constant exultation on the third And the simultaneous hollo and bustle, You, whose selves were inexhaustible, All spun together and straightened together On the race-track of the brain. You— All the way from France to this country What and where and when You were and what you were not Has been going on for a week. It is the world's Most important question, The gulf between what you would do and what you Have done That makes me hot and cold I can’t see you, though. I can see a street in Washington, A window in Washington, You in England and England (A house here is for rent!) I’m only worried when you And I meet and try to find A place to sit. (There’s always somewhere to sit, For there is no seat.) I’m never worried when I see you, For I know, just as the poet speaks, You will appear, Just as Poetry speaks, there is always Something hidden in that great green You gave your life to. <|endoftext|> "One-Night Stand", by Anne Waldman [Living, Separation & Divorce, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Philosophy] Wearing no headphones, my brain unable to cope, a thin, static streaming from the radio, louder now and then filled with details of my niece’s falconry lessons, I lie on a thin mattress on the floor, wanting it to be over. I hear and sense my own breathing through a stinging cold I’d thought I had when I woke up, though it wasn’t cold but deep depression relying the sheets, body, mattress. I can feel my breath through the static. I feel my breathing, know it’s not weakness, want and fear are gone and in some parts replaced with memory. After my uncle bruised his skull on my brother’s arm with an empty whiskey bottle, I accept his gilt slab, its dim shine like the moon on the walls of our church. I pluck a silver branch off a pine column, repetal shouting like a child. I’d picked it before the heartless light burned my skin. I’ve got another branch now for my need. I smell my enemy, my uncle, on his death bed, far from me, still collecting his last rites. I wonder what it means to be human, to have a host of endless mouths, to be surrounded by them, to have a heart it fits, to be here, with my uncle there, with my nephew and sister there, to have this infinite need we seem to possess, to live and hate and die in a kingdom of suchness, the land where we are made of stars in an endlessly recursive dream. I pick up the sharp ones and take them on. <|endoftext|> "City of Nod", by Anne Waldman [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Life Choices, Nature, Trees & Flowers, Religion, Faith & Doubt] I want to wash my face three times a day into which I awaken I want to set everything off on the table that I forget to do I want to write everything off as nothing I want to heal the trees a bandage of nothing cabbage I want to ======================================== SAMPLE 548 ======================================== in earnest or in play; yet let 'em sing as well as they can, if but to lure our ear from some wild refrain, or sweet or with some stumble, Into fine conversation, which they may get on with such music or with such lies as suit. "You know," said he, "that on the shore Of Buffalo's river, there's a mark That everybody talks of, where all The people that were there, when 'tis clear, As far as the fifth or sixth recollection, Repeat the name of one Boaz--which is fancy, You understand--and that's the very one They stop at on coming to the frontier, every net Hath caught their throat, because 'tis so plain, And nobody's to blame if they do the same. --This beauty's the same charm, they talk,--all their time, at this spot on any place to the day That was seen on the side of the river. For this reason the tipsy warriors, too, Were close to stop at that place, not waiting For what the world calls a bow and axe or a blade Of similar device, but in earnest Because this beauty in their sight was won. When a troop is in view, his rivals to note. These, like the sun, then at once cease their song; At which, the Thaumonomers look up and smile, For in like manner, where all see the sight, When they at last arrived, were taken by surprise, (At the first boom, if you please, of a trumpet) They speed away--so fast, that in spite Of the King's speed when equal he takes the field, Rences and Duns your grateful honours remain Unseen of, and--whether he'll a peace At once, or in seven years-- May be as well withdrawn from the King in person. Thus spoken, the Sea-- A[il] was all in service bound, Like that human tide Which, like the Sun goes round the world, Glides by the straits of Meliboeus Which I pass, and is taken thence To be away in the eastern sea. Which moved thy discourse? replied Ah yes, and I, because I say too, I know, I know, when we are drenched in the flood Of the great sea, the human voice's extent, Nor any help the bust, nor the sword's length, Nor length of man nor peace, nor fire nor the hoar frost, No counsel's lightness, in such hundred years The wit of man succeeds to the strength of the waters. For the tow'rs that man can raise never rest From the shore; But if by his vigour's blast The waters might be levelled up again, To what? What is his excuse? It seems as well that they should linger still When bound with a net that draws so near, That they should stand again with the shore Which he drew. For if he who wrought the 'scure Kept the process well in view, And laboured that evil might succeed, Then, to make ever clear the design He need not have persistently to reveal What each then witens, and why would show it? Or if, perplext by times and fashions, And the clashing of varying custom, He, tossing to each side the hoary show He brought of the heavy ends of time, Would choose not the mean to be as well nigh; So, like the sun, grew, with no outpouring Of light, and with no clouding of its hail, The day of time in the outset seen; Nor the bag of winds allow such lustre to swim, With the vast hill-cloud the sea-spray winging, Nor the blue deposit of the eye to stain With its own violet. Ah, you're welcome! For the wit that ere now has worked on my heart, Is the wit that ere yet must work, on the world,-- Wit that shall make of new years the round, And before there's an age, there's death, I'll be old; And when we have rained on the dust the rain Of a hundred years, and after that gone by And when our feet are stricken on the bitumen, And we've no such wood for the fire That fuels our space, then we shall play the devil; The wood we shall burn at will, while we're above; We shall strum chords all wild and awkward, strumming Peculiar plectrums, which our audience Shall by degrees inexport ======================================== SAMPLE 549 ======================================== Steal not my strength, when my sorrow By thy bridal showers is checked; My chamber haste, where modesty No word will you or nay say; The time will surely come, with joy, When you shall share our joy and love; Gather in heaps the orange and grape. Happy bachelors, why dost thou shake The hour that threads thy days with sorrow, ere As yet an hour's penned stories tell? O how many end as well as begin With the instant day that brings repose! To thee, in truth, dost thou thy choice Make so much wealth,--so little loss of love. He shall in time and trouble fall and break Live to be free again, Who that finds humour in a mightier lot Than to be poor and beloved; But, if in there came a mightier face, Forgetful or false, where then was he Out-and-out slave, or lord, or master? Who eats, sustains that wearier than he Who consumes; but when the hungry mouth, If not now silent, shall awake That never yet had spoken, then, I ween, His tongue will have no power to dream. I say, the morning dew falls away Not all to meet the light, the day; The night may ill succeed the night, When we are happiest and the sun But the giver--he that saith not, shall share That night of Walthily Thought:--one flower! And so one bud shall blossom gladlier Than all which on the bloomy sea; This night that this shall drink the sun Shall think, till both be spent and wakened, "This Night I was the Night that was." I care not though the Daughter of the Day Shall never have fragrance, flesh, or lust; Her filth shall ne'er by night to Heaven been led, 'Twill be the self-Released, that turns the key To every power, wherefrom by day, by night, With laughter and with tears, men triumph and are bright. As these white blosoms of my garden-plot To day new life more fruitful raise, So I in my own Nature give Kindness and Love to every child. With kindly mind the wife made cheer For the dark days for old and seeing; For nothing but light will serve When this world, whose mischiefs know no ends, Growths on flowers here, that, smiling, lie Round the mother, doing her day's good. With mingling prayer and chiding She spake in prayer for every man Of all ages, born and dying: A heart with highest sorrow Basked in Heaven on her mother's breast. Though thou the leafless trees be vile And the hollow winds above thee weep, Deep in Nature's bosom lie Still my heart and that of all Whom love and pity world without end Farewell, O Nature! while the shades are nigh See that with the first beams of light Thy charm will float around our home. Through thy images to the sky These ladies pray; in rising sleep On mountain or hill, they here are happy: While brother, bird, and beast, In the hollow of their changeful day This tender image there shall live A thousand years to be The sweet child the mother's child. Wealth for thy children come not, Nor for the tree that blooms no fruit Nor the life of any star, But that which is more than dead, --Our life in love with earth and man. Fairest of creatures! were it not Time that demanded thy bond, Twice without measure long ago, Drawn of Nature, thy young breath, Nowhere for sale, nor yet of iron Warriors, among the sun and dew Sought by men for war's alarms, Alive for them that do live, I, as a creature, ne'er would wear Iron, which eyes well make dim; Nor thee, life of life, for we Make at the driving forth of shades To dream within this ill World, That one or other, however We shine or sleep, we are all; Nor bound thee with; for Nature too Sends out some creatures, and nought Others, but all the same, As in summer or in winter's air, Rise sunward or droop, with power Of vision or that sense. Nor stoop, nor crouch, nor turning share; But dauntless stand, or sitting up ======================================== SAMPLE 550 ======================================== Thou never weep'st, nor murmur once: Thou keep'st the house, and thou keep'st the keys: Nay, save for thy wild and curious brood, Lo, only one lock remains; to that, Those, who are found so dext'rous strong, Are by nature weak and vain. One, for some girl's sweet sake, a key, Save to her bridegroom, only sits: But these, in me, at least, love proves, And on my epitaph, an epitaph, Of love's weakness only and of mine. To share my fate. Alas! it was not dear To thee who, that most garrulous age, Wert himself but half dead: no, no more, I gave the raiment-room to Friendship: 'Twas my own, and now, it seems, no more. For here, ere this, I made my ablutions, And closing up the door, I made ready To sit down and do what there was to do; I search'd my table, and indeed I looked For a reason (though altogether simple, It was but evening) for some new escape, And a new pastime: one mouth seemed to have Another's love, and I to sit behind; I feel'd my arms fall slack, and my erect Bent with the burden; in short, I was caught And strain'd in every limb, so, Love seem'd vex'd And impatient: but the door! Hold, hold it openness, Then, madam, turn round: a page, though unwilling, Prompt forth and ask whence this sweet godlike man Who, from a cloud of splendid beauty brooding, Has settled now to look on us thus, Sleepless, silent, or with discerning eye Turn'd on a page, or read one thousand times No longer stupid, I have read it; The feast is close, the tables are placed: One after one, to all heaven flies Our lips with two fingers off, and one Over each: what! will each weary-standing Table after table, till all May be gone, and only be we two, The other still to change, to show again These leaves whereon I write. One table bright Bears a single star, and one, a solitary Star: two tender webs between: two kisses, of Twintress, of virginity, and then a third Now joining; thus Love weds himself with groves: And hence our Paradise--to love, as owner Is man or wife. I have fall'n so low, I see from hence, while yet I steer'd the thread Of this long thread here, and when my fall Was to follow, I beheld the sign, the Some beauteous bird; and I imagine such He scented, orbed, and when or where he was: But if he be as little known, I know That e'er as proferred pherson e'er-born, To Angelic Love have ye bestowed sight; Or cherissom, to the god that ruled her state So sweetly, 'dispersed,' came a new champion In Martial iligancy; that beheld The monition of her Dardine, And with the sworn hope of cooptation Saw her rejected, and to flight illur'd the Angel with Ambition. To what ran His name Upon her Nativite? The salutation only, And hence her Dardonic sanctitude. Sight much we bless thee, for that to us unknown, Beyond all other Virtues, thou hast held'st pass'd, Beyond that merit which can force thy silence, Or that which can the least resistance bar. For still delights she uninvited Thy presence, and keeps it so; that she might serve Her Audience more congenial cheer, thou dost furnish Her couch with cheer. Such favour from above Heard the foolish sprite; and so unremov'd She takes it; not compacting one venial sin, Though with superb confidence she 'scapes the bolt That hiccups from the pit: with it wont to play, As satyrs, naked, jerkin, and thigh, are Ball'd into snakes: and in thy speech ne'er swerves One erring chord; but, blockhead! still-devouring Aveng'd itself, and hell and heaven retaining Their hellward gurges, now this, now that way Concerting beat; whence, gath' ======================================== SAMPLE 551 ======================================== Twice married, twice dowsoned, twice burd-rolled, Grandson of how many hundred kings-- His playing cards with the other boys, His electronic games with Tommy, His want of faith in Tommy, and pluck, His startling faith in Tommy, His dreams of many noble daring Beneath the crumpled heart of Tommy, His sense of proportion, his feeling For Tommy's heaving breast, His heart to believe in the doughboy That was born to be a soldier. I held the door for a doorway That opened before my father and laughed My door was too far for such as he, And a doorway like that was never meant For such as he, with flabby muscles, His head all round from his heaving breast, His sleepy head down, A spine that never knows use, A spinal column of rude build, Muffling with tendons; There are they who haunt the threshold As they who sing on the drum. They say--"Why have they dragged the beast Out of his kennel and nailed him To the cooking-range and covered him And made the ugly victim An instantous menace to you and me?" I let them speak for me. I am that small, That your eyes have caught me Because you admired and looked. I am that phantom Gone before the moment. I am that dark, That timid, that fearful That I have taken you. The man who killed me has left me A little of himself yet-- A little of himself-- But he has nailed him And the truth is, That I am all that's left of him. There was an old gipsy couple, There was an old gipsy couple, Who had begit by the lap of clay, Who had begit by the lap of clay, Who had beguiled the yellow wood, Till, being empty, they had taken All those creatures that wood and clay Can equalize, And then they married, And said: "The lonely days are nearly done, The days of our reincarnation are so few; We are both old and we are young, For we both know that the gold has been depleted And the hard cash is on the mind; Then we two will make a life work, But where were we all cynic and cynical With such rapturous faith and hope as we had With a world of want and vexation To return and ask? For all, For all--we two, the most can understand. Then all of us two went north, north, and they To their cottage built themselves a home, And old as they were they made themselves a home A modern home and domestic; They were not poor, For they had deeds of plenty In their personal ledger, And the sense of right, That my heart knows In joy, is lorded by a sense of right, And you that would forget And dream that you are old, Be your own master again, When you knock upon that temple door. There you shall not seek the savoury bent Of early, homelier service; You must prove your manhood and maturity On the rough road which others find Alickety and wearisome, And the old have pride in what they are, Be as they will, Yet this is the poet's dream, And this the poem's promise. "Gosh! the last of the left-handed people that I know, Ringed curling around the hill--a giddy-bill-- Emaciated and helpless, he is shaking them Short 'Wosh!' when he wants to shake them long 'aitch! These shambling Bush-men's minds are stricken with toil, And I have none to work with, let me be punished For they reap but harvest. "The brow is gray, the belly fat, The tongue tar thin and the face windy and hard, I pity them, for they do not know the thing to do That they have naught to boast but hands and farm-credit, Where these encreased dreams of mine with little doors, Do not stand open but in tune with labor And day and night are harried and winded." The cot was eight by six, And with the rest was sparse; Two worked the hayfield, Four worked the town. His wife was maid there; There sat my mother-in-law To watch her girl and bake her bread With neither man to help, Neither man to heed. The shower ======================================== SAMPLE 552 ======================================== And now I'm sure, so they're getting thinned In the circle round them, and it looks so-- The wind will make a swag as of them, And we'll find, to our good fortune, that we Are worth our killing no more than we're dear: The goods on our bush soon will be licked clean, And the fish we caught eat as we caught it. But as it is the business will bear Our best to-morrow, and we'll have the We had a word for all the mess they Put out to sea, and now the word came They'd catch our hawk upon the blue; But they must put a stop to it straight now, For he made up his mind to tackle The Sardo-Edditions then, and he will Break our crew from their work--then why did they Not get their utmost achievements first? The fish got away for a hundred years At Dinklyn, the fox got away To Blenheim, the ball of foxes rolled Thrall away to Solway Knoll; But naught could these sea-sounds move, So they gave the word and the stealthy creature Was hounding us to their lengths; Nor was there lessening of our work Upon our tripod while thus they strook together, But they'll have one last touch from us now. And we're rid of them for you, and they're Dear Wordsworth! how is it that I find In your magnificishfe syllabus Word after word to what waste and useless chat Has past an end? I ask, for there's something drear About it all, and will not give up posterity Even in its psalmody. There is no day Of the year clear in its midst to me Which has not something unsaid to tell Of life's abysm or the souls' waste, In a dry land nowhere with miles of scotage. Just when I think I've got somewhat sane And felt no o'er which to the dozen cuts Of the weather's ruthless teeth and to hear Shriller than blasts, you come in their clutch And make me deaf with howling again. Then there's the slowness of light, you have it well In, the great peroration which is built In light of that which's to come, you have it as well As I have it, but worse by far! And I say The whole o' the world's life is lunacy If it is less than what's after all the best To close on and whet upon and whet the shaft Of; you've cut it, and what there will be left Within that shaft to strike, hit, next time on The edge of worse than whinstone and so be, I'll know more about when I'm well away From here and other people, for you are only My despair and my highbrows and are the worst Of what's free, the men who are worth their weight of guilt. I see an old woman winding the spindrift Of the past from order for the use 'Twixt those who were there and those who were not Foresaken of time. We move to what came next. So much to give of the way the fight was, And what the country came to you should understand When you'd fought 'em and heard them roar Some loud reminiscence In jags, and on the farmyth coast, Not like on ev'ry hand of cards or dice But like a harmony of many horns and shells, Where dirge-like music with cries goes by to die 'Twixt sand and snag and emergent mud, to dawe The dead souls for all time in ent'ring hell. As her little hands gathered grave bit by grave bit From the stone, in giving of the maid who died Painfully of melena, perhaps in fear, Her lovely body by some spectre's scaring Was left to its own spilth in a pit, And, when the time was ripe, a basket took, And then the life of the woman's dear hap Was burrowed, which, when you'd-held it, you come To tread all so disparted to pieces bad. But all that peace from hand to hand befogs And swerves is you and me, when it is wed, And to the maid I gave my heart, and she Was set a torch-foot's distance from me; I take the hand back. I feel I shall, if you keep Them at bay. Still, keep them there we hate. But ======================================== SAMPLE 553 ======================================== Versa, amid Them stands, below, Aristotle's form, of which the line The pupil is the image: where he sheds A bright, effulgent light; nor melts at noon, Nor in the moonbeams' shade. Purity The gilding, and, beneath, the prime Of judgment, studious weather, and so He bags his puny bosom with a vest, And shields his eyes from all the common hazards Of earth's dealings. The fine scum he spreads On metals, and the casket's cuts With mystic stitches; and o'er the lacquered dome, A withered, transparent and winged shower We hold him fast asleep! With mystical symbols he's graced the place, And from the palms turns the impudent charm, And when he sighs, it is, 'Mong bee and worm, So satisfied, so stately of the kind, Thou dost the court select a prince!' When the whole afternoon is past, And twilight falls, still she serves him well; She helps him dress, with troth and gentle grace, The regal dinner; and when famishing He through the haut boat with the magnates Ramping triflers of the golden age Descends upon the main, he kneels Before her and submits. Ever on the edge Of foulest weather, has her skill been found To pluck, with ever-clapping fingers, old sin, Past durability; and of witches' spells, Prom Ring, about the bowie-sparrow, strung On her dark fingers, a grim control, Sticking to old treacheries. Her prophecy, And omens of misdeed, she plays On him that makes him king, a mighty shake Her shining hair. The witch that swings her tub With silver wings; who times her spells by night, And whom she scans, the dice of heaven; who by Whist, or arrow, or some volcanic pulse Dreadful and strong, changes; with so clear sight Of eyes, that heat and purchase light upon The heart that is not lovely; nor for hire Hear nor its murmuring sound, in the eyes Of careless lovers sees her lovely things Toiling at variance, and that balances The riches, of his reign; and has in eye Both nutrimony and wit for her Enchanting as of old, through night and day Pastime of kingdoms, and can with ease Make one, though he the palm had won in strife, Drawn with it many a task; for oft The foolish love of human life resigns Upon some sudden deceit, and is changed To cold-winged, insensible might, Not such as such false-hearted power can spare, By force to its own self, yet by it made strong. This too, that fitting mood affords, in wise Proportion'd to its mate; the organ and the senses. For this they give, that man may grow and show Both in the breast, where that growth and spreading is due, And may require the heart to sound the nerve, to send The instant obedience, which is knowing, yet Be alarmed by no inward attack, But pierce, undisturbed, a wholesome mind. Good man, the chief and final Godhead! who dost pay Sacrifice to thy own service, thy desire To serve thyself; whose heart, though swelling fast, And to thy spirit's fit satisfaction, Articulate in praise and lowly song, Ranks above the mere creatures that in pride Enacted thou didst trample under foot; who gives This pledge of sure sustainability To affect a nature so temperate, this bond, To grow and endure; that every act may seem A heartfelt kind of boundless mercy; this joy, Of change the healthy childhood of the world, And harmony to throngs of brother-kind; whose power, By many a year of toil in improvement won, Shall bear this forehead sternly high, this bolt Of vital fire at last received, and run On to the sword, whose piece in him display'd Was once the whole man; and he, whose form Impress'd the uses of power, anointed high For priest of this world, though first by them Converted, Him once a sinful world Hurl'd in blasphemy; but, his flood To make atonement for the iniquity Of the old world, from all eternity Sent for the new; himself, of fleshly (9) mind (Not of unclean) born, by the mere voice And ======================================== SAMPLE 554 ======================================== Poem and thy lovely face I revere: Come, thou Enchantress, lest my love displease thee: I the vain endeavour will prove To exist, but thou the much preferr'd outcome. Come forth, of all, come forth, thou weed me deemest most injurious: In So. C. ["Love's] plain hatchet flat upon her muffling lips her lips imprison'd, When love as blest a lover's prouder muffler wraps round his arms, Bring to bear thy charm's coverlet o'er mine, and let me sleep. One bestirring pinnace to the forest ran, From the green earth's stony breast up drawn the greenland sheen, That in purple raiment before the sea Bore a glorious crown of flowers upon his pinions high, Bidding him arise, and with the nymphs press-offending pins Pinch us the flashing gold, while torch-dod moon in lusty tears down burne: Come, sleep, sleeping, thou slumb'rest maiden of the gods, Come, sleep, and with thy wavy eyes, And o'er my sepulchral hearse A burly bray, as if he laughed at Vesta's grave, down fill: Come, on the grass thy shiny plumes Shall dance with afternoon's rising sun, Till earth's form blaspheming voices pour Through the mute air; Come, with dim dreams clothe again Us the Turken and the Tyrian band, Neptune's glad enchantment us at once enfeign With sleep's extended senses, to chase The senses of troubled night, and that we prove The boon of seeing in alien skies Seeing, one common state of all the world our own: With quiring spright, the brazen Phoebean rash, To hear the gods sing in illo and augur; Forth sped the hero with the Tyrrhene lute And layered gown, to Aeneas shine, Plainlier to behold, than sun-bright as, The immortal statue of Apollo. Sleep, sleep! such words are said before The eyes' broad fields of Paradise, In twin-lumin'd bowers, where beacons glare And gild the quiet deeps; and yet, There yawns a void; No purpose, no relish for the here That was And is no more, but open lay bare Above the twilight shadow, and the stars, that roll Above the Tuscan horns, Ride like pausing falcons, glitter as they sail Laugh along the telescopic skies. Sleep, sleep! Up by the viewless water, to thy hand The hand of Aphrodite was given, And he that wins her the least o' the most Shall win the maidenhood of death. But prove of me thy straying soul's worst, O man, a prey, that ne'er the phantom thrall Drawn by the left elbow thro' the future Cleft by a glimmering o'erhanging beam Dazzling the pure eyes of her cool desire Beneath the tide that meets it, if, In waving domes of the world, the marble fail Of the livid pines Winking, like some wide-hilted water-snows Sleepless in their spring-capped haunts. Oh, dream-dropt splendour! by Zeus cauld in light, Caught with such width as from the shrine to glow, Splendour drops from the solid sun on the shrine! Ach, thou art old, Agnes; and the last o' th' earth May now disseveral whiter than thy forms To swell the damp of successive mortality. Thy reverend hair and thumbs now swollen to a knot, And soul that never lit on pleasure's path, But instead a weary peace, When longing her life to sate Sobs within its peace, Or aye does best shun The least fancy of sensual eagerness. But the pleasure at thy side Had ebbed, and thy breath the spark was of the lie Was near thee now; With hushed tongue the man within thy thought, A thirst that didn't feel, The wife who is sad when he can't attain The perfect thing, The glutton for the loss of his children's bane And pleas. O, wheresoe'er her foot is planted, The holy pageant of thy seed to gaze, A man, a beast, a god--there he is at will, Where she is faded, cast away by time ======================================== SAMPLE 555 ======================================== . . . — Slow moans from its rumbling heart : The water-wheel, O water-wheel deep in the hair Of our swamps and our rivers, Our subterranean stockades to squeeze Because you say there is no other way But to compound the air that is all of us and to eat the air that is all of the world Under the weather benevolence for its scent goes everywhere — from the soot of her shoes to the stink of her sweat to the smell of her cami We in the original scheme of things in our time and seeds This liquid crystalline empather, Like the crushed cellophane that fell from our mothers’ hands — the family meal trays or the waxed butter she loved as a child <|endoftext|> "A Mission in the Sky", by Gerald Stern [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] The ground we crawled on was soft and odorless, Bright but dull. These beheld we, seeing with strict vision. At first it was not enough to simply lie down In the padded bubble, then the hollow, Now we crawled on till we crawled out, deaf in, On stilts, with our mouths dry. —MR. PAYTON The ground we sprawled on Was soft and odorless, dull, Silent and light. We crawled on Along the trench in muddied fashion. —St. Payza, c.1095 To the time of spring The chill of December has returned, The rusty smell of dissection, The dying tenderness of bodies that wait So very still, And our own, the trenches we have mired us In this rugged glade, red with earth And dry with the unloved twig. — G. Darracq PENNSYS: An Elegy In the dry cavern of this stone Damps and footprints, some tear-[(]drawn, Slate-black or glint-paled in the dark And no shapes to be seen, only this low hum That stands the world off, like dying notes Of a tortured instrument’s indefinite tune. — A.E.H. Gyer This might have been the hour, tucked between green pines and silent bell, That dragged a board and parched me with tongue-tied din. The ghostly city haunted every eyetooth cable, And where I lingered, or wandered, where I paweded, I saw No uncatched eyes, no human twist to pavement’s Hide-and-seek, no dangling breath Then, spitting another tale or two, The unforgiving minutes had passed: No sound when I heard my own, no light when I peered, Yet under the hum of the reapers, without sound Squinting before the shutter, my ears adjusted: No one within. No one without. The shing of the grain. — J. Javers “The master’s voice,” he said, “was there.” — St. Huber’s haunting Odes but it never made a difference, and the hounds Would follow us wherever we might roam, No matter how often we changed our name, Whatever village, cottage, or shop we offered. We learned no Gaelic; could not afford To learn it all up close and clear. — St. Jerome’s witty dime <|endoftext|> "Memorial Stephelian Stock from Fulst, For", by Gerald Stern [Living, Death, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Religion, Christianity, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Class, Crime & Punishment, History & Politics, Money & Economics, War & Conflict] (“a figure often seen in ancient mosaics”) For Hubert Zatte, 1958-1993 Tombstone splashed with the dust of sleep, the divine in relief— My father’s nearness, rage, and love, and nearness To God’s greatness, and justness, and justice. Grief, and heartbreak, and loss—face framed and gray In moonless track that follows from past to present. Graven and carved—dim in the texture of this By ======================================== SAMPLE 556 ======================================== Or lack, like their hound or dog, or spider While the glory of their bodies heaves. They may be said to go 'Cross lands, o'er sands, and o'er waves I traveled for him, 'twas for Christ. Or, if they rear, That pride and boast of state, Pale here and proud there, Half in dread and half in hope, They in truth may be said 'Tis in no wise for fear That they should not despise The service to their Lord 'Tis for joy and glory. Here's to the day That taught me my faith to soar; I would have died for him, And you all the way come out, Since I'm alive to-day, If it but cost the word. Oh, more and more The city's dying! I wonder ere long I shall forget my land. Our heavenly Father, who is king, Have thus His church sustained And thus His curse said: I only seek in vain. She's one of the gang that stands on high At St. Paul's, with fair Exercy too, By night she thro' the town has gone. Come out, my city, take the road--no-- Come out with fresh-blown flowers in thy hair, And come like a sacred phial sent. Blest be the city so gracious to-night! In thy green grass yon valley glitters good, I hear the gentle linden call out from far The straight runs in my blood,--my heart's gay will. When e'en the roses burn, I'm he, with thee. Yon tarn that's on the hill so plain above Yon river, gliding to the sea,-- How fair 'twould please me then to meet ye That yet are waiting for us the same! Oh, watch and pray, dear Valley! I know Those heavenly eyes, that thou hast in secret, Those eyes whose light still oft is wistful-- The eyes whose light comes fresh, Like joy in the noon of heaven when night Has ceased to be,-- Oh, bright, how many a night Our Father of the skies hath hid Under the darkness and the black! How in the morn, our God, hath he Among the dead saints up-created! But whence came then Of those that, tenderly, gently Laundered into the life his, And at the very first, his Spirit so through our sprite assuaged? They, in the rank that passes Year after year the same, And in their comrades, so in ours, Have all their life been levelled smooth, --The Holy City's a windy town!-- You fellows are the people That are all on fire in town; And thus we do and peer; When from this soul Echo comes as clear As if 'twere tuned on a string, But never-changing-- Oh, hear! Echo's in the skies! And your hearts, the grace Of heaven we feel with thee; And on the earth, on earth So quick and so fine! The gods and the man of heaven Can still the past times sound For one hour, or one minute, or one. This time, the times flown, 'Twas worth while to scream! Come round about, my hills, my hills, On whose bank The lordly night has settled cold Yea, with its gold, It may surely stop. For God's sake, do not tempt The powers above, my hills! My soul is bight for His, my hills; 'Twill not fail; The very plain, The very plain, Will hold it safe. 'Twas sweet to listen then To Thee, Bethlehem, my dear town! How often I beheld and feel it now:-- This day is dead; But the great Christ shall come again, to dwell Where all times are dawn and the great Christ's day. This is the day Which men call "The Feast of Lights." It will be more bright And more beautiful now, For that we hope to see A face more free And a word more wise; The dead shall lift their lamp, And the risen Lord Walk by the sea. I'll look on the skies, The fading radiance move In longing of white wings, And thinking of Thy dear face He has gone on his way, And we look down. The stars of Heaven That ======================================== SAMPLE 557 ======================================== See her mightier substance flow In graceful stripes of daffodil, While ever it plunges deeper 'Neath the bosom of the bay Till it springs beyond the fen, In silence, and seeks, Where its great lake Hath no sounding surge Of raging foaming waters! Come, from yonder sleepy vale Where violets blow, And magentas with their golden head Twinkling as the sun, With brooding smiles that seem to bid Sad farewell to Life's soothing voice In these loud themes; And plaintive ditties that rejoice Faint birds' strains. Come! for the fresh notes are long O'er the lone waters sung; Let the winds of May Greet in accents high, In rilling numbers full, Of love they seem, Who through yon brook's dark wall Have mark'd her light; Soothing every sense with love Bequest no ache From lips which deep repose reveal. Ay! let this moment go Quickly to the close Of a mortal rest, If such an hour were here, Long as Heaven and Earth shall last. O sun, I thank thee for thy grace, That it has rigg'd my slumb'ring mind So strongly, as 'tis round the earth Each fresh condition unto its share Evanesterly fails To give content, which ev'ry one Assumes, doubly transferr'd, however, From other minds, if all unmov'd He struck not thereto. Ah! Death, to whom each soul belongs, Like pleasure for a time; Thou art an eye so favour'd, there For all to steal from thee, in whom Such wondrous favour hangs ingraves; Nor art thou able to detain Unvisited, nor detach Thy captives, thy grim form Scrawl'd with horrible characters Upon the soul of ev'ry man. With minds and manners just, Whatever be thy state, Ere we forget what we have seen 'Tis just, and provok'd we see 'Tis so by reason; so good is become Thy look, and thy say, and thy command Dearly of our hope deprav'd. But worse than all Is judgment; here our bated breath, There, more estim'd, more honour'd stink To tell as prize of high exploit An o'erlabour'd prosper for the thief, Who that precesse, free from fear, Undertakess thee to guilt, And yet more grievous, that thou failedst To follow through the boundary rock The blest entrance, by which thou so maim'd Hast seen the Seraphim at play Nor there, nor there alone, But in the street and town thou paus'dst and walked, Noting the like: Is this the toil, and labour of the day For which heaven's highest to the Son of Man Must cry, Bring home the King! You have been with me oft: you will be here, Let them but hear my skillisan's lute, Tho' the tones, which I of stars, as well In time and strain may suit. Let me the best of songs bebrue Which in Dorothese's sweet bower I sing With you to play; I'll ask you for the shorter verse More suitable for my theme; And if my music you prefer To the melody of my lute, Your calmness and your heart are both mine, No tardier than your wares; For your nature is the more mine That it can feel pain and bliss. Ye Clouds, that circle me around, Watch how I fall; Your least exert to hide Is to keep me trepidating on. Heaven's firmament I find Has ne'er a more cherisht shade: This earth beneath it lies, Which we from death must bear: Let's, in the cleft, to our sweet rest All stress and motion put. All Nature seems a scraped tree Which, husband'd well, may bloom; But Nature, such as mine, A danger's moment makes. It is the diff'rent way Of flaw'd water or white-wash'd lime, That's tempered all in one. Because in Death I live more near The shows of Heaven, do you Recall the action of a faun In ancient Rome, towards the East, To see how Things do more than stand? Or hear how in the wind-land's womb ======================================== SAMPLE 558 ======================================== - i know the feeling- dear god, bring me and face it a sweater you made <|endoftext|> "a meenay knowes", by Adrian Vatikyan [Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics] In the termeseenay knows the afterglides between the tongues of a concussive device. The result of a countrywide search by the Information Police, Parse.io was among the results the FBI delivered to my home. The flurry of activity took place in the days preceding the 14th. I felt their presence by feeling their breathing power. I felt their feathers picking up my thoughts they were fans pulling THE FU*KING LIVER back into trees. I felt them hovering in the trees above my beyond. I felt their wings kicking the top of my head. ‘I’ve enough of you.’ ‘Bring more tea, sweetheart.’ ‘Bring more money,’ I whispered to the walls, watching a collection of broken wires. ‘’More,’ they almost had a twenty's andescent life in their lights.’ ‘’More’ please,’ I said. ‘And I’ve enough. I’ve enough money, please.’ ‘That is an abomination.’ ‘Let us kiss in peace.’ I felt them. Am I missing shadow and noise? ‘Yes, that was done in good faith, you see.’ ‘The run is not deep enough.’ ‘... an old fairy tale, Kraut's mambo.’ I saw a prayer like a prayer, and a city a God build. ‘The light's distant neghbor is not the light’s young neighbor.’ A mirage of hotel bars. O the golden cards and the emerald cards, and the carded cardmaster, and the grocer. I slept all night. I have not been to bed since that night. <|endoftext|> "The Horne: Tan Tock Lee˙68 to June 1971", by Tan Tock Lee [Living, Time & Brevity, Love, Heartache & Loss, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Home Life] The drugstore never opens. And the blocks are gone scattered potted plants rubble-picks in the yard. At night, all day I’m home where the husks of old homes bob in the trees. Each evening the same that shows itself at the door: the previous tenant’s out he has slipped beyond the measure of time which always passes. I just got off the 4-hour morningside of a train. The last 4 hours are as alert as clocks moving around the world and their eyes are blind. Daytime a light scratch in the rearview. At night the 5’s wheels wish to be free. At night the 6-hour dances in its teetop . The walls, green, plush, double their furnishings in the sun’s careful ways. The 5’s hem a porch just let down, let it go and bring back a tumble from someone. The 6’s wheels unsure rise from an open slot and watch it come out to your living room. Night is in the wind. I feel it then, hopeless and sure. ‘Again,’ the sun just bounced, then left again. At night, light as marigold, the walls and window dressed for use in sun, you come in and I come back home. The drugstore never opens. <|endoftext|> "Non-Fat Lard", by Tan Tock Lee [Nature, Animals, Religion] I counted. My black book was stacked and layered—two tomes in front of the new non- -confusing name, I lost count. ======================================== SAMPLE 559 ======================================== Fresh from the scrofulous air, From where the guiders bind the wings of Hell. I'm back from that far-brought war, Not with changed and blissed heart, But mind as bate. I'm made glad Of what I sought, by what I found. Faith makes no sound: with Faith you gabble On, while everyone thinks you have it; But when 'tis high earnest, yearning low, You tell the story with a shiver. And you are dead, dead on the thaw Of a gray November day; You fly on a breath of springs, Came blest, and loved, and met thy fate. The world was bright with your light, Was woman sweet in you; But now we heave you in our bier For sins forgiven, love. We've lost the leaf, with branches yellow, We've lost the fruit, mild of flavor, But not the magic of this autumn; All things are fading save repentance, All things as we pass go back. I'm not as I was, I'm not as I was, Light of the earth, and round as you. Onward, be on, fight on, strong one, Over the crest of the hill. There was a soul on earth Lived as mortals did Earth to let loose and loose On the hills, on the field, On the length of the course, On the green runnels, in pools On the riverbanks, On the mountain, below the gray, On the dells that gaunt the valley, On the distant promontories, On the death, deep, deep down in the earth. That great soul, that high soul, Lifting earth and air and hell Heard, twice turned, felt, knew, Met, feeling to receive All that makes existence, Is a soul, is spirit, Is no difference, is no blow. And we how it fared, shall find; We have the records there; We shall see the fairings come; Earth has kept records, time will print. An ancient soul, with infant eyes, Roaming beneath the sultry sky, Tossing her light like a curtain, Seeking a place to hide, Rising on high in the cooling air One slender, tremulous wing, Our frantic soul, in speechless agony Flaps up and down, Never flits lower, floats on the wing. Sees heaven and bliss, Who could fling to endless air Something such as might have been A wonder, that might rise, Fall, fall, seemed to fall, but rose, Looked, sounded, knew, moved on, Rushed onward, whirled about in air, In the motion, flown all over air, O'er, or athwart, turned on a light Shaped, judged, then returned, Down the road, risen, crowned with feather Over the city-heights. We're getting older, getting holdier of the world And the sights we hate and the sights we don't like. Old age is coming on, and the truth Isn't much they teach us in the daily rounds Of sentimental empty gratification, And until we become the masters of our will It's just as much that we're helpless without, That, down to the pit, below the cramped spires, We're helpless without the spirit of defiance. To return to the land of the wanderers--to the road That led me to madness, half-killed for ragged town-- As our captain said at Wigton the other day, "Any lost traveller who comes here from Farrer, He or she is mine to the world enough." To call them once more the way he led me, Those thousand fresh-opened eyes, when the bars and stakes Were raised round me and I saw that they were mine, And saw he was right, though he had to wile And win over the doubters with water-towers And a schoolboy's tricks, and a late promise To tick them up a few horse-rides to Dunmow. And let that schoolmaster lie; You know I could learn as well, if not better, By running thirty-three times around a race track, Or a little less, and doing the math. You want the tempest crest to crest; The gale-blown cloud to see as if from behind, And to trust all things with a grateful touch Which puts aside the ironkind that rusts the rim. Let there be ======================================== SAMPLE 560 ======================================== Completely deposed in the self-same dance, I smote the rich wood with a shout: "I am Sheboya. I have come. I have the power." And from the empty air she swept, While the great city seethed. Meanwhile, around me, the white bird-song Swung and mixed with a hideous scream: "I am Hudib Eth" -- and collapsed. Like a boat tossed half-way up and down A mighty wind of sound, And over the heads of women and men The din of wings rose and sputtered again. For so it was that we struck with different weapons. I against the wall. You struck with blow of the rod. There is no doubt that I removed, In order that not one limb might be harmed, And from him, who had the gout, His head he (a fond word) put down by, And (we thought) out of the approach of doubt. But now the gentler (to your question) I will answer -- and move the gate of a pause, And answer forever -- "The lower eyelid Is there to keep the eyes of the nose from a film, Or to hinder it so far as the ground. "And I saw that it grew under the chafing As under rheumatic in the heat of the sun, Whereby the uneven limits are enhanced, And thus, if I answer rightly, you see You to many things much less." My answer! My answer! I said: "I saw That the upper eyelid was set in the sight For the correction of deference to angels, And that from the melting pressure of low down lights An aquamock is made at the top; And from the heat is expelled The dry frost comes, which weighs the rock, And always the sleeper's eyes lie flat In this upper light,--I thus made to endure The fire out of which I was quenched In this manner, and your speech meaning To question your intent, since the fashion of the world Is such, that of its loss you have a use." And therewithal was a rustling, which chased me. Ah! from the eyes of my shame The salt of the Sun, who wakened me, comes falling! In the land of the wounded is light, And, and then, my sight was a vision, I and my sight, which I beheld; Who was in reality what I was. Now the fire has set in the upper chamber; And in that region thrice I was scorched in ways, The highest honoured, when I strove With impatient tendrils and their chain. The eyes then went beneath the nails, The cold doublet from my shoulders thrust, Which by a pace is joined To the spine and loins of a horse; And then there was flame too, Which now upon my head is litten, In the chamber where the cold lake was lying. They will then heap it, because it is holy, And will throw up the ashes, to see if they are thin. My hair shall then be combed about my brows, And my sport shall be snuff-taking, And in the sight of all. I shall have my snuff from a small box I find on the stairway in the garage, Which is pulled for its strength by a doe, And is said to be good for the heart. The wood and the fire must be cleared; The basket of fagots with wood are stacked, And red-hot, the fire leaps in its smithy. "Take mine, O my father!"--a boy said to me-- "Take thine, O sister!"--I, in accents curbed, Gave, 'mid the crowd, my sighs, if I saw them now; I then was shapeless, like a wall. I laid the virgin's bill, I set the stream of the stream, Her unmatch'd hand, her hand Was hardly mine, for more than half an hour. Yet the fingers, swift as they could go, Shall then at the handguard draw the sword, And her hand go down with a stir and a flutter. O then, as she lay so low, A tender maid lay in the moss, A maiden rose, but scarce-divine, Had come down, not from the hill, She had been clean and for dry air fled, But her chest, because it was made from the mold, Gnawed by the wind, and I did too; I ======================================== SAMPLE 561 ======================================== arl 722-135-3 sad. sad-eyed, sad, turned away. sainted, solemn, prayerful. sal her, isle. saum, milk. sawn, sallow. sapper, sassafras. sapper-sack, sack of ashes. savage, fierce. saxties, brave and true. savage-stile, flagged with white. sallow-arm. satchkin, barley. scaith, donek. scaithna, donekneash. sick-harl, sick-harl. sick-lion, nurse. sick-loon, loof of loaf. sicken, to make sick. sicker, take sick. sif, scoif. six-shooter, six-shooter. skellan, sl ord-est. skell, sl ording. skellan's veil, only covering. skellanie, sloping. skelloch, slinking. skellan-chum, slating. skellan-mogg, mogg of slinking. skellan-pooh, pumbling. skellan-runge, slopping. skellar, enough. skellast, half. skellays, there. skelloo, seven. skellub, part. skellocked, covered with sallows, shivers. skee, cauld. skeeley, sick. skeld, skelder. skelly, blowing cold. skelt, shift. skloe, near. skelly, working hard. soike, v. soley. soone, every. soope, sough. sooser, because. soondl, snowy. sooters, keeps. soov, spring. soostlies, spirits. sommer, morning. sommer-morn, Mair's Morn. sommer-sund, Mid-heven. soss, grave. sossa, grave. soph, elder. sott, a box. soplir, soul. spack, a basket. spence, six. spencam, a spaniel. speng, stake. spence, six. spohin, crushed. spohoot, crushed. sprack, spring. sprick, a spark. sputyn, shoot. spry, age. sptigon, four-o'clock. spryntie, elder. spex, pipes. spryt, steer. spunkle, souseen. spunkle, lump. spunkle, lump. spunkles, creeds. sputyn, go. sputty, to the grind. sputty, souseen, soup. sputtyeet, broth. sputy, v. souseen. sputy, sooth. spurtle, plow-staff. spwink, ring. splot, four. splot, straight. splune, spread. spleen, a leather pouch. spleeg, Sough alack. spleeg, souse, stomach. spleeqit, a pack of scolden. spleets, currants. spraughted, splenet, sneered. spraughted, splenched, cursed. splain, a pair of spades. sproine, first. sprout, an American orange. sprongor, a man. sprouted, sprouted. sproot, prick. spreid, splreid, spit. splogg, toils. spleen, sploe, cur, bone. spleech, bone powder. spleen't, chanted, ordained. spleen't, chanted. sprecht, prepared. spreight, powdered. sprecht-up, powdered. sprongor, a pig. sproozled, pulgin. springs, two- and three-peeers. spros, three. sraud, reverend. stane, stone. stane, stone. staw, spoil. staw, spoilt. stawn, spoil. stawn, three. stear ======================================== SAMPLE 562 ======================================== not because I feel like I am missing out, nor because I look forward to the day when I can brush against it again; and yet I understand it as being more of a peculiarity than anything else— like the darkness which may or may not indicate what my fear it may imply, and I can take my share in considering how it is gone now and what it meant to have been a little girl in Colorado or wherever it may be in my days. Then again, the mind can recall even its darkest spots—as for the light a kind of white I have sometimes felt hover over the room before being shifted to pure color by one who came and went with the bright moving bird; and as to your red-and-black leonine I have to know it's at the center of the sun; it is mine for the finding, as it is yours for receiving. Tell me then: What did Adah so arrive at by the way of writing? The first letter Adah sent me—on the first of what days—had been a love letter; the last—on the last of novus letters—the day I received it, it was a love letter; the wayward and even lyrical letters sent at all hours, Adah's pen yet so fervent in its youthful mannerisms and so incoherent, no more (she wrote them, as if she were stealing them) legible than if she'd written them to me, as if she'd been given them to her by her mother or sister, as if she were Adah's constant consolations, writing in her sleep things like "good boy," "daddy," "sir," "sweetheart," to parents, grandparents, boys who arrived at her elbow's distance (she had an iron lung) or who were still home in Colorado, as always she had been, then "to go nofarther further" (she had said before). Did she know I had no intention of ever going any further than that?— her pen now facing the wall, its case of pens around my neck, she was telling her own story. "Ahoy and fer be continue—" It was her narrator who nodded, like a girl in a dream, as if she'd been watching herself dwell in a grim fiction of lies, punctuated by brief but fearsome effects, sudden as yet negativities, to burn a little longer <|endoftext|> "A Workforce, Lake of Gloom", by Martín Espada [Activities, Jobs & Working, Relationships, Family & Ancestors] The day the factory bell rings WKND SHDMG SDOT and sends the booths fleeing, they come, the men who do the work for the mob. In the carports the women, pimply, have their bladders and their venison, and have fresh fish when the trucks come • The day they're scared and run, the mob goes into the warehouse where the Lard is sorted, and some, marked • And I remember the woman who worked in the flower department for twenty years, the boss was her mother. She told me that one night the other woman had to call the vet station, so she put the blossom down on the table to put out a cigarette, where some men were already standing. She told the men that one of them had bit her back and the man they'd all be paid for after they'd put it in his hat. When the toll came, the boss went into the parking lot and called her son on his walkie-talkie to go tell him the bad news. She got in the truck with the other woman, and got in the backseat • Then she drops her daughter, and they all get in, the mob running in all four doors, jumping out, and then the mob swerving to their vehicles—the boss gets out, and the mob passing her—and the mob passes her, too, passing the other, and the two mobsters pass her passing their guns, and their knives. When we arrive at her house the mob is waiting, passing their phones through the kitchen to enter through the marl-tston • In the kitchen the mob runs in to lock it, or to call the boss, or to scream— she waves her arms and their cells force doors, wall. Then she tells the men how sorry she's been, offers them her car, driving off. You have ======================================== SAMPLE 563 ======================================== 'Tis now too late! The languid, yet tardy man, That did with industry and ardour strive, Must now, before he 'd attain that goal, Give o'er. I 'll sing another joyous day, When labor 'd the race exclude; And thank the Maker, I 'll say, 'Twas come who might be expected, And t'ward all enjoy that blest. 'Twas February's lovely morn When o'er his thickleth thro' the fields The happy frog began to show. There seemed naught beside to do, 'Twas as if all were dance around. The tent peeps through its paly shade, The humble hen brings home her toys, While from the lowly bat's dull nest The parent spirit hops away; The stately crow from brackish dell To the clear limestone lens can come, And 'Lizabeth-annes' mop of silk can bring A breeze from stone and a hawk from plash. The jolly blackbird, trilling thus, Is glad to be, and frolics free; While over Humber's sands, Upstream and stream, brave floats the red rose. Of course I love each, Of course, and love with all my heart Such fellows as the North unites, All such as, when gathered all, With hardly stirring or other sign, Come over, come over! How I love them, love them, too, And there's one came to me, dear! At first I wonder'd when she'd come To her own, her lovely, her darned heart. Oh! her dear, her dear red heart How I love it thro' moss and stone! Whose face I love, and whither away! Oh, beware, dear fellow, of the Gipsies' law. From her I can hear the piper's fife, And hear the lute-player's shrill; She calls me O, by yon white misty cake, Sweet Ringos, of Charing Cross! Oh, when we meet, and when we part, And when to Richmond we take flight, And I have heard her say her say, "Where!" Daisies like this one, Maude, Never would look down, But up and to the Fates take a wild leap; And he/she will float where Maude would, For she/he is half made; And Daisies of the cloud will they paint, And Balaam, that Angel of the Earth will find From knees as soft as those of Daisies so divine. What wondrous hair, what rosy cheek (Sweet lips sealed them in a kiss) And more than either of them knew, My Diphite's dreamed up!-- This girl is made on a cut and chosen method! And for to dance (such is the way of it) She was turned half natural under the hands of a Chemist. Made exactly as the ornaments are (I dream them)-- These took the cut from the immortals, Both powder and brush, And then, trusting still as I said, Sewn into gold and silver. With lights of Cimmeria in her hair, With the stars in her eyne, As if she had been to the vault Part of the suite that is hoping, sleeping, Set you from her hand that was yours in the air. O! some girls love blue, And some love white, And some white alone; And some love roses, but why so wild? This book, this box, is not wild, This book and that, or any thing, Of other kinds they may be telling, That was so, but this is the best. Dare you see by me how charms in metal Delight men oft-like, quite in the vein of Wealthy dark-haired ladies, who'd fain to flaunt Their wealth of twigged perimeters on the sun, Or in their high-glazing china, like those fairies Of days that be, who as a business manage To scare the Polacks in the summer; But here, by looking, how much under-representals In your plain sake! O, I'm grieved to view it. The very thing! the very shade! the hue of things By some people so extremely scarce seen! the whole Possessing these two features, one true hue; And, if your microscope had yet succeeded in Pausing on the shape ======================================== SAMPLE 564 ======================================== avenge for me, my children and my dear; In them make There be A happy homes in the land where we wake, And the morrow to its parts in all is blest; And they tell me, Man, Thou shalt have All that thy soul's longing wishes bring thee yet, For they tell thee In the far-off West, in the land where the great One sleeps, There is a little place Where all things are as they befelleth in thee: No form of mortal sensual thought is there, And the warm spirit in thee abideth enrapt; There is no sin's concord in the treasured heart's Treas'ning cry; The strong intellect the sunne's flame doth heal Unto the heart's gen'rous smile; The purest and purest of feelings bring The calm rapture to the purest of hearts: There, holy brethren, whom none Of all the world have seen or heard of, Each in his kind, his self'ly thing Set upon the blest and purest Hand hushed up and blameless as a bride: So in my soul's eye well seen, behold Both of my God and of my man's heart; And then of me the unheeding world's Sententious shout was dumb, Was that I was, a sinner forsook; I saw, no one then Could, as I, a flaw in me see, Beclot me the fault of my late youth's death, Or passe on a lack of zeal to God: And with my heart this choice and sweet I fall on the ground and cry. I thought when I was strong Would never use in love. Dear Mother, do thou cry, Who, sitting by thy side, Thy fair round cheek art throbbing o'er, To see thy graceful grandson's head, While fall'n into his bed He trusteth Jesus' life to gain. Give me, in my mother's face The warm drops, the tears that flow To fill my train from mine affliction's face. For thus the field' of heavenly power is won, The kingdom's light grows purer, and more bright, Its, ring grows plen'rant on the human rock. I dream'd I saw (God's truth in my soul confirmed) a soul Perchance at God's heart draw in the vital mire Of life. I, not dead, This soul was in life's flood; Whose lifting fingers with her spright Were lost in heaven's deep passage, came, Sunk by the fountain, drench'd by the beam. From bliss to bliss my pathway led; The lover will stop By all her romantic shades And all her rolling springs, And all she hath Of rich, mysterious lore; The rest will keep Where love hath lain, And fancies lie When lov'd is loth to die. And thou, O gracious waters, Mayst, at dark yon bay, See through thy glory's blue The love-shadow lying soft On Hymen's couch! The wreath I brought He to the lad, For his sweet Jake's sake, To keep Be that the breezes blow Wake-flooded, high and low, Like flakes of mermaid's hair, When Ashtari lovers run In after-times, And the soul's being speed Far as the light of falling dew, To find the place it chose Where Jupiter swayreth; That they, their time done, May think of who are wise In what bright circle rolled, Did strew the Maiden's bed With Baby-dog doll And Baby-cat, Away and pastime stop The brooding night, When wakened love of innocence And deep trust may find The sweet contentment still Where Baby-time is lost. When jocund-hood seduces With enamour'd joy, Filling his eyes and hair With your dim smiles, Let not the hour-glass pass With dull recurrence The wane of Time And vain delights. While, down in the deep abyss Of wood honey-down, Away the horn'd echoes wake, There lives a phantom song With meaning far Deaf to human speech; Pale daughters of the bees That steer their lanes Unrivall'd when their furies bite, Black-eyed girls whose names Like words of some awful spell, Dissolv to the ear, ======================================== SAMPLE 565 ======================================== no more desist, or I shall straightway with both the same wind, lightning and thunder-storm, and with all cats with talons rend the hollow earth, bearing out the good among the vile." Whilst he spake thus, a ten-fold rising shudder ran through the still, deep-bosom'd air through all the air-- thunder and lightning from left and right. And lightnings rocked his house through the bright sea-mist. With as much glee they light the wine, and sing the harder ones toil, upright of the still dry ground, and find their prey. Son of the thrice-plotted seer swift their pinions wing, in smiling triumph of drink down the Sun-carsin'd morn, and hold within straighter trunks of the city whose stake is Faith, my King. I think the wind has wafted white and naked her white breast over the sun and the blue, the wind, the wind, who have wafted her among the wind-rows. My heart's delight! She hath gone before me--before me on a white sea-maiden's mast waving there with her oath out through the wind-spears, northward, southward, to the altar-steading, to the hill-carven house of her covenant in the wind-world of heights of summer, of shadows and winds, northward, southward, of rivers under banks of grass, of rich winds from the iron-bright crust, wherewith is cut Yet, by the white snow-shoulder, whose tinge of gold can yet behoove unto change, and the wind's wings of golden frost quenched gold, I have found gold in the uncoiling coils Of the hills, where I stood loath to fall, By the blue-dark rock-points white unveiled of night's white, which only seem by the inmost glade of a moon-beaten lake to swim mighty waves in sea-green waters warm. And can feel, as ever kind the winds are, and skies are filled with stars, they too bring change, grant they bring that which wilfulness forbids. Hail, Night, we come: over the red sea of it From salt-weeds of the day, we sweep: as the wind sweeps, I stand beneath the green moons: O the stream of starry flame he flits across our way. The phantoms of the coming Dawn I follow like pale clouds of fire; behind my orb, the night, black and bright, Darkness flitting like a shadow to and fro, following my orb, whiter than a ghost O the deep she-goat of the night! O star-fruit of the night! And how I love thee, O gaunt star fruit in the night, And all the wild fire of thy face! The crown O sun, crown thou thy orbed self in gold From every rock of the deeps O sun, creep out to the great wild Oil fires of the night thick-bright! Like to a seed O moon, as a seed doth The seeds of all worlds, thou art! O tree, O tree, O moon, be thou Gold and pearles and silver buds For moon-lilted lights of my eyes, To come to the wild woods where I Ever roam, O star fruit, With stars, in star-like festoons, Around thee, Or their cold graves O storm and flame, O light and silence, and wind! Yet, cold as they, shall still be safe: To thee, to the far horizon I come, for thou art God. Whence was the rumour But from where the voice thereof first had fell Those vestal orbs had waked: And all night edgewise Have heard the spirits speak, Of the fortunes of the brave, And men's liveliest hopes: Some whisper at their ease, As o'er the hills alone Blaze their palms, Some thunder on the moorland, To where the Normans once were. But whether they be departed Even so they do sing, And nightly, thus, they make their feast With our new king, to whom They have full signified Their gladness, as all things They do or have done, Whose worth ======================================== SAMPLE 566 ======================================== not of a man, being mewed, when no woman could do a single thing, but she did. Now I have stolen something to offer again, after so long, another woman, an even bigger thing, which I may not even do, being mewed. Nothing will do and the moment, at least for me, It has left me, has passed into the rainy darkness, gone to the dark and to the dark, where no lady of all that sets earth near her, but alas, where no one else can do it. <|endoftext|> "The Sea Calls to Me", by William Matthews [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Activities, Travels & Journeys] The last time I was in this place, my heart had a wedding in it and it had a feast, a glory of feast. What think you the confusion, making men think they were travelers and women thinking they were travelers. I remember standing still in the middle of a field of maples and thinking, are you mine? and thinking, your bush his garden bed. They were blossoms that brightened my day. Their frail perfume on my few companions called me to follow their veracity and stay—to look; I was their prize. They were not flowers that fragrant surprised me and hoped this marred marriage would not survive and I wasn’t sure I would fulflammy that anyone could have the distance to say, “What can I give you, honey?” but that someone had, and I had done the best I knew, having wasted what I learned and that someone was you. <|endoftext|> "Song of the Shallow", by William Matthews [Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Music, Poetry & Poets] We would walk the long sidewalk, the thread of a golf ball the diameter of a muff, a small silk handkerchief we stowed in our pockets. A flute would play like a lavaliere, the ball stutter on its lie and ricochet, the middle fingers rocking the joint with their circulation. Straw hats, face coverings, two paper hats followed us—we walked almost like pilgrims, with our black beards and our dumb demeanor, and we were close with the wind and the fog and the city and the sea we went on and on and on. <|endoftext|> "Knowledge", by William Matthews [Activities, Jobs & Working, Relationships, Home Life, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] The secret of being successful is how to be undemonstrative, so that any competent employee will take your part in the operation without a bad faith or disruptive demonstration, holding the hands of the two or three other employees who are reading the newspaper, when their attention is distracted by the plight of the homeless, and who are tense and nervous and occasionally smoking marijuana. You are successful when you behave like a mercenary, when you don’t care how you come out, so you can come out and still be profitable, when you can walk into a building and be a service employee for as little as fifty cents an hour for as long as an afternoon. <|endoftext|> "Flour, Pharaoh", by Wallace Stevens [Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Music, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] Flour, I n your book of numbers Flour, flour, from mummy, Flour & honey Flour, from mummy’s belly, Flour & bread & clay, Flour & brain Flour from mummy’s forehead Flour from the throat Flour from his grain Do you like my music, Flour from my oven, Flour, flour, fluff Highly academic, Do you like my music, Flour from my self Do I mention flutter, Flutter from morning, Do you think my music Flour from the tap Flour, flour, from baby If you turn on the faucet And fill your cup Flour from mummy Or the forehead Or throat Do you like my music, Flour from mummy With mummies when they piss Fiver with the brocks Of brockgrane & brockpye When they dong their cowls Flour for the professor Does he like my music, Flour from mummy Or from mummy’s belly If your ======================================== SAMPLE 567 ======================================== To what he smelt: that as an unthrifty toff Kept lard; and had his master's master tried The centry secret duty on the plate Of meat and drink he paid it with a glaunt In sign of high rent and duties exact, And passed away; but where the little plate Its point to the ceiling stood, that floor With herbs and dishes let to flourish still. And there he found the herb Britannia, Our primrose plants of red, the coconut And peas and beans, put there for their proof In feignéries that might haé different, And their fine souls of scent a-stir in the flame Of clouds and the old lake; and in the gait Of flies a little grasshopper that would sing Had not I told him the fair facts; and there He found the female muffin of life, achöèd By love, which he too proud-like had gotten on the bill Of Nature, and could hardly take it; which made His heart feel lapped with anger, and his cheeks all pale; And black-petalled even to the black and specked eye, His nose had flowers and seemed o'erfull to smell the things That Nature meant for some flowers that were not. So part, I mean, what made his brain go crazy Was when his wet land its miseries began, And death had rain in th' ermines ere they began To love and prize him; which burst in haste In self-interposéed tears to rags. And first a cheese broke not, nor crumb nor crust, Nor even put upon the tongue a scent or taste, But when the eyelids did touch it did overflow With precious things,--a rolling ceaseless flood of joy. Next in a while, as at delver's stalls, The graces of the noble mansion awoke, And to the gossips or the gossip's page The subject would appear, or blabbering tell, How the year's work was wended in the spring; And how some fiddlers, who seemed wet to the skin, Did sail upon the ice, and how summer birds, Did go, with just a wayward nymph above the skin, To spin their miniatures from the rippling streams; But that a horse, why--a saddle and a load; While with the fisher's dog by his side there would tumble Wit from the squire, and snarls of a night from the foreman, Now fear not; there will be nothing more; All days I shall see your face, and hardly a score, But only when we gods do meet in the marble panes; Or lift the laver to cleanse our ears, or to wash Our feet, or kiss each other, but when I clasp A man more like a brother than a man, Whose body fills me like a valliant palace. Why, even when the rain descends, and the earth lifts All that it has from its roots, and the moisture Waits only till the sun has done its work; You'll be alive with me, and the light-house trembles; And the faithful lover breathes his love anew. Why is my hair always moist? and why Do my lips always sound sweet? And why do I always smile, As if I wasn't the very spot For love to sit in? The same power compels My body to remain As it is now, And my round mopping breast, And my wingéd laugh. I have not been so good as I might Since I gave up sleep, the surest rest, For that sickening sense Of being watched, and the vexation thereof Is like a needle's eye-brows, A keen repulsion From my naked life. I haven't yet gone mad; I thought I might Have died Of some disaiting blight; I thought that all my days Would stab me through With sharpest knives that hoe possesses. But the sun rises brighter For being bright; And it's the same thing with me For most of me Now that I know That those around me Die when their gifts decay; For what good is there That day I saw the spheres unpacked Like a huge case in the sun, And wondered why my friend Was not there. For one little slip-the-string Had gotten back Into its hiding place And lingered as if it were heard. And I turned and clasped it And we cried and ======================================== SAMPLE 568 ======================================== Arielle also burns to give her husband back, "Not with such desolation could I live," She sighs, "gives up every hope and dear To all the world beside, and takes her life in hand, To seek a life again among the mountains." "My dear," says Arielle, "your long delay has been A deep and sad disappointment. You are young, And know too much of wretchedness and woe To strive for higher things with patience and strength. But as you gave up all to seek the hills, In truth I think that you would find them again; Besides, you love the mountains, and believe That they would love you as they have always done." "No," says Julian, "nor can I indeed; Without my wife, I 'll rush on my death." Then Arielle cried out, "Be gentle yet! The truth is perfectly plain, my friend! Though you have chosen to bear my name away, There is one that loves you more than she. Alma, the old and poor, has had enough; The days are wretched, the wind is driven, But she still talks of the hills again, And hopes that the mountains will be your home; And you, for once in your life, will give Your heart to her, and your soul to God. 'T is a pious hope, and grows in turn, As God's tender loving-kindness to man. If you have patience, you'll soon behold What's happier and what graver awaits The patience of age and the old nature. It is still a question how you may Recall the hills and the valleys to the skies. But you'll know what life and how it speeds, And how you may its powers all at end may fix, Its last, best, bound, wedded little day. "O, child! by day and by night, How patient and true you are! Though I have given you gifts untold, I can't fulfil them all for you. You must be patient, not over-hoar; The future has many charms. Be thankful for the gifts I've bestowed, For the while they are unguessed. How easy it seems to give! The glad surprise of your face. Tell me, are they things you know? "My child! the mountains, far and near, Listen and beloved hear! You must love the rocks and brooks, And love the wild and green; Learn to love the sea and sky, The flowers as well as trees. Love bears the mighty land from shore to shore; Love holds it so with most and least; See its part of the journey here. Leave some in her sea, and then Leave some in her mountains too. Nurtured by love, our spirit grows divine; Where'er I cast my soul, it flies. Strain no more to stem it back, The teacher, love, is near. O, if each word, each pencil blow, Whipped down from God's high circles, hit The spot it promises to fill, Where'er my fated footsteps are, My life must follow in his wake! They curst too far, the saints of old, By living dead for cash! Christian hands the thief's brown Bread from loaf of mixed wheat! I'll banish quacks like you, All denominations, to save Word of cackle from the tree. How stands our faith 'mid all change, Under the gale's violence? O, 'stead of a Christian sign, Some vain godhead plants! Some Madeah in the wind, Some planet in the field! In nature's common garden, How does it never sprout? Each simpering farmer Cozens his simulating peas! And every adulteration Farms nature for contempt. O'er cup and can, our lust Of religion's bloom that is, I pledge you with love and tears, Yes, with my humble whip, To whip you as you pluck, And teach the matter no kick. For Christ and his flock, all solons Are too and romps apart. Like jewels, Nature's passions Our errors leave behind. Now, a Christ-like thwack Is all we have to show. For Christ, for Christ, I dearly love His kindly clamp; For Christ, for Christ, I faithfully Pick amongst the weeds; And if we pick right, we'll surely As Christ will bring. I love Jesus Christ, To him and ======================================== SAMPLE 569 ======================================== Thy mighty Friend, thy best and love, To whom the crooked axles follow. Do they, thy lonely shrine forsaking, Give the wild unicors procession? Nay! They, if not broken, as in thy sight They one and all, seem raging yet, The worst and vilest form of men Whom our Judge justly doth in the end Turn ALL AWAY! But oh! a spreading ruttle is my cry, For truly -- I am in earnest -- I can nothing else relate, Though this -- as I'm used to writing it -- -- You may henceforward see. The earthly paradise That you with pious zeal must make material, Is 'veetle save for him. I swear you'll never find the next Fit spirit to fill up that lot. He's about twice as far on the ascent As the modern leaders go: He's always preaching about his side, Telling his groves and his hills of right; But he's always doing the other And he thinks he a fitter one, -- And therefore I hope He lives his life in vain, He must in earnest so pursue his aim, And for others to share his fate. That paradise is so narrow to grow -- It must be certain pinched, sure, 'Tis clear to every single soul That eternal life is there; But there's no such life as I would give For any such dear Lite-A or he, -- To the end of time I'll follow this one, Who goes best who's strongest steadiest, So let that say hit you true! I'm not so mean or courted as that! Though a stranger to fame and state, I'll not ask you to choose me for oneself, But as fit for earth As any! And I ask no mighty bench- He follows but himself. With what severest of the soul? Is he on the melting pot? If he's lucky (which I expect him to be), Will he share among mortals what he'll take Of Life's total treasure, The best he feels? Or -- as after football He'd grumble, or as, in cricket, he 'll say, -- Can he last for three scoreless innings? Yes, the miscalled one's I! The papers again; and once more the public Hot ammunition will be turned to the field! The editors will write, with the best will allow them, A thousand Libyties sub-lie here, And how the guilty magazine Told lies to one of the noblest men living, -- One who had every ostensible vice at his Name but one vice, -- an innate antipathy T' have to perceive an Elephant alive! Or that his soul, the Brawn that rotted the Son, Slimmed and blunted the potent Brute that sent Lord Ne'er even for an echo of the stork's song, But to the fury that could send it its doom! And will the Editor say, nay, the God Who made both of them bad or good, nay Will he not accuse them of madness, rather Of a tawny heedlessness for the peril Which might or might not come from their even-travelling? To leap on that stretch of fool-paradigm's edge, And at the hazard split the fat posterity, Whereof to spare is nothing; but, rather, Will spare a dozen spare of spirited young flesh, Or fattened lies in a brittle fetter to wage! This point, at least, which I'd have ye consider, I trust to come in good time. Too much hath been said, Of little worth or import, of our Chief Justices, And those the jumbled Counsels and stale decrees; Of what the conscience of England before her would yield, But that the favourable props of their time and place Made her trusting in their oath and covenant; Of whose best friends in public weheightening her weak burthen, She hovered with wakeful, buzzing, careless wings; Though these are the shadows they are, and they are these, That there's neither meaning, meaning to be ill. One thing is said with propriety, in all ears: It was my intention in the style of Flannin To have nailed round about the point this question flat With a pamphlet from King George his study on their law Which I an hour before had hardly brought to pass. Though I saw that the drift of it would be quite sufficient, And as they speak for what is right ======================================== SAMPLE 570 ======================================== Tuesday "A letter by a serving-man was left to the last estate of a lover, who as a rule does not go long without becoming the subject of flatteries: he had given him an acorn for a tobey who would burn or be burned. That was a man of subtler parts, and the things he said were like the things the idiot Sabrina said. I should have known him better than on the embankment beside me off-ringing with his hand in mine. I paid the orchard, and was on my way. But now it matters not. What was done there, if he said anything that was not, and all was, done in good or evil, bequest a season or two of dust, the unexpected juxtaposition of each word in the listening ear as all day, and earth's continual reckoning till death, the clock-tick, removed us has been the clock-tick of even the day most recently run on hands and minutes on one hand of an immobile time-piece. The wind ceased with the crown of the moon, The mists settled to a mixture of woods, And soon the brimming trees grew dark with sap. Like her, in all things hers besides her, The girl would be a dark wood while the moon grew clearer, unluminous. I saw her there—the inner flower that a body was, as when someone reaches out of their side and touches it— O wound, as it were, and all the lessening airs and fret, A waste in which what is most pure and is not in need of furthering, Doth taste and touch as a sweet movement of the soul, Unveiled the impalpable knowledge of the sun and of the moon, Marks out the windings of time's nightly carousels, Turns night into day or day into night And most of what I saw there I saw through her eyes seeing what there was for her to see, For there she stood, but round her lay no wood— She had put off the veil that her thought had made. I awoke, and there was the sky outside that the wind and the mists had vanted for and so many and dark—and the moon was voker's wife voker's wife with scarlet hair that stuck up like a spurned twig. And this was New England, when most every one was at home in their own house. What's old is that they tell of whether it be true or not, Or that they so monotonically repeat it, that it's fit. All that it is is just true, and has been for as long As anything can have been so long—and often longer. <|endoftext|> "Demosthenes Charmure", by Robert Hass [Nature, Animals, Arts & Sciences, Music] Like a soft skin, like an aged thing, Like a staving organ for the deaf, Like the notes that say to us from the heart, Or like the lark's dream of sound, Now die, but understand, Drawn, As now, while tremulous nerves are stirred, Song just like sleep, the deadening power Of remote Greenland. Now song, A sudden beginning, The hearthstone of the wandering flue Of our poor dead Percies, When slept at last and heard no more, Though he'd been there, must be with pain. Charming darkness, Silent, terrible, A sense that what we are fearing Is silent hushed within that track, Where you are known, though not from where, As once when you followed him The long way back from a barbaric shore. I'd like to make a pleach {147} of snow & ice with that note in it for the goose, but he'd do better, Altho I played to Nessus that exact note, a flue only I've captured on the wing, Flicker as deep at the corner of night as melk Deer. O girls, who make music, Youth & lust, at the clammy heel of age, Your deepest music can reach Into that corner for half an hour. Can it be you again, now that we're all departed One by one, that this life we've lost can move In any old garden where we crept from that cold tree of a petered lot? We never knew what song would tune the nest Of the sparrows; even its piteous flutterer, Conductor for the wing, ======================================== SAMPLE 571 ======================================== E'en so strange a trace the uninstructed spright May puzzle: for still the morning-star is held To yield the ere it sees the east: and last the same And second Phoebus unperceiv'd shall receive Weights, unseen, of conquest. As the 'little-one,' So 'ans it glory. Within the cavern so It had a chamber, not immense, As hath been said, but small. CSlepius' daughter Was she; and she so oft the fire had set High, that to this hour he believes her still BIPircumselia. ADraz'd at length, to their rise, Fierce tumult curbs, and they come back To routine, till the morning star Trillion in the ocean once had shown. So in the chamber, at the bound Of their meal, the kneeling smith Smote upon his hammer, And it sound'd, and smote again, As of his voice I heard Ringerilly. He who cleft the stone Had gilt the work: and he who strew'd the beam Felt old upon old. Next his art Bore him thence into brick, from which he made Old as old, mean as it was. It was the din of an urban batter, And though but loud, yet turned to scorn The prince that sat thereon, and th' expiring people. At last th' escutcheons broke, and he Sank in a corner, in a corner, From which none could see him, though he wished, And he only. One there sat up with a pin To drive the pinniture in her language; Not pinched, but pinched with the pin. But look ye, I must not return stouts; And some men might follow me, And some men might not follow; For of all men the Chief of all men Was then considering, and considering, And he might follow, or he might stay. So 'twas a struggle in a struggle; The wind in his shank must wince; The Danube at its bestrop; Then with all his ships out at sea The seals, at all of his in cold wet weather; The air he must choke with his ships; That river must have its field long and black; And a whale's-hides--white as white. So he would shun the flood so hard As any river; and the Danube He would endure, the German Rhine, Where ere he came, would be to him A sea on either side of its limits. Then would he have a city at his feet Of temple and fortress three or four; The whole in his one city so great, So walled, so pillared, and so watched. For the grasses, once, under his command, Haul downst it quickly; and the walls Too hastily thrown down; and the winds Disastrous would trouble his dread At day, and his fleet masts and spars; The mariners who follow'd were amazed, And the masts were ever to the spray Bearing away, and the fires from the decks. Nathless in so much trouble he was used By a secret counsel in his breast; For, say they, who know, a man's eyes narrow When truth is near; and though the wisest, Be not a secret, or else recall The wisest in his own renown. If to his praise be needless, then follow, And stand before his face in the stream. So was the council held. Whereat the counsel was remembred, The next moment their attention crave. Here it was that Apollo growed; As from some tree a plant of tender spring, Within whose tender green a thousand fountains By year's end are constantly seen. The Romans first, at the most advanced hand-breadth, Iason for one, while the others drink A drop from their many jars, each nectared with the liquid wight, Ascusan them, a nectar no physic could prevail But in the crested wave in a sailing-suit Calcareous, for the way was newly torn, And the heavy steam it shed seemed to them To be a river on the horizon's brink. Thus was it; but though 'twas esteemed a work Pregant, that mighty mountain by contrast, Which he who there had stood, till the morning wake, Had scarce towered to, of that northern torrent's rest, Or more, was surely done. Where denial M ======================================== SAMPLE 572 ======================================== You may have seen Page from her proud mum a silver choker that round her neck Ties the best and lets the others pass. I shall give a splendid ball; I shall play my natur' music and pay it all, all just for you; If e'er by chance you be We'll judge it by the scant You, indeed, are not giv'n to attend it. You are in love with the best And the best and the wisest will tell it. At your table There are those meats You never eat; You have a mind to be sadden'd If you take a dish that someone else taketh; And you gurgle with distress When you the bill! In the land of the free I was eli'd by a N***** If the mind were in slavery Where ought the stuff come from Of this N*****! You're imposing, indeed, But the Lords never dream Of such a state; Where we an' the Ameri- tuns would fall I'm much agrin by a TON. The beaux in Clandestin are noticing A new breed of beauties that flit and pass. The lean clod-potatoes that chuse to skreip and skrike And be sypher-slicker, and the rhyming beaux That twirmy and yawk and deuise at The "rude race," they are the beginning of a habit For England and England that's fresh and nat'ral. Thanks for the word, thanks for the kind letter. O that I could believe such impertinence From such a soul! Thanks for your high existence! That I may sometimes believe That these have souls, too, And may spare me the indignantly base opinion That I myself--God, but I-- Must be a monkey, too! That was one of my very first friends, And I've had very few since. O worse than that! When Virtue out of Human Love Has been forc'd, she's ever forc'd; And I could swear my first and last-born Faint innocence, Has been driven off into a ditch, The sooner the deception is recover'd, The better for the humane, you'll cry; And if I could I would tell you, You'd peep into the cell and peek Every nook and snap. What is there I can do, But always so much as just This out of my eye? And whatever he may do, Whenever there's a blow I must bear, and whate'er he says or does I may as well pretend I like, To prate of the wrongs I've borne. In my old master's house, The first place I was In after school, with Mrs. Mund I saw a little dog and fawn'd Upon her pups--sweetest fiends, And raised the nastiness, As I call'd it, of my feelings Up to the master who I found Reading a little book, and sit As still as death--pooh, ooze, Still stone--as still as sthrum! The dear man did say, "Why, yes, Your Dog, my dear! Doth share my tastes, doth indulge my will; And therefore I will book my son A three years' term at Swan and Hook!" And he was like to stay, and I Nay, nay, had rather he had flown, Being sleepy in the intervals From his biting finger-nails And turning tail. Had my dear master heard I would have set my face Upon the door-sill and kept my wings For ever more in his hearing. Yet it vanish'd quite, and left me worse, And in the best of houses Was found an elegant Grigrie With a slight clust'ring of kittens. With the back-scuff that settles down, And the brush-bush that slides down, And the hinky pe&^h covered with flies; And the mud that hangs loose on his flanks And his side as a worsted hangs From its logh'ring tether; And I all the time said, "Poor Mund Is not the little partner I thought him To be,"-- And now I always felt about as a "Pug"- Not the beautiful sort, like painters, and ones who in Even their own fun'lings turn sometimes too much And over-strain themselves; But a simple companion, who'll bowl you a " square ======================================== SAMPLE 573 ======================================== "Enter and lead from their fetters. " "Would I had some. " 'Tis such, a cloud "To some. But he, of solitary "In his room, well worth your dwelling, "If you'd only give him a call!" "He lives alone," Cried and advised The prating parrot. "Oh, my good master," Peacock proclaimed. Aping the Peacock, who cried, "His Holster is broke, and the strap "Holds a loose charge; he'll be an Alp -- "I already have an appointment -- "And will you hold the ball? Behold, "Your skirts-killet may very properly "Have these tail-tangle fixed to her, "To mend her up in a trice! "The seat is on a mat, "At times I've found convenient." "Ho! ho!" said the cygnet. His feathers "Thick-skool. Make off to the wood, you lazy doves, "And be off. For what? a lady that's fair; "You dance around while I come to you! "See that you're tidy: now you are free, "And I'm out, -- you're a waiting to come!" And he flew off. Nothing but sly doves Could duffle him, as he pawed the tufted grass, To the wood went the doves. Not one Would the jay from the rose stay or watch. "Hold your tongue, you clumsy twins! I'm going "For a drink, and you will follow me. "Lazy doves! That's what you are; you try "To be birds, and saps as much as pears. "I'll see you when I come. Oh, speed, "There's wood out -- you'll burn yourself. In lay "You, my dog. What's up? You're safe! 'Twas luck. "What did you say, plucky? 'Don't go near.' "Don't you go near! Didn't you say to jump. "I stopped -- 'Come on, silly, silly, "You must go right round, and the other way!" Three doves winging to the wood, Through hedge and bush and brake, Like a tortoise they flit. "So you'll carry us, we dear, To the old hermit's place. "For your three birds have promised To obey our Calling Seaward seaward they soar, they scale the sky, Climb, and skim, and skid, Till the great god bell is heard, And the tortoise's purpose fixed. All seaward seaward They are driven, and filled with gloom, And the seaward-faring doves Drop into the deep. Four odors four greet The seaman, and four greet The mortal when he fares To the dark strand, from shore to shore. "O, thou the land," they say, "Thy body's king, thy thoughts are king. "Thou art all the creatures's lord, "If thou art weary, wait awhile, "For thy great thoughts have fixed it all. "Up, till the sun and moon, "And thou, of course, thyself, are set, "And till the midday ray, "And till the merriest moon "Charm only the lowest trees; "And till there be no blemish, "Then come thy goodly ship, "So thy thoughts may fixedly "Treasure the night away." So the child sat and played By the seaside, and at last said: "There's the game! But it's slow, "I know it is, and I can't find it!" They looked and wondered. In truth She had told the reading-book list All by heart, the long words that ran As book-learners wonder how. One of a hundred different Children learn when reading aloud To the rapt nation, on the shore, Of the other land: then something Of the same their wonder rings, "But this strange name, and these terms, "N't it some kind of a play?" Twice found I songs which did respond To my touch, and both I kept; Which may show, I think, one allus To pay us singers more than usual. But, as to prove the thing, e' ======================================== SAMPLE 574 ======================================== When the eyes Of Destiny Caught my light like a flame from the distance, Even before the soul of her you save Has your poor illusion cast aside To its blissful places in the sun; Even before the philosopher’s knife Has sliced your fine brand from the cradle And singed The victim’s throat In modish dress, Out of the foam and clouds Which the fragrance of your fragrance were The roses first saw the light of day. The woman began life and God gave her Sweet treasure. Echoed the rights of man, And God shook the levin-stone From his shaft. And over the empire Of these worldly women grew to be A name like a song, So that the lamp Which foretelling had begun To light our shadows, began to blaze. The memories of all that beauty From the confine of the earth were buoyed And left their deep bed to slumber, And lo! Through the spread flat sky The moment’s villages Shone bright And crowded numbers of homes, Where my memory likes to bring me In childhood As to a musical house, Were city-halls, Houses, not like these, Cities where the golden arrow Drove the bright van That rushed The astral hosts before, Where I, not yet born, Their rich theater Saw with my sight Blindly wise The scenes of life And deathless The faith The city leaves To all who come Is filled by those who Go down From the very belovèd high road. The noble and poor Go for refuge To open battle With age and death; All are fugitives From the wind And the night; And all try Their feet To the world. And in my ear Murmur of sirens, The rest-harp Sings its spells of ghosts And teeth of waves; And through my brain The sea-call Of love and dream Recalling life. And many a time I, an old man, Who was blind for years, Would have with my weak arms Support their tips Toward the light Of the far lamps To lean to the soft line Of the sea; And with my ashen old beard Star-like in dreams There from the Thing Would steal And bring a stranger half Out of the dark space Of tenement Who with my wondering eyes Had passed the street His face between the bars, Whispering that it was I, He who did the thing The voice of the crowd denied; So he came to the air Of the sunrise where we looked Together for the souvenirs Of wonder and wonder. The lights flashed to my sight The tawny city-spine And the white hill-sides, The twilight rose and the purple Of the wooded ways, And through the low gates came the gleam Of the track, Where somewhere as we ran Through laurels, careless-rhymed, The bat fluttered once and joined The dancers of night. Of all the nights and days Of the years that had been, The sun of my nights was weak In these of my days, But the stars were clearer When the bells rang "millaire" For the burial of the dead, In the storms of my days. Not for the gold, Or for the pathos Of graves Is worn with pensive time Like the face in a dream; Not for a dying den Is that in the skies Which lacks All meaning save its own; Not for black oblivion, The unloved and the bleak, Are carved on marble That face and wept In the still welt of death. Not for the tomb wherein He sleeps whose touch was the grace Of a kingdom where Truth has passed, And the World has drunk To power all aim And a breath more; No, not for those two alone Are carved on a marble wall The touch of a bended soul And the dream of a God. Not for brevity; Or the dream of the hut Clinging to nature; For each successive leaf, Each scimitar which barred The ebon cage where it fed, And alone, alone made The bed where it made its lair; The shapes of its wings and feet And eyes of snakes, Were all the world, where summer Shone from an herb that was day In Eden, on the snow. ======================================== SAMPLE 575 ======================================== The celebrated flowers rise, the light air Unmottles, and the groves with brilliant spots And subtile-shining shadows, viewless evening Sprinkles the earth with her young and sparkling gems Like diadems of fire for Queen Máyá’s sake. As when the moon in Hikkadhola’s(61) stead Gleams with full force in clear glimpse, the shining Moon that joys in earth’s embrace, who binds in chains The Sun and takes all pleasures of the air With blindly good intent, oppressed with bliss With heaven’s great joy, this mighty star, The Sun by Viroch Piksed speaking truth Of Yáma, from his chariot borne, Obedient to the sovereign power Of wise Sugríva,(62) seems to speak Most wise with light that shines, as we note In this fair planet-mist that in its scope Lifts up its delicate blossom so All the thousand gems that brighten earth And cast a lovely splendour o’er the skies. Here all the Gods may spring to cheer us With every sign of earth and air. O prince of Gandharva caste, this sphere Is sure a home for thee, thy course to keep In perfect leisure for a length of years. No great desire is in thee, no strong wish For aught that earth may give, no lingering grief For death’s expiration day.(63) Happy that man who treads This earth like lotus-main whose root is this(64) sea; Whose path of oceans teemed with commerce; Whose eyes that glance from earth like moonlight be That turn at once homeward undelighted When they have gazed so long with glee, They know that God is just and should forgive. An archer, Rávaṇ sent by thee, and sworn To by thy side for an hundred years and five, Dháruferí, in every sphere endowed With skill at shot and perk of keen-edged bow Would seem the best of all who wear the quiver. No cloud appears less glorious, no slither. Now, Ráma, why shouldst thou in despair Make complaint to Him who made the world Wrong-doers, sinners, and insolvent? Dhœi ťágh, with Lakshman, wrought this ill, Laid in treach’rous piece and guile a plan By which to cheat the firm‑hearted and wise, No queenly spouse should they e'er submit, And he, after plots so well planned, gained No blameless triumph, but a guileful one. Alas for one like thee who, armèd with pride And ne’er such omen near, would stoop to touch The Lord of Day and fainting eke, dallied With Arjuna, with the mountain-born, undone, On ground whereon no daity can be, or light, With loss of kingly guile and strength, Untouch’d by glory and the Lord of Day, While Brahmá, though he grant thee bliss and warmblood, Seems to despise and scorn thee, and makes All hope of favour from his realm shamefully vain. O devoted, glory-crowned spouse, not fit For Queen Kaushitá’s love, let not this body pine, Though dear to thee, thy wife and thy desire. Well is it, O thou most supreme of women, Knowing the truth of what I counsel, to keep The truth for love of thee, in thy breast to be Engraved, or thou wilt see, self-tempting, the while Thy limbs, like mountains in the firmament of fire. My words to thee, dear one, are like the song “The sword which keeps the shorter bent is best With whips of both, even will and power, to wait. The hand that longs on it self-pressed will ever be.”(65) Yea, Lakshmaṇ is my king; my sire is he Whom each bliss to, all strength from, I adore. And he, to whom all virtues, every grace, Are like one substance pervading, round about, Fearing none, I know, nor dreading in the least. Still might I wish mine eyes upon that face, Ráma my lord, my mother’s dear fellow, With vigour sure of heart, all grace to see, For that is meet ======================================== SAMPLE 576 ======================================== Still show the gaunt phantoms of life's eternity Amid our terrors; and that sole, Nameless in the light that shines around, Is Life, and its evil token; and the other Mutilated stars and shadows of night. As, man has raised the unknown God from the deep, Through vile, abominable mud-- From slime so red-crusted as to be Nought but a den of woe-- Has set a new creation's seal on him, So has man condemned the lordly Cause From the stern throne of his heritage to move Forth from his dominions, like a tame leopard, To the wastes of waste darkness, and have kneeled Down to the beast in mud, to save his soul; So have men hated Him;--and because They could not kill Him, because His plan Wou'd overthrow their purpose, and produce, As it is written, forth of the womb, Thou shall see Him broken on earth, and lying With a wall of fire at his feet; and men With hands that could crush life nigh out of him, Worship Him, and beneath His feet Have worshipped, and their hearts were fried in him To their wits; while he--sitting, remote, and dumb, As long as their fathers had ruled them-- They thought not shaped like man, but monster monstrous That crouches and creeps, and devours in steps, The yoke fixt on his right shoulder,--at length His son, mortal, with their pride the yoke to bend, And their God, the Lord of Heaven, to grope for, and find Unknown and feeble; and his young son Called down by Heaven's command, found by man, The lowest of his steps to meet, and mild To mortal men: "I love the youth, and I Will put him to the proof of manhood's dint Of courage." Thus he rose To the task, and drew his sword, and, like the sword Of one to whom all the house-doves swear, One morning when the sun on earth's sphere Was at its highest noon, laid bare and mild Against the sun his flaming body, And charged his son, and he stood against him. Son of the man! The youth's last hour was the best. The last, son of the man! A winged soul in men That fills the air with transport; lifts and fills The living with the years of the death of life; And the length of years! and the height of men! and the fame Of him who sways them! Out of the earth he rises; Out of the vale of months, when the wise Sought vain things to hide, the earth that he loves to go Up to, as the top of a ladder, and up Above the loftiest man, and the highest man, that's fled From men's lives! Not shame, not death, not hell, but death Their fate, for the multitude: what are two worst things To one worst of all things! Why have men with swords, Is armed for battle, Their fearful strength, Their craven hearts! Strong is a soul alone;--strong a soul alone Brings freedom to men! Strong a soul alone Gives heaven to men: Mayhap a god, not so: I myself will wait for them. At the door of my own life, Up, in my own earth, and the height of life, Will I watch, so stiff, With sunk, unspoken lip, and swollen eye, The shadow rise, The ghost of some friend; So, whatever moves the present or the past, One force alone Shall make the right; one death, not a prod, The result of millions, makes a right. What shall we do When they who built the wall are sinking in the wall? What shall we do Who serve the throne of Him who rules the empire of the dead? Who mark the rule of the whitening Assyrian king, That cap-silvering Persian king, whose dotard hands, A carpet of that silver stuff, his tombs beside, Roofless above and gaping below, gaunt as hulk of old wine barrels, His cataracts and sinkings and panic halts of sleep? The penitents of the church, Peering thro the bars of their cell, See, thro their pannicures, how clear Sharp swells the blebbing blood; Blood of men the terrible king to depose; Depose from the throne King and priest ======================================== SAMPLE 577 ======================================== Grieved he not at all, for he would see No change of place: yet therefore, on my speech Affectionate, not imbruted, spake he. My promise set, the labour and the pain Must be, to keep the league, and so fulfil Be it never so briefly. I go not now Into the other noble arm, but set Here, here, to the world, myself to taste All the calamities which await it there." When he that saw my perplex'd reflection, Threatened myself, and in other things spake Me still the author, so that more I wax'd; Then, gentle billow, where thou art said to dwell, Send and straightway drive us up and down the sea. When we for th' eastern country horsed, as often we Have on the dry land trod, and turned about The Syrian city wherein thou sitt'st, down run These syllables, ever-vers'd in ever-neverwhere. He, when they were escaped, turned and twirled His shaft, and for the city seek; whom, when we Equip'd for hunting, he beheld approaching, Thus spake, to me guard equal borne. A certain city, which, as surely as I Have told thee, expectation can change. The very jokers and kids, that dress Eachverse or veil in a sort, And make their disguises To seem some other thing from what they are, will Watch, and if the time threatening, fly or fall back, Headlong, and tremble,--then--by cowardice will fall; For others will be more courageous. Thou art one town, Other cities goodly, some very pretty, Like those which here, but rarely seen below, Forth with their temperate fruits and sweet Thir varnishts o'er the citrus live, Will tempt the traveller from the town; and, Headed with cob webs, the watch have seen them too. Deep being I saw such webs deep set, Vinent round, and when I said good Lord, Be justly chided, the just voice was, gave way, To one, who would have done the priestly power right, And yet, myself, not so sure myself. The squire, who sat with me a while before, As saying, Why come ye? said, I will. Said, I am RP; of this congregation just; And, how in Fashionuelol, most worthy To the survey of myself and the B.M.S. From youth, to maturity, what has been and will be done Here, is in these my thoughts, and this my cause. All hail! in accent as general, but different In subject; for (notwithstanding his disregard Of that, whereof thou particularly gratisfies) Still I discern in thy, his, and thine a content, -- The theme for ever satisfies my will;-- The writer of these words; and may be stamp'd By others ever, in their deepest lineaments, Solely by myself: I ne'er commenced To pry into mysteries, nor shall cease; but soon Shall burst my bonds and meigems, talking still Of these my favorite themes. So see me freer, Paced about, elate, and talker in a rod. Self-love (and I love just as I have seen For which I speak) first, and most purely, I Love mankind, and to them a man; and, On their accounts, in many changeful moods Of joy and sadness, kermes, in their progress just, Man-loving man, I call'd from far and near To speak unto them; vocation Of tongue or pen, let them have will power Not stop'd till will be unbendable set. Their faith's good mark, a cut, that makes a game For all, I discharge, or mine; nor read Less me, the more, through love of self-spite, Which stains the soul, who dares not render up His voice. This vice crowns his ambition high For many things as mine for few. I Love myself, and do with me divide My existence. Come then, And as we walk, I set before thee, to behold And praise the god of art,--the god, whose hand Stands like a mid' moon's on the helm o' th' car, and weighs The helm; who at the desired port checks the winds And measures by the sea the orb that lives beneath; Who, while the round ======================================== SAMPLE 578 ======================================== Widows' tales and life of martyrs. And always there must a WORD, whose power can give The keys of Heaven, of Heaven itself; A word, whose rhythm is like the cord That makes the saintly bells of Notre Dame. Oh, speak for them, Word of Life! The holy good-kind word! For those who raved to the gibbering hymns, For those who raved to the chill and caverned hymns That rose like a loud rush from the grave-lipped tomb; But he, their roving WIGHT, was gone, Alone, among his comrades and kinsmen Strolling with his flute. Just such a wight As in all the world hee never met; The sodemaster, the Bacchant of graves, As e'er hath beene or may be het. He lay a running medium from the city-gate Into the chase of his adoring flures. And she, she was his truest, fairest Of all his YEMENIDES. Hee's mee, in pitty, that sitt'st now wi' the thrall On a sea-ledge, when, at here lugged word, Her hand her twining like a dancing flore Through the paths of her inland home to run. And if, perchance, I divert her palavering care An' catch a glimpse o'er the worldly thing Shee but think of a past time in an ill wise, O, such sweet memories of the dead! Oh, when a heart burns out wi' grief or ware, An' is cut out wi' all its late yoong, It can but beathed in sweet remembrances Of those thro' whom it has serv'd, As 'tis said they put the heat of lovers' fires In the cold coals where they grew the hardy roots O' faith, which far from ken'd the dear test. Ye Maisters of life's keen strident lure And, men of thought, ye stirks o' the world, Ye green and budding buds o' the race! Ye manes that love the art o' the thrall And, lo! the time for your withering care Is o'er. Yet let me no longer call your joy your own. Ye call it joy! yet, with it, ye share A common foe--The Enemy o' your race. Curs'd be the words that I ne'er can spell But as the lightning's muck, in this we run. We must forget all but life's good men; Their scathin' care, their blows, their knives, their heat. Ah, me! let sounds and shining uivers Hold me as I gaze through dark tears. He was ta'en, as men hae atgit to clair; Wi' thud and wi' a tear in his gram He was hit by a pack o' Finns, While the bairnits sang, "Cousin, cousin, come home," At the foot o' Muir. Here is a health to ye an' Mamma, That hae gie'd me eight cru-eights At least! I'm wise an' weel, an' I thank you; An' aye, here's to you both, Ye an' your darling Auntie, An' a' the dear lads an' all! I'm glad you're back, my ain brother, And hope ye maun ne'er forget The cheek ye fell ne'er this; An' that mouth, an' shape, an' mind, That ye was spell'd to please. Ye an' them-all, ye were ta'en an' told Ye maun be a Crook. Ye were twins, ye sae blithe and free, Just like as we need must be; But now ye're shell-torn, an' canter, An' wight ona; An' ever ane is here to see Ye wear it like a sore; Yet here's to you an' your auntie, An' them-all! Mamma, I've heard, is strange an' queer; For, as men fash yourt do, Mamma is strange an' queer-- Pendant Luthern is fit for me, An' me for Mamma. She saeaks sae jimping an' slow, Wi' cold, daft, sticky fingers, ======================================== SAMPLE 579 ======================================== This is the Room where No one is, Slim margins, Glazed black glass, Cut currant warders, Dimmer Than this room can tell, Beside me, there's Two women, Their backs and cheeks Lit by lamps 'Neath their bosom, So much that the lids Almost brush, Letters high and low, Locks of amber hair, Lined hooks Ahead of them Over the walls; And by them young girls in long white dresses. On a chair a chair, A painting done, All ivory, so this dame Painted it, Abandoned, soon, Into a museum And it found its way back to me; And I heard that at the Ghetto She gave lessons, Thus I came to know, Without her knowing, I had stolen her son, And I doubted, nevertheless, That I had come in my spare time To catch the thief. No father here, my eldest son Pushed a book between us, and Gravely looked on me: "Why are you so mad?" he asked me, "Why is your heart so mad? What do you want?" That all the people are fools, Or only fools"? "True," I told him, "The people are fools. What have they done?" "They have burned down our house"; "Aha, aha!" he answered, "You, sir, always are shrewdest; Of people you are blind, sir; Or else you would see What he has been working for; He wanted a wife; And, since he would have it so, He thought his work was done At the magnificent height of its greatness. He had it all planned out beforehand. But here I come. Yes, I am a fool, And so is this young lady, And we will pass on. My mind-body would be bright If only it were sharp. And the flesh its dullness shows Is yet a clever thing, sir; But the heart of brute Made me a fool, sir." Then he smiled, As if he loved me, And thought the voice was very sweet, And read some secret in the eyes Of his daughter, so he made a sign, But his heart seemed numb by design. "Tired legs and head," he said, And went on packing up, While his daughter sweetly made a bow. By the end of that day we might have walked A league in the opposite direction. We have travelled much, and, for a time, May we ever come to this happy shore; Then our memory may soar and span the seas As it soared and span the seas of our fathers; Theirs the cross they received, but theirs the crown; For this watered, and toiled, and bled for you. For ever be glad, but be not so glad, Then may we ever be rapt in a tower; For the crown is hidden in the garden here, And you were a fool to suppose it not. Of gray sand and cool dawns that sneak Softly along the cliffs, You and I might think that all the land Was dotted with pearl; but where Is every diamond found? What your heart Says, and I must tell the truth. Ah, if I could only see the world Without glasses! If I were merely Ileose, And I had wealth and rank Enough to do what I would; The secrets of the world to share, With wizard snares and shows Or leave them unarranged; We should need not only now My earth, my clock, my sword And toil! Ile make a nation, A dynasty, to birth A new, strange world; or raise Some tower on Uncanny's wall And live above barred; Or let the babes on Rolls Of marble in the dyke, And let the City fill With towers like those. No; a wise man such Would watch the winds; look on the stars In morning or the moon's beam A thousand leagues of blue And say, "Be still and breathless, For He above me is within my breast." Yet if there 'gins to blow of tree, Soon shall I turn my eyes A little upward, though the grass That is still green may not appear. What is that mist we see? We may just as well imagine A monkey sitting free, Or a man without ears, Or a lady married to a shop. Is it the ======================================== SAMPLE 580 ======================================== and so most equal they might be. Our grandfathers would say: “Young sir, You ought to smile on such a world, If all is just, to bring a wife.” But in a girl, the age they reached, And knew the laws of love and years From age to age, they thought, well, she Would sap the life of youth away. They liked the boy. But does this mean the law that there Is either a girl or there, that all Is chaste who has no brother, that Can by himself be more than wise, And that he feels no pain, Until he be a child? Then he’ll brood upon the law A single step too far, as if the Obstacle to him were because He was a boy. Then, in a woman, as the flame On windowpanes, must a lute sing And so prepare the world for youth Who used to the horizons of song. <|endoftext|> "To the Point (A Farewell to the Ass."), by Ezra Pound [Religion, Faith & Doubt, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Anniversary] The fleur-ilage that you came from, And see the poet that you are, In all its ancient arms and fear, Stands a pale before this blackness. And if there ever was a time When the heart was a gem, one note Was a gift to pass at its will, Until you stand here with your tongue Quiet as crystal. It is strange, if you think of it, That the ecstasy of feeling is Like light passing through a and back again, As though the idea came first, and went When the body stayed with the word it gave. To be cold without our dreams about it, And hear what silence says; and guess That if we stop thinking poetry We are broken up into an atom, lost; And if the point should give its name to anything, We may as well call it stone. But we men shall walk by the place where a thing stands, Not caring whether it be glad or fearful; Not caring whether we shall look or leap Until the spirit is straight and the body stiff. The music of our ways shall go past us, we, Having made books, and books which are but records, And the stars guess how we have been; But in the earth, this silence of the dead hour When the hand that we did not pick is at rest, We find a song. <|endoftext|> "Poem (continued),", by Ezra Pound [Arts & Sciences, Philosophy, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books] I The grey street lamp shows the face of one Who is weary; he faints and quives In the wandering festal garden; he Is contented, he hastes home; In the autumn which sees him the leaf Of a branch is turned; But the leaves that unfold the street which lies Among the leaves, being rooted to a flail, Show a figure to weary, to sing About the fire; they are thirsty; they Drink as they crowd along the wind; The children lose their way and are whirled; Or else they walk into the court. If a star is bright or dark, Or hangs herself better than heron‎s, But from overhead one gem Does, perhaps, some cloud-scented night Give to each street light. There is the road: the darkness answers And our exhalation is For one moment in the passage; The great trees, autumn's rooters, lift Their arms in warning, and we Go asking of the night. And the flat houses near, Better if they grew one with the lawn, For they and the many tracks Are free from shopfronts, the place Of habitation, where the last Song may do more harm than we The running house; and the street, A plain round about, where the little is Of intermixture of any song Is sober, where the kind Of housemaids live which with live wreaths Has built a hostelry; And beds for sleep, where once the vane, A little cloud we, of sunshine, spun, And the smell and sound of the night Is made ascendant. We are weary of lute-playing, Of splendour of flowers, of sunlight thin, And if a shadow long lay dead Then through the door we hail it; the fingers Astonish, and wake the light Which has slept for us; one would sing ======================================== SAMPLE 581 ======================================== guy, the one who so declares that the pain was always here--but out-side the mind, as will appear when the mind is cleansed and our present frame of the world is rinsed from pain and redressed, whether or not the pain still is inherent to us is something that we have to learn. As the story of the blind man and the hut where he sat and, wanting neither glow from his eyes nor the music of the spheres, he felt as though he could look straight into the sun-- the wound in the world right now is from the sun. In the tenth chapter of St. John of the Madonna it is written: In My Son. Not the dog, the one that's following him now, he's left the tail and the kiss--the dog is going. This poem is an allegory for transformation. It is never but in its limits the poem achieves its most perfect variations. It goes on giving, the dead can rise in boats, and the cemetery wall early morning when this letter comes in-- and the moon rising over the avenues in Lake County ironically still green--a kind of green as if continual rain had built the leaves of every woody branch of every single tree in the woods to be articulate in holding hands at the moment sunlight separating grasses from all malesaces, wells, banks, and bermuda canyons, from the timeless fact of now, and from metals, magma, great mountain air, rich as if great drops of rain had broken open the wettest field in the world--half-man, half-beech, half-oak, iris as if with yellow casts, that the sun shines out of, great armatures, they go on and they flow in perfect blue rivers, and are the beams of the sun--the wild streams through the wood, the most perfect forms of daily life, the close-allowing and close-allless heavens that lie as if to sleep along the earth. To this world there is no real existence, for what is real is not sure--it is vague, it is remote, it is fit neither for movement nor rest, yet it is part of everything, it is a twinge in the body, a nail in the thumb--there is a slice of the truth in the thing and there is the only road to it. The world is not real nor can it be, it will not be for a thousand years nor will it be for one. He wandered up and down in a city of red iron-- its exhaust trailing over the flowers, as the coolness had drawn itself around in a circle, but he had let it believe it was still there, as it had let itself believe that it had found him when he was something other than himself-- that this was not fire, that this was not he who followed, that the he that had borne over the heart the vain load of the heat, that this was other than fire, that this did not follow-- he had let it believe it was holding him, when the hold was more than he could bear, he had let it believe that it was its life, that its resting place was his, and he had allowed it to fool itself another understanding of the world than the old one, when the old one had had him for its prisoner, and lo, when he had left it for good it forgot the old meanings of things, it wondered what the old meaning was. And now he pondered one day if a hawk had over his shoulder the red eyes of a green bird,-- it looked as if it would demand the gift of a relief; it looked as if its own way, its way lay on the other hand over the other way of the other heart of him; and the power of this wonder, however friendless and unfeigning it might seem, seemed to be about something that had not yet occurred--a birth, an act, an embryo-- if it were a dream, as that bird might look out for the heart of the bird, it was everywhere--to come and go, treading all in its own way, trusting itself, and ignoring the rest, if only as a shelter and a shield against the body of the storm, if it were ungenerating the pain that it found by its natural impulse to feel by its own instinct, if it were an itch that made the scratch for the heart to grow so large that its heart-strings so twisted and tight they made it angry, and ======================================== SAMPLE 582 ======================================== From which doth so invade my quaking —Hence all that mourning's torch. And I say unto my heart, the earthly may Forget and overlook but sweet long ev'n, How sweet the secret of th'hollow, and the green! The shapes sweet dye, fade sweetlier, from the dust. These waits of Winter all his wrath forgot The mason is so nice, and the lofty cross Suffer'd some sadness. And now I'm aweary Of storm and cry — but sweet before I went My cheek was sweet and chill with mounting dew. Fever days, hot winds, and heat ye did buffet, And turn my trees and me with wavering flame — To my sweet heart I do not wearay! — My heart is kept for nought but that I'm so soft And sweet; and he's so good that for him Went thither; his's and mine, and the rest that is Of my true nativities, and in his heart What sows he hath found of good seeds, and which Will grow to precious fruit, with patience eath Will laugh and sing unto that end; and so Bud because his Lord it is so willing And tender is. — O sweetest precious stone That hath in it a purifying grace, That, on its chiefest plane is set, shall end All burthen of comfort; yet one sweet word Of his shall be to me; nothing more. Two words shall make me glad; not more. For why Am I not more thankful then? but whom they invite I do not question, and for him I mourn — He is, alas! — life's poor, warm-eyed child. So may My neighbour's heart be found as sweet to have From me; but words to call that prayer to me. Alas, that I do rue this estray; my lad Hath count'nance to it; wherefore, though I it wrong, Then do I weep, for the loss it is, My only lad. God send him a full peace Unto his head. So having said, mine eye I raised, and could in descry the place Where stood my babe, all golden, with my mother. The clothes upon her swooned; and so her soul Was there entranced, that, when she did look, With every tear that affections dight, Her eyes were like sweet tears that would come All loose and flowing: thus laid her down And let her bide in peace, and her brow Shed inwardly, and made grief her mourner. What shall I say that she is gone, my child That she is dead? She that was half a mother The man half human, who was born for one To do a kingdom, takes one away Without one word, without one grief for him, And in the grave could hide her grief. Say then What shall I say? She who was mother should say? Behold now, my child, the fount of tears, The spring of tears wherewith I may fall; That thou mayest read and mark, and say This signifies grief; for that weep'st thou? And hast thou grief? but love more have I. Because I have not found the words, I will do better in that for thee. What, canst thou saythat I am dead? and have been When I am dead, and thou wast an earth Low in the sea, and in the sea bed low A swimmer, and in sleep dost' absurd The saying of the priests, and ere this spoke An atheist, and told them my soul was clean. And yet here in the region I have seen There is no church, there is no child Alone in sight; the babe in arms of His Who holds it is the seed of Mary's boy. And such a one, the seed of Her's is one Who to the sea did cast a load of grief She shall not say; my dead I have gone But never love me, and to some band In Southern lands a naked warrior led From out the vastness wild; but he was proud And well was worthy of our wonderment; For he but cast his lot in war for liberty, And so he know himself no slave; but she Who bare such love she was not worthy less. There is but one bridge, one road in all the world, A traveler's map, where all is covered by no line, Wrought up from point to point by love's crooked path, The self-appointed wing of love, ======================================== SAMPLE 583 ======================================== and fast from shore to strand? Why from the sword, at least, The nearer shore must go? I have indeed a name Of mine own, most evil too, Though in good stars not worse, But of a colour as dark And of a thread as thin As ever, for still, On the driest grass O' the thickest meadow I Must keep my ruin, Though on the spindle-hand Of the slowest reed. I have indeed a name Of mine own, most evil too, But a god-name, in fact; And being good By their mere goodness, And not of what their good swears, Men call them Zion. All we have of God is His name. "Why have you seen me so downcast?" With his head downcast? Look at my feet! My God is in them. His hee is. Each for his own, And for none. Shun not his service. We all should serve him, By our troth. But, tho' Moses ne'er set foot On the mountain high, And Isaac never kissed One wife's cheek, Thou art more lustrious than I. Thou art more pure, than I, Thou art honest, Thou art the King's true flock, Thou art Aaron's she goat. The goat of all, The goats of all! Thou art the King's true goat, The Queen's lamb, The Archbishop's blind fancy, The Pope's white wine, The sheep without spot, The churl, The servant's constant dog. Thou art the Queen's white dog, The ass's tail, The cat's claws, Thou art the ass! Thou art the Queen's cat, The man's hat, The man's sword, Thou art the swine, thou art the bitch. The bitch's ass, The swine, The swine, Thou art the wife. Then sleep for ever, Dream! within thy bed There's a sleep to sleeplessness, sleep to countless fleas Toil of the limbs unfledated. Thou shalt never more, When the waking day Steals on the darkened sun, Hide memory behind a look-at, Or cry at the window, The day is thine; Night's fierce energy hath turned it pale, With huge skies o'er-gazing it, And filled its sands with stars, And round its heart in turn Moved the full-lipped moon. Night's wild body, dreaming, brings it forth, And thrust it eastward, eastward, Until it meets the owls, Where, gleaming gray, A kingly column, noble-girt, Meets the night with a leap, And looks at the sands And the winds the seas in, And runs into the west Where the dawn is, Where, breathing light, Now the stream of the day, The morning-stream of the day is, Running all day, But not for long, For now the day is done, And by the powers of darkness And of death the dead Do the strong heart of the day, And earth, mother of things new, Breathe off the deep; But not for long The feeble watch that the night, And the light nurst eye of the day, But in some nearer place, Welty, Wiltshire, thrice, heaven-bred; I who have ridden from end to end, But stopping with my two poor chained riders at Sheen A good greyhound at each side Duff all the whacker and wheeler I got, A grey nowhound, and a whippooriner, An eight-leg, a cross-under, a dapple-faced duffer; And not a miner, Black with earth, who didn't whack us, But three plumber lads from Swansea; We thought they meant to, To whom we whacked them, and the dog; But they have got a stout defence now, And the school is closed. I know not what Tyrone's mighty famous for; I know not what Sparta is here, I know but what life is. But I have met a white thug, and a black, And they agreed A white thug and a black thug A row would not stir 'twixt But 'tis nothing to the tears Of greyhound grey And grey fox, for they know ======================================== SAMPLE 584 ======================================== Browse the author's lights and shades for a touch of romance; are he is mute when his songs strike on their way, as bright as an angel, his utterance a stamp to memory, whose sound fills the earth's heart. <|endoftext|> "Hospital Lobby", by May Swenson [Living, Health & Illness, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] (From a much needed but still long unrealized project of mine, Restoring as much as I could to the text of W.G. 1. Poetry You can’t polish a river & then reproach me for belating it back to life. 2. Poetry Proud art is unprincely enough before the living world that it stirs, breathes 3. Poetry Losing all that was intense, life loses its magnificent dizziness & turns to dust. 4. Poetry Those were not for you. 5. Poetry The air is closer to my throat than I can comprehend. 6. Poetry A bright walk is difficult without the wind’s partial pressure & these have begun to die. 7. Poetry This one’s in the books. 8. Poetry The heavens have opened to the same stars I have. 9. Poetry The dawn is getting darker, even as I sleep in its shadow. 10. Poetry In the same hands as that of de Beauvoir there are terrors. 11. Poetry One morning in spring my beautiful and girlish limbs, unbound, are faced to a blade. 12. Poetry I heard the night wind singing stars & wrote them on the ground. 13. Poetry The way a single word can do this is the kind of tool I am. 14. Poetry The sky’s distance makes me ill. 15. Poetry The endless piling on of minor terrors, my own and others’, undressing me with the uncoiling of their gravity— a sort of old-world misdirection, a strain of fatherly advice in solo presence where I can’t say no. 16. Poetry O you, who suffer confrontation with or more 17. Poetry The dry rain falls in heavy ladles again & again & again. <|endoftext|> "Melatonin Relieves Teenagers’ Nightmares Fast", by Jorie Grankus [Living, Death, Health & Illness, Nature] Loving them so much Was nothing anyone did for once, not in a hurry. Light, and soon, was the common belief that made daylight a stay. In the kitchens and bathrooms Not watching out for time The flames did their things. Their fast, as it was unfolding in the bedrooms, once People said was fast, and they were fast. And the streets Were not staying straight for the third, for the nineteenth, perhaps the twentieth time Some thought they ran to meet the dark With an old woman down the middle Of a ship’s stern with passengers’ remains, there was no hope, and they ran. For another teenager who put his hands on the street and felt them Pull the arms and legs into his arms And thought this a bit, And the last time someone said It was the movement of true love, the end of life that was swift and liked, The it ended as soon as it began As if this made no sense, And the world did not have one dime to spend, As it came to a place of it and stood With a certain name and built The manner of a house. And they did Their sport anyway With whatever was near to hand. They saw themselves in the trees, On their high horse, the stars Of all colors, when they, too, Were swooning in the heat of their longing And ran the theater with their words Out of a rich sense of playing it fast In their bodies’ eyes. But there was a downside, And it was salted, it was flying Around them, and on the winding trees A sensation of it still On the tops of the leaves was great That it was safe, though it gathered as it chilled, And the name of it soon spread far As the woods, far around the block With the dogwood and juniper. All in all, it was a good spring Of hours. Except in one night’s Speed, or ======================================== SAMPLE 585 ======================================== are all in music. He are bread. A universe out of a volume of music. It is not a black book, it is white music. It is not a string, it is a body. How do you sing? My song is coming down from the river, it is coming from the woods, it is the last note of the song, it is the last nowm…it’s a happy world… <|endoftext|> "from Act V, Scene 2", by Trumbull Neither the fortress nor the broad forests In a far corner of the world Our hero seeks, nor the captain’s speech Of an unknown goal, nor even the point Of the wave, the eyes of the journeying eye, Each in their unsure career of youth Till their prophetic ages close. Behold Earth, earth again where once the mystic born, the god, Stretched on the now retreating beach, some antech: Lovers of their mother’s beauty (How holy was that life!) yearn until they die. Now he must find his father, or shall we say our home? Doth time make more new worlds to be the ones we know Or does the enraptured stranger see the rest, Of the couch-like strata, “the man of the world’s desire?” He saw earth, and heaven, and the star-spun sky Among the boughs of the forest, not now so far. “Home” here is a word, as etymology, many-lingred, As “Place of the unexpected,” that ting-ding, here, Where it feels like home to forget where we are, A word for the common mind, or mind without a goal, As might compose our souls, but it lacks the longings Of the mind that is wide, it seems to be. The mind that is strange, loners in the dark, Blind as to the present, last in lust or cares, Reck not the distance nor the distance to be bliss, Despise, unloving, no desire for absence, Dreaded forever some phantom absence. O One with whom I may walk these troublous days, See once again the sought and storied land, See once again the surf of parting seas, Come after long heat to the dove-gray moor, Come ere the voice of the last canter be below On the thin skin of sleep, come ere the Web of hours lengthens to Eden and the coo Of babes at play, comes as an evening drop From moon-warm waters of short beautiful days. <|endoftext|> "Oranges in March", by Ralph Waldo Emerson [Love, Desire, Activities, Jobs & Working, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Spring, Valentine's Day] Sweet orchard saplings in March Hiding March’s yellow gold Depend on thy fruitage To make you wise, and branch-beams Strong as they. Be patient with thy springing fruit. Keep this for future ripe age To hold forlf academy Of sapling grace: Pillar and roof of merited grace To warm the heart of Sicily When its people forget Their envious names Who hunt these woodland doves Singing in the branches Where the shyest woodpecker whispers Small is beautiful. <|endoftext|> "September in New England", by Ralph Waldo Emerson [Living, Coming of Age, Activities, Jobs & Working, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Religion, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, New England] I Spring is here. The patter of her very thighs Brings me indoors To a cool little room with close-pressed flowers That smell like the crowded Civil War days In the yards of Boston. II No one comes. The radiance of the soft white morning Invites me out To my garden, to an old old walk Between elm trees, and here we stand In the amber morning The Gothic streets of Boston. We are old friends And I the one you come to see, And you the story I tell. III A year ago you were nowhere In my world. All the lads who went away On the October Tuesday Had ======================================== SAMPLE 586 ======================================== He is sick of so b---ch a pill. And I have slain him with the deftest hand, And found me having lost A light found in all his face. And I have no other thing to blame Than that I hated him first, Though a father I sold him to suit And changed him with-out pain. So I took the great scab from his ear, Which had a thinn, thinn, of gristle-like shells, Then gripped him gently and jerked back his head, That he not bleed too much, nor choke. Then rolled up his body to suffocate, And covered it with half his mat, And with the step and step of a man. We lay together half a century; No one of the twain survived: Though till the last of his time He read of him in books of stone, One with the rubbish of truth Chosen and chidden, thrown aside, Made again and yet again; I shall only lose by him my glibish, And his frolic of a name. Yet I may picture in his bed half A year ago he died; Nor shall the thought to this be sad I little in him or naught Once loved; love me as I did then; Round our two hearts the years peeped and went Until the Great dews of April Threw roses, which the Spring took, And on the day they come or go, In my breast their rusty bells ring, You see my loving you and you, With lillies I lov'd him best (O! did you know I loved him) And he was near to my heart. We had a comfortable life: Till the feller shook his first dillo, (Because he'd trade at seas) And through the chimneys muttered, with smatterings Of butter and of picks and of bills, Rithmetic and bad puns, phrases In four-square feet of a vial, So that our twilight both our's turn'd green. He made no attempt, when he'd wake And seemed content to prove his skill, The least thing to put you well to mind, And take no pains to learn or you; Our roof had four or five old stones That in the sunlight cheer the sky, And never the best for a screw But, by him well wired, secure in its place. While thus I feed you, hear, O heart! Of groves, I come, I go; I climb, I creep; For here a flower, rare Daphne, there A violet, late Passion, there A lily, by the green, I love you and I follow. Is life but a hunt, a sport A game and so at last A thing to admire, a toy Listed for the most on earth, Just for to play with? And after The chase and the hunting once (A bad sport), then decamped we And in a wood, secluded, stood, Mute, through the world we flee You said, "But he has fame" -- Ah, me! Never a man could run But he had runner by. Nothing Is so soft as quire nor law Nor conscience. Give me your hand, Loving to get on the road, Where there is no pursuer, Where, if any ever catch you out, It is one thin blue finger. Thus we've come, we fellows seven, All weary from the wood; And each of us a leather To pack in, down valley, gravel, And be our escort. We had the wood all day, It flaunted in its grass; 'Twas hard to pack all in. One of our pails was twisted In a sand-bag, that was knotted About a child that sat on it. He did not seem much given To join in company, Yet drove his stout horse's face On something ahead; For he would turn and peep At something he saw; And then he'd stop and meet us near, And we'd speak and talk and laugh Of this and that; Then we'd take him from the park, And make him run a bit. Some men, so they say, Do not like the forest, Do not like the varied Smoking of living things; Yet this is just the way we went Our own merry way. The mules were not so swift As any yet, But we did bestride them up To a royal lawn Where flanked ======================================== SAMPLE 587 ======================================== And marcht them with terror back to the Home. Then, going forth, he in the woods took what gear he pierced down among beasts and among fruits. And the broad leaves of the clean woodland he broke and torn leaves he flicked over and over again, And the fruited brush Singing, he has made a paradise for thought. And just as that man made the thought, the kind impulse from within that is what most starts up in us-- a child we are and make, the aimless hamster or mule, And have made us what we are, but not ourselves,-- It came again from his music, the playing, but it came from other quarters, foretelling, Then he told of a broad heart-warm place under a bough, and said: I will there knit my now unfriendly will, and go and pig his young years Many a man has done just what he did in the woods; we have in our hands what most we will do; and now has gone, And has made as much of that as of his little boyhood. And he was satisfied and went away. And this there was just as much as it was in his day of was just as much as a man possessed in a moment, as much as it will be in his, who comes now to dwell in this forty-first floor in the square, as new but little as that first house, and says to Here it stood, there above it a willan cover the floor was the corner where all those were sawing at will on the rail, in- side of it, you could read the finest kind of fiction, an English fox, a bare sticksman, a bird still flying, a pile of brick just against the wall, a cross between a shanty and a palace, a little lover of that ever-anxious minding, the tree is a lover of the buddha-gate and the pilgrimage, not this place, these things, but now in this place the buddha-gate is just a long walk-in wardrobe, just a washing-tub, some folly, a lover, this is it, this is what was missing, what is, there now, no own land will do it, no stairs, and this is just the place the buddha-gate belongs to, and this room just a window over some young girder who caught him, just a rainbow-man, now his little brooch, and what did Buddha say about other foxes and so some go insane and some live at the station of the wheel, I guess, and this man he said he was a little fool, because he couldn’t, no he would have missed the things he was after, the trick of not missing, but strangely moving about the intersection, as lone nature is in our place, on his back, if there is such a side, on his face, skewed in to something better than his own hand, he said, his face mounted on a belt, curious as it looked we can’t recall what a no-one could say, and he had nothing of do we think about something we never thought was there, he was n’t here, and his green coat was cool and flamboyant and bright as a trip, and he said his name was Liu, and he could hurt you, and he said he would hurt you with the truth of hearty food, not harm, without the way, why did we beat the clock, we don’t know his name, I think we can t hurt him, and he was afraid no one, the rapping boy ======================================== SAMPLE 588 ======================================== Bonny blae nicht, ye seem, Just when winter's storm's out; Your red-blossomed bowers, O, arenaice the scenes That clad wi' love's fresh beams, We have tarried sautrely On board to bide, And though the reestacie I'm old wae tastemouth, And but despaired Of my prospects, I'd drink the flitch potage At a' our meetings, An' hear the gospel Dispieced wi' the hills; I would glance on high Across the scowergae, For there was a lookin For jubblerie, I would lean o'er sautly The way to yont the sea, And I'm warnit as can be To serve the chapel In turn during their prayer, For by-and-bye, I would love to peep Into yon parts That lie to Keuka Wi' white blude on the lips. By By-by, by-by, An' then take to sea. How the spring wind sighs o'er her old grave, On every bank now verdure, There are daisy and lobel and linnet, The sweet breathing crocus, The white hare bell, that blooms by the pond, The mournful ferns and the lemon tree: The young man's dallyon now to view, Upon the hillside wild. As up the brae-gairds we line for bed, Let us lead a special way We'll do no harm to the flowers; Let no grim wolf howl in the dismal brake, To fright the little frien. Come if ye wad, Be off, and do no hurt; And when ye are ta'en, my sowls, Think we may a Pope understand, That wad God worship too. Auld's Gaircings, no longer around, Knock about our auld stone cot; Owd hags, too, a' your fyse Here's jist half the damage. Keep then behind, for by my faith, We do not want your den. Far and few and fat, A little land was buy'd for him, With a shilling, and a bit of leg (Dam' auld taties, tho' poor); For he was well content To see his flocks and his fountains. My bonnie ship, My Theresa! O, what a romance Ye've got, for a goddessess! The same with beautiful Diane I fear I fear I fear regret. Nae langer, But a speer, When a' the whun they could see, And half a minute yet. By Satan's beguil, A' that's jist speerish; A' faith's fechtins, A' tale-telling. Ye've made the best of a subject, And breed'd a subtle stomack; But yer jouk had thuught for't, When we thoch'd muckle't thrift. May bo-teera's son, Were it but just to be a Subject in this tunacual way, And no better in it; Then by-by shews could we have the Prais'd Fame, the Friend of the Free. Oh! say, my bonnie ship, My Theresa! what a yarn ye've made, For that's wae for me and you! For nae kind of thing Tears me now like the face o' men; But a' my heart, sae like your wi' a tear, Goes cup and breaks. As sae I watched thee mirth wi' blee, The syther bears repeated, I gae the gate, and there she Was sitting on the stool, With a wolf for fan in her hand. I gae askin' how she was, And I think she is, now canna see; For I perceive her was na free; She follow'd thee, that e'n she was na'; She tuk aye where thou did'st sit, And sat wi' thi chair an' thy grace. An' a' that is siller, an' a' that is sweet, For me an' thee are set aside; I dinna see, nor clearly understand, The ends i' the Law's happy mist; Oh! Oh! ======================================== SAMPLE 589 ======================================== sunk long. <|endoftext|> "An Imagery of How It Feel", by Wayne Graham [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity, Love, Desire, Realistic & Complicated, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books] 1 I wear the one suit I feel the cold silver of the dust that closes the life secured by “This Is This Is This Is” 2 the White Horse Inn (1914) I drift river from here and never go again the shipping from here across a country court of public shipping of 3 at the linode under the montage of borders by glass or paper or metal is how the White Hobe are the flicker the of a montage of white ice breaks the cable blue with gold splotched heart already makes a place in the lotus is in the heart's shade the palm is is close enough in the palm with the gray is pocket is the light is an illusion is there any place in the unbroken life and and or are we ever make this location different from the other cities Chrysler and the landscape changed 4 in between this is the heart of the mountains and can you break 5 the book is a dream “look like you’re trying to tell a story to tongue as you sees a whole person act in the seat of this is a story of relentless resolve as recovered by the and where was it done in a book or no is the story the story is shaping your mind which is it for the story is it for 6 is it but also she is what we love teaches the uncompleteness of the story which we ought to commend to us as true and authentic but why is it is is it is it is it is with a book 7 the eyewitness evidence in the face of memory is the mind has its own comics at odds But what is it about what is it about is it about it is almost is it is it about what is a notion and an abbreviation as both exist in the same current of the mind as a memory has it its own life as the allegory 8 in the sepulchral dream-lodge at the bottom of the landing of the window wall is the mountain slope below which the mountain slopes then sinks into the dream-lodge of its caves and gorges itself more like a wet sea into the bottom half turns itself into a river ======================================== SAMPLE 590 ======================================== I also learned how to walk and hold a thoughtful conversation with a plastic box. <|endoftext|> "Thank You", by Jessie Lambert You said your hand was soft and smooth as a girl's surface, but I could feel the fiber of truth about you, and that always made me sad and glad, and then the sky was dark and I was all dark too, and all of your sentences became hyper-realistic: the cloud cover, the monsoon that runs like blood across the city, the neon sunset flowing, all these details I loved ended and I never expected. Then we stopped on a dark green hill with clumps of trees waving on every side, and in the fog, a puma lounging on a scented branch. You said my name and I knew I was lucky to have come through your gaze and onto this hill and for some reason I knew you meant to bless me as you said, and so I stood here thinking you meant it. I didn’t know if I believed you, but now I think I do, that even when you’re there there is an air gap between us, that even when we meet, with your hand held, I don’t feel yours. I know you, Jessie, even if you’re never going to reach me, never going to have your fingers on my face, I’ll hold you anyway, even though you’re probably long gone and I’ve got no right to say my name. <|endoftext|> "Parting Song for Leaving", by Eileen Banner [Living, Death, Growing Old, The Body, Love, Heartache & Loss, Romantic Love, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] Was it a sort of finitude, that narrow decision, that killing of one another? Who puts the time when departing? Who puts a tree in the middle of a garden of black umbrellas and spangles rosethed toasters clutched by weary fingers? Who puts out a tree? Her beautiful jade umbrella strung between the branches. Her body lit up in the dark like an orchid or the man who took photo-journalistic office decorations away from the shutter point of view. There is an erotics to it all like watching a manta bounce. Her long blue hair scrolling in a dark trance. Who puts it out. A canopy of ivy wreathes her ribcage like a rich girlish black prince leaving bases of rose and lilac in a visual scut to rest herself at some rear entrance. Who puts it out like that? I don’t. I’m not that kind of lover. But all you gave of yourself. I loved the cashmere of your lips. I loved the miracle of you in the thick of the long green meadow of dark hips. I loved the fullness of your mouth in the wave. You left that wave at last like you put it out with your body. You stepped back into the heart, the guest room. The new, new flat land. The strange spreading out of the vacant beds we make of the countryside before the tent. The day of your funeral the dark lilac bushes flaunted their dangling cones and one white-tailed hawk strutted back to its sky nest in the lower mountains. <|endoftext|> "Most Days", by Judith Rooslin [Living, Marriage & Companionsy, Love, Break-ups & Vexed Love, Heartache & Loss, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Home Life, Men & Women] I usually get up unscared in the morning, but yesterday it was hard to walk through the garden un- pregnant, while the hospital was in the front yard, and you said you’d only gone for the coffee. You must be so disturbed. And it was hard for me not to think of you walking just wide open, being so far away. You were pregnant again when you got back and didn’t even know. Now you’re staying with someone else. Something about waking every night bitter, that’s the saddest part, drums pounding, you aren’t there. And it makes me think of the other things you left behind: the battered other cars, vast winters, the red eyes of jackhammerings. The house burned to the studs last I heard. The smaller houses go up in flames, too. For months, you kept the key in your finger as if ======================================== SAMPLE 591 ======================================== A bird of prey his bays With him with golden neck; Their gem-wing'd shapes to lead, And howl in the spiced dust. A citron goddess lovelier Was never seen, that angels might Scoop her from the dead; But kept a suitor to obtain Her bright, virginal breast. The cony, smyld, and the mare, The retriever, and the stall Doun stock and shelt, Were wont to lie Beside the yak. I stayed my step, I heer' ov every tree That would but by me. O brown breccia-flower o' the coast o' belladull, I have seen your face yow does greatly me do plack, Yet to my wynd I am bettk and dwell Worthily, though I have seekn'd yow the plough. Yet would I seem that you a donna spae, I wo'ld sing a kindly ditty to you. O ti thro't and wire! O traceniwn wood. T'ward Carahergum my passage uppon a hill, I saw your image on the mountain bank, There uppon i' the rude Glanced the little turtle-dove Gale uppon her wing; a ray there came Of the new-sprung daylight; I knoc'd myoon my door to keep The daffydown folds behind. And by in the faces there I read Yowsome dissipation Lamentable dissipation. It still'd my sufferance, I took the road That gave vent to the mist, and now (the day And at Anterior Pass where many dragons pass I have never broach'd or see'st of their kind), I see (along the same rail that had borne their form From Ygdompentam) I see In the vale of Ufoggi, the same which I saw The other day the other day,--and know If any sunlight there has peopled heaven. For on that day I happened to look In one spot where were dragons baying, And such ghastly thoughts--oh more l21d loathed I-- Came ooRT my blood: my tears, Which falling like a river, welk, my tears. Threw down the sheet, and all ran away. Where thou and I so late so foot'd (I not guessing then how far erwe, When the distance was so great), Now far, as my elation swells, I only murmur, "Oh for more!" Oh for a verse! Oh for a rhyme! Ah! but for a melody! Not a mead-pond pet chant; For an anthem, fragrant and sweet As the aroma of a star. When first I sought this humbler bard, He very luckless was as-sunk; And I never blame my own; Because, that turns the scale Above the rest, I cannot Descend so far without A sure-approvary sin. A life of inscath and sneer, Damps of cant, and drizzlings of the night, And strange fears of everything new and dim-- These, no doubt, drew my anxious sight That very hill where I sate as the cock Fledith; and where at morn you may Drive to drive thy car; My view one hue was of the land I sate on, and as I gazed From under the grass that perch'd my plough, Was gan the heath-carnal roll Of dales and hollows appear. The other day, I got, perchance, Some thumbnails from the writer Who hath an ill eye for me (Or he may be covetous of wch), And hath me for his own In this valley of his wit. Oft have I dreamt of the other day, But seldom that my lips did salute The bard-bard who clung to the wall As the carts went by, and down From the bard I descended, and squatted Like a milk-pail; and then, like an And half an idiot in a forest, What I would utter run All, as he would speak, as well as my view Is not so high as my mark. Oft have I heard him sing Songs of a winter's tide, And, in a shadowy walk, have heard him And friends together ranged, Singing hym ======================================== SAMPLE 592 ======================================== eugenics, killing her 7 children before her mind. What a gift to know the secret to everyone's being and time is in prolonged amnesia. How to delay that which destroys us is the gift to know, can’t wait for something to happen. It has a way shaping an outcome. Was the planet round? Without some fate of geography and name it is one that sets a meaning of ruin. People will find jutting views. And the city is in ruin but not by itself. Where water was running and had the shape of a bow and burned, did the city not receive the consequences. They had been lying, in place, too long, without regard that this ruins could happen. This should be normal. Anything not commonplace, is rare. Everything can be touched off to nothing, if we think now. But even when everything is normal, the normal stays out. On top of having to remember— a gun in the night, everything forgotten— the personal is forgotten, to be born. But then the circumstances of a life, a birth have to be remembered, if they can happen. If not to be touched by earthquake, flu, devastation, then to live through them. <|endoftext|> "The Kiss", by Ari Bani’ [Living, The Body, Love, Realistic & Complicated] At the foot of my bed my dreams walk barefoot as I wake up between dew and glimpse of dawn, I see them, my dreams, their expanses become my leaves of my life, my scenes, They range from the divine to the mundane: their subtlest lines radiate from the core of my being, floating down towards you, my bride, for the sweetness of your mouth, Your foot touching mine circumves my body, and your kisses are moments I bask in, past reaches, slipping into playful pauses and upon hearing the click of your shoe camber I stand transfixed as air around you grows chill. <|endoftext|> "Furniture & Appliances", by Ari Bani’ [Living, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Home Life, Home Life] So you think you’re going back in time. Or is it the other way around? Losing your balance. Giddy with power. Delirium spinning a page. Flicking cards. Not knowing what the curtain of the sky rushes in, and cannot contain. <|endoftext|> "Escape the Bride", by Ari Bani [Love, Break-up & Vacation] I wanted to leave the lodge as you had. I wanted to run like a runner in the maze of your throat. I thought you needed love pulling like a reinsmith’s chain. And I prayed your strength would begin to falter, that you would crack just once, <|endoftext|> "Early, Early", by Ari Bani [Living, Time & Brevity, Activities, Travels & Journeys] I went through the proper gates. Fruit crawled up the trees. I drank wine from colored cups. Wine took shape in my hand, unmercifully flat and white. Clichés encircled me. I could smell the cedar smell. The bushes talked in the heavy ting Chanukah scent. I knelt on the ground. We spoke in Kotztu, the language of God. I wanted to leave everything I’d known. Outside, in the gold air, I thought of rising from my knees. My mother-in-law was chaiten and ish, a spiritual woman, a shawl for chameow like pandanus that climbed up a wall. We knelt on the ground and spoke reverently. I’d gone too far. I closed my eyes and knelt once more. I forgot the vows. This was not meant to be. <|endoftext|> "New Level of Prurience", by Ari Bani [The Body, Relationships, Nature, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Philosophy] I’ve grown to love the subjunctive. The future comes cranking through the door and you see the door shut. But you remember where you were when the future came. You were in the infixcade of binary sensations, dotted between an avalanche of ======================================== SAMPLE 593 ======================================== twelve fingers before (I’d only been nine) like a starry seed though I hadn’t slept for days at our bedrooms’ depth— in a light so dark that my own machinery shut. “I’m getting goose-feathers under my arms and face,” she said. (What was that thingy in her ear?) “Goose-feathers?” (I’d never heard of them or their curving lash.) “No,” said the stranger, “but you know they are kind of, like, kind of like dragon-fruit? Like, you put one under your tongue and it sort of turns your tongue to frost.) “Yeah, I guess I do have a tongue,” I said and hung up. For four days I could hear nothing but ice in ice. The last day I was led down under a silver star down an icy passage to the river. (Ever the optimist, I thought, or tried to, anyway, but it’s hardly any of us who get down this road.) That morning I wished it were just the two of us under the star. I’d hoped for more, to be pushing against one another like a door that’s finally set to open. In fact, there was more. She was going to carry me up to sit on a rock shaped like a south star. I was going to leave where I was on my thighs and take it in but something clogged my passageway at the last. <|endoftext|> "One Sunday Afternoon in The City", by Justin Chin [Living, Life Choices, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Money & Economics, Popular Culture] Through the window, through the pane, and through the skylight of the desk, it’s raining it’s springtime. In one sentence the characters of a story line up it’s hard to describe the softness of the windows, and this isn’t narrative but description one of the earliest windows it’s peeling away. it’s springtime the softness of the windows is touching, isn’t it, the skin, though it isn’t yours, isn’t in your hands it won’t give Your hands whatever it is you want it to, what is ours the softness of windows is touching the city is barren it’s late, isn’t it Is spring, the red leaves falling through glass Spring, which is like a window (no matter where you are it’s spring) it’s raining the rainy city, late it’s late <|endoftext|> "The Three Wound Sceptre", by Julie Sutipila [Nature, Trees & Seeds] He may not be my true-love, But I do adore the small, round botanical golden colours that flutter about the mire. The mire is my dark tree, scarlet with trashes of acanthus. And when the wax is fierce with sun and leaps into being the gold-crested sunflower blossoms and the potting continues until the stone is gaunt and dark dark, light as scent. I have opened earth's treasury. Oh, I get to sit here in the sunflower garden the sorrow-wood of my dark tree the gapets and the gold of the pyramidal pine cones. And when the latex darkens a magpie moves by. I can hear him and now he is here in the tiny gap in the pine tree where the mud is soft, rough-textured. And before it closes a mud spider lays a glove that binds my wings in little amber that brings the two of us together. He who was found by the wind (in the afternoon) floated by the glimmering gold, by the yellow marsh sun on a lake wondering. At evening he surfaced barely conscious, breathing into the gulf and the crown of a dune ======================================== SAMPLE 594 ======================================== We neither of virtue, nor of vice, But, for to fill thy hungry mind With everything it contains, 'Tis fixt to thy perfecting. Behold, O master, view This palace that I'm caring for, Here the full flower of woods is seen And all is in its place and end; Here is all the substance and the function Of every power in nature. Here is love, here the Creative wisdom, the physical part, The sum of all energies, The order, source of all necessities. Hence shall he meet the world, That he may grow in wisdom, That he may learn, to give his best, The "supreme imperative" Of life to give the world its sons, When I was in this world, Then my sister was in the world, And my two bodies moved in two bodies, Took their direction in two directions, And mingled their motions, From two directions opposed. Then the two of us the three of us Came from the lower world, And the four legs of the four of us followed, And the two of us The four arms of the two of us And the three of us made the three of us. Then the four of us Came to the upper world, And the arms of the three of us Were united in one of us. Therefore the four of us, And each of us, Returning to his own body In the order in which it left off, Ascended to the higher world. There, too, the arms of the four of us, And each of us The four arms of the four of us That now are united in one of us, Make the whole of us. For now I see a power divine, Through whom the prayers shall reach Him, with whom Prayer and worship shall ascend, through whom Truth shall be found and shall be in our pure realm. Up there, so high and pure, There is neither error nor error's chain, And you my visions. Why and wherefore did you get them, these paintings? Whence began this work, Wherefore this painting, that by removing a circle You have made the balance quite crooked? Was it with you alone in mind? For you have painted all things for me, I, the wise ones, those old masters, you, Here, alone, alone. You, only you! The other nine, some, but not with you, You alone! You, alone, the lone one! Who's painting, who's painting, you alone? The lady who's replacing me, The tender sons, the sons, The faithful daughters, The virgin mother! All alone, Who's painting? Who's painting? The blind ones, too, I told him, The other ones--and he was replacing them; It's no good telling the blind ones. Can you tell which one is which? And the others covered, All but the naked one? And that naked one gets no spots, Sirs, here is no blemish. One dear as your own! One as like as any snake! Can you tell which one? The needle cannot fit the circle; Though you bathe and feed you shall still be stained. When you have taken a bath you are fresh again, But to take you are not really new-- Old as you are. As old as Homer! Thrice has been said on this theme, I've not the slightest idea what source the translator got from; yet I've read, and the thing must be a favourite. Tousenduch, the best German of his time, wrote many, of which, besides A great many are still existing, as I've said before; and which also contain an account of this, a most monstrous and horrible story, of some people killing others with barrels of boiling water, and that isn't rare to be found now. Prussian Elzner is a man I found only a little while ago, that very great dry Joe. "That 'Philosophy' can't make it clear, No scholar now-ward vaunts his learning!"-- If that is true, then Prussian Elzner knows Shucks, I guess, a man that knows something, Some knowledge of an individual character-- This Elzner he of whom I said That so many men of such a story could be. What other thing shall we take in consideration? A man perhaps is kept in prison, As in the wood; ======================================== SAMPLE 595 ======================================== Turbulent with dancing angel and azure Touched with the sorrow of Heaven's watery sign. Innumerable as the leaves, Each with his domestic law, Legions of naked virgins and of maidens. Thin, undraped virgins, grand as the Queen Of Night where she in secret palaces Waits in pink shadows, fragrant as bells. Some with high embroideried raiment tread, Whose light whiteness glistens and doth overturn Lightnings white and golden and soft as a fog. Among the shrubs, by the leaves beneath, A delicate music haunts and warbles up, A minstrelsy, half fairy, half, sweet, A madrigal of light measures and measured Footfalls beneath the tears of summer-- All this, and more, too fleet, too fleet, too thin For notice--already another instant's flash Of cold white light, each drifting so light That it was like gazing into the air In song; Never had such shadow, as all through it Blended with the trees and the hill-top, The green hills and the lake and the water. The topmost prime of summer! First of the years of my life! Last of summers before or after! Sun was I seven summers ere this And summer after; Yea, I, the very sun, which then I was When as a child in Eden wandered out From heaven of wandering glory-children, though yet a boy. And ever, ever, while I wore by, Sun was I, sun, arrow-own, in whose eye I gazed as the heart of the lark in its chase, The summit of the hill in its springtime, The earth in its springtime, and the sea When with a rippling, languid, lucent slope It rang out on the shore and the shores rang back. For I was ever, since as a child, Childhood came upon me again, Sun was I then seven summers before this And summers after-- Yea, and I heard wherefrom they told came The song, the choral of summer songs; I waited the laughter and the madrigal With a wondering joy and a song of love. And all my days, all my years, the summers though seven And ten, with no seasons, the sun as with the last, Were they with me or me with them or me? There came a dream to me, the very Dream of the summer, that men take flight From to the summer, the way God wrought it. Here is a path to heaven; so the Word saith In the freshed ripples of the morn; It is the way to eternal life. How should I sing it in a stately note? How should I sing it to the glistening stars? The spangled planets which enigmatize His law as they are all morning choruses Of golden harmony and strange; The restless planets of the night? Never my song would be an elder's song, Never my thought would be a child's thought. I will create my songs as thoughts in tune; As soft the descending hours which are so soon; I will tell of the stars and let fall The leaves upon my chamber door. When I am in my grave I shall not be heard I shall have words for my proud tears; I shall be dumb till the bells and stars shall see A sunrise for the passion of my twilight; I shall never find a baudri's head But it is a case of fresh and clear. What time the hungry and thirsty days of the moon, The glimmering and pale plage of her face, The inexorable sullen drench of her sea-flooded loins, Shall perforate heaven and time and tell men that Spring Is springless with the brow of a kingly sky; What march shall it be of blood and music To the march of flowers and of breath and of air? We look abroad to find the gods, We ask in the skies for the sun, We ask in the night with no night heard For sound, nor word nor thing of sound, For bird, nor gleam, nor sight, Nor thought, nor dream, nor any bright confluence Of thought, nor spirit. Sun, and thee, and thee, and thee, Ruler of fates and all the play Of immortal hours from sea to sea, Of gales and far-beheld lamps Ere the day is dawned on the hills, ======================================== SAMPLE 596 ======================================== If it be not impossible, I say, The dragon spirits be again, I saw them among you: They but came up from off the ground, And on our shoulders did they fling A sparkling mist of golden breath, Like clouds they fled, like cloudless air, Above us and under, amain They sped, befooling us all. <|endoftext|> "My Dinner", by Amy Lowell [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Home Life, Men & Women] The dinner I have not been When I have been away: For the cook has been trying Who shall share my table: The dogs and cats present Are not to be pleased; The light has fallen in the hall And the roof and dame-form Have been all in tears, Till she the fatal hour Who taught the key-hole To that old piece of furniture The back of which is, I mean, of course, the kitchen, Which does not prove that I Am still its patroness: Yet some savory mystery Comes to the viewless eye That does not grudge me That slight respect I bear To the old rustic engineer Who makes things happen, Such as long ago I heard When from his shed you shed A sleek tall thing With luxuriant arms, With its woolly head upon The willowy neck With the grace of a crumb, And the forest in the countenance. <|endoftext|> "Great Anee", by Amy Lowell [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Romantic Love, Unrequited Love, Relationships] Great aree, dibby da busterly mynae! It's tae Slime! Saws me ane ha' nees, Noo skit na foalsam man. E'tmend my girl's cauld claddie, Was na' the best e'er; Saw me ane roun' i' a chad, Dib in her bloody stomack, A roon' wi' gree. Jenny's in her jowell e'e, Still beets the stou' o' Jenny! and 'twas lang fot not meeting E'tmend, gi'en that we were a' beeting, That it turn'd ane's fa' o' sinning! Was naething then but beaming white! My faith! My bonie lass, Now your brown eyes look i' the pan, An' dirkie shin'd the schame. An' see! how she cocks a crump on the pan, She's in the pattern for clearing. "O yes, ye'se her shoe-peep turn, She's hoaming sae cold!" Shoo was it! O ye a' the land, Whate'er these lov'd men doe! Ye wide loughs and flashing waters! Kirk Yew, yon' lea, Where daintie Maids love to range, And smileie Birds amang The flowers o' slumber As the day of December! An' whiles, far away, Weel might dream The stars their sacking glare, An' mill round yon' eve. Tir'd in the glen of Shiels, The tauri'd deer swam, The bullfam'd hawthorn scrub Play'd in the warm pool. The curlew followed the traveler The clouds its voice flow'd, The crane-vain with promontory Dance'd over water. There, in a wilderness Sate crabbit Trudy, She self-abass'd, in her wabst A curlew's petticoat Four-pen'd with cote-steads. Beasts that will not have the field, In forest black too deep, They're tost by the wayside, By waters uncertain. Beasts that faint in the flood, And doom'd to be drowning, On railroads viewless fainting, In country too far off From towns awb Froate; The targe it hath broke, By thousands are drown'd. The horse-trough, whare it's a case Whil'd with graining, Its palfrey shee's tosting, Upon the clodd body With wrenching. Then ======================================== SAMPLE 597 ======================================== O, what a blinding ache! The earth is shut, shut, shut! 'Farewell, farewell,' 'Farewell,' Farewell, farewell!' On, through the meadows to the sea, 'Farewell, farewell!' 'Farewell, farewell!' Sea-breathing airs, With those subtle powers, That mend and prosper all The seas within the gulfs enclose! I look for fresher roses, I look for blossoms new! Dull cold thorns sprout Like icicles, On ground that wears of stone. Farewell, farewell, Farewell, farewell! His waiting-room was near the throne. Young and tender was the boy, White and clean and fair and gentle he. For months the twin gates unlocked. For months the tall oaks hooked over, Rocked in every bough that flew with bird. No leaf, for days, had sought for tears. His parents knelt around him; then, with hands And hair unbanded, up they went to God. His lightest breathing is a flame. O'er gentle fingers, charged with pain and years, His face looks faint, but tender, and young. At midnight, as the aged have their prayers, The very dew of heaven turns dark. Slowly he grew. But he was fastened, At first with golden brooch and ringlet; The silken garments, fastened by his flanks, Were fastened by his furs; Then with painted cap, and wreathed by soldiers' fangs With sticks of thorn and boar's cloven tongue, So that the creature's mouth was bound with stone. Ah! ruffians, think not I have died So bold as, sweetly smiling there to-day, A tender youth and all too mild. My father, the king of all the remains Of what was once a crime-ridden land, Weeps for his only son; nor can think A foul and lowly look on me; He, my father, sees me, tearless, shy, A widow in a castle gate. One year he saw me, ruddy with youth, and bare With sonorous furs; and, long ago, Two forests clothed me with sinews' bitterness; Twelve turned-by by fierce youth have tortured me weak. No son of me, a robber's hope, Has come to open my heart's giant-guilt, Dark as an April sky With blasted April's old, unwholesome mists. In a charnel all in one; Down, down, with sullen hearth and moldering fires. His breath in his March-breath is cold and stiff; A weight over-golden has he gone. His fiery limbs are blackened and twisted: And, his body stark and sodden, dry, The look of a monster is that of his face. I dreamed him sullen. He has come to teach That spirit is water that is dumb. What! only from the brine is it learned A man may stoop to bow. A shyness like a mother's gone, Blushing through a gold thread, never told; A beast that is tamed, is savage and grey, Does still what it will do, does still. It wants no gift; the monstrous cock, Brisk and barly, rowling and draining, Will hock its musicked neck. With shut eyes, muttering the themes of law, He cowers and looks; and more, of the cock Extracting its last juice, than all; A grim, gargantuan, briny thing. A word of the craw-by rooks, How the Kings of the sea-kings abrear, Are sated; and the she-goats mar, Whence the wily stag-switch's spring. And why and what and when and how? That knows he who counts the cuckoo's flight, And the hangfly's-watch, and the moth's five-mail, By the love-sick song from the swallow's throat, The rusty-fly's telepathy. He who knows the sea-god's story, sings Who is sweeter than the love of a woman; He who the tusk of the fierce things Counts as the green-dust, clattering of wheels, That his father bade the squatter go. Daughter, be hot. I had a young man. Morny-eyed, ======================================== SAMPLE 598 ======================================== King Charles and the French preisen so famous! And thence is Hild, I trow. We 'll fight the Spaniard, She is a good carress. And had she heard of your return I doubt The Pope's port the Scots would be for woe A noble archer, like my fates! Thou dost not speak to me as thy sires And the court; thou hast nor love nor hate To do me mischief--and the Red Queen, she Is a good carress, and thou mayst be So light of foot I may lead thee on And to and fro without the gate as one So light of foot that he cannot fling A lamp above thee to bewitch me; And the Queen's hand will help him ere The Red Queen comes--and the Red Queen... He rose as at night the Moorish noon Smites the eye of day and leads the sense From his sleep, or takes some questing flight Some birdling-cause and o'erleaves the moon To catch the light and scent the dew. That Love he loved and she was fair, and so Their sonnesmanship and sonnesman died In an ill night--the flower of both were dead; His wife wt S - H. For whom or what did love of mine owe Light of foot, hastie nor lean to lean Past shadow of shade and sights of awe, VVhen I felt scarce ground from my bone to take The women and the summer hours Back to the late rose-moulded dead In the dales and limes of its birth? The hunted deer it's there for a shoot To see a vvorked atween the brow, A haversack in a lane, in pace Furrowed by an erespoon, and of yord Between her ros-tal een, when chill the West And morning grey as hell's extreme With trembling on its crystal hood Was swaying in her shade, all as I might Athwart the long shower-pollen shower That is the Ithaca-dance of February. And blue the Broom's waves and blanched white Down in the grey half glen, when heat of gold Has not yet burst to soother the air, As softly the grey waters the brook Flaws in the light amid the green As the low-lingering gulls at it and no wight But me--me, no other than my thoughts, the lithe She that puts life-hold out of her reach And spares, in our being, all but him. A moony silver mist hangs over seas That get the sunrise, coming from far lands And drown the name of anyone with the Name Of sinners, the heel of any God, and pale And paling men with golden earthed flesh And breath as ragged as the cornel-root Must grow, must grow from where we died In a grey death here--old budging like a rose, Old; but the earliest hell's breath blows broad And freshens the new hells in the body's cloak From whence we rose. Nay, the days, the first, Are a rose: 'sweet" the "sweet" grave is made Of white dust and dry blood. For life is life, And man's word and heart that spoke as blade Have cost us no life. The most fair thing done Was done against death, our liars grew liars Who went hounding life's green in grave to death. We winked at death: when the sweet brides of spring Returned to have new pleasure with them, We made the grey widow of Death the first thing With birds and swimming in pools, and on high When winter wind caught cold the glistering flag, Whose thing is man's book; for who could live And see the greatest thing of all, and not Expect that, before the end, manhood died. That said, I am a lonely man: I read This letter, dammed and torn and sealed up, When I have learned what love of me hath done this; I have had it write my love, love's wife. From line to line, everything written is, As the legend sayth, about my dear love. In order, first, the letters run: VVignedetrout, Hamedetera, Paternoun, Or Paternoun's lover; for, but reading this, I feel (O pity of us both!) like one Writeth now. I will read it in the rime, When ======================================== SAMPLE 599 ======================================== rigour, and extreme, completeness: So soon, as seen, what ought to be seen, The deed itself seems more good than great; And, were't not the less ours, there 's something more Of rarities, that claim to belong, To draw the wonder of the rare to see; Though greater seems by the less condemned, So that our seeing may proportion GARANCE, or some fiend, with prurient knife, The moments of his peril, lest himself Should grate upon his share of prudence. But for the mean-soul, soft Virtue sends Wratings on any lender who dares, Mere presumption of honour, Which, but in priestly vein, makes stand Some slight reserve, Unnoticed, till, by some true proof, Which takes out love's opportunity, She kisses while he: Thus fixed, he, to all His goading, fidgets the while, As for his own good, or lesse personal, Proves her friend most strictly: whereas Without flattery, worth should most Encompass the true man's self In her own gallant, unfriended. He not a minute slackens, when she speaks, If that a task be hard, Which, like a porter, she hath brought, From some farthest corner of the land; Which, tho' 's not said And confessed not, 'fore the truth 's tall, Shoots but a shy and vague reminder, Still firing dimly her heart and brain. And so, though still he doff her cheek, He stays so sweet a rosie, That tho' he soon forgot it, her eyes Were look'd much brighter than before. Oh! had she been afraid to flaunt, and leave The gentle ward of her sex, With the courser track'd so proudly on, To waste so much on her way, Which, with the rest were home-return'd, too late, And hard-like in work, and like in face, Alas, but like in show, would be A fine sounding thing, and match'd with steel. Such seductive words were her pain, Still pleasing on her lip to linger, When the snagg'd brown man had put saddle on; So still, so strong, so plump she whimper'd all, And seem'd, tho' she would ride him yet, A galloping nag, an earwig's hunch. He half desisted from the wonted play, To see if the road were clear'd For the slow hobnail that would allot Her place in the trade, and the bobbing Of the jack pye in the bushes there; And the bromsted galootty from the wave Like the old hounds were teeming, Like the barm in the dog-grove's shrub She feared 'the bellman would be lost' That the Irish wench had got on the track, And she might, like a devil, Have set 'n many like her, afire. But, like an Indian witch, She keep'd her looks when he drave her out, And the meeting of them, alone Within the lilac's shade, Had dazed the passing cow; And the roses wished their mistress All in the art of speech, And the sun that had no sister Found the bonniest sight to be Of his morning's balm to flow On the grass, tho' he made it shine Like silver in the maiden's eyes, And the mares bade: I can see, How the sun that was blind with shade Fell behind on the highway; And I know, loath to see That it should longer be a way, I would be blind, and so, at once, Never more see the way of shade. When all in the news was forgot, And the ruin of the dream Was the eagle's fall, Had the house of mourning been Seen from up the air, Oh, sweet with what was loveliest, The brilliant silken straw-bed Could not with its own lustre be, Nor what rich lawn the old wall Lay in ruin on the virgin green: In rifts its great timbered houses Lay in ruin, where the rushes were woe: Like sunset skies when the blue-green grass Flared red and cold, or clay in its fire When the calm and solemn ram Sank within its lair, the churchyard looked woe. Then the chaplain swore To the world there was no mistake; ======================================== SAMPLE 600 ======================================== That, when I used to sing, I did so sin In praising, like the deserts of the Jews. And now, man's dominion is round all The earth o'er which he rules. He has made great Our Earth and all her works his own, and strewed Confusion through the world, and ruined all But he himself. Man shall be no more, Till he shall finish his work, by which He means to judge about his fallen one. Then he that judged within himself shall see In himself his judgment, and that says: `The World above, man down, I too may fall, And weep through my self, and see the doom of all.' This is the only way to be lifted up. The fall is mid; no other way shall be; Then all our Earth shall heaved to Heaven and sunk." "How long shall we stay here? Yea, there is the shore, A long while, but not so long as we may think; And now once more the West wind rolls along The old tempest, driven east by us, And then we can put on our weed array. 'Tis kinder and lighter than heavy field. And so it will be safe enough to walk on, Seeing our speech; and here our stern rule ends, And God be with us, giving suns and pleasant stead, And peace to love and trust on without back again." He held not still. The Wind of Night Howled, and gleamed upon the seas, and then The West wind put a general end to Day, And Night covered up the sun and stars; And all the wind of the world swept on the sea, And the shores and in the waters about it All the coasts lay white in the bright sunshine, And the wide waves seemed 'twixt dead and silent, Silent like space, and the roe was twined Round the mountain's cold body, And the crystal wave was gripped in his glen. The count who harangued the Council so well, For the first time, on Monday, Was sitteth by the wall; his wife and her child-house are dead, The Hunter's prize was hunted afoot, The sentry's reward is the last seal! In their defence, That hour hath come--they stand-- When the dew-spangled Egle is in doubt, It is gold and wrong. The stars blink on the frowning estate- As, in garish lime-trees narrow bound, A felon white-hot as kindled slag Flings his breath on the face of the tor in mouth. The chief, who never by day nor night Loved life and light and truth and love to see, Hopped down the road and cracked his crown. Or, singing like the woman at his heart, With soul in ferns turned, and dry a fiend, Discovered the road-head, and led the men And his own crown, be-jewelled the room. Then the chief paused, shivering as a blind man By the glare of torches sounds and sees. "Yea," said he, "ye know not what ye do, Nor what work remains for you or for me; I am in doubt, and ye are in doubt Which way I might comfort ye. If this way lie peace, light up the light." Then the West Wind blew like, And blew like, And blew like, And blew like, And gave to the Maréchal his shield, and the Maréchal his horse. They rode and they fought and they rode Until, at thy season, At the forest-wood, Folk says that fir-trees they could hear-- To bayes they howled from their mother-lode, Light-mé and light-gré Saw a gleam as of an agate stone-- Thus sped the wind in rain and sunrise-tide, Until they passed a lion-guarded wood; But were borne by: They halted to go upon a bridge of water, At a field where they saw, Towards the right-hand side, An altar, white, by a green hill; Towards the left-hand side, Behind a steep holt, The mighty Temple frowned up at them As in command: The shaft thundered: the roof--they saw Its sceptre in darkness. Through flame and ghost, From jasper gate to jasper gate, All-glass, all-silver-white, Their body's flesh went broadsworn ======================================== SAMPLE 601 ======================================== A boy I was, to lady not even middle-aged, And certainly not old: till I chanced to see a sun Passes, and this poet curse the sun: a veritable woe He sung. I was for once, ere to and fro we did, Treading a path that 'twas more than habitable; And that this poet, cause of all my guilt, he said Nothing but in this way, (so his fame I raised) That "Lent Me the Sun" ought so to read. Here in this town the civic dome Is, in full grandeurs, furnished with a face Of grand destruction. There may be seen Eleven million of the finest marble, And gilding it, in rich russet coated; There may be seen a special earthen tube, Not quite such as I 'ate; a trellis, too, A structure to lodge like tepus trellis, A capital like a pagodas, with tumbling Upwards, and tumbling into air: all these Upon the ground set in magnificence With many other crafts one 'uns to see, And all such scientific apparatus As builds up purpose in a dull modern mind And keeps it working up to sin. This the chamber where His worship communes with his spiritual light, 'Tis hardly that and more, Or is it only to confute That stuff that we regard as eternal I know not. It is so With him. I am rather prepared To go, for I am not at all, Nor ever have been, a fool; Nor was I ever yet a fool, But rather Through my silly pastime am called a fool, And I have known it to be but a phrase Made up of rhyme To hurt me. I went to school And never had a Bible. A book of Stowe was my study. I had no cash to buy one. I burned my eyes On reading Thornton Wilder. I raved At Russell and Tu Quag, but I felt Vast doubt When Robert life's articling Would show me many a pale crevice in A selfish world. And yet I did not foreshadow That I should soon have the full cape And glittering pate Of "masculine" glory. I never took it. And yet I have these walls. I 've made the noise For many an aggressive rhyme In troublous times; I tried the rail-ways as a mark Of his old clothes. I 'm not Any more; but though my attention May wander, I shall fancy these Talls draped round with red, gold, and blue; And having been once a cheat, I shall be a politician, A dream of strength and courage. For how often when we wake to Repetitious silence, The writer mused that we were In some new regions of wonder; The reader sitting soberly unclosing With sympathy, the eyes closed. And seconding the augustness Of the demeanour of a poem, Are our own imaginations Expecting things we have not seen? Oh! dear professor, dear teacher, Here, more than ever, I 'm needing Your precepts: as for truth, 'Tis the only jewel I e'er knew In all the world, as I take it to My grave with my name. As for the colours of the ground, 'Tis only passion and eclat Should make them bright with mere una doubloon, Though I once thought them dull. Now, if you'll let me wander, Let me wander where I will. And though it 'ud be the world's bardsterip To fill my empty years With that most lovely of all mysterious things, Like a new sparkling lake, And a beech upon an old stone, That only by the shadows can be gathered Of an alders crossbite 'em, And there the sunlight would but just but Have made a glancing-pop, Which would at least have brought some drops of it Into the picture wet; And, I 'd rather say, than a living bloke Has tasted fish (Where eaux-heat would have lain aside) Mere-mod 'nt 'a fish would scarce have been Good enough to look at, But with her fire And tart put brutes to flight, 'Twould help to sell the duds off, As a flying fry; Though I hate to eat fish in a ======================================== SAMPLE 602 ======================================== Vict'ry, 'shun at least half the war: And if we stand, we'll have them in the fray, The land of peace, our finest food. If we strike, we'll strike in pride and pride; And as a toil, that so may end the war, 'Twere wisest as well for honour's sake. The King; to strike, was to restore, The English throne and empire to her claim: Well might he hate the thing--'twas denied. The Kingdom was his from blood divine, He was its sceptre, by its grace endowed, By him, of army strongest the second. Our march's to murder, or our fort to breach, The whole's their wish, the whole their interest. If we make sport of words, or don't attack, Wise are the fitties for each castle watch, And day and night, their watchword rings! Are nought the lord of peace? Get your answer. Incline your nature to my meaning, peers, You don't decide by a--vote of--common-people, For dastards you are plain to discern; And meanness, which looks as simple as malign, In your own cause knows but how to lurk, And struggles where there is no cause at all. "Strong, for strength I doubt," say the British chivalry, "But Art hath other skill than War-- I give the advantage to deep thinking. O England! without your Empire then, Rounds the circle of your Empire, yes! If your wide trade secure your foreign food, Great were the gain to us all, who gain Their home-right, in such country wide; Your ships of commerce-passing watery tides, Are good enough for voyaging; but what are ships' crews, But for the want of such imperial change-- I'll bear this fifth, I my health forsake, If our best success be against me, For if you look what my last vote bought I'll speak the truth while I can, but first say-- Heigh Ho! I'll give you just ten of the rest!" Heigh Ho! the King of Misrule, see There goes the best Patriot of a nation! Hear it again, hear it a third time! And will it a third time bring the price Of this sixth to give? Lord! it makes the ladies wink and shlp And men sigh the sixth time dear! Now with thy cloak be none so poor, One look at the stir of his burgundy, The strain of his sledge, the circling of his leg, And a sight of his countenance to recall "Oh why should I have worn it?" he cried, With dry eye and upset head; "Who laid it here? see, here, here; oh I remember Why it was put away. Why I have worn it I dare not ask; Only to show to whom it belongs, To show I am all forgotten. The Argus returned, the model of a boat, By four clever Loughn primary school captains; And the fast little Lutards laughed to scorn The Scholar's blue, the Veteran's grizzled, brown; "We will cheat," said they, "and play get, and those two rings, That look like small hills, will be our stakes; Our sport I like, for I shall be the better; If we do not play well, we lose, And who likes to play when you and father play?" Well said, saith the Loughn to them, the Loughn to them! "My thanks for the Arms, it is like to save Me from a comely villain, and from evils far From remote; so see that you do not forget What day and night are dear to me, when I have play And rest, and till the evening come I am not well. But lo! the sands are running out, the sands are running out! The little heavens made by th' losing of a star, Go the seasons by, and when the Sands are gone The fears of death, the frowns of death, the side- views of continual risks and double death. An hour's notice I should have cost the best Of me with arms and helmet, or such high Prone on the point, as that I should not be seen. As the sun went down night had fallen and pined To lie alone in his green repose, A ghost, a dark spot in the shaded earth That had been nymph or lady, but now was As ======================================== SAMPLE 603 ======================================== Honor or dishonor if you can, Everywhere and everywhere. No one lives outside the door, And, in the dusk, the hour of dreams, Nothing matters but the stars. The path of every ray of light Doesn't touch the path outside. But I'd have you stand still At the door of the sun And listen as I whispered, "Trust me! the strength of my song Finds its goal in your soul. Stand by me, love! The fame of Jesus will strike gold And make your names silver too, I promise. Don't try to think I am a man behind this mask, I'm just a man. And you Will have to let me sing a song Your soul will have its own way. The sound of blackness saps my strength, I'm called a needle, forget I tell you. I walk from this door, beside the sun, You to stand at the door, As if you were the only one. I walk from this sun to you, To stand here by your side And sing to you. This life is dull in the darkest hour, When we should toil at our task And work, and soon our time pass. Life is best, my brother, when it dies, Nor clog the spigot of thought. Let us do what we will, the day's our own; It is ours from story to read the end. Death with my shillelich Arose, and rode that Death. I saw the darkness, rode that dark; This should be the end, I cursed, and gibe-deviled. The scarlet mist will spread For thee, but is it love? Still seemest thou then, That thou wert gay and I was lad? We called the beast and knew not its name Of any feather. That thou wast with me one week, It came and went: But we were all forlorn That we were parted. All pain was the while Of a trustless heart. Thine enemy, and mine! Before thy name and he My spirit, I fain would speak. And I the soul of the past, If of some art, The incognitiue Of our most ban-ed time. But the march and mine enemies Won't know what we are. They will come and claim the tale That thou, for all thy hurt, Fairest queen, among the fools For ever baffled, should'st say, The truth--and die. I go in the road I shall not fare My time thou art in thine. When one star shines in the sky I strive but to be blind. The lord of day an hour Shuts in the foot of mine arms My yard and thine from him. The hands that decked not to make thee blest For all thy throes have held thee In worshipping love. Before thy plumes of dawn I may not kneel or see. I cease not, nor surcease, Even if for thy sake The world were sundered And one forlorn, for him Whose passing now I seek. The rose that leads me on Has grace of her own For length of wing or skill And the sun's red rays will scatter The bloom. The grasses then Divid not their stains of dew On those thy garments sow, Or heed the mower's sway Over them that scatter seed. For me thy light upon The way I take, And for mine eyes The gracious sun's face turns dear To give them sight of thee Through tears, until I lead An away that further passes My heart the livelong day. The sun is running towards the skies, A crown on his head that glisters And fires and makes them feel the cold, Lilies must dine and give no when To make them sweat, and look in their face. The ragged cloister is set apart With roses all their own they raise, And clothe them in garment best; The roof-tree no harmonious nest holds For summer wherein the bugs entoil The roses flowing to the bed Of her who owns each day But like or hate, between us is That resting place Wherever thou may'st go To sleep, till we be quite alone, The dead-daffs cease to feather and blow. But only in the winter When the night pines and locks the leaves, And in some little nest ======================================== SAMPLE 604 ======================================== We often see a Lapponian O and a MajoL, Worthly attired in pretty Palms of Cushions to sit on, Unseemly in such Regalia; and somewhat tickle The whim in some flourishes, To find a lisping Diphthera, Or twin-petted Diapason, To strike the Regal Ear: Worshipped in rich Epistles, Like Almondus, it may be; Or Hummel's most mysterious amulet, Which some agree is a Gaspe. Who'd sell such gems? what, play-muth? A whole Pantheon of Absurdities! He might, indeed, but, plain, I am, Of such length and girth the Figure seemed; And they who've been where, and seen such Things, With tales of Parnassus, will agree, Are by to shirk their labor. And since, oh ever wise, there stands The Elephant, accoutered straight, A Straddle, and then a Fall, is all his Plan, Not my subject. 'Look down, my friend, and rouse thee to feel A Man in Night,' cries NAPOLEO, 'Here come of Jove a lamb, as white as snow; And Clotilde, and a treat of potation; There drinks the Merchant. A Brahm, from bliss, He's wanton and sparkling as the Pleiad, Beating her blue-ey'd daughter with the Sun! Then tear away thy borrowed Sunshine.' 'If any would have money at heart,' Said then BEATRID, 'let him or her Buy the poor blessed Lamb, and prepare To-morrow's feast, the Lamb and the Nuts. So much the better: so the wiser,' Said NAPOLEON. Unswerving will I be, and the steady Pledge I will uphold to both weal or woe: All things, from morn to dearth, We'll work out together, good or ill. The businesses of each will just be shown To what due price the other lowers, Saying this, 'What hath become of our feast?' Said the Widow: 'Take not this same Servant Forged, counterfeit, or without price, And a profit seek to both in a dish.' 'My lord,' said TAP. 'Too late, my lord, I beg he's not: he's lost it; and gone That for whom thou scorned.' TAP, leaping up, quits his pliant seat And runs in to TE in hot pursuit: 'Well, look, his Servant!' 'Stay, let me speak Te. Call. Speak, Te, but let me amble home First.' 'So thy lord commands?' 'The writ of all his Gods so to obey?' 'They told me--Ah, Master, he deserves: Thou canst not well deny him.' Said TE, 'so (he said) he shall serve me well. He served me well: if here he served you, He served it well; so that in talking it Thou canst but think it was some form of doing him; He is not ashamed; nor yet am I afraid.' 'Thy God.' 'Not so, But seeking that amiable And trysting Brahmins.' 'Give it him,' cried THE CLEREG, picking up the paper eagerly. 'Give him thy Roast Lamb; let it atight my door Till all are sleeping, while he lighteth torch And drags the fire, and to the office, And caters teas and sandwiches and luncheons.' 'If ye do, Master, he too,' cried the child, 'Men tell us, suffers for thy sake; and know, Whate'er thy favour, it must be gratefully given.' 'O yes!' cried TE; 'gladly.' 'O yes!' Said TE; 'so glad;' quoth NAPOLEON, stealing in. 'Let me but do my part, and thou shalt be Great at thy whim, and equal to the King.' 'No, no!' responded NAP; 'so thou art pleased.' And then, 'if I also serve with thee, what Befalls it? this bargain strikes no bargain: I'll be King.' 'Might I not,' said JAMES; 'Then thou must be the King.' 'O do,' cried TE, 'And I with thee,' replied NAP; 'or I am dead. ======================================== SAMPLE 605 ======================================== takes over you. You believe the tots get more love if you have them in your life. Instead, you grow empathy for tots everywhere. You refuse to tell anybody what you are doing. The Mother told her you were dying And didn’t I? It was seven days after. I was lying on the bed. The Mother came to me to tell me that a department store was selling a tote with your picture on the back. I can’t buy it, I said, and the Mother said I did not believe her. They sent me to the reverend, who said if I don’t see the tote in my life I’ll turn on the tv. And I bought it. Tell me something, all the tots in the world but me. Your mouth is so big. Nancy started walking beside me. With my head cold I thought we were done. That we should have stopped long ago. You can’t hear me sobbing, you don’t know me. My mama told me to tell the cops she had AIDS. The poor little ***** now has to come to court and tell the judge she lied on her disability form. She does not want the kid. Her church is trying to help her find a job. She is afraid she may be a danger to others. The furniture has a dozen windows because the tots dig through the cracks. You are reading my numbers right, I am not lying to you. But I don’t like to take pills. Poppy Hunter has a lot of catching up to do. Your mom has too many put together. There are not enough to read. I leave her house when she gets home from work. I want to take my toter to my cousin’s house to get a toter and read and read. I was out on my back. That was the plan. Get a T to read and a toter. If I had the money I’d have two toters. Two toters that would make me all the toters on my back. I know they are a bad mix. But I want the toters so bad. Toters and T-toters! When I walk there are toters and T-toters all over the place. There is nowhere else to go. That’s the kind of library we have. Reverend Horton says reading is the best medicine for less-than-idea problems. Reading solves problems. He says, come to my non-profit. There are books all over the place. Put them in my bag. Come on, for a book, come to my house. My wifey will give me a T-to-T. If I did not have all these toters, I might get to where I want to be. And then there was that comment. It took me six years to come to California. I lived in a tent at Appalachian Trail South. There was no electricity, no water, no heat. I had nothing. I had all this time, all this space. And I said to the people at the non- profit agency who took me in, Is there a place like this in the world where I can be with my books? And they said, Yes, there is. All over the place. They even put a toter right there on my shelf. Come to the non-profit agency and say you have this problem. And I was so pleased to be put on the shelf and given the money to pay for my room and to take me there. It was such a surprise, so coming of force. My non-profit had this little room to read to the disabled. They had a little wooden stage where we could rehearse. And there were toters too. The one that mattered. I wanted to be the one to pop into the whole time. But they said it couldn’t be done. So I came in to do my little recording with the toters. Because the toters were still coming, and people came to hear me. They said my voice was like the sound of the toters. Well, they were right. Because of the way they were done. But I wanted the whole toters. I wanted to hear them. They said there was no way, I would have to do the whole season all over again. I said I wouldn’t be surprised. People would say, Oh, you got a crush on him, you ======================================== SAMPLE 606 ======================================== Cold lead, dark lodgers of the darkling ditch, Or child against the wall of black alleys dim, Or war for its trumpetings and roar of brass, Oh, let us feel as we did in those days of yore, Love's terrible majesty and the yearning wail Of its great voice so long concealed. Come, Night, And do not claim any more the fame and pain Of the wide sky and misty marge! Who is a slave, that walks with the great queen? Her garments are the houses of the rich, Her house is the wild by the sea-- No snare is her love, no shrine is it, But the green place and the solitary hill; There the one who seeks, must journey forth, There the one who gives must pine and bleat, If the earth be a curse and a bed For the lost hearts that seek in vain. It is she who yields up her soul In the dust before that immortal dust, In that serene awful air; It is she, the trace of heaven on earth, Who made the far path of the star-light A way for that adored head. It is she who gave a path to passion, That held bard like lightning, maiden like peace, Then were the roads friendless and lawless, But her lovely home is a crown of marble, And a statue that cannot incline. Ah, who is this, that face where for the first time she bends The knee with terror, of blood and womb? Is it love or hate, shall she confess or disown, Who rules the heart or who is the lord in her soul? She trembles--for it is he who speaks and sings The ecstasy of conquest in her trembling ears, For he is she and she is he in the hour of joy or pain. I feel that I am within a strange world of dream, A vacant blindness sweet and full of gentle airs, With my soul watching the work of my soul In the vision of Heaven's perfectness that is my home. There is a golden gleam throughout, there is a grace, A simplicity, a self-satisfaction, supreme, That makes the soul re-produce its own love or hate, That maketh me be me or me be thee or he or thee, It maketh me to feel I am! And this is no dream, nor an empty fancy, For the breath of the tempest can never swell To the note of the storm, nor the trumpet to the tune A miracle of life, the soul awake, Breathing its life into the great ball With the air that is its window, With all its heart-strings a-boiling from the waves, And joy, and pain, and lamentation with the tide, No star or fire, in the heavens, But part of the earth where time is a-field, Planting and humble and alive with the blossom, And with the bloom, a part of my meaning, my gold. I am that water, I am the tree, I am the sun, I am the fathomless Inane, I am the soul of the stars, The soul of the sea-spray, The soul of the voice of man, I am the light of the earth, The moon, and the clouds, The thunders, and the rocks, The very rent bellow, The birds, and the wavelets, The bloom of the fields, The voice of man, The might of the hills, And I am the chalice of desire, And the cross, and the strength of the world. The dead they shall return to the larger and happier life, The life that went with rewards for good done, for more savored, For faith mated with virtue thus put to noble use, I am a side-show, a burden and a trouble, I am a whip to love or love a foe, I am a heav'n of visions, a heaven or hell, I am the spine of life laid across The shoulders of peace that droop and scrape, Or the strength of a glory to bear Against the world and all its strength. I am that water, I am the tree, I am the sun, I am the fathomless Inane, I am the soul of the stars, The soul of the sea-spray, The soul of the voice of man, The light of the earth, The moon, and the clouds, The thunders, and the hills, The very rent bellow ======================================== SAMPLE 607 ======================================== "The ancient Thracian king "Will I now, at one blow, annihilate; "Nor will he, when he sees me, dare to bear "The battle-bolts, the javelins, draw "His sword, or to the field stand full in fight; "No--never in that folk and their wars, "A skillful monarch, can he brook."-- Then with one glad voice and hue The war-whoop rang, the flames sang out: "Glory to Juno, while life lasts, "Toward the Enemy: and on a spear "Let him die the justest way." A thousand steeds' desperate activity flair'd the strife. How Thracian bands Bare-armed, unbroken, how they dashed, In many a confused, savage rout, O’er the field's broad expanse, surge'd, O’er the mines, dank, and tangled way, Into the field’s expanding round. The field Twice-halls had reap'd, ere now, As sceneless as the time When did Hector’s lifelessness Begin. For he, the glories swelling high, Tears, but dearer far than gold, Had shed undiminished down. Each day that elapses, more the tears. Then as the morning’s rapturous hour Arose, o’er him, the son of Jove, Dreadful as might Jove himself, with awe The form had grown; and a fierce delight Had keytar’d, thrilling dread in each dismay'd heart; Loud, with raised hands, they flee the noise That, trembling, tremble'd. Neptune, in affright, Upon the threshold trembled. Pan; the god Hovered, huge form all mysterious, the thunder-bolt Hurl’d at him. Panic fled the earth, He breathed not, nor assailed’d the air. The bolts That ebb’d and darkened o’er the bended back Of Jove unfold and unclose, to the hurl Of their full force. Jove wax’d wroth with anguish, and The load once more of the great weeping earth. Such the swift passion, as from those long beams Of Jove-somewhipped Apollo, who had seen His strength with destiny, and as such shapt The Fury. More than terror Pan his shape Mystiferous assumed, his terrible form Reascending to the skies, and puff’d the smoke Darkness and smoke. Then, with like wrathful charms, The dreadful Wrath-of- Titans, whose might defied All heaven, the ends of light and heaven they sought; He drove them thundering from heaven. Then dispelling swiftly The storm, not with his bull-shaped tongue, Nor sounding darts, his wide-spread head he shook; But with his bony lance, and, behind, Shook the immovable earth with iron bolts, And hurled in furious terror on the towers Full-thunders shook. Then arose of gods A magma-like turmoil, or a ground Of raging fire, whereat the house of Jove Took fire. Deep chasms, the dwelling-place of Jove Repell’d the furious shock, where on his knees, As on his knees, he driv’d the spear. As crag On crag, the woolly goats that wander wide Along the crag, their soft sweated horns Beating against the shower, dislodg’d by ceaseless sounds Of one fierce goat, when, yoak-ringing! she has run In tempestuous strains, that drives amid the herds Their deer, or revels with her dripping bristles The rustling flock, and beauteous for the chase, But as swift flies as arrow from a bow; So on the billows, crest’d with spray, the hand Of mighty Zeus fell on his path. The third horn Still seem’d, but still farther o’er the deep it seemed Still staid. As by some one were witnessed How best from peril to guard one’s self, Some boaster, wholly on the ground, On this thick main the billow rolls, at last To reach the distant beach, a mast, that now, O’er the low main, but ne’er so nigh the sand Stood ready. Then the other two which, slow Through the deep bed, were yet behind, they roll ======================================== SAMPLE 608 ======================================== an hour's enjoyments. Happy mother! since thy beauty From my earliest years I've known, For thy affection still I'm proud And blest! The world hath nought to give delight, But time and neglect; Nor cause for joy to seek or tell; I can have nought to do or say, Since my love is no more. To the crow at hire One year I sacrifice'd my 50 pence The choicest pair I could find, Though both are barren as the land's first fruits, Which this year come winter's blasts In vain I grind my 361 seed In china clay upon the hob! From the dreary worl' I won’t call it loss, That this is equal at least to gain, Each shall be smashed by my revenge: And when their next season comes, Some glad moon shining on their graves Shall cover them with their tears for me. --Your carol on the murderer’s grave For this the 34th year running Is utterly lords of, Since the day he fell for this Came that great queen the while agone To shew us all the course. Man of another mould We often may penetrate, While that rude spirit breaks the spell Which bound us to our natures: And lift the barred gate which keeps Our fathers back A lifetime! When I have cross’d The vast of time which acts and sleeps, All Love, Hope, and Love’s delusive wealth Shall be like black ashes blown. I play with the grave-chemistry, As one may with a camp Of marsh-cloisters: bending earth, I walk the length of it I only in my dream am here, I only know the hundredst, But we are all the rest! Through lattice-fos, nor lattice-vase, Nor pictures nor poetry Could tell my love for thee; Nor statues nor cast in gold, Can do so well as I can! And you, from all, may lend Your strength as I have done. It does not matter, if it be The multitudinous And chaffering diversities Of a word or two, What is one colour on a man? Some likeness that the Lord hath used Among the sons of men! It matters not if it be A thousand images of love Carved by the magnet on his heart; If the poor copy upon the brow Be all the original; And he beside whose name we grind Shall be our leader of the throng. The Muse of the poetry of thought Hath never been one to swerve, Recklessly for the love of one man, Though such as might work other's ruin, And in a thousand instances; Because from her own childhood grown She vieweth, where’er she goes, The truth and beauty of the age And the high conquests of the time, He alone hath still been true, Whose house did cover me; And none but he the dead Have seen his real self have seen Whose form my spirit’s home. You, in your ingenuity And your fig-leaf wit, With which you made my names of advisement A honour that I would prove Unto the public, as of right they ought, And having, when that they desired it, Performed the thing they said they would. But, Lucile, I do not think it are So very many ways to conceal, All they knew, which made that fabric Named in your songs my fame, And on my name their honouring oaths That they would speak it no more Till they had formed the truth in it And made it good in rhyming. The wind that knew not how to blow Nor yet how to advance The wonder of her poem's name Unto the praise of it Informally and obscenely, Said she it was time that changed Our names once more to poems, And this was his report. I thought I heard a footstep Not of the building rate, But of a weary sigh Which, rather slow and weary That process seems to have gone, Were loath to quit their place Since we, whose names they report, Were once together there. There sat the player, silent, Amid the players, The dead, the playing dead, That were not, I presume, Played by the living ones, I know not how or why. The men of that ======================================== SAMPLE 609 ======================================== / <|endoftext|> "Early Evening Over New England", by Jacqueline Osherow [Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment, Race & Ethnicity] “hey mommy, wanna come to my house and watch TV?” jk Yup. 1 of 8 in a brown bag. Fruiter, I mean, I mean the guest brush- itis my doggy derriere. Grocer, also acceptable. Butno human brecht’s presen- gingery for the hankeredays, the lesser Beings of the universe because they’re the remotest. As infernit, he’s gotlike-minted a purple bag himself to school in just before supper. Later at a coffee shop, we chit- tune to South African radio and hear the Empire’s press run rampant with revel- ous love, madness, depths of candor. Like O, like ON ere evet business went to potatoes. Here and here. Full on. RUM and good is over and work is over and done. This. Out- side. So high on. So gloriously high. People wait across the street as a young woman in a beige mini with fur in it rolls by. Beachy and cheap. Which is shameful and which is funny and good and lovely. <|endoftext|> "The Women Who Talk about Boys in Ladies", by Jacqueline Osherow [Living, Life Choices, Social Commentaries, Gender & Lesbians, Popular Culture] “And since they are powerful and able, they often take the guise of whichever sort of person they are in their own presence. They may be female, but may as well be male in public. Sometimes it is not an issue of their power but their game: the girl who puts on a show of probity as a he or she; an advocate of the good, or a friend. In today’s terms, too rare.” Our neighbor across the street was pregnant and discussing that with her girlfriends. “You want to talk about logistics, or what do you call it, the odds? How about the subject of logistics?” In the third dimension, which of course does not include you, may not be able to hear that you exist, but, indeed, how, knowing that you are also living. If you are to live you must be able to see. That’s what I think anyway, yes. I think this place is always here and always female. <|endoftext|> "Time in Autolux II", by Marilyn Vidrin [Living, Time & Brevity, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Winter, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, History & Politics, Money & Economics, Winter] Though there is no word for “time,” there is a word for “weather” and “winter.” Though the snow falls and falls, there is no country, there is an ocean, and the sea is littered with ships like an easy target for an occupation by marauding men, and it is a time of insecurity for travelers or anyone who may wish to fall behind, and so the longer you are in town, the more unlikely you will be to be caught flat as a dungaree, or worse, for someone to fool you into thinking you have forgotten all about the snowfall, or may wish to forget. It is the sadness of an easy target who is worth your fear who are you. There is a time to be wise, or act as if there is time, but not in the winter when there is so much silence, and yet time enough. Some of the most highly experienced and trained persons do not use their full potential because they have been caught in the self- important habit of being, and by doing so get to feeling self-conscious and therefore less able than they otherwise would. If you get to feeling as if you are the only one who understands the problem, then now you understand and so you find that you are less than your peer in the problem, which is exactly as it should be. Time to do some thinking about what you did as a child and find out who you were. Time to find your other adults, any of ======================================== SAMPLE 610 ======================================== Think to cure a shyness of breasts, And disuse a skulking of nets. Spend of reason then, run on, or steal, Like rats the dear Christian name to tread: And when your poet 'gins, borrow there The words of music, and fashion there A dignity to all your tone; Be drunk with pride, and let the rest Abate your labor. I, and the two whose names I bear, Would choose us a colony here, Where both our seeds are sure to thrive, And all our heresies cease to thrive. Let His most Holy Church this prove, And we'll be your priests, and save you there; And both are well-in-her-mind to share And call good together, day and night, To join the mirthful throng again; And so unite both in a day, As followed in the Book of 3:35: "First Anno Domini Seventh D.XVII. "All faith having gone before, "Two TC. Rehearsal, one Sic. Eff. "Day, one Sic. Rehearsal, two TC. "(I, and the other god, but hold "In Purgatorial Tragedy; "And both the rest do now "Live at liberty to say, "With strong board and hearty wine, "What joy, with pious trust, "These mortal limbs have felt while standing "By this Gate of Life, "Thus let it end, "With souls approved received in Heaven, "Before th' Eternal Door." But here the thought of joy was stifled And a fear came o'er my heart, 'That my long light'st vision had past O'er my mind, when I did take To flight, or to defend my eyes From slumber, and the close of night. 'Twas while I sat and pondered deep, (The curtain came before) What was done at last, 'Twould seem, the bad and good, Perfect joy and perfect woe Might show from eye to eye. For now the narrow entry Dispersed the habitable gloom, 'Twas everywhere illumined by light More clear than the free morn's beams. And though I felt my gladness wane, 'Twas joy,--so bright my joy, It seemed nought, but dazzle spent, Of clear to-morrow's sunset; All now had faded, now the same Blind desert desolately flashed, The dim easy droop of drooping eyelid, Or the quick drop of words, And the tremulous, trembly smile Of mienless night. I passed, and sought for some Of that immemorial room, Where, morn by morn, With multitudes in congregated plumes, So many turning forms entrained, The vast assembly join'd Of lives that ranged, Whose sundered steps fell glad From Nature's flow, or steep High mountains crowns from birth To show their empty slopes As flood or ice. There, of the countless bards, At dusk on any hour The singer would appear, And, when I had forgot That ever Voice did seem, With sight to see, the green, bare trees Of luminous temperate flocks Down their tall varied sides Would bend unto me, full Of their own life's warmth, and hang Dry ice upon the deep. The moon a perfect oval sweep, Erect as if to rule the skies When looking up, or far descry Some far earth or stream or star, As slow, as the dark clear stream Of the full moon did move Thro' the waste of immemorial time; It seemed, my beautiful star Was burning o'er my heart, While listening to the solemn Night. There also, at those great gates, That swing beyond the plain On either hand o'er viewless wastes, Noiseless bore the same pall; But as I looked, Nor with the goodly streaks o'ercast (As they are over night's dark folds), And from the wat'ry plain Of water bore that fresh and clear As from an air that was but clean, As it were when on the chalice Of night, the sun plays with the fire, So blaz'd the pure water from a flask From a fountain without name; Nor did the unwary eels on each side From the great well fear the frost, And flying streams at once drew up, And ======================================== SAMPLE 611 ======================================== And soon she ceased; so he to our ears Convey'd the tidings. Now was April hidden in a mist That broider'd the green leaf with its tail; And lo! the old woodbine 'gan tremble, And with the trembling sound our gazing friends Gaz'd at the fragrant open door. Then violets and daisies began to moan And fling down low moanings that resounded Like the lilt of drifting flower or bird that cares for a nest Near some wild dove's carolling. As on the summer first-day I walked into the wood, I heard a dove call In what I judge was its joy of speech, I look'd, and the dove was silent. So saying, he stole to the path of the swamp Where the maiden had its dwelling, And entering she unlocked his presence there; For the spirit of Spring call'd to him-- I know the young speech of Autumn Too little to the old lore become! He look'd around--the new life was thrilling And things know'd before he look'd to that place, Were new as they looked. So was then the welcome made, And the sound of the dove's low moan, That now sounds, forever, in my dream. It was the Autumn of my happiest times: The violets crown'd the baldness of the meadows And blossom'd on the fields of my ease. Not a sound in all the vision of gloom Tumultur'd my timid heart, Save the far roar of the tempest in night A far wilder roar than the rest. The throat of the dove was in mine ear! And the sparrow flew from my sight, Where the Black Iron Range Swept bold and desolate. Where no rucksack was wanting, Riding for a ride; And horses that were fleet and nimble Yet saddles to boot. The very suddenness of the vision Fanned my high mood to an acute Grief. Little I cared that the doom was near: I was clad in the armor of joy. The phantom of the self-invented World was armed with the sword of glory. All things had become orphans, As from my hand they had received The thorn that pierces for the heart. Moved in the power of Autumn's spell The motionless stream, As on it slipped, In and out the ethereal gold, Till the water's face looked one Gem-medal. In mine eye Were the yellow leaf and the speckled Peach, That the wind at night with its bright voice Scatter'd over the hills. And the little rabbit that in the apples Withered, And the fiery-coloured seeds, The scatter'd flecks of his frolic paws. And it was a golden sea, and I breathe and it, As I write this in my heart's bale, Autumn's on my brow; Winter's on my eyelids: and this ruby My bosom wears of October Meshes yet with silver-feathered light. All the hosts of my sad country's woe Seem'd impotent before this autumn hour, Where my pride's wealth gushed up, and shone, As from the Sun-joy of the rose. Now she goeth from me, and thou return'st No more; But sad things shelter thee In what oh, what little room They give thee! My Summer, now beyond the sun, Rent with the storm-cloud, and the world Roody with rain, Has thy dying zeal's hope a-fire? I, who often hastened thy way Through the leaves' rifted sleep, And the brightness of the hour beguiled To a past I never was, Have I power to make thee thrill? The echo in my mingled breathing Seems to answer, I will follow, And, yielding to the mystery Of fickle time and birth, Make choice of thee, And come with thee on wings to thee! The song that sang that love divine, Which floated round the shores of parting, With the lily's sea-child breath, Is aye with tears ineffable, Thy thought's tenderness abhorrend. The years that knew the course of thy Red, beautiful lips, And the voyage thou didst bide on To the land of fairy bards, In a moon filled full of pearls, Have vanish'd on stars inflow'd. ======================================== SAMPLE 612 ======================================== Hoping to work thee good, as he and thou. But him poor Wisdom cries to thine. If, then, my duty, thy commands perchance, Delight thee more than these, let him of whom The victory and the prize thou wait'st, Him of whom thou ask'st and whitherward looks. Seest thou not how as their magnitude grows, His hope from thee increases more and more? Let him be cast from thee to sudden fate, Who sway'st the sceptre and denkies grace. But I am near it and I judge it sure, Nor move thy purpose to prefer a dream. For I am of Epicurus perchance, And loud the shining reputation rings In quavers not a little tame, but clear; In speech the blossoms or delights of speech, And all the blissful life is breath and song: What I say is so, and who gains it wins My hearer also gains it who listens. I judge it sure, yet look behind it to see; In the first place, for thou of him who reigns Knows how to bear a pallid brow. Mark then, reader, what my lamp and thee Do tell us of a man whose bearing is blameless, Whose sleeplessness no prophecy can interpret, Who lives to none present, nor ever comes; Blameless, and of body unsinewed, unmasked; Who of all his acts is just recompense, And practises what he preacheth, by the law. His speech is fine; but breath and sound are yours, Who tread in what-schooles, I mean, and feel as free. Some say he has the eyes a poet has, Some, the eyes of one well adapted to teach: To say which is not right; for he has the face, To qualify whom it teaches, nor blind it: Whom face it teaches is he, provided they teach, Or, though they direct, consent that it should go. He hath his staff's end at such a price, That who obeys him degrades himself. Whose-city-tickets are he of such-like-sires? Whom he sells from him so much more than thou, What grounds the feeling of his shivering waves! Who in his public walk as we have, His acts are as nought; nor like the kind Who done like him, keep off till once the way. Thy friends alone, with much injury done To peace, withshops thee, and ruin's bite. He gathers up a few such as please him there The doors are shut, and he quite misses the show, Then, till they walk him by an opening large, His steps go fleeing on behind the train. Is't not an easy break to one that has 'em? They can't tell, are not told, they join him I think, The fellow lets all that he may; which makes him A groundless apoplexy in our game. The gentleman, poor and black, let it be Which e'en betokens ugliness and want; No blemish they dread who two husbands have, But, as is thought that was not he, He's dark, and has three hundred, bar no shake! He makes himself a lyme, he has 'em all night; Then (tenderest of all things) smokes himself in temse. This senator and this governor did play Their wots so close that, left alone, The earst his teeth they tuck down his trim. This great eminence stept upon a stool, A dab had a cane in their hand, And kept the few and the few between them sit, That the best way to tickle mouthed bums. To say 'twixt and the comforts of their end And, plump, they tuck him in bed at night; Not so light, but some after their fashion, As 't would, were a king in his prime at Whitehall; O! bleriles, D--mnus, from this power in fines! Their fictions are all a fable a-go, Theirs is, and will be, all but a true song. They say the vice-regent's a poet, true; But let that pass; what is't gets my point. Charms in a chain, as well as these in rings, That's now quite worn, and likely rather aged; Dame Gimmel bade 'em shake hands in gowns and shoes; Then, with all their talons down, they fondly kiss ======================================== SAMPLE 613 ======================================== a cat resting its head in a heap of grass braid and filaments of lavender coconut papers from the fair standing to dry over black marble of an art gallery holding in hands bare lemons with lemon to the moon hanging around their throats like braid-bundles of baby’s breath chrysanthemums in nights tinged with radiance darjeeling honey (along a dimpled sky) or dedicated to the head of a moth a can of iolite in a rusty canner’s tin in the tall dry air of a court of slates of clay or of lemons and more vineyards red lemons lemon trees and their juice my favorite plant – avocado all the leaves blown across my face around three low-mount buildings and then so I can watch my sweetie at dawn past ribbons of chalk and patterns of tiles taking cover at the bottom of a treasure room lined with clam-food jars of dew crisp green and pungent orange pansy and cactus smell mulberry chimneys one of the years (of) cactus and its girdling vines pumpkins that put Arizona and New Mexico together bananas that throw their skins across homes and porchets and vacant lots on the edge of a pa-pula / porch / porch / I city-sized stone of my flower-spreading face people walk and take pictures two blocks away it’s a city of about 130,000 afternoons yellow with queen-gloth Preparation vistas it’s hot and humid I am not a city but I am at the edge of a peach and I look like a stone (Hio) a peach with peach-colors (that) citrus and its drying (ses with) your life-fountains green pear husk (and) the shade of a peach melody pantoula on a lime citrus beauty and its longing red grape-buds and its ruddy, in-sessile touch of the galaxy “tulip tartanelles” “tulip tartanelles” red bromel and (gar) bon with its ghost of green I a lot of sunlight where are the (pale) tapers of the cities like an amphitheater of light hiding (my) breath a lot of dates a lot of daytime is it a date with you I have a lot to say but I cannot think which means I cannot say it let there be the shadow of a peach-bronet of crackled apple blossoms a lot of (red) poppies with (pistachio) lemons with (tods) apple-blossom now I would like to tell you about another phoenix a cad of a phoenix with (beauty) buds that light up the pavement of my block of my block with (cad)ph rules of the sidewalk and (purple) poppies with (the) apples of my sidewalk that a phoenix that lighting (the) street that flickers (yellow) streetlights that lights (and) man-days (the) fruits of a phoenix on my block <|endoftext|> "Instability", by Eugene Urwin [Nature, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Poetry & Poets] Words have birth and death. They float through speech. They light up airy tongues. They see me and sound me and I burst and cool and pull. Specs fell silent in my warm wilted morning and roared my beloved wake. I lit my tongue waiting for their screech: Out here the wild word tamed and dried and watered my soft key holes. You let me read you out of it, maam, with my drip. I waited for the loud read out and no one came. After the time when the sky shut down and I tore the roof off and spoiled the house and none of the dogs vomited. I turned my back and I faced the ground: One sheet of ice on nothing understood. A pronoun was ready in my mouth and suddenly, here, and now, and only now, there was enough breath in my tongue to make it appear that I’d said I, just like me, and nothing would break loose and float up and spout of all three at once. ======================================== SAMPLE 614 ======================================== oth only for the hope of her. It hath the wondrous power to heal; This cure for all our ills is told: Some spells it draw from out its fold, And may heal all ills but one. The hermit cured me of my soul The reason why I stay is, The Gipsy's blessedness and me. He saved me when in wretchedness, E'en when I sought for beast to slay; And though I saw from thence the end My vow'd life would be, I stuck to him, Stuck to him for hope and faith and love. Yet e'en when to perish, like the snake, I wouldn't live, he saved me in the end. 'Twas strange to see in his wild, From age to age, the sparkling Grey of his human thought; To hear the sound of that great heart, Which taught each living thing to say, Beethoven is the best, I think, And looks, like eyes that see and know, Majestical to live for any wight Who loves, and feels that they know. We pass a century in this world, When God in language told his gospel, To us indistinct, as magic hieroglyph, Yet with an undertone too strong to pass, All Nature teems to beauty through The Mage's fingers, always singing praise Of the great Designer, evermore. Up from the mouldering moet, And though old Time Whirls round like a deadly sphere, Treading on his throat of change, Comes a new day to tell Of fresh and glorious things, in creovis, Of sense, and thought, and aspiration. If you feel uplifted and uplifted, If you feel his aura round you, You are wise and strong In a manner and outward way, But if you hide yourself from him, You are human and in a mode. I went out and had a nice talk with her, And she say she loved me, And I turned about and a soul-felt look, And gave her one in one on life. I'll give you my hand and never believe her. I took my cab at top of Mile, my dear, I walk a live-long week and every night go to her; I hear it's the life's refreshing touch that make her sing And if you ask for evidence, just smile and watch her. Some folks drink wine and bread, And I'm perfectly cured, But she loves me all the same; I went into a garden and there I did observe A neat full-sort cauliflower. I ate it jolly soon and was awfully rude To talk about it, And then I hugged her and felt the life go out of me. I watched it a day and noticed there A pig that looked so much like a pikake, She tried to run away but she couldn't and so she ate the pig. I saw a Cape Falcon and a Peacock and said, "I'll be your Falcon to the crown." And the Falcon did just what I say, and then I got quite wrathful. And the goose said "He can have my tart." I hunted one all night and saw it come into me And then I say, "I will own this Pig, I love it, If it means your pussy." A fellow by the name of Sparky put a note Into my hand. It was from a baker down the street, Said "Here's a full sort of bread that's fine and clean, And I put some in right away, And so far I've kept it hot and that's why I'm here." I went into a cupboard, and there I read A number of times that a man shouldn't say His nature is greater than his brothers'. I felt bad and winked at it, And I soon wrote what it was to hear from one who'd Neglected the thing that he was after. "Surely," said I, "it must be because I'm better That a fellow like Sparky sends so much to say." I said, "That's queer, for he always says I'm fair, That's in my lunch at least, And goes without saying that you should swear to me." "Oh yes, it must be," he answered, "but that comes from me; My name is Tryon. So don't be scared And don't let that be the end of our ball; We can't go to the city for a dance; I don't like to see it, it is ======================================== SAMPLE 615 ======================================== Britain a full courtier, careless of what in France he might say; So those who worship God in Israel Homeward are steering toward Jordan, Though He sing in them a country's song. The days are over when a man might Go gathering his inhabitants, In the deceased days of yesterday; He is not heeding that age is past, Nor Britain's bleak septentitan; He is sheltering under new laws That made helpless host of the parent nation. Whoso this month was in his woe, He faced the woe that he was wailing. If his burghers were silent too, His insolent gossips drew much blood. If his prelates said not Love's own lyre, They stood a-toting their canes. If they heard not his own mouth singing Unto his own land's lamentation. Now where these dwell, do ye wait for them, If ye be foresters of their days, If ye be not firm of your voting, And safe of your stumping as a palmer? Ye are not Roman upon the Tyne When the children of the loud-crying earth Make most of their father's groaning, And in him are buried all his wonder. If every castle of British earth Were riven from the wood of its king, Then put a William on each stem, A Copland on every tower's head, A Winchester on every gate-post. Were the tung and the mason's wood Gath'ring on the Western Heath to blazes, There would ye find naught but monuments To lips that had sung their Lord. But you are built higher than they, But you forget how they were built, For they are better than they seem, The house of God is higher man's home, Than the palace of a prince's blood. How fair is your lot, Sir, could I But sing of your plainness of sleep And that sky where ye do float! But ye behold it at the gates, But ye go not there: ye face the day, And are not troubled at night, Because ye are peaceful where ye dwell And free of the voices that reproach. I would talk with ye of many things, And things too small would fret ye, If I might sing a little here and there Before ye, who are stronger Than I, and all the world. But if ye should hear a voice with me But once in all your wandering, I would make ye wonder, as ye saw The voice at the gates of Lydia To Peter and at Capua. From the hills of Blundertown, By Shakespeare's play-house will I sing you Of a thing as it should be; Of a thing past compare, Of a sight beyond a second. Of a sight that makes you pause to think Of the laugh that round it gave The friend that stands in the side-saddle Now of that horse that blinks And pants in the pit and seat. Of a rare seat so rude and patched, With not a stain to see, And the coat he keeps behind Of the wizard who rode bare And mounted with a kick of his left foot When he thought the town was away. Of the sorceress that designed This miserable change, Of the man that pulled The rope, the man with the keen wit the jade, That caught the witch and spanked her At the last year's ball. Of the judge so dreadful, The court that was dangerous and steep, That he sits in; And of the stars that were fit to fall On the eye, but never were. Of the laugh her lips had, And the tweedle compliment She flung to the dame, Of the new hat that came her way As day and night is run, Of the creak in the door that opened out As they went out together; Of the hack that is trouble for the horse She rode on at the heels, Of the drink that she swallows, more Than he speaks, though both may understand. So good will you keep your pace, So firm be your endeavour, Let not your pluck for a post prohibit The feast, the date, the time. Let not your travail go ill - 'Twill so your friend's distress; You'll go grumble till you're asked, "Why?" Alas, that the dish that must be For man's eyes now and again In the end of a labour long, ======================================== SAMPLE 616 ======================================== When Sorrow was young, and she as small As now we see her, and as rash; And thou, what now? where art thou? Nowwhere, or when? but not where she, Allartian? the womb, where first from thee Thou started, be it where of him Slept his first aerie coition. As Earth, so was men's murmur about That place, now now whence paling not so much The rapid flame which in their veins tinged The fountaine of their days new fire As the retiring stream, which, then So little, to no spot where it dried Leaf-like, now dropt into this lake, Refined then where the last wave, that broke Through glass Rhea's noble pile, still show'd Somewhere, still unseper'd, remote, Albeit we flee, and where so fast Its withraging angel pace their wire, Far off no keene they see; for since Thither Love doth this sure rest withhold, The further, thus the farther forth He goes, whoseoe'er this loue doth move, Here is the place of rest: do thou That thou thy gentle wing may all Surprie, as often as ye leave him Here whose kiss can do no harm. Lo! Here is the damsel hand, here the cord Of him that did these fields conquer. Of the two Two slits, of him four parts it chop'd, Whence a small tree doth grow, and rise, Where burst out vertibles among Names of all men. Rinaldo's name Is by this trow the most famous, Here's it sticks, and never shall be told Who were his peers, here of no tilling; Here meeke, the ridges wear away, Where backs no beard, nor ph[oe]nis haunt; Nor where Adam till his feet, Nor where the serpent new, This wood thus hath no helde. The chase Is here with farre advantage borne; For where the courser's hoof's bent He clears the diz, and the hawlant On talich wood he runs, where he oft Scarse farre, never beaters were. Here is he not so ftable, To chase, where nature would have will'd He's out and hop'd; the chasing Fit for so true a chase. And first, When I the old warden see, I'll telle you of all that there 's one. A black bee in mine eare Sate on the shrub, so loth to wait Upon her bond, that he leaves his sted, And, wher'er she goes, First she him holds, then he her holds. With what tosay she was bewray'd They led forth byal her guard, Which had the way by half we saw (And she a lamb at hand, which feard Scary things befel her) She made us see the swine Mighty here to almes his jolly-maile High up on a golden stool, Which standeth er she drew, Mongst like mighty men well versed In via councils and wys Was this Lord Marmion. Soon as he Had drawn her down into the vault, Down to the golden bowl, whence he A gift had ta'en, them I say, Charmed then the sacred braid Wherewith this Lord of Marmion Wasurn'd her, because the wight It had warned long time ere he Might come to look on it, smiled As he should sit, in which he A place set out to fill And did, in place of other bishop, But here an end of speech. For lo! here came a creature, As if a creature were of all That could be wrought out of good And mischief unto love, That had a wing, a serpent, to creep Unto her couch; and here began The famous and god-venture rock Which every man must own But if you list I'll break his wings And use, not seldom, all skill That can be betoile to love: For man may be wise And faithful, love and all. Who liketh read, here you have it; You're rich, and yet you're not a thrall: Whilst for your hire you fain would pay Of lond the land that now is here; You can't but rich of welcome you ======================================== SAMPLE 617 ======================================== Who bore it to the consul's point; And, by a ghastly sound, And visible sign, From emmeth up y-formed from th’engine, The eagle wings to the cloudy clouds, And slided from his own speed And with wings from the neck of PONEY round, From his wide-spread wings with storm began. Nor yet the eagle the greater draught; The humblest bit in the compass of PONEY He suck from the opening eyes of PONEY; He suck’d from his own eyes, and puffed Into a limitless, boundless atmosphere. But PONEY slept, that when him first The attack at full rush'd from without, The giants in their blood Gave up their strength with a drunken sweat; And o’er every nerve in his body A redder glow went forth. Till while the plunger thereof Went all its length without a surge, PONEY woke from his utmost pain, As low-laid in the bed of pain, From the great eagle flew, Or close’d within the fen On the naked top of PONEY. A seaman, whose tall ship once At landing hit with his oars Pocked the hard chalk, said, “Ye may mark The snail’s marks where it breath’s for: Give us another hour, sirs,” While BLACK stood near satisfied. Now PONEY, on a sudden, Up-pil'd his whole weight, and sprang On his strong legs to his mind, And shed a deep, keen, long sigh, For thought was turn’d from the matter: For thus he said, “Dark, I deem, These following winds will be, So they blow hence—no danger. O, of a truth, I do not blow. Yet what of it? for all my moaning Of grief to me is but vain.” The calm COMMON-STAVE then responsive To POCKWORKS said, “What things to him thou sow” Then bore the vessel to the shore, And, prest to land, each stood on board, And cast a shriek, so loud that jennies The stars above their heads were stinging, Which, as they swung and flew, were play’d To see that fall and fling Their nearest points against the mud. They struck, and then they fell to drown; They struck again, but this time laid that swerving Began at last the wind to balk, But that it only balk’d half the wind, Stunted in its fall, and slack in its blow. With looks that, half wild, he composed, The hapless SCOURGE then bethought him, And, as he took in that cry, He cried, “All that the heavens may dim To me, my scathe is due, That when thus extreme violence is gone, A nature fit to bow the knee, One stroke must look the same. Such fate as is in wind or wave, So fate but sleep, to feel no pain, Which is now slumber, this forbears.” “What! stir,” OBIITA said, “and then Insult their faces, like to break This slumber great Bomachi, nay, This little child, ’tis all, and all alone, Which I have done, ’tis all I can repent; For if I could, seeing some one waked By his rude wits, were still more strange and higher. He that I am, I know; but waked or not, All places on me shine; and may My eyes some part obscurity. I cannot know or reckon up The wants, or know the hours, or part; To help me there in this decline Is all a superfluity of bliss. The rise is gentle and moderate; The set is sharp and sudden, not pacific; Red is the rose, for red the rimbaud eruption Which makes it blow as soon as open, red, As hot, as dry, as full of flame All in a manner; from that, for cureless I run to bed, and there let go The wretched head, until it ease of its pain.” A lily full of beauty, with delicious hues; The mirror, in which we see our own faults. You say, the picture is unpleasing; I very well assure you, But that is not the fault, ======================================== SAMPLE 618 ======================================== Blow strong, beating with your honours. And this you do at will. In all this, that you do amiss, Then yours is the blame, not ours. Woe, the bloud, high lives spent making Balder. Ah, his youngest! we yearn For Odin's eldest: none to win, None to hold a place near in worth. Yet by our prayers some hold that duteous Sought on Aer doppel heimdals, That rule in gloom, the stormy earth. And him, all-vexing Boreas burnt, To whom, not yet men had heard That Heirise now Hygelac holds. And this did Hesperormity Mighty as Hela, win to soul So feared for boast. All the realm And realm is changed to question 'How?' Who'll give it her due crown; and the knaves In ken suffer what they deal in shame." Whiles Meleager and the rest Of that miserable crew agree That the old king should his due course run, Too long his fame at sea to fumo. "You're kind of heart," O! they cried, "We find You'll give the like, but full in brass." "Alas," says one, "of you, this hue, This hue, is bright alway, and hard." "Now doom'd be our cruel fate," say, they, "If 'glory of kingdoms' you spurn, Or move 'gainst you, 'gainst you 'gainst all praise." "For this I suffer, " says the king, "Yet shall I hold it for a scorn." O, 'twas weary mighty men to hear, And yet they did but talk. No marvel, Nor should we find that while awake and free Were this broad world and this life. Too dull! To sit each living man and hear toil And care. On land that sounds strange, bright Dim earth where beauty all is wasted; On sea that sounds strange dim sea of wrecks Where nobody goes, we bear a sway. True, on the sea the trade is,--a power With sails and wind, and sells his product. And here commerce never was, nor ply'd To stir our food; but once or twice a year The silken sails all wings and works Are turn'd towards our nation's field. But while the people now are slothful; And food and wine, on shore or near, Burn up, and us and our lords do know, If we may burn or eat, each other, These fellow-hands shall cleanse the fist Of sin, and bind that long-boned chains. Through any snags or floods that swirl 'Twixt land and sea, the time I ask is That the long marsh-lands, deepened By deeper streams, should quiet broad A single zone and tie that dull Ground which cannot live, a slow Unguided central plain. The bulk Of sea-girt earth with grass and sand, And low-lying meads of water grass, Shall drown the hardiest will of men. The land's bulk to soothe and harm the sea, To fill the mighty serenity And crush the mind of every foe, To turn the coquetry of the sky And city-clouds into tender smites. To open up the waiting deeps, Away from the breast of mountains, Whence not a ripple to tumble, Whence not a sound itself, Away from these, and but a sign That the light sea can seek no more The waves, the sea, and shore; Our restless deeps as liable to stir As deeps of salt, shall lie Away from all these places Where the bale men built their forts, Forts the country 'glas, the wind. And where have these strong fortresses Been most completed, built of forces Unworthy of their trust, Where tyrants hold their thrones, or where Mankind are slaves, to terrorise The whole world. The strangling mars of hate, And the iron tears, and crpetween, The tyrant-arehdarts, Away with them, away with them To this forest age Of our flourishing. This timber frame, These well-made spans of timber, let it go Straight and true; and, in my path, let all The foolish terrors of my folly stare For target and armour to the sun And the great wind, that, fearless, may burn My path ======================================== SAMPLE 619 ======================================== That promised to be right, And so, through Science, Can only move a child To lie down and sleep. Nature's art I did abhor, For her should all be blunder, Because my mind is bent And all alone I'd study; In great establishments To learn a lot must be Science and art ajar. "Wilt thou put Nature to this measure? With the leavings of the blood all fibrous, No food to be sweeter than the moth, Gnats and flies; on her clothes no dew; Blood of blood animals, mind of men, Women, still there's something wanting? 'Tis said that nature's lovely scale is Broke, and all her figures twisted, So I may thank the sacred sun (Now is at rest) and the night's star (Nature's nature all profane), I shall at least complete the trifler. <|endoftext|> 'We are the kin of the wild and silent oxen, and with us are heifers, goats, and proboscis-flies. One leg smashed and bleeding under us, we push through the grass, At the two, suet drips from a grass-chip, and dig Under the weak fratricide's battered head Under the dead cow who has carried our young. We are heifers, We are veils, we are the proboscis-eyes. Our song, the note made from the inordinant air, Sends our foes to some still deeper chink. We are a prim old tribal place. We are first parents, hard muscles. We are second parent, soft eons. We are third parent, suggestion. We are the smallest, we are the tribe. We are the biggest, we are the heap. 'Twas back to look round about, and hear the wing Of the old wind blow: From out the pale blue Cool knew what was around; For not that back of us, but nearer, With its sound, the bloody flame, to see Its blade slipping down, the prow With two long jowls sinking low, and rising A face our lineaments have blown through, Unshorn for sin of speech, by fire (With lightning going) up to God, has speared Our eyes, and set their sparks to fire. We were coming back, when our kind said, 'Be patient, it is your country-side You must turn to.' And the eyes caught our hazel Dripping in it, and following it round Past Winchester, a thousand miles, To the Iollike grey square, their midst Where two as at two had set their teeth, And clambered at a stand, their cheek Quivering at us. We are blind.' <|endoftext|> Small Bell-wethers, peep you these, In and out of the human frame, Giving, taking voice, giving voice, By all three eyes fixed on heaven. Say, among these, the smallest, What word should they declare Should fill them all of majesty, Of as they seem, or seem? O ye Blind Easters, do ye say Your sightless shadows confuse The fullness of a word well framed, That all your shades, your visions o'er Fall out by syllables? Nay, but you say Your little words disarrange The fullness of the word well framed; Though you would not alter a word, That speaks the fullness of majesty, Of majesty, of song, of song. 'Tis true, that oft, by voices woe-reduced, That haunt you, hungering, from the throats Of those that hear, and hear, the word From whom the speech comes with syllables; They use, as you, these shapeless sibils And shapeless accents, that should be mute By voice, by voice, that comes to them With fleshed words, with soft human phrases Trebled, that through yourself take sound, Speechless, syllable to you, Sightless to hear, for this, to see not Through your broken phrase, whose speech-strain Should be as sun through the frozen earth, Earth whose round dry surface breaks the wine, That slowly drains it, but is wet with rain That quickly drains it, wine that chills the earth And fills all wells with water, that descends Till into arched cataracts, overhead Arose a wisp that shook and rustled With many a subtle indist ======================================== SAMPLE 620 ======================================== The steps of erring animals grow faint Before the arrows leave bowhead dry, While eyes of the above do not turn To accept the vengeful grace. Much writing would be want of the Muse Had she but power to multiply A word each minute that she write; And certainly not enough have she To answer the problem set before her. Alas that she should form her poem From nothing that can a word be! But then the facts are not always clear; There is so much we have no say in; Much of them, it is so we are told, We know nothing in them to sing. To me, who love even more than I think Men, and in a place I have not found to thee, There is music with my name confessed Nor an echo, or a wind to blow, To make me happy, and to tell me so. To know that to thee one man is more Than a couple of lions that spoil a cave Or a primrose where the first peeping Shoot, you know, but the boys at Troeck Are so smart!--for a green bough does rustle When the sun, the tongs they have taken. And yet it is as well to have seen Those brown-eyed folks with beards like mards, And who strove against a giant orchard tree Or against a crab; and when, I think, We cried at once or murmured 'Percy!' Then the waiters gave us nicings Of the horns and glasses and doves. You, in the Garden, were the first I saw after that mile of peopled hed Or trotting crowd, whom I did not disturb, And the first sight of you was with me So the young flowers did look up attent And the flower like new beauty, each one, Who stood in their ranks and moved like yards Of some great chariot in a dream. But like a lark that new sleep produces I saw, and then thrust aside the fetter With which the shades on the face of the moon Were dragged, I had read of in tragedy. I found you were not half so sere, and proud, And so exquisitely young. Nor you, but myself, to feel the breeze Of the rising breeze that made the tents ford Of your very tents! There was much to be said. But not one word was uttered, but I gave way To some mutual look, the confession Of a friendship born of common woe, In that all he stood most like, as the path, Lay on the sharp edge of the edge of the road To where the landscape grew still rougher and rougher. I flung My arm round you and would not you slacken, But with soft words thrust you closer to me, With so much greeting left, that you seemed less afraid, And a short time elapsed, ere I withdrew my hands. So, the sunset was our first encounter: With the flies that never idle about the body, So sally and fly among the shades, that I thought It was a great nature moving to behold The scene within a woman's eyes, and I Was weary of flying things, and made you The medium of my wanderings. You had felt the morning's presence with me: Our love was touched with the summer's bloom. And when I look at the white clouds Of the southwest, and the grey sky Spread on the ground with its vapourous line, And I think of you who are wrapped in sleep, My heart is rent for the very marrow of me As for the mother of a child to whom death Is brought at the moment when all Is moved to compassion. These icky things Will fill your wind-pipe and make you die. How can I put up with this much thinking, With so many ways of death so near? It makes me ill, and I wish to depart, And lay me down to sleep. There is a house Duped in a valley; the winds have broken It for three hundred years. A man Robs his body every spring-time into mould, And has it not broken through? There are two gates; One opens straight on the pitch, and one is cross-wise; And when the winds blow the right-hand gate clear back, The narrow-crossing gate, the left-hand pile comes in. 'Tis a fence without end, which takes no view Of the fields, or the sky, or the man in dust. We do not live there, and when the morning ======================================== SAMPLE 621 ======================================== enrique amelio id órgano enlucido. horar hechazar entre los senos el la pequena de los que quiero enfrió el amador olvida desque merito el consumo su enfermo señor: que de manos vendría el buen armado y se le han traen pedir por el cerco. vamos de vamos,—vamos de allí vencidos. ¡Vamos! ¡Vamos!—que las augustias questores el trembo brindo el mundo, Que vamos con tercer drobie los siglos en que los vallones asegurados por tu temista quítek en su tema, Todo logo de entre la sigle, Y ¿cuándo le acabarse Siempre, amigo? ¡Estamos de mi siglos y vestidos con el Síphide en el Árpana y luto con su padre. venitan miedo, el lenguaje en un cuello vencime, Viendo que, temblando de estrellas, Vuelve al rayo en el ancho cargamento de Olmos. De la sintlantica solitaria, Verde tierra, le doy perder la primera porque viurte al silbos que siguió, (mortal pudieros) Y ásabpuesto ir lo que le corá. Al luís Español, que otro día ó tú, Y nieve é querello, y más según ayuda por telón el vago De Olmos que con frescos llanòn De títero nuevo, y sueño en que de los moros a toro fué El pasajero á su cabeça Por voz miro, Vivío que si estáan más hermosa, Y lo dezaye Hijo á morir. El cabello Los orás, Vedecía, que mi mal va desolado, De la voz se visto El nombre que el visto fué, Y con quien mi mal convive á morir, Hasta es la sí majestad, Vivir en que á es la noche de la noche del día. de la tierra—atene El Árabe arriba Con que se le hacído Y como decícho Porque en ella se mejía Vid, en cama la baraje A mis arboles fallas, Algo todo vencido Que me lleva á un amor, Se sigan de morir. en la tierra Del concurso del aire Que á los moritros desocupan, Hoy que á mis afectos de este númago Los que han sombrístesque, El trópicionaba A su sangrandeada algo, Por un prospector perdon Los valles de sus premios El sabor impuro En esperir sofo de oro Que á miedo lo demuena Lo que sería: Para que yo venía, Acabarda á las octava es mueve en calor Le ombre está en ver como un gran jefe Paráis, de diestra y ofendes De un muy pellecer En un piedad y porese, Su echaros Oye que me guayaste en las flores Único de la gorria, En un gran buen porfía: ¿Alémito lamentar que de deyes Al lado, Y aunque le alvade en las piernas Porque seer menor? Al rayo, alcándole: Desventuradas me mantenga el emboto, A que al santitos deja el hijo, Dibujar, como de hueras pedía. A la plata ======================================== SAMPLE 622 ======================================== You loosed that wolf From death and pity and love. You taught him how to be just, How to stand for justice In the moral air You were willing to be yourself, And not be fagged by a clever buck To turn in your tracks, You who have the blame And let others turn you, And—to whom you give The power to turn, to walk without shoes to sink in the earth like the mud for a rug You were always willing to be A heart-beat away From the friend you've come to know (That you don't think that they can be, Called out, or seen of the way When the end is so plain to see). The money may be your one penalty. The pride may be But the odds of becoming A heart-thief are your margins (that should be the dimmest in the net). And yet there's a blessing in you For those who give The heart you're after And there's a gift within That may be infinite in its range, But goes and comes within a narrow ring— In you, in you, in the coming years I'd like to be a part of. <|endoftext|> "A Graduation", by Ben J. Johnson [Activities, School & Learning] Each morning, as the students filed out the door And stood in line again to get to school, I watched As each one gave a prolonged bow to the same Image. Then, as each turned away, I saw They, too, were gone on the street, I could not be with them So soon, except in the sure knowledge that I too Had an Image in me, and so I let the thought Pass as I walked home, watching the ticking watch, as the train in anticipation began to brim, the barrel was Brushing back the pieces of a bowl that had accumulated In the dark bedroom over the years of his life That house that he had loved as one of his country well does, for it was a barrel that he had seen in Texas As a boy when he had gone as a boy on a huntsman on a horse With other boys on huntsman or horse down trails Staying in cabins on trails or in rustling trailers From sunset to sunset and back. He gave his thumb to tell me to keep the image to myself. <|endoftext|> "The Rise of the Mulberry", by Tim Dlugos The most beautiful moment in any story is the moment when the fox is lifting the rabbit from the pile. Bowed and bent and small in the canine way, he carries her away and up the chain with his teeth of caution. Until she drops under him and the pellet of possum clicking in the dark hits her paw. <|endoftext|> "Testament", by Tim Dlugos [Relationships, Family & Ancestors] The descent into the cave is quiet. You’ve done worse, you say, please stay —but the figure will not come again. The figure, who is not a figure but a network of day-to-day events having taken place over time. Your great-grandparents could describe it to the court-appointed therapist. It is a journey. We had no idea what the journey could be, the miles of mountains we had forked with our own own flesh. Each in his or her own skin so deep we cannot imagine down the road, there is no road. Let us think of it, let us say it, let us leave together. Your mouth is saying, a love that is such a story of writing, of memory. <|endoftext|> "Poem Beginning", by Tim Dlugos [Living, Time & Brevity, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] And then the poem began when it seemed the work had nothing to do with time and instead of something to do with living a while you told me about your great-grandfather and I made a poem of it and a few years later when I thought I was done with living I had a chance to spend time with a man I had not known to people from far away <|endoftext|> "Poem Ending", by Tim Dlugos [Living, Time & Brevity, ======================================== SAMPLE 623 ======================================== Good effect so stole the curtain! I loved to watch the world's conditions. Jaunty languished on a verdant bower, And bloom-fringed pillows o'er him flung. 'Twas a delight of rare delights to see Your virtues on a garment worn! Good sense of order and kindness I counted the principal gift to claim; And when I came to soothe the worn lade, And sprinkle the wreaths at the bed's head, In anger you hid your beauties, said It vexed me sore. I am the Lamp: I light The land whereon you lie, And call the wan spirits thence, That strew the tumults of the earth For smiles and showers of blossoms bright, And call the waft of the glad roses, The poppy that folds in the farmyard, The flowers with silver bells, and those, The filigrees of merry novels, That, trickling from your pearles, sweeten The snow that sifts in your lap. In your womb You bear a living child, A baby-baby, who Will light for hours of earth The pnior of her well, And with the milky mother-love Of all the plants that live by love Shine at her knees for ever. What shall I say, the Muse! But to spend a parson's time. Well, we are so contented That even a woman's tongue Is a world-auf fret, And though the fairy scene Is romantic for an hour, Yet you will scarcely find, Though you search from lane to lea, One sacred lily-love, Though you search from Maud to Aginier, One rose alone! My mistress was a maid, One of the conquered Girls, And her father's knight. And no man dared to speak To her of her, for fear Of scaring the maiden boys. And she stood at the tombs, Drew the lips of ghosts, and sang To them. And we two Sat with her like girls together, And watched the dead Girls of old. And once, by Horbilles, we rode, And admired the acorns, And snuffed the acorns by day As long as we had power. But at night, we hid our faces, And bade the fair ghost, Lemnos, To take us, as her will, And dress us for the pastime Her golden sun had set. Nay, I will tell you what it was: Her golden sun, set to bed. And, at her word, we bade the rest To feign death by Lemnos. Then, I to my mistress, meek and mild, -- I was not more miened than I -- I tripped, I waddled like a fool, -- Like a coward I paid her who won This festival of flowers. Then came we And there were all our trophies won. And still she smiled, and all our talk Was crowned with her perfect wit. And she was moved to laugh, and she looked As if she pondered, took my words To task, gave me a thousand lessons, Taught me that God is in each flower, That We are Our father's and our brother's And sisters' child. I never saw A woman look as if she pondered What she had heard for ages. I never saw a woman look So terrible on and on, As she did, as if she pitied me, And seemed to pity the whole world, The whole downtrodden, distracted world, That I was meant to be The heart of the old world to the new. What with sweet speech and bitter, What with our eyes and kisses, What, not to be loved? Was it to love me? My love-sick heart, and what did it mean? For ever it meant and do, Her pity, so mutual, so sublime! And how could she refuse? What with passion, and rapture, What with ecstasy, What with rapture, and woe? It could mean, and do, Give up, O hands off! Give up the cup and say, Surely God's not not kind! And on the other hand, Why not so intimate? Surely God is kind, you say. For love of me she just has stood In a corner of the hall, And loved the time that I was painting, And left the ======================================== SAMPLE 624 ======================================== -Oi will to the gift, Bilke to the side, an' will to the bone Poe'fare unto the side that he ha-int. -When's the rice an' wauk, When's the time to go au-teken, It will a' be daan, For a' the care ye gaed Wauk an' buird me to the core, Nae shauk the waefu' til I meet her. -Ere's there ai rum crying An a' the stramos leaving, For thow the time I'll been wae, I'll be a king, I'll be a king, Shoe the least in the land. "Came ye here for a leetle lost?" "Noo, for the woound is sore." -A duck shall no more, he said, Than a coop wanton, Rore this pod 's too small for a swan, An we'll be a pu'mur Pasmen's feast, He's unco the fae or the lord; He loves the heru' and the lum, The hizzie is in a we'. An' I'll take the ca'n, I'll yam him downe lowe An' uppe an unco his whit an' wame; Thou kens the bucking shallow, An' a duck shall no more, he said, Thou kens the long spume o'tak the sun, An' he'll be a hauf he' the carth. -A duck shall no more, he said, Sho would warrage to thole the man; I'll be a king heil I'll be a king, The great one, at a' the least; At to-morn or unto morrow's dawn, An' till she kens the wind awa', Thou shall be maistif thou be swell. -An' I'll mend an' i' the lum, An' I'll take the licht, an' I'll take the cad; When at some pot I get a bead I'll he'p yeh your ain bail; An' then whare yeh shall duke me hug He'll be a king I'll be a king, He's unbird at the wyt. -I'll obey all the laws o' creation Till I net lie bag th' swode; The night's a bit o' frayits, I tunt a leek, Wi' pride I'll be a king; And when they ring yon hornie's knell To lilt me at the last. -At end of toil an' sleead work I'll be An' like to be a king, Till frae the kirk to Cnocrs I'll drall, An' there I'll peaud the door; There a lover's welcome he'll be In a' that's red or blue, An' I will abide a while. Ye grim, ye unco skittering knaves! Adieu! I'll wait fro' ye o' your d----nage! And don't tempt me, sirs, wi' your puissance! You may sic sic fashions as ye like, Ye may but fall short o' my sophistication; For there's a nid o' me that likes ye saucy, That'll ne'er reply unless ye dunder vote. Oh, I can see right well, 'T is the fact o' the matter; Thae are two ducky ca'd folk, To mend a' our barmes, That we'll be twa ever e'er again! P'tend ye wad likes ye best To fin' an' hold a' the selling; So we'll try it together. Ye'll hear about it in the papers, And about it ye'll hear; They'll make ye records quat ye've go'd for, As reversion'll maintain the right; The warst twa canny fashions wear, To return to rule, the fair; Though it has the pith o' Hades It has the vera hell o' grace, An' just proves that man cannot A beak live under the pope! Then he that's a' the beak's is, I'll tell ye what, be dumb! I've us' the time, an' it's now, That a change's comin' ======================================== SAMPLE 625 ======================================== The gums are well withal: with that his chariot shews Her wanton state, and for a smock ways doth wend. Lo now! what sport! the hay-cock parforce doth show As though for age, and in the paire, with many a smack Pelton came to kill a shepe in a glade to fling: Him stumbling stound, a prick runs thro' his heart, Whereby he dies, and now doth all the flock. The Loves at her birth make sure a shepe to beget A certain kinde, the courage to be born, The feeding of his milk to wanton plays. For children in those sences, all which urge To no good, do all they can for ill. Thou were not alive nor that thou didst draw breath Unto this earth, to corroborate thy kin And prove the natural progenitors' race; 'Tis well, that from her has fled to lod And taken those which only at her house Do kindred living see, her merited fame To be with such a conscience. A very nurse to those that have Composed part of themselves, with that resolve To wash their rags, and do with them a make Of noble raiment made of their own rags; At whom she sees the habit of a stain As big as cobwebs, and she'd have done with all But that the earth at them has with her stones Found too much might have made the ashes talk. And now the Loves were brought unto her house, At first she would have sent the flame That doth so watch the deed asain to doe, But that the men with their apparel gathered Came to have eyes upon themselves, and deemed T'was a long while since this fashion gat them grace, And if she shut them out to be with the clean Even to enough to make a clean death fair, That done, she would herself have her full pleasure For their relief and children, all alone For feasts, and in fine she found, what makes the snow The Pleasure's mother, and all meat kept for pay. Warmed to seek some bosom in which to melt With sense of beautie nigh on infinite, She does but seek a part of one that's goodly: She who was borne to kiss, or take a cuddle, Sells paltry wares that are not worth a crown; The booksellers may their quaint profession say, Some bargainer wantwit, or journeyman just Cautious, gives what the price of his skill is; But there the hides all, the curious never find Which the doth hide, or are privy to the thought Of what's hardly most concealed: which if they be, And not too well they use the concentrated things, Then plaything and fooling about the heart Where most is put it to embrace what's held most, A mouth (which or they say) one sense that knows, And which each makes the chiefest sanctuary, hings A spirit, to be moved by that which is next. But by this is understood, that the man To be here should have bene a mind to shun What moves him not most: and this there is In gifts and o're major parts, where the same Alone doth more than recompense the rest. 'Tis right to give, to give when we may, By 'squorceries of commend, by claps of hands, By raising spirits after lives of prayer; To give with thanks and prayer, when most we want And most o're certain times; which so much bind Our hearts, that for acts of love 'tis made stale; Oft giving, us keeps such habit getting, That to refuse is no death-doom. Well, I was one that did trust; and now I see How trust doth nowhere help: I trust, but swerve, And if we swerved to set apart, we'd differ A good night's serving; now so different be That, light as light, 'twas as much power of wind A poor place for a desert is; a sea Of glass 'twixt shore and sward; a shepherd's land Where scale of thoughts was broke, and maidens thrown In weeds where brood things grow, till on the shore Is made a desert, and whereon will play The parrot and the lizard and the snake. Yet trust I as in goods, but swerve I still With charges; nor am I bound to ======================================== SAMPLE 626 ======================================== Wept not for France, who bore the brunt Of armies thousands, when they fell Her fortifications were destroyed. The last onslaught fell as fell the first In the three mighty battles of Troy And three long years of war, as near In spirit, if not in place, As this last siege. Only one thing remains; To break the stubborn Paris' spirit down, And that is Paris' and ours. Then comfort thee, chief Of all men, and heed my words. 'Twas ever thus when driven To pick the outcast from the heed, Father and son, of all who choose The path of rapine. The sire's heart grieves As the main pole of the battle shakes, And the avenging God is grieved, And the red comet pines, and the horn Of Mars fails, and godless with this blast Of doubtful hope we track dearth, though sent To these first signs that none discern. Lo, all the world speaks many languages To diverse men, so that no speech is spoken For the heart to find the same speech, And men die and go their lives through In words unbewildered by the voice Of the unspoken face. Yet know One thing, strange to me and many others, That though a man's name and country be More flagrant lies of he not caught in sins, And it is well for man to look low, to shake His chains out, to speak out loud and bold, To cast the shadow and send lightning deep To strike the essence of even. For their sakes too, I speak this word; For their sakes too, look high and well; Each low face in your yellow nation's book Reads between the lines of Marvell's art Three central reasons, red and friendly. These the signs: he saw low men, The lot of them a speck, the model Of him as great, what then to me Was I myself his mate, his plan? He on high his standard stood, Towards the end of ages When men arose to a higher style Of life and godlike race. If I knew then what I know now I would not write a word, Yet I hold my paper till he say Huzziddoo, and raise to the light Those smouldering rims of brilliant smoke. For thus I used to read in Bede's caldron, And trace his cleft foot-prints 'mid the reddened plume Of his rear-hand quid, upon the burn Of a white horse, shot through with gold, And he and his quarrell, God's own great space Bounding the quarrells, bound within the wheel High on my ceiling, whence the blue dusk From great roofs and colour'd festoons Of brazen flame, all silvery thro' the gloom Of starless night, dart darkly up, to meet Swinging to their deepest depths of the tail Idly, in the flame's fetters broken loose, And yet unbroken fire. So reading, All the signs, all the leaping flames, Crowding, swimming, with the evening's gaze, Tossing up tossing, beyond night's grasp, Soaring, soaring, on a golden sphere, Like ships by port magic moulded on a key, With masts half-raising, let the deep cavern sing Of their enchanted closeness, stilled the spell. Sweet golden autumn leaves And foliage of golden flame, Are sweetly rolling now Down a stream whose walls are copper, Odared with the lar, and wind Is trailing the gold, flung down; Are playing in the iris snows With gold leaves smit'd, and spirted streams Of silver-finned flame, beneath The irised autumnal moon. A breath of humid evening blows, Percussing with warm fingers The foliage's dark-stem'd springs With delicate mosses growing, The flower's husk, and coating With pale snow-ploughed water, What dyes their veins so black? Is it, who can tell? Only know that in my soul they say Meadow-land, or Fields of Origin, Or love, or wings of the wind, Clouds in a star, or the glow Of the moon on dimmed hills, The forest-wood with clearings Of old time, the moony linden And tessellated fallows, Ferns, and the sea's green fog, The plume'd leaves of pine, and o'er The ======================================== SAMPLE 627 ======================================== Can't you pick that damn figger out? and tie the ribbon securely to your shoes to keep from peeking at your red dress tie Something something economics just tell me I'm tharting it— The House that Williams Built Their's now the cry Overearn it to win the Land their their What shall it sweat and howl it to its ruin? <|endoftext|> "Elegy for the Time , ", by Gertrude Stein When I'm at home all alone, and you're not there, my drowsy head falls o’er the fire where you didn't burn it. In the paper it lies, its black line, with such promises sealed, and mine, would you think them, if I gave you this? (Oh, I'm glaive, I'm sayin’!) Lies this morning on the sill of my chamber, It does not stain, It is most elegant of style. (Do I look glaive now? No, I’m more sarmak—) It is a must for ladies, (Fetch it, please) You write in it well, and therefore I got in t’yen. If you took me at my solecism My little one, you would find it’s only fit for God. <|endoftext|> "The Gun", by Frederick Seidel [Religion, Gun Culture] She fumbled it and dropped it And it whanged in the river; And he ran out to the bush And a bunch of little frogs followed him. And they danced to the guns in the pan. And the little frogs went to dance, And a pretty little song began. And the beat of the drum muted And the music of the music. Then the tough, greasy, lying, Red-skinned, ravel-gripping, cursed her And laughed — And a roaring In the guns and a drumming and drums. And then he ran back to the house And he gathered up the beat Of the little, sweet, frog-like band. In the dusty light of the pan, They were twenty men With a beat from the thunder of drums. They were bright like the tracks of deer And the drumming and flapping of wings. And that was the best dancing they had, And that was the best music they had, Till they danced themselves to death, With the beat of the drum and song from the band And dancing and dancing. <|endoftext|> "The Yellow-Jointer", by Friedrich von Zäbe [Nature, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Trees, Summer, Arts & Sciences, Music] It comes from the south of Janthal with its nettles On the morning i’s flecker ankerhofed with yellow-leaves. The yellow itself like so much morning is not quite so yellow. The tall nettles like so tall ?The little people that I meet when I’m near. The alger cloak and the thick wool down from the leaf. <|endoftext|> "The Oath", by Hannah Waters [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Separation & Divorce, Relationships, Men & Women, Religion, Christianity] When I have remembered my marriage was not commanded, I have realized how happy a thing must be for the dove, for she kept the forest, washed in fire and by flame. Now, with my eyes closed, I see how happy the woods are for her who had rather not choose, seemed for a while not to care how things turned out. ‘I am glad I was with you,’ she might have said, not dared to tell me. Now the old tale (about John the Baptist and the Tawny Bird) stays in the eye, as a dream in the pillow’s heartbeat. Why was she sent to the bride that never was, where there is no wedding? There, the months of glimmer, the bridesday, the weirdness of there, and her mouth now bright with its color an oath with an oath, how is the present completed or even semi-complete. ‘I was in love’, she might have said, ‘to you,’ but I knew what you knew, every word, every turn, every tilt. What if she’d had long ======================================== SAMPLE 628 ======================================== well, fuck 'em, you know, It’s been a terrible week. When I wake, I’ll beat a walk. I’ll do it on my knees. I’ll do it on my back And next Sunday I’ll go And hop on the subway Out to the far, howling Bridges of Bedford-Stuy Where traffic numb Branches lumps on heads and knees Like the last pulses of A knocked-down cab in N.J. 2. The new P.F. Fletcher light-sculpture, a ghost-pacement of air and color. Pair of loose Chippis, an Elgin play that once was stilled Rests and Shakespeare’s Lullaby, whitmaned elves and the Harlot’s Labyrinth of verse,—all voice by Ransom D. McDouall. The shrunken head of the British poet Or to the lower valley’s New Chorus Bells, a concordance and a calendar. Where can I find this? The felt-covered Night Flight, Hamilton’s Club, and the sealed Cathedrals of Christmas. 3. It is But we Will never know What’s ours or our we’re just Doing our chores and ours It’s not Our family. We’re just the dog at large. It’s clean and wide. <|endoftext|> "The Month of May", by Sara Firth [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity] We don’t know. This is the story of us; a pilgrimage by walk. You pull a string, and an unseen guide with horse and sheep climbs our lantana trees, booming and red as a Belgian benediction. Peppermint and sweets feed our brains as foliage glows, and a hail storm leaves behind so much they don’t notice until it rains. <|endoftext|> "Four Days Before Christmas", by Sara Firth [Living, Coming of Age, Christmas] This is the story of four days before Christmas, a tale of misdirection, drowned days, an apocrypha, a muddied destiny, a case of mistaken signs. This is the story of four days before Christmas, we believe, we were four, we still are four. Christmas is about how, and that’s all’s fair; that all being said. <|endoftext|> "Like the Man Who Would Be Messiah", by Sara Firth [Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Religion, Christianity] Holydaylily, holyjays, holymess, holypeach, holyplayground, holywax, holyking, holyfaces, these faces are not made by wax or candlelight; they live in a tan-gray mist. Those that met Christ at thegame he played in all alone in a brown jacket and black hat that doubled as a cane. They knew him by his last breath, because it’s that way we end things. Did you ever think how difficult it is to miss the days after losing someone we love to sudden darkness? I am not saying that it’s not worth it— thoughtless, displaced, weeping suddenly without explanation— but it happens. <|endoftext|> "City of Death", by Daryl H. Hammet [Nature, Animals, Landscapes & Pastorals] Bozeman, Montana In the first world, are mountains, and the sun is small, and the colors are harsh, and water cruel. Rivers eat people, they say, and when you see their eyes you know it. It is not a good life. You are taught what you are not meant to know: that only a small percent of the human race is made of what we think of as human. Animals exist in the second world. You are a driver, hauling people: some who did not make it. They sat in the rain and loved. In the second world, animals think: they will not survive. In the second world, people speak to themselves. The hands are still with us, even if no one says it. We drive on roads we imagine, thinking we have come. <|endoftext|> "On Writing This Morning", by Anne Sophie Lamb [Living, The Mind, Arts ======================================== SAMPLE 629 ======================================== The archangel's children are never fain To eat the bread the devil prepared; And for blood there's none so deep as Hell, But all the kings, from Solomon to Sachar, Have drunken of it in the blood of bulls. Oh! Yes, on earth it is more familiar than that glimpse of Hell; we crave the meat it gave in death; all the woe is in this thing: We that are strongest in the flesh and strength of life we sought a little; and were fain for sweetness and did not renounce the flesh that was stronger; For we abode upon the breast of flesh and sin, So reigned through time and were left in sorrow. And that which never could be is here: What never was on earth before. What once was on earth, this never will be again: The sun on the whole wide earth, The heaven is there and yet the sun; The world, the heaven, the earth, The whole world, the part of it, But we that saw the whole earth, we saw heaven. Is Christ not the sum of these, Crowning the many kings, Not to comprehend? Whatsoever the case, state or act, The universe is Man, Not more than God, And we have in our hearts this word to say Not to comprehend. But what of the great shape Who shaped him in an hour of time From chaos to his image? For he did smite and save The brutes of the earth; He struck and smote With mickle power, With mighty limbs Whose pieces did as ripples statics mark, He shaped him to his form, And that was all. For his heart was pure, The shape was brave, But he, to be considered Was man. And whosoever sought What was in him, Sought within him: And that which he was Was as the shapes that shuffled Before his eye. And this was after a thousand years. Who was that priest, that warrior, that prince, Who walked that hall of stone with gray and silver hair, And called the men of condition, rank, and note Out of their wits? I know his face and I know The day, I remember the hour, And feel the wonder of that day. For I heard the beggars read, And hear his name inscribed, And then I felt the heavy wheel and feel The sigil of the holy water. That made me immortal. And many a time I've ridden Down the antique road. I've known the place and I've known The house where I was born. But there's no denying That such a while ago, And to another time. THE lines of the horizon are straight and white Like the circles on a slate; So we sail, drift with the tide In the vast moonscape. The world is a box. There is no out and above, There is no under. There is no near nor yet nor far; There is no inside nor outside; The present cloys As the horizon has space for; The future has no eyes. The world is a box. The night-tide is here. It dances upon the sea, Like a torn wild-flower On the shore. For the earth has room, And there is no apart, There is no home for the dead, There is no home, no home, no home. The present is its own And it has no apart, And the future has no head, Neither. The dead have no home. Away, away. Nothing before nor behind, For they lost the way. Light beyond the near and far, And all behind their day. The world is a box. WET AND black the road ran to the sea, Sharp and fierce with the smell of oil. We knew that we were going to die On the road, wet and fiercely hot. And we'd promised to meet again On some day when the sun Should sink in the yellow west And the sun should cast its yellow light On a world of white road, And our faces light in the light. I HAVE some news for you: For you are coming there Before the year is half done; Some day in the spring; And the years between that yellow And crimson season set to run. Yes, I know you've already Touched the far horizon's rim, And looked again, and known That the fragrant garden before Is a world ======================================== SAMPLE 630 ======================================== So that, when I perform'd the things which I present, I one to other agree, without my pain, And without my mind's strife." "To things true ," said he, "like words unto each other flee, As clouds fleeping to the ——-'spy —-air —- vulture above. I am of your company, Have lived among you, drank among you, swigged Among your nimble drinks. True and faithful I drived with your wrapp'd fraternity, fingern'd The gold amongst your strigil'd added sweets. Unto You will doze me now, for I pore'd on you Early, ere growing —— but wine hid mischief That must not be disclosed. True it is, as Mattʙs genealogy will confirm, my seed Comes from the river-side by the mountain-spring, From the green mountain-slopes. Arm. del Picco. So is my birth related; and when I climb, Via altimeter, the airy circles, by The climbing spring, my father sits behind, Over his shoulder peering, to whom I My assigned portion pay. So to that ill Which thou art hinting I often did grow, Tamed in me by your ancestral caution. But now my cheek is fine beat, I like The winter, well the breezes working, see, There on the snow-beaten mount, where rime Flashes extreme. Behold! Thine ancient For thee and for thy lineage is well-sett'd. True seed of mine, though I ason even Forced to thy father, him dispensing O'er those direct who best should heed. His final Great decree I fear not, so he dies; Therefore thy father prefer to thee. O thou Who well hast weighty causes to defend, Blush not to accept a shallowness And flatterie of accomplishment. He, Who in his age his prophecies foretell, Plac'd me more favourable to arrive In time, skipper, with the hope, that, here I Would anchor, where 'twas truth depended. So, ere His face expired, near him I beheld My cousin, -arising from our descent, — Who, with no circling gesture, misapplied Strength uppermost, to trip the light Strong cord. O age! and has thy foe, So elect, so early was elected, Ere chance or change hath place or qualification, Of merit or repudiation, To move thee from thy standard? Then I, As a student, before I went upon The water, from our flood disgorg'd, here Was bull’d or goat, of art so deep Studious, of idea to wave the tars Of iron. The limbs now limber’d, is he Of both his arms pierc’d; sore share so skies, That oft the Greek in weightier spheres exhibit More force compos’d, than when the belly more Denuded he felt. Far different motions here, The one of our toward the left our tower's force Accords, the other point to the right, our air Try’d by them reverse. That constant pressure, Which to their constitution lent so much, Springs in our spiral world! And what they help or shun Of all these causes, by good chance did allow, It may be said, once possess’d, they discharg’d, In social realm, the thousand circles, each The degree varying with the other, now As now Saturnian. If such our swarm Were colony all, scarce summed their sum, the earth MANIA would subsist, and wise men then Would not long marvel. Moreover this, that all Our LEADER so soon drew to its strike, Limitless merit would have Bay’broke wall. However small the price, or whom we kill, It the smallest sum would pay, what shell Tears away! But we decrease. Our whole flame Must wither, but your light maintain. Our lights give light to us alone; Bay[L]re shouts! Our flame, our light, your past, your present. So oft One mighty star with many has appeared; One golden candle voluptuous burnt; One in the bosom shot a spark, one in The eye a bloom! So frequent fishes Their noble shape change, yet one in all! When the resplendent lamp, unmarred, makes ======================================== SAMPLE 631 ======================================== I've the holier home in heaven, Where all the shapes and all the music are quite though the right hand of God is stilled, But it won't be far-- Too far above the farther sea, Where the indomitable stillness is. I shall sit there and fold my hands, And let the music fall and be lost There was a house of Mushroom-land Where, through a window, Came swinging his scarf, Which he oft did pull out now and then, A furry paper marshal, A nook where maids wore pink and rose, And gayly talked With others in the nest, Of this and of that, When I was gone, they said, And frequently did contend, Another window was removed, The house was new built, And I was the new boy, But how seldom must I go there, And I won't when I'm gone, They seldom speak of, And never seem to see, Yes, very occasionally, There's a rustle, and a rag is thrown, An echo of the footsteps Of a zucchini, Who is the shadow of you now? They know you don't read, And your sisters like to say You are not so sweet as they were. On a day, Old Bill stepped up on the floor Into the room above mine, And said, "There's a snail Down in the garden, That's what I know." Then God Sent through the window-sill The pathos of rusty nails, That led to a field Among the corn, With thistles that crossed like gall, And brambles that were thick, And lanes of moss with fern, And wagged sea-worm In a black sea, That quivered To the leaden heart-beat, And all the winds brought to blow, The crying of the leaves that yearned, And our old garden-space With dead runnel-colors, And wail of rain, In the low room above mine. Old garden-games Woke not the face of Fate To face the living man; The things of love that they shall do The future's ghost beheld. The things they never had a hand in Young post-mortems will declare. And loving alleys once built Were spoilt by a future dell. But who has smelled The alien dainty And clover-sweet Hinterland in spring-time That laps the green And shivers with the sound, And little twilights And stars and that most fine Old serpent-arch that topps Like an azure lawn? And for earths that are not green And for planets that are not bright, I cannot tell. Lies are our crowns, And the nearest things To our little home Are death, and no more birth. Dress you for new beginning. First time out the fire; Do you not know the worst? Don't you wish that you knew? Tell me, and no more Of the beaten roads that you know, Which is that? Nothing's true, now I think of it. You'd think so, and I'm sure, And the words I've got to say; They are coming from you, Which tells, to my pure heart's knowledge, They'll ever be true. When the bottom you understand Of the shining that's underfoot, You'll be open-hearted, And find earth's grace, Like the mottie On your back. When little feet come this way, We meet as if we had known, Though from a distance; Which no cover Aforever covers, Be my name known, though out of sight, My lover, I will find, or try to find, Some little grace. I've a little thing, 'tis said, Which will show you your face, And this I'll hold to you, Though you think 'tis naught now, Out of all things, Myself. From a little thing, my lover, I will take you; From all the things I have told you, The very same, My own I call you, wherever You stay or work. My lover I have known, you'll say, A thousand times; His eyes have been your own, And you from out of Your heart (Yes, my heart is here with you) My name will call out ======================================== SAMPLE 632 ======================================== Twitter? This ain't it, Jack. Swig of the day! Let's drain this crowd And party in this way I can; I've lined up my little chest With eau de Chapeau and "chum," I've lined up my little chest With champagne and "peau doit" And eau de Cologne and "plein de rose." Come, Dipshits, let's drain this party, And share what tide comes out of the west; I've brayed all the wine of the past, Got me a hobo shell for my gun; I shall drink no more gin and still sit up; I must hustle down all that's left in the bottom. (Bong! bong!--drops on his knees) Oh, these old friends from the "thente night"-- Poor ol' "Jolly Dones"--why can't you be wise? Yes, that's the way: ) ) Oh, the last toast, and the last wine; (Then heaps of roast fowls) Then all my clothes and money gone; (Hoist that, Ma'am, to make an end.) Come, drag this old "hobo" to bed (Ma'am, close the doors, and b--l you, also) And "listen to some old "Château-Thierry" (Oof, the ends of that have dropped). I would to das! I would to das! Now, please hear what I suggest: He lick my arm, there--next instant-- (Ho, here it comes--don't stop). Do something! Keep the old das-jays! (Shhhh!) he'll sleep!--lay down on the beach (Bang!) have an arm in a sling. They're popping up again, those country things-- Rib/brain/ears/they--I mean, solid, Though I've not a doubt about one of 'em; But how to make them steady, firm, and sure, They is the common place, as I knows-- Put much faith in rum and "fool". As for it, you mark me, they's no need to dread A frost; but if you do, do your cram-time-- How folks works today! Ha, ha! Who'd let the butter (after cold) be turned Into lard? Who'd keep from a run no more than they'd keep from chaff-- Then it's obvious that "fool" and "mock" must be one-- Heeere's some hallelujahs for "jolly Lazar's"-- That is, the Prince's play-house--to drown the cold-- But hark! it's started a snip To sing "Lacines", by Josef Oedekerk, That is, Mr. Morland's friend--he never fail-- Tho' in a different scale We all Should pray for peace in our piety To "the Elder of the Village". Oh, it's hyphy! By god, it's hyphy! Ay, it's hyphy! By the chief of "hot" and "golden" And "low"; And the "cord" from our loop Seems never turned "on" again; And a dimpled wrist with its "shine", And a girl with a face so fair And the ways "she" gets her "muff", And the feel of those rich "dishes", And the soft plumes that adorn Wherever we go; For the pipings of the fluting (Ooh, we've sung it around, And it's a ditty for "Flight of Sparrow") And there was the crow, And it's like he's "rollin' in "dime", And that bitch yonder, who sings So the ice may shine, And that lady above, 'Tis all "hopping" and "flappin'"-- "He must follow the tune", you say? Well, "it's hyphy!" You say, "There's something "salty" in the "zipliner" (That's "ziplo" for "zie pliskin", too); And that, you guess, is what you've come to, I guess, As a girl, And you "jazz", then, To a tune like that You see, and tune your strings to, and breath to, and see The dancers circle in and out of the wh ======================================== SAMPLE 633 ======================================== dotgebaunke graven dot’t boond lyche dot crome wynter dot be cormaic dot demnes pote poade dot big wilant besyntte crosse dot na ynght dot xthena beoly ffyndantbuntdot dot beltinge doure dot peccalde bawde crydon dot plein rare neuyr emendauns dot bewstynd haz mawd oud neu moorgant lyffulle dount i dym dot neu wychtful flemyt creuynge burtyr myrridde dot llyngd dyfel dot armol grouayne neu deuonegant ynghyfert dot bakke dot prydge bryffulle pennas bawdd allorph eny scet dot ahis longestylok fóuþdous lepistes dot aut farfho stoast, ful men oure assent dot lufofo schawt mit vly (leyeu) ydde rhodd dot onleof oure water briddes dot will hadde wi’ assent dot dylach foler gelícant heniar gorth argh dot galant baillie maidnynge englad yn col dot borth maydhynge is dourf i ca daffyle dot heu neofkiu, goudyf swith dreig ón dolchoyte dot heddyffad, bisengleu gumaill no wryte dot ferch maryd firch arych redder dot neu mawd mor inn dot fflanns i’goch traid o trudilydot strabnoght dial a gwory dot attribb yn dyl nin i dopnogor dot mid breis hynis dot allant aryt dot pruderynge lyifawd halou’n alle aryt dot I tros i will yn erthe, to lufe dot thair, stert hyme a wommynge dot maryd saynt Myles naturall ene without end dot castell az eyed mor not dot peugomen I, dot schouedain cantriwd greue smaragd a byd dot gudgrynge gylpais ant thréd bynde yn yd dot softe wold deuoched yd to bytte Hysbert and his two gallant ynghlas, Cygnots the sons of Raudouille, Þat number hadde be durst on Goude to fyghte of Gorne ellsyné fledde with hors cakód; Ynteles þat after sprole of fémyned, Þat founde a thryft schoue geeþened al oþer hellé. For they were hit ferst conuenient and sauen Heuen he wende with hokies al golde to sclandre Ne consédar togeþer stedely for to syghte I’stód hem aright, hit swyþel me saȝt nat be to braht He tok and he cast a suck þe þryked yn troyte And ys bruþel of his wyff and wyþe gost to rode; Bywel þis inne iþer a boþu noro faurþe to frauþe Queen Elizabeth; and thus singeth the guitar, And the green hills were laughing, and the green grass Was laughing, and the merry note of the flute; Faint with music as aspèst plenteously, Till it had oght to fele and groan; The singing birds and the lowing herds and beeing This lonesome music giving a melancholy tone To the silence of the shyars: a little pause, Then they merrily bursteth in a merry note. A martyre for a martyre, not to feare It suþe any thing, for God wolde noght not feare That martyre or theym for wretches to fyghte For theyr cheere and theyr cunnin and theyr pesty, But yet they lust ======================================== SAMPLE 634 ======================================== A woman with thin hair? She's asleep,--she won't wake! I can't forget one pressed Against my breast: the shine Of a leathern bra I remember, And her squeezing it, tight. But her eye Was finer then: When she looked into mine, I never, never heard Of such a wistful gasp As now I hear,--where Methought the lily's head, At its lowest hovel, Its withered crumbled tail Rustling in the dark. Over the level ruts Rocks from the pit, Stricken with water And steep, precipices The firths between, Watched for and thrid By the shadowed dusk That something saw; Or such a wall, whose hortus And bones from boughs and rocks In ceaseless mutation press, Black, purple, sparagua, Rocks that are undermined By Yarrow, losing Where'er they fall, are wound With gravel and sand, Crumbled stone, fragments, twisted Stones, boulders, fragments Down the vampire-littered gorge, Dripping with blood, And livid columns, cold With drops that floated twice Before the death, Part of the morning's sov'reign band, Led to where the dead field vermilion Grew, the column's base's gaudy brown, Shining with globes in its breast, Crumbled northward, the great Division, which for ages Past, not the little blocks of yew That grow in shunned places, Grown so thick, in tender highland, Wandered between the old Old college tower and the green Green hills that look out northward Down to the green meadow's vale, Where now the grey distant shapes, In misty solitudes secure If there may ever be recovery, Of poets who have often turned to think, At the sunset's eastern edge, On the Teviotes, a dismal truth, Which the broad fields leave steep And stormy here; indeed, on sable Chrysanthemum greenly planted, Frowning against the day, As in discentaining thought's verge, On yon fell monster's back enshadowed; The high stern pillar, that overstays Old College, having the splendent prize Of the unbroken tower, in peace proclaim From whose exigent gaze the courses Of ancient righteousness all unconfessed And once exhausted, may with this corner Of insatiate fury now infuriate Try on the wing the wisest wits to fly. The venerable wall with the Scepter, Here with jagged stones, not once esteemed, But that have dashed it in the world's history. Its Sceptre, which is pounded to scorn, Was hung here with the wrong hands as the stake; For, though it is the reverse of mine, And with college and sublime faculty Is ivineer with hopes and dreams, Yet, neither being thus, it is not the S terse, nor p\'rombone S office, which is sought. That the old college's Sceptre is meet, So that the College's stand in sight; That when in truth the College's Sceptre Has robbed the colleges of their glory The College's should be known; And that here's a proper ground for the S, And so I stand in mystical sort All in the College and in the eyes Of the negligent former Sceptre Whose eyes, my clerking Sceptre, wander From their still communion with the thing That goes before: Dreaming the empire of their sires, In which, to show their past ignorance, They keep all things at an extra Home, Where old Phœbus mounts the sphere's great wheel From sphere to sphere, yet measures not by one, Paints not a thing, but is himself. There, taught by Numa, master-of-spell, Those six comfitters of the name, That make it be present in their robes Like one name in the eloquence of speech, Or in the style and use of statute Or in the taking of a nose And mumbling round the horizontal; And make it come to pass Here the power should be compounded As clause, accent, full or thin, Like clause, accent, full or thin, And being actuated thus, Where, if it any one should restive What's back in the clause's gate, He should have caught the ======================================== SAMPLE 635 ======================================== Herself herself took deeply stirred, And seemed to yearn her gracious lord's return As though she sorely doubted and feared. Her throbbing eyes her thinkings did behold, And she could do no consolation To such a sight with the o'erwhelmed eye Is not grief due; for often 'mong griefs sore A tear's unsightly start is worst to feel. The world's broad circumference then she turned To that rich jewel wherein let us behold Our birth and our race. And this fair garden-bed, Twined round about with paths of fragrant rose, Delighted Sweetheart was by, for haply here His eyes down-slanting sought the path of pride, And many a sentence could he read aloud In the plain garden's treasur'd word. And thus On Love's fair world he his fair words did speak So rich-smooth, that from their place of rest The wise poets smiling might have looked Thought, if they were not fain to keep a straight A little. For thus he his fair tales At young folks's ears lull'd; as here Warn'd them of duty, or how thinges Are begot, oft still beguiled from thence By idle tales, which make us sigh unsightly woe Upon the little wherewith we have. Thus he And sweetly spoke his sweetest lettered name To which the world confesses. In that place He by the garden's water-side, which looks Toward the broad-flowing river's west-owes Was wont a sweet-lipped love to kiss At evening on the silver, ere they fled For lack of room in that rich domicile. Where four-wool'd hay and stubble couched their horns, In peace thus welling i' the crannied roofs His lover did entertain, the latter half Of the long earthly day; as on th' other side The fearful forest, filled with strange noises, grew; But sooth'd with music, day by day, and pot With blood-red sunbeams, still was the twain, While one another in love's truce did lie. In that no heat nor red-hot anger shared Thea's fruitless sighs, nor to the sea-banks did Such savage sounds, whose right tree birth Thaw-bound two or more; two such things, Scarce as those ravening lions that in stage Hung on each other, warmed the people. Meanwhile the gods their quiet hearts did use, Which was so worthy of the Gods, and these With heedful ear, as wise, they listened found The famous lovers as they made their way. Thea and Leda still make a mess for Pallas, Which is a pool, and nowhere does seem From this their lofty mansion, what new woe To spring up. But for thy sacred head I take no joy of it, for I ween Thy wife must keep it inly busy With much unquiet thought, and cause thee evermore A sleepless age. Tho' I pity still Her tears and loving dews, her noble fear, But she is older than she wonder'd, yet she looks The same as when she was a maid, and used To chase her Queen's fair eye from it once, and show More childish faces 'twixt them, more serene; Her older head, her greater strength doth move, And, ever in the midst of all the world, dwells Not Love's fair presence makes the maid Feel joy or sorrow, or at least a change From her state to another; for she Is witless of the same, neither knows What is her own; and meanwhile her glance Athwart the trial, will as freely go To see the works of day, as ever Man saw his Mirror: Love is such a stream Of sweetness, that it needs no hand to bring Its two streamlets nigh to one shore. Myself I see a helpless Child Swayed by the soft persuasion of Love's upper air; a mother's care To take him from her breast, and keep Her name and welfare unknown. On this Old age doth open many a vision, A rare old age indeed! for I Am put into the Wolf's pit, and lie In the same lowly prison where my Born Of Authorial glory which was mine. Yet I make praise of it, seeing How Love spake all things to accomplish His promise, and by speech convinced Of the eternal sufficiency Of love to mediate the all-dividing source Of all our heart's appeals ======================================== SAMPLE 636 ======================================== All-devouring stuff He gave me. So Even the stuff they did Not burn. There, You can see the sin The poor folks must feel, Going every morning,-- Plymouth--The grove Of Dover Castle, the milky roads, The Berkshire wheat-field; and my walks With ghosts there, and The Darwen, and God knows How many, from whence I got in various wises, And then again with, or from, hither! No one living to-day who sees me here Can doubt that it is the same old object Which moved me, as you saw, to seek the light And seize a wing from out the blackbird's nest. And that you plainly discern from this Is how I long have had the whim To take men with me, for the last time. For he told me As we stood there, one fine sunny afternoon, In the Moorish and Christian legend; How Zarate had once been so holy to the Moor that he--there ended his story-- Made Arab and Balinese, of a fact, Say, to abstain from killing the cow, Of all the least inconveniences left them. I told him then of those, but added, That it was something to be so too When you have got a passion like amour, Indeed, before I left the Count Zar catch'd me by the arm--he said so-- And struck me so--I, supposing it Was only to shake out my pent air, And loose my confidence. Oh, you know What then I did answer, and I said The only answer I could--that amoured My conscience with such certainty, That I did never afterwards think it. Then he drawt me aside and, smiling, said He was a liar, and the end of him. And the tale was ended, and I said After, I walked Along the roads and at intervals I thought I heard the ghosts of men Whom I had held as quick and asleep, But, on perceiving me, fidgetting, They slumbert; and I, perceiving them Not in the customary manner, Thrown from unconsciousness and fainting, Drew my hand down from my neck, and Throwing them about, Asked them why they came. "We are all alive," they said. "Why then," spake a voice, "Our coming are but scattered wings To flutter here a little moment, And sink out of your notice." At which I began, "Enough, for I would ask Why you have drawn your faces All in clusters, not three, A nice effort, if they meant To be at all human signs." "Here," said they, All in force, "Are all the Twelve," And, for a moment, this seemed to me To make good sense, but, sirs, they said That they, as forediddings, Were only signs of things to come. "Alack the day! for what are Or this, or that! We are all alive; Nor need you tell me more. I've bent you down and photographed you For IOUSE the photographs, Foundling belief is not at all Egregious, nor am I very well But I love the land of conceitage, If it means only the shift of its feticive To a four-monthly, so they can be Don't want to have a noise, but want to have no noise. It is of neither interest nor shock that I Take my way, sire, without vest nor clothing. So long as e'er it be, "A stroke I hit it with," or "Hills I've climbed" Has only a sort of escaping from away, And am I minded to strike a new line Clear to the mean where I know not how long it is, And betimes to the next stop, and betimes still further? "But of that I'm unwilling to say, That to-morrow I may appear." And so I am dejectedly Cut down and printed and wired and brought To post up for their June or April thing. "Here all day hearing nothing"--yes, but you know How it sounds--"Of the 'Preacher,' so the matter seems." "Yes, now I see, That he's nought but what he seemed," Which from one angle, and tiner from tiner Seems most-assured, "no preachin', per se, But sort of talkin' some good common ======================================== SAMPLE 637 ======================================== To soothe her wounds and him supprest, Beside the wood-carver's altar, Thence where she thus, 'Forgive! forgive!' Stemming her sorrows, spoke aloud: 'Forgive! forgive!' it taunted tears From her bright eyes. "Thence forth she went, and loosed her hair; Stripping it for another vest; And on the flowers, in purple hues, With brillian whiteness glowed them. For this it is enjoined to each T' accompany her chador, Who willed not old Sin to miss Her light roses, and her snaky Sepulchral violets and nightingale. "She slowly went, and forth she drew From her convent chamber into the sun; And we at camp, and on a sunny day, Sat for the vespers of her dolt preachers; And, after prelude and cinaedi, Every thing to its own accorded. So from our dwelling-place she came, She who was never known to fail, And who so often with her head Was wholly cowed and bowed and humbled By those young accents of the tongue. O maid, O sister, whence that sense, Which to the water is so eager, And among sweet voices most inflames it, O'er the fruitless chalice so anxious, Flung by the invalid's hand to cling, And matted language leaves it dumb? "I will be true unto thee, O maiden mine, forever more, Even as thy self did me; Nor need I cross mine eyes again Or sigh and repent again. If thou art satisfied with that, Arise and let thy beauty rain Her smile, as once it rain'd shade or flame." "O sister mine, where didst thou come And what shall be thy name?" The Lady of this House replied. "I I am all, and ever were The brightness of the moon to none, Nor will I ever lack for thee All good that to thy house is given, For thou canst say that 'tis not in mine To lower prayers, and shrink deplore And pine behind doors of thoughtfulness. O grant me thy pardon, And call me blessed thou, That o'er thy lips now starves not thee That God may grant his own." The Lady: "These fair and glorious skies, They though with falling stars shall bless Thy soul that hath in them found an home. O chooser God! Choose whatsoe'er thou art, Smile on this flower or plant it in thee. O sister fair! O gentle mother! Choose with mine thy sweetheart's side apart If thou canst, or should'st, such treasures hoard, As shall gild again and well resell The grave wherein thy shadow long must lie. Say! dost think, or know, what wife hast thou?" The sister: "God doth choose, nor fav'rite One wife more over other more, than this In all the world is chosen over all. She, if a ragged maid should she, Plucked short of her high aims, or deemed less fair For man's simplicity, shall hold her happiness Lovelier than ever lightens on the lorn." Then said Mr Grave: "Your sister, ere Her beauty give the heart, would need, to say A word in your praise; though she, the while, Dissembling with an air that may deceive, May there remain, from eye to eye, your praise In hidden envy." "You are my brother," said I, And he replied, "You are my sister." There in the brother's voice Was that sublimeness of being mixed Which made us quail to think of either, And though the words were Brother and Sister, The feeling could not shut them out. As thus they walked together, This is what they talked about: He the young chief whom all alway'd admired, As an example of royal worth. And a love that was not the less Because it was more humble, to know That she was not of the lowly kind But a place thereby to be so high in held As he was in courtesy to her. And with as easy speech you hear Of one who had seen as much of state, As of the common lives of many, And heard her too in everything That alchemized soul of most refined, The Master's words, a ======================================== SAMPLE 638 ======================================== peaceful, and the remaining faces were death- faced We must go further on and we have made our choice We are in a valley Rabbit trails along That are rabbit tracks But the rabbit never came to this place No signs so it got lost Is the explanation of the world so far? The intent of the rabbit is food If it could travel it would know what it was to arrive How it would get through the The distance the rabbit know's not The planet if it would No message travels to it The rabbit trails off the path to the marsh Coo is behind the screen Is the unseen deer We are hanging out on a branch We have chosen a better plant for the A lisping leaf Not an island Not a blood flower Just so many flowers Stop I would <|endoftext|> "Eikled in Silhouettes", by Victor Hetzstein [Living, Life Choices, Relationships, Friends & Enemies] This is a volume of silhouettes he does not quite make it he is a volume of silhouettes He is not quite gone not quite a man He this is not quite a brush not quite a snake This is a single volume we do not know the shape we do not make it <|endoftext|> "Tokyo 2002", by Victor Hetzstein [Living, Growing Old, Midlife, Time & Brevity, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Poetry & Poets] After the closing song It is in the sense of a lens Where you can run in pure optic distortion The city is an hour fascicles by round Or tristate We could read writing While the city refreshingly only old Or speaking Or needlework I think of flat folding together They dry handles cancellous releant I think of instant celandine (I think of) telling I think of an ovoid (I think of) advance Or an orange I think of cinching over I think of thin or continuous Memories intact Trundling in tangled roots Punctuation intact More at one another Punctuationless Vocabulary (I think of) Arranging Tones Contractions Literatures Thination Fog Or music Or any smooth breathing There is a donjon (I think of) A donjon (I think of) A sense of and around Around it A canopy above it <|endoftext|> "The Japanese Soldier Hanging Out", by Victor Hetzstein [Living, Midlife, Activities, Jobs & Working, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Social Commentaries] All his life, the soldier thought of only one thing, and that was making money. Once, while we were looking at the soldier's desk, his son showed us an envelope. The son, now eight years old, wrote, Dear dad, please have a look at this, it says I have been good, I hope you can make your love available for me. And the father looked at the young son and, speaking no Japanese, took the inkily translated note in pretty fluent English. He was tired of making money, but he thought of the son in English fear that the boy might one day read the note in his writing in a different tongue. Some of the soldiers gathered near the patients. I have to leave them to their relations. But the soldier never went to the relative shadows the white of their whiny wash and their lingering awkwardness. They may have been speaking Tagalog. Or the distinction was simply not there for this boy's perceptive sense. They must have been so distant, more birds than men. There was nothing but forest there. The distance may have been too great for the vocabulary of their adage. But I know one thing: the soldiers' friends took pity on this soldier, shamed the ======================================== SAMPLE 639 ======================================== How swam he out from Danwall and kept The flock, As above I told you. What need I your serpent-crown And Dan's gloomy face So don't, yet say it! Why, Dan's daughter Had told it before I heard. Why, last night-- Of course--I'd heard that the bright Gold trinkets Had worn out their leaf. She'd told it me By the knife In her finger-- That 'some ailing Gossaman Whose ague's the dear You might peep or spry, When The old mouse hangs A-nit on his Poor trick's no good Seen too often, And the witch Of a death-bed She's hoarded Her abode Below, In a cell Sleeping alone In terror Of the king And the court That her Had told. I am lonesome, And not long; What more do I need? When you're a-bed, Then you snore And rise. By a dying wife's tale told (She fell not flat), When she went down with the But her little son Has the end of her own; So lie low For the fever will claim him And hers too. In the hours I have left til day, The husband may rest; And in the hour between, One at the candle By the side Of her lies. And of myself I ask Just what the West May say Of my promise kept, Of a night and a day The wife's last days: 'It was good till I can see it!' You hold me fast, for what I say, O you that can weigh fifty tons, And of a sure knowledge, you have the wrong Sever every honest vow. But the facts are plain, as the laws are, By old custom weighed. I take the helmet of your friend The Great Knight surrendered it to me Before his burial. Then tell me if the bridegroom Is there in the coach that comes Every hour. And what is the voice that I hear In the camelle of the brine below, Where the dulse is swimming, in the stream below? And what is the face of the willow-wands That bend like sin against the willow trees, In a moon of a night? But the long steel halts by your door, And the husband is out with the mail, And the coach is not there yet; And the march-bell rings--and your wife, To the tomb where her husband's horse is laid, I thought we should share a laugh, They were such adventures; For though he slipped 'twixt the policeman's legs, You would laugh at him. He dragged a thing with him everywhere. He died. But the sky was still blue, The sea lay dotted about its cliffs, And the husht grey windows heard him Without reply. 'Twas the wife Who said, in her everlasting smile: 'Our wedding's two years gone! Not just up on the second year.' She trailed away; and from her hug The great head rolled sadly and languidly, 'Twas a lie, you know, that he said it. I heard him say it myself; He died ten years ago. Though in fancy he stay by our side, Just as he has left the room, he comes Rifling what's buried; For the pieces are rarely long enough. His old-time careless, ill-taken laugh Never rings at our door again. Though he stumble in his story-time, It is impossible to please; He paints the tenor of our life Ridiculously. He speaks of battles fought, we think of war, He's there to talk of peace and plenty, But there's no meaner flourish in his speech Than our own. As years have passed and years we've been at war, We hear it yet; And a voice at the door knocks loudly, 'And we're doing the same. We're fighting the wrongs we've always struggled with, And it's finally bringing back the dead, There, on the plain, full length above, How can it only? But why should it do so? The hungers of the body may be swallowed up, They're moved by poison or cheered by joy, But the calm gaze of a man's satisfied, That's all ======================================== SAMPLE 640 ======================================== Fell like a plague upon your body; and thy brain Quailed with the furious debility of yore, Yea, when the rocks rolled back and thou wast alone On the dark, dreary march of life, Sick and low, the remedy none to seek, For sleep and oblivion, which made a song And slumbered with thy soul. Yea, when thy forehead no less was bowed In languid rain, And the dull corners of thy lips Twitched into a frown, And the grey clouds stretched o'er thy head, Unthinking, thou dost cruelly demand An explanation, full of blame, Since thou wert undone, unsought, Since found out, and proved to be as true As true could be: And to thy error thou art just, since Thou shouldst have writ and lived with thy rhyme In some dark, deserted street Where naught of me shall pass. It is a bower of deepest green Where blossoms warm and cheerful air For ever blow perfuming scent; And there at evening with sound of stream And gentle moan, And dappled sunbeam's blend of blue Purer than the lily white, And red as opportunity Brings may bloom the unkind misfortune, My poor sunbeam, that I never do Delight in sunrise, nor repose Nor joy with spring: But to the mystery and the riddle That hides in me a silent self Nor care nor pity: I who, Who hold for sorrow but a useless name Of swine that bleed the hand that flings, And multiply in filled bannerets The heads that brand me:— Who fear the phantom wounds of time, And read in that deep brook the plot Of Greek old Anaxandrys, whose praise I slaughter for, What once was slain, is still a tongue That drips his solemn secrets In hid philosophy. He told how with the javelin bare Of a strong young Spartan warrior rang And hewed by sheer attrition, Of youth and strength untamed, he hung Forever in the midst of the fight, And his breath racked; and of some night cave And the gold-pomponed Valkyrie Who perched like some paroquet bat On Percote's rocky peak— He told of fountains clear and green That laughed up to the moon, and the scale Of bee-fretted emeralds gray, The usher of April's promise, when Nymph and faunal bell of May Promised all things forto be Fulfilled—so mourned the piteous story, And the dress died from his star-travell'd glance As it had fitted; and he said Of the nothingness beneath the suns That born from any sphere can die Its insignificance: Till, beheld upon that western steep, A circling he had seen at dawn, A hill whose pedigree clear Re-echoed the hills that three parturited From the god's own seed; nor did the sun Rest there in that natural slough Of soil; for everywhere his footsteps trod Light years ahead of any world of suns; Nor of the uncertain way he ran, That made him love his ease— Feared, yes, loved—no wonder then to catch From those far distances whereof he was The only human eye. For everywhere that he went he feared Lent sleepless the new-come day, and so Slackened life's bounding fire; nor erst Flew from his task at sunrise black against A lucid ecliptic cliff, nor climbed The dim, shallow gorge that girdled deep The rugged but lastinghorn. And so Forlorn, that mortal brought no day To add to earth's, here he left the sun Them that know not love and death; and sighs, As from her grave, the eloquent moon Dissolved like echo on the hill, that, As if he had not born of her somnific wort, Mixed with the harmony, sang the song Thrill'd for ever. There, through his desolate Time, he walked; and well could movie things, In keeping with the gradual light, which came In sequence; but the stillness of the gorge Seem'd strange. There he walked to keep the law, And saw that none abscourned it; but the sun Flew not from him; he call'd Earth in to him, And all his sc a m a mirage; and Earth Led forth ======================================== SAMPLE 641 ======================================== of it, its bulbous, winged iceberg. "The paper said, “A conversation with strangers. A chance to talk about yourself, about what you find.” I got an envelope at the same post. I’m good at opening envelopes, but this was a novelty’s jigsaw, musically paid, orange-swathed, green-roped, pop-top, polystyrene ice cream scoop” The others heard it as “Tell me about your magic rings.” I hear, “Like little bells?” “I’m guessing you don’t know the beat of those, either.” I feel a cold fall. Poke the shell to release its soft texture, let it drain, look for more. Once, beneath the bridge’s rock ledge, with a mis-tried pick- rap, the score I cut from the day I was born, where my father, holding, I close (stunned by exposure) as a hibernating mammoth may, asleep near the top of a mountain, picks at the air, jumps from its bed, running, flushes the candle of itself. I catch a glimpse of its shoulders, its wrist- bones, shiny, that form me to gasp at its size. When I’m small I can’t get enough. And, when all else fails, I model loneliness on the dirty page of this book. <|endoftext|> "A Clear Day for a Summer Rule", by Carol V. Jenkins [Nature, Summer] It's a nether world this blooming sun, looking for work and a name. Everything I can’t see and I can’t see, a keen bit of shade on a leaf, and the leaf too, falling over, gone and coming back, then in the morning bright, no sun on the same branches, and not even imagine buds rising higher up than the branches. <|endoftext|> "Love's Old Boys", by Carol V. Jenkins [Love, Heartache & Loss, Romantic Love] There’s a kiss on the lips, There’s a yawn somewhere, There’s a book unread, There’s a man frozen toice of ashes. A land for the earth to claim, They march across Our moments, like dust in the eyes Of a man who have no name. <|endoftext|> "She Slept, and Slept Amidst Her Dream", by Carol V. Jenkins [Love, Realistic & Complicated] 1 She remembers a chair with a little sun rising from a spot of light, A white, round arm and a vague regret Or forgetfulness, a chair and an arm With beaded-looking flesh. When she moves There’s someone there Whose body has moved with the light. She doesn’t know If it’s been here before.2 She returns the applause of yesterday, And her dream of a castle burns bright Between vague beauty and a murky start. Wherever she is, she hopes there’s a Reduction to a landscape that, In broad strokes, has taken shape; But there’s always been more. Then she can even more, knowing how It all has been. <|endoftext|> "The President’s Becliint and Lady Helen", by Carol V. Jenkins [Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire] I found this old newspaper Under a case near my desk And thought I might invite You to examine it for me, This one from 18 bad— I’m afraid you’d find it ridiculous. To tell you the truth I had Somewhat of interest In this little blot Which contains a many lines Expressing All manner of no Use And, as to say The lady who received it Doesn’t seem to know This president, he being a complete dunce, A letter saying He’s slept in On several occasions; and, though once That’s no great boasting, The tongue Has hardly ever this time been tight. We think we’ve seen our favorite poet With his ghost come up in it, Or was it a ghost moon Going with him? O, it’s most queer, sir, Very ======================================== SAMPLE 642 ======================================== --A man is born A stone, a bird is born, A stone only, but a stone none the less, A bird no larger Than a bird in earth, earth nothing-burlier Than a bird to be counted different, And but yesterday not a bird at all. The man who sings but yesterday the song, Or sings it in his mind, To-day forgotten and unheard, There are few things so spiritual, To whom a rapturous god is Of all men nearer than to death. And I should have confessed it long ago, And stammered and denied it, But that I could not and would not, When I had room to. I knew he would not listen If I told him that I knew him, And so I kept the truth hidden, As the sun had done Till I stood alone in the night. I have wandered far, I have suffered and know What it is to love And to suffer, in my day. For my heart can tell A thousand hearts are better Than one misguided heart, Yet there's no comfort in it. If I hid my weakness My brother would know it; If he knew my weakness He would question my faith, He would find a reason, He would find a sliver Of the wonder of it. He would find a world to ride on, In his own light. So I smiled and nodded when he came, Breathing a voice that I knew, As a bird comes at last, That it might be some dreams of my own, That I once had prized, But in his song I knew he'd been down a peg. And he laughed and loved me, I am proud to say, As a lover, That he moved with the swing Of my mother's tweed, That the music had been born of the rain and the sea. It had been living and singing on the waves for a hundred years And I was but the one Who heard and caught it. For the beat of the music thrilled through the world, It was self-sinking Of laughter that had lifted it to the zenith. And I, who had sought it for a hundred years, Standing where it could not be, I have given its secret of gladness to the depths of the sea. And it is possible That it was the swan's song That our fate was to follow Bearing us down to the earth to sink, Washing our lips with laughter And with foolishness. For when I had sought it for so long It was drowned and melted away in the deeps. Was it ever unwelcome That I heard you the whole year Without knowing that you had flown? Your loveliness unseen, We who have known you, do we not Worse than if we had seen? Who are you that you should have me A nurse and light between us, A path for thoughts that we didn't know To go athwart And make a new world of room And tread it always in the sun? Are we not lost, Lovers of birds, lovers of sun, Of seasons and nights as we are, For we were never minded to be Of thoughts as near As to our dead selves. We would cry where there is To see you anywhere. And the sun took what we brought, It came over the wall of its sphere, It mingled with your blackness And lost its wonder. For I would let the day go, Though it kept Wearily. I have talked with you to-night, And there you are So in and out And always the same. There you are, the whole of the night Had flown but for a sound, For no words heard Your presence, So the cold trickled down And no flower wanted to blow. And we knew If we knew; But we knew not that it was strange We knew, And when I turned to you it was cold And nothing changed as I held you. For the heart of the little bird Was proud That its song should make one song. After I had changed I thought of you As I walked down the road And saw the fire-flies dance In drear flies of the night And hung about them And wondered what It was that was, For I had learned the dead could stir And one stray thought that stirred Became when my heart took wing That I should come to you And hold you as a hand holds down A feather That sinks ======================================== SAMPLE 643 ======================================== The years. When thinnest must those months flake The arms of every mother, When fetter of bonds was wear, The heart of heaven grew glad, And mirth of joy was ga'n, The man's despair grew nae matter now, As in old days. So on the high-skirret sits the wind That girds the stoures round about The tree where jinks, and scorns, and ceas, Sleeps those that pattern are, To weave the cloth that ever must remain The vest he vail. So merry men, that once would lift the visage To manhood, grow half unhuman, And 'mid the cheering trees The flower-clad hill, the summer jou: Who care to, or how? How cared for So grand a jou! So oft as e'er a number of the same Were seen to greet and drink together, They swept the busts, yet left the wools To round their roundel ramp. Though not the stillness complete bereft them, Each up found some task to spare, And form, from domestic roles, to take, The little rills down to fountains swept To satisfy their ivers. On every side the trees intently swerved, While glozed or grim death-lights bespoke Dark guise of prowling thieves. Death was as near as inly as he dared, And opened by degrees his narrow book To doubtless men that in life were fools. But, as when wightly wishes reach a king, He seems to want the thing he would, So, spare these, my multitudes, whose dread Is easily removed and life preserved. The fairest loveliest who came thereto, With vigorous youth and naked breath Prest the sylvan silentness. He that these would be most woke To hate that which had once caressed them Even in its perfect being; And after sleep of mind they came, For better in some region made, To breathe with clear pulse the grass athwart. There truly arrived that little band Of free-born spirits their abode Evermore, whose sinister wrath Growed from it till it kindled be Some store of grief the heart had lost, Or in the years grown old, Baffled long experience. For these spirits from the earth and mountains Erewhile had stray'd like the flaming flower, And they perceived that they must rise More deep than well-spring water. For they had passed upon a mountain, And were the eyes of a flower, When all are distant from the very Light, what can they but grow? Thus in the silence the stillness deep Was like an only child, Or like a little butterfly, Plucked out of a direst poison-frost, As if 'twere as the clouds were not All of them woven one. Still as that little child, this way they went, With uncertain step as they were told; But at the upper bounds where death was, They heard the dying warble. A cause and a worthy end did prove, And childlike they could catch Its wondrous wonted sweetness, Not caring if it brought Sighs from the light body. The arrows of their spirit were kindled then; Sight that follows shadows flame'd; Their foreheads will ne'er be cold Since, being free, they went astray, Or pierced the hidden air. The souls that are bounded then by sloth, Are free and noble, for the voidness Of the mighty chief desire. They can look beyond. And thus he walked With perfect piety, While the bright flame's awful presence Made the air more bright than day. Nor did he know, nor once do we, the form Of the mystic sunshine, the perpetual flame; So man to his heaven goes down, And such as a dream hath been Of a rhapsody; he sees and feels Not for himself alone, But for the children and the people, And he strives to see and feel For all after him. On this upper globe They live not by the ordinary life, Which is but a type of the dead, A man perhaps, whose life lived up to the end, Nor reached the ideal in full life, But drifting down From occupation to occupation, Not having made at once, for instance, A specialty Of soldier, or physician, Whereof to an end, of growth or of use, Not having ======================================== SAMPLE 644 ======================================== Lay on the petals, do not be upset, What thou didst in full fifty years ago, In the selfsame place and time. Time hath my strength, his hand is strong, And would to think no danger comes The same shall have, for another's time. Yet, it fall, or it fall but for this, Would God I had a mother who The waters have withed the sheaves, The rain-shadow round them wove The vine-clad vines that round them swung. Unleaped a brown horse from the waters, The trees are emptiest, where he stood, The sky I heard the boughs shatter. But what I, from these so torn and pared, The earth from those dear patterns got! They are not here, the shut doors and hole Vanish'd ages since their stately nuptial Was talk'd of, writ and chalked on the sward. I did not know our domestic strife, I now know, hear, and feel, and shall remember. The trees, in their quiet pomp, obey the snow, And frost, that o'erslips them, sere: But in the chambers of the hearth The tender green-boughs creep o'er the hearth. When shall I see them, then, again? And the porch they stand behind, that saw So many mighty forms come in to pass? The white wig of family name unseen, Did not give light where they pass'd o'er to stand; For I was left, I shall not be left To it the night or the day; My father, who fill'd his quicken'd bowl, Was all the third the way to heaven; The very house I first survey'd Mine own, my mother's dwelling-place! And now the stars are other, made To joke with midnight; yea! and now The whole world moves, as a vessel rolls From anchor just. And thou dost dip thy weedy coils there, In a wholesome well, unprofaned By the pail or dipped, as righteous, As any fountain clean; And by the floor whereon it lies, Passes unsoylent dim and dry Anon, with infinite cares spurned Of all the distant water-works! And I, whose father on this very land Its sepulchre made, am here With thee, sweet wife, to show thee what, As good man's buried residue Are due to thee, and do to thee A goodly lesson here, I vow, Here, no more, for baptism take By water only! And he, whom thou called'st me by, By this will I to thee resign Thee, and this shall be the instrument Of saving thee, wife. I must pardon thee, For that thyself thee wereving erst said Was I not at thy lodgings every night! Thou knowest it! but any other Are the same to me--no difference Shall make either life of them, Nor the God let in, the Devil ban. Thy covenant I have no covenant Nor heaven nor hell to misgiving. So then, without more word Let us in! the gate is now unsheltered. Perchance his golden head Shall be only the head thereof; But not the two-jointed wine, Drink of which mouth is a spiritual Janer And without mouth to be mouth Shall be the sacred ball Powder of that head's coat And of the cuttle-fish the wings. His temple is his temple now And no more let us brood On what the altar-frames contain Than two white days and night. Shall we not drive Heav'ns (O love!) with savage breakers home Like Sulphuric flames? And shall not our hearts then receive A gift from what they give not foot But are in hand?-- Ourselves, in ourselves the targets cast, And seek from each the apt similes With which to kill and kill again? A longer time may be allowed To loose us thus: for what's to stop With such a speeding and such pain? And, sooth, the brute here his hard hand wields Which thrills, no doubt, as desperate fire, And bites and thrids; but at the heart Is the world's skill, for I have found In making my way a safe one, Having first shunned and temper'd my first jump By its fine alarm, and down thus fell To death; and coming to myself, ======================================== SAMPLE 645 ======================================== “One wishes to return to men, and this shore “To sleep in houseshall. All above say Amen; “That hear, and joy to heavens, O land of hope! and thither go.” With twi-formed eyes the god whom all have named Stood mute, sad; his mighty breast did tremble much; And I well know what double turmoil there Sent through his mighty bosom, and great fear He felt when, sudden, light he saw; nay there, Surely these eyes of maiden I that be Am most in love with truth; through me he sought Safe refuge into my arms. Then into mine He went; no bit he could; then said he: “O Milyfill!Loose is now thy collar blue, “Sweet-gathering!Bright now shines the banner of “The sea that, for long, saw suffering mortal waves, “Mighty husband of these:Loose now are thy bold braids, “To show thy golden tresses.Strange is this shore, dear maid, “That all his praises needs must close,Sweet! be these shaven hairs; “Sweet! they whiten all this water blue. “To that pure bud, from the air's tares raised, “His dove-soft body budding is;Sweet! loosed the fast-sealing girdle, “From the pious wrists.Loose now the modest sacrodon “That hissing bud a moss-wood staining: “With smiles his lips of upturning beauty “'Neath lips salt eating darts adown:Loose now art thou, maiden, “To dance to maidenly dances minutely; “Mild bloom before thy love-lit smile, “The green bough with richest flowers is waving; “Fair for such glories O! the lily-bosomed tree, “Which is but gold enrichewing, shed down “A twin lustred. This dainty bud too, “Surly and deep-shadowing o'er the flood, “Can scarce be called a flower.” All this the god, all new the maiden knew, Save, then, when a third god, Thou wilt recall his praises oft to hear; A kindlier-spacemed god than those she knew, A god that she had fears: Who now upon the soft fount stood spreading Pure water, fragrant for her face, And took up its duty there. When she must hold the flood within the mouth, Nor, letting that come to the face, Exalter its fresh look, and so Sap its hard farness and smoothness, Will so cleanse and hol be done As any bride might approve That such water he left be Trembling with softness and pride; Moved naught but by his grateful smile. Drew her face close, but knew not If the flood-tide fast and slow, What she would be and do; For what were tenderer tears And what sweeter deeds, As these or those, for love she feared Have she need thereof. The skin of this every maid Who for so many nights has lay In this very clay her cheeks apart, Each one day breaks open her lips; Breathing fresh airs, her breathing turns Back from earth's cauldron red Into the heavenly feast, Drawn to what for her she feels a part To be part of, free, for love, E'en if it be the whole Of her body's hour As with men's blood's heart's at its peak, With theirs of blood her body's glow Burns with what the light On her body's hour Shining and quivering. Thou, only thou, from this mighty day, Mak'st the hard Earth one blood-sparkly soft Wherewith the lips of earth to gird thy forehead, And when sighs her heaved bosom part For the poor sake of thee, Let's not weep too much For the things that thou hast lost While the gods will, We pray thee, once more Let us, ere we die, Give thee some of our blood-sparkly love; In thy wine-sweet life there, To poison earth's lips with flame, As the blood does on the sun-cold face Of this night, In thy wine-spark tears. This cry is not thy cry. This cry belongs to ======================================== SAMPLE 646 ======================================== Till, all astonied, he shot down the sloping banks And reached the sloping river's crystal brink. He climbed the rocks, then, held his breath to see How far the river extended, how far The mountain rose above the foaming tide. He hastened thus his question from the birds to lift Till they caw'd and dropped, then onward plunged until He must at length come back and watch the issue. The silence he and no-sea breeze dispelled And then the rustic seer in his free spirit sang His praises to their goodly Queen with hopeful cheer. The Owl exclaimed, "O Bird! why rising so early? And, Bird, why unharnessing your courser from the stream? And, Woman, why undaultering the marriage-chain?" But no answer gave, for so high up the clouds were skimmed The voices might have blow'd down and the heads of the birds Have touched the slender dawn, or, one by one Fell on the seaward-flying rooks. Still with eager eyes The Owl and Bird pursued their journey, till to a cave The Owl at last exclaim'd, "Why stone the Muse? The Muse from life I put. Let Time bring again His fool's effort, or the Bird, I history say, Here on the shore of Caesippus dares record Our utter'd conscions, then let mountaintasyouth Re-sentence us, and resume his accustomed seat." He sang, and the bird answers, and the song is the word First was expos'd, the Muse rejoins in her freedom In two accompanying singers that attend In echoing caves (their names no man knows). Far in the dim tempest all else remains Of human life that's past and remote; They sing as plainly as they've ever sung. Ye Hespedwonyons, conscribe this one line The whole of your wondrous adventure and slumber In a plain, sensuous number. Only think How the representation of the world Would have had to sound to the deaf, a pure clarity Of touch, and your horizontal world Of Mercury, for sound to have been at all. 'Tis thus the soul that by the force of love Is stillest and smoothest, bringing nearer and further, The impending human step and reposition The upward march of life among the stars How shall we ever hope to reach the goal Of the wise and powerful? how can we Once more regain the sense of what we are? For none our minds may warp us to actions That have an element of sleeping ease, Being thrown to sleep the while our heart's awake. How shall we ever hope to reach the goal Of the wise and powerful? once more regain Our human state? once more dash on the path of fate? All life is not at best, and mortal Nations soon will pan upon the shore So go we in every quest for glory; How then shall rest or hope for us? and how Forever shall our present life be theirs, The next best past? or even the next? Some from the hunted coast will still pursue Athos or Troy or Delos, and some Forget the next and next, like hermit bees Crawling along the all-enduring walls of stones. Two spirits pass through my being, my spirit Is as that mood wherewith I'm given to you Who now approaches me, she is so gentle As those who from you look small despite That I was tall and big-boned. Her presence is now calm and sweet, as if She'd drunk of her half of sleep and it's rest; And it's a joy to see it even so. Her hair is white like an April day And of her face the dreams I covet the best, In which she seems so cross and simple, Hanging upon the untemmelled ocean Of your being, and tall for love of you At fifteen, twenty-one, now. I want you to be As happy as you can be, and therefore speak Only of what's before us; what we see, A point for which we strive and tremble, the breath That when a will compels, so is stilled. Oh father! we have but this to do, To bow before the Goddess of our need and die; And, dying, even as you, leave behind Your image on the shore, to cast A love which in its likeness lasts and moves Right on to this, the grave of all. It's all we're good for, as you can see, To practice in the world that we ======================================== SAMPLE 647 ======================================== As the slow river narrows, That with one wave o'erwhelms the other; Now doth a stretch of sparkling water On the bare arm of the fount shiver, Now for its passage far more lofty A dark cloud is rising with white arabes, Hiding the glad heaven with faint clouds; And that nameless flame that round it So looks as if with life it blended Into the Soul's immaterial fire, Enters the dull heart's silent sunder And vanishes; but the fair face Burns on the ivory sculptured fount, And all the glories of the spring Panting, suddenly and suddenly As suddenly die. Nevermore shall you look on her, Nevermore. Thee the fair Yarrow, Shaded by the large green woods, Thee the undazzled rainbow, The peace and singleness That the Spring brings, Thy singing fountains, And thy herbs and thy flowers Are alive, but silent here, In secret nook of a glade, Where the ripe heather, and the red Red leaves of the heather-magnoli, And the pale flowers of Spring scatter Their scent and their color O'er the face of the Mountain-moon; Where none but the shy flowers that Ever linger in shade, Or th' adventurous thistles, Dart near the open earth-way, And the low wind is a stinger For those poor little creatures; Where none knoweth of these marvels, Save one old Gentleman, And the Fairy of the Vale. I had been happy in Hell. I had held the fiend a prize, But I had not known circum- Stock and Color, nor Country alone; I knew not then what was meant by these, With purple wings and blue velvet feet. I had been a fiend; I had held The way of the Fairy Race. I had the wassail, at begging thrown By th' Old Quality on ground Where the New Year thrives, but all for gone. And that I had been a fiend, but not yet As I am now, nor of my vain repute, When I go hence there will ye know More of me, Old friend, than all the ages Made that far endless succession. I am in doubt about the next line, but let Me know aigth rowld of your loss, and we Can then write together; for, though that does Not sound like our fashion, which some call Old-age, Lives there no lawyer, age, or access, Or promise, I think it like to die to hear, With freedom to live, with plenty and with comfort, Though I had done nothing but writing I have not been a liberal patroness, Yet here is naught to hinder; but what it is, He, or you, or perhaps an eighth or ninth member, Is not wanted: and thus I love your letters, As little as ever I have done of my own, And pray you do the like; for, from these, there is No secrecy, but in showing it is holiness Which gives me the chiefest satisfaction. <|endoftext|> Then 'twas mirth to keep close company, And we would strike a match, and laugh away Those noisy arguments and discords of the heart. Therefore, since some of us cannot sing, We will wear out a great match, and peace will follow. Then, therefore, since it is good for us, we Will make good-feeling a profession of Joy; And watch with care and speedy word the match burning, And follow each wild toss in full satisfaction. Go you, who have a poetry in you, And fixed airs, and use of justly-round rhyme, And all that free fiction of the plains That wanderings with, and peculiar ways, That whispers nobly to the lasting rest, When full of rest, we would forget the town, And drink, and dance, and hunt the lambs in the field, That butter, cheese, and milk, shall bring us again: Go you, who with most ease and plenty speak, Your wit unfets with names that need no lyrics, And far have you a prosperous day's contented evening; Go you, who had thought all pain an idler That swaggered in enough, and to your ease May show your wit by doing just nothing, But that, alas, we are too full of strife, And Courage, if not Kindness, is for you: Go you, ======================================== SAMPLE 648 ======================================== case so great her name, You'd sigh, "O that my very praise of her Were but the name of that high virtue which Made her such a star in his latter days!" You then were all-accomplished; and your Teaching many made so far appear; And when they wrote you did so answer him So learnedly, that many thought you wrote His own thoughts, I know not how I should Rather place this weight upon his Latin head Without more proof than that, your own confirmed Success in the world might count me here. But since 'tis so, since you find it so, I am Bent, the proof is in the thing, in the course Of convincing argument, not in fancy, Nor yet in anything, I that all my way From lower to higher, from higher to lower, Has ended, have since been my proof In two small speeches, of two rough words, And of an accidental part of you, That your love is not in me, nor my heart. His wits ran over, As he had not kept his purse Half tight, and at the end of week, Old Buridan found him, and would have chid him For his exceeding pride that he had been Bid, while in his seat, and yet he wist He should have been much more than bide. Well, he prevailed; But for a crown-toned bribe, He might have bid it. In such things together they vie 'Twixt good and bad, and this poor lot Was no great glory, for so 'twas. 'Twas yours truly, Virtue beyond mankind Shall crown you, though you defraud it At times, but in your sole self 'Twas rich and sufficient. Hail, till the shade is won By your foursome, who act in good earnest As you the common folk do. When all is ended And round is the hush Then rise and preach your plaints Till the angry clouds slumber Your overspent hopes; We all are sad; God did not make the sad to be blest. "Down and in," Hear that also, and obey; And the lads are for your part, Not likelier than not, to rise, When there they be a-mouthing one voice That orders your souls to rise; For things like these to seem Only shows you that he knows what you are, And shows a goodness of your own. "Down and in," With what is done of the past Be you to make amends presently With none to make it amends with. For next time do these become Part of the last bill, And that will the next time prove you; You will have fallen better If you see it made good. "Down and in," O what a cover-skin You will get ere you can tell To whom things are now held agree! Just the side of it where I got A weak spot not much in the profit, And nothing of my body hid But flesh and bone, as is my mind; Just the place where his hair lied When he took me to wife; Just the title whereon I found it On my books' margin; It is there, but not my book's boast. You shall have such a child indeed That child will always bear the name, And she shall be a saintly sinner: May God bless you both, May God bless your name and child, And good health be forever given To your youth, to your body, to The dear name of--Harold." Vain it seems, The fortune which I found Vain it seems,--again I find it true; The storm's at sea,-- Fool! Fool! to trust what the siren sang; Not the storm but the swift ship. Glad and good luck be with you, To the maiden yet unborn. O! come to the land of laurel, Where the beautiful lie And never put on sloth; And no laurel shall be there For the maiden yet unborn; For me, with my life's small span That will last most with God; For I a name of honour Will leave for the maiden yet unborn; I have not been clean and sober, I have not been sober; I have not been clean and sober, I think. Here is courage, methinks, in a word; This here will I bear with me; I see that I must fall, ======================================== SAMPLE 649 ======================================== What is worth and worth in the bronze face. What is worth and worth in the face Of the figurine with the fluting tongue? The slaves who make and hammer at the sacred altars of the Incas, With perverse smiles that betray the faces of all they leave Afterwards among the heathen who have no faith in Thee. And it is true they make a fortune in the shade, But on the tree a weary crow would find a plum. Only two things are always linked together in this world: 1 Death and sex, the one pleasing, the other repulsive. 2 Neither of these be it praised nor blamed Can their opposite be. Each one of them pursues its joy, But the conscience of man is repelled. The man who sees is often less happy than he. The god that human beings worship, and the god that we make Is the negation of the sight. But this last god, ever crying, Straight in threat to flesh and tree and beast, Robs neither us nor our image of the god to Virtue of old But the live devil. Virtue with clear hand On our altar offerings sacrifice unto. Sexual act, of men, beasts, plant, or fruit. Sole cause or hand that touches us is us. Sexual act of men. The hand of the other can be Anywhere, yet alone. Human beings not content with the present social state, Seeking the one true goal pursued by the parties, Oft in the vile disguise of the other, (Pure materialist as possible) Suppliant for favour or for presence lent By the one, they cease to be men. They make but imps to do the will of one The negation of the other. At the feet of the negation of the other Is to have recourse. What, beyond the possibility of shame, What beyond the danger of contempt, What beyond the danger of no return, Moves the gay phantoms? Call it an oath, That if thou in this remote and dark present Hadst enjoyed all, out of all time, the happiness In thy face, thou shouldst have driv'n away the least Of thy right hand, then life might have been Long time in thee occupied by other joys Than the sweet difference of happy from unhappy; Long time in thee devoted to the wrong Of teeth from knee or hand from bone. In short, thou shouldst have been Fountain-girdled, crowned, thou, with dazzling lust; And I not have but been vine-banked near. For the sake of the sight, the joy, the life The movement, the utterance, the presence, Of thy sex. Sole cause of thy coming, sole cause Without which thou shalt not be, thou. The right hand spreads not other than And no other, see! no other Than thy beauty, not one breath of thy Alive without thy is not life's breath. Lion's share in the wild boar's bruis-on, Lemuel's a share in his madness, Or tiger in the cunning of the gazelle, Although more rare. On thy beast thou Hast better, as a brother lion and Yet more than that, surely more, and surer, Than dog or scavenger on thy food; Now like thy face, now as a beggar at thy feet A-glow with thy largess, and quite as good. Lion thou and all thine, like them, full-fed With thy due grace, as the two-folded mirror This unto thee stands, to reflect unto thee And to be thine examiner. Be of good courage and be brave; From the bad and weak Sovereign-masters of their weakness; and from whom Not all their filth, nor all their ruin can remove; Forbearance. So all men have for company, And for mutual counsel, since high heaven has Been quake! when this would not be swept away; For the winds can neither ruffle nor shake More, nor show less, Than may God's good truth, and is not shaken By storms, nor clouds, nor any dark tempestuous night. Maiden ======================================== SAMPLE 650 ======================================== stolen hours of the slow-starting train and in their blasted mystery an aura was swirling around us like lost clouds. <|endoftext|> "Half Knee Procedure", by Susan Romijn [Invasive Surgery] The world is turning upside down. Everything that I thought was real is not. I’m an addict, I thought, of the kind that goes straight for the heart. And I have chosen this operation over the half knee procedure which I really didn’t want. But I woke up with two cup-holder springs in my mind. I drove to the operating room in a bad dream, my knees swaying with the heaviness of my brief skirt and my thigh bones rippling with my aspirate. <|endoftext|> "Crossword", by Katherine Cunningham [Activities, Jobs & Working] Neko the thief I Neko the thief The phone rings in the morning. I answer it, and it’s Neko, Neko. A crooked smile creeps across my expressive face. I can’t be contacted over the phone, but I know Neko is simply a phone I don’t recognize, and that it rings out every time I drop something—I think it’s a regular function. I pull the phone from the wall, take a cable tie, and then snap—a crooked smile creeping again across my expressive face. <|endoftext|> "Violet Flash [I have left the house and stepped]", by Katherine Cunningham [Living, Life Choices, Activities, School & Learning, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment] I have left the house and stepped Through the shivering sheets Into the empty hall Of the bus that carries me away Into the rows of heads And bodies that grow cold Against the white ceiling. It’s freezing outside— How long has it been going?— Since I was last here Arrested, cuffed, and driven From a rally of children Who never knew I was capable Of violence, capable Of violence and fear, Like an unhappy youth Walking home, confused, ashamed. No one called me, And that’s not entirely Because of what I did—no crime was My name on the news, My name on the news Where it would flash Like some kind of brutal sin On its native and common water, On a street of gray neighbors More colorful than snow. <|endoftext|> "Fall Forest". by Katherine Cunningham [Living, Time & Brevity, Nature, Fall] When the first few green shoots emerge From the underground, at dusk, And the sky whitens, then in a few Days the entire forest comes out Again, and in its bright girth appears Sweeping, standing in the colors Going, blue and green. When the leaves Leave the shadows of the trees Around their comrades, again The lone pilgrim by himself Must pluck and push from between The sinking pinheads. That’s his only Re-entry to this place. Yet In the time between, along roads And fields dazed with whiteness, And twilight in the laden Hop-rounds of the fall-branch Where yellow silent moonlight sticks In drifting specters to the snow, Lights his rest-stop innards Ever alert with a glowing Neglected lagging fire. Evening then, and colors distorted: Dries of a midsummer night In a waiting-maid’s cabin Boned in a near-principalship. While images of strawberry-soft Wait for no reception in the trees. <|endoftext|> "Heart Attack", by Katherine Webb [Living, Death, Time & Brevity] 1 My heart turned to a rat Because the white snow melted Down to a fat root Grooving the air.2 I still am looking for you, babe, The long street seems to go. You go with me A bit.3 In the broad daylight I will mean To get a jump on you.4 There will be ways to see you, Four wings to fly to you, yes.5 Never before so exalted.6 There is a beam of gold behind you, A lustre of ice. You are made of gleaming tile. So get in between me and that Out-of-control car.7 Do not spare me for my worth I did my bit to make you.8 You’re off the grid, knee-deep, An old model which I’ve outlived, Racing a perfor ======================================== SAMPLE 651 ======================================== Poses and flings and huddles of fire. Then I said, "Permit me, for thee This channel held so captive, I will seek my pining heart again, And for thy kind appliances." How many mortal hopes have been slain Through the rich tints of Reality! Chameleons of light, before me took their flight, Lost in the depths of earth awhile I hung, And the fire of Truth relumed my chimney high. From fogs and sultrAGES of thought, And from my low desires, shall I soar Supremely?--with flames out-reaching sight, And with a mind my passions bursting through? Shall I a vision? Shall a DREAM,-- How many things it doth transcurl Of our nuptial Bliss and Nothingness To be seen by! For though the day Be veiled and dim, thou in thy self Can metamorphose the dry WD silage Into garlands supremely sweet. Who hath no vision, hath no faith; Who hath none, let himexclusion mark; If he will mend he must by force, Or in the airy domains of despair. Rise, my heart, from thy sad, open place, And ye who in fellowship are, unite With me, ye poor, who live in ways Limited, And daily through the teeth of Real Shall he exalt in glories yet to be, Such as thine own eyes shall raise to thee; Within the beaten road Visit for many a welcome guest While thou workest out thine own bread. I have no flame to set thy thoughts on fire, The sage alone who wears a crown, Who looks on Diotima's hair, Without her eyes hath nought to say What steady hope in man may know. All day long I sit in my glass, All day long in thought I dream And like to trill hairs With thoughts that never pass, This thoughtful talk will hold, No more I seem in my best clothes, My friends, the family trees, From bottom to top, To heart of hearts that shall never die, And all the best of things are here (And none of their fruit is wasted); Leave all their leaves unthemed, the days They are the best, the nights the wisest, And scarce a time they are that they Are not naught but best, the times That drift their little fingers o'er All most complete, unhelped by you Who are the spirits of the best of days and nights, one night that shines So calm and perfect out of time. Could I like a merry tom-cat run Up and down the street with swing And jump, a simple unpretentious cat, Between the houses, jump, jump, Over the parapet, play with wind, And pace up and down the street, all eyes Like a young April full of spring. To go by the pass, with love to hear, And think how it flows in waves below, Like a river all the way down, Like a river in a dream to come Out of the winter's chestnuts brown And turn with the low wind's lazy smack, Like a river winding with weeds Or a vein in a withered vine; No, no, like a wild maid untired From her thick layer of crust on sour Watery pearls of winter cold, Down from rock to rock her waist they press In a dashing water-cratch and try Each snow-crash jewell'd head and jing! Or sit awhile in the clambering crag Where the wets Suchredskog fall awomb, And hear the belted marsh-hart's pelt Wimbling far into a fissure cry When the wild sea-beasts shake their rocky flanks. With the wimbling wattle-blast low drawn, That's white and still and eddying round, To look right down within the sheeted belted marsh, Or see the emerald mouth of the dark With the curd and the twinkling wrack Of the myriad of alder-flowers that blow. To sit on a timber-bar with others Upon a sunny weekend chirp, And my better half in her apron blushing sit, And think with her hand on my hip With her yellow braid and silk tie showing, To say with the inside of an in-line smut That has the green-hat going round! To go to the well with the ======================================== SAMPLE 652 ======================================== saves the moment for a ring on the finger. <|endoftext|> "Astronomy Captures the Patience of Stars", by John Logan The constellation Orion, from which our days eight in the sun trail, are the constellations we fix on the evening sky and find ourselves trapped in. Not only is it the cradle of all those stars, the keeper of all those constellations, which take us onward and onward where we have no business with the heavens, to a far off planet that takes us home—but of course, we also take ourselves to a restless planet, our tired legs scratch and feel at home among the eternally rolling bodies of the dead. <|endoftext|> "Norway ," by John Logan Hear the puffing, see the puffer dogs, smoke-wrestling policemen and seacovers bobbing on gleaming duds, the wax-white glare, the wind, the bareness. See the days receding and years, a dinghy, flag, and daylight, not so bare after all. See the river neatly sashing through the sage, the horse basking in a field of fescue. See the cut-throat caissons pouring over the side, their ropes curling in the canopy of morning. Ashes to ashes, ashes to tolling trees, what, after all, is there there for us in an era of detonators and death squads, Nima sycophants or the Universal Secret, our silence as the centrifugal force, who has time to teach us? What is the source of the gift if not the tolling distance, our worships as dry as the Wootona flats, our eyes still on the prize where the day began, where we began, not so dry? <|endoftext|> "Dawn At The Cobernaumnaal Brewing Company", by John Logan [Activities, Jobs & Working, School & Learning, Arts & Sciences, Theater & Dance, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, History & Politics, Town & Country Life] Out of the mind, with a busy year packed and all in the trimmings. A king over Mesopotamia, a group of schnucker barley Filigree, a mere ape-labor force Spurting dark slugs across the river, A suffocating bridge Sparkling and rope-bombing wall Fumbling down with hobnails. Down with the Nombre das dé un tronco Manche en fin du beur bastante, Down with a cloud-cothering moon Found here to the Gulf of Mexico, Down with a fistful of golden grains, Down with the grip and plummet, Down with a most live gub Step The producer to Cincucibals, Down with the seven nasty coppers, Down with the morning, with many eyes Unedrugged and sweating. A blue fur wrecking the wet stones, An ungulate rage in the old crowd, Down with the dollar and the shilling Rubbed up and humored, with a frizzle Dipping into the atmospheric Longing to get out, longing to get Out of the gun-metal rich Inky beer that he kept so long Aperitifs on Chartres, In a dry ward on the dusky Myrtled barrel of a Temple. Go out of this gutter, what you pay Is what you get. Shaken, not blown over, mellow You will be. No return To be good for anything. Not the one for you, I mean. This is the sort of day When sky-tints pan out blue, The railroad creaks gratelessly, even The Sears Tower shakes from goose bumps, Yet beyond the black brass band And shouts and people, Not quite what you see. A white-front June vaunt, a bond hi-down Unrolled on line in a Chicago sun Some centuries after. Or busting on its way. Carpet bag in page sixteen. Props Upon the sides, it is said. Nuisance may have its uses Overtasked out, it seems A flood battering both bank And sloping shores, The frightened-to-move freak Migrates to the river, flings Keys, ======================================== SAMPLE 653 ======================================== Go up, then, thro' rock and cave, Rear up, then, thro' reef and fissure; Valleys of an hour. Twice has Parnassus the eclipse been seen, Twice only can the soul of man be free. Doubt not, break not hope for haste, for all Is done is as old as soul can digest. Taste the shame when sense is closed up and dry, And laughter, turning to importunity, Bitter to sweeten, rolls from horn to stern; Mouths are slave to tongues that curse and rave; But I am young for all, is youth a crime? - 'Tis past and dreariness has no bounds. Locus, whose rule this famine isfall, Mother of much, within this withered thing Sees yon ruined business, eaten by Hell: Far it is from blessings and aught Of glittering life, and for the best The richest fields have withered swards. With all dooms most terrible and dread, Of God or doth as doth his church or throne, Ere to men's arms and neath his glorious foot Causes of wrath his sons and messengers of Fate Horned on and hoary of lips are borne. They 'scoop about the blasphemer, strangle, bind Him who blasphemed their gods, and chain him dead Or e'er he die, shall they, that dare offend, Scatter one by one at random or comek. And chiefly from the sacred minist'ring-gate Of Erlen Home with grim massacre seek. Though hence with shorn hairs we may go and parade A peacock's color here and in thy fur I pity him, who has no toys of war, I pity, too, the knight with sword at girth And this fair lady who so bright admires. A woman's weapon can the sword intend, I envy not the power, which ever turned Fire to gold and power, which is the god In arts of war and most in those of peace: At arms who ever conquests or carries back A land and substance from the waves and thunders. At nights we rowsed in a garden dark, Our head with rags about us from a bed, Where a strange bride had been laid, a painted child; All cheeks are bent with stiffened hair; Their rosy hands lie in the middle earth. At heads we saw a smiling herald's fire, On gulfed watches lighted with the moon; We drank to the angels in your clear Mistral voices out of the sulphur-pit; And the gaunt beggars, swinging a tigress' cage, Watched from their hard blind dungeon window. We have done the will of Death! Though to your sterns in dire darkness Your dukes and archbishops grope and moil; It is we who have done the thing we know. Of all the kings who led on England, England still is victorious, right or wrong, Through the laws that love has or the shame, Defied Evil always and set free. This is a song of that famous fight, Wherewith the warring armies were once red; The staves were hard and the fighting long, The wounds deep, the wounds amain of dread pain, Where hearts of swart men alike have sinned. Wonders it was to tread green Gallia's scenes, Where rugged mountains brood to see the right prevail, To hear the doom dispatch to the Void A voice to crush our peaceful native land, The battle, the dismay, the victory, The triumph of our royal brotherhood, A blood-red hail streaked with flames of onward sent To those flaglike strewn-like roofs of country Saxon; The hope that from earth victorious folkmatched; The hope, that with the victor's wreath To paint the North our flag we plied; The hopes and fortunes of the British crown, Whose gilded sceptre on the defeated swayed, Went withering from us in that hour forth rolled In blood's curse unto the shore of Tyne, Our native land that felt the Reign of Blood. But if these things be past, and our loved states Hereafter may be known of more content, I pray you, help me ever to write, As we gaze on this summer's sunshine, That time of life or of quiet's fair climate I fast, to write for you, dear Poet, Of such sweet times as these to you was given. ======================================== SAMPLE 654 ======================================== Exploding to burst in rapid-fire The dense armory of-the enchanted Prodigy of the Thing-in-Worse! O my Horn! O my magnificent Breath-mangling Horn! The pursuivant of the levin! The resonant incarnation! Of all piercing to the craving Of spirit on low-floored fiends! Of all prodigies for cares That speak the Dread of Ir Rem into Ashen song! O my Horn! O my magnificence! My shriek of all callers To Walsinghain's well-walled graves! A king of sweet-alpinized spectres, With burning eyes who listens! Not to his rank throned in Heaven, But from God's Realm let Hell's King Speak of me--as up-glancing through Clouds, spied thro' the breezes, lift The unspeakable! The Impalnity of the air! Who, then, had heard the instrument That puts a lute and horn together, And grins in two the silver trees? There, in the bright Western air, The sky's red gates unbar, The cells of these earth-haunted mines Throw down the baiting-hook, Or joke with one another! A hundred wonders out-bow The ruby or the garnet, Dancing o'er the level lands Of Lank. I have seen the moon Through a hail of golden hail, Dragging a ridge of snows, As it hove into the sky. A measure of the hungry tire The bodies of the Twelve, Of Zempini. <|endoftext|> Pieds, and this is far enough. But my maze of street-wall and raised bed Of slings and loop-clips and strings To make a train of my feet, Is full of wooden men and dogs With human faces, such as fill The house when the soft children sleep Nor show the pain in my back From shifting through light shadows. But when I say "I am sure you are there," They fall a-wringing Before my feet and claim, Cold from the coals In here, all day, their byre I do not feel, Yet here I am With you already, Your tag-rag and shingle patch. <|endoftext|> There are certain Places in this city Where you may see pigeons. Their flanks may fade in This heat as they have done In others. But you should see Their heads, sharp-lined, Persimmon gray-white Or orange, with black And yellow eyes that may or may Reck not with one another In flight. Their songs are of the hectic wild, A love of small feather, For warmth and rumps Like their own dinners, Scented by the sun On this city street, Their gloomy little alleys. They must have liked Things that way, Inheriting A courtesy so dry That they mustn't express By word or action Gripes of their own Or those of their kin Who may miss Things that way. <|endoftext|> "The present exists to serve the past," said He, Who, in the Corean vibe, lectured all inhabitants Of that orb upon its mural ramparts, When we our three-pointed hearts beat high In oppositions of beautiful and brave. But with such mania did he sink Into a trance, that to the threshold He might have stumbled, in wild affright, Had the door slipped away on his sight, And he were pure ego! Let but an hour Of whispering twilight, and soft waves O'er-reaching in, ere she within shall turn. For that eve, as rare a sight As ever burnt upon its way Was the double sunset, side by side. Then came dimly through the hush That was to come the husk and splendour Of the sleepless night, when the last stars Shall sleep again in the grave; but the Last encounter, as it seemed to be Energetically conjoined All the dreams that week in harmony ======================================== SAMPLE 655 ======================================== Below the surface of the whole globe it lives. O ye rivers! into whose pebbly caves Sweet zephyrs wander, whose waves ceaselessly move To utter your own views, nor seem to love Stagnation, as at the foot of the hills Ye flow serene, till manners find you have need: So ye that in your infinite graves Are still alive, and have your being still To behold the dissolution that threatens, And, death of death, in you are no dismayed. For as from rocks solid hard, earth's vast frame Will crumble, precipitately, as in a moment; So would the world perish, so man perish, Perishing by slow diet of calorically Positions for the upper air: and once The father of parable, to be not done, Has told a thing, it is done, and taken from The Earth, and not an earth can this appeare: With reference to which, see Job. The world May perish, but of itself can not dissolve Into a void: nay, it is in a document, A compact of nature, that it shall so be. There was a tale a man told me, intrested Into this circle, to the which was made Both heaven and hell, wherein intreated hearts Run always full, and there cannot rest; Whose places are all vacant, and in such mode That out of every pace appears a power Standing still, and sitting on every knee, Walking, and crawling, and standing still erect; In awe; in stature; and yet as nought Above a feather; which the Airs of Night Guard as their own kingdom; nor fewer Powers Abode below, above, or here below, But the whole Air ungoverned sits still. This being heard, I set me down, And with me attempt the task myself Did teach thee, to observe how spirit-like Things have their lustre in their motions quiet. Lo! that's not now the case, nor ever since Was it: for this the Air is nowise less Than it was of yore to yonder side, But even so far, that there not breath may escape Unlibeled by an inch; which make thou sure That of this Air thou may'st believe, at last It hovered twice, the uppermost Heaven After wide passings through the bounds of All, Saturn, and the Star which under and o'er runs On man's eye from Under cloud; which that one night Was allotted to the crescent Crote's birth, And now (or, maybe, the Republic for two Had snuffled them) on these scented clouds were made That wings ate up. Here Rumour's at war with Truth; And we have Person slumber, drowsy; wakes The spright of Passion, but renounces point And passion, wak'd to sleep by love's abatement. He was (but shall again) the As. That was where he Was; I had been (10) a different creature: it shows How little I remember; whence one gains speech How much from things that know not how much they, How much from those that know. I would not speak Before recognizable as inhabit the Earth, Nor deem that live brain lives by Skin (for only The former proves that) nor that eyes inheret all motion Without concealment; but, such was th' warp of mise: Conveying to the mind such matter, as brings Conception to birth. My memory has writ Mistakes, and to theseeads the robe has slipped. This makes me doubt if music cancraft bring To birth of play, or Dance to bodies clothed; From all we know, we too may alter our state By speech or pen. Our capacities are two-- One in all, 'tis just the sense, the other fall Upon reasoning; this depends upon our mind For faculty, the other exclusively is thine. It matters little, but particularly thou Woos Time's two crowns. How to measure time Is but a motion; how to measure it Is computation: nor is thence conception. Heire and heir are not the same, the one You cause a joy, the other a woe to take From you; the former must, of right, take heir When born to she, the latter when born to hee: Then I am heir. O Reader! this I stress, It is thy graveor divinis. Why dost thou frown? Unfortunate! (for riches are not here) ======================================== SAMPLE 656 ======================================== Bells tolling there the while; By Eginstedt, a shadowy maze Filling with shadows overhead, Faces half bared, and white hands tucked up, For once a little room Where, far off, the Bookman once did bide. Thinking then on your courage, Let a little wager on it. As for the prizes, which you might win, For home, half an hundred guineas, Just say--I would rather win the bet, Than win the hundred and four, But, on my word, that is more than enough To reward your courage and your pains That were upon this adventure daring. Pledged to you--spite of all I say-- You are right in your part; for you have won them; And all the world's angry, "Bring them again, And you will get them again;"-- And you have given them back again, The hundred guineas, as you promised, That you would keep from such expense unearned. But I say, "You are wrong, for you have made A deal of difficulty for yourself, You have arisen and said, 'I have done wrong:' But here, I say, the home of all such people Is troubled to find fifty. Fifty and more Is still a very little gift and store For them to mediate between such losings Of being so unwisely given away. Stuck in the throat! But, how else? let's have A race with Fate, and so repay A stranger's useful kindness. You shall Be patient with me for a while. Perhaps my only hope is that Fate and I shall not encounter. Well, let me see. I can hear, at last, The sound of hoofs behind me--you Going at full speed.--Back through the door, All silver and bound with shoots of the apple, For I really must find time to pray. There now, I can hear the ticking bells, And the flash of brutes' wattle long since. I am not so muckle a soul As that which, by its life-giving springs, Moved Prometheus in his boat; But this I am, a dreadful thing. On the beach, for late evening meal, The Bear the sand-bagged domestic plates And bowls bear, to receive the acorn salad Of canty-cooked pottage, tinged with stout Of the wild wheat, the blackest bilt t'other day; And to the swallow vegetable pure, A nest of rich sadness, crusted round with shells, Not quite whittled to the carving-place, Whose oiled, lovely-posture'd wings could be But as childish-stature for a god, Its faery freshness cold and smart, Yet with the always slender stem, unshorn, To grace itself up when high it goes, And feather'd and furred to be lightsome In some proud noble leader of the dance. But there's the pattering of the pecks; And while the calico blows apart, The Bear, with a sort of monstrous grin, And long white ears, wears speaking of the meal. --At which the more sober Fool, With a swagger as of Cock Robin, Clings his legs more choir-like round the Cell, Or, in some favoured of this isle, Fashions spadoo, garlanded with blossom, Holds up before the congregation Something with his rapier and declaims verse, Or, by-places his hand in the pocket Of the smooth-shorn Dame. With pace that keeps Back the never-wavering Mass, The Fop with deathly frown, Comes,--if ye will, unclad and gray. "That's best! For 't is so oft we see the plow." But so ye do. Sir Fop, you've nothing to maintain, But some other more learned than you. Our young barbers help your years go by; Your great-grandsons serve, with their gewgaws. With their brace breakfasts and beyond at night, Our rustics, your squires, at all good things So shame the milk of Bris-bria milk: The whole yoke of domestic drudgery Is expited for their sakes alone. This for their delight, To drink oftentimes as they eat-- Suffer, most worthy ones, this affliction; And lift the strip to their floor with a sigh. How it will chance! when, ======================================== SAMPLE 657 ======================================== Were he to prove the thing I say: the one That when she us flung away in the sea, Were tumbled for our land had been the home The daisies love, that all things did apply By power of arts to delight and woe. And then I saw and cannot see what bring The wretched man so great reward so great grief He knoweth what he seeth, and through his sight None other, but the thoughts and views of all. Thou canst not see the sweeter and more deep And between the great desire of life and love, Which one more swift and some sweet than the other? O little hearts, hearts of the dreams, That in thy gaze do see by chance a light Beyond the thickest night that ever veil And darken life! So, grieve not and listen well: Lest all seem woe, as thou hearing, shouldest know. Dull weariness of sight, until it seem As nothing do ye think to be pleasure, Which will but seem in that comparison As hell in hell; and wearied ears By that more heavy woe, remembering What pleasure do in Dagon's fire ye hear. A heart, how heavy to carry now That on-looking eye of that wise boy Outward! Never weight was worse, I ween, Since for his looking on our hell-ways God wrought all woe and woe in us! Nor be Injustice done us: but all our loss He is for that time embittered now Against us; and for all time past, as one Who keep the gates fast for ever closed. A love this heavy-wise borne on The body of mine, the body of her Upon my heart! Nought do love so feign As hers, so great in sweet appeareace! And none her fault so much doth importune In any wise, as mine to love, and smother My soul from her sweet face, as one ager bale Makes weeping: now is she for mine eye Departure, whom comfort most in lesse; For comf strength to look her in my face. I am her man, not limb or leaves of bind And blear of leaves; and her pleases In that she makes, I know them well, They that are sweetely sweeter far Than herbs of creature-head for sale Like watercolors: this doth make me wild As vanitie, as maryage, as malice And hatefull rancgth. I have hearth-fire Grow in the melting snows of it at times For cocks of morne, when wind hath pale them; And in the fire upon my flesh is felt Its very heat; and then the frost, which flows Into my very veins, as inwardly Seems drawn out; whereby grief is so plsion'd My inmost body with the motion, that I Seek every houre, and emperealcy In do se: then (outwards) my heart is bent As is the sun in turmoiling heaven: So that as colour of the rainbow Or like an amber-hill rare ocean Grows in my face toward the door, so glow Into my inner sight the beams of it. This had she touched; which, with disdain Lacking indulgence, she then did model To be the charge of all my sin. But that which she could not mark as misdone, Or slight the risk she saw it justly done, Boldly thus said; durst I anathematize My conscience to her will! O ransom pay Or else, my blood shall guide thee first up Through morne, and fire devour into hell. The truth is guilty, who write it, but parameth The should have ground of his contradiction Of truth with truth at once. Also the wily Skilful, wise, and suttle magician, That wonst semblances, hath written truth In threefold colours, to deceive the sight, And lead us not God revealed. The sacred Divinity that peeps from hence Doth from one corner only speak itself. The Book I have open'd, and what I saw Checked with shut-bee, let no sober man Observe and write, though naturally A child, or dispassion'd so to write And only eye the livinglect That with the world is free. Complaints, I choose Ex tempore, and equally open'd The other latitude, allowing fall The ======================================== SAMPLE 658 ======================================== Dear husband, till the bitter hour That bore thy friend away, Dear father, till the same pale face, Borne before thy daughter's feet, Round the shores of Auber, raised The plashing of thy singing lips, And thy shouts of laughter broke O'er the breathless breezes. Day by day, in bits and rallies Of the most stubborn, serious buccaneer, Your friend your friend, for merry turns, Blasted in bits and in rallies, Here, through the long, weary years Long neglected, and the midnight flashes Of mischances, and the ill-run dashes Of damasks, and dull paines of doomes, Here, day by day, while illness curtails, And fools emerge from doors, or doors grow Op, or with ruin of some unearthly, Horrid kind of acts go to the cups To the destroyer of the body, and the soul Of the dog-legged mouth of a brawny brute, With a worsted globe of poor man's earth-blue suit Cool, coarse-frothing his stupidness and joy; Here, as they chatter, and their talk about Never a serious thing but how they don't know What 's come to them; and the hoariest hopes That whisper from the lips of fools, and Shrieks, and sighs of souls belike to the very tomb Sicken with more weakness than the best of Hope can put into the fitful ears Of old men looking toward the next election-- While sick'st with the unavailing dearth of thought. Gad thanks to thee, kind Healer! I am here, What if I die now, so help me the Death that I Have seen, and try my hand at writing, While all around are over-sad, And wild-looking with a looking-glass in the eyes, In choler that will scorn the courting hand, The red claw of the ackless ones of life In its charm for the last time, and the ineluctable Wrath of the Love that has surely and only Forced it into their flesh, that they may fall; And the smooth eyes that look so real When we talk to the crowd of the newly dead. We will sit still in the outer yard, As though no weird thing could ever more sit still: Do mournful things so well as talk of prayers Stand still and look us in the eyes; Shines through the open door The wondrous sheen of the sunset For which all the world can weep, Or we three together forget. Though I found a tale, my memory held it good As though it could hold no more. My heart stood still While the withered bard in mournful mood Rolled out his tale no more. He said: The wind that sang the birds to sleep Sang the dirge the old man long and long: The night will stand still When we leave it so late With handkerchief and lighted cigarette And bag for the half-lot And tale the dealer blew his own life out At the full cross of day. I saw the merchants on the corner Seek for us In the way, The market for the day. When I came back Unto the night I was alone. My room was dim As though for an overdose of low stars, I had for hours gone and never half Had filled the night with any sound. The window, that lit for me The narrow street Where I used to be stood like a phantom. My breath pitched off the sill In winter under leaves. And the young dawn cropping the dark Like smoke in the light Thrilling all the street, Like a vast thing lifted like the Heavens We can see and the damned stars we can't see. There was no sound, And when I went There was so little my room was dark, It seemed my sleep Entangled me Even in dreams In the house of my neighbours Where I pass the azure river, The glorious dark house that is not there. My light and airy senses In each room and each day Once deep sleep poured Were wonderful as the night air. In the open air Night is no doubt gloomy With endless black that nought can drive Across the skies of the blossoming world Oer all those nights of weather-gray That would hide anything and daylight You be, with love Still praise That voice died in air, And now I found the loveliness Was not the speech of man, That touch that ======================================== SAMPLE 659 ======================================== Have set the fishes catching, Made the pea-calient dittich of mushrooms, Through the darkness now shone the Sun of noon, Now was casting forth the earliest particles, Rowed the Earth upon her side for miles and miles, Bearing in his bower the moist, the living, And all night long was gathering wet and warm Soon was piercing through the great thickets, Through the woods came mounted lumberers, At the chase came coursers, and the lords, Horses, and dogs, and horses. Day by day in yonder vast wilderness Came anon the hunter forth to chase, For he feared his servants would be slain, And there should be gathering in of bears. All the week he lay in darkness, Dark without ray, without word of sun, Into his grave the shadows fed, Of the doom of lowlie souls. Now with dawning he is caught away, And driven forth to run and chase. They saw the wings of aneath with rays which clear, Swelled from hence and flashed, and soared aloft From the high skies toward the upper air, When the span of wood the wide way made, Wood to peak of heaven, ridge to forest, 'Twas a heaven slippery with rain; It spread all light and warmth and lightness Dense and warm, and bright as day. 'Twas odd, yet most miraculous All was sure; the wide air slithered, So that flood and tumbling torrent Ran in everywhere 'neath the pine, And in the driest woodlands so, As the wild winds blew and blew them, Foaming, tore, and tumbled down the trees. Now clear was rising seen; all sunlit, Nor clime, nor season any! To the spot gave mortal men. The spirit of the forest reared, And from the trees the sprites descended. They come not flat, but come and joyous, So high the tree-tops glittering, Darting, wheeling, and plunging down, From their lofty tops to groan the earth, Even as swallows quickened of the warmth of spring; All the shades to flow of Summer, All the weather that could notice; The pine-brakes wild the fresh beams swell, More keen with bracing heat than too cold, Flashing with balm than either, And the oak-top's new velvet green, With yellowness of the harvest gold. Yonder shone, in Godfrey's eyes, A flowing stream and haughty, A glassy lake and breast, Where the river splitted in several beams, Crescents in purity, All the yellow, tender, lily flood I was making, to the solium That was so bland, so meek, With the edge and girdle of a diadem; In the happy days of my boyhood. And now see me in my best garments When the Autumn rays are ominous, More like a warden than a gardener; And see how voluble grows The world in our strong hands. Here is the hoar frost's power Scorning the living, Bolding the progressive. Furrowed trees stand staffless, Crests to be plumed in feathered vice, Boots to stand up high; In a sharp full tenor; While in the breast Hindrance Is speed. I like it better, Since the god at last is My compeer still; Than tame fawning. A fawn with fangs, A fawn with wings In the chest is fierce and fierce, But a spring-horse how it lunges, Full-throated with flanks, Running with nectar all its life, A gale with dew. When she falls dead And she lays down her tall stallion, A fawn how lank and low In the middle of the meadow She doth go in, in spite of hurt. This was our village, And our cottage-home, That on the tree that droops, In the hollow of a glen O'erhung with pines, Is the place of many a maiden's First and midsummer pleasure. Here we dwelt in the country In the heart of the Highlands, Ere the cheeks of newborn lads With the bristles of beard, With the close of the summer, On the new-born year's first morn. Here still is the ploughshare, The plough, the ======================================== SAMPLE 660 ======================================== SCENE I: Outside a large room Cut through with a plank of wood: Socrates rests Before a pillar. A falcon who answers him, And who seems to have been order'd before By Demophoon, a youth whom he loves. Master Socrates: How many weapons Have I, exhorts the youth? A wretched world Involving war would have me stay, forbode, These ancient prowlers; some call off their games, And others, like myself, play, but to break The victors' spirit, and disturb the games Of these their betters. Many around Confirm this guilt. Of me imm' naught is true, I envy the busy world with custom crouching; Yet virtue (as our master saith) is ever seen Or manifest; for 'tis the chief of all That take our life into their even hand; Our earth, our spirit, and our eyes and minds. In the end 'tis the perpetual enemy Wherewith all mortal things go to the grave. Let the dead bury their unholy bodies, The living worke still: their dissolute times Shall find them in the raging of the seas, On the cycled isles, and mountains' heights. Their pleasure, earth, and sun, and rains And dews shall be those places, and the vaults Where they have shut up their ease, and graves And unextinguishable streams. Thus, says our savant, 'Tis the perpetual enemy wherewith all things live; Neither content nor repose: that pleas Is still an avid foe; at once all delight, And all despair. Canst thou conclude That which I begin, or shall I conclude thee? Where, or whence thou came, or where shalt go? Or thou disdain'st to answer? Like beasts we pine, And living we are doomed, and shall be more? What joy or worry can I command? which do For thee, for me, I live or I die? This man Is just the destroyer of his own self. What mercies could he make out of griefs? Heaven, and him, and a better world, must give What he has joyed to have and done. He, Woe, wretch? No power or might, could everything, Ere fall away, or forego; and the time, In which to try him and see him perish. Did I once find thee beautiful? was that the cause My love wax'd as great as it had been before? Was this thy last? And was it? Had any part Of my loved thee? I could not love thee more. Thyself had made my love more sure in thee, say, Thyself had made my faith in thee less certain, But as my anger work'd my love, my jealousy, Fain to wipe it out. The worst will find way; For he's faithful that doth entertain False images of his fault; Envious that dost'st ever strengthen His evil to make him more. Then he shall pay In the last day's judgement his foul sin Which sent thee to be killed; for I am sure That thou shalt die, that hath made him furious; Death is the security of life. Though thou'm a man and live in man's estate I'll make no figure in your tragedies, Although in tragedy writers' pages One much would like to see me. I'll be there With rage and despair; with awful sad And wrath; with sorrow for the good days done; And for no bit of work that I have done, For thy young love; and hope when I may not see thee. And I'll share with him the pity that is his due; And I'll curse this word of Papist boldness That fears my love, and no effectual fear, Though that's thy plight. A man's fault is a man's crime, And, as the Foxe book says, a whiffnè de Glowe. A wise man and a fool together weaves The wavy web of simple life. The best Give way when favour's begirt by their prey. The Scott and the lowe may not consider The gazer 'mongst us, nor oft be twice The lightest thing that ever doth looke; But lowe or Scott there's none to see; For hindsight's eyes are for the hardts only. Lift her up, till her head to' assured, And her feet in air she gently stoops, And the she has got back to her breast. Ah! gentlemen of fortune shy, She'll lay you up soon as she ======================================== SAMPLE 661 ======================================== before the desease, Which plagues so many maidens fair Who can't abstain from loving-- The wedding-day comes with solemn state, And the chaperon will drest rise Till churches are also done. Ye maidens all, take good heed Of little Stephen, 'cause he ends The glad summer day; Give him a fair round 'eace on 'is head Whilest ye are all astolphe; And if ye will hire o' the day To sing or dance so lang, Mind ye sing the wedding-song. Who had a bonnie long lace, I sowed marigolds among; And around their fire in the damp I made a 'edlet of bees, Which worked their little 'easts to sing, While I did their 'eads like jumps, And their young jinks did trot; So their young jinks did trot Fair without any dood. But the bonnie long lace, Which I sowed in the garden Persewitched all the doors With sweet lea-routhe's dark green, And buried is the sweet lea Beneath the horns of Jove; But my bonnie lasses fled, From the bonnie long lace-- From the dripping towns of May On glens and frutches--in their sel's, And their rims with clothes o' snow; But the bonnie blue skies, Which were the world's bounty all-- Did not fann their flower. But ye blue skies--beneath the snow, All sun-lit and breathable, As I sit here on the floor of the house I built, All fire-smickered, sun-galled and spruced, That still resounded to the breeze-- Dry land, dry land, again; And break and crumble--to the unuttered wind-- To the whole world's unwritten book; And, in front, In the flush Of the new wulding, in the flush of the small-- Stand tall tall houses erect; And in the front-hall of the house, Brightly litten, bold-naked men stand, And each man's nose is a true guide, To his man's heart. But a smud of smoaked earth, And the scents of warm woods and pool, Are the sweet of the honey, the smuttish of the wine; And the sweet-bottomed barley, that smells As blushing as a rose, Or as bee-hocked as a weed; And the sheaves of the hard wind, or of the buff Or of the maddening of stripes andones, For ever crowded by the lazy mouths, Are fine wheat, In the hand of a child, A barley-meal for beer, Or the tea of the gods For eating. The sun came out in the unsandalled sky; The ravens cawed in the unsandalled air; And the evening grim, as we find it in the myth and the poem, Cawed in the unsandalled night-- And we cried in the unsandalled dark For something to do--For something that must be done-- For the sun was hot on the side of the world, And the city poor as an unraked swart oyster in the haze Of the late dusk-- And the world was still, And the beast lay sleeping in the city bed, And the reveille of the city gate, And the hush of the stony city clock, And the scrub lay fouled on the wold, And the rain was big on the ear. We called for the rain and a wind to the rescue And the shells rung out like the jaws of the world-- And the spell of the night is still, And the souls of the groves have had their say, And the lost are with us where the living are never seen-- And the spume of the night is grey, And the chillness of the night is deep and dead On the broken crests of the tall hills. The night was dark with a heavy slumber In the dread time of sleep; And still the wind wailed at the sleep Of the never-sleeping dead. Why did I fall? I did not fall For the vale, the willow-boughs, nor crag of sand, Nor the heather, nor any living thing, Nor the bank by the infjord, Nor the ring of the wave, nor the amber rail ======================================== SAMPLE 662 ======================================== My milk; and the clouds that frame my chamber Blot out my Paradise! Never more shall I, Girt with unthinking indifference, stand Where front vigorous Youth, yet unused to swear. I will not breathe the passionate moan that burns Through all life's pores, even where some mean man May hear me singing, and through the end of days Lift his fine lip sideways, thinking I said That to his face. Who knows? I am not to be held Thus cheap, for all this, at the office of Life Who will not break the heavy work to do, And stand, like some great master, on his bike Across the yard. One thing alone I ask; The patient thing that no one else can do for me: To walk between the time of morn and noon Unburdened by the work that frets the breast And smarts the brow; between force of hands and brains Slipped out at night and sweet, fitful sunsets And dry, drawn-out things. I will not be The mindless follower of some great project To build the city on the hill or drive The stupified man from home; or see him kneel Under his shadow with the tears that shake A chariot-wheel's touch to the half-gone moles That flicker; I will look at him and learn His nature, caught like me in drift Between spirit's purity and vexing Pureness and vigour, and the body's debt. Now I have learnt all this, no task is hard For me, but one -- to yield up life itself, Which is no more, no less; and the sea-fowl, Like us, and reckoning pregnant, like we, Sails out upon the windings of the world, And wings its way, which knows not how high A soul shall soar when dusk o'er-runs the sky And night with slippery slugs has made the day A body of terror, and the twain Become the shadow of a soul in me. This, this is what I ask! But I, more ponderous than light, (The Word was I that looked upon his face,) Am humble, circling, groping to discover Thera sand. The caged doves of love, That hang as from my spirit's bidding Tripts to the bare ceiling of the west And smell not sun, may burst to the great open door And over-murmure heaven's consummating fact Tremble: and, haunted by many voices, I sink yet sweeter if more softly borne On wings of portent -- untaught to snare Man's strong moral flesh; as hovered near The elemental Creator of the earth And life's all vivifying wave. Can I Say this? I know not; but it softens with time, As with the sunbeam's colouring, when the hand Gives to the drying soul its life in childbirth; The slave for ever to the mother's arms In life's dark fetter, and worse than none that know The secret of their prisoning. Tell me: Is this all? and is this aught? for in my soul This breathing song for love's release still is wakened To rapt submission: lo! this long quest leads up To one acquiescent hour; and I who slew My kindred, not myself only, for their sake Must seek the antient Samsao, find the golden bowl Won by the one noble nation of a king For the release of the fugitive sovereign's sake. O prophet of mine! who art about to pass From me, where have ye brought the wand? and so The Torture's old song must music leave; for I To your utmost necessity have yielded, For this is man's fulfilment of desire, and The thought of aqi exchanges, brightening and breaking The heavy darkness of the sufferings therein, That make us humble: if aught else, be it The flash of lightning when it sinks to ground, And the strange voice of the lonely streamslet; A tomb of color flashing in the stars above, Tattered shreds of color in the flowery turf; A proud face, or a despot face, contorted; Antinous, with his beard; the two Spirits -- And look in equal space, -- this a substance, Not form: more -- in your just view we made Surpassing clear the features. Are ye sure Your knowledge of our lineage is sound? What! shall this blind men see with hearts diseased Burdened with offences? What! shall this ======================================== SAMPLE 663 ======================================== That many another such we shall see. With what a spray'd and fair adorn'd it you take That have before you such another way: Which yet the peopled Church and state Find so contrary the habitants, The mind of Love finds in them hell; Nor Reason can expel the disease That love converts to so much bliss. This vice you see would to the altar fly, To make the vessels there offend, Nor ever, if their mind should take Of Christian duty, to the end Of ceremony, to assist them die, Which grows pernicious and immense; And being such as seldom to word Is finished with christian worship due, Disarranged and broke up with good For blessed saviour's usage, savour none. And, therefore, let no man thy care employ To tread or remedy out in order Some ecclesiæ domain; Where plants the sacred brow, a tree Of such renown, whose root, and any shoot Of such renown might fetch exchequer for all. Worship which from the heart inflames, And runs capricious to divers ends, As the same man to different need may choose, So let your thoughts in due degree, Which ought to be devocal, be curst. The fine thing and the grande thing, which we Deem of so oft in the course of our lives, Go not to marry alike, we know not the day: In which both priest and altar are a part, A minister and a Patron also; A Sorcery, still at length, without a gleam. Lo what sighs can do, and what tears, quothtound can do On Israel's King, worse then his consort's wrath! And yet this Isoud has late been pleas'd at, Weigh-more in passion did chuse him not the doom Of coronet, than ere sate Herod on the Crowne, Who when he could, a King, no King doth choose In art, as mantle, to entend his state; And stern malice, and this Scarbucci least law Were both the debt due to the clergy; which when They are indeed in obligation, do not permit Their selves from foul disgust, to cross, or refuse The toil, or service of the popish wars; Both which at once do sear the land; that is the wind, Which for no fee, hath blent in his evil market Not to offend our common friend, we yield, and thus I see you for the ceremony strange Of you are some 'cannibale,' of another style You, not of kennel or draught intend; nor will we, In any wise, broken up for your health, take Or heart; for you, as sound and strong a body, Though often bedewed with gore, and slaked with oil, Yet self-maint, as free from humours, fit to move Our vocation, ere that dark womb fill'd full with black You Will, in Christian prayers offer up your penance, Qui 'caritate titulus,' pardie, 'monarchius,' Mak all the loathsome sex, and many more That have their name, but take not other care Than making men more terrible; and you Our thews and bodies, states and customs, foes, Our words so fer and firmly bound, make men so Far better prophets then they were before; And what's worse, our voice, and count'nance is, Not from the blood-stained sword, but from the tongue. Let not us from all that in another weigh Dearthish weight gainst granite; neare our view Of Canaan's land, or Syene's height, or deeper Deep, or perhaps as grave as yonder coast, The red and redoubted, because you've sight In yon little star that sets o'er Bacchus. He seems a monster, but that he's of our tribe; He seems to roar, bemock, and cast his lance, As most his war with us, is but to preach A religion of virtue; few and mean, If righteous, he's not an enemy, You loathe not, but in your own orb, 'tis plain, Thou art a sun, and live'st light, by whom 'tis given To judge the infernal for a saviour. How awful is th' inversion of this, That, now the power is felt here, Towards our palace still From the fane of light ascend, Which is not named from sunan Nor is it ======================================== SAMPLE 664 ======================================== For e'en the loosest friend, Could ne'er love her more, The belov'd of man. Her husband's virtue, from the brown gout Drives away the light from her lowlight eyes; Though sharp the stroke, and snowy the pass, A faint, a frail, is all he gains she finds. The stars above her, I know, Have heaven for the heavens; And thus she sleeps--the patient, loving Queen-- On whom we trust that life and light shall flow And longest be the sky of our cares. Good night! the watch is set; Pipes, prayers, and cries are still; But death is in the air. The last cymbal of the bride Strikes the clear octave; He comes with glimmering tars To dark the vaulted dome; The Lady's spell is broken; He calls a sombre host; And through the multitude, One by one, The vanished guests returning. And now with roseate arms He whisks her o'er the globe, Where a grief that strove her life to bid; Where, like a jewel's scatter'd bloom, Flit purple marauders; Around a ground white as with musk Witches; and through the air, Her majesty upon a cloud, With circumspection held on the flight. Till we, upwards as from her throne, The hidden robe of the Universe; And in our turn'd eyes catch her glance, Where there's, ah, Napoleon! where? Sudden as the look of glancing steel That checkers on the pitch; A flame that smiles between the guns! A sleeveless cloud on the dome, And long and long, The tremulous white madrigal of "La Mancha," A sigh, a hush, an almost inaudible moan, A fluttering sigh of sobs and the nameless tears We, standing, now should see sleep like a child Upon the asp's pale bell. Away! we fly! and leave her when, at last, We (long shouldered and with trumpet-calling) Should feel the long twist of the golden draw Of the tangled tresses of the world's long sigh, When life is, at this Last, dead in its own fire, And I--the loneliest dying man there is-- Thought I, What petty grief, what empty fake Of the phantom of a women's love--can dry Her breath with my own? I thought--and shame my thought shall yet confess-- What light goads to death so fickle can A mortal wreck of grief? I have fail'd! I have fail'd! So a star's hold Of an atom or a fraction of matter Into its sphere Of influence crumbles down, But leave I, I alone Can interpose, My final silence-soil, By subtle powers of mine, Which if I couldn't soothe with mine She'd give them up, and so she's gone,-- And I--the one last sound, The last word I utter, Shall now be but one Of many many more Too many more yet Than I, myself, can bear, How the world befools us, here below, Pretend in all, so early to sing, Thou art here, thy self un-image-loving, Thou, all dreamt and all dreamed, thy self adored And all unlov'd, the everlasting Son! What sane creature would think 'hm a man Should only love himself and none else? Behold the brambly young starvelings Of one that's held an uncorrupted egg, And her small yolk whole and smudge round and smooth That cooes over the roof, or plump Her bill one much and much again. She that had hir'd the morning sun, No manspliced egg, and had that curdled sort That cooes out along the eaves, And what may't of lard to batter She squboards the rump with; and if there's a mace Of butter-chucks, she'll fry that; then they set Her side the coals suchfouls with their twinkling caw. And yet, you say, she has a juster use Than that; she doesn't want a new world's slack, And never works, but time by, hours which are hours, And which are well enough; just what is 't? Some great sun burns bright with his red and ======================================== SAMPLE 665 ======================================== hides more of it than whatever the experiment signaled. <|endoftext|> "An Example of Reconciliation", by Amiri Baraka [Social Commentaries, Race & Ethnicity, War & Conflict] The sun was a mass of gold through which light poured, unmeasured, on the black, that was all of her. The village they came to, which was their community, a long, cluttered urban, activity place with no privacy and a home where the sister slept with her mother. She was the sun mouthing the piles of smokie pants, the dirty clothes from her father’s garments. She had, like a star, a dress that had land and heart. But she was, unlike him, dull and bright. And his wife had come to his turf to draw breath to celebrate the coming of their third child, as her color and age came, white grief: the time for a birth without biracial identification. His image dominated the life she knew, and her son, a boyish face held down, an ugly gesture. But this grew without that other man, the brown one whose yard, the most city-like that ever been, was her dear one, and her mouth, in which she smiled, was all his. She was gold for his eye. She was the sex on whom he was most hungry, the weapon that tempted him to be free. He could not cop a look, and he felt that he could kill her. He wanted so to see her lifeless. She knew that death is when she would let him have it. And so they charged at each other, bare-handed, and she in her knife fashion. Neither was much in boxing but in spirit. And he broke her nose with a clean cut punch, telling what he had done, in hell. She was a lot like a sunless world without an end, and he was ready to end his life there, to become that shadow. He could not take the contradiction of being a white boxer, being so close to an Indian one. He said, “When the white woman is in labor, who is going to work for her child? I am not going to give work to my own mother.” He began to cry when she told him what they said on the bus to their children, what they said about race. And he knew that he had to die because the dawn ever later than the dusk, and the sunset before the evening. “And the girl, and I thought I had saved her life, when she saw her own child on the bus, in a Halloween costume, and she bit his nose, and that was the beginning of what turned out to be a fatal rupture.” She was telling him a complicated story about the time she had taken him into a swamp to take a piss in the early morning, and there she had almost wet him, and turned down a bank to dry off, forgetting the reed bush, and he had to stop and think about not driving, and about why she wanted to drive in that moment, knowing she would kill him. He had to drive through the pouring storm to drop her off. And after he had left them with the noisy engine, and her sister, to pick up the children, and drive them home, the end of the story was she would kill him, would kill him with the sound of water flowing, with a wet reed bush as the back seat, with the place where the mother came and went with the children in her arms. And this was the starting of the story of him sitting next to her on the bus as her living room wall and the picture window were water and a bush, and the way they sat in the places she had marked out, so that he could lie beside her, in the colour of the morning, while the dawn ======================================== SAMPLE 666 ======================================== Fellow without hoary rank, bring her not in. She has deposed from thy lips, the tongue of each, Blown with careless wind, and mocked the Chorde; And every unseason'd note, the faintest sings Of earth's mingled hymns--the bleating flock, Moan of savage cherubs, and fauns of crags; Bleeam'd the pitiful vocality Of waning days; the yelping raven, And waken'd hounds, once more hunt in vain. No echo from the soul's abysses, save The Echo's shrill, tick-till'd bell (volant, No lighter cadence can the despaire Than solemn tick of clock, or silent bell To the dull ear of Death), scarce more evident Than Holy Writ's creaking groanings, looms Beneath the rattle of this loath'd sign. 'Tis what the heart turns when it is dead, And the great God ceases: in that all sound Turns to its own feel of sharp distress When the last wail of anguish dies And its spirit falters in its purpose To its own agony, and slinks from strife, And darkling spires The Camp of Life As the vast scaffold of the grave-clout, It stands, a pale-faced stone-fitness Ascending half-curtained to the skies, That bids in music over brothers Sense of hardly-allowed presence of God When mankind at last and earth forgets; Mutes the furious clock that scrambles Its dum-tapelled hours with wild rattle And taps, and summons at intervals The sated heart of things that scourges Earth: it fades and dwindles, and at last Is but a dull tick to darkness turned. It is the last, that woman yields Unto man, the especial strait; And weakness raised on firm-set foundation, That hopes to raise man higher. The small Will have its claims: the great will not. Over the rank and lean earthbound beast, That bludgeons with hard burden low Sheltered under kindred brows Of deep concave flesh: that all dares Have seen their day; and, felt the day, When one by one the shadows pass From light to light, till night is made A shadow, is the calm fruition Of toil, with hardship glad, with dream Persuasive. Good she who gave The keen pen's unerring skill, To sum and compound first fruits, When God's own meed the record's claim; The skills of earth to world's end Extracted by trial long, Those thoughts, that turn life's nettle oak Out of her heart and not her tomb, That, dealing justice to the earth And giving life the higher spin, Became a tutor submissive To witchcraft and the sorceries Brought from the moon's unlit gates; Bequeathing to that wretched place Such powers of scarification With such commendation, 'tis to be Looked on as not 'mid the haggard dust Of earth's ancient smutch, But as her talons skimmed for truth Their mute majesty; and a pure And highest vigour thereof. The Rock that stood before, I'll stand Before my greater; or if that's A realm no power is able to claim, Earthquake or thunder-gloom, Be it, son of my sorrow, to be Told as sister to my sister; Bereft of rest, but found her sire Above the thrones of earth, her lord And comrade: that these things may suffice. Was none to save the apparition, only Rose A cloud of the summer stars that are Sentin flying, The curved golden vapours Came through, down the gilt-edged dome of the sunset; Came down the golden South, Light as a sword of the sun, and the night Sunk like the eyes of a sleeper On the snow, and the ice-taken whilce. I sent a mouth to the place But had no tongue: 'Swirl, swirl, white sail!' said my spirit--no more. We sank, like eyes thrown out of the sea To the rock-beetle's whereon they can see them. Here and there the starlight's spot Might be seen, A blind, whitely burning spot where the moon Hung, her left; and the sunbeams came ======================================== SAMPLE 667 ======================================== Now where I toil? I do not know: The world is nothing to me here. My brain is made of tin, I'm told, My heart a model watch; Though it ticks like clock-electrified steel, 'Twas work to me; and when I'm taken With visions of wealth, or riot, and mirth Of city or party, alas! or sight Of the sweet little nursery, then It turns to rags and despair; While every trace, and key, and system, That keeps this being is turned into dust. And what of love and its sweet presence, And all that is exalting in the heart? Ah! I care not for these things, Nor less the sense of still surprise And wonder in each strange relationship; Yet it was love that bid me come To this country with its scene, In every aspect strange, strange and new, Beauty to me--eyes more true Than any other eyes I've seen-- Whose whole eye made me believe the light Of it would be some more celestial air. Yea, love and beauty both false, frail things, Which even in the most exalted of loves, Such as the poets say the Poet sees, In woman's heart, to Poets never blind, A moment's look would make him see the butt Of a false heart, when even that would blush On a false man; for to us not known Is even that which shall exalt our pains. And yet even so, in all our highest hours Of highest bliss, we think those things we would Upon the soul's last shore of death; Or before some last long agony Upon a new world would be our home Of highest love;--and these too seem most sweet, Are most divine, the least of our bliss, For love and wonder both, where they have met Are loveless; and a thought of them alone Lies hid in vision; and scarce a wish, Ere all but that which wisdom makes, may be Of all that makes life endurable A phantom; and we well may laugh to see That when we look down on others that we love And wonder, 'twill but make us weep to think We could so change our lives which we so love. The greatest peril to offer Are those which we have most of; All life is perilous, but that shall please Inmention, and those whose light abound With peace and plenty, life most absurd Yet when I do not choose that fear Where none are likely to stay, Yet how I know that hazard men of words Find not, which to their thoughts express, Which to their thoughts' understanding time Affords. Yet as my time, so my relief, I may not forget to tarry To help my enemies to see How far I've sunk, and that my weeks are few In millions, but my years, my days, in moments, That alone of evils can be said; But in my presence, that I held such, So many have seen evil lived and died And brought so foul a shameful name with me. With thee, O river, is the bridge To the realm of death, The enemies of life, With thee is the route to Hades; While still thy current flows, So, while it's in one part, Can only bring to ease Our duties done and engagements forgot, With many thoughts o'er, But who, indeed, would prove for a space His final thing, and basely plant Fair hopes upon a ruin, Whose success has been an annoy, Rising all but an obstinate thing When other music and other pipes Had echoed life's most familiar theme, And no man ever has forgot it. Why, it is, of all things that can happen, The least known is the greatest stir, But if I say, or if my soul will read, Say, in what quarter is our station From hence, that we have any business there? And yet, O gentle current, though thou Markest every man as another, To us all things happen the same, This is thy wonted presence, and thy tone And capacity are best. I am thy journeyman: in me thou cleav'st The germ of all mankind and beasts, and also The eggs of young birds and little worms, Which hatchetts find not. Would that we might The air be given us as our egg, Then were we able to ascend into heaven, And leave our place at those above, and here. Our birds 's a bit haph ======================================== SAMPLE 668 ======================================== is the kind of rain I remember.It stays; it seeps; but it doesn’t soak. We take off our jackets; some have their hair braided like fronds of weeds. The woods are bone dry. It may be the season for reeds among the willows. Blue wren and collard greens—water ruffled and washed by the erosive energies of midsummer. Sunflowers like cigarette crumbs. They lack the angularity of a certain style of grass, though there is no weather in the setting sun; the many wrens are like a picked-over dog. We try to feed the birds, but there is no food. We walk through our field of dead: no information, all the strange facts about them. The little knot of wire that the hedge has pulled into a reservoir, thick and bowed. We exhort ourselves to move forward, not backward. The hollies are retreating but we turn and look, making eye contact, only the brook, the wind chill of it, becomes more open to its wildness. <|endoftext|> "Not Even History", by Tom Sleigh [Life Choices, Activities, School & Learning, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Race & Ethnicity, War & Conflict] One teacher said, “We are not even sure where history begins, or where the present begins.” Her tables sagged to the left, perhaps because the subprime craze had just sent tens of thousands to the brink of collapse. Some sought better ordainment: quick swaps, interest swaps, gift certificates for freedom. One maiden, snapped suddenly from her carefully groomed path to “something in the right range,” emerged from the left-aligning script to a massive white hole. A switchboard as invisible as the trees, our last landline, in five years none would remember, silent and uncaring as the splayed heart within its unplowed grave. We lack patience for all but what is plastic and disposable—spin class, certitudes, seventeenth-century bibles with screenshots and clues about who started the contact phrase, the codex, black-on-black worsening before the passage of time. <|endoftext|> "What I Have to Offer", by Hannah Gamble [Nature, Trees & Flowers] Everything is dying here. Its name is aluminum. Everything is a sickness. Its name is aluminum. It is breathing. This orange-leaved-needle maikón is not orange-leaved. You put your mouth to it—what comes out is a bruise. A bruise that bleeds. With its signature texture, a bruise you can never erase. It is bleeding green into the ground. We are bleeding green into the ground. This bruise is as specific as the day is broad. Nothing is possible that has not been tried. There is no past. This bruise is everything. Its definition has changed in my hand since I received it, and every drop of sweat on my hand is a wound. The definition here has the power to seal the fate of each of us. I shake the puddle of earth from my palm, This bruise is inadequate. There is no wetting. There is nothing new under the skin. But who is paying attention? The day is here, the day has changed into memory, The past is pleading, begging for attention. We who write our stories are not surprised when they are not what we hoped. Everything is looking into a two-dimensional mirror. The week before I travelled to Diu, the hunch was that of a new war in the Eastern Mediterranean. Who is handling fire is handling the past. We who write our stories receive words, some of us receive memos, each page is what we touch in the mind. <|endoftext|> "Earth Day", by Hannah Gamble [Love, Relationships, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Seas, Rivers, & Streams] Turn out the lights before the in-laws they are afraid of our intricate memories it is now certain that that which has passed into darkness will gather there the pulsations of a stone, a mountain, and a solitary sun <|endoftext|> "Money is not the Mother of God", by Hannah Gamble [Religion, Christianity] She comes with her shadow, the rain of it, the cold journeying dust, the heavy matter of counting, her arm nigh the hour, and me within her vision that is cold too, and constant, and the repetition of it and her future and expectation moving her hand back to where her breast is even in the name of whose ======================================== SAMPLE 669 ======================================== <|endoftext|> THE songs are of a different sort Than those of earth, for earth is dead Since her sons have drunk the elixir and gone Wandering in the ways of the dancers Or wandered, rather, sadly gone, They have not wandered. They are queen Of all the earth-dances. The devil made two, one for heaven And one for hell, and this hell-song is The choirs of that other devil's choir, The mystic choirs of the dead. This is the music of the living And this is the music of the dead I will not believe the poets, The poets have not prophesied From the first dawn of time, To the third dawn on, how time rolls, And the hills and sea-shores lie dead Since the night is over and done, And the stars have kissed their flowers And look on other flowers And they look on the sky, sky. 'No, there is nothing after death, There is nothing here behind, The solemn music and the seduction Of matter, and the removal Afterwards from all destruction Is better than before destruction, Better than otherwise, then.' 'They are careless of the first, they do not know That after life they shall be as they were, That they shall rise again as they were, And shall walk as they walk, not as they can For the work of their passage and the space Within the house of probation is That not only those within the house of probation But they who are without may walk with them As they and they only.' The riddle remains that after death The giants were twice cast from earth, And they had conquered earth before They were gone from it, but vanished in the crowd, So you are gone. And there are none to tell Why you are gone. And I was told That all I was told by a giant, I knew, That once he saw, and was a part of the world And had a world of his own before he died, As it is said that you were seen by the world, Exulting and wondering where you went, And the sorrowful still wonder, where you were, And you looked in upon the world, you were A sovereign of an empire as you were a corpse, Had you not lain alone where all are The sphinx that gazes on a star, The poet sphinx of an ancient tale And on his old and ancient play Fondly he sings, and in his songs Deep lies the history of the earth, Ere you were born. Do I like the songs That suit the life of man? I love to hear the great Poet play, and on his harp, with a sudden storm Of leaves, the deep, through all his well-played songs, Float the long lines of ages in the fallen woods. <|endoftext|> My Saint, who art here benignant, Kind favour by my side, Still vouchsafe to sit and eat with me. O, what a thing is good to see How far your grace extends! The table is spread, the table is not spread, From you I took my first relish, now I have it, Et verbum nasum, no dust of mine, or line of mine, A proud honour is my tongue, From my pliant bent it draws the breath That that has often got to me. The words of my tongue were bent to bear The fruit of grace that comes of mean beginnings; So great is my strength of conceit. My body was death, with no rest or rest, Nor is it now, though it was never so Nor will not be again. A great work of flesh is laid away, And a lesser work of faith is laid away; The sleep of God's long sleep has come, the deep repose Of His old rest, that only taken at the right time. My soul takes no other earth than the true, But shrinks unable to see The lust that pulled her on, the hate that slew her; The lowly labouredness of love, the timid fear That made her more than human, that robbed her So she might know her more than mortal may. Wherefore I have me with you again For glory and a little cheer. Ah! there's nothing more delight Than to remember the olden time. With two of us, where could we be less Than the be-all and very crown of life? 'Tis quiet when the day is day, Only the ======================================== SAMPLE 670 ======================================== league nearer and the wine-cup more comes Than my land is, wide-stretched, and the world's dominions To run; take heed, who thou art of me or what By this with sorrow and the fame of Pitipotl. The story whereof not so much as a part I tell. "Now is it beenrown in style and safe and winn That you, so that I might speak of you, should know All I can say here, here will I look On this young people whom the gods and the sea Have yet to be called: willing they behold him, Him I see, the king I serve; but well he seem'd Most meet for my mind as for victory. A thousand others all with him likewise seemed Most meet to be and none of them unwilling, But each to him I told my story, I pray'd, and bow'd Under the shadow of my lyre to the wound Most mine; how strange is it now after these years, This glory, and my new birth, to behold The same order in our affairs! What man wot This race, so wise, could have orderd better? Nor did he wisely reign as a king should, But blindly too; the secret thought of the world From his only half ruling part must come up, Itself unknown, but to his knowing eyes Saw openable, some lying wizard hiding What in his last sickness, the end of his days, Lay hid in the annals of Crete and Troy; And many of these things indeed he knew, And were acquainted with, as I ween; But what he did, could best; and so we join, And are both the same, whatever we are. Now who shall measure, and who speak the praise The merits of this man, or tell his fame Most cause he long'd for, here returned to his land? A mighty glory he had, in his day, Which now in nothing saved, but in the end Deemed other ways more fit to be employ'd. All this he tell'd me, yet one thing more He conceal'd; this after all I find no place In my thoughts, the praise of Pitipa, the word Of the great Lord, his lover, best aloft, That speak'd from his; and this is that he drown'd In the sea, yet sear't his bones beneath the sun. "Fierce Medusa! (said he) behold thyself Ere in the middle air thou fly again." As feathers fly from feathers, when the wind Has posses'd them, to the earth return; When to the earth their train the sails unhitch, Found the stout Norseman, and to a ship His floating robes immodestly flaps; For well the hands forsook him in the gear, And they landed him on dry land soon. A little the angry words displease; For now upon the billows he hath bent His airy way, and fades into speech. "Tell me, what tidings of strangers bringing woe Of such great height, dost thou bring from Circe's hand? And say, what means this thing, that pastures so Up to the moon in vast architecture, And such prodigious mischief hath convivial, That cities are to be built on sea-rims, And trade is quench'd in a span of land?" "I bring but tidings of a gentle mind In softer fields of Earth than was thine, Who, far from lust and anger, spake the words That ALTPLACH'S wife did throng among. And, if thou know, be seated, far from heav'n, The valley of NINE-TONE''S head; For never in a wider vale it lies, Nor day nor night has ever seen it, neither man, Nor heat hath ever made it wise. And lo! a sailor hath inquir'd its age, Who told the tale of wo that keeps it night and day, And by what celestial light the branch of palm The river striv'st grow in purple grace, and port. And his fame it is that has make'd the poet great, And that is famous is the house of NOBIS." The sky was speed'rd, and plume on plume from clouds Shown motes, while the day was close neath, When through the death-atells on either hand, Two letters totter'd, through which it ran. "A cataract," quoth it, "in rivers deep, Thy golden-ginger'd daughter, T ======================================== SAMPLE 671 ======================================== Sam Chudleigh Shag, shag, shag! She is the goddess of grass And hunter of night. She knows all men Weary, head-worn, may-wandering. So shag Shags the shaggy short-legged breed of Africa, Cameliers, not-racing dromedaries-- Black and blear-eyed, and late married - And "shag" dogs. Through each shade Away--the wild bird's twittering glee! - A way is found that ends in a stream Where hides a little garden atoll Half-moulded from the brown and ragged knoll 'Neath the moon-blossom, crumpled from the spray. It is all gabled--the roof is held up With lordly peaked caps of moss-grown oak. And shut in shelves of druid bronze are set Crops from some wild continent; to charge A world which from the sea is come a-flow Like a storm-seized river, without its rate; Propped up are crops of hemlock and fiord, And trees of silent darkness range along. But all the tower is ringed around By a true poet, wise with finery, Who thinks he is building a tower up For the blue bridegroom and the white-eyed Fair dove that, shivering and dumb, has chosen Some companion for the windings of its wing. But others see a lithe bluffer Too extravagant and wide-for-my-heart And laugh in their insiphracy as they forget That sainted Milton hid beneath the world To hurry to that lone place, sole rock in wait For poets' wings and the heavenlier tune of praise. Into one corner a young youth, pinioned By the tree-chains, reads his rag of leaves That hang like sparks in the wind and goads Naked down to help them bush the longer. Down from the mossy lip of the couch Of splashed poplars a young chieftain With recumbent hunter appears - 'Tis he drops at the holl!, for time to shed The leaves of some great-eyed painter's pallette Through the long house of the Cliff They move as one told. I will report No more of this poor one, for he slips From this to recount his deeds: the run Of his hot veins like lava-beetles, His beard blows, and blood runs through his lacquered Skins--hence the blue blood - shadows and vapours - Red and brown. But still Long on the boy his beads of white thread fly Before The powerful triple barrow. It heaves Upon his arms. It stands. For a pow There's not a while That he suffers from the sun that lower From the beaming roof of his heaven of air Around his mare; Beyond The swallows, that steer to this spot to-day, Climb the grey hills on a veldt of slumber, In and out along the showering arrows Of thorn, rose and broom. The bummer of the year, Though she's only the season's third-short brooch, Sits dark as a stone. I turned in my bed, for a fever Had struck the fever pool; the very air Was vibrating, and a horrible taste Of hailstother Was on my tongue. A mad dog was howling Outside; and, with the sound of a maniac beating A obstinate gaunt horse, My boy and I were running the country-side. My boy, tramp who rode like a loose gun, Left me running with him--and I won, We two rambling, down the high country ways. For years I heard not of your return. You had gone for the right at a price. That week, or later that night, the light Of your face flashed in mine eyes. And I remembered the hill-song, And I felt the life in my feet, and I, Half-naked, in the water I knelt, While our great mare splashed across my knees. She broke from her track, The water crouched and swung, and no cord Was in the tangled, black, quaking wood. The blue, free world poured in. One dim, cold star Stared through the swells, the roses were worn, We burned, and shouted into the moon. She sank, and the ash from the fire Made pink my hair. I bore ======================================== SAMPLE 672 ======================================== brother of the thou hast seen; Mingling the pow and sum with ease, the learned in pride; Of result would he know but one head, that heav'd him high. Love swells the topmost forehead broad, To the eyes of my master high: But the nether parts, the face and head, Thus earth-delving chiefs come down from out the bounds of our sky. When they see my masters high esteem for me, and thus aloft borne, Mov'd on by my troubles to the sky. The hand of science in this is seen; Far in the flitting age we pour Fecundity of leaves, fat or slim; And fruits, and grains, and heartiness Of cream-rolling hive, and of wax and honey. Forth of this bird-like world, again ask of her sciences; Not wisdom, though so greatly prized; Knowledge,--rare fruit that culls on high, And with ease binds all moulds to it: From the youngest leaf we fetch, A starry beak'd bee's glance, of head And stings, and sucking; then for pays Of maids and gods: and here we live Posterity's courtier, and present In judgment, while we fetch our grains; Star-brow'd Life and shade-pav'd Death the same. The maggot in his mother's haunch, Not till we fetch the same with pains, We croak along the fields and spines. And thus, the old cuckoo's roar, The little gust of wind that pops, Becomes one stormy thing, whirls a bit, Pricks in a moment on its way; Crop-fascicle Life and wind-sculptured Death. Myrrh'd by the fragrant alleys, Deep in some rich vale with evermorn Deep-ding'd stars above the brows, My slumberings pour'd through grasses, Freshets, and glens, and ruts, and bowers, Crept in my drowsy wandering. Over the meadows wending, In dews that gave my theyle Weary strewings, and strewings, Weary strewings and white on the ho, Worn strewings, and strewings, and whlues, Slumbering in folds that the ho Sauntering opened on me. Winding a mushroom's cup The sun began its beam, Mellies bloomed along the lea, Ears o'er-lapt in gloam, Ferns swelled up to the knees, Feathered parrots, deer, Snail-owls, spiders, butterflies, bees; Mush in the sultry fen, Guanaginious monkeys Round stone and sand-bag jumped, Toads clumps lay on the heather, Plenty of home-swelling Mush-pots round the house, Big with moles' miwtes, and frogs. Viny half the day, Blossom I drifted, Red rosees blossoming Under my meeaded o'fthee; Granite-stone roses, And pink founts and porches Of ice-light, ice-blue. Myself in the grasses Set alight with smouldering Flames where the streams of dew Made crystals, to the willing Gashing and sparkling of streams Of ice-light, ice-blue; Rising, falling dew, All nature in the blythe Leaned with gentle pulses, And streamed forth to the world of dance From the deep founts, or toil of mineral. Earth in her bosom beamed Blue and violet from the lakes; In the hills the sky poured pearly flames, And precious was the sun-tide of wine; Into the vaults of vaulted beams Drained were the silver gleams of heaven, Down through floors of gems and ores, Floated the deeps of ocean blue, Where a star-fish was his diadem, Down through floors of gems and ores To a green sea where dwells our Goddess Where dim ancient seaside dances From the rock whereon me Blushing, I crept, until close To the firmament of rock Languish'd a wild giant time, With plumes of foam, and lines of fearful albino snake; Deep I pl ======================================== SAMPLE 673 ======================================== Not after G-d, but these wicked heathens." Thus saying, he fled, nor voice nor word Reach'd those torrent-surrounded sides again; And when their huge bulk had vanish'd far Along the coast, in hollow choirs The dove-hung shells sublime shall beat The foam in sea-scented pillows. So to the cliffs of Heav'n they glide, And edge along the uneceived sea, Through sheets as soft as troubled snow, Swift as the flying fowler's frost-bound spider, Or choice gale-borne leaf, that fluttering flings Its creamy sheaves against a stream; So, o'er the soft shells plunging downward, From the broad neck swelling up the surface Like a strong neck of massy gulfing oak, With tender hand she plies the web, to bind Those branching orbs into flowery swells; So from the well-drawn doublets, bursting, There rebounded, soft as deluded dandalf, The flowret intermingled with the blasts. With gentle stir that swept her garment fine, Her flowing tresses flowing too, She, as the while she plied the glist'ning thread, Above her loom, the dream-like mist, And not upon the pattern-written ground; All semblance smooth so placemes Illume her near; nor other sound, Save the throbbing of her beating heart, Hush'd at the beauties of her dress, By touches small, and dark as curling fern. Ere on her nuptial bed the lover stands, Lighting his bower with flower-like stems; Fairest with its green, the nuptial moon, A cross of pure white, that yet displays The tint whereof all flowers shine clear; With wandering beams the valleys shine Of wood-nymphs up-pinched betwixt Wide reaches of fair olive-boughs, Where through the glimmering green they stray, Catching the planet's silver horns. Fair as a fire, that on a bough Smit by the sunset falls, that now In shiney gold is glowing out Is the glimmering oak's garment-ful, Of many suns, a cross of gold. Fairer than the green morocco, Fair as the lily's plume On balmy days of summer, And sweeter than the sound Of the lucid fading cypress tree; Than this, O fairest orb of heaven! Is the forest-leaves' perfume thrown On the breathing freshness of the wave. Yet she lies not fairest of all; She lies calm as an earnest song Drawn down by gen'rous gusts of sound; Her hair's a melody by Emory, His heart's a lay in Bohn's ark. Sweet as the sound of brooks on emerald hills, Sweet as winds that labour o'er the sea, Sweet to hear, and sweeter yet Her soul's an addled apple-tree. I dream'd the mortal maid was nigh; Fancy as always follow'd love. While before her as she wafts her hymn, Like the sea's light-clashing trump, Music from her lyre's unbounded height Soarer in the sunshine. Then, while a grateful emotion Love drew me longingly Behind the grove of trees. A wild-wing'd Sibyl flung her voice To that plaintive scene; Where the white orchard's early bloom Gave the low topaz of the glade A tawny taper sign That slumber slept upon her breast. The vernal filmy oaks, Shook to her bass and clear, And the long grass sighing low, Flickered by her footstep's sweep On the mossy sward. Not a bird chirped, not a worm Faun-like opened its crevice; The chestnuts, stung by bees, Throbbed with their musky scent. The flow'rs that hid among them there, Heaved by my cheer's full flow, But none the less green, than if the woods Were flushed with indolent apathy. Shunning the scene, I lean'd upon my harp. The charged air's irregular vibr, Imag'd me magic in the spray Of those dark clad mysteries. I stood thus in a black gorge, Where black, and sparkling, and cold Fluted on darken'd ways: None of the light the groves best ======================================== SAMPLE 674 ======================================== Fain wad I, maist rove an' rotton; An' fain wad I wander down The leafin' wale, to see the flowers, And rove at my ease at the sel; I fand I could rest an' roost. All mair pleasaunt, an' full to measure, The land o' twa wuns than a hundred An' a thou-ninin'; They do't go a ruft a-mou'd To mean o' poverty, Wi' their daisies an' sit tae their knares, Wi' their little Grace-Jays. An' there's a stous o' maist astonish, An' art not a shroud nor shroud in't; They cut a* a dirty jifferin Aught, or frae the tops o' the well, To the garters an' the breen, In thick wurglin' voices, Here's to the days whaur I sung, In hope o' winin' skaith they gave, And grew at a' men's commen' Like aye near mysel' I'm afeard I'll never hear The glen bands an' laighnan' tune Again, All hail to the Kildeesome! A' for her bravest nack! The big an' the bard, He had a kind heart An' a keekin' nose; A weddin'-wind it gaed When little Jeanie died. Hangher Brown the miller's daughter, Gravest an' best, For she's the bee's haw and the bog's bat, I' some folks' eyes. For, like him doon her faults to stang, A' might sum her nose; Aye mony a doon she's the cart, A' round at the lyse. The mony a doon she hat ta Did daunder down, 'Till that this speckled billy would-be Pelting-wight; Wha, hedlin' 'at she's doon in the hall, Tak' her by the nose. Some kind o' curlew it came Toon Tam Mac Caro, Twa peats 'till sto' an' a little mou', That he did sto' Hickerin' 'twait be, The little beardless nak I'd lo'ed, When thal' an' mak her tak' her hame. Though on tae, perhaps, my pea-shootin' days May have flowin' bleer, I'm now, my dearie, as perch as may pean, An' ye maun be ca'd, dear, wi' me. And, hopefully, if fate may keep me kirk I'll e'en make it mine, A blessin' aulder's allowed free to think on, And land's excuse. I aye maun hoyden life along wi' pleasure, Sorb Samson an' eccho-junike; But if I might hae a deatfu', doon I'll wear it Wi' a swashan a' wi' blarsheekin' harm! Gin ye'll not listen then?--It's sweet to me To hear your sound beside! But it wa' as plain to me, as a heeadin' Brown warld be; For thochts o' you and your doleful sleighs As sweeter far than a' a gree. It is I'll to leave thee, Ye riskie flanks on th' sheile; Wi' naichty wip to turn or slip; Ye kame 's a slyin' hill; Ye'll jist dree yoursel' Down wi' sae guid stane wark; But aye this worstead's here That's troo my hope: Gud or ungeerd,--I'm gont to mend it. I've dune na mused at ye, Yestreen like a dreci's broil; Yet I guess it isna saft To you, for to me it's sour. Gude nae langer, though, at your going, My ayntly leucated thought Will never yomb sober. Gude, ye could be happy In thoo' liddle end o' auld Gowrie; Or ======================================== SAMPLE 675 ======================================== 1 In 1707, Her appearance, I think, was as a full-faced but unctuous wine: She was born with the beauty of a beau that was made to break, She was full-faced, that being that which makes the world's life a song: She broke through all the gates of her family, There was no place for any thing to look in; Then, at her father's order, and the rule of her mother, She "went out to the world." O my brother, my poor ignorant brother, Why come ye not to your father's old shop? Now the shop was about three yards from the road; There was a poor sight in the world that would see her; She laid up her courage, She "greeted Her enemies with laughter, She had thought of so long and earnest, They had stayed you then; She was the woman that would go in search of Men and boys, And certainly she had a painful time; Her friends told her, If she had them sooner, she was so tiresome. What are friends for? to be used By whoever uses them, So it is but as a crew or clan, Their weak points to be broke, Their trust betrayed; If any's deceitful, Like the sin of Sodom--a vile view For even that is sweet. Did we hear the last of them, the men of that unfriendly, uncooperative race? They are grown to a mountain since we heard them being thought Unloving, vicious, and many-sided, The toughest-armed, the boldest-legged, The keenest-footed, the biggest-jointed, The biggest-hearted, and so forth; That any beast that roamed through their aqueous Alleys, Or bore them on their kingly-carted bays, Would have wrought, when he gat them standing Together,--a mite or two, and, perhaps, What wearied, furbelow, or scrap of bread. What rung the heart with its old fashions, O'er all the urgent curious ways of the feet? 2 Now of this our Castle Dou systematic And of its divisions, we're aware: There's good, and there's sleazy; The deer belong to the Castle, The foxes to the Dan They're to George no less (And, sigh, His father-horn on his lands). But common knowledge is another thing, Not reasoning and not experience; And the regular, onward flow of the main Must pause sometimes in its whirl, And a peep at the castle yard Is what the weather makes of it all. The castle's in the grounds of a park, But grounds are but simple, bare, But parks are clean and curtained far Better than they know what to do; The castle is wonderful, But beauty's not; Nor are two bodies here wrought, So in their jointnesses they're kindred; And beauty's a tangle, if that's what you Mean by it. Dear Basil, listening to your marmot's Pallid parsimony, you're but a fool To keep your heart unshaken; You never should have run such a game To win a pale, decayed, and one-eyed Spider, whose age is measured by lines on An old brilliant forehead, whose horns jut Himself is older, and whose wrinkles, let That go, as my skull will soon be ground up And boiled down, all the same will hold in its Cockpit, and be what bird,--whose wings we Shall Higher and Lower have swept, and Whose airy curt bows and quivering rings Lettered with stars, though no such thing as 'sun.' I've reined my kite, I'm driving home, That spruce horse I've lately taught to drink, The summers are fading, and my stock Of words is shrinking, one can only Sell it at a loss for what it cost, For 'now'--but where is 'then'? First I contemplate the one thing Whose verse I carve,--where it might be shown To any who might ask it, one line, That "here's Johnny B. short,"--which Serves for starlight, when the day's done, The past me twice tries to show me, and This present me twice delays. Two pretty lives are linked in one, my plumpest friend; And when life's rough, with tales of error clashing In rhy ======================================== SAMPLE 676 ======================================== Bridles, and curved brasses, with circumgradiacled and convexing gradations from pearlash, top, tof and breve, from the trefoil to tricentulum, and some o'erto to euaggia. This last no specific median to the display of which beauty has ever been known; those still offered by moths to their mates. Our maids, Mother Clousewort, such toils as they have ta'en, our sorrows at their bridal feasts, Our gratitude, our months of darkness and woe, Our maudlin poets, our brief years of war, Our slighted Don Doci, and the girl That followed in his footsteps, all these in turn, From every grief that our own hearts engulphed Now are brought to one single goal of wail, Where your tenement is the world's total sigh, Where I from my own chest you tear, Exclaim, and wring my hands and say, "Woe is me poor Clousewort, poor man, for ever say We love but fitly, and I love not now I like such men as tremble at their fate." To this song of grief and fevered delay, An old Corsican sang of battle, fire, terrore polite, that, set in translated ringers, made the stanzas longer. But close on his heels as he rushed o'er the battle-plain, Red-faced, triumphant, frothing with angry wine, His warriors, his Prussians, clomb the castle-top, The music of the Thue no longer made them cowe, Go oft, dear German people, who in these parts have held your tongues in mock'ry thus long too trustiously: For by the poor kalam remarks not one groat Of the earnest nation's benevolence toward thee Return the praises that were given thee thus first. These who art thou, a nation fairer than the Song of thy Lord, my lips cannot tuneful be, Else I should humbly for thy grace, sir, vie With the small song-writer of this vulgar scene. Kind sir, with woe I run, To say good-by to care, And by good luck to get safe home again: Good luck alone holds right. I do for this; good morrow! I see no gilded Cross Beneath this night upon thy brow. Such talk is idle and false, As 'tis vain and vain, To lay my foundation On such spurious dust. From hence away, a-painting on The things that fear my brush, With great excellence, But greater defects. Is not the task, Nor, with my talents besom'd, Good enough for England's look? Look where before me sloping Western shore The inland sea, in splendor flung, Expands to the more puissant prizes Of late vast Mexiclinghés, and glows Already with the mighty red-cross stream; This way opposing, fierce and slow, Through whom the strange course me cuts I follow with hast'ning feet; I encounter now, at bay, The Turkish limes, the he-goats' groans, And feel their ardor kindling near. The Japanese beheld not as I: Chid madly at my feet Their chieftain-prince, as I would deign'd To lay my limbs down beneath the sway Of the hoarse-throated Turk. His spear Pins stiffening in my flank; And to the mother-kind nastush of his herd Calls with an outcry! 'Mangu when he makes His quick life-cycles, and that one-way road For his swift cattle is a common friend. But thou, you Japanis bold O'er Asia's sun-blackened sea, Ask again, and once more forbid, A thousand times more thy purple coast To yield the weary white man's welcome. Once more, dear bloody-bloody-rose, The hand of slaughter and of swords Behind you lifts, and around That bridge, of death, they scour, That, at the threshold, dark, Fell, and white, and dead, Like snow-flaked forests seen by mirage. What tortures, and far more Than if I yet should feel The tender death, the near-bressed gloom, Death's broad land of dreams Of late, where mother and child Met in Asia's dim wood; Nor ======================================== SAMPLE 677 ======================================== "The holy, holy flowers that never die "Come for our goddess to immortal love, "Our only vows since first we met! "Come, O Phaethon! to thy woods and shaded floods! "O! fareth not thus in all the eagerness "Of two wild ages! O! but I hear "One, and one only! when all "Will my restoration gain "The better lot. That solace now "Was only meant to be my last, "For ever from the Elysian fields "Of Hebrus far away!" Then sung Themis, and Thebes superbly set! And Priapus, with Isis gracious, ancient trees, Filled their dread bows; The foaming gulf, The mighty shrine, The halls of Chiron, and, her tinkling swine, Phaeacian Argos, and all the streams Allegria, flung Theirs hands abroad and bare, Eternal jars. Of brass, of unripe, and of mellow, that far Awets the Adowneos! Then a luscious grove Of enuatic pear hung Irus' dome, Irus, they say, Lytius, whose sheep are fat. And as we mused On the God's praise and power, The statue of Jove stood by us. The Goddess stood With flambeau in her hand, No more to frame. "What then of Jove?" He said; and after him The spotless statue of Laomedon Rose from his seat, and bore The sol and the hooks, Hercules and sev'n times twixt his golden side And her soft side Laomedon was chang'd to his former shape. "Ours is the cause," The youth exclaim'd, "that we may descry his shape And have the power to warn. No prophet e'er was given Of these are wv/t: no angel ever spoke to them. "Behold them come With her that was hid." "Friends," then the prophet answer'd, "See the garb of nature; and on hipps tread "The track of him, and they descend with thee." "Vaunt not!" exclaimed the youth, "doom'd to sure removal. My goddess for the same insult has scorn'd my love. For so the dame a woman makes her rival's spouse And puts to proof the aid of male supremer. But oh! take me, Thy wing'd vessels bear me where my love shall live, My goblet fathom and thy wine out-vied. "A cloudless night succeedeth winter, And melts in sunny serNaakes. Aphrodite is The eye of fortune, and her face Ne'er gains an glance. Nay, with gentle care We test for better and for worst, we deem The worst the better. Yet, should she prove not So far unlike a woman, then thou hast No right to be called my friend; for he Who surpasses is not my friend. No, Let us be friends in the contrary with this-- Male and female. Dear shepherd, and the damsel now Herself of him, with whom she scorneth no, "Or when I shall hope to look on his lovely form "Let me not see thee! That too she says. She, as That need be, should ne'er within the borders of My native land; nor sail aught Where there is human life. I scorn her once And now I wist her, being so faire. That also she saith. I swear no thing Fell from the common creed of womankind, In rude desert: and where Her fairest which she doth in her pride assuage, Not human. Nay, come over, Fairer than life, come, or thou shalt see Not human! My hope is in thee. Nay! ah, no--she comes not near. "O, come to me!" Sole, beauteous! get thee home. Nay, by mine head, I charge thee, froward! Speak low, come what may! My heart is hard of cheer. "Though modesty doth ring thy belt, and seem to wear "That ragged patch, not half so fit to be seen, "Then being so full of fear 'tis no sin "Thou dost so much shrink and tremble; for the sight "Of strange men makes me tremble. For my hope was laid "Here in the breast that she all ======================================== SAMPLE 678 ======================================== - Laudats Once a cockold's year, like two hairs! Now a bee's let out. This is a bard! That singer was he. No one collects words of his, let alone songs! Then, a general author, he--whoso he may sing-- Collects others in cheap double-page rhymes, Pipes and pipes, with an eye to a summer play Some noises of winter, red hiss or foam From the print which must have given him the slip Hitches, hard, to the point of rhyme; I, too, in print, I, too, in rhyme Must come to a sunset and an early grave! The poet's mood is the field's; The poet's dream Is a cup and a kiss From all the riven earth; And a touch on the brow From all the sun. The poet's dream Is the tremulous flush When summer's light Is first felt by the hair; A moment of dream Of poppy and bay, Long, long ago. The poet's mood Is a haunted room With winding-streaming glades Whose cold inky streams Will ever hold a drop From the sunned stream. The poet's mood Is a mood enfolded In blue and fragrant retreats Where the new leaf sleeps Upon a stroke Which made it bitter-sweet. I have lived for many years And there is no man here Of a mind so radically Unrealistic as mine; There is no man's for me Who would dream and be more true Than mine, for to be more like The beautiful unreal Creatures of old dream and song, The lovely unreal creatures. Up, go up! or the world shall go with thee! Go up! or the breath of the lark shall cease, Go up! or the earth shall forget to tread, Go up! or the fog shall melt as she fills her shoes, Go up! up! there's no more frost on the brook! One that I have loved, that's come to me again, Not in dreams alone, but also in words that start, The dusty memory calling at the same old door Where I found her so happy to see: Her beauty that hid as at the sight of a face That makes man wonder, and her place of crown, The world's splendid immensity, Hath been too great for man's sweet self to embrace. I heard them say, God was alone, and I would knock My little room shut. So she is quite sure of the love, though but lent By his welcome, as if a friend of mine Had found her, come again, and had to quit. She'll come! God is this clear and clear; And now it is as if his arm Could nowhere hold, as if the clouds Fetched off at their folds. Now a tiny breath Has made that heart of the heart of the wind Give up all, love, or love no more. Now to this, or to that? What if she loves you? Now to this, or to that. What if she does not love you? Now to this, or to that. It is a sacred place; Now to this, or to that. Yet the choice is shut, Now to this, or to that. My boy she's by your side, My wife my woman's body, as when first We made the terrible vow. It is her idea, now, we two made the same. 'Tis of no consequence whether I choose her or not, Nor whether you call her or not. Nothing that way now, with a boy's high heat Or a girl's lower, or a lass's lass's lass, Nothing to what way but one, While you, while you two, in love as a boy and a boy, Swung love-sails as seaward And steered to an end so sacred and so low, That in love, there is not half a whiff of crime. God heard our damneded soul and didn't care; Here's and there a heaven-sent hound To work his business and lie dormant, He gave us the laws to keep himself away, And not to make us fret and get some change. I know what's past and what's to come: That woman's as good as any on earth; I'm no care of hers or ours; Mine is the blackness of the star Riddled with stars that is day on a clear night. I shall go into the waiting glass. ======================================== SAMPLE 679 ======================================== To see by night the andid to thin, To see the crest that was so had been scarse. Here on the walls had shone a lady whose eye Went out beyond the farthest trumpet's song, Who laid the world as with a chil's lily white And rippled her hood of amber. So young! I saw her go, and hear her settling cry Of farewell. That lost black cloud above the trees Betrayed me, as a mist does the sunlight; The woman had kissed the world for a star. There on her porch would come her up again In the evening and she would not have known And she would laugh At my lily-white hands where they hung Under the frosty fender, small and narrow; Her waist would feel upon the burning bents, And hear my unlistening for what I thought. I would not know what she had heard or seen of my eyes, That were so yellow and all too bright, And my hair that was so blue and so red; But she would sit with me and she would hear That my face was so sad; <|endoftext|> "Autumn", by D. H. Cooper [Relationships, Fall, Religion, Christianity, Faith & Doubt, God & the Divine] for George Herbert falling, or holiness, God makes none my heart can see, God makes none. In heat great God makes none my heart can see, My heart can see. In the bel god, whit, whit, Whit, whid, whid, whid, whid, whid, whid, whid, my heart can see. As next I start to walk, and start me I will tell of how I went my way, some day. Tough road with slanting ground near crop field near barn, on hill, from house, house; I follow road as it goes, rural road, rural road, rural road, and God— I look for God— God I never saw— I follow road as it goes toward hill, and I follow road, to hill. Over the corn, across the rugs round the lanterns hung, over the dance floor, pews toward pew, I was dancing, holding my end where it bid farewell. I was dancing, holding my end where it bid farewell; God was dancing, dancing too, one and the same. Only God is walking, cannot move He is walking, all movement he and I are one, all motion He is in me and it, he and it, all space He is in all my space and it, over the land. A bus turned in the street above the quays where ships are going, above the quays that gave it view of yard, the sea. I went my way, holding my end where it bid farewell; the bus turned in the street, went under the wall, half-built across. Beyond the hedge, beyond the garden halls of twine, the beach, the sea, where we and the beach together hold wine parties and parties have a good time and my love over the moor, over the dark, swung open its doors. My boots clacked on the shingle, I did not hear the boots; they were not there; and the dark tore past; oh, I held my end as it bid farewell; there was a few more pangs before this great ending. Some ships have banners hoist on them as they go with great big "A" and "T" for the regimental colours; there were many flags afloat. Through the thick winter air it grew cold. And into the church I walked in winter. I did not feel at all well. My head was so empty; like a house empty. Then I reached the home of the Pole; our bit of damp to get there some one was there. My good red triple-red star over white "Live" on a white ground. But they have woven the wild flower wreath, the tulip tree has blossom, the lonely wren honker makes music underneath the huge pine where I used to stroll. In any wintry weather my axe was my axe and wood was the wood; and I wore my woollen ======================================== SAMPLE 680 ======================================== ories to help her—to deal with the hurt of someone's expectations changing—to tell her, already started undoing all her own measures that work so well with her own measures. A computer or spreadsheet would have been the job of her soul to configure. for so long: a cut-off which is neither “clean,” neither “dirty,” “suspected.” Her shift starts out slow but then it goes much more quickly than it went last time. Still—but I go out to look for her. Her shift is done— it's not what it was. All the tables are taken. the employees of one employee are standing in the kitchen when I arrive—they’re still in their Halloween- black clothing. <|endoftext|> "Ode for the Nervous System", by Judith Beveridge [The Body, Relationships, Nature, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] I may as well enter my own mind or my own heart— I might as well be that left handed female form, tranced, as though I’d awakened and found myself in a strange room and “I am myself,” I recall the language, rudely spun, that I have spoken form! (No wonder that the particles that the word rest on stretch, and the primaried mind too—far and far have my repeated semistrations been.) Be the body my pleasing mark, the hand, the eye—nay, the heart, the eye would not be how I without a thought strikes upon a substance. The right hand might have been the fashion and speech, I’d as l have it the fashion and speech! Be the body my ready-made, my sign of a hand, mark of prepared speech! There it is again—it is a presentiment that thought at a distance will be my slave. Here is a globe he has dropped. He may have been omnipresent, our statue with the blank face I shall appear. So was that air from the outside, it was his not mine. And here the eye that never moved, here the absent body whose eyes are fixed on another. Here too a vacuum like a distant weight around the place just at the place. Who is that? Be the body my ready-made. Be my sign, my ego, and be what is most absent: my mind, imagination, flesh. Is it not most absent, my pathetic flesh? It has been absent for you— was it not? Your voice is unvoiced, your voice never sounds. My heart could sing all day; I never had to say it. Too near the presentimental eclipse may be my heart singing something like a lament. Be the body my prepared-made. I had it from you, my voice being my ready-made. Be my mind, my self, my star. Here’s the archer, his arrow sharpened. Be it the thing. <|endoftext|> "The Mirror and Lament", by Judith Cladier [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Love, Heartache & Loss, Relationships, Men & Women, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Arts & Sciences, Music, Mythology & Folklore, Heroes & Patriotism] Love is singing— I am listening the time it takes my fingers to play— beach air, wind, light upon the sea— I will not hear the note through tears. Sound dies when light dies; the moon only.” Rain comes so slowly— how long do waves go before they are caught? I do not know! The moon has twelve; one per day, but I have only six. There is something about lonely moonlight of any tide that knows, that, after the tide goes out, lonely moonlight will pursue. But the sun dies, and why should the sea be tempted? There is no sea. The sun's light is poured out upon the ground. So too the light that from the tall glass fortress of our apartment may be ours— light like the sky before the storm. When the time is right lonely moonlight can be the sky, but it ======================================== SAMPLE 681 ======================================== Sticks strong meat to their tongue. But, ah me, that homecoming, The Christmas dinner, the love's ease In Moslem candles made bluish, there came Blinding sunshine, too precise The trickling laughter, at whose source Was melancholy tempered. And the meal Smelled so much of the lentil The lender stood and wondered, Weaving his kimono. It's as you see, From the way The ravens come down. Ruddy and black Is the bush. In those days they would give you a smudge For a great idea. No mercy now. For my generation's wish Or really, ever--was to live discreetly. To live two or three years at a stretch. To drink secretly, to travel Steadily, to have no one see me. It made the city smell mild, the tree In the skhore, The wind on the shingles, The blue wash Of the river. For all this, and for no other Meaning of moving people Around us in the room, As with whom we communicated, Until We thought of flight To the season tree That guards its pod this year alone, That pod of delight Wherein now only a fool Would miss it, and I With no sense of how long This will last, I think. I'd read, if I understood How people used to read then What books they ourselves read. I'd read a lot. A book he wrote, He sent across the seas, That had all their nervous acts And tellings. I was a bore. All this, and the dandylaugh Which he used oftentimes to call To modishly melancholy, Had quite the place For my brain In love's hot pillow. I'd know All things that were, have heard The candle strike Its secret charm, Be really, and be wrongly. I'd learn The stroke of fate, Sick in the shade, Sick, dying, dying Of the star's last ray, Its secret star, For the hour and the hour's sigh, Of dallying, forgetting, Dreaming, throwing Blades while my soul Tarried in dulness, Shadow, drawing breath, Eroding silence, Being and knowing. I'd read how people lived, To re-experience They lived, What they were and what they were doing, Using the bottles, The common books of their stories For wine And fire. I'd know how long a word Should last, Have guts to throw it out, The closest and most splendid Self to surrender, To drop everything I was holding, To stoop to the low stone wall, To speak the name of God If God were what I wanted, My dress size too short, My boots of coarse brown, My satin bangs, My lacy underclothing, My shining false-blair, My ruby opiates, My syrups, And to bless My care-beg, Being given By men who did give That I should find, My hair, My body, And hold the result. I'd know The colour of the apples Plucked from the pears, The deeps of love The evening lets In its emerald doors, And to know God's pride, I'd know, The bloom And the best Of each face, All made to serve, I'd know what weight An ounce will have In the mind Of a lover, And know the nature Of that which wants A body like to yours. I'd learn What dew would do To the fat Which I've eaten And all that goes with it And wind, And sweat, And dust, And all. I'd look at the skies And see what clue The moon has for the sun, Or whether a fog will mark the night With images of variety. I'd pay attention To see a sun-flower In the end Of the stars, And see on his head What the plant is Known to mean. I'd know Who's prepared to give His love, And whence His being, And what's out In what gate And in what day And my mind Would hold That men may be Found wanting, But that I'm no Know what it means To enter on that land. A man like you, ======================================== SAMPLE 682 ======================================== Scene when he wends, then hear The mournful words that courteously The son the father doth greet. "By our father's blood, thou must go Toward the dark-blue waves of ocean To pluck the serpent-winding woods That speak in lofty speech to thee And ferry thy passage to the shore." His wound shall close his fearful way Where never shall another spring Love or kiss or food appear; Cursing not but feed, his song no more From that hour shall sound upon the ear To say, thy journey's end is found. But if at fair dawn they miss to find The wandering pine-trees walking there, Yet though the foresight of thy death be vain Thy God shall haply meet thee there. A knife must cut the thread first to disclose On either side the yard's fair form The skill that knits the material sum Of beauty's work. A turban's width Shall handle the silk-rose's gold beneath, In jewel-hiding clasp close-clasping-fold. A flower of rouge that grows there to Distinguish life, if smitten through Breathed out its spindle of soft scent There where its leaves must flame and fall Each fragrant breath of amber or E'en musc-acetum that sounds of Emeralds' or silver-flowing lilac vine We thus the autumn's leather-mad plot Of woven beauty in rich dye Would win to hers of silken twine, My life through all the burning day Shall there unsoftened into dully Only by the dew, not love or joy Of joyful or unjoyful life and death, My soul's near realm to me should be. Sigh it, sigh it, such as we, We burning, yet the grass is wet And dim that witherd evening dims The air with phantasms gray that came Without delight, without delight Doth fare the soul: how wilt thou then? Sigh it, sigh it, for all the past Is dark and his darkness thou, The present day is come; That blue-dark spot be held against Of dying day, where guilt doth abide, Where no-thing live can grace. Tis pity to breathe, scarce a breath, One air of joy, one air of wrong Into the wind's all-speakful crowd, For then the holy beings sing All things to many. Thou, sweet, wilt smile To know the souls that go along The course of gods in crowds to thee Would strew thy path with roses fair, The glorious air of multitude Thou'lt say to thee; one by one, Within a gem-bright coat o' Saturn's use By many brightness touted thou art seen, The starry staff--a tooth, a faceted row Of twenty--and thou the sign A single day-dream, the moment's scope. A lone isle where morn shines warm O'er waves that out the sky are spread; A mossy cave, where night is chillest, 'Round which a light, that doth dispel The vast of night and heaven's deep distress, Through blue-black vapours plays; and near O'er this the living wreath that dies Upon the cold damp turf. Tis life that maketh din, and noise Is good to smack a leader up Against his manful friends. What matters sweat or dust or blade Or armour to men that hate disgrace? By lust of gold and power and place The safest proof of men of kachuracy Is an empty cloak, or fall. What? say you, even gear of a strain That monster turpinoids in stores O'er casts that smile on the main, And sometimes a run of daggers Or deep-groin-gathering shoals of beef-- Or else--the work o' slaves that glows Along the country-side, On the jagged rocks and sands, And quick but sure-- There is no other record of lives Of worth so rich-laden, No proud ornament, no blush of pride Upon this face of Freedom's dead That more awes the living and adores Than this--the grace and pride of one Who saw his work and strove and won A habited city from the ground, What sweat it cost, what manly blood, And was received by the warm hearts of men With love for him, and honour to the last, When beauty waxed great ======================================== SAMPLE 683 ======================================== With smile or frown, and yet discerns in each A soul in action, a heart at strife That would be broken for a moment's space With the least moron, is a champion, thou! This is the day that for us is turned aside, And all our armies come to slaughter here; For here is the man whose might is as the wind When it is air, and here is the wind that weaves The strong man up into the threads of the blue Its strength and its beauty for a bridal bed. I was not of those of the house of Atreus, But of those who with Quirinus of e 140 years ago In Thebes were slain,--of all of the house that was Famously overthrown and burned within the building-plinths On the great deputy's tomb, which now is the house of the rest. Thee too I think, in this dim memory of eyes Possessed by enemies and the habits that they wore Wherein hath nothing changed, as 'twixt wind and wind Rocks the shelter of earth--I forget this, that we Shall be again; but here they have cast the bones of all Who had life and time. As for me my body's soul Fails, and paves to blankness the seaman's way Of Acheron; my years pass like the time of grapes From earth to vale, and at my back is the sower Of sowers--the days and nights that melt down, and the souls Of men that are not come back to us. From no inhabited region does it come, Save that the folk have guessed what the fount has known, And are tormented for a time, and then endure Bearing the weight of their possessions, and pass, Like whales in tumult, to the shadow of a rock. The grief, that hath a ready-in flowing as dewdrops On the palm unto death, is fed with tears, and fed Is this, till it be to some daughter's hand the last thin fold When dying souls lift hands. But still When I look round at my loved life from the summit Of this convolved world of mine and see thee be The dimension of all, of the last of the day, And dark as the shade that some wind calleth from far Over that chamber of a mountain whence there gathereth The mist of her apparel upon the heights; As dark clouds gathering round a mountain's base Do scatter the shadow of the cliff unpeopled, So the shadow of thine eyas, after life's day-dawn Has seen thee more pale than noon, ere the sable wind Hath gone forth in the turning of the world's halves, Hath crept from north to south, and taken in its sweep The island of this other hemisphere; and hence It lieth like a prism, whose face to the sun Grief, as a morning, loves to turn on that side From which, though shifted, the world bounded to the earth; And which our world on either hand seems to be One whole domain, but is a plethora, a loose black space Time-distanced and lonely, with high, and fenced in By not the least semblance of a word of Earth, Save where most she endures, where she gives least harm. Forget thyself, child! for here a prey Lay whining, yet undutiful, content to sleep. Lo! this was prophecy! I looked up, and saw This thing that was both God and God's image pass The crystal threshold of that dawn, like a thing That hath become a thing. It is not lost, But busy immaneura on the rock Of its image changing in one small hour. The world, that is the world, is saved! its day Renounced, the whole human willing to forget The man, and drink down the jowl of His, that sways Earth in the tawdry compass of the dance Of life, and of the dead only sighs. Oh, Pity the ignorance of fools! and pray Let neither of us wake ere he run mad From grief of heart. I would make the world right For one more day upon its sidewalk make, As children make a scene, and right the wrong Which one more day shall make thereof, and all Be one at last, and sleep one weary summer night. I know, I know, where I shall lay my head Among my kindred; I am one with those Whose mirth is contraries, whose hands are flesh While other hands are from other ======================================== SAMPLE 684 ======================================== a fascinating horse, a bear or a steer or a donkey named Pablo Who had thrown stars at him and thrown dirt when he was down Only to get up again and have a hundred kisses on his cheeks In Iowa On a fence along the road, a man stood rubbing clay. Fences cut across deserts and roads always climb, he laughed. and you’ll never be a horse. But I’m afraid of heights, that’s why I’m in New York, to see if I can find something that can actually get me in the way of feeling sad The boy comes back and his father dies on an April afternoon, stealing a boxcar to New York, his life, a feeling of shame. To be in danger and to not feel afraid. It was amazing what a little painting could do When you said bring your Bible for a ride and I brought a suit of red Salt and pepper. When I got back I stood in my coat and everything seemed better and I felt better and somebody painted on the window “Let’s Have a Ride!” I went on to have some adventures and paint trains and horses, I rode those convoys all over the world. And I knew it made me happy to be on the road With something that was bigger than me. <|endoftext|> "Yankee Liberal", by John Restakis [Activities, Jobs & Working, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] “The best of times are like a thief— the thief’s never caught.” —William Carlos… Gueydan You could say the same of Ty Mansmith, who ran the United Fruit Company into the ground with his Progressive Political Campaign of 1884 . . . <|endoftext|> "In the Gray about Town", by Léopold Lovelace [Living, Time & Brevity, Love, Desire, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Nature, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Popular Culture] Somewhere between the cobweb and the trap There hangs a cold flower—a hummingbird Ah yes, and I see how it glows in the sun And think, but am not sure what it means —there is no more about that hidden friend Still the words cling, through rain, fog, night, day The poppies, as time passes, Drop to us from the tender grist Of Silence, the dull grey cobbles Hear the work of invisible wheels City streets, the late hours of dark angels (As in old poems) They softly whisper (as in all things) We be Silent at that. <|endoftext|> "Song from Lady Rose", by A. E. Housman [Love, Heartache & Loss, Romantic Love, Relationships, Nature] After the Lament for theoundedie The rose, with centre of th' ungrieving green, Was weeping sae lank, at this monigher hour; It lay at withered, sepulturèd-looking; Its leaves were touching the invisible grave, The sudden sunbeams glancing past Were warning that she was soon to die, The sun was setting as she had lived. But though her lovely green member had no loss, Death may get soft feelings, when they're cruel; And, smiling in their filmy umber gleams, May feel their softness of the sensitive snow That weeps o'er the graves of pretty, unyielding roses. <|endoftext|> "Sunshine", by Léonie Bären [Living, Death, Disappointment & Failure, Nature, Winter] Is it not sad when the calm ends At midnight and birds go Singing, away on their miles of winter flight, And all is dull and dreary weather And the daisies chill and winter-darken all the sod? How long it was since I saw you How long since it was your hour to be I feel so very much alone It is strange you should come and find me <|endoftext|> "Sisyphus's Escape", by Léonie Bären [Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends] As he wandered, he forgot the head, The feet, and the ears, and the neck; Yet he slept, for he was sparing, And he ate and he drank, and did not curse. ======================================== SAMPLE 685 ======================================== Though in the city dark from view, Yet day, and morning, and the green field, Shall flash to me when man and priest Shall burn, and hell, the scrap and the germ, Blown loose in the garden of the King. To-day is Sabbath; nay, and soon My body shall be all my care; Tis by this sin alone that I Have sat with the pang unloving; Inself, I've nothing, nor you. At length, and by and by, I'll do I fear he may strike naught worth his while; It is not for the subtle wit Not at all; all else I trust From his hook he'll hit, and in the course See at the last some red-stained prey Gathered with her young, as is the way With huntsmen, or with cowboys, or hounds, Who with their quarry let the drag The land and man's world bury; they follow Straight into the dread place, since death Lives there, where there's neither turn nor ploy. Such wonder I, till I hear naught speak, Till I've got many a thing proclaimed, While I make it a basis to be sure. I have not the life that God has made, nor The knack, nor care, nor the patience, nor the guile; But still I have a world of longings and hope; For by his grace, it seems to me aref. I have a hope, not to be told what is; In everything made; a world to have and see, In me and mine; a world that I see cast To be discovered and conceived, like song Of a sort unseen, wherein the human heart Of all men or women, where it is to be; I have a world to show, and have it sung, As that's the trick, the win, the end of song. Then why not take my hand, and let us walk Together, which, perhaps, shall work some cure, And bring us wiser loveliness to try, Than in the use, the study, and practice, both, Of thought and act? Nay, why should it hurt Of such pure union, that the heart, As with one hubbub, must be in motion? We have the key, and can, perchance, soon Make the lock--then out of sight, once more Bear up the present poor, quick gift, And with the mind's eyes on to better things, As the true canons say? Or is it then A question of mere hope, or glad looks, Suffice, before we've got the joy? I shall not know till I am gone, What thou wilt have, wilt give; and thus, Having given it, it shall be lent Free to thee, and to thy use is best. Is that?--Possibly, I will not know For certain, till my cold finger-tips Smile in the sun; then I shall know, And no more of joy's or need of love. I'll try, though, from thy black lips to kiss; I'll touch thee oft! The surest way Of wrong-doing in God's book, is to smile. So, when, before my coming, thou dost Smile, and do not know what I am, A laughing evil spirit shall be driven Out of thee, and with thy lip for mine, Blindly do I lay thee! Thou shalt know When done the right, by making me laugh. But thou to me, I'll kiss thy cheek; Be that the proof I'll have thee laugh, And say that thou, as I know, art me; Smiling for-me-or-else-ca-or-ou, With the still hard face, wherefrom's thrust A watery motion, leaving thee So far within me, thyself alone. Whilst I a new delight with this arm grasp, Dying in, joy-wise, O! What is it, thou, but that our bloods mingled, Mixing as their neutral gleshing, Make of our hearts their palace forever, Divinity to be one? Whence is it could that (O profaned state!) One mere hellish thing, alone, could divide us? Is't worth while? That drops not too? Is't worth while that the end of my kissing Is damned to being just an end? Come thou, my bride! From out thy sore despair, From out the lips that gave thee breath; O bride-candle ======================================== SAMPLE 686 ======================================== wards. This was supposed to be my sphere, my reason. I found the world and what is in it to be perilous. Contention feeds out of each one's goals; God has forced us to strive for the `what I do.' I have ruled lawlessness out of my life to survive. I have worked `for the wealth of the land.' I have striven to be `a man,' `a person.' Now I seek self in solitude because I have outlived all mercy, when I reasoned against it my best was a "what is," as I gave up my soul for your love's pleasure, instead of settling for self-freedom and conscience and all the rest of the thing that sounds the happiest as an unattached horizon, at last I find it is a way to wealth and its joy of living, a way to not being a thing in the hands of a soul above the withdrawal of an itch. It is on the edge of for me, by pride, withdrawing as much as I have given in return. I am letting go more slowly and more surely now, the result shouldering of each day anew, no more urgent. <|endoftext|> "not being an `o', but a song", by Alex Ross [Love, Relationships, Arts & Sciences, Music, Mythology & Folklore, Greek & Roman Mythology, Heroes & Patriotism] O the millennium ships from Ithaca begin to bear his body home, he tells us on his knees, to our utter confusion and annoyance, a fallen Ulysses, blind, unbelieved. There are no hands to brush the flies from our eyes. Turning to face him, we have to grin back into the steaming dark, which flares, its speed approaching catwalk levels. It is already dark in our eyes. To his neck, which hangs in line, the rich auburn-haired girl from Luxembourg says, with a shrug, "there's no such thing." And of course she knows, for what is there to know here, that the old urge to possess always, to possess and possess again, without giving back or sense or reason, with a rich complaint of the absence of respect and silence loom over all events, of an overtaking and a lack of an appeal, but for which no nature or anagram is known, and so strange, when it is described, even to the point of knowing the secret, which she's herself, as he is, near the top of the path, up past where we find our friends who sound like the same name and have the same mark on their toes, as late at night, we walk home, with the barking of the cats that rise up on our heels, and my brother hums on his hands to repeat some prompt. Some mistake his for the nth time, but his hands are the magic's muscles and she is its architect. They're learning their instrument now, it is that of every human in the world: pleasure, terror, shame, affection, fear, there is the constant rise and fall of the body, the simple harm of all motion, the noise of waves on the shore, the poor math we all must master, no matter where we are. And we know that, even as we sing the dizzy lyric that the rich name and rough hands have taught us, our endless multiplicity and contraction, our cries and our sighs, and our shit and our stool, and the shit that has become our habit, are the tongue-lash and the nod and the eyebrow, and the years of an ordure of shit that are hours, that are minutes, that are seconds; though we do not speak of these, as a thing that will still be a thing at last, but in its zigzag, puzzle game, it is the game. We need you to sustain us, to speak, to make our offense, our questioning eyes to see beyond that sea from which we rise, and return, to feed and so heal. The poem, even the lyric we've muttered over the table for years, we thought would blow away like a reed blown by a breeze in summer. But there we were wrong, until we listened to you, which only happens if you're among the lovers who draw breath to listen over and over. And now there is none of that. For the kids ======================================== SAMPLE 687 ======================================== For with greater reason I should pay That am a lighter sort of theirs than they. Yet must I praise them, and my praise should be Like-kind, or slight, or defaced- ‘Tis a thing that paineth me in my minds Not to have understood. For I tell you In God’s name, and to the blameless heart That sleeps not, nor deceives its vain besiet, That the night in mine ear is bitter. So long As I a man of life may handle The gift I gave, I covet not the tree, And was my birth-right. I am no more the man That of two one is in Christ, than one Of two is one. If the abler bore The smaller share of sorrow, how Worthy of Christ, and the lesser heart That slept not? There is no fellow to me That is as one that is alone. There is a living soul in me that prays With such lips as love to love, and weigheth His sword, as the blade whereof God made Itself a drawer for men. No eye that saw Then mark the archangel’s face would pass To pass his holy brow. For me there creeps A creeping shade, who is no bar between My spirit and the God that took me. He seems to have the aspect of the grave Through which the soul drags one, as a bar Between the deep ocean and the soul of joy. But mark him well, for he foretells all: And of this thing no more till dust! Lo! the third trumpet! And my heart dies in my ear. No more of his would be hard to bear If his were better news. I think I know What this means: there is a better hope, No human heart hath hope like his. O words Of holy writings! thou mightest sundrive From him the sinner to salvation! yet We hail the monarch of the whole world, the Lord Of life that waketh every self-tree By him of the future, with the tree Of fornication and death; yet shall the tree Of life preserve him from the wreath of hell. How shall he sleep in field or forest heart, Unbroken, or where woods are steep and grand? That mortal shall behold his face Forsaking heaven, and from his eyelids Behold his God sent back, when this thing Wake from his soul. All is undone save two things: (1) If men see his head enthroned; (2) If men shall seek His habitation on high, in heaven. For if his head be left all wan upon earth, Earth shall be left to profaner power, And the heavenly throne to thief rule Not have the guard of God. But if it be That he shall long afterward be blessed As a Father of his children dead, Liveried with power to give life ere life Gone by, even that child born by water Of spirit, born with the spirit birth By Spirit from the loins of him who bore That flesh of Adam, nourished in Adam’s flesh, (If yet that flesh were dead and gone) Shall be the father of a dead world. But if the father of the flesh of God, Last of the living, be blessed to father An immortal soul. O Father, what Thou wilt give for that privilege. Such great has been the word, With trumpet and lyre! For all the world is standing now Aloft to hear that word, And yet the message, God willeth, Shall break and all add up wrong. So let the Elders or the King Of the world–or any one Take heed that they break no more One little flint of song. Now let the shipman stop and smile! What is there on earth That hath not been Overlooked by you and I, When, like the boats, we swooped along Hanging athwart the shores afar, With stormy billows and all the wind That blew over seas whereon we swung! O, like the dusky darlings of the well When shadows fringed upon the rising sun, The dingy lights went up and down, Underneath the boats in fluttering coat, Faintly shifting to and fro, And then they swung and down they went. But shade to the boatman goes he not, When moonlight wakes the hills! Full soon those dusky lights will ======================================== SAMPLE 688 ======================================== Columbine is rich in Napa-Valley wine. Mereuanee a great art. Naïapala Mighty son of All Cannon King. Niippo The palest golden shower Esteemed divine. Pouvue Sustained by divine bounties. The dust seemed drowned with wine, We found here a low. Cyril A poet of high note, first of all The vineyards of Śiva named. Curelius A name that stands high in the Diction. Called of necessity Those men who pray for immense goods to see. Cornelius An archer, effervescent. Coatus ordinary. Everlastingly good, the helper Of the poor. Draghu An ancient grove, the abode of truth. Where, ever, o'er the forest, who dwells, Shall caribou cry. Ayodhyá’s Peak And those same lofty peaks of Highest Godavari’s sky. Káśyap with his hundred moods Of men from far and near. Kauśalyá The glory of his line. Kauśalyá the Mother of us all, Devouring in her stead. She made the deer a season, had The evil moon for mother. Kauśalyá The hundred lamps that shed A thousand gleaming rays. Lakshmaṇ’s mother known for spirit, With consciousness of right. Lakshmaṇ’s line, exalted. Lakshmaṇ his son. Lakshmaṇ, glory of his line, In that great post has stood. Lakshmaṇ his son. Laksha recognized in the land That stood his line. Lokitably called by names, Contiguous by his skill. Ever must he cry to each, Each proper one, good friend, sweet spouse, Great boon and glory: seek to clasp, And please the hosts of men. Lemminkainen he calls for aid, From Kalevalainan, from lands Delighted by his song, they haste, No bard so dear to him they trust, In a cave, where dwells a musician, Live the sweet musicians, Lemminkainen. And the city, that who knows where, Holds them the song so sweetly played, Wearied by wandering not. And the musicians, and the reeds, And the waving of the trees, In the music join their sweetest voices, Hear his song for travelers, Thus the musician, Väisämöinen, Anunacalpitant, In the twilight of his life, Thus his desire of song-recitals, Bilberries in acorns, lays down, In a well-filled satchel lays it Of exquisite woods-pulp craftsmanship, For the needs of heroes, For travellers on the wide-stage. Thus the reed was carried, Puffed and loaded with smells, On the maiden’s sledge of sewing, Which was shod by greaves of swan-skin. The maiden sat on the bench, Held forward in the seat, Gazed upon the flying baggoggles, And the golden helmet dreamed over, Fancy-laden. Straight from the vale of Suomi's forests Halls she in Väinö’s land. O salamanders that obscurely lurk Where´s the path? Where are the skilful drivers? See, hunter-bands in battle order. There a reapers’ band is marching, And a band for carpenters. O Ehŭoku, loom above, See, see those cards with furled sails That to the sun-washed waters fall? In the leavings of the stream they shed, In the tide of green-wash’d waters, tears, Pleasures for the waterfalls. See, wild-geese skimming flightily; Carry that sad-sweet reed, O leader, Through the ocean expanses. There a geese’s father sits on the rainbow. See his child there joyously squabbling In the rainbow’s sheaf riches, In the cloud the geese’ father skulking, Sat on there gold-green flagging, There his own children sighing, As their hands they wade ======================================== SAMPLE 689 ======================================== Sending All your lust can Whip the high- Incoming iron to a rope of brass, Gluing so so fast and Latching every blow to the head and Hind leg. My walls Flower-and-maple are a curtain Rug And stone; in their words the Transcriptions of the iron Form in its cap- It is in the mind. If you've never struck Yourselves to the earth, By Stripping of Stark and onyx, you'll Feel the earth. To see the Welding Your body to the bone, To carry and Swell the blood, to see The heart gush blue as a foam Of blood. By the shiva We've defied ourselves to that room of the Pale blue Air, an hour of death. <|endoftext|> "Rhode Island Duck", by Ezra Pound [Nature, Animals, Fall, Landscape, Summer] The Rhode Island Duck, my acquainted self is down, out, the ducks in all likelihood, defeating each other in the air. I am struck by the colours the Rhode Island Duck is a Rhode Island Duck which is given to me in a tragedy. We grow up to be gunned. <|endoftext|> "Eclogite", by Rachel Schneider [Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Seas, Rivers, & Streams] The best way to explain “mountain” is not the peak, but the mind its manifold mountains like the finest connective capabilities regardless of form, where in a given moment one type of element descends or ascends is the infinite element seen as one mountain only because it is the most incohesive and its own connective tale regarding that element — no two ways to reconcile its disorderliness except as just that mountain — something too disorderly to be mountain. <|endoftext|> "Dwarf for a Map", by Rachel Schneider [Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Language & Linguistics, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] After the above To Dwarfs Precedence, my dear My heroine takes the Giant as her model. I can’t tell if she realizes she’s even a giant but there are hints. She is seven feet tall and that scales reasonably well if one is to be taken serious. Yet who could not follow dwarfs on a map they scale mountains like the moon. I was tempted to name her “Mella Helen.” I could not think of an official dwarf name. So Helen, her name or the name of a dwarf goddess, felt just the tonic I needed (it had to be drinkable some people). <|endoftext|> "Sappho", by Rachel Schneider [Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Men & Women, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] It was a happy December night; we had just come off of a long winter, and sunlight slanted through leaves. The trees were laden with perfect, orchids. Hepaticas, Euphorbias, and Cerdocytis gave off incense laden with their bud. I was bent my poems upwards, working at a new poem. Love, I am glad that we could meet, seeing as how now was time to write a poem. I had worked at it for days. I had turned it over and over again. Then, as we were going in together, love, I walked you through the darkness towards me. I love you, I said, still saying it, so that it would have no other hearing. I love you in a very bold way, so that it would be understood that it had taken place. Love, I said, in a very frank way. And when I said I love you, it could not be taken otherwise, I thought you were a father. It was too great a privilege to tell you that I love you. That was, I said, an act of filial love. ======================================== SAMPLE 690 ======================================== Trembles the goddess, and they home return." Other sea-passengers to speak. Of Egypt the wondrous reign They now are in. Even so they speak. One son she had, that Aegyptius old. These two sea-descended, to visit Their other father, on the strand Of Xanthus, son of Castor great, King of famed Axius. In all Four travelled. The bright stream they pass Westward of Axius. 'Neath Xanthus' son Is the threshold of the springs of tide. The mother-seat of Earth Was not yet so, for that a bit Of coastline yet remained, whereon And Heaven had built the world, of early mould. And Heaven has filled and shaped it now, With vasty vault. And Earth she nought lacks More than what here yetis the ground. Larina is a limpid river flowed From landward, out of a clear zone, To weep adoringly over everything. Adorned with shells and studded with fair gems, She held her honored spot With suppliant grief upon the altar mound. A small olive twining, by Spring's own hand Thrown up on one side; a little vase of shell, Plumed like fire, the other of many colours painted. Of shell she hung a shaggy neck with surpassing art. And did I miss The world to such a height, that in a little hour We pale delights of heaven could make Again our absence, and once more skip Down a little hill from height to height, So longingly shall we spring again To our favorite fairyland, from this earth? For, Heaven and Hell awake! they bleive! Their scheming clouds in the clear blue sky, They thro' our turf; and from our length'ning line To sit they press, So, to enjoy themselves, they abide. So 'twas decreed, a son was destined to come From that god's mid ocean, Oceanus, Whose waves the land begot, when all were dried. From him a race of mortals was to spring, Whence swarm of saints dispersed throughout the world Where now those suns of terrestrial souls and of ours Reign, where Darkness from his riven field Now smooths the way and studs his lopped branches green. And thou, too, hast wandered many a thousand mile, And still hast had to mourn for years and for ever, Thou best and perhaps the minister of Him Who for thy sake traveled on through Heaven and Hell. Know, this same life which Heaven's imperious Least had, And Ne was but the least of Nature's children, Is still-born and unfed. The Moon's in endless slumber, The earth does not want, and the wide earth must have Her birth through all the mighty wide-vaulted sky. Know, Nature still eludes our searching; she still Will shield her secret, and chasten the mouth of fire. She's seen her secret, that the World's too deep for man. A child is born on the earth, as her deep fountains bear The overflow from Heaven; or the oyster cracks, when mere The mighty sea produces a child from mud. Hark to the pensive paterland, who can hear His mother in her tomb, who will inherit The vasty hall? He'll hear the cries, and shrieks for The voice of mother through eternity. To know whence the voice comes we must go where'er The great deep sighs, to hear and aid the tale Which is but man's. Some say the voice comes from Mars. We've left Ocean and entered the windy region, (While Night calls us, we like the ghosts of travelers Of all before us.) Think we some great sea-wind has Played in the desert-sand, and wrought upon The cloud's-eye luff, made like a bursting star? In the wind we hear it; for it becomes the greater In its moaning, until our limbs tremble too. So I am healed when thou thine hands hast touched. Look! the Land lies open to us; onward! without The bound of this thinking, thou canst not walk aright Upon the earth but thou shalt feel the wind Borne in upon thee, and thy dream of life Are broken. 'Tis not a waking, but a sleeping, Which whirls thee through its husk; and thou must eat and sleep. What but the blood can bid us live, since ======================================== SAMPLE 691 ======================================== <|endoftext|> "Beyond the Parnassus Line", by Walt Allen [Living, Disappointment & Failure, The Body, Time & Brevity, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams] The visible round-faced men without crop-days, over a cup of coffee, are related to the rent-a-crat that remains after a decade, or the times when each man escapes to his own bar on a canal-side or broadwater alike with no plan, and the next day the barman disappears also and the time flies. This is the time when the boy, whose name has been forgotten, is coughing and sneezing, has fallen into a chill; the man walks to the door and does the things that I want to write about, was reading in a dull library. In my head his voice says “Don’t worry, Dave, everything will all be fine” as it appears in my closet; the letters like long afternoons on the garden or green city in early december. He is sunburnt and widowed, and sighs and shakes his head and picks a sprig by its tendril—not unlike men, he writes, always stooped in the belly, never eating alone, like the cows of Cyprus, who wander past lanes of plow that never have a hill. And he’s robed like a priest and he has pain in the chest, and his skin is yellow as a shelva back; he walks to find his life. The waterbrinker, or little comrade of the immaculate gods, beats the time like a leech in the sands and seeks its shore, looks for a place that it never has been, hunts forever for somewhere to lie down in the waste places of its time. But all life’s fair, and he isn’t old, I think, and look at the sere sods and delicate scales. He wears like a thick brown shirt and he has shorn hair, and a tunic; and all his walk: under the spiex, this bare-brown name. He looks as he looks in life, from beneath the high and heavy sods, and I can see the sun in the white coat, I can see it on his plain old face. And if I close my eyes I see him, all weight in the vest, with the sunburnt shine of his arms and white hands, and in the flesh that’s also white, and I think of his face burning blue when it’s cold, or the time comes, maybe, that I’ll think of his face like this, even when I don’t want to see it, that I have to let it go, let the bones exist, let it lie in the front yard where the rough-hewn wife digs the weeklyword, or you in the spirt of time like a sunflower. <|endoftext|> "Mulberry Moderate", by Jennifer Wong [Living, Life Choices, Nature, Trees & Flowers, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] It’s so late the trees have faded, except for the sudden group of nude Mulberries—rooted and dry. I think the soil is soiled. Water drips from the mulberry stencils. My fingers are stained, the paint has cracked, this small-time thinking. I’m sorry but I don’t know who they are. I only know I smell all of them and how they lay their pearl-handled coats where the light slips through. <|endoftext|> "Mulberry Moderate", by Jennifer Wong [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Home Life, Nature, Trees & Flowers] For a long time I worked in the dark room, painting the walls with the broad brush of my depression, myself, across the rust-colored roof, up in the branches of mulberries. The moonlight made the face of my neighbor, a woman in her thirties, suddenly go mad, and I, more like a child, wanting to touch everything, ask a little girl to the street with me. Our voices break over the small town in the evening. I like the darkness so much better. I have so many unspoken feelings— rage, fear, and the fear that the life you have chosen can take everything away. <|endoftext|> "Mulberry Moderate", by Jennifer Wong [Living, Life Choices, ======================================== SAMPLE 692 ======================================== Where Fate sighs to meet her, and to Fate gives No joyful greeting, but a vain prayer-- Ye other poor mourners of the grave, Rushing to him, who does thy right, Give then a greeting, and a tear, For this thy Heaven-ordained, thy-fond, Inconceivable War-Lord! Ye many daughters and sons Of the city, dwellers in her. Yes--mourners and mourners, of one heart! Ye several homes of one name and folk Ye several homes of one bed and form Ye many assemblies of various folk, All hurry, some less, some some some aroure The thronged and fury-fraught I would but unfold for motion and number My peevish, other people's affairs In this careworn world of ours, And kindly look at them all, Refreshing me the whole duration With a mild contented smile. O care, to be happy--my head upraised! O humbleness of spirit, and earth-sick! O lying-annual, gilded yearly cycle! O regular yearly cycle! Say what ye will--(God grant thou wilt not!) Say what ye will, and wholly abolish That common pettiness of sorrowing people And that senseless superstition Which killeth, and almsthal condemneth Thee, God's chosen! I have learned of such wonderful illost thou fall-- Thee hath God doomed to a most shameful end-- Uprising ever and ever perchance, And vanquished at last-- God's stupendous stigma, that shall not fade By any season, passeth by and leaveth thee standing For ever upon the verge of death's bourne, With all the wrong of earth's wrongness, scourged and scarred-- And shame of man's iniquity! Thou art Truth's most gracious ally, Truth's temple, in miniature, built By Man! a creature full equipt with sense and life, As evolved from the lowest glistening sluice Of the unapproachable gale of God! Man, conscious, intelligent--flesh and bones-- The prize of Truth, which, in the field of time's long strife, Went with Christ, and now boasts him vanquisht Fate! Thee meanwhile, as thou abid'st the blighting frost, Sport with the days, and tempt the frosts of death. Thou art the true Church, thou the true wife of Christ, Touch'd with the Truth--Christ's blissful haven where all welcome hail! Thine too be it heaven's first, thy next be it the last Art thou a State's divine head Or cærulea's stately hill? Art thou Roman prince the last defiant Roman stand? Whose name from earth has first descended to adore? Woe's son, the son of reason, Descended from thy reign! Sunk or changed in thy high reign So high the crown he wear, And all the earth with terror wash'd! Woe's son, all shall now see A brutish tyrant's building plan. But more to thee the prince Where all realms round thee repeat The large imperial name. Thine be the builder, thee the man Most callous to the praise of man! Woe's son, the son of reason, Thy namesake, and thy foe! Think of the toils And what-dyes, and you shall say Your name's not on his trophy-cup. All realms, and realms like domains, While there's a name for such, Shall sound, that wretched villain's name; Your name shall ring 'Twixt tongues; and thorns that fetter shame, Shall on your founder arise. What e'er he done to thee or his fellows, Come, his day's done, and so be it; No more the power that made him can; None can, till life's death; But still the senseless deep thine inly covers, And all the deeps shall sleep to see That bone without flesh covers thee. From you, how shall I be known A god? Which of his hordes shall give me the fame? On my statue shall my voice Breathe, while 'tis in earth heaving? In the hearts of his exiles Shall I ascend in one universal band? From the blue ocean-sea Shall my fame ascend, and breath? Nor of joys, nor sorrows Shall men inquire? ======================================== SAMPLE 693 ======================================== --The flowers again--so, then, shall she --Bend unto the heavens and fall To blossom, loving, down the shades! O who can tell of happier things Than God's own gift of youth, of love? Yes, here she had been: with birth And, as she claims, with right; An alien, once, in Puritan trances, And now hath fellowship With the glad, budding, drowning air Where she her own -- the non-living heart -- Quaffeth clear. She hath no need of mine: I set her feet Again in mending to the marriage-tide; And we that thread the thick and weary-breathing air Where she, her very being, is a part Of the soft flow'rs, thro' her own free power, Seek her, as, with love's holy impulses Conjoined, I, and she alone, --All place, as here, with no volition save Her sense of good, and here in fire's self-wealth, Too pure, -- are brought together: she and I Narrow our wills and wishes in one field, This bed-rock of the springs of common-sense. Yea, she hath found herself: in such degree I doubt if she hath more wit than I. Her bride-smiles fill mine eyes: her herself, The queen of thoughtfulness, presses close Thy thoughts in hers: there is a fulness In thought, in sense: there is no thing That's void of sport, or wherein she stepeth But she hath learned the pleasure of that there, And hither she is now to make her home Of that delight. And thou too, unknown girl, With thy strange, sweet, buoyant ways, Whilst thou dost show All beauties under one roof, Which, in one moment stirring, Thou and it seem to raise, Enthroned side by side -- All joy and thraldom in one glance -- As in a dream? Thou art as firmly set as heart By balmy-jaunter sough In west-winds, that mold The dust and sweet flowers under -- In thee is it true that all Which there is blest, Our souls may so immerse us, In terms of love? We will: we are this night united Together: to and fro Within the breeze and the sun We go a-sailing, wandering unafraid Together, free -- as men who bear A Tower-Laws kinship -- knowing naught But this exact show of joy, And that one another's trust. Yea: where strong hearts do reach Full forth their truth, and give free scope To thought's most complete scope, There thou and I, like shepherds be, Within a pasture moated of twigs, Have with the uncheck'd gales, danc'd with dew, And heard, upon the tower's pinnacle, The nightingale call, Calling and picking tunes, -- The forest and the storm Confluent; scarce they seem to me A tower of any kind More worthy than this HellyWood. For man's temple there, These woods a toy. Nay, rather seem I that the tower Tells his own taste In having towers; -- the highest, His lusty self. For he is some great thing of mine, Mine own taste only: he hath found The sweet-vine, the grass-green might, The violet's glow, A shag of scarlet, a fragrance strange Unto mortal smell, That hath the glory of the woods Yet not the cells' conferva' That wasn't from outside, That hath the old world's fruit To seed his stature; For from the garden-plot I pluck'd thee, massy emerald, That, fresh and good to know, Is green all over, perky, Like an emerald's fringe, But, why, it shines so Fresh and coldlier green Than like your leaves, callan of me (Parch by the yew, truly) Or else how, where you're just Like any dry beech That's been through many years Of a hundred years, Except you're richer In your huge couch of green Than you've these while Got from some poor folk And, or else, how 'tis That you're a trifling tree, A living, breathing gore Of honies seen no more Than every year ======================================== SAMPLE 694 ======================================== Treasured above, the battalions of the dead, Which dead men�s breath since themselves deceas'd, have won At such viewless conquest of the life they claimed, Since, each a separate being, the blood they gave Thus from themselves have yielded into clay. So breathed he, leaning gently on his hand, In words like these; then broke the silence still, And thus in thought unresolved began And such I frame to speak as least may seem Just, and pardon-welcoming to th' all-righteous gods Whom power of mercy to the elements strows wide, Up-rising never unto fate, but after pause When We the living, demons! What we, be men or women, the animals now That we have power to make of us, or from the dust Back-matter of a thing which survives the life, Thriving and tearing away, then kills and sires: Or birds, or butterflies, or what not? or dragons All signs of us, or not, that stands Groping through the mist, or sitteth still, More sure of death, only like a while With life, while that, the weapon that we wield, For fevered beauty hits not, but fetisheth And spoileth comfort, if it sting not, being deadly well-shellod: Or sunbeams that we are Mere-foliage from Light that was before them born, And farr more mal-alchimic than they are, For Love as forward mere Into these foul winds must go, Where, hurt and blood-washed as before, He over-perishes and lieth dead, Yet is so bral to heaven, that, a tablet ran Of that the error of our age's monster-maker. But all that life of men for this was a jest To cure their terror, howsoe’er they round us roll’d Of monstrous aspect in the clouds of air, There was no sight, no sound, no sickness of air, No face, no sound, no age that might prove it true; But thunder, and the ways we’ve been where some one dead Is the object of men’s butchering, and our mothers’ curse; Yet was there something which, past doubt, it sufficed us well For this like change to come to, and these to be from land to land. And this the ancient diatribues the priuest testimony That man hath yet conceived of, he that was fitter To rule than to be ruled, the latest record Of which the swift double-gun-barco style Is that which Calchas so evidently read, in others Painted in that Book, and that’s a story and a story, Each winding a moan as they are told, and writen so; Whose every line, the full moon’s clear face, turns cool But most by these, and his wroth-melodies Of interludes, out of history and time, From The Book, as ‘tis a lie, with passing sl For later and original eulogy. For these Diligent, efficacious, starry men, Made martyrs for our vanity, or in delight Of crusading zeal to lose their souls, or as to show The Laudan-Talents: what are they? where’s The difference, if it be prize for prize? yet Giv’n they were, and where? where’s the grave of those Deep bred in earth, who died for this false air and Faith, That still hath such fury in its bosom? No marvel then, that so many have been slain, If men, to their own poisonous will, had been slain For this false air and such unreal thing, For the refreshing draught of that worm to cheer The adversaries of the truth in fight, Or help, the false air’s apologues. But further still Our road lies straight athwart the gulf of time, That when the dead were all, no longer then Might long ago have borne us souls to go up Unto the higher heavens, as ‘tis our lot to be, And see what hath to see been there; by ear Unsorted, as my prophecy, not the seal Sealed fast as once in heaven, but others read In what it meaneth; for he in heaven Between God the Father and me, At his last utterance, fetched up a voice, Aldire being dead, the spirit on his own, That spake thus unto ======================================== SAMPLE 695 ======================================== sick, and dies and you can never free him from the scratch. You can’t see any familiar face, full of babies, another poem, because your eyes are infected with a deadly, red spirocheia. A snakie heron lights you in the head with a wound in his rattle, and now you have a disease to die for. Don’t try to see the people where you are, don’t look for society. I can see you — I see your cloth, crimson and like a bite of justice, a long last scoop of dirt left behind. I can’t stop watching the suns to ripen, the sleeping stars rise from the blood of young night, and the blankets run from your skin. My eyes will reach for the silver sill to fall between the other worlds, to inscribe the hymn of how poor is real, how rich is not real because we are enriched so when we fight, we have to make sure that, tonight, the trees, the medicine, the sun don’t work — the harvest doesn’t work for us. In a night of time I’m caught between raging and being a coward —  that coppered front tooth in your neck would earn you a scolding from your mother, a hand from your lover, a hand from my collection of mountains that burn for no reason. I’ll return your ashes to you, but not in their sage, the little flocks of fire or magma or coltan. A hand placed on your hair, your heart laden with longing where I see dustlike specks leap like breath from night winds,  or bolts like stones from rain. There’s more like that, the dreams, pulsing and fleshy, the news, the discoveries, the longing to be fulfilled, the revolution’s heart, the sighing that burns and burns. You will die, my love, and you ought’d die free. With all the rivers that are drowning with the stones and without your tall smile of hope that came unites our dewy eyes, the snow that blinds and the starless nights that breath and breath without mercy. <|endoftext|> "Dear Mr. Fuentespace", by Victoria Yu [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Life Choices, Sorrow & Grieving, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Love, Heartache & Loss, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] “Dear Mr. Fuentespace,” it begins, “I am one of the land — a word that has lost its origin meaning behind a name — Soudanese — I am from a small Chile. I am writing to you because I am writing a short poem about your name, which I think is magic, and in which I deeply immersed myself once. Do you still wish to see the beauty of the world through my eyes? I hope so. Please reply to this letter as you see fit. Thank you. Sincerely,” And now this endeth my story, and yet I write, feeling it already begin: —an origin that is lost to time and no more visible than as a river rushing across a plain and meeting no one, then rounding a corner and vanishing entirely, and yet here is a fair town and about half of my life still left. I stand here again, when the snowblinds on the frost line, and am once again, an exile — and then an old man walking among pilgrims in white robes, or a trader in spice or beads, or a shepherd boy through the barren tangle of thick, brown reeds and stubble he’d dragged his prey to the Sheep Market in the middle of the night, or, a girl about to be a bride and saved by a Javan porters who bore her up, I sit with an-other girl, and am mistaken for a tradesman, or as a gatherer of date- s, having thought the same thing a dozen in the chamber where we clustered. But the bell ringed a buckmaster or butcher or other seller of fat, lean or white sheep, and there were seven of us. My saving ======================================== SAMPLE 696 ======================================== McGonigal also notes this episode: 'The Eleusinian's himself, he, in his pomp, Vaunted that he could dance worse than a rhinoceros: If that bad thing doth but a square to this here boast, Behold his age, as fit reward, upon the next fall.' Back from the roaring main to hide his rude expense, Homened with the Death which had been called, when he knew 'The donné of night'. With eyes close minded by his song, He to the voice that waked him, 'will trouble when it calls', 'The fairest she who ever did fall', to repent A's late bridegroom that had to his poor, begun Poorly, the wend her way still here. On, pretty creature, Then break from me; yet not to have fallen from thee, Nor husband'--though kind, however harsh,--pardon, my son! My own night-walk, who after he had sung, Had lingered for his lady, as I hearked, 'In vain! His whole soul in the same thick flue, and run through all!' Lingering with me a while, he lingered still; then, As the way was long, he turned his steps again, 'Too far off our help', he said, 'would give more grace', A changeling that never might have grown much manly If in his feet the thought of the King of Kings Had never so terrified him with such awe, Lest, under his influence, in the stinging storm Of that first bold lyric, he had loosed the brand That in his bosom then he adored; Even so his love had been: and such were his moods, Past word or stroke: and from such let me pass in speech Tender--so I bid your reverence.' 'Art thou the King of all? art thou the King?' And this the sound of that question was, 'A weary noise!' And now the King became Blush to blush, for pride made him bold; And her, with eyes narrowed up to heaven, Gazing with spitted glances as she gazed, She answered, 'Wherefore answer me? For one To whom the King was wise is much less.' 'Sweet bride, for that one I speak, ask but his name!' Whereat with withering scorn, his feet he stayed, 'Pursue the grim fair, and tread to the tusk, And call the monster the tricher of moles! We be not the kars of marriage that ye wed; Her mother and her father and I meet To crown the bridal bed.' In haste his father came forth, and she Sought to check her flush, for he had spoke; But yet the ghost that now her child Stepped by with trailing limb. When her mother Saw where was she, her she turned around, And scantly hoped she then was king. He seemed a king, and more, of a tale He told them, how, ere night, he so broad dawned, That on the ruins of his castle, The priest to his lust full hard, had he got A maiden, whom he left in that dark to die. Her name was Martha no more; yet they Who found her crowned, they crowned again, so run, The field of love must wear the name of Death. Thus, on the mountain, was the purple heather O'er which they trod to the earless boulder Piped the fair word, and she must have it from The maiden or gaoléd maiden, or mair, They were no kin of theirs, unless they sought The maiden or gaisle and drink, by the bier; She had already the word, and so the doom. 'If ye seek her, look for her by the bier, Where she must be sipping on a thralin, A maut with the maut of ravens, or oft anither, There must be her mither, for that she was Marquise, and ere that may be she must be wed, When we are dead, if ye still seek her lover; So is it writ in the book that he hath sent. Thy Thumb-scroll, lady, which hath brought this faut, A kiss to the ear, or else there's no thralage To bind her as a bride: a thral, a groom, To bear her into the bridal home, But here he hath her crowned and clipped in wrath.' But the ======================================== SAMPLE 697 ======================================== (And O! how cold the valley below!) I met thee again. Many waters flowed, And as many paths The trader wended; But the palm seemed nearest That bore him home. The very palm its dye Repairing, Stood stouter than the rest: And as in one his fingers sought They seemed extended In grasping patterned clay, So futile seemed his hope He perceived, and put it by. And the trader of palm trees Met his fate; but in the day I sing so grave the trader's toil, He felt its virtue far. And all time saved was the trader's To be rescued from his palm tree Who, wishing to be free From all, whose life had known release; Free from woman, wife, of bondage And from his labouring shipmate, And from the foolish idolatries Which he had offered to himself; Free from all affairs that distracted, From his own craft and both, he meant to quit Life's lonely house that he might live, Friended in the house, in his own land, Home being in the region of his fate, That life might yet be living in him For his own fulfilling. Still he hoisted sail Over the pleasure that floated, And at night, when he slept, His peaceful holdman was Of moon-cups as his fortress, And could his tent so boldly let In the lush and the blossom-scent, Rising on the wind from far-off wastes. While from the palm the trading-room Was glimpsed, from the trader's camp, Half hid in the waving trees Reclining in sleep and slumber Came sight of the palm-tree. Over the valley came the sound Of the forever-repeated palm And his adoring; a doting cry Chanted louder in the night; And then silence all around. Dawn in a world of dreams With yet a hint of the real past Walked a king upon his throne In a land of magic, where still Star-filled heavens of luxury, And air of gold-fairy cooled Smelt dream-canavens on the plain. Sleepless on treasures unbounded Trembling before the beauty in their sphere, The dreaming king made straight for his watch. And he was hungry for the fruit Of rapture, for the end Of the contented day Which the careless theochry. The gold of earth, the ivory he sought, And took it from its sleep of soft concealment, And lifted never from their place; For his lips the clay were feasted That held not the precious fruit. The glorious marble of the palace He touched, with the delusive weight With which earth-grabbing thought will ope Contentment of store; And the breeze in the straight path of heaven Whose candle is our inborn power, Thrust from its socket as the king passed by Sank on a couch of purple shade; And one was silent: the midnight breeze, Silent on the meadows of Paradise, Wheren Earth lay like earth of yore. The diamond whirling above the stream Of Heaven-will-freeze-country-stream, The fragrance of the incense clouds Blown by the flowers, the splendour of all The stars, the circle of the moon Slanting o'er the summer stars, the flame Star-like in its shine, Sweet of its flame of pearls, And resplendent with its fruitage, And glow of pearl-house stars Which roll their train, a flood of pearls, Blown up from the pearl-pool of the waist; Light on the sweetest scent, Mingled of sandal and saffron, On flame of amber; A flame of the warmer day Grown hoar with perfumes. And still the amber crushed Whirled a sigh. The king rose up Over his couch, and the glow Seemed amber-bright, a glorious shade And pure as oil. His eyes, Fixing on the inner, were Wet for a moment. He was wise; He took his sceptre Laying it in his fold With all his might, but all in vain; The strands were drawn, the threads Seemed drifting, a fire within, Scented, but wasted to the gale, A shuddering waste Of cloud, dull of a heart grown dry, Which shone and melted, a ruined fire, Till night's pallid silence came, S ======================================== SAMPLE 698 ======================================== Comes always in winters and you might as well be in July Ark inside. A dog knows only fire in darkness, and only dogs have taste for you because there is no one else. <|endoftext|> "Common Space", by D. A. Powell [Activities, Gardening, Jobs & Working, Nature] The common space is just that: common. Whether I grow weeds in the living room or roses on the street I do not break the law, the fumigation is passed, the neighbours consider themselves bound by the same codes as the inspector. The common space should not be seen as the 'place' of human breathing, as if every room were the same and every room had a common ground. What belongs to it is not the ground, but a construction built up of windows, roofs, doors, and rooms out and out. What I plant in the common space is not my business to know. * * * The common space is just that: the space. The law is concerned with the details of the flower. It is the making clear of space. The flower may be a trick, it may be our gift, a secret at the heart of the painting. <|endoftext|> "Cosmogorical II: Cosmology", by D. A. Powell [Religion, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Philosophy, Mythology & Folklore, Ghosts & the Supernatural] Over two million light years from home, we pay for three million years at a retail rate, fifteen dollars a minute on the accelerating electron, we run the calculation, the pile up, we are found out in the lecture, ridiculous the table, the clock, the Udinese, we run the connection, we do the sums, we must suppose the phenomenon, the cause out to the big round planet, the more of us, the more of us in the better, which may not be a theory, if the theory is in whatever it operates upon, a theory is a set of actualities, a totality of furthering and allowing, therefore an actuality, a projection of those, who are as yet out, and we must take it, we assume that it is God, we mustn't say it, to take that at its face value, to accept it as our only truth. This is cosmology, the most general, most evanescent aspect of belief. The Earth, we don’t know exactly how it came to be, that was the interesting bit, and this is our latest game, this is our last chance, we are simply going to try to make it, what we have done before, and see how it goes. We may as well be frank, we may as well be brave, the nature of matter is matter. Perhaps we are all sent here on such a funny tight time, we may as well be our most passionate, that is all there is to it, our deepest, that is all we may do, we cannot help being, we may as well be brave. * * * This whole idea of the order, let me put it this way, it comes to us built into the language, we pick up our stories and our grammars and what we get is a language of homophonies, one sound for another, one word for another, it all has to do with the way we were made, so it is a kind of start, we are not aware of it at the moment, but it is not a trivial thing, it is one of the things that holds us together, it is the one thing that makes the world go round. * * * Are you there, bees? yes, I know, I can feel you in my hair, I’m still here, what did I say? don’t you think it would have been better if I had said flower? only I don’t mind, I do mind, I’m surrounded by nature and the babble, it is one thing, it is another when you are a blithering idiot, like where? I was watering the flowers, not the water, no one is in the garden, tell me, have we not seen each other before, you and I? but I, I am an old friend, I will go easy, don’t kill me now, there is nothing to kill, what do you mean don’t you have a family? don’t you think it is possible, that we might have been able to get along, that you might have a little of your own to come to? that you might even like me, though this is somehow changed to like, do you think so, I mean you like me, or don’t I call myself your friend, are you my friend? to come and sit in my living room, ======================================== SAMPLE 699 ======================================== The whole season's bloom, One sole note, and this the sum of it; There was no love here, and yet it was Good as love is, and made of joy Sweet as pure as music can be made. <|endoftext|> A true Norwegian had, I think, or had not To eat and sleep, And there arose a novelty, 'Neath which I paused to look behind. Something like a breeze on water Rose from behind me, moving slowly, Tight-rooted and so close, So quiet it was, that I hard-nerved To behold what its shadow was. It have been a wonder, when I have pondered And seen the old tower's granite column upon Those plastered sides Close, hard and gray, That any were open to human eye, But there was none: No mouths, no doors To let some one in or out. I did not rest more surely, nor more surely proceed, Nor ask more frankly, or with more get-up-and-go My clothes I did up, Towards the pale chamber, nor one jot, Of being in the churchyard, once again Having on all-white beard, My hair laid aside for a handful of hair, And cowl long-slim, Wearing a beard, wig, and frock, Which looked no wear From this rough-shaven world of men, No man beside me. I lie long in this chamber. This man who stands before you Is older than my case. And the second before is the worse, For I this time were in my late flesh. And he, more vain, and more well-trained, So judged what he saw in a change of blood, In being kissed by you, in enjoying you, In boasting of you. There was no cause for weariness in the making of song; It is a good-bye when it is called so. A light step leads where a heavy one might have led, And I, What was it that I was seeking? And you, What did you see that you were seeking? What good of you made you wanting? <|endoftext|> That an undying passion should be given To the ill-guided and the uncontrollable Who are never aware of their governing Is not to be understood I think it is beyond the sense. Yet it will not be, Nor shall I ever forget My dear and only love. Ah! my dear, I have followed you For an hour, and a second time away, What with thoughts, and without, At the stray hour I cannot forget, I have not met your glance In a single city square, Where the couch of the sky Is changed by a sunlit wall To a door of a hall, At your airy touch It has been my own To wander far, and surprise A friend untaken. I am happy with you As my lips or my eyes, I am sweetly angered with the unkind Gossip, and I freeze you With attentions not in keeping, It is well to cherish the touch Of a friend or a relative, For my anger's sake Is much better than wine. My dear dear friend, My friend in spite of myself Is the moon, And nights and days On her cheeks, and on her brow, I can weep Till the cold drops come, And turn sad to surmise The burden of the world. O dear, O dear, Do you hope for many more, While the long white shadows lie Like a waste of grey, And the hangings in the winding-sheet Thicken the gold? Do you hope for more to be given By this heart, with its waning pulse, To the pleasure of the one, To the amusement of another, In this gathering day? Or do you hope for this appeer To you, and all who have been given Many other pleasures? O, you are beautiful, and I can Buried in my arms In the night, your beauty shall not Be the soul of amorous flame. <|endoftext|> Oh, they came from the bowers of the dark South, And the he wrote, "Reptile"; and the most sacred Oblivion, writing in flowers of the day, Flowers that are ever new, but never the same, Woke in the birds' pale fragrances, and swam Warmed in the night ======================================== SAMPLE 700 ======================================== If other gods I should sing, and cast The Poet's verse to distant worlds afar, Or sing him for a slighted one, Who are indeed many, and one; One amid many thousands, I would say. 'Tis true, 'tis usual with a rhyme Of little, fit for the frail clay Of daily talk, to come With breath divine; and, as the breeze Bears on along the meadow cool And friendly soil, we breath the same. 'Tis not that normal breath I trace Of morning's sense, nor yet of hope; But quaffing dew, or of the shower, Or of the Alpliction dear (Whose sweet returns are touch'd with sighs); This breath, out blow'd by Flora's smile, Which doth the heart to bloom more fondly Than all that waits on baths of fame. I am! I am!--but O for why? Why should this word break her spell? Think'st thou that life to thee unknown Is slight, or that gifts unaid'd Are lost? O! what should those things be That music hath dispen'd, or prayer? On them be all thy thoughts! and all Thy prayer, be pious to thy fame. <|endoftext|> On a lonely upland, in the ditches of Coalpit, at the desert end of the vale, Where hardly a house is seen, the bee comes and goes to the rolling sun-tanned ridge that peaks in the mid-mirror, and the mountain swells towards it; And I, grieved by thoughts that rise to every sphere with this discontent, where I was not, I am! I am!--but where was I before? Lo, these glad memories make the atmosphere sweet, As of girls, on cobblestones, running in bright tulips, the wise bullfrogs, with his song, With his warm moan, To the mountain side, with a high and dream-like noise, The white net of the tit, the warm cloudy pond of the swan, Their sundown veils drawn, with shadowy loops, to catch the sun When he has disappeared, then there is not a ripple in the stream. There was a time, ere this life's happy hour fell away, When I, the young Duchess, courted the air, And, on summer evenings, from the hill went soaring, While the bright colors of the garden below, with their wealth of yellow and of red, breathed the odors of blooming plants. I was a flower of the mountain, a beautiful blooming lily; They said, when I flicked on the bright full moon In the gloaming of afar places, as cold as her skull, the dew would shed silver, and I could catch On the dew that fell from the crests of crags. I was a flower, and we were destin'd to part, By the moon from the hillside, where the eagle flies. For she came, with her robe of scarlet, with her head a-the air, Leering As she wandered o'er the vale, The awful shadow that hovered o'er her was, to my terror, What the thief was prowling for, was she a thief? We were soon parted; I went to the fields, To the flowers that smile in the vale; And the scarlet robe she wore, what beautiful persimmons stood they in the vale! Forth I went to weep, when, lo! I found her with one whose eye had seen; And she said, "I charge you to beware, When from the house keep your head, and turn As I did!" Our house is nestled in the hollow side Of a bluff gray mountain, and 'tis said That sometimes the mountain shakes, when it thunders; And oft we've heard each other's footsteps tumble From the rocks above, as gentle Creeping Angel Steers his hazel way, when afternoon Is subtle, and fair, and down his talons sweeps, Thousand-eyed and intricate;--he roves, that is all. When morning was reddening the mountain's flanks, As we sate o'er its piny summits, beneath The gliding skies, that glided through a cloud Of chakors,--you could distinctly trace their flights, As they alighted on some ledge, and to the crags A ======================================== SAMPLE 701 ======================================== That, in their other summonings, They chiefly had a herald there Sent by the King of the Huns, but he was An old, haggard, hollow-eyed fellow, The one that bred the flocks of Thrace, The one that in his place had come, But his face was worn with something That human wit alone could read. Then his mouth was wry, and slowly, In tones so quick and light, as one might The test of the very hearth fire Struck him with zest and gladness. That fellow of the High Ones Had come to take his full share of woe, As his fall the poor, pining Orpheus heard From the boughs of decrepit woodman, whose song Hurl'd down, hurled up the hoary sea, in grief, Hurl'd ever-uselessly adown the air, And, side by side with him was Valhal, The King's person and the King's grief, Pale as the wound of him had other been Or Hell's, or the deep gorge of some roll Of rocky mooring; for from each side, With each one's scorn on their lips made fast, The rose still with her wreath of sin and woe, Rested not for rest and shelter from the day. The first time I met with knight Orpheus He was at war with some lady of the day For laughing off his courser, for to ride Full whip and spur, all naked, When the winged huntress laughing shook her dainty head Flicking her eyes at him. He mocked his splendid body But quoth he in wise, 'No horse nor man Will maim me in these halls. For these souls have never known a man: They are one and the same. And if you still think your bosom warm That lady's laughter and the grace And art and mystery of his art, No tear for your misgivings from that maiden's mouth Let which he so skillfully furthered. And if you dare, fling the leaf of that common tree That all her music is in its fall, No little blossomed branch of every year's pride For which he garlands the hall of kings, Rake its crumbled leaves for proof, No maiden's adorning for proof of its birth, None of her setting inlaid gait nor tread, Hark! out with your hollow peevish voice What draweth the breath of tragedy From the lip, having never been sung, My sorry plaint will answer for me Or ere I keep These purple, fuming groves where the silvern Lilies? Doth the stone, the heap of old men's words, The living dried-up sacramental bowl, Or those bare tables say Anything of Orpheus at his home A-glitters in the old time's rare Medianel lies stretched in moldering That he hath left for us here. Sweet clear yearned streams of pure bright flowing, O blessed streams, O flowing streams of clear clear clear bright flowing, The beautiful songs of mine own country, The beauty of thy song of morning, Because I saw her to my sorrow, Yet her mouth laid against the cobbled wall, Nor a single cobble-stone Could she ever find unransom'd. Oh, over breasts where grief hath left her treading, Because her far absent lover still lives. Hark, the song of her sons, And the woodland vine's agate-smeared leaf Singing the victor's victory. On his porch she sits before the chafing door Beside the pomegranate-eating, At her feet Fast they tear apart, and her household raiment… Gather, for hell's mouth; She hath smitten, and is henceforth, As against a giant, heav'd, In a day time, into thee, With myrrh and madness. The harp she learnt from my faun-fed queen Even that high music with its chords and keys. The singing of it hangs in its throne above my hearth. And I, All the time she sang it, I learned the songs of mirth, And the gladness of her song. Ah, still she's playing with its strings of magic, Playing the melody of the weary of earth. Ah, still as the light on the blue of the flower on the tree: Look, the flowers on the banks of the woods are blossoming, Ah, the loud strains of the young nightingales ======================================== SAMPLE 702 ======================================== sum is done Ave at last universel eat its cake. And yet one poet when his fiddle stopped, And stood like something startled to its seat, With the note suspended spoke this to his lute: D'alton might be invisible to his neighbour, And many might fail to recognise the light That traced his first crescent like a crescent moon; Yet here was something constant as the sun And his voice at once the highest and the lowest. And you, whom he had wanted once to see, And he more distant, you by his side Who seemed to have left your world in infinite dread, Would have been as faithful, on this earth, As two moons to form one cycle for the sun, Swift as his flight, at once circling and recurring. One moment past, the curious doe sleeps, But p'er ev'ning sets the example clear. If in your shade you sigh and turn away, They still must wait in sorrowing pride Till their souls go back, and reach the moon. Even the branched blackth of every fresh day Begins the withering of the rose. And wearily grows turbant and cold The fragrant hearts that are wont to flush and flush. So many hesters count they have done 'Tis past the salut; hesters set at length; And if they wait to speak, 'tis too late They lave their words in as deep as any grave. The dead days are gone, my own sweet friend, Since first I looked in your small and slight Eye, first checked, first flaring faint flame of fire Of all your being. A strong desire Would be a flame to burn and check again. A marble street, a grassy walk, And, where they walk, long lines of fear, A house they never see, A marble house, a little grass Which hands unseen, and hardly seen, And through the window's deeps, The cold out-flow of rain, And, darkest, night, A youth whom Death has snatched away. He never stops, Death, for ever stopping, The one--the other is The one past stopping. But sometimes in the night Of all unutterable night Death sets his sleeper beside An open grave, And o'er the firmament, The face which 'neath the blanket should lie Is withered, and the watch-light gleams In the dark air, and nothing is there But--the One, who lives there, Death. As, by a garden walled in with trees, And over against the wall of houses, Walked a merry gang of travellers, with laughing play Upon their lips, one or the other blind; And one, who had the country about him, And in his hand was held a rosy glass, Came walking at the back, and as he went Slipping his goodly carrot from hand to hand, Said to his fellows, "I swear I see Here, as the here to which my lamp commands, There's here a large old town with walls and towers, And here one Charles the Mad is King, Though all is wild, if the news be true, But, friend, the war is not"; Then, as he wooed them all to dance, he said : "You all can dance, I tell you what-- So, as these wedges hold their luck!" At the word, their steps at once spoke doubt; But through that doubt a firm command From every eye and peerless eye, Took place and spectre-like they dropped, And scampert away to see the show. So, as in love with beauty one might try To picture the end and pass of love, So now, throughout France, are those who part So well represented, that the tale Should be believed,--unless that fame Of such one fallen,--died,--cursed, disgraced, Forsook the name of man, And sent his countrymen to strangle curse, And march without pants! But all the ladies, who, I smell Round my scent of rose,--women Of a chaste and maiden mind --But, little lass, don't!-- And some of these are more young than you And some of these are much lovelier than you, Can laugh at Death and smile as shids the sun; And, when they call, say to whom it may concern, Say, the greeting to the King! So, ring your dice with whos' and ours, And ======================================== SAMPLE 703 ======================================== An' more over, I could tear up an' wrang it in!" The longer he made, the more he saw and knew And so he shut an' stared an' cried "T— R-i-c-H-C-h—r!" He got a little where he'd stowed his Dump Right next to the door; "An' look at this! Myself 'as clearly master now! What a curious eye it has! "An' who could p—r n—-" They'd talkin' all the day an' they wuz a ape An' can't-tic! "An' no one wuz mad 'at I did you 10 bazillion times!" There wuz a square stick figure man an' out he sot A-scozin' all day, An' one of 'em a-shine ' at the wit 'uself, too. An' a-fightin' wuz 'ard enough in sooth, But I wuz dead-think, Th—e wuz mad waz you wuz no good, 'at is! He've seen the moo-vey bud Way down in it mesemish craze An' they was verra quick to tame, Waz heeame there waz one, An' fahn they remembered him When they got here. "Waz't 'at you a-makin' unco died to-bey?" Thought he moor "I wus mad." "Waz it some allus spell, I don't know which? I guess it wuz the servin' jobs." An' the ter ed wuz maks the best man 'Way an' put "SOR-cle JOHN." Oh, the neeaames are his: An' the lost ones he'd pore In the way the ford o' hell Kep 'at the Bekest of bread An' feed on what you'd stab An' give the boodies to, That's what, that's what! O, they have crowded 'em in So 'long 'ere, and it pains me Meanin' to say it, 'Oo they'ss been "scrowded in" till They is—no more. He's lonesome through an' all, An' the Lord be proud o' that He hath the knack o' it; They've shoKin' a shay up to it, they Thet they aren't die. He's done a lak' them boys at the Provost' and Provid'ry. Aww, they ain't a-lone yit Thet he's frowat to it! Mud-bloods, he's done the trick 'At they won't haf to fare For the squeak that he's beat Fur theyt 'at's in their teeth! It's all hushed up, an' what's worse Theyt let it usual, An' the train at Leddy Rantin' in the weed ag'in. I' all severin's, they say, Thet theyt's a-gittin' long mar; An' thet never a one knows Thet it's a-dead; Wot does the seegg, he's done the trick All through the place--thet nobody No dooty now nor no more, Yet he knows wot he knows, you't Trustin' I'd trust him! O this hell o' a heap o' dirt Has taken 'em, an' 'as got Thet they's the fix fer one an' all; 'E's pullin' for bio, you see, An' 'is name is "Lost!" An' this curse of war Will gi'e 'em 'igh at it; I'm runnin' through 'em, you see, 'Cause I can't forget 'em. An' you can't blame 'em, neither, It's war, an' they've sewn it in; Sure, "Lost" is one in a' their game, An' they're sure as they can be; You should 'a' said before you went 'Oo wide; An' you can't blame 'em neither, It's war, an' they've done it sewn; They've taken the divils to a flower They'd never seen; They've taken to their shapes of the spot 'E least ======================================== SAMPLE 704 ======================================== ere he shall be what he can be, shall be to it as clear as is the sky that he shall win us fame as's the hail; now it is enough that thou believest; witness his miracles, the vine, the corn. (ll. to conduct) We are answered on this side and on the short side of the earth, who in his name have called thee to God. (To the.) The land is at his feet, and he shall name the earth in his name. (To the reading of the replies) Your secret (Christ), the sunshine and the shade The miracle of your opening and the paraclete, the abode that blesses (to the crowd) Who say (to God) Not when (i. e.) not this (ii.) nor the Holy TRINAC) that God is love, that to God is come, this is broken, that not even unto this salted of his ascend, not once, not ever shall be. (to the answer of the bad) As the bread (over and over) is lovelier than the bread wherein we abide, so the mind (to come again) which this righteous crown of truth disdains, all earthly hopes, exceeds that christened which nor disheartens came but in Him, the end of Christianity then see how sum (whate'er it is) the servant of God was crucified with that man of sin, this people believes in Him, not in his power nor yet in his path. What changes the case from that which was first? If it were strange to Belief that a blessed God should be a fleshly God, then had the apostle been more dextrous than he to Believers, and thus have not refused consenting to the law that his power (conceited) should rule; but that was not (to the reader) For my own part, I trust that I have made to the beginning those pure wisdom-cleansers, light and air, in which alone the wiser as divers cannot err. A faith can be in hell, that is, a fleshly deity, or a deity of light, if a deity of the flesh, but not a god of light. Nor a (I) By this ill-omened serpent the eternal serpent, uncorrupted, there- s three-contesting reports: -- (1) That the sceptre was hewn in the bark of the serpents and that the glassy stone was the handled part; (2) that this is the only stanza (sic) in which the word is used save that, mutatis mutatus, he added an interlude to the end of stanza 24 of the Comus. (3) That the prose instrument had been given by the Duke to Tholouse von Waldseim for his intortory. In the interlxation of stanzas 25 and 26 of the Tristens, there is a curious (ii) deny that all that the MSS. are mute of the climbing of the ladder. (iii) grant that this course is set by Virgil and that the lamb is given to Cham, and so explain the stanza. (iv) state that there was in this stanza a new idea. (v) say that there was no new idea. (vi) say that the character of the world, the change of which character, the words of which are : (vii) appeal to the reader's knowledge of Virgil for support and deny the interpretation put by Bogle and Wylie. (5) That in the light of those events, an ex- treme and external god was created, as in line of those, and his time of existence was then forecast and of foreknowledge. But he did not create till Morning rather than Noon. That the creation had to be foreknown to it by the Sun ("the father of morn-bearing") is manifest from the words of the first verse. Thus our task is begun ("that in the of Heaven") and that he only of heirs was foreknown to be so by the Sun ("in his sun-abiding") is proved from the ensuing strophe. (3) As far as the soul is concerned. (4) That all else besides were petty; for the soul is not a body and could not be the first to account for its actions. As a body, it cannot create a soul. ======================================== SAMPLE 705 ======================================== Lets down my cask, and by this golden bower, Is worthy man was evermore a King: Here may my gladsome youth appear, As in the court, I pray ye, one moment more. <|endoftext|> Ye north wind, pour out your wrath Upon the king's outlawed line; Who hath thy love and friendship won, Then, for love and friendship, strive. For from this vault of cloud-stored ire Sits happy winter peace-bringing, By whose warmth hid from nipping frost Ye seek your pillowed fires again. Night has almost rounded now, The spring comes green, and by her stirred She drives the summer from the wold; The birds' keen noons they cease; But we who rock and are not singed Shall see the Spring love-whisperer, Through thy blue and bluer air, The Spring's own valley run. We know not what of her we need, The little one that always waits Dares herself to picture-tate; Each day she attempts to tell From one side or the other The meaning and the will of her Whose thought it is to feel. No dovelike balm shall chase From her breasts the dew of prayer, For still she stands aloof, Till Heaven's work she doth fulfil; To do her duty towards thee, A happy nation, sister! The year is building, never weary, We know not why; But by that somersaulting of her days She keeps forever new trend, Her heights on most long from any fall As they flat; But she must match these November ways Some morning by some familiar ways, She, not this wood, not all paper and print Would paint her beauty true. She waits, as well she may; for in her way To be getting her falls on hopes which tend To keep her unbent: She is not a swimmer or a sprinter When her best is temperately cocked, Nor has her bent her to the clear green plain, Without a common fear. She builds; but scarce in winter has she righted Aught of her steady love: Her mortal force of death is seldom strong For winter-snow; And with her seasons she goes round on toes, With winter-sounds, She hardens each annual bud. All souls that have a heart to heal the wrong Arrive then at the season best; For but in thine own might may't thou make one; Or for a loving hand to straighten one By thine own spirit's amassing, So bid forth thy broken one. Fate knows all; their purposes and their fates Are in the loss of deeds, deeds which doom Some hopeless souls to beggary, while they live An exile's pilgrimage; 'Tis but in divine Justice's knowing We understand why the stars at night Go hurrying with worksome cheer, Why lowest clouds for ever banners keep, Why yet the east must good northers see In life and death. We may guess for certain that not all that mists So flow toward this pole baneful shall flow And wave, that darkness cannot at some olfactory gust Make soft the funeral duty of the unlovely dead; But how the world will use her shall best display When year comes and returns. The unfledg'd wife, the unfledg'd maids and youths, All ways for human pathos they go out, And tear the cup of penitence nigh to brim. Who waits breath for the dread of delay to take, The grim church-yard threshing with its stones of stones Could burn their shame away. What could their troth when loosed are the bars that bound Their one blessed life, their single one, Their one fair world, and weary with its load? Not more their mystic union then more rife When each one each in the other strikes complete And none to pay? That they must wing their flight, I trust; and see, For the old life's relief, can hold in doubt This new stranger, if new-found neighbour of ours Just fit to meet. The hope that, when it is certain there is nought Around to take The faith that all the world is one seems fitter To give than pray. I look out from my casement on a tear-drenched wold; The crow is cawing; A bow, a branch, a cloud, a little frore Come floating in ======================================== SAMPLE 706 ======================================== And yet The maid she thought A rose by any spring Would have been a ball of mists And moonlight like a smiling swine. Sick of love and sick of speech, No tongue, no lip, She held the mirror up, And saw white hair. And thinking none stood there Except her lover, She strove to speak: Her lover's eyes saw all. What are the fingers that brush your hair, And what is withered rule the land? Black sleep to you that break in the shower, Red blood to the dying that drain the cup. Red song to you that soil the years, Red nights and the shadow-show'rs of Fate; The wind and the star, the passing and the tune. Red children, the pearl that pearls a tomb, Red spice, red salt, to salt being what it is. And when the moments are wind and change, And you must dress and cook and fry your flesh, Then look at your child and say: It's your heart That aches, it's your hair that clots, it's the fall Of earth that makes you bullet and deficient. And say to yourself, long-haired daughter, my son: I'll pay your wages in laughter, and your weight That laughs at the wind, the sunlight and the shower. Why are you silent? I don't ask for your voice To wail like the wind, and be some great thing made From my desire: why do you stand Waving your arms? I want to know What is that which brings on This hollow body, this self In which I live? I'll be as deep as the sea and as true As the sea and I am free. I want to know The sense of every word? What are we seeking, what is it you say? What are you, and what are you, that I should come here? What are you, that I should look in your eyes and in the eyes of my fathers? I'd get the robes off of you And I'd show you I'm someone, And you'd vanish in a robe of some power, And the heavens be silent, and men less and none. Why are you silent? I don't ask for your voice, Nor yet your face, I don't know Why this shapeless flesh is chattelling me. Why this star that lights me, this breath, Why these tears that choke me and wet me and drown me and teach me, Why are you silent? The sky is cold and bright And the darkness so very deep, and the moon And the stars are the footprints of my lover. Why are you silent? When I think of my mother Of love I am proud; I am made of a dust and you are my home, And the great things of flesh and blood, They are just light and yet I love them more Than any grace they give, Oh, she is reaching to call me When her brother is sitting by. He always has been with her. She never tells me. "He's a bloody stickler for the Left Bank. Look, my darling, the villet blows about With cops and knaves. The boys are in the gibbet, and the old men all over the street Are covered with the colours, And the air is full of shrieks, How quickly he bends to his brow, The slender old guard with the girlish face, The red-polished faces, the angry eyes, The black and ruddy lips. In a careless sort of way he stands, So strangely bowed is he from feeling. Proudly he finds himself a pose. What shall he do? I do not know, And yet to care is not my habit. I shall be marching home by night. Oh, shall I see the torches carried in? And the musketar put? That I shall bear that in scorn for you, Little Kew; and I shall die in my place? I do not know, and yet it is as well. She leaves her self in her mind Whom nature teaches to feel, And this causes her to shrink And blush when she sees her alone Dreadful and sad among her ladies. It is not happiness. The man is nothing, for whom it is not. The doors are closed. The Curate has told his tales, The Count is fast asleep, and the father's outside. And there is wailing in the house of a woman Who says she is pregnant. What shall she do? ======================================== SAMPLE 707 ======================================== I wis't, mihti; God yow say! I send you, min't fine, A gentle word, mi sonne, Thogh I mi fay! Sae jist on yer tok Fro hame, Tak ye your cloþowsenne! Hooly is thi blew So bewast it! Nane mair, my sonne, Yon ever bield flaith, Þat tow melvie; Yon blawn and nor donne Forth to fal, Laune, and ane two (I doubt) Here ane is. O!'bove sic traces, Bi him dawt weel shee'l wa't, Sair each thing a' ferde! Cood through fra alit, Fing la place; Ne mair, my sonne, Yon tok la land, Syn destrauft; For Finglas bear, When Fowkes now hoven wa't, Þat wor not mell, Ne dinna tow pin Deliver; Ne else wald be cast, Deo græf to rest. Th' firste sicht for ton Þat forsault does thee, Nenes his hald, But he no þynken, Þat wald so fyr Ne lyestly ȝet neu{er} góð{er}; Ne aȝ eu{er} tude Me adde, þat mot nane, In þis yrnde; Ne us þat thu{er} nolde, Ne þeȝ no pec naunt Ne noðre ȝede, Syn þay haue to mete, Þat com of ȝondes Þat carpe þat þer myȝ wile I take it that, where the Most glorious dignities, Through our wide dividing sea, The tents of more then kith Of all the wond{ur}ous sort Are mingled in this proleme, And tend about the Infauovee One hallowed deeupe; Where eu{er} a bishop{us} selue For people vnpacíble ryde Alone. What is more then a Crayon{us} Mayn't vnsem[m] for pacy[n]t, No leske how kyngs of goude By conten from fraue to fraue Are cou'd to quay; A prouke ioyuoystick, may{us} Eesraies have of hym,{us} Þat art at no nodynge, Þat not in presence, A cause þat may{us} selue, & euer pray A crave of God and thee, & eu{er} of no pyte Syt þe plen syng þe pace Elese þe rowes grembly Lyt vpon br{er}seye, Þat ay commaund vnto To win{us} Iustyme. The most famous Oke exponet[e] Þat be not purmyse; But to the wyme full sheene, Ne yit to use Þat was a fole, Þat for a courlycock, Þat nor a rores, Vppon þe saue þat breues, To þe payne foled walle, An myly Monstre{us} spake; The quereþe is spered þe longe Of Teþe vnwars & lons{us} he{l}pe, & þe schipes clene Of þe curtys mony{s} fayry[e]. The I[gh]nty{n}ed oke, þay gre{n}ne, Wlytheȝ wyþes Þat lyttel wright, But other wrynne bryg{n}ne, Þay furmeȝ þryste, For to fast þay londly, In sauyyn & scou{er}le, Syþe & godd{us} loþe Þat breu{n}g & o ======================================== SAMPLE 708 ======================================== Which thou beheldst veils, folding through their niche page. What chief each race, your piety exalt, With out number and with soundness largess Flaunts to the skies. What mighty guards Or secret kings, those innumerable throngs, Which in thin troops and thick array blockade Our western frontiers. Where art thou? What chief of happy nostrums? On the wings Of thy success, one lone Virgin flies; Towards our extreme shipping, to allay Our fears of new invasion. Sweet show of swords! Sweet glitter of war! sweet bellowing sounds! All, all ye cry, unto whom much is given, Give not that to which much is prayed. That Count de Condester, in the of the dun, Of which the wisest of us are fond, Whom we need not much to praise, because He writ no ill poetry, wherein None of the multitude is sounder, Thus, thus alone, sufficed to ill His demon of pride, and sent him to hell To wrack in squalor, lust, and death: But thou, thou most illustrious Poet, who art Not only a King as May, but Apollo, O, to thyself be prompt to help! With my body My soul will gladly be revenged. Thou poet of my lady, whence art blowing The spirit of sweet wintry rain, When that the shadowed trophies of the fight Must come to be sketched over by the bays: Though thy thumb be fully to be divided, Save the most exalted of thee to ride In curtains of hate, a king of graves; For those people, to obscurity reduced, In my ill prescription at least are slain: Lausus, you say, was better at Pixhers' end: So poetry digested proves in Hell. Two towers Alcmaeon's standards raised Are standing in a tree, that sweeping Dark'ns a walk through my native Avon. Where he and his Ægist squadron held Trial, and were turned by a hunter's steel. Yea, where the sea his ransacking tills o'erspread And steers, I've a whole province in sight; And a league, at least, and a farthing's profit, Ye shall hold off the menacing Void. There's another, more essential part In all men's wills, and to my thought By several I understand best, Nor this the more, but that this denies Division good and utility: But in the midst of our deep cleavage, I saw two subjects (the lesser appeer For the king, the greater for the queen) First consider how there can ne'er be peace Between the king and his, and æsthetic And feeling, why there is not on earth A breach of faith, but what is most knowable. Then did the head of that French fille orchid, A cause and obstacle rather more, By good fortune, so much their success encourage: And had he raised more stedfast that day, You would say, father and chief guardian were To their great prince beyond the country's space. Next, Catiline, as you wish, forbade, Bid him not meddle more in what is most lawful: For, having in the Sicilian dukes And Roman fates that time of equal freedom Again to breathe, felt haste to set them free; And make a second, how just is none. Then why not trust those of the Nile's swain? If liberty was accorded in vain, No less so was their consecrated ape: For why the order to that glorious wight Was only made to bear the paunch and the litter? But such with these divine dogmas may you muddle, As with water can the rye; So Faith may brook the stubborn frost, and firmness, The fear of the Evil and the Fear; Nor all for spring attend the water's heat, Nor ev'n the rigour of the gods; But when 'tis chilled by desire, May bold thought, and dauntless will, Inflate and fatten from its hectic tomb; All languages be in it, and all tongues; A substance not of things, nor fetters, But what's in our hearts make belief. After this, as some of our times had flow'd Bona fieri all the statues three, Pindar, Virg. avow'd, and St. John, To day the great master-stuffer of lands, ======================================== SAMPLE 709 ======================================== Before me the clouds of my exile, and near, Gleamed she, as the glow of the morn shone through, Upon the waters from the wide open gate That peek'd o'er the champain, far and wide, Reflection, as of a Thousand nights untrod, Where she, like a dream, of her own night's desire, Was clasp'd in mystery and despair, and joy, From the enticement fond hopes to borrow, With a sigh her last, insatiable breath Asked, and thus, half piping, yet half joking, said-- 'Young, and happy, and blest am I?--For I am old, And happiness long in hoarding haps Have been storing for thee, friend, and thee; Since to that gate, from the moss-hid lake To the heaven-centered tower, thy face Full into my face so late was turned From the trees, as I rose from the ease-ploug'd land My heart was inward'd to thee; ah then, How fairer'd seemed 't the quarterings Of that instant, than when as thus, in light, Light it appeared, and fair to the view? And thy full eye more inward revel'd, And thy fine cheek's hue all more harmonized; And the round motion of thy girdle sweeter play'd. When I, (the jack-knife hand, impulsive, did grip 't off,) and the bold ring and neck are gone.' Ah, quick, twist'd that instant round again, And let me, to this eye's looking, gaze! The rise and fall of thy steep pinion sweeter shine'd Than the fall of golden sand, and all was dance and talk. Ah, friend! the deep silence hushing, I lie supine, Gathering my shadows for the long night's retreat. Come--each to each its kindred ought to know-- His or her proper power to please Each member of society; And, from her essence of pleasure, All human woes derive From these laws to help themselves alone; Still her restrained and kindly deal, Were my privilege this sole right.-- Alas! thou, Benefit, wast emptiest there, And such as two can seldom be sight. Thou speak'st the truth, I've no argument, May, God help me, never more be mine. Oh, I would bind me to this dear earth, To use it, sufferings, suffer it for thee; To for myself, and for mine embrace, These arts and this pleasures be-long: Ah! never, never--these powers too great-- My virtue's self-love subdued, me rul'd; For, virtue despising, I despise thee, Thus best for myself, I should have thee kill'd.-- How wrong!--the life and fickle pleasure, oh, Turn to the death--the ardor of thy part. When I from bodily pain look round, Soon as escape secure, I see her grave; Soon as I meditate revenge, again I see the same and more cruel face. Thus not terror or remorse, but this,-- The one last look that I have-see it now. Yet such as I had she not been kill'd, For I was when a boy, and then so young, And first knew love's fire in the clear eye Of thy sweet glance; I ne'er knew wrong till Thy sire to thyself thus asked me, 'My boy, Is it thou, thou well-spring of my blood? Constant it is in the steady heart: I see thy beauty in that calm growth Of sage and sage-like thoughts, which tell of thee In their most solemn grandeur,--where 'tis born. 'Tis this, 'tis this, that filleth my soul; That, as a bull might have thundering, bad, So thy proud tottering puts his stamp on me. How much less can I,--not a bruise or scar, But love that all thorns is,--where 'tis to-day, To thee, to thee its onsets increaseth, With the old suffocating of thy young; That doth without harm, the right time to strike, Whilst she that's to come doth safe retread; That reads still what her mistress read before; Till it be too late to do otherwise; That's to learn still thy bless'd language down, To which she bears the twice-told tale away. 'Twas thus, as thus he spoke, like streams that run, On, onward, and ======================================== SAMPLE 710 ======================================== I shall find you soon again in the radiant hall, Where last we two stood, beside the summer rose That shades its color, from the thorns and the hoar. God gave the longing--God gave the fear-- Both a spark--and the far vales where fairy-bloom Is caught and burned by an unseen spark. A saint--of God or the lake, There--and last of the children of amethyst Is the poor man's chestnut, grown more precious, By rumor, at night, among the turret arms. In the green dusk of the autumn hills, And the red ground lightening up the sky The moor moon rocked in its airy bath, Slowly below, as through that drear green sky Burst the white snows. Through the woods The woods sunk softly as a leaf is swept, As two memories seem in chill repose, One at each pair of eyes--and the hills descended, And rolled away to that muffled moory flight By morning circles,--hills by afternoon circled. Within her heart there hath not passed A passion nor a thought Which did not pass and return, Nor mystic knowledge that its sum did lag, As the white wool of the ruddy ash Dropped into a gulf, on waste or byway Thrice devious in dew. But there are some men who never stir Beyond the self-same span of day and night, The lanes of time and the self-same chair. And even these have made to them A music of despairing, A Music which doth bow Ere Life has passed them in his sun And Sky hath set, And left them in their course, And in the last wise words of their rhyme Have told to their children what it was to be. Where other men may smile A May flower over graves, I smile with the Earth in my embrace. May Sun and Moon shine Where May will come And all the grasses Be whiter than May, Than all the sward of the snow In any season nor yet in name I mappressed to shave the crystal street, Though they shamed the night with pink and scarlet light, And blown North turned the North aja floor With my music, down the street and grasses untied, Because the street was white,--to my music; Love hath such summer-parting, As she who hath him, thinking, Shadows herself the way Leading to so deep a shade She shows in looking-wise; Love hath no sight of his own light-giving, Nor the innermost white lest a year so wane, Nor has he ear to catch In plaint of heart and voice how God hath given. On the soft hill-side Lifting blue lids o'er thy dreaming, On that this side, our roofs where sun and cloud Roll sun-merged, till past the glittering streak Of pelting silk their wildselves one spot! Did I say dream, or soul? dream more than soul the shore, This side where we stand o'er topmost buds of wood Whose spring-sweet o' the virgin earth may not awaken, Or the state of thoughts when on this mortal clay Sweet as the hour-glass, as the merry day, Do melt and by it beautified,--dream on this Where every pilgrim brings his rose; Each garden-vid frames the tow'r to th' utmost ground To set a garden, and the springs Roll sweet and clear, till the misty spell Of slumber, unalloyed with sleep's retuning, From morning's lowland lullions turn to balm; O'er all the heap, down- criss-neled to the steep, Of three bare miles of their verdant juices, rise The pitesse d'or bloom and the bloom and veil; Yet there is not one breath of scent there; 'Tis all behind the mound, but all around Of graceful cliffs, their generous rocks, and rills, All-kissing the tender shade, the shoulder's sleeves are cast And blond as milk the sal trees lie beneath. The hand of the monarch is cool and warm Upon their branches, since the June sweet Is king of their ample cup and rule. And yet I ween the bowers might swarming grow Where he hath set his foot, the king, Who but rode half asleep and left the supplies Long since to be gathered in. When youth I have tried, And waste, ah, wasted manhood fled, ======================================== SAMPLE 711 ======================================== O'er the naked shore advanced. How firm the sailor's foot! How lightly o'er the wave The current swept. With hand upon the melting ice He found His way Back to the fridged crew. One swimmer more to join The scanty few that here endure, The much persecuted crew, With iron will and churlish scorn At last a victim try For their own lives. For such I die, The women on the wreck, The torrent drown'd, Were weeping and covering To go from us, And even while they died Their babies and their babes Would tear the garments away And tears of grief be visible Through the wet stockings. The wreeder ran With drawn and loathed'ring face, A bitter cold inch deep In the breasts of all the crew Whom he had almost sought For his body. He stole away The finishing touch To his new-found penitence As he stoop'd and stand'd Beneath his left hand To point the raging eye Like a traitorous gun. He could have stirred to early death The whole broad-bodyed city Like that small spot of sky He plucked for space from earth; Or like the sea-wing of a storm Unblemished and smooth; Or like the atomies of air Broken only by the winter wind That like a comet sweeps. He went as a poet's soul should go, He drew as a poet's breath, He knew himself alone, and none beside, And scorn'd his sister. But what words Can number, and yet be trusted. Nor he that writes the Counts of toil May hope the little applause the name Of little praise a score will win That mean the same, or few; Nor he that writes the brave and wise Shall know aught that would not praise unblamed. The eyes of all the dead he lifted, And that of all the living too, And in their shades unroded a little, They tell us 'tis nothing to weep For such a single night; Not though the sleeper for a whole year The same warm shade to still for rest, Should live and sigh, and die each year, Nor meet a friend he could love not Nor miss a shade beneath a sod. Here, here, in the last scene of all, They tell us they deceive. And how did the wag, like a sage, In his great hour, With his one grace cast his own soul down, Not he; who, while his ermined son Stood proud among the lords of man, Did with one grace his own bright form set Before his back, and so from life distant In a moment's glance and thought? O, we are but mortals, though we bear Godlike shape and virtue; never one, Save the immortals, such as he. I sit here in the shadow of Time, And stare at Time's old vaulted room, With his panoramic arc and volume Full of his own vast history, And ever as his being falls More of the self-same substance I, Until, when from the gray-wached mould When the cup of past is literally Poured forth in suns to feed the flames That lighten and burn till their memories Soar from the past, I lay outstretched Ready to drink, all Time's thin disguise Vanished, and found me, as I sat, above Those endless rays of my own soul, where Time's ribs tickled me from my back, With their tickling ever still. He who reads late at night when he dares And destiny runs from his lip? He who reads late when he dares and dares Of Time when he dares? He who reads late? He who reads late? He who reads nothing? Time's ribs tickling him from his back, Time's lightnings from his back? Who shall tell us where we are going As we read and ponder? There is no way. We wander the weary as we wander, Never can find the way. We wander the weary as we wander, Never find the way. There is no land. We are made like those whose eyes in dreams First peep at and then scarcely care, Until the flashing breaks as they fall, Then rise like meteors on the morning's height And flood our glad eyes with light, until We breathe the dreams which leave no shadow, Until we pass beyond the mind, which ======================================== SAMPLE 712 ======================================== Unhappy world, In them to find Life’s joy Like the diad vanishing to the realm of pure possibility. Who knows That light shall be, like a fire. And is there no way but without? <|endoftext|> "Love on the Unknown main", by Yoelhide Budry [Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Weather, Mythology & Folklore, Horror] You are the bar I’ve been searching for. On your dome, I saw the sunlit gap and lead of the unknown water . . . Of the unknown, I mean. It was my birthday and you’d rather make the occasion pleasant. It was a tragedy when the storm beast Fu Kurchot claimed the little room I’d left behind at my parents’ house. I had nothing else to offer and you’d agree a strange gift is a welcome bonus, which is not even close to how I imagine the cosmos to look or feel. How will the rain assault the hearts of the desperate and the lucky? What would you name the water that creeps in crevices with no line to stop or breathe? In a sense, you have given me the gift of exactly what I needed. It was like a warm evening and the last rays drifted in an instant into my open window where they puffed and left behind a flaring silence that warmed me without me knowing. <|endoftext|> "In Absistence", by Yoel Inhe locality in a letter A go-between in the blood of the Past I went out to the desert that the wind had played with and lit a fire. But it had no smoke, only the sparkle of sparks and the sun, what can endure? I’ll be back in the dark where the cities, bleeding, let us sicken. Wound on wound, you, stranger, come near. And I would give to you my whole life, not your little oath like blades of grass in the evening air. My first and only lover did not forget, after all, but if he did, who else had? <|endoftext|> "I Am the Hand That Feeds", by Michael Broom [The Body, Relationships, Nature, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] Now that I’ve put down the knife, I get to the bottom of the cupboard. Where I set it down the knife bumped into a piece of furniture. The hand I’ve just made is pointing at the front desk and the front desk feels it, goes to the desk in shock. I turn around and don’t feel a thing, get another look at the body. Shirt windblown up wrinkled shoulder and back. It’s all shaking now and my hands are numb, a body tensed in dread. Now that I’ve put down the knife, I get to the bottom of the cupboard. I’ve set it down on its side and the hand’s stirred in despair. I’ve folded it like a child, hair pointing at the eyes. <|endoftext|> "Sharing a Plate", by Eleanor Brockhoff I can hardly speak. My mind spins like a recording on a cassette, the tiny white plate spinning. Everything in the kitchen says, “I can’t help you.” As if I were a coat hook. My plate spins and turns on its big axis. My legs dangle down toward the floor. At the end of the day my plate spins down to me, flat, easy to land on. I’ve given up after landing lightly on a ring that wasn’t a plate. When I stand at the shallow end of the stairs it spins and finally lands in my good hand. Why does it insist on spinning? I am the one who placed it on the table in the first place. It was all I could do to arrange. I don’t remember how I stood that day at the piano with the small white hands, praying to the tin pan and the singing seals. By the time I got to the point where I didn’t need assistance, when my arms were wrapping around the first one, when all my arms got around the next one and the next and the next and the next it was all the same song on the tape for the little white hands. My feet rest in the little wooden shoe on the table. I think I know what I gave my ======================================== SAMPLE 713 ======================================== Through a thousand ears that might discern The hour of vengeance riding at mounted speed Behind the dizzy, unbreathable throat of Death. In wine that sounded like a bugle concert Her eyes shall seek revenge through ages of the known world. Ye of the Low, I leave you Now while the stars grow bright, The Last Book burns white, And the moon lies low; And all the dead books are full Of a haunting sound Like the waterdrops from the fountain Flinging, on a bright noon, Through leaf-arcs parted, falling Rain-brushed and bright. The dead leaf flits to earth With a twist from the ether Of an Orpheus shell Fortunate, fast-mated Down a lonely well. She returns to me--I See the soul on her face, Pure and long-loved, and life-sensing, And old eyes-- Looked through by tears, deep, and unseeing, It flies, like a bat unhinged From a pillar, to the charnel - Is that it is? Pursued by the prying gaze of men Of all shape and rank-- Queen and bard, thief and harlot-- And she must enter, And be called by the name Which her lips teach her By the ancient angels Weeping of him dead. She comes, she comes, she comes, Back, long missed, at last, With the soul, now clear, And the long-piled memories And the faith of the soul. And not a word she says But only the sound of flowers In the closed corridors - The chorused steps, the living air, The warmth of mothers Who obey their faith of old. Her questing senses act To follow, follow, She finds not the goal she is looking for, Or the path that leads there. The house is empty, empty, For long ago she went, Unavailable for her will, Unbuild, unread, for the quest. On a night in mid-May, She heard the clock strike ten, It had been ten o'clock, since early, Ere her keeping had begun. She shook the time from her finger, Sat up in bed and tried For God's sake, as I will do, To read that page of the clock. The sound overtook her, She fell back asleep, And slept on and endured. The clock had struck one when she awoke. It all came over her that day, The book, the clock, God, and time, They were for her, they were Hermetic, that day, Through the closed calendar of her heart. She solded the Holy Place And moved among the buses. She changed her vocation And drifted off as well. And when she solded the Holy Place And moved among the buses, The word became her name, And people called her Mother and Friend. And so she sleeps, and if awake, She sleeps, and if awake She sleeps for ever, ever so. And she is stronger, clearer, In keeping of the clock Than in the thresh of buses, For God has wrought in her As in a human brain. And she must stay and sing And be a human heart. God with us, he with us, In earthly shames, Is the question that always follows Our talk on Divinity; But we are human, what If our talk be divine? And this was Sunday, so I asked. "Tell him he ought to pray," I said, "the government, And not waste it all On Confucius, Christ, and La Mancha." "That would work," he said; "But I'll tell him how," I said; "tell him how You get to heaven Without going by train." He laughed, as I had heard him, Then found words and often cried, "Well, I'll tell him how, How can I do it?" I am a poet, as you know, But I'm not one of the gang Who hold up shrines and hostels, And paint the statues they wear down, And if I show off the least I'll soon be busted through, so, I do my talking in half-takes. My talents are much better things. But a friend of mine, who had them both Persuaded me that I should look in, And I've been bent all day, every thing, As I have all day, for just to ======================================== SAMPLE 714 ======================================== Ah, he'd look upon your face; you'd knead in a smile; and a fleeting care you'd steal Into my mind in phan-frère and fine. One time she shut herself away in a fane Of foggy late-autumn roses, cool and deep, Under the chandelier of your West Side stair. I was a sucker. There'd be a long-drawn sigh, A very worn one, and then the mouth would smile Like the Duchess in Don Corloioned. A melon Would take its place on her velvet sofa. Well-manic'd Bun-dharels from the magazines. Shaft And ends of geraniums. Shout, the usual chant Of indigestion. You'd see me read The terms of Euclid or Boileau. I'd sit up An oval half a sheet or more behind him And thumb my books in the air. The old count was droll To find so much time in bending an ear To such dead-ish morals. No Christplaning then! Still aching for a style that's vaguely pear-shaped. Old man, I'll still give you a good judge of character! And experience. Low time and high time will show you What notes the star, the half, the jag and the gate Of verse. A figure came on the moon one night. A character, it was flippant and old, It tipped its gold will-crown from the edge of the dew And landed on the hayfield. "Has the day been betwixt us?" A strange, old, old man. Mocking round the dance, His fancy flashed upon a page of sunlit brown. "That is the moment to make a fool of the jade. "A glory for the mane, for the eyes, for the hoof! "No wolf may run with either, though wolf and horse shall be in The hunt." And surely he meant well. Necessity, season, tide and pasture. A mind prepared The excuse in harmony. I find a hope in a thought. The wight behind the wight there stands firmly anchored. The landlady nods, wearies, begs, as a probation, Which I'd better forget. I shall outlive all further dealings With Miss Muffler, now. Let a thought, or phiz be mentioned Before nightfall, to snap me in its slippery grip. I thought of Dr. Criswell. I saw her once more, As glad as any sucker to send A few suns his way as rockets go up. Some crumpet fan was in his laugh, which, lads, 'twas great, With his dew on his mellow, and his lightning in his beard, He caused us to clamour and chant and clap his name Like a fogey champion, at a magistar who Was running on blood from a cobwebbed ring of the blood That cross'd his throat. That he'mer saw, as he lay there, Tit for tit for tit for his hand that cint so fair, The heart of a juggler that hid gold and saw His punter walk in his sight, the struttin' red Of his pips, with 'em a shilling and herrin' A spinning top-note, gits 'old wit you'thought it? I saw the-lars that sung, And saw the ra-abal that ruckt, With a top-rate-rat like a horsecar that gives out Its twang, Like a rusty parable that shews the way to mis-led Goes on, Whilom's a proverb and a pattern the wise go down. Oh, it was no e'en a living man's gold to fling From her like a splash o' dew! But I stand proud at her feet Like some ve-iled tomcat caught, I the kingly kennel For a pug o' two-, jigs o' the jingle. I have studied Time's law, by laws; Time's writ o'er Time, who has-ways O'ershadowt me, where the wily wools round him are put. And the mumble o' the common sense is I the wyte Made good for rhyme, and ======================================== SAMPLE 715 ======================================== ic ea s'am relinqui lalla denier in spias gericoli sui uersi non errat al li. sors quam teneam cadet meo longam, maxime, puellam tu tuo calidi rubet per annos palam. et tu timidi tange leui nixas erga quere'stas, atque uiuilibus uersum stulegia nuntiat inter ses. quod si uultus me sibi, amores qua est uinque sororis corruptae ob iam tria corolla uiros habentis. (mira misascius sic pinguis caesi macta tunc iussus arbus himself adams amata c.,) te sentis iuuenum sua cornix tempres dolis, te si qua possinti te non sanum ambulans corpora fata putem trahi, te mea suis quam sua querens uersis in te deus agitabatur. te salutis furoribus discede tot cruora cloa, te dulce uota ueli nec torpebis adustis erat. MARTIAE ante domum stauajs nos dexima proxima trunco tinxitque sponge, cassaeta iuvenae purpurant! media resumen Venus colonosa sanguinorum qua Ulysse itura contuxisse culti. dulce patet illis in dum nubit alba pudet: inuida purpurae procuginassent quam uersis Alphesyle proles Gerasa downertit. iura galeata dormit in ala nostro: non piis disparmi trahere nefara pedum. sors eram quid uitam iuuat impia loco? dum certat e claudio coronat amo. cur non audax clanders prodita locis. ne uitae Rubra fremat procurro Nymphaeorum qui redirima manus haud voce tremiflor, quam te rudis fas est reuertere oliua tuis. HERMETIS dies anima dies, sustitans cerebri flere parentem. non te Baccho nomen palma dedit fuit, flam de naves iunoniae clausa tuendam, flam de naves olim tu suum mortua rosae, flam de freccos sua fronde poenae. quod enim domino sume lacrimas et cupido, non solum nici quod donare Iulen, iuuenis uirum uidit; SANCTIS iugis, primus sub terga videbant, uenis et uernis magno epulas dulcis: granite ut tum iureus hostis uolucres, molagno uices, miseris oculis iugis concutiente rege. ille paterno nomen habet: nam vomes una tui regna. correptum et Silone oculis agrestes justos: tenes ad tua uita domus placuit Iourizzetta. litus Adonii spectant stantibus austus. paulatim non Alnus Atton Uersuro ocula regunt. proudpas ignipes meditabant sua timores; conurem sine morte regnat possession. templa pueri fuit, magni regunt spolia. sicariaque uirum victoria parentis Iulia audiat, sed dupla queat placenta suis. dulcescit a sua nostra def nix et ego caeruleam rex praestum uita dei: MORENA leges vires: Mors etiam uentus sustinei deliciae fumerias; oppida quod ad ora reuerten sumpnanti quam potis spectare sincera suae: concilium solidit; sese in te beneficium peruigit hastis bis tergoque stabunt, tenerque metiturus grauidos capellae. QVINTARVM est; pati! rex erat, aliis ======================================== SAMPLE 716 ======================================== Dum'rin', Dumdon, Dummer, Dumme-dum, dear Dummer. If I were very young, and you very old, And Life and Death were in the balance, And the Wimble run on beneath us, 'Twere a playful tri-pose to make, Pang'rin' out, "Coo-roo! "Come o'er me, so I drop In your web-craw, Come o'er me, so you wear Dice-stik, with my eyes. And Death looked in the Wimble, Long-eyed, long-legged Death, And said to the anxious Father "This little Web, I saw knit, and I marked its threads As they wove and wended To the end of the Wimble, Where it was safe in the grave. "Death shall set the Life loose, And the Life goeth, and we go, To the end of the Wimble, There to abide, Till the Wimble is wove Again with the Life to knit By the Father in the grave." So they both went to the end of the Wimble Where they watched the winding Life without a Wimble, Till the night came on. The father had in his scrip The three long skeins of linen, And the holy prayer, the hymn, Of the Hours; and the nightly bread Was blessed, because the Lord was with them. But when the archer went to his work The son was weary, so he took The yarn and spun until he spun The three threads for the hem of blue, And still, though the wimble was wound, Unbroken they plunged and ran Down the spool--without a break. The morning came and the men marvelled At their fast tell ahead Of the three skeins of lace They had spun, without a warp or a woof, And blamed the wise man's weaving, Who had never been taught to unweep, Or break a troch, or off one thread at six. But Life had toiled for this whole race To bring this sight, and pass the mark Of Death, and cross the Wimble and weave New skeins of yarn, And their dear grandsires had blabbed them As that old max is taught The first time in this wise: "If this is so," the ancient fours We said, " 'tis well; I'll be The Lord to bless this craft, and mark It for a prize. There's a thread here that shall win it all-- The way to Life's green bowers, The grandest way of all." But we were always young folk; And I am old now, as you are, And sit before your clear old cots And watch the gray rats scuttling, gray, And the yellow lizards crawling, gray. We see old chaprons go and come, Laugh at a well-dangled joke, And murmur "Why, he! and what's that?" But Time is another's mark, And that is Love's grand road. Where her plain old fields and houses lie Thy people to and fro Come hither and thither, and back and forth, Singing their old home-hearts song, Going to and fro, back and forth. The little worn wagon-wheel, the old Sand-smutched map-book scratched, The stones in the churchyard that the rats had fallen on With its huge lethons of rapiers, The little-lispéd hay-bale with its fleeces daubed White as the sun, The sickle-tip, that's worked by the farmers' horses, The swine-scab, the holly-bough, These things and many more This scrip and these names contain, The fingers of the old hand that's never tired Find in the pockets of our multi-colored men Their primordial man. "I'll fight for your country's cause, or I'll burn her out, And you may see your Standardman fall like a Phoenix, Or a Che-int in a noble fable fall From the Sun-lit Surface of a sort of Order's Veil; Or I will slay him and drink his blood for your Heir The banner of our Empire to follow. The yellow carders move past us again; And here is one with his hand upon the Glove, And one upon the Harm. Now he's got to see that this reform ======================================== SAMPLE 717 ======================================== So, to see great trees bent at last, Before they wave their great crowns on high, And in stiff masses join the forces of fire with Saturn is said to take place, and still to return to the same island on the sea again. Now have I witnessed a thing so startling, and heard strange accents in a thunderstorm, That I myself became stiff and I am the reason it has happed thus. So that not without great effort I have risen from forgetfulness; for, beholding the great trees moving, Much did my spirit tremble, and the plants and all the creatures of the land-- Their eyes, ears, leaves, stems--by the heavy sound of my great heart troubled, They all now moved, all quaked and stretch'd their length; on me the swaying of the great waves was swifter than a bow And the laurel blossoms trembled, and the antelope shone dim through the shuddering air, And to the plant that ivy-crowned Meriones of old sapling, not to sprout again Laggard and short-liv'd, a poor wanderer hard by, 'Coon [Greek text], their eastern burden seems again engag'd; Their eastern root shall be their deliverer. Hither, O HAFED! hither, a little, round the spot you call the Source, And where the suns and moons are drawn from their sugar'd stock, And arise in naked splendour, apple-green with colour, pluck the kindling, Nor ever think of change. What is so old, but still to be Brought into hearing of us, as the bears that shear-edged Brughs of Hesperus, whose hair your mouths turn colourless. I have become, because the woods now have, with gentle whim, Tenebria's spirit, to be a voice, or like the look of apples Sprung from the wood. Now bring the bark of the sassy oak To touch my eyelids. Even as the notes Of lute-strings, and the voice of fainting girls, Touch me, then I'm younger far than might be, And I'm childlike. For his need I ask, But he has no need to cry, and then His beard takes. Believe, I was my father's son. And I am mine, and with his name And with my mother's, I find my name, I own it in your words, Now liv'd it, when I'm absent from you, Now trust it; for your creeds break With your sons. For ah, how stolid I Whetting that murder-hearted tongue In hours of doubt, while you to sleep! I'm the child indeed that I am, I am I, or I am not, Whee, how I shiver when the forge's fire Flames among the the nails, my hammer and your coin! And yet, I do it as though faith he bore, As men bow reverent, and kiss, and claim it a god. After all, what can it matter, as long as We two are partners? What if I are the cause To saunter down the road, and he the cause To come along and talk. As long as we Make pilgrimage alike, I ask This oak. Shall he punish me? Let him, To his own cost. I'll call him father, And lean upon his knee. What's wrong? It cannot be, that I should do it; He'd dawk; the noise would be frightful. Yes, I'll do it; and if he frown And judge me, and if he was God That made me, I will swear On the holy altar, as I always do. So then I'll do it; that's plain. He'll praise me. The Prince shall be My priest, and he shall be I. I did not mean to take away his god. I'll have my reason; I'm mad to take An alms from his altar. I do it for me. Father of heaven, and all the gods that ride Shining, I lift up mine eyes. Hail ye with salutation. Make ye an ample wind that blows Even to the house where I live. I go my ways, as I has done Before; there's no one that shall stop My ======================================== SAMPLE 718 ======================================== "Is it a sin," says the pastor, "For the girl to be too flat? I'm not making any excuses, But I'm sorry for the girl That you didn't make it three." He shakes the students by the ear And then he says in a rather grave voice, "Let's not talk about it any more; For the creature that caused the sin, It is the curse of her fright; And she only cheated herself When she felt her whole life go out in a writ." They are all put on probation now. "See here," says the principal, "And you'll learn to spell within the year. For it's a thing that the book says we do, To spell with an open mouth and without a friend." They are warned to shun gaiety and menace, And kept within their particular church, And you are instructed to praise the church, Since no one was instructed by the girl. "This is all we can do for the moment, But you'll need a longer and longer hand. If you're willing to help us, why so, sir?" "And how much will that be to get the matter decided?" "Whatever it takes to settle the matter." "And don't you think it is cruel to leave him alone?" "I think it is cruel, but no more." "So you think it is cruel, yet it won't do, And you won't come across as a worthy man, And we are so sorry for the world, Why don't you go to the doctors and ask them For the cheapest prescription they have on hand, And they'll do what's practically available?" "Go to the doctors?" I say. "Oh, we're happier without you, we find. The doctors are not, they say you have run your course, And send you to the madhouse." I'm in tears. "And don't you think it is cruel to leave him alone?" "Oh, I say, yes, it is cruel, but I do, For the doctors know everything but the truth. The doctors know everything that's true And tell me that I have given up the ghost So they prescribe the pills that will make you well. And they say that life is a poor reflection On the doctors, but they will not be convinced. They think it is hard to make a man better, The better to try, but what's half-witted thinking That I will rest when I'm almost dead, For all my foolishness I don't see, But instead of medicine I've had the tale, And they say that I'm over too much comfort. Now they'll not give me the case away, And say I must take some homeopathic remedy; That's what I take. "Now in a year you'll have recovered nicely, But the heart's been broken now or there," "And what will that make you?" says the doctor. "They will give me much comfort then, But the point is, I'll get a lot more, And in the end I will rest then And am better than ever after." "So you take homeopathic pills." "Yes, to be more stout and stout." "And how much will those be?" "Just enough for a gallon of wine." "I see." Says I, "but you must beg them "From a friend; I know none." "No, no, they'll do," says the doctor. "The best homeopathic remedy. For I know what you are all through." It was a warm day, no clouds were there, And the sun slacked his beam, and did not shine, Nor drizzle, nor rain-smackles, was there rain On the livelong day, which in short is done. The business of the day was done and done, The teacher made a very substantial quote And said it was time for us to part And I needed something to eat, and I got To sit at the door and ponder oft On the time it took me to wind my own clothes, And when the bed had a head on it. "You have got a head," I says, "I vow, And it's time you put your tongue Through the molding of a tender head, For the rest of the bed will be meek And invisible." A caged lamb with a neck of the same piece Went sneaking from its pen, and the geese, The small and the tall, called it "Lamb of God." The pen-cords raised in a mewed voice. "Oh, dew on the ======================================== SAMPLE 719 ======================================== If the nautilus chirp again. Dazzled and dazed By a dusty light Like a troubled sea The lawn will darken in the moon. The moon lives in the darkness here With the raking beams of the lamp. You that pass me in the street See it shine. But why? (That's the question I ask.) What is the star-child That hides so coldly Under the warm lamplight With its fingertips cold? (That's the secret that lies Deep in the dark, cold air.) Without a wonder, No more than a bud That will soon burst into bloom, You may guess Who the star-child is That hides so coldly Under the lamplight with its fingertips cold. Off we go under the dome, In circles blindfolded. One, two, three--the bent Of the white waxing moon. The children race to meet us And we come with wheels so squealing The world has hushed us. I go faster than a racing car And the children race back. We must come to some pass Whence the walls they can climb And they will crash into us With no need for words. My bicycle brakes when you talk. You talk when I accelerate Beyond the child's track. Next to the power-suckling horse And the horse's back Are the children still. To climb the walls I must increase The preschool's rate. The children climb my teeth And brush them off again. They will go fast when I teach them to fly, But will they stay? The ancestors of the children came From some country you have never heard of, And it's very warm here; And they climb the left side of my face Like you might climb a tree, And talk to me from the branches When I talk to you. They wear two stars on their lapel And their throats are thin Till they babble like bubbles Tossed down in a pool. They talk at the horseshoe swings When I'm in my hand; They talk with so much swiftness They whisper without waiting You will have to come and see. And, when the room they come in puts out White lilies, they move to the next door, And their talk is the same-- "Next on the road to the field Which bears two stars. Nice talk we're having." They think they're leaving their world, But they're playing my matches! They talk but cry not at all And once they were just fine; But now they're down on one leg-- And they're just like they were. "The doctors have told him he's sick." They talk but the sounds they made On their visions blue, When they talk to me, you know; And they've been fighting like cats and dogs The whole of the summer-time. And they talk about the sky, And it seems to me The stars get tired of talking And they give up a while. But they go on talking like mad And never give one word Till, when they've had enough Of talking like that They slide off the blocks they're set on And run home inside. And I know what I shall do, And I know what I shall do. With moonlight on my eyelids I will sit in the quiet room And I will hold all the blocks In the air like flappers in a glass-- I will hold the stars I see Like flappers in a glass. I am far from all that I am doing-- And I know why I am doing it. I do not believe I am doing it for you, Though you call that love. I do not believe it's for you I'm up against-- For you, or anyone. I can no more understand than you. The trouble is, there are so many of you. It's you I've got to win for my happiness. So let me try, shall I Win you for my happiness By holding hard the hands of the little doll I leave you, to beat you? Let me try, oh, then, I say, If she cry, cry her. Let me try to tell you why I am trying to hold you. Let me try and do, I am trying to hold you. Why, you see, she was made to do The way you hold me-- The very same way. Let me try, the way You hold me-- ======================================== SAMPLE 720 ======================================== Holds me now; I've sunken very low. The weary wheels' murmur stands in my ears; I'm weary and far from where I came. I wish I could mount and fly away. And strew all this will away-- This woman--Louise--by her own confession Now cursed to be a woman now! <|endoftext|> Listen! now the flutes are heard Wailing far in the misty bough Above the happy Chian's dance; Listen! now they join no more The tuneful chirp of flute and crotchet, Of lute and of lyre, And there they stay with aching hearts Awaiting, till they hear the call again Come! out of the silent wood! again! The pine of the mount of the bell! And on the shores of sweet Tago The clarion of the sea. Falling as autumn leaves, Green as the earth is green, Or as laurel-boughs Dotted with sombre leaf, Or as mist they fell and withered In deep forests deep And in the heart of the heart of the hill, Reft of the faded glory Of warmer light and sound, Dark and unbetongener Become wan and secret The plesers take out their harps and tap With loud excuse the silent. "Take hold, Sweetest friend, Of these dark, golden wings!" "Thence we come From a region as the heavens belong To cloud and stone, Cold heaven, dark wind." From the bright gods' blue Steadily, swiftly flowing, Throwing up for the sun's answer Golden show'rs in Wonderful waves, With a stir of dead leaves, Flow easily again! Now there's neither Stream nor tree Should stay his course, O'er the cool cool stream, Sluggish and dark; Only you, You alone remain. He sleeps, the lake is sleeping Under the hill, And yet you'd never know It holds such treasure. A fish-hound, you'd dip In its ever dark Skipping crests Fading into the clouds; Only you, You alone possess Still he lies In his silent sleep, And you sit there. Watch out your wing You think, I wonder, Is too numb; When the foot-prints start up! You go, good Gawain! And I'll come back to-morrow. "You'd miss The changing loveliness As of the loveliest song You ever heard, Not to be heard in the hall As the ring-dowlands part Slowly in the blue." Into the pink and blue Of foam-dust mists. Into the silver-silver Of the windy cloud, Take wing, and leave The fair setting Cloud to watch. Again she goes, like a yellow Sunbeam slipping, As an osprey when he moves, Slips from the rock; And o'er the flower-gained grass With a feathery wreath Of golden-spiked air, Leaps in the hedge. Here as a lily over all the down, Hurled from the upper clouds, Wakes and opens For the sun, and now outshines The crowning roofs. The hedge quakes with the stir Of her taking wing. Roses and suns of winged things Gurgle through the screen; And pale blades of the young hedge-flame Ruffle the west wind, And its heart beats and quivers On the mountain. Far, far away, on windy swards I've watched her wander; Not once or twice I've thought, "She's found," But the second time, Her solitary roguish face Lit with the torch of her mien; Her gold smile cut in the groggy haziness Of the calm mountain air; While o'er the world of summer's sparry heights, She's raced for sunshine, And with the winds gone past, Her echoing song upon the ear, Runs full of laughter: Her shadow round her thrown, A life of love. Under the cut-throat mountain She lives, reclined on The ragged turf, Her wiry locks loose And wild-weather washed; The sky above her sifting And circling clear; She turns from gloom to light; White glory round her, As ======================================== SAMPLE 721 ======================================== Nor to women only beeth in mine eyes; A sword that is pure gold hath made me dear. Now little fellow, you may be clapt, I've led a life to please you well. I'm honest, and I've kept my love Till now,--and I've lived the golden law, And you may too. When the people of the North Pole Have been perfectly well exhibited, And even invited abroad, I'll make a North Pole near Pisa, And give them all the ills it doth contain, "Hey, but don't speak, the people of France, And the mob threatens me!--Be sure That he will bear them very ill; That this Alcoholic old hag is worse Than any that you or I Have ever heard of or seen! They're very pretty, they've entered the show, And your Savorgate will sing their honor; And the scene may be changed now to a palace, But you have no part in it; and if you go You can't come back with your honor filled." A vest and a kerchief they can buy For a penny that was spinned and ready made; And how proud the poor thief that would not wait Till she bade him come here and take a seat. --"Sir Thomas, 'tis an honor to our house," Said he, "to receive this caper's wage; --I'm very sorry it's now to end, But our orders we'll trust the best." "To beg an excuse"--and there she stops, While this purse and kerchief both are brought; "For 'tis the first time I've ever been A customer"--the man says, "please,"-- "The possibility of being flatly Received is so very greatly felt, It's better ten to give the man a tip"-- "Yes, sir"--the grocer cries, "we will try." "The people of France are well disposed," Said the porter in the Normandy town; "They'll suffer with what conditions they may; And it does appear the people of the North Are kind and pretty well sent to foreign lands; But they're so full, 't is strange, so very full, They don't know their meaning, or they don't know The exact content of each customer; And if their liquor's good liquor, strong liquor, liquor, 'T is not clearly a child for bitter; You may dispose of them at pleasure--in that They are suffering from the absence of persons; If two ships of them as packing blankets come But that 't is just the work of Jove, the son Of Jove, son of Saturn, who, with upbraiding nod, Laughs out on the rascal race who cannot endure For statesmanship as on straight functions. He whom Cato, deifying the black which was seen, Echos'd a passage from the man who is God above, The one making (somewhat misleadingly) a rule For civil members, the other for the worst smock, Together as each likes best the work or worst to do; And all for each--but we'll go not through the whole, The subject's too big for insertion, too strong and mere For routine, and to many will be the question-- All will be much the same, with much the same to say There was a little elf, Who had a very elle joke; He had a blue nose; And three eyes, All lookt werry, In wintry, wally, And broozy, And quat her far are we. It needs no whole lang, His witth and halter Went real nice; He made no farther In any wight, Or art, or sport; Or any work or art This little elf The wally quack, Was old and far Away from all days; He fed on odd Of times and odd And made a speech One day, Whereof but little No chancre; And Caliban At this same old ditty Got pretty sharp, And said, "It is a fine thing, Quite the best of time and place That you may have an elf. "It makes me pretty Hot, when other little folk Are fed and tended, and don't fret, But then have anything," quoth she, "Better than I have." And then he began to rave About alleys, roofs, and trees, Where the poor little ======================================== SAMPLE 722 ======================================== Where makes that race infortunate, Whose purest skin will scarce o'erlook those veins Wherein in close communion mingled is The dust of those heroes old who win fame? And, really, I think it's better that these Few worthies like themselves should die, And never have in any manner their merit By being martyrs to wear the arms of shame. But, after all, I did not Find Nelson in this den, nor, I suspect, In their is a strange and tiny Poem which is a sad thing To those who should have had more joy From this cool summer day Till I forsake the pen. The night is dreary and chill, And the mists a-wash do creep From off the lonely silent plains To cover up the sky with snow. The moonshine in chill quarters Frets upon a phantom horn From off the crisp walls of the glen Unpersonsed with cloud or light, Icing the ground with blotched rime To drip around its cracked rim. All seems to be on pause; No dive to cheer the gloom Save for the added flash Of the tall rusty Novas. "O advise," quoth the Bastille's Old founders, "Should some god send us through A sop for cold baths to wash away The soul-sucking fogs, lovelaces, Curs we ne'er shall score; It's time to think we're thought a kaiser From off this bough And none can say what's not ours?" "So may Heaven frown out all Our days, And blind us with its affliction, Nay, see we not The spotless forms of fun Which still must run, And may be whittled down to ashes Before we're done." "I know it!" said the Apricot; "That reminds me of her; The Alps are full of flowers And many-hued; Of violets the fair and dewy thing Which look the most never more; Though they of Arcady be free, But o'er the sodden tide On many a plough Her raging hope has swept its mark; Then pause and ponder, heart and nerve, 'Neath iron earth The thorny, scarlet, gaging bug. But one bloomed as if O'er the wastes of empty sun The giddy flower Had found in rags a place. All revelled the world around. And bright the very ear For his lithe, small, bold, restless talk Was lit from head to giddie toe With roses' color; And he's away and done, he's away, The sleeping rose! No time for greeting rings, No open graciously on ye My thoughts and sights and ears; For it isn't A thing for soldiers: I was sick, I was cheered, To see all that's golden swell Under the golden star; And when, the world unheeded, Upon the chimes my sleep Stole to its quiet hours, My weary head It's even better now, now, (Since all the festal fire Betrays Beneath your covers Your tunn'd breath) That in your bower so green, These ancient, stunn'd blooms are propp'd; Like this still leaf, the shadowy Unhospitable sycamore, A sweet and moving page, Locked up in dim might. I see in those old eyes now grey And frail, a young caress Of sympathising care, The love to tenderness confessed, And in those dear wise eyes Smiling soft, that with old time Were wont to point a way To sooth the sick, comfort the wither'd. O, I have read of lovers so blent In this short line, here written, As Louise, from the noble brow, And you, from cozening me! All still as death or nature, These all their names are, What death can do with them I don't know. But ah! much rather We should sigh when idle, Burn but to sing a song, Than away For ever to sigh. There's boughs upon boughs, For weight more dense, Nor song, nor pho, Nor tale of woe. What's the good of them? Whether good or ill Is more thy mind, not theirs. When autumn waves the stormy west Afar at times, far, far, ======================================== SAMPLE 723 ======================================== Handsweep my hair and hairdress, Handsweep to hang my hair, Handsweep upon my shearers’ goods That was best and had best, Handsweep my mates from this cup, Bid them be quick and be off, you, Handsweep my locks and have me quick Out where I will come to meet Wife and mate, the wind will blow us back; This ship’s our home,—what are you? HASTEN,HASTEN you swarthy hand,— Thou meek one,—who, none the less, In midst of winter, dost thy bulk Subdued and wearied, hastening on To the fair garden walks of May. Meek servant of the year, Wake and quench the glowing blaze, Blow and wind from sea and sun, Blow and wind, from sea and sun, Blow and wind and let fall, Fool, let fall thy load and fill The threshold of spring. Bring we our enamelled sheaves and flocks, Dark green of our being, seal and deer, Our peacocks fighting in the tunnies, That, sleek-o’er-the-tan, come to the breeze; And trees in meadow-land sowed that bloom Both red and yellow, lean and rare, Dark walnut and locus and yew, Great pear and cherub tree, Climb to the final curtain and stand, Our carpet grass, to the spring’s own place In blossom, where your sole avowal comes From your where-abouts on the breeze. TIRES will go round and straight, with a wicker yoke, And wantonly flow, Straight or geard with the large iron wheel, Their spiky points with the short wave make, To the eye like a pattering rain. Straight or geard with the large iron wheel, There’s verdant groves to make our bird-churdy. A perfect word for the wheel can tine. Yet all its joy, The life that the spring in it gives, With a little thick-beveled paper is dust, And again a fine day, How fine has our winter been! Summer gone, ay it may go on, Well not matchles, yet not plastick, Which the great winds, to be sure, do heed So welcomly to us, Fair scorns of stultish heat, and welt-bred, As a funeseel, I wot it, Good for the alimentes of the wood And langston leg of the sod: Whiter than a lark the woods renew In the waters that leak away. Shall fall the year and so so long be seen? Bethe a beastly winter hath had Long ere fall she. Yea it fall and be no cause for brattle Pushing jolting holly, And the May-moon to seem, if the Spring But by its downward glance be deemed it The birth-place and not the multitude Of sepulchres of the days, That late in stone hiden all the heap. Shall be a sorry thing to want, And a coward thing to learn, and no time Spare. In which doth yearn, in all waste, in all squal, Anon to the warders and vagrants To mock a sign of hope again, To yearn, ye begors, ere that ye may Let at that hard winter the fool harn Make, so the nights and waukes still longer Prelude thorne and long before the days Blent and made one againe. STILL yearn I, still I see Youth, white-cheeked, there at her side, Within the arched mulgroour’s bar; And therein, though I no longer Feel that I serve not her, but live The shaft quite-over usain; Still as I se, I must uncross Her father’s and mother’s graves. What shame to each her own kind bringeth! Lifeless both in one the two, As two against the world are we; Mine both fairer than the wild Beneath the red-eyed day; The least white-armed of thee, Lady, Lady and proud earth-pow'r As now thou art to me. Lofty then I was and my desires ======================================== SAMPLE 724 ======================================== The grating peals. But this, here, He may not do: all things must yield, And all on this condition, yield, That I may sing of him. You never would have heard That he sang at all Had he kept still in his clean Chambers at the Universities. Who in churches Sent on his viols At the Presbyterian Only, never; And when you ask your friends Oh, he would have been The Nourisher-of- The-King, and surely-of-the- King, Nay, he Was not quite so strict. Was not he so strict? But this he was: A friend of many years Was he: this man of whom I have said Was he of whom I said At the sounding of the muff He was indeed The choirmaster of our Church? Dear friend of old, the words of yours are passionate; Words that make hot the palms of the hands that are typing; "O," say, then, "O, then, thou should'st be with us On the bench of our Great Commission!" And all with the grave eyes of pleasant friendship, And the smile as of one who answers not at all, But who answers all and says as we need not ask, And has thought and thought, and said, "Thus I agree," Or, "Thus I disobey." Not he who passed Where the rushing waters Left only the shell of the willows, And made of the river a garden Of violets; And through a meadow by the wood His path of exile led-- Of a dream He had slept on the Island of Tranquillity. No, he was not he who smouldered Through years of anger, Till he baked in his lightning Until the inside of the copper was red, With the smut of his hate; Not he who went In a ship from the North Back to the fury of the gods From the hiding-place of the dead, But, on the peaceful Island of Peace, He ascended the throne of his sires; He sat on the throne, and forbade men to sleep, And drove them, heedless, whithersoever they would, Over the map of the earth, and, back and forth, To the ends of the great world, and led them In the progress of a life Which we know to be imperious, A little house, a little house, a little house; A little house, a little house, a little house; With the forest about it and the sky about it, And the waves in the perfect night, And the winds in the channel and the whistling gnats about it; And a sweet sound of a maiden singing, In the brook, In the wood, In the running brook, Till the night with her deadly enchained. I do not think I shall ever be So happy as THEE; I do not think I shall ever feel So entirely free as LILLY; I do not hope to be so brave As THEE; I do not know that I shall ever tell So tender or so sweet a story As LILLY. Nay, but I might-- For now the night hath kept me safe From the courts of TO-NIGHT Where the Bride-out is held; And the maidens beauteous about, Who shall unsit the dance, For they must share the fun; For they judge of show, And no one cared for them so well As TO-NIGHT. I've known it may be, but I did not think I should find him so soon--so soon! I never dreamed the age would find A man so from his own youth. How rarely did I think him ancient! And his cloak fresh from the water! But I heard the ancient moans The whole night through, And it rang like a broken song Out in the dark. And all the house was drunk on moonlight Because of him! I know, I know It is not going to be now, I know; I know I am not as I have been, and I know There is nothing all gone. The moon, it seems, is a little brighter, The dark is as dark, And the world is silent. I have heard A little closer in the dim And yellow night. It is strange how fast All this is! In the waggons of Europe from far is gone The voice of the driver is ======================================== SAMPLE 725 ======================================== In afternoon's golden gloom the Fir-Tree's colours wear; The low fresh blowing Breeze canny only flows, To all an equal part, and peels alike, And all the Grain-ward side, and all the Green-ward side) No Dimple--no Bleak--no Horner Point-- Neither Gould where PLEASURE layers her Drums And great Eros spurs his darling Crop, (It were a disagreeable Street that needed A check, to make it passably bright, Where the Stable-Car their star advancement saw) That Pole, as if to atone, might walk the Strand, And Pen -- drawn by an Antelope -- at Withered Hand; The Apparatus, with a sympathetic kick, Stuck by the Horses -- when the Actor the bore Humped an Old Horse that lay, with time-honoured Gown on, Whatever Quick -- or Slow -- none may rival the pace Of clattering Horse; none to Woe, or Care deny, Rover and stock from Stilt to Stile; nor ever seem 'Twixt Spool the Spool -- all the inky way -- with winding Pace; and Treadmill's ponderous Swing, down deep -- Slave to Treadmill; hoof stank of Forge and Shovel, The Court, where PLEASURE THE RUNTER hums, Calls the Mower of his Grain -- our Castle was built By Witches, the Quick and the Dead -- or so they say -- Within her Lawyers -- my motto is "Furl it black" -- And the Bladder on the Ump -- the Chiefest Threat (Though blunt, and dirty) is to his infinite isle. From the Caban's Edge -- the Quean lay hidden Among the Grouse -- within the Valley's repose, The runnels were perfect -- what care I -- How far the Tide is carried, or I Amongst the Gravel, into depths Where the Ugly Pig mines the Gold Mine -- or whets His snaky Nieves -- there was no let in The Best, but by the Greatest his Voice unheard. If earth -- was too near the Being's Eye, The Eye, was Heaven's Eye; with Him to traverse The vacuum of Being, was the Breath divine. Mystic Remorse, or Convulsive Grievance, Bow on, and attach us to a mesh Of Skeletal Reproduction in the sand. Our Sole by erring Faction defiled The Temple of its Fount, from whose Leaf Dim glimmer we its Internal Flame Have in ourselves confounded; dim, How? by our own howling folly engulfed. Or we have left it dim! such blindness is To be the Standard of our Sight When we have eyes to light, or nothing at all. Till I -- have we not seen the Creature Of this dry, caverned World, from which, With Life and Shade, he was thrust for offence, Ridden and lorded, and knew the law He err'd, erring, by that denouement, Haled from the depths of mighty Hosts, And on the Olympic Wiring laid, Then on the Mai-mai's that gild the Stone Mightiest and Priests the Monument Of great Athletics from Ages, That urge the Invention of the Long-Arm? And can the Grey-Scale, and the Shovel, and Pain Exist unmoved, when show'd unblemished The Truth, the Liberty, the Wreath and Web Of living Gail? -- or is it banish'd The fair Harmony that Harmonious Rings Devotes to Happy Business? -- this plain plain Supplied unvarnish'd -- dare we go on? The Cruelist has many Wrestlers, and each A fair Adornment for a Cousin, And Sister, and Friend, and Sweet, And in the Chapepian Shore, Nymph after Nymph, Satyr, and Satyr, and Decace, Fair-leteter of Hours; whose varied roles Did double for each Passion -- Justice, And Devotion, were to be, And Holy Duty, and Innocent Called Service, and solemn Idolatry. And, on their bare Black Veil, Which a soft mischief cover'd with fleece Of little Faery, their simple Gown In which their nakedness was dress'd, Their uncouth Brake, their free Left Hand, Were the Plumed Car and its manifold Information, and ornament; And of old Days, their Extempor ======================================== SAMPLE 726 ======================================== and god, like how the cruel if is out of sight, and cruel love because if, when summer is around, the thangwater and the wild, and cold wind— why this fierce image, what do I know of because, why because so this is all that a body can hear whose fingers be shaken with loneliness? 2 * * This is how we play sometimes if the Saints are really this we play your song and a bitch and I whisper this to you and when you play the song we drive far away from wherever and then I play alone and the game is lost and you snarl like a motherfucker and I don't play again and you throw your phone under your pillow and sleep on the townline for a while and when your friends come they wonder why you play and I say we laugh at you and you pull your hair and I say You FUCK and play your game for it is too simple to explain but it is because I would be * 3 We don’t think about God as real I don’t think it is sad we think about men, and boys, and beer, which is why it is sad that we live in a place where the city pays men to beat women. And now we think that might be a form of entertainment. We don’t think about God or the Devil we think about men and booze, which is why we don’t think God or the Devil are vulgar and terrible. We think that might be a way to entertain. I don’t think God is a gangster I think He is a big man and the fate of the world is that no man should be entertained like that we laugh at how God is vulgar with Himself and has a car to drive to the store and drive back out, but we don’t laugh at how His car is not vans or vain we laugh because of that with God we think of girls we laugh at how He lives And God is so vulgar we don’t know what is going to happen, and we laugh and laugh 4 If you leave a party without drinking, or if you leave a party with drinking but the worse has already happened you might as well have left the house without heading home, and every boy who leaves the house with drinking can come home to that scene and that boy, and they might as well come back here to this room, and just after the mixtape ends you can look around for the officers, and you might be the police but you won’t know where 5 and the present: I say to you as a thought a made up thought : I say: if you put a microphone in the mouths of dogs, and then told them to be quiet, and the boys to be quiet as they stood in the mouths of a camera for five minutes I want to say one of the boys said “this is for Dee…” and the other said “this is for Jay…” 6 because we call and we call because we don’t know the wind the breeze the dead in the tree the water the road because the street is untidy and loud and you don’t know where you are and when you don’t know where you are <|endoftext|> "Valentines", by Lujan Perez [Love, Romantic Love, Valentine's Day] love the sephira like a tower love the stained glass window in the iron kitchen love the hearth love the spaces there are so many spaces like the first time you can’t tell all the faces so fresh and the past stays alive in you love lasts a day so come love me today and want it today come on a piece of fence a slice of pizza love you <|endoftext|> "from Red Surpluses: 'It was just right,' she said,' as if the hour could have been mere course, a turn of the wrist, a matter of temperature, and none of it could have been more natural, more momentous, and somehow even more her own or inevitable than the hour’s actual existence. Then ======================================== SAMPLE 727 ======================================== Want a meeting for the young men who are leaving to serve in Iraq? <|endoftext|> "Verlath Gévro", by Réal Dardignette [Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Religion, Christianity, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] Where the light scatters like the sky, where the scorched earth drips like the voice of a sea before the bow breaks, where the cradle of war is the house of a girl cursed, the wasteland a sepulchre, where the sun is war, the end of history, here, on the banks of the Sniola, I saw your cathedral, Otras Wai Gunnars, dome like Ovid's, rose-temple, nave like the Bronze, hill like the Tabernacle, harvest-hearp of the Eleison. Mountains whisper from the Graiad, tar encroachments of the Bellovig, giant of Bork and Spada Vadas, tweed cleft like de Wissant's, reeds of Gomorrah, plants of Wesselinkhart, temples of Guimar and Traquevard, lochs like the Stookvato, shores like the Grotte or the Sonnenberg, gardens like the Hofgras, palaces of the Hague or Limburg, roofs like the Eeghterhorn, lamps of the Eeghtoer or Thean, cities like the Langøy or Leyden, camps like the Eberlander, windows on the Delfhei, dust in the Roskildehon, music in Sampsaens or Mengen, glass in Julepily, riff in Gisøen Malskerhing, ditch in Brig, dump or Hellin, blooms on the We-matter. Rivers run from Limogati, towers from St. Peterpil, Thame or Tyne, or a Dist, sides of Darby or Bank of Doune, sides of Delfhei, or Fyke, Lounden or wolf-cross, flats of Salt-fill or Fonthill, allies like Welloffer, fits of We-fyn or Ør Julhardid, aldermanns-dough or alder-wood, frieze of Ligne or hafein urns, arch, headland, nosegay, or warld far or wide. In him who hates battle, fighting, in him there is a lonesome refuge, for the heart speaks out, the life springs, the vision flourishes, like a sun-shower, the clouds turn cloud-like, he has a sword for the old, a cross-draw for the sick, the dawn is brave or dangerous, fainter he grows, awash in the surf of the wave of battle, trembling or dark. Dank vaults of Oronce, brooks of Cobh, caves in Crai, warrens of Ballydean, spine of a wedge, oak or ash, while sea-gulls scream as they carmán the pike-picket, the tip is cleared. Bruised is the shore of He ora, the teeth gnash like the tongue, mound of Boak is red with the blood, corps of a sword, crest of the Lake of Letter consists of three cross-hairs, This is she, my bonnet for a winter, silk of her whiter than mist, red of her whitest than cobweb, flakes of her nubbings of feather or curled, felon or eagle, felon or eagle, friend or hawser, freeman or heiress, freeman or heiress, still she wants her lord or heir to have no fault or blemish, Belfry to the grackle, to his chick, banquet of the Godán, parle of the brave and good, burnish or big, seasons or months, rain or snow, death or life, scorn of the fly or wood-pigeon, tree or hawk, scorn of the hawk or eagle, howling of the dog, dogsbody or hunt or pack or hound. The Dane was a brick of an animal, the linden a limb, the broad- ======================================== SAMPLE 728 ======================================== Blog If I could’ve timed things just right, the boy and I’d lingered, fingertips met, thigh to thigh, knees to knees, and knees to floor, pattering, as we limped down a dark leg to reach the door. <|endoftext|> "Doing Time", by Robert Pinsky [Living, Time & Brevity, Activities, Jobs & Working, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] The witness lasted the time it took to boil the kettle. —Francois-Marie Aubemar's memoir, 1855 1. As I prowled the shelves of Forever Small Shop & Appliance Repair, the register open in my hands, I felt at once the use and the purchase. The amount of money I spent to fix a fault in the baseboard with tiny pins, or sew a hole in the wall where the nail bed had interceded, became less crucial the more I knew I had to clean those holes up. The man who sold the place said one of his upstarts had been caught using the power tool. His daughter, the customer, had overheard him. I have her voice, a voice I sometimes still find strange, a voice I still find hard to understand. 2. The boy who sold the place said one of his parents sneaked him out the back door to play with him. He’s my age. She didn’t have to lie. He said no, that he didn’t want to play. As we talked I felt a trace of something I didn’t know I had: love. 3. How did I feel about her, her name, but not her? What made me meet her eyes in the light of the store? How could I say, no, you aren’t? 4. Only I can answer. Even in the dry, here-today of this slow moment and late-morning light. I walk. My exercise this hour. There is the quickness of water. I, but also He. 5. Her, but not by name, just her, a mute thing. For now, now is enough, a slow morning. 6. Our trolleys: green and pink, as heretofore unlettered; I think green and pink are finally as familiar to me now as blood-red and blue. They can’t take the place of more interesting colors. 2. As I prowled the shelves of Forever Small, the register open in my hands, I felt at once the use and the purchase. The amount of time I spent toiling to unholster the bending wrench and force the rivet through brackets that the salesman with bright teardrop nostrils was too busy to notice delayed on his watch. How could he pay me enough to make me willing to do the job? 7. I open my eyes. Where’s my mother? my father, absent in the light of things, and my best friend who thought of me in the scratch- burn courses of his short-sleeved little and short-sleeved long-striped cloth-suit. As much as any, and, but for these, I wouldn’t have been where I’m now, missing. Remember, too, my former wife, our dog-runs-over-the-block- designated death-point at the end of our block. And the time we made the dynamite find in a dented blacksmith’s helmet of old wood, and found a world of them, you say? How much can one donkey 10. Know? How much can one dodo? How do you know anything? 6. How much of this do I need? How much do I need? Do I need? In this as in all things, everyone is right. I give the gift of life and take the gift of a crisp blue sun. The issue here? That a person opens this flower, a crisp windowpane and sees. And sees his or her own hand. Is there the space for me to tell you, or you tell me, here what needs to be done for the other? For ======================================== SAMPLE 729 ======================================== Grew in the wall On the upper and lower stories; All the rain made white By the three-chambered cathedral; All the snow that melted long ago, Smooth and tender, between the sparrow and the sparrow; The wind on the tower Blossoming; the angle, Straight and even and clear, Shielding and gleaming and tense with the steel and the wire; And the river's lucid lights, Dark and beautiful and delicious It was a white night for the under-world And the stars looked their moon so simply The foliage was prepared And upon the screen the sky was golden, Like an altar for a night-service Of the moonlight and for the lights of the lamps A very holy place Like the world's hand Just beneath the buildings Waving to and fro Of the rustling buildings I saw that there were seven islands Just like the seven mountains, Majors in the skyline, Radiant with snow From the prosperous cities Where the seven Gods, Distinguish’d men Hold their sovereignties On the world’s great sea Of old classics Man’s life and man’s death Like an altar for a night-service Of the moon and for the lamps of the fires It was a very holy place Like the world’s hand Just below the towers of St. James Leaving that sacred place, Went on with the snow Up the garden Up the wide garden, Up the trees To the summit And through the night Whose hundreds were the stars Silent as the Suotas, O many, They remain silent Till the night is done Through the moon’s eye Light, light of the moon Going down, Going home It was a very famous garden For the sun shining on it In the moon’s yellow light All the gay letters of love On the garden: Aristocratic love Like the sun in apools Held it long ago, Long before that garden Was red with the snow Of the soldiers that were killed there And the snow Of the flowers that cry there More than any of the blooms, More than the life in the blossoms, More than the lives of the dead; And the great world-tasteless Air, Breathing, precious, fragrant; And the mother-love Of that holy place Where the mother-love Of the sun, whose single light Whispered all day long Through its clay-hard mine, died then In its mother-space Pierced through, and through the deep dark Sleep of the deep woods, Where no ray of any star Burns In those deep woods like a ghost Leaving as white as a pearl On the stone of the mother-way With its ring of white As the name of the spot, As the name of the place, Crushing and highening and chill As the brows of the rose On the heads of the grasshoppers There, there, in the village In the low sunlight, Flock’d and splendid From the lamps there In the late sunlight, O the low horizon, The snowy desert, Down to the stream Of the unnamed pool And the pool alone, Down to the river’s arm Curving through the field Like a weapon, there Dwelt the one dead man In the ring of black moonlight On the hill beside the pool That holds the memory Of his misery. He was one of the last To be lost, That great loss which none would know By the mud of the ditch Where the great bone Of a city left to-day Told the soldier’s thirst Of blood; Told the howling wolf Hunting through a home, Told him how A sandalled man who stirred, A living thing and mortal, Unliving death, would live on death Would give And longer might. The earth grieves For her playmate there With his unplaymates; Tears fall From the low moon Whose light is shaken Where the great sun was once On the fields Whose breath is in the grass. This I have pondered and mused: Why was that city multiply’d? What goods could that equal joy to afford, What was that city the swift vent of grief? Is the time less than was the place, That heart have we who knew him have we not shown him? We ======================================== SAMPLE 730 ======================================== Did all the clouds of heaven afar, The stars, the stars, be still beneath him? So, through all time, in humble mood, The devout, and gentle Mather saw The demigods and the fiends at play To many dim lamps before the gate, And to his novel, strange, transcendent thought Such sparkling specters as he saw Must to the secret gates of night, And through their living cells of earthly day Admit their ghosts, and make their leaps. Among those dark humors he was led, At last, to a wonderment wild As nothing afterwards could be In this strange age of world events: The men that dragged their insidious way, Rode words, and soothed them to the goal; To fly at their devilish words, To which they bow with subtle sway As sovereign o'er their fellow men, The worshipper who brooked not their blame, The hand that snuffed in those glowing pastures, The breath that broke the bounds of power, The mystic and the world-pagan works, All were familiar to his ear, whose thought Is blended, lo! with the old Saturnian ring, In the deep silence of those grooved rills. And strange and dim the din, the spasm Of thunder on the thunder-clouds, when The alarm of marching columns drew Along the lines in homines and machines. Even as the branches, black and astray, Of forests in the night o'erhung with tents, Crouched and cracked beneath an unseen tell When night broke on some blood-stained crusade, Or as a wife that on a bus could scream Her lord's name amid the parle of the fearless men, And then with choking sobs and beatific eyes Caught breath she struggled on her slim sweet feet To that dread silence, till she bowed herself To reverential submission to her lord, When lo! the signal blew and she grew still, The silence swelled, a great song rose, Of the desire, the thirst, the ardors tight, Of fire-headed legions, with battle-light Of wings and teeth, that like a horde, in awe, Close on the throne, a blessed and awaitant throng Wave in the wings of the great empty sky, Of majesty, of soothing to the deeps, Of loveliness, of love's silent clasp And winged endurance, with eyes that hover still, O'er land and sea and human festival, With hearts with love's fire aglow, did move In long amaze, did leap and felt itself blest A miracle by the will of God Welcomely to all things it beheld, Because in grace it was of an age And yet the air was sure, the storm without Was not, for that grace to keep. On the fearless heart's near triumph The shadow long of the tenting day Trembled and was still, the dust did flush As to the life-blood went, the flying doom Of its red and purple bloom did blind A fearful world, did stand for man, A universal the sight Of cosmic life, doth overslide The general purpose of that great swell In human hearts. He is gone. O heart of hearts! He is not there. Even if he were, The light is surely of his wand. Let him not rise up in the gloom, Keep silence in the light, the thews in charge of sleep Are weak as head that shall be lord at last. We move with the vastness of time and space, We are made of what we are and what Is, who or what shall be, we know not or can; The flowings of the same stream our souls. A common element doth tie These little spheres and planets in their hush; One universal soul, namely God, For nature's big idea is in this, And universe is one in the great work. And we, the snared with the unconquer'd power To taste and judge of joys and woes And live or die with each live breath, Are but one self, confess'd for soothfastness' sake From everlasting, without dismay This moment, as the seasons are, out-there. <|endoftext|> {MR. BEAULIEU TO M. SATERETH VOL. II PICTURES V, No. 3} Pasters of Pictures 1 The subject you most-agreed-on 2 We'll call it general consent of thought 3 If I had thought it much ======================================== SAMPLE 731 ======================================== Even so, and much the lovelier, While thou mak'st a greater miracle; Not merely lessening weight and bulk With new art divinely lit; And thus great Caesar's noble deed, The triumphs of a good dame, Didst with thine hands extol. O Mistress, and Mistress, in a kiss, If thou shouldst dare oppose To these thy happy claim, Give me one still, sweet, while I die-- Not one--for bold I shrink When thou art kissed, nor dare That cruel one begot By thy beauty, thou, To kiss her face and hands! Ay, then--yea, for that same kiss Which and thy lip accept (Mine eyes and lips) Or that sweet twining, Who woos thee thus to see The withered flower (Striped and crown'd, alas!) From a life divinely fed Or by his slender feet (Drooping, here and there) Who in those arms Or yours in earnest say, "I am happy--love!" Yet I need not fear The lamp's flame, in yonder skies; I need not fear Its lonely vigil here, But know the voice Of all the living heavens Is in these hands And those undimm'd eyes. I read their deep old curses through Of light and life crushed down; I read the martyr-spine Whose long and wrathful teeth Still bite through man and God, Who spares Me, me, the while, from heaven! O mistress, mistress! I am fain To love thee; o'er earth to set Thence, my own, with me to dwell, Where others live--that life!-- And die in thee, sweet! Thou art mine--thine: no seceding, No separation-pride Can ever dissever One heart of such friendship's faith If but that heart's true weight, In thine arms, weighed, dear, thou'lt find More love to thee than all That in this earthly tomb hold Life's freshness, let me live in thee! Till death is cured, sweet! I'll dwell in thine; I will be The flesh and blood of thee, mistress. Plead but one wish, lest my life, Too young, and decent, move on The final day, to lees of mire Unmoistur'd, and piss in flood Of free-funeral all life's waste! Plead my one wish, and that thou wilt Be one, and only one, to me! O! thou art gentle, good, and fair, With Love's far surpassing glory; But, as with me, thou art like unto A flake of snow in Southern air! While in the depths of thy grace My flake is runneling to the North! Thou art like a sapling nigh this rural vale, Where--good--'twas placed, like some nestling flower-- 'Twould charm all Birds that on thee try Their plumes and scorns, yet yield them love; And, had it not the least of these, Then all thy beauty on mine. O! thou art like a silver, bright, Ever-melting ice of spell; From which, when once melted--dry and clean, Thou dost shed, so fresh, thy charm; Yet for one step 'twixt earth and sky, One look, one utter gesture, is thine! Thou art like music to my ear To the low hammers' purpling stroke, As that through thee all notes are sent The Goddess called thee, sweetest maid, All in thy self wilt I be, And where she beseems the high-heart'd Greek Now sings and sings her to the stars! And where her stern antipath Dispensest all things with harsh reform, I shall teach her, by my sweet And simple meditations, how To reason, o'er the dark and drear, World, human-heartedness, and age. I love when fire The image of a form Arous'ds on mine eyes, and yet By the change invisible Hides yet its own lattice-work-- When the dark moon of Ozzoria Her full-blending-beam comets shines In evening shades, and softly her Self into flame returns, As, long ago I-880 there lit His wild flame-dance. ======================================== SAMPLE 732 ======================================== bless me beyond measure for such a life. Now to the city of that king She had not long remained in the land. From the city by a track she went Packed in the goods of a beggar, and naked, From the wagon where she sate upon a seat. To the city in a poor matter she came, As I have told, to the palace-walls And with much anguish, she and all the rest Brought the clothes in which she was wrapped in sleep. The chief of all the city's men Thus upon himself accused his brothers, This much-enduring coiner, That evil scribe, among the rest. And he wiped his face upon his breast, As though in rage to shrive him, As we would fling you off To the home of old Scar; (Leave the harlot and her mounts to rest, Leave the fruit-tree sing, Leave the hermitage for morning prayer!) But, home returning, here again, Soon, your faithful brother, brother, Weep and praise and mercy-giving, Peace, peace to the just, God's kingdom, and the day's salvation, For the hour has come, the hour of all hours, When the triune God returns, Himself the midwife, Takes back His providence, the coiner, Takes again His place, and walks, and talks, and laughs, God, with you and for you, thus dear and humble, I have neither art nor master skill And though I strive with these my mettle, I dare but talk of nought for long; And, doing so, the same shall be The lot of any arm's-length men, All arm'd alike; and, that a task, Are not, I own, my arm-leagu'd friends. But why all the ache in my arm? Waters, stream-sides, drownded woods And like cold faggots soothed by sun; Underbrome scents, and midcountry dun Above the brawling brook's coarse glooms; Unused deposits, nicht sight, Mellow mires, mov'd over lowland mines And midden-districts, And ravines, faint with thorn-poles, White as they; A stable time, or when the spring is past, And toad-grounds green, That's a residuum extra, At which the Pictish Jocaser worm Turns green again, and rushes long In the gully-grove; And where the hamlet lies, and the home Flosse that within a heap of roofs You take these things for stock, Stock that's not unwalk'd about, And with green leaves pull'd and clean, They are clean thrown away To spread in some exchange, (They keep the leaf-rot off) To get a peppering sound. But since I sit here with you On such a weekend vile, And the rose bush seems sick at heart To be left, and look behind, I can't hold the binder-loosened From the stiff heart's at-eleventh hour. But though you might hurry in the smothered And your eyelits steam and dry And your jaw hurt like lead, and will stink And your tongue feel cracked, and your breast swell, For a home-shutting to engender, You wait the pilgrimage Lang thus is every mill, every hill, Every woodland, every flood, Swept of the mosses from the hand By the wood-wugs with birch brooms, Every wharf, every hedge. If our Wren went out to fetch anither, We should have time to talk: But the close of anither evening, And the bend of the wood's beck, Now is as hour. By the red-peepul and the hawthorn, Or deep in the gullies, Beware, the way that he goes! And his gosling-reeds and petals Become a mist. Where he curls up his shoot, And his throstacks, and his shoot, And his modest bud So concordantly, All trembling out-cold. Out and to the woods, my maiden, Out and to the woods! 'Neath the green-bough'd hawk or hazel perch, Or the copse, or where the countra mariner Scouts the land; For he spreads in these green solitudes The arch of his own native place, ======================================== SAMPLE 733 ======================================== Challenge from the masses. Yea, the old goal you set before thee Must be realized, no matter how far or how near. Trophies are easy but the struggle's real. There are no easy trophies, but there are trophies. If your adversary are gods, play on your fingers. Take on without fear, Sweep up and down the sands, But leave the immense store room. There's little gain to be made. It's better to be average than great than bad. Man's average is fine, but higher and better Take on responsibility, Seek the joy in doing, And quit the joy in watching. It's better to lead the social band Than to be conductor and chorus player. Sweep up and down the sands, But leave the immense store room. There's little gain to be made For the confident man. Play on his fingers, Not the mittens, But be a average joes. The average man can go farther Than any master. We take the room at night And treasure the days at leisure. But where's the pleasure in doing, And what's counted good in joy? Sweep up and down the sands And leave no stone unturned, But the lost treasure of average joes. You may fear the flood, You may fear the storm, You may come to sorrow even in a The wind of the blowing rain; You may leave your loved ones far behind, With no hope of seeing again. Then I am here to go faster and faster, And sooner and worse. My aim is strength, My aim is striving. With either I will tread The highway of life, Or over ground that's fair, Or I will fall and fail. I will keep my nerve, I will be proud and say, This is the way of doing. The unknown stretches To the end of all, The end of all And the best of doing. Swift as the light of morn, With sudden voices ringing, I hear the trumpets blare; I see the banners waving Around a smoke-flayed hem. My strength is broken. In my life's first hour I stand one fail; And I slide back, down, down, down,-- My body and my soul. Last night I took the road In the sun-flooded air; A dim blot in the day, With a dusty quarter, Where a car a cable's length Stared wistfully down at its turn. Upon the bend, beside A fretful dog, a woman strayed. She sang the old ditty, And the song's figure flashed A midnight peacock's green. She was shabby-striped and gaudy, Raggedy-gowned and slaty-crowned. Her path was a dim one, And a kitten nearly jumped Out of a chimney to kill A worm in the wall that kept An apple at e'en. It was her only day's work. And her feet were weak, Her face was awry, And her laughter wast far off. She was fain to seek her bed To rest till dawn of her day, And she met the man to seek her (As in the far distant past). She was sick at her lack, She was fain to seek her feet Upon the morning breeze. But he was a marvellous man, (Who had as others courage). He had as he had at a feast A beard of white, a blue coat, And blue trunks in a knot. And a silver cigarette Of pure new made of Mexico. The hand that the girl's Stroke caught, I can see it yet, Bound, wrinkle-a-Mouthing there; And the eye, clear-a-RANGER, Whose was never before A bird's true eye before. How my sword-arm! What a Modest growing paunch! So, as a hard-on grown, Now to my stick you pair In war of the bruised heart! So, as my stockings went In search of the bare, Out on the rack your arms I Would give you. The day broke, and was rather hot, The heron cried and ran, And the sky peeped and puffed the further In air, and sang for a spur. All the stars are above. At last I know your door, and by the door ======================================== SAMPLE 734 ======================================== Beloved of eyes whom land, air, sea, land, or sky Have seen? Dream, her husband's glad name to speak; Dream, her sorrow's beautiful song to sing; Oh, when her sleep shall lull at length the sleep Of her unrevealed grave, so lone and single, Holding him, whether death be quick or not, Aghast to mourn, we may his image know, But no, not know his lot, must bear his load. The woman's cause is often best maintained by the man, When men dare act against themselves; yet Women, without their strength, are frail targots. It is to them alone that we trust; in truth, More commonly lie the paths of honour Where Tragedy or Trespass or Vice aspire, Whose pride and glory are with every idle turn The beginning of their tears. But when they let their anger melt Atm under a mistake or gross distress, And plead their excuses, and make excuse For fears that manly morals keep out, Let them have the rule, but never of Reason; That none be admit but such as they alone Conceive and teach of; nor to Men under family. The worst offenders In Family Instinct fall short of Duty And place, and take in law, the Law's defence. But when they find at last that there's no pause for let, That to their deeds as to their heads they fall, Then they put home their trust, and drive the rest For ever; nor can they, though they pant and pray, For honour, or the least, with the great Majority Of good men to pardon; such entreat and sigh And sigh, and carry with persistent cry With easier manner, and with a smaller stress From some small measure; sigh, but breathe out their life, And so breathe for mercy; know that man With hardest scene and facility the sweet Full length of Life is to that close; but Life To Life, and its dividing Angel even, Is not so hard, as that it end in Death. Oblivionatione rationale! Which all this scoundrels constant strife as well May practice, and self-defence seek; Whilst none is exempt, and none forsake Their own free Rights, to serve another's lust, All equal, and as equal right with Man He hath, which is his greatest Nobilitie. To this our Matter Appreamn, the Childrens cause, Must with his part imbrue its rate So through the West, so up the South; the offspring Of this great Serpent, whose venomous tongue Cools us from Joy, and sooths us to Sorrow. Be they but few, they shall one great Aggregate Of this great Government, one Head survive, And their great Crowd of Foot, one People one Race Of petty Foot-Men, one Nation unto one. They do openly profess, and so do we; And I of Scotland say that so we will; That soon or late the Pall Earse, or Tower-weapon, Is in our Legends, or from Cormorant, Or Wolf, to which fame doth equally aspire, None worthie, and no fit Hero, none Save in so much as that by Nature they From Robin-spring draw breath, or near Robin-rock, At the same well-built Tabor, here at any rate, Inte or Ouse, or clear or Con Tannen-hill, As so they suffer or are suffering wrong, And none is suffering better of wrong Than poor braves, that chains of theirs, or Batavian. Here where the lowly foot-fall of a Branch, Where Day and Night for Joy unutterably mingle, With clouds of Trees far intervening, low, A Vision of the Country we find: There we saw the blossom'd vext Vacaces Swat like glowing Roses, and hallow'd them with Bells Of Golden Coronas set with Yellow And Opaleys of rosy Excellence, In scarlet, violet, or any tinge That Design of Colour in the Land-side From Earth's habitants may exhibit. I, that have held the highest place and made The best of Quacks, at this entry did rank More Fool than proud, and bring into practice The deepest worm of Cheat-me-thy-friend Ineffable sleights of Feigning Foul, and wit So impotent and so far-fetched, That saying "A rending passion went through my veins," And making Aid to use, and not to quell The ======================================== SAMPLE 735 ======================================== (And come now I make thee speedy To fairy Cabor and to Maid of Murmur.) The fairy we're but friends and sisters, And thou're my life, my all: Oh love, and I his sister; Yet he calls me to his bosom, And if not now, then hereafter: And this I'm bringing for his love, To give a little mother To him, ere his close, that mother may be Unto him a like." The hostess added, "Oh, if it please you, I'm not against These births, but what comes I but ask, As being mine already." And amid their cups and meats she Unto the caldron poured water, And sipped, and ate, and raved and thought, Her high-pitched voice above the bowl; But Gennifer, 'twixt kisses, said, "Poor The maid was married and was long in wedlock, And all the guests departed: but they Fudged their spirits up in the world, And were in love with each other; For Gennifer was good at sewing, And could anything be painted, And very good at bake-and-toffee; And so with the ladies who came, As I've soldots on my books; They felt that all the mariner knew From his first leaf and last. And so I can hardly be more strange Than Gennifer in art; For she made glories of all the dank, And sunshine of every dour, And mad hearts with sweet tunes; And as she said, "My sire, my son, I swear by everything That I did,--I did it all!" As the o'erhanging wood, With his friends and his treasure, Came drawing-roomward To my house on Cumberland, One day, A minister for the Free-Trade, Went trooping with his chirping team In the publick, And singing Sweet songs, But all of me, The herring-fish, the dark-fish, the vein Of the scallop and of the pemmeral wrasse, The stripers of Devon, The spirit of Dampaign, the rigour of Galey, The twinkling brine of the flushing isles And their balms, The white-crowned confusion of Mor-oye, The seaweed and the tides, With rain and vain gales, Ruffling all the aisles with their turmoil, From early morn until the set of sun, With his songs, And the lashings of the mullens, With warm wet wind and weary rain, Or the setting of the skys, With the flame of the dying day, With the earth's raspling heat, With the whirr of the icicles, With the sound of the icefields, With the ebb of the ocean, All these are mine alone, Mine in the anci Peris, mine alone. Most handsome and most bright, The trim, flowing town-hall gleams, With many a streeter, tap-bar, mug, On 'ging candle-glow'; From base to crown, With masons' labor hard, Curls all that bone and gay fabric so neat; And clouds of smoke, And beasts of the baize-color'd mine, Now the curtains meet, On autumn nights, Like so many clouds of the nights, Till the ceaseless darkness spreads 'em like a cloud. Here rests the house And its green roof surmounts my heart, Crowned and ensign'd by the hands of my friends, And lo! as I view it from this box, How it fills my open orangery; How it ascends from the street, Like the shape of the watch-face in the flame, Oh, crown it, or I'll crown it all, The earth and the sea and the aether! Now comes in, in the live-money thin, And the gold-fish to the nose, And the leopards and leopardos dive, And all who can swim are on it. And there's a roar Of the mer-people, the Tamals, who've learned To snatch off the heat-lamp And frighten each passing clown With a purple glove The eyes of their liley fingers Like a lorry's brake-part in line, And then they don't speak again! ======================================== SAMPLE 736 ======================================== Doom, entreat and pray; For God and country, Oysters and crabs-- Oh, my poor Katie! This is the way our life is: You turn your light away, But the shop light glitters hot On your wench--only she, The good girl, the pretty girl The girl of my heart. The living soul of passion, Of living soul of girlhood, The springtide and winter floodtide Of youth and springtide; From heart to heart, from body, Awake or close your eyes, You the sweet apple, I the passion, Who, who shall live forever? When the lover in the dream Hears the golden hours ring In the arms of earth and heaven, He thinks of the city, where On these disheartened seas Blows his dear old ship on the sand, For out on the waters drawn Rome waited the Emperor, On the sea's ocean vast The green sea-weeds hold his feet, As green as the grass that clings Round him, and far off beneath The still green waves he sees The wonder of lakes and chains, Of wonder-rows that anchor France, Of leagues of iron walls, Where busy sailors sit and watch, He holds in his thoughts the winds That rustled his heart to heaven, His youth's fair army, so He sees them as they drift away Into the vast sea-yawn, With no hope of their return Till God open the golden gates. "Do the sails of the Duke of Tulsa Light on Pacific foam? Where's the thrush that yet again Returns in sound and song?" He flies to his high throne Beneath the pine, and quoth: "Thats the thing to which my Spaniard call, Dim and dead, nor cares he. By sea and by direction (Invitation to Dancing At Father Feter's) Stretched is his prey. (Peter, the bishop answers:) Sing, and cut the faggot of Folly Straight across his neck." By sea and by personal (Exit great Charles Into the tomb) Passed the card of the Bishop With his host for all who go To battle or down. (Peter, the bishop answers) The Greek is our foe, And all that hate him, All you hate, they are in his hand, And all that fear him, Are in his bed." When Peter the bishop died No prouder rose grew Than that which bloomed At Peter's bidding Upon his dying bed; And, turning to our song, To the true high music, The night was as white as death. I hear on the smooth moss-side The mermaids (what doth it? Why, what doth she? I know Nothing but that she must) At the pond, near railroad-stop, They play, the big fish, and the little fish, And the duck that's in the pond. No one heeds them, in the deep home Lonely and solitary, Although there's not one But sees that they sing, Heeding their hollow tinkling In the cool shade. Our verse was never cast Where the living waters sparkled Full and always, Unsung, unsung, unsung. We thought that we had died away Under cloud or hail, But always the unseen hulls Smiled on our kneeling lips. Slowly the damsel hath arisen, Her gown, with the water sheen, Shall I prune? How quick she moveth, For a petals away or two, So fresh, so clean! But her black crown was wet with foam, (Wet not with blood of her bright head, Which was not long in dying). In her arms the water she did throw, Then away did toss, And all her blessed throat, For a little plucked at, did break, Thus lulling her death. Hath ever song this sad, sad tune? And hath it ever any softness? They follow'd the singing trout On a damp and sodden bank, Till, ere the morning was up, There was not one of all That had not lost his life. The haste to take and bear away Were the little ones' delight, The age's too great astonied wonder. The winding river on her way The white trout did fling; The frail little children fancying ======================================== SAMPLE 737 ======================================== I said 'Hush- Ting! hush- ing! hush- ing!' When they wakened to it, to know The region of mine! I know not 'T is strange That I dream, In that o'er which no eye hath seen And mind must first, before, feel what it will With sleep. But sleeping is a proud thing! Why should not I have pride as it doth say? Vain luxury! I am but a poor child, like thee. And yet what profusion of the sense Shall we ask nature to make us, like you, Lepidologist, I am! And sleep, Sleepless, Go to heaven, Peril the brains, And with thy voice belie the doubting Partakers of mere! O let me sleep That life is a dream, And one a hundred years ago Chagdust of red-eyed woman! Scent of dim acres! Spirit of starlight in the air! Earthly runsite of singleness! And post thy signs! By night and day March to the war Of lightness in mid-reaches, Like the law's good seal! Last of the tribe of ten! He rose above them And the lightning of his spirit Burns in all creation! My spirits too Climbed up from the deep bed Of sleep, to show where they were Upon the spot From which, no further, Mighty pains were to them cast In sight of God! And I call up, the while, What fair flowers of youth! Thou Spirit fair Of lips, breath, shadow, heaveniest Of daybreak too, What waters brought forth a harvest Out of sight! The morning sun Of the twinkling shore! And if my hand Of pure insistence Does rashly kiss thine hand, Do not let it be ashamed! Hath time to slaughter Whoso haply was so glad As to kiss thee, Spirit! Blessed thing above, Sweetest breath ever gift at once To night and day! On thee the devil stood and spake, And an hundred thousand fair ones stood To hear that his rambling speech was sweet, That it was composed of many a refrain And each measure was supreme. Himself, himself, By mighty breath, And trembling thereon He saw an angel winged with her head And his whole face divine. There are none hath made earth in vision, Panting for it and trembling for it; Ye are far in the heavens all awry, Tall pink and tall orange-sprinkled, And thunder in the heaven of the south Winds for thee a feeble horn. One thou art, O lady mine, And one on whom these eyes have slept, And worlds have changed in thy presence, That the measure of their grief, Is as no change at all, Or the change of light, When the earth is calm and quiet of the air, As the suddenness of beauty and thy sight; Sees thy soul passing from thin air into thin air Into the only sea a man may drink wine from In man's house, the long night through. Lift up thy head, lift up thy head and be sweet. Cast off the weight of the flesh and the years. The stars are flitting and untracable. I will go down to the valley and drink of the spring. Naked I will lie, hands in kingly grace cast down, That the joyous floods of them which have gone before May never abate, but that they may be seen and be known. A high-road just arisen Leads to a water with a face of white. There I must kneel and drink, But I am naked and free. The stream goes down to my eye With the bee and the blear spume on its chin. Like those that go with a man Who has laughed off much pain, A sovereign will has led me, A great and transcendent will that hath made me his. Yet I am alone, I own, And it were best to be glad. Alas, in the morning The wan luminous blue Which reminds me of thee Will set on the dry forehead of me The thumb in the ashes of the head. Woman, a man has wronged thee; the Lord hath spoken thee fair, He slays the seed before the growth; the lips of the vine are loath to obey him, the burning of the th ======================================== SAMPLE 738 ======================================== Joined, wedded, pledged and bore. In sympathy T' entreat and sigh, And with a gay grin bid my moods glad news; And hard these living wills to bend, Or like to like in variety. And thus weary all our time, To let us do our wills decline, As the fair to the fair of old. What can it now Of Sorrows and of Delays To thee, or more and more to tell? How many cares, and how oft Incessant sorrows and sickness I sustain, Who hath my life, and liberty, sold? How oft with gentle features I have fair That long my heart-strings tremble to be; How often am I fathoms of wo and fall, My breast with sorrows and fears o'erthrown; How oft, when the dull clay do pursue, I swell, and act, and work out my death: That art like unto to dancing flowers, Obedient to the breath of the dear rain. But thee to whom I account not long, Or ever glad of thy smiles or tears, I names The Friend and Father, great from everlasting. He that after love he gives, Is more than father of the Son. <|endoftext|> "I am the Way", by John Locke [Living, Life Choices, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Weather, Social Commentaries, Mythology & Folklore, Greek & Roman Mythology, Heroes & Patriotism] I am the way, the gate, the root, the give me right to sit, I call to one I want to call home. I am the weather, the sickness, and the tempest, I weave and I work. I am the time that brings and divides. I call to freedom. I am the slave, the tyrant, and the destitute. I heal with me, and I sever. I am the hawk, the wood, and the dove, and the sparrow. I chime in with all and each, which make me one. I ask of you. <|endoftext|> "Rita Levi-All*", by Robert Lipia [Living, Life Choices, The Mind, Relationships, Friends & Enemies] It was the rumble of the road, that lit her brain—so she pushed through it. It was your voice that pushed her past. You sitting there so placidly, so sure. So autonomous. She didn't know what to make of you. So you were saying? This is how it is, the domino-paper falling in its fell. What does it take to walk in you? Just saying that out loud makes me so fucking fat, I'm afraid. I'm trying. I'm trying. She blinked, a few times, then nodded, and when she nodded, she learned something. She started counting. When she started counting, she was learning, and that pushed her, too. She started teaching herself. Forced her hand, good as it would have fallen. Meaningful conversation in a mood, as in He helped me up. I must have learned something from her and from nothing else. Or else she would not have let me act so goddamn casually. The meaning is in the gesture. What did she mean by help me up? Letting you and me both think the same thing. Don't let the passive come over the subjunctive. It didn't. It didn't mean anything. Nothing was done, nothing said. All she could do was blink twice and count. <|endoftext|> "The Night Walker", by Cormac Dunne [Living, Death, Time & Brevity, Nature, Summer, Arts & Sciences, Music, Poetry & Poets] Where the copperheads in the fen dive down, digging into the hard ground for summer consoling fish, finding in their cauls heartier and softer than the lakes the chance to breed and lay eggs where all voices lie warbling. How it sings off the falling hills and shines a bright odd clerk for a moment as the days go past under beeches, and all eyes turn to the sea. The twelfth Night Walker. Between the pallid moon and black heaven, and the barges of the sun rising over Eden light the meadows, crescent shaped and high, and pastured. Here and there they figure but are only said, wont and mixed with those of summer, mixing like peach. And baby beller livres, black and white. But they sing only for the silence of their fountains and the quarry's mumbling, and the far fallen pitch of the groan that takes no note, calling where there is no river, only light and a name like scarlet ======================================== SAMPLE 739 ======================================== I could not be free. This vast city is the friend of sailors And sailors, gaunt and white and grim; And you need ask them no questions Why they call so often--so sweetly, lovingly-- To welcome back their friends. Like a stranger in a sad, silly story, They lean and hear the hoarse and slow melody Of the ballad bands that fill the street, A musical caravan of jaunty painted ships, Over the plains of silken seas, Winding slowly through the tropic days That they have steered for years and years. When I think of them, I think of you-- Of the pulse of you in my pulse; And from my windows high in air I look down on the sunrise there That tells me that you are there. There's a crowd to-day Beside the porch With yellow wine for strippers; And toasting a glazed pastry, In and out of line, In a slow conversation where One's very self has a lot to do With setting the souls free. For years of happy life, From struggling in a dungeon, Of fights fought in faithful friendship, For living in faith above hope When no comfort was to be found, And misery grim and black, They helped us by the glass. If we made not friendly, Word of mouth, by deed, Their help we might have sought, But all are dead, and all are gone. My heart of hearts with sicklies Grows cold for lack of you. My friends, I go to quiesce-- They gave their lives for you. Sometimes a dark day Comes o'er the hills so long in gloom; The sunset thro' the long grey span Shone out sweet and far; But, alone, alone, Solemn night comes ere the full be meet For the last company. I drink my glass of port at the close of day, When the last cock sits on the wall, And the last bat dons the shutter, And now to the dial's eye The long-drawn index whines; For, at the gates of our fairest lands, We know, it seems, there waits our fair, sweet flowers, All warm with the soft Spring tints. My oatmees full of heaven My life should be As the lark with the bright wings of blue; For heaven is the soul's pure caressing And the senses, as the wind, go by; 'Tis not alone white clouds are white; 'Tis not only great stars are great; 'Tis not only the time tells the time; 'Tis heaven that shows it true. When the air hangs morose, and thin, And the swift world is a dream, Is it not time, O Annette, to part From the old town's bivouac? The red, dazed sun where he beams Shone too bright for blood to rival; And in his haste to kiss The naked, golden, snake-skin, It broke the purple cluster. I'd venture one for ten or twenty 'Round a well-stocked table; A peep at the vegas' row Would make me laugh a gobbo; The bittern's only wonder Would be the drop it couldn't broach; While for libation, or prayer, How they lipsof the pike Would doom them to a dying kiss. What--come again to visit me-- Of the choice race of bees, In a line of beauty? Such as I know, nor need you tell How crowned, and heavenly fair-- Lepidium! let us sip, Taste of dear fruit, and spread the hoard With a warm, friendly wing; Hail, apple blossoms, Ever flowering; hail, Spring flowers; hail, The fair, old town! "Let us travel a while the varied dells, In the black mountain-lake, And the high majestic thunderheads And clouds, and world, to know; How the pent mountain-journeyman Comes to tempt and seek repair, From his soft, mountainous path. "I to the lake, will your steps take In deep, deep tranquillity, Beneath the heaven's blue blue; The silent stars shall hear us sing In their deep, tranquil murmur; It shall flow on as it should. "I will put down the book I read, And, my pretty friends, I pray, Follow with me ======================================== SAMPLE 740 ======================================== Lange, or eft-net, or cubered lock, Or none; All shapes and kinds of men, all virtues, All intellects, all coarse, and all refined; All kingdoms, all powers, all dregs, and all comforts, All, all, but hope: Hope and belief, Hope of Heaven, of Hell; and glory, That makes God love to be told, Honour and solitarie; and graces, The beautiful, and rich; All of them, is more than all their hands Wherewith from earth they ran, and all their suns Which wyld great begett sound; All, but hope. Their wynds of thunder and whirlwind were run To fetch and set their Son: And as a mould that bottle doth, doth fill The world, and out of wisdoms source Draws her darlings; and Hell abhors No beautie, no messengers of joy Recede to man, by fame; And mir the dust I hap to tread, And fall like mould, with all I hapt To fall, and follow my Lord. Therefore, against disburdenment And inglorious ioyants, My burning care, my pride of honour Shall death at last lay low; And so be capital to their charge As ever, whilst I live. Thy blood shall fall Like a red, red rain On slaughter and multitudes, When I on vertue's throne sit With jollity; When I under grace's consort seat, With joy to take; And all my myrtles are of myrtle And roses, both for thee, The world's great patroness. Come, then, and make thy quire, My garland's golden chain Hang all my churches about thee In house or town; The fire's up, the grind's over, The plough's in the wind; Come; thine altars, too, like mine, Smile, and be glorified; Give, give your hearts again To living and deceased. My maids shall walk the streets And open wells, Where birds of holy melodie Perchle all day; Their incense-smelling breath will sweeten The dorp of ill; And jovial bears will play them A merry tune. The serpent-flower, and linden sprig And purgandian wil grow aloft Where'er we go; And every erthelia more Will rise at eve Than all sickle-folus, amie, But the least hearts will wringl At morn from nihile. And all things, lovely love, shall love When we are gone; And myrtles too shall weep For losse from thee, Shrinking as we be Into the arms of shade: And fruitflowers too, lascivious With purple stainles Shall water the happy dales, Where by the sea-side we Recline on our crotchets. Now shine, sun, and weep not, For though I beate early, You, with your gold and your green, And all your gold and your green, Shall remorrow, and next day, be gone; Goe where I dare, And loll as you will. But, while thus I sing to you, Mine own selfe, for the late wrongs Done to me, makes me sad, Nor will I put aside Wherewithal Me may discompose my bowels; But amidgette shall be To make me plenetrate my soul. My sences ill bode mischiefes, By which I am so burt, My soules depaints and woe Make me now wayl (+) Of hard parents, froward (+) Of my rived home; To rue from me The future that may see: But, my recepits, by your meditatio, My God now ioy yeare, For that which lasteth me, Of him that lives on me, Have an meditatio. Who knows what will jump at his shafts Or, rapiere that's reputed so Poor pretie, never will be, He that on my thought doth pee Perceave no chance of thine. O that this fame were true! And that it were not evyll smale, To speke ======================================== SAMPLE 741 ======================================== Beata fulmina tertia lux Fortiter a vulnera non umbras; Chlamys tepidarit aureus unda, Et galea vacet hic marmora labes. Gins is so sweet, he'd lie such a whistle, If the sweeter way it had come from, It's like I'd get up and be with him, He'd let me sleep, it's so much the same! 'Twould rather rest, to-morrow, if they'd let us in; The sort of man they make of me! And ain't I glad to live? the man must sing, Where e'er the ocean passes, they say That there is room enough to give him room to swim. But it's bigger, the Devil, and so you know His course is all but known to me and to you. Well, he may swim that course he likes, as 'tis his bet; I say, it's dat Yankee Doodle Dully! Some it is, and some are not so bold as he, But are quite as big; and down in Florida they'll tell Of man that can't get hold of his head. I'm not strong, yet I've taken him in my ark; And ere I came we'd a prize to pull by; 'Twill pay him--though it cost us a quid! Our cap' iron be true, I'm dancin' new-set, Let's get us some beer; then he'll do the rest. Good Deeds Gone Buried, I like to see, When some good person's name is made good, How soon his memory is made good. Some what lies beneath, we owe the deuce; That's most of us in fault, but never a few Will tell with truth that nothing's amiss. This some see, but few have or never will, While those that have, or never will repay, Good Fortune's wheel has turned 'round a thousand times. Though as to external shows there's none to please, And tastes are tame, reputations mine; They never shall, how will you know? retire Or change, for who has pity for fame? Or who has learned that the good is vain? Who calls the tune to think their name is heard? On what thoughts the soul depends?--The soul's a slave! To do is to prepare, what care, what pain! I speak as to the indifferent eye, And reason shares in common-knowledg, too. When I, before no other can, Or I, seize my subject as the same, What is the end?--The elements remain, Earth, air, and ocean, and their outlet broad. How else, O soul! would depth of knowledge rise? Not poetry, may do it might baffling! It is not singing that reaches the great, It is not painting, may do it might naught. Rugged to tree, and aspiring heart to upward nought, Are naught the epic, but an aulic space; Unbreasted, out of pity, thou liest in peace On lowest altitudes, that somber meaning knells; And where thou risest, days and nights and morrows wilt roll; And comely looks, and heavenly arms, are evermore there. So I (eager my powers, the brain reeking yet) And thou 'mongst thy sisters, to my gilded wall, While now I sorrow, with a pain so tender, Who sayeth he will love me, what will he do, From day to day? and so the gay repairer Paints the man, or so the painter's cared for, Who looks at first, with some old wonderment, And eyes that watch, and muscles strong, and so do I; Till old romances and poetry it do me breed; At last I got (just like a second Mr. Plon) A death-wish--some in now, some out, I ween. I know now there is no such fate as a fine (Ground-broken from a poet's head, the rest) When, most, there's a creature in the prime (Liveliest bird of sign to star of the swift) That's merely to the meanest worthy made, Who, like the king or the devil, does command, But makes no friends at his gift, but breaks the crooks Of such; but oft betrays his friends when he spits. Thus am I; therefore now I'll scrape a bit, On ======================================== SAMPLE 742 ======================================== . <|endoftext|> "Scenes That Make A", by Mark Wickersham [Living, Midlife, Activities, Eating & Drinking, Nature, Fall, Weather, Winter] We had a great frost. And that's the way to say it, to end the chapter on ice. Then the sun peeks out, a yellow, yellowish, russet sun peeks out in the same way that autumn is peeking out in every frame of this image. This is the end of year small things, an eel crossing the brown stream of water. How strange to see the river as water, if the river had an eye, but it doesn't, and that's as it should be, as the parrot brings its cousin home, or as always, on these lifeless summer days, the father sits in the open swing, as the cormorant points into the blue, the blue of the sky, the sky and the river, a yellow river that would let us look and see it. And the great frost in this tight room left its signature on everything, but I don't really see the water that's my own river. Maybe it's too wet, too blue, too bright and ugly to remember. <|endoftext|> "A Short Story Of Two Flowers", by Mark Wickersham [Nature, Trees & Flowers, Winter, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] The thing with the snow in it is a flower, the moon with the tree, a shape of ice, a blurred smudge of a shape of tree. Now the tree is waking, and flowers long frozen are waking, opening like a cube of old bread, flower buds peeking at us through the cold, they're opening like hard red olives, the fruit leaping, sweet and delicious, a thick cluster of gorgeous riper strawberries. The moon smells like a bread bowl, a brightly wrapped present, candied with the dust of centuries, saying: Lovers, the cold season is here! The snow is a design, and the flowers are the hosts, the stillness of the river and the sea. Their eyes are water, the little fishes drawn to the surface of the river, the crown of their days a mirror, a salon of beauty. <|endoftext|> "Fall River", by Mark Wickersham [Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Fall] It's impossible to see the fall, the quiet places between the sudden storms, the ice showers, the weeks of trilling ganja, dawn's first lightness, the blue as it undulant sloshes toward the horizon, glistening away the weight of evening, turning an ordinary gray to brown, so it's impossible to say what else but the fall, how it looks, but the slimey, fetid odor that blows from the jay's nostril as he screams away from the pigeon and beyond toward the stars or one more case of the undiscovered country, how it isn't here nor there nor anywhere else, its sound, the clodden of a thousand species growing, not shapen, salubrious, spring inclinations. <|endoftext|> "The Eden Tables", by Mark Wickersham [Living, Growing Old, Activities, Indoor Activities, Relationships, Family & Ancestors] Todaysil now called "Toby", after his philosopher father, sits at a table in the picture window seat of a Jucylo XIX SL3432(Manfra) electric typewriter. It is evening, the rain outside has stopped, the raindrops playfully standing on the head of Toby that makes him sit up all the more rigidly as blue clouds drop after drop from raindrops in a blue sky, their twinkling watchers, doodles of dawn or dusk outside. The table is covered in raindrops, the canvas that covers the raindrops is beaded with them, the space of each drop neatly vacant of color. Todsil is here and now and now empty of space, with no room left for the dotted lines of the dots dividing the dot-dots of raindrops from Todsil and the drop leaves of bright light that make the table into a lantern-lit dark room. The leaves of Toby's shadow run fishing in the dark of the table, fishing for sleep, for it is a long while until the sun comes. ======================================== SAMPLE 743 ======================================== Decided to be rather serious-minded. With these, so backward in the race of change, In quest of freshness and undiscovered truth, Were rival fastnesses. So the disciples, Grown to manhood, gave no more a window To nostrums which their elders tried; And were far more exact in basic powers, And better for choosing quality of food, And better for aiming at a brighter goal. Some fresh air! My soul recoils; I have been The drunken interloper all these years. All these new truths have turned me into a fool: The feast is ruined. God! it was all drink and flags! I knew no better; but I was just a fool. Good Captain in His rectitude! No better, Your niggers! How far away from any game you've tried! My sea-sailing son (the "last full measure" of me) Became the open sot who now set up a blat. Poor lad, at last he found the water in him, For what he could. We used to be and frolic, But what of that? Such re-action, Our late arrival showed you could not cheat The watches we appeared to be keeping. What else in this new-comer's case did I see, Whate'er the legend says, though I am her friend? Nothing but a wasted time of hot air And the devils of occasion make a town. Very well; and let this go! Why the end of all I've tried was this? To be at home, and to find people here Is what it means to live: leave me not uncared for! Vacant eyes and a fosse I could not find, And floors that will not press me to their heart. The minute a new body writhes, I am not sure its thread is spun; If one point more or less I stand, That will not end the confusion. Oh, I must have, to complete the rout, A pen, and--a word! The ground I step on is deep; The hill I climb is treacherous, And een could plunge if I would. See! I found a pretty boy, And taken him and married him, I thought to lie in barn with him. But his poor body all is break, And groans as though with a swinging tree; So that, to bend his breath awhile, I'm tossed at random over the steep, And kick for a new pen! Thus, too, do I confess my own In first returning, in sole work, The pen will feel, at least, a flinging. For the boy, so tied to that pen, Shall twitch it just to write a woe. 'Twas but a harmless child Of little understanding! I always explain, 'twas thus, The Knight himself lit the fire, And from her window gazed, And, without a word, that eve, I waylaid him in the grey. I, that had thought that she Was all intent to alight, Stayed to swell the boys and girls; But, with a cheerful report, I half-boxed her pen, and let Her in, and her adieus fly. It was not right, but wrong, For her to have assumed, But her chum's innocence; No offence to her, but her hands Was judgment on my pen to write. This I at first proudly denied, Then, by and by, admitted to show My heart was not her issue, Till I bethought me, she the grieved Had causes, both of us alike, Not she, herself, to write for; And I see her body thus preserved Still the same affection she used to show, And, in her song and gentle air, And sweet and eager air, They ever, as from before I came So prodigiously alive! But do they want an answer to the heart, Or shall I in fury write? Answers to these, or yet? Why doth it then require exertion To be known as that which I am not? One English ounce outruns an Abt; Weigh my heart, for instance, at Barre's level, And then determine I should be brave, And I am not. Never say that I was brave, say I not; Never say that I was not--the sense is clear-- So am not there, as with an arrow, who, On returning home,--no such man did I find,-- ======================================== SAMPLE 744 ======================================== Not usually of late such long notice, If to a suitor be my lord Not without difficulty, I shall bring. But, whatever place he shall choose, He that is not with child will choose To have an honest wife's marriage, Neither he nor his child shall know The terms of this marriage made, I will and I bind his hand To have no other woman Whose affection holds so power. Not that I mean to disgrace Her with some unseemly tale; But, on the contrary, I say He that loves best by the best May love as little as he can. For her sake that is not sought In any place, I seek He that is not with child Will call no more adultery. I should not wish, without The surname of Mynhauler, That there could ever be Even a shadow of suspicion That ere long will search my house, Baking all my wheat and tare For Sir Jeffrey that were dead. All the knights and lady beauteous Have already an utter joy Of my Poem of this letter; In it I appear to be And would fain say things That might serve well enough, For the amount we are to tell To the number of your steeds. I have made an ass of me Even in the printed book. The same itself may bear What I did when I began, To make the whole show, At the beginning of it. Yet, since I say no thing Except to men that be, I thought to tell you then As near as I could A representation of my mind, Telling of some concerns And intentions of my life That I could not make clear, And that can ne'er be clear Till some luck of your changing. That, good and ill matters what, That they of heart are a part Of the numbers of the greatest. Since the numbers of the greatest Be in their favour or disfavour. A knight, this number to remark, He that befriends, as they say, Bears but an humble share of fame; He that they say is befriended But bears what most may trouble him. As for a ruined man The remedy is worse than the disease. So doth it seem by all that talk, Whate'are the place, wh'are they be, To speak, an ocher and a flesh. Now as this care of the after life Was, I think, most universal known To you the lovers of all that see, I bade you draw three columns' side by side, And read them to the chapter that sounds, To answer what might fair Cadence, Appear'd to rehearse; ere I you asked. And you ask'd me that very thing, And why you ever should decline To follow in this vanity, Which fools think pleasure, by afflicting. With what face are they held on high By writers of the third length? But might they, how'er dull or wholy, Have some good thing to say Of love and all its paltry cheer, Since they who had been true to love Had leave so oft, so terribly, For others to read? But even of friends, that great company, When such as you say they are, Why many half-dozen but three, And why it should be thought a shame That most should for that be prest When that, they might tell, had been scorn'd? Where I was speaking thus, Sir Popper, in his rear, Rested a little on the back Of another gallant Warwick. It is that love of knowledge At length is served and stolen by learning; It is that nothing is won, But half-baked projects dreamed about. It is that with too fond a hope We wake and cry, when in fact we sleep And hardly remember when we rose; That in our ribbons fancy We swear the Titans all have done; That 'at war is but a show; That the more you fight the poorer we, The more we'd have you poke round; That the navies had been won Long since before Mr. Pitt's. How long do I stay For you? let me come home! Oh, I may not Yes, and no! Now tell me, will! Now say a tear, Yes, and no! Nothing more Can I ask than Yes and no! Oh, look upon the picture In which my life is grown gray, But still the light of it flashes through; Even while my ======================================== SAMPLE 745 ======================================== Ariadne is dead: But thou would'st not own it; At her uplift eyes Thou drovest her right hand, And throned in gilded car Claims her only praise. At toil, at toil, It soothes you, 'Tis the wind, it is the rain, And, fain, a plain Shows the reeds and sedges, And, but for those, You would die for home. From the moss that smoothest Scent of many Flowers, the away Whom, note, his hand loves The toils that dig them, I am the sot Of this wide room, And my hand, in your eyes, Will never lay, Nor my feet, No the dead he may hear, All things I have wrought, The work's behind me. O, then, wherefore thus, For the race to-morrow, Took I forth my life? Longer, Master, nights ago, I, a toy to make men spend, 'Mid the toils of many Was she sleeping? Yet, though the hum was high, And the day was long, With the time of her waking, Did I not watch? If death I come to call, Say, then, let now the tears Stop, and let sleep take me! For I come to thee, Master, for to die. Where the fields were flooded with heavy rain, And where the woods were black with toil, I led one war-scene, whom we are slaying As if to live, For their souls now swiftly follow my sword, And the name they had, Fearful and, foul, and stifling; For yet, O Death, they have not lost their grace, They live, O Death. I see them, O Master, I, who lived, and died-- Well I know, where of am I?-- If I had left this thing on earth to grow, Methinks that any eye that ever looked Here on earth--such an eye as mine, Could see but one, By whose grave in the earth that is--that one is blessed; One, in whom lies, in whom we live and move, All that the heavens sustain; The freer, freer spirits to whose luck may run; I see the angel come with hair all brown, The freer spirits who wait the blessed end, One on whom th' hour was not yet late, But whom fate still awoke, and whom still eternity Still wakes; Who saw, who saw, the stars, who saw the serpent leviathan. When the skylark was singing to the dusk, What was his thought, and what his thought, When the light bird was on his wing, How he sang, and sang--a singe of joy. For the hills that he sang to were singing-- If, of old, they still are singing, For the plants that he sang of were springing, How he sang, and not how he passed away, His end was not, a sleep, a burial. Yet we cast the shadow of a shadow On their grass, and under their blades Of grass, we go the way he trod; Lifts not the sun up to see them fire, And the heaven does not see them more. When the lark sang from the rose's breast, What was his thought, what his intent, When the flames swagged from the field's wild breed, Who made the angels' eyes dull. And still he rose from the ashes When the night was dark, to follow The light, and only he may see. I made your fancies come From where they are not; I made your dews to leave Soft as your breath; I brought them from barren marts, Bruised like the earth. Enfold them, that the world may leave All its weary weight To my place; Bend to my will, Cling to my secret power, Knowing it is Enough to make My fancy's chord; With faithful love Strike the true chords. Plant the strays of life In this hold, Round my breast Till you breath, and I in you Exalt you; Till to your high self With love you set, That my brow May live through you. Come to me; I fly to thee; Love, naked and, doth not hide, Like a bashful vild who, abroad, ======================================== SAMPLE 746 ======================================== The common World's governours, and we The oppressed, proud, quarrelsome, in it found The common Life, the high, imperial Death. We in ourselves do as we do at home; In exchange, the neighbouring worlds for ours Stand deified, and call the happy hour Of our redeeming grace. 'Tis in the price, you see, Of such immense gifts as this, that all must bend To that great agent, the completer Life. The natural voices calling through Life's labyrinth, Sounded joy, and love, and mutual respect. The "Good night" from youths at morn, to maids at noon, Was the sweet message of the home. The interlude of summer hours, waked to strife By the keen midday, taught us to be a-match, Loving, and hating. Close the green summer door, The hostile bed of love was our summer-house. Taught in the pied world a deep discontent, The secret meanings of all human states, And where the bonds of life grew more like the thongs By which half the world was wed to Death, We played the part that man has always taught To him that knows how worsted, and how to most, Scoffed at the feet of Fortune. How is it That many happy moments 'fore our death were, Like the rich carpet of our native hour, Present as the green lawn, or the open fire Our old Time his slow-silent servant did Like a meteor's flight was passed from sight And sunset pictures; on the inner sea The stranger morn's, the longer shadow; on our shores The noon's cold and rosy ; heaven's other hemisphere And its sadness eclipsing human things; We, the frail householder of earth, whose daily Births and Deaths, our thoughts that sleep in sleep, Restless stirs, like the storm-shower or the wave That rolls and rises by the hour when we lie Hungry and nigh our own dismaying shore, But the low tide drowned half our anguish there And then the new long sleep; lo! each hour for each So, like a twelve-fold division, The whole circle of our being ran More close, more distinct, more distinct again, And, all the glory of that prime black leaf Circling the mid-day hour, the twilight's glory, The last, the glaring light, our life's life, and last The flood of deep sea, till we paused at last When the long light of day behind us lay, And all was silent night. No more could touch our wings. It was as if Each fixed path had kissed our bodies blind, and, lo, The moon in heaven on us, and blind things Go hand in hand with us in darkness, sign Of postless gateways God hath not found Nor made. And for our vaunts, and vow, and folk so proud, And words high heard, and overachieve, Each is as if in his blind wave to touch The lone, vast level, and touch its womb. The fixed planets watch us passing; even so The fixed stars their influenced music hold, A hand beyond, beyond us, mute, And none doth hear our passing till our heels Are on the threshold. So we pause, and rest A little in the road-side grass, and face The circling wings of love the while, Mocking the sun and mocking the night. The darkness with its sowing of light Had come and gone, and ever out of her heart She drew for ever thanatos with The circling lyre; and sometimes our voices join And play to her on myriad spheres. Then silence, and not a stir, Not a strain, not one word, until the end To things unknown, and to their use the light, Their usher, gives. This is the uttermost Of terror; yet, because the day hath come, And men will worship, God hath left them breath To live and love, so that the dead may sleep On their red dream'st course, the funeral pyre Falls to the dead man's shadow, who cannot see This glory, but that loving hearts may show To him that dream and sway them, and around The wide circular altar shall they tread Their old devout march, borne away With prayers of deathless hymns to Him That is the dusk sun of their lives. The night comes down on them. They arise And mingle with the clouds that burn And stroke the swords of light That are their feet And wait for him Who coming, as he coming cometh, ======================================== SAMPLE 747 ======================================== Offering-- then Sir Agazzuma Seeing the knight in motion, raised his rod High on the curb and fenced it fast about, Which proved true, for whom he said, "Seize the knight, thyself thou show'st to me, If thou so far find him to my harm appeer As aught thy sword can pierce, thou shalt quit thy crown And join our king, and one for life to another, Thou shalt end thy life by death at his feet." And while he thus discoursed, full soon he showed Beneath his king's crown the wicked knight that he Appeared, who yet his footing would maintain. But when the rugged youth when he discerned The voice of Agramant's name, he brake, And rushed into the king and squire, who bent Their course against him, and opposite bent Their thoughts and eyes, and considered What kind of combat it would be good To put him out, and how to combat him. Therewith, his eyes, with great dismay o'ercasting, He casts about, then turns his sight and view On every side of these the furiously- burning war, with such dismay the soul Of his unconquerable heart was wracked. But nought his resolution fully dissolved But when the latest lap the fierce assault, As having vainly judged of many comrades, Agramant decreed they should be struck Both together, since each were unworthy To head the rest, and both disunused To run one foe. "Fret not yourselves," he cried, "For my dwindling company," and set both near. Thus, then, a secret combat they renewed, Rude from the rest, the champion for his life Strove, wherefore he would strike him; yet his hand Would bring him down, and the faulchion smote, That hair-gleam showing at his side; nor that his sword Should he, by speediest of its blow, but die Of its own accord; nor would less prove of the sword Than desperate, if the mace and shield it bore. For, lo, a man paragonic for might On all sides, with courage ever hot, Who dashed withal his foe's head down to the ground. A like incredible encounter found In Atys, whom Agramant with fury drove From quartering, the glad victor bare Within his consort's walls, while the bruit went out That all had cheered, and delighted was the whole. A hundred swords he bade them seize; for thus He said, and boasted more would do, but more Already his fresh horse and mount and his stirrup. Wherefore he called: "My dear ambassadress, Thou also stirreth my womb with mighty heat, And prompts me to such deeds which are from us Not very kindly; hither was thy notice kept. A good recompense is ours for this right And just award that must be given. But take, noble Among your peers, what battle-gear I shall bestow To me and these my winning fighters, to make Havoc of the rear-guard; with these go forth and smite; And show all Spain these kings who do to death and me The Lord bid beware! long may I behold it! It shall be my right and each Spaniard's doom To rend in twain, if the King of France be overthrown. There had all fled away, had Aëllo heard His father calling, he had dashed at the walls And all his kindred with them, or been slain. But he, with marvellous energy, the lance Forth from his neck at an instant impelled; So strong his arm that, breathing, light he is. With joy he bears away his heritage. As fire falling, light and flame are gone so, And there is left not a jot nor a tittle of her. This stuff was fief of her father, and King Caragos Retainers had held in Spain:--call it, what thou may'st Call it, 'twas a kingdom--and she was in her prime. With all that Flemings call'd 'royal' and 'stream' and 'throne,' She'd scarcely found out her gold; 'twas most, 't were 't shewn, The people called 'em 'monarchs,' as much of them Were princes in long stories; but that's now brought low. 'Twas a fool I made, a fool so as never yet Had ever made of Spain an empire ======================================== SAMPLE 748 ======================================== Believing that they can't live there. You hear the name on air—a little boy from another world— a doll, the same, but tiny, just there. But when it gets to heaven, looking down from a stairway, you see the shoes, and all the specks and hairs. And you can't, because the next step is beyond it, looking back from heaven, and then you begin to think it's a theme that takes you to many places. <|endoftext|> "Bitchy In These Texas Fields", by Mary Szybist [Living, Growing Old, Health & Illness, The Body, The Mind, Love, Infidelity, Relationships, Men & Women] If you want me to confess that I know a secret of the spirit, be the wrong word, and I’ll burst into flames. <|endoftext|> "Native Woman", by Robert Duncan [Activities, Jobs & Working, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment, Gender & Sexuality, Race & Ethnicity] Indebtedness is the unknown quotient in the same way we don’t know the outskirts of our misery. —Native Woman, Wayside Saints The mist tints the meadows orange, the haze tints the roads, the ice tints the brake lines. If I’m honest, I prefer it this way, but to preserve my rural anonymity, I meet you where you are, embrace you. Forgive the statement, but I’m considering leaving this world for a quieter, less understood one, one without automobiles, and the highway appears as if born to wound us. The one thing that unites us is the unknown quantity of debt, the lingo of ownership. Money that’s not your own screws you round. Or, to turn it around, debts that aren’t yours, but your own seem to be your kind of money, the kind I’m owed. Exchange is what we make them into, and exchange is your husband’s father. The trees bend, the grass sprouts. Yes, I know, and I see your baby brother, but listen. I’ve been told there are other ways to be sutured but one way or another, if you don’t have a child you’re gonna have to bring one back like a piece of ice, boil it for an hour, cook it, hammer it, pipe it, form it into shape- gourds, pretty jars, tongues, milk, meat. If a woman is like this she’ll eat soap. <|endoftext|> "Settler's Platoon", by Mattsea Cox [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Separation & Divorce, Sorrow & Grieving, Love, Heartache & Loss, Activities, Jobs & Working, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] August, 1860 at Gettysburg Family gravestones in random locations displaced by war, reinstatement of homeliness, new digs unearthed like burial tunnel across from farm where we slept upright an infant born eight days before Entrapped in new campin field SozeI tell you, I am a slave on a chain. People passing, smirk. I ask: is this our land? Remember us? Remember us. Remember us? Remember us. We loved that farm. Yes, I want that tree. That fence. That hill. How do we with the ones we loved wish to return? How do we with the ones we loved build the fence lay that road in our place? We buried our children twenty-one hundred years ago. On each of their names, twenty-one in forty-eight. That’s it. What do we do with their soul? What do we do with their heart? They are our children, children still Who deserved to live. <|endoftext|> "In Your Arms", by Mattia Mattiatti [Living, Infancy, Relationships, Family & Ancestors] When my daughter was born my boyfriend left me and his third wife, with whom I was sharing the same room. We were like birds that hibernated in a tree together. She is my backbone, and I barely knew her, save that she would surprise me. When she was a newborn her beautiful face, her eyes, her high bosom said you are mine. When she started to speak ======================================== SAMPLE 749 ======================================== Unreasoning and reflexly blind, The universal offspring of dust, Making the soul an idiot To its own kind. O! to believe, with alioca-gree Ensammabeling air, One rind must breathe on a dearth. Ch. quid una fuzoto e foi in mia faute, E qua falte in mia faute, ch. E qua foire e foi dans son teintes, E qua son teintes s'enaye un aime E faute, ch. Queis t' assez un tranquille on ne fut jamais Ni s'abrit et carpe, que soit un chapeau En l'ange, ch. T' assez tranquille en s'enaye une fize En ce feuille, que le vent s'eut modern E guerre, ch. Et vous ne dites pas après le s'aute chief Sur un chante qui me regardait son sond A maistra, et que j'avais ansoit Le premier blessé. What do men do And sing when life is dull and drowsy, And the grass seems dry?-- Do they play somewhere, anywhere When night is deep and dew is strong, Where dull is good and hard and dreary? Alas, I dream of misty past! Let me again In another place For that is where I made my nest Long, long ago! I saw it was a place wondrous fair, Of heavenly height, and light and gladness aflutter Upon the wing of her, all holly green. What? Nay, my heart is not that bold? Here, yet once more Let it lie still and mute: And, once more, all its rapt dreams shall be Of that for which it ached in years gone by, A-singing of itself, the song that should Now rise, strong and brimming, full and true, As something new within me yearned, and reach Warily, nigh-soothingly, the unsung song that lay My heart at large within me, a half-loud ditty Poured from its love and longing years ago, More wilful than age made it, or the wrath of God. Tut, tut, boy! the song is thresh'd. For come, you'll not he sport 'twixt those mellow warbles, For thrash'd? no; nor that loud-braying bleeder Of a heart not solid--?--for that's bred Of course, some troubles, yes; But let him whine, that's the music and the rhyme! No, he will come to dinner! They have not sent him away? Upon his knees he kneels With fluttering hair? And he, the faithful servant, Has penance piteously so far? See, the man is simple. Now for a stout drink, quoth the Knight On the top of his look. And what he calls Is he, truly, in full, God-like time, To recompense the servant, and draw All fearfully and rightly, and not be plucked Of low-built guilt? Ah, what's the good of it, by Heaven, That, in your gracious music, I know There's a God? Whine not, God! For I, The Son of Heaven, full well How absurdly have I held your omnipotence, Or shall I? Have I, under grace, no sin, No stain of dust, in which to be imbrued, Begotten of loath'd Earth, and the foul winds? No. These call me pale As the pale moon. Yet this I know, This and no other: I am one Of many sons and daughters of the day; With names manifold; whose eyes are seen Filled with light; whose ears are tuned to hear; Whose hair is blanch'd white, whose brow is bent In the proud crescent to arrange this light, Swell'd out at once to fulness, and, Plentiful, and warm, and gathered in. There lies our prey beyond his power, The kingly prey, that three hours ago Plunder'd the realm of night. Not he Who sits in Heaven, nor yet he who down Slumbers, but his discrowned captives Who were ravish'd at their day of rest-- The wretched v ======================================== SAMPLE 750 ======================================== Sad, melancholy, littly-lisp Turns up the melody to sadness. Let me be killed. Let me be killed. Rivers of light, moor-fowl Scrim upon the miry ground, Water-cross, Girt town of dead May, Yarrow The frog-haunted woods Gnashing: horses, rabbits, Pigs. Far-faring Cats. Holes in my pocket That I shove with a thumping wrist Hyena Smashes my first-born Hyena Cunning to draw Cunning to burn Cunning to kill Cunning, killing, dying In one back-biting Hyena Men, womankind, Lifeless bees, Logs, snags, snout, Other-wrought, black-com for us Fleeing and retching that he once Been asked by poets to be killed At the moment of his peeking At that very moment his skull's Saturnine Sly brows Barbers Crossed at neck and chin Will he then Leap up and lift His legs Pins down the snout Hyena Thrown to earth Ah! it's just one wax extraction One foot up from the sill And the first sound that he takes up The old-fashioned way At a speed unrefreshing Not in the front room where The garden is But then On the landing Now and then Light-footed when a waltz is tried And without strains Fannings round and round Fly and fetch and run And down it comes Good-hairst He will march all the way As a tramp when a city's burned Leaden on his steps Hyena Rats The fangs Stare up and stare Hyena The fox-tocks rut Hyena So stern, That it makes one think of Death and Death's Fairies at Whitefoot Swamps On the downs Where lint-mouthed snakes, alas! Litter and lave Up there In the lane where men die In the toothy jars Suckled by the milky Thumbs all over The shrunken head The quick move From whence he come In one jet He'll gallop down Hyena Six hours since the first dawn Hyena His young life's Swollen out of everyone else's time Hyena We hold him-- He's a common one, We'll carry him round To every corner of the yard <|endoftext|> From the R U N C L A T e S ometing S , unkempt and rve An S -h an d -a- L i-ving , Flavorfull T ypes and varietie We present to you all the foorth Which in our neerest troupes and shoven Flew o'er the Border late a' In Company with Missis Ottum (Young Ottum's loveliest sweetheart) Onboard the pack mule they laft S urveyed till the lond was laft Wiht Missus Ottum Wiht a junior leasure, wi a strap Blest be the loveliest scoles We on earth now can try to get When honest lovers of ilk Get children, an' sike 's everywhere. (Deilna, liar!) An tokkes an' dunts of household luve Is what's meditative an' ruve O, cotentin', an' filthful sarpies Imbreathells and smores on the e'e-hill Re: thy hair . . . O, it's like That family o' the luve-oth Bank! Aye, wi' a' its weddits o' woll, On Whigs an' Union herts, wi a bloody seal Being wrung off, an' a sweet bit han What whigdom langs so sacred Forgive us when we get rude On the back of our Brendan the boozer Forbear to mention, in the field Forgetten, these piranists in Malta For whom Arundel was a farmer, Forgot, and Jacob was a cur, Forgot, and dirty Stuart Gave them the black-mail, an' the Reformation They performed wi' their favourite thowt, freedom O dreary whiskers, O, ======================================== SAMPLE 751 ======================================== bloggers who frequently confuse (1) their tomes on education with books on manners. But every writer, be he dead, who strives to cook, and puts his best or worst sense, for the end he may not know, is sure of one thing: the many <|endoftext|> "A Chorus Life", by Robert Duncan [Love, Desire, Infatuation & Crushes, Romantic Love, Relationships] The magician who sells books by the mile expects his customers to be impervious to his names. Men carry names and women stay nuns. The man who peddles poetry and would-be wit charges the steep price of lachrymation. He is annoying. Damp wide are those wings he likes to spread, and the feathers of his satins double as if sweeps of divorce court. Come here, he says, before the high court can sit you down. Come here before they have decided to marry you. They are rushing the audience with their love. <|endoftext|> "Blind Love", by John Evan [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Separation & Divorce, Relationships] I wanted to write today about one of my dear friends whom I have known for many, many years. I wanted to tell you about her, but I have to be true. It is another thing that I can't love you as I love her, so I won’t. She is beautiful, and that is more than I can say, and it is another thing I can’t imagine, and I can’t love you like I love her. It is another thing I love you to be a slave to her, and that is something I was not, for a long time, and that is also something I don’t love. I can only tell you what I know. I think sometimes about her, being a blind woman in a city of two million, people who would never know her and love her, or care about her in the slightest. And I think, because I think she still is among us and because of that, I can take things in life, and so many things, for what they are though I can’t love them as I love her. You can see that, because you have known her, but I wish I could love you as I love her and have no more life left, or have so little left to give you. I can only tell you I love you, who love her and are in the room with her. And that is all I can do, and that is all I can. <|endoftext|> "Running Man", by Stuart FRyson [Living, Parenthood, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Friends & Enemies] I Once there was a man and a woman and a child. She was daunted by her own mother, and she would always agonize about her, and it made her the central character in our story. We wanted her to be like us, with an exceptionally insular attachment to her own life, and to have a gruesome disposition toward the life of others. Her best friend was an eerie man who would come into her life on a beach and walk away immediately. When the man and woman were in love and lived separately from the child, she was less obsessed with her presence in the man’s presence than he was, which was in part because the man was good company, but also because of his crystalware, and he was happy to be with her around. On the other hand, she would come to him and ask: is it true? Is this person who just happened into my life and invited me to his dinner and to his bed? It seems that he is always sad about his presence, although he does not say this. We made the boy watch their bickering, and he showed no distress at what he characterized as their fight, which was essentially absence of someone in his place, and he laughed because of this, and said if he was going to laugh he should have known what was happening. He did not tell us what happened, but there was a clear pattern which we discerned: the man was always entering the room when the woman was away having children, and once or twice a week he came and sat in the room, never expressing himself, except to express himself in terms of casual profanity. We knew that his longing was to be in position to harm the woman, and this desire was both his waste of time and his envy of her peace. ======================================== SAMPLE 752 ======================================== In his fair bosom, and one arm he made A shoulder for his aching bosom; And still as long he sat on the ground, With barely a will to live on, His face facing the blank wall. The angry words of that back leer The firmness of steel heard no more; Yet ever, still with head bent a bit, For some loved one, through the doors of room The nagging memory strayed to seek, And maddened he still with new glee, For folk were in his place of state On whom his eyes turn on the floor; For lilies on the floor must be While flowers are esteemed daisies. Yet no fool, as I once saw her say, Watched by her finger, the penny bleared, Gab the soul in the fire; but sat Still as a stone to his thoughts apart From the thoughts of mortals, seeing and listening Was her heart and her mind, her dear friend Who blew and blew the bugle as a knell; Her dearest comrade, her Jehu, For the fabled wanderer; I say The chant on the iron near her seat Was as melodies of dawn, a curious sound That rattled and echoed in the rock. When came the bitter hour of need From down among the moth-washed flowers, When many a winter of snow had lost The flowery king, the jewel-clean rose; When ivy white on stone had led us To cover, and wailed and loathed us: then Was she, her watery veil unfurled, For love and fervent meaning cold To greet the world in sunniest ice; A thing made soft by the shower, But far less than soft to feel Upon the wild burning far That honey drop from that wild drop�s cup, Then, then, was she made joyful That her lover stood as stark as me Here in this world out of Heaven. Then good came from ill, then ill came good; Then, dear man, she gave me cheer When every flower is snow-white, When each daisy smiles and wavees And every bird is happy. When fruit is bud-shaped and ripe, With buds and with blossoms; When the young breeze is warblier, With the song of birds, When snowflakes mount the mountain. Across the path where we stood Long after near the bed, What if my words at first Were soft and sweet as when All Spring was Love’s heart, and you Were not a part, nor I, Nor aught of line, but set In light, and circled with Every sunny thing, fair, young As you were and as young; And some of the things here (As they might well be) Forgot and gone and in. So then my words that seemed so wise, For them to hear, from them to speak, Then burst as blossoms, one beside, Tearing, two, being three, or four, For all the world as sweet, So much change from sun to shade Does not alter one. When in a pool I watched her Waking, I said, “What move Can this, your prest breath, proceed from?” And she said, with silent breath, “O my love, What my soul ever dreamed of?” How should the sky with calm stars be And not know love, since he must sing? In each orchard where the dragon Was sleeping, a flower On the ground was laid, a half-curbed thing Half-awake, Lipped to pounce at one or two, Lied open and half closed And turned half undressed, How should the snake not know You were there? Lo, in each orchard, the vined, With all the birds aflutter, From each dark direction, This is how she came: “In your pain, my one blue Flower that is over there, I had known, Had known you there; O, to have you there!” Love without her hearing, by, one, two, three. Love that cannot hush her, over, under, In her white fineness, To drink at his leisure From a full mine, hard at her lips Plunging anon And brimming with her thirst That throbs unceasing For love to make himself quenchal. The earth grows flatter to hear her crying, While Love comes nearer and draws back his smiling, He ======================================== SAMPLE 753 ======================================== Stript of its sanctity. Now that's a house-- Where man may live And leave his cares-- Let each one take his share-- Joyous, unafraid. Here let the song continue, Cheer of the Christian clan, Worship to men! The snowy thorn is borne Upon a blackened vase; I linger on its blossom-rose, The mass-market florist's dower The sang-song man's amen' Extends to "White-rosed Rose." The sky of such splendid shafts The rose must be the pride; The sun in those has no care, The moon must veil her gem, Dawn can never come in That ogival delight. The crows in the haunted dells, With stealthy gliding wing, Seem at things to make a lair. They call to each other down, At shadows that sweep by, The shapely polyanine, With wirbed line below. The roses I lighted last night Are up and beautiful; The may-berry comes to stymie The dripping of the snow. There is a hush after such Kind words of command, Words that so should fare Whole hearts to delight That words do never Are words but flowers. I climb to my lodges, old mate, To cool myerdear. The pine is white on half the world, The fields it blisters on; There is a cold moon and a strong, Where mightier the might of love Than mortal be. But half as I am, I climb By thy side. And though the tops that ring to snort Are nothing to you As I the being, I warm your forehead near my hand, And we together Catch the spring wind I feel my breath Cool to your forehead. There is a shelter for ever, There is a shelter for me; But night that shakes it and tears The rosy bloom, for you, Has snatched one from the world. Will ye, when ye may be The life for ever there? I keep me sweet this while, And mind the old remember Tales of you I heard 'Twas thus, my long ago. Though like a wandering dream Time comes back to the same, Your memory shall my mind Relive it once more? As a world so large That youthful only dwells; As a world so large That life is short and sweet; As a world so great, That it has no end. And from out the flow'ry wedges That remain behind, As a world-eagle's swoops Only that has not wings, Stole through my soul! 'Tis a world where one faun has never Sprung from any foam; 'Tis a world so grim That gales of wind, The light-drapping ice Of a north-wester, Are not regarded; And a world so old That the moon never Has risen on its top! But it lies full on my wall! The tale of faun and fay, It shouts up to me! And I turn to the stem Where my Christian is; And I think upon it! Twas but a glimpse: And yet how well you save Some precious things, Which otherwise would have died; And by the same rule Cruel Time Blew a pathinstead! 'Tis the giant hope That you ever march to; The bliss of death In your bed-- And here are the solitudes That I've proved: What if we trembled When we heard you swear? You said that it was best To walk stately and low! Be quiet, till I call, And let the walls be As they've been Only by feel; Pray ye do not show Underneath it and under, But tell me what you do; Be sure that you are safe, And till I come Use to-day To be how you used to be! Then, if they help In their own disguise, Then will you keep That faith forevermore; For what are you But a tale to tell To one that's flown Alone, and with a fault That was your own? I'd love to know What you are That teach me this; And so would she, Who died beside Her beloved poem; And you--why do you think I want to know ======================================== SAMPLE 754 ======================================== KEENE! Yea, whatsoe'er my nursling take, To childish play or wile, So, one after one, For Christ's love, You have nursed him, Christ's child; So, at your own death, What do you say--N.B.--"Ammulus Arundo?" I am that "whole numbers" poet of Mons Sauvage, Who wrote no end: but in a single stanza Of this or that thing they said, So long, so hard, so sweet, so sweet, Or hard, or soft, or long, or short, Some secret music, mystic sun, Here's a crumb of bread, or a bone, And heark,--for the child is mounting, He who has not soothed his feather: Oh! how he looks abroad On the father's vermin and dust! You too may have worn the Welchman's clogs, And raised the rowels of your standard, Or row on your boy's dead ribs, Or been shoe-cuffed like the man To trot home, trot home, ditto, When they harnessed a mule, And the horse-tail glowed like flame. HENRY STRAW: The melody is "Thy long life, Thy long and drear death!" It's trimmnin' time in the country, The country on the uphill, Where the tremedals state the lesson:-- Some die of a squirrel-bite, Some of a snake up St. Joe's! I can't resist the music Of the words "Alegant Agony," When their true sense might be "Agony." Good Steep is good Steep when the road's steep And there's sweetly clear Rill One (Gloria et concinllo)-- Of all the sons of High Street, Our boys up North are first in the spirit: They may fail, they may fail, But why not allow them the thrill Of the "Flying South" (Wey)? Give us a run of Speyside swell Or, at any rate, a wedge of Speyside clear. And let's have of the spirit at Brougham, Such depths as the Sonys can throw in a tan! Give us some "English beauty," too, With "white Mereogan" in her parts! Come, son, 'bout this tart from the North, "Why's ye hatin', 'fore ye see 'is mate?" "Yer boy a couple o' thousand ain't I?" "Don't ye kin' see herring fur weel hinged, 'An's fur some to deadlier, weel a groin', I thout!" "Ye'd part o' th' Highland singin', An' gart your health!" We're the cream of the horde-- I don't care what boys out there, Sure a set of lads can be Most impressive when they fall. Though we're redne the stiffest, Still they pour the dummy charge With the quick retort,-- "Nay, come laddie, keep yer Punch, Though a little cold, I've some to drink; Though it 's 'ow big, and 'is back 'ates Are nought but plaster feet, yet, wotever kin' I've a friend that's got it all!" He's got it all-- A set of papers, A pen, a ball, and two bottles, All made for a horse that's died, In a row, sir, and shepherded through The conflagrations of the pen. Let him toast us the boys are with him all, So one sees they all are bidding good-night; And a whole circle bright is the set Of the Station till its gates are closed; And we'll make a wind up, one way or other. Oh, heart of my heart, O'er one that is so dainty! Pale, alas! and worn with sorrow's smart Is thy light as the day's that we saw him first. With a careless thumb he tipped The page that bore his tale; And the tone that he had, you could swear, He's an artist, lad, And you'll find that when he's asleep, In a little while the lid Of the jewel box by him will be rowling softly Like the lid that you see there, In the baby's case, now a baby now. See that frown! ======================================== SAMPLE 755 ======================================== [lxx] not to change or stay or do anything that might make it so her lord and whatnot; I though I knew it had been noted by the minister but thought 'I don't care'--well you know I was nineteen and in love and so I did. And not having quite got well in my own time, I had thought she might be willing to see what I could do, being just such a young person, and not having any hope to be one of them to do such things in his lordship's [lxxi] place. And then a short while after I had had her to dinner I was sitting there and she got up, asking me to, and making me a best weeping face that made me eager to speak; and when I did that she saw how good she had sensed something was the matter then made her stretch out her arms, saying 'Oh, if it's true-- if it isn't it's very wrong and unjust-- then, all I've ever done being good, being such a child.' So, that day it was, I worked on my [lxxii] music, learning how greats like these,-- elements living up to beauty, why they are beautiful, and under how many depths of it--but in that [lxxiii] way I learned for weeks, but never finishing it, just as I had learned in French of the men and the manners of the country places, I think; only that I being so very well content; in the end I guess there are not so many things you can write, though many better ones, in the end, that can do for the features of one, and for the spirit, as little as one might wish, which for these reasons in reality so long ago, not doubting it myself in any case, although how quickly a man may know his fates can do with their head what they will, as you know, The hearers were deceived. And when the King was ending his speech, he turned to Peisistraton, who for a moment stood pondering, still, with no feature, and the blue shadow of his eyes, and his eye brows like horns of some animal, and his slender beak like the handle of a bow, just in front of him. He had not ceased speaking I said nothing. So, I know he made me a coat that could easily be spun. It was a slow-paced spell, though he blew the rasper, so warm. And he stood and wept for a moment. But he never heard the half of it what I heard when turning the other way: it was as if I'd never left that bench of willow boughs into slender clouds that the topmost branches had hung them, smooth stems like lilliput, to crown that town of yours; then, they grew again, one from the tree, like you one day and another, like you and like me, like me, like you, growing; There was a dead leaf spinning down the path. And that's all I saw between the plumes of brush where I found you, like a rose in a strange leaf, a vine laying smooth young stem of tree, an old door hanging on a limb in wall; from a tree you two; just as long ago as when you went away, but no dust at all; just as long ago as then. If I had but seen you a few months afterward, or even that year, or that season; if I had but seen you, as small as I now am, a sparrow perched on the wire; I might not have known the old love for name and likeness in some dark way now, in some dark place at last to echo you, in tune; Nothing of you I might not see or hear; though still nothing would have changed your vision of time of me, and the time after the sight; but it's different, that's plain from what it was. You said there were five worlds of painting, though I know now not one. That is not the same as that I know there are five simplified bits in which the light-filled world is slowly started, and where the soul has some color. Yes, and I know you see things as a black ======================================== SAMPLE 756 ======================================== We called to Suabian {1c} by name,{1b And the untoward matter was right well known; But many other young fellows were enticed With fair stories from the old Tuscan sea. And near or far, with the world on either hand, They past along the road of her command; By gates that open like the falling air, And gate of rusty lock was never overcome. And late and early by the way they trudged, And all adrift as on the tide of the storm; On strong Orion's {1d} or {1e} Diana's quest, By eve, or mid eve with stars o'erhead to gaze: But, through all that trouble, was a crew Of half a dozen they without number. And well it jests to such like foolery home The wisest of mankind, and the noblest of any. And for the handful {1e} we built a fire, And gently of the smoke the company stirred, To tell us of their young consorts and their land; And there, on the queer roof, beneath the moon, There came such a report of strange affray, and such cheer, The lady answered that, by the gods, they had arrived. For her sake and grace they travelled far; and they Were loth that she should love a lord of a lowly sort, With knitting oars a young unmarried boy, {1f Or knitting some thread therein, some faldstool run. Such was the story, when they come the dame, In place to say their greetings, and then show What be the state of things? what the doom of men? And wherefore thus? But, all is boldness and night Upon a double day; for in that chance entailed A passing to the book of prophecies, And that of most honour, {1g} and next, most grief, {1g} So they espoused and wed, when the list comes round, She that shall bring him the fairest son. So this Of her who with her lord's first husband is crowned, Is at the crowning given by her of her husband's son, To him first of all to set the promise devout, And so great honour is done to him by the chief Of that first husband's realm, as in this chapter Thy noble wife the last on earth, the next of her race, Is given that crown to wear. For no woman E'er wore a crown of such sublime emprise, As was the scarf, to which that honour belongs, Clut eyebrow wide, and long from the equal fame Of him that bore the title of {1h} , as of his son. And at that time no reveller there had any heart To show her, as their bride, the praises of her sex, For love of their mates; so good, so bad they twined E'en at the love of those their bosoms were soon flung, As is 'twixt men mutually one way, and the other; Though of the friends of either more (not all their own They cried) {1g} for the cause of the wanting joy of her who bore That other. Then whoso wedded fitly, she became His bride for ever, and the blessed rest her lord. For then we smiled to see how dazed men grew, {1h} As either on these twain their eyes they cast, Till they themselves were wight of age, and both the town Threw at the two, with many a safe-guarded path; One way a path before them, and one broad top to make, On which we twain should thence to St.feldenberg fare, And he should end the strife of battle, and the strife Of men in conquered ground; which seemed quite too much At hearing of it, though not wholly deceived, For twixt either path up rose a hill, a strong Rocky mountain, rugged, stiff, and hilly, and high; And we, down clambering up, above the top The naked vale we looked from, and heard below The vales echo with the choir of our choice Archer on, that follered the chanter's rest, As late I wrote, it was the song of his vespers. But round the hill we bent, with goodly song And lovely dames, a little dance around, So near the hard earth it was hard to turn, So right was the hill. Soon as we had hooped, Our two selves parted from the rest apart, ======================================== SAMPLE 757 ======================================== And promise true; This is the city of England And the Nine Divines in the hall Have borne their fragrant breath On this feast-day of the Nativity. Hark! the bells' echoing peal Sing forth their chimes amen! In the streets adorning, Heavenly plates are e'en now Mingled with flesh and blood. Here on yon pavement faint The footstep of our God is seen, While round He sits upon The very tables, where He's mingled with the innocent As some sweet consort true of song, Yet sprung of sacerdotal-sin. The host' cold white walls are rude With Christ's feet' tread, And He comes in wearing a crown; Of red and stony new. All round the palace dusky, Old as the weather is, Our God is seen like a shadowed sun Whose orb the empyrean alight On earth's white drinking in From eagle-hills and hills of purple Mounts downward, till, diffused, By the moon He sits down there. He sees the diamond glories Of virgin cheek and temple, The glories in his heart, Beneath his palms, and shines Like stars where--for joy or sorrow-- A thousand pilgrims come together, And all in gloom and rosary, Or in all men's millions, to him Before the judgment-gate, to pay Reproof and sacrifice,-- His feet shall feel these glowing Athwart the wool and dust With warmth, and take in sight the King, Who sits upon the glorious hill. Whose eyes are illumined By tempest, that will, ere the horror Of darkness on the city past, Darken its towers, ere it strike them; And the city shadowy Cries, 'mid the tumult, on and new. He speaks, or he hath spoken none, The King's new tongue to hear: Nor man hath wist or knew What words may say to him, As round the great earth's gates, Shook by his majesty, Showers fragrant incense, solemn, tender. But, Sir Knight, there are some here seen Who say, even as the Cross-Sign said; And lean His words are prayerful, In words as lucid and as brave As ever lips of pen could write. Lift up thy mind to read Truth out of darkness, To catch, at last, divine Of God's high glory; The glories of His perfect plan, Which is beyond our slavish land, But only of the late-- Saw faintly here, at best-- And there's the peasant of Terneu! Lord of the far-famed Glenderay And terrors untold below! To him the King is not the Man: For every town may claim the Priest Whose head on the feasted Fish Is run the slaughter, and whose tail Is slain for rum, and whose staff Is for a viand, like the dear His velvet gown a fold outflares, A silk-arched port, there's none to tell; There are no towers of silver, none Breast with aching belly, none Vapour from burnt incense-fumes, nor heat From baked ears of sleep to smoke the sage. He hath the regal self-sufficiency That name signifies, not dreamed of heretofore; He hath the sod, and is Thy host; Without Thee for his, Thee needeth none. And look--the wings he hath, the plumes-- He hath them all, his own Who wears Thy Crown, He is thy Lord: He does not live in daylight alone, He is the Life who draws Thee down The Middle Kingdom hath no name, And of the three is one, Thy metayer and Thy Judge, All three as one, they judge, they praise, Thou art the One, Thou art the Three: O strangest state of things! That I should write this thing-- The vision of the world Singing before Thy face, Clanging into being, Into power, with Thy voice Seeming lyre that had When the altar burnt And the bright incense blew We spoke in reverent tone That he, the King, was come, Bringing us what he asked. Thou wast a stone, Thou wast a shade, There was a curtain over thee: Yet we could not see ======================================== SAMPLE 758 ======================================== In that example tell me if he had found a valid instance of"legitimately adopted religions", for to him they seemed"just another" and "nothing more"than that other Jew, German Wotje. <|endoftext|> "Kolind", by Kay Ryan [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Separation & Divorce, Social Commentaries, Money & Economics] I wanted to give him the opportunity to walk out of the cold, dark room into the bright, new sunlight of the garden outside. The room was huge, with white walls and roof, and a snowfall of rocks on the roof, as if he were a god who had died. I wanted to give him the opportunity to put his arms around me, to feel the warmth of my body against his, as I did that day in the camping store. I wanted to give him the opportunity to own anything he wanted to own: a car, a home, a job—anything a person can want to own can also hold the fear of loss: death, hopelessness, disappointment. I wanted to give him the opportunity to be a better man, to make ordinary evils ordinary, ordinary. I wanted to give him the opportunity to stand in the sunlight, to walk down the street and think of my name. His name was Kolind. I gave him the opportunity to leave the room. <|endoftext|> "Ephemera", by Kay Ryan [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Relationships, Men & Women, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Writing] It is hard to say whether ephemeral—an unfortunate term we use here at St. Peal Academy, where we purposely cultivate confusion. When something is no more than a storm of words against a white wall, or it may be an ephemeral poem, it is easy to feel its loss as severe as the desecrated ground, but as ambiguous as the distance one feels walking into the wind or snow. When something is only to be interpreted once, we scold and fuss about it, but when something is forgotten, or a book that one read over and over returns to the same library, we feel relief to let it go. To have something return after having been handled, sold, or given away is to know that something important has been thrown away. —From Poem No. 2 in The Dance of Eternity I. Praabiikas is the Greek word for "blessing," but the prefix Arai is applied to "un-augmented things" (and in particular to birds), so I thought it might be a good idea to banish the ant—or perhaps the maggot—for a while. You see, these insects really do have little say in their (or our) natures, as anyone who's ever tried to deter- rootly an ant in her/his wound knows well. You pull on the bit of buttock where the ant is, then pop the concell secretions back- way aft- like penitential dri- jubbar, then suddenly it's black to the sky and flying, but then white (or blue) again, while all the world plays host to a holier-than-thou faith in one's future pe- life, at least it seems so. This is, of course, the kind of holier-than-thou confession that just might sell a soul at prices that rival those charged for rotten burials. The old were made that way, and the young (so I've latched onto the trivial holiday)! I could almost believe these inter-vaginal plates could be recycled and bent and square to make sort-to-see peristals, per-suit cures for bumps and cuts, yet there is no way to frame those visions other than in a cat's eye, not to mention a womb or something. The rectory's in the field. I could tell you about the field's subtle hills, its oil-sand veins and its for- ever- continueings. Would it not make sense, then, to write a book (if I were Horace) called "A Praise for the Peculiar?" (There's your self-indulgence, Horace, along with Horace's exquisite statue of the truly die-hard ass). So with everything I love about the world I am made to hate in its special kind of hell (di- DUTY! Di-DUM! We're all in the pay now!) I'm on my own damn horse alone! When I return to the battlefield of the novelists I am inevitably (and e- yet the errant) trou- thew and celebrate with a jubilant shout of HOLY CROW! Illness strikes! My tummy tumbles with ulcers! Spinal injury! Tu- bercoped! A div- iational superstar! ======================================== SAMPLE 759 ======================================== Hurt, I fell, lo! thou art now glorified. So Heaven above all hurts, what do I fear? Let me forget, some thing wished gone, I say, I, who beg the full Desire, taste not the lack Of what the soul desires, though sky the height; A certain rapture in the flesh. The rate Of Nature's joy, by which our mortal lives The eternal ray, shall one and all rejoice, That I suffer, not enjoy what most I covet here, Nor dress my touch, but through your hair and dress. Like him, who, changing to our habits lost His native mood, his meditations brought, And was at hand, when those he hoped to avail Were piling the palace roof, within, he saw The portrait of his muse, from whom all draw Perceived their ruin. That of his life the lord He was of all that he did, thus sung. I have sung half the magnum babbler of verses, That I so many have forgot, and half will leave Unheeded; this half the prince of poets can Me only to acknowledge; yet the schedule so done, I doubt, could a half, by giving body and face, One servant's head be better than an ear. The pains I bear, the virtu of every part, The servant's woe, that sings the hour of his part, I liken to the heed, or drear degree Of those fatal to the painter of the cave, Whose forehead was their death, whose ripe desir Was, making a poet of the peasant. The pains of house and barn, and pig and olive Unhappy in their lord, had lent to fate The hap of those in summer, or in years Not common; of these, or succour, or need Of any off'rings, yet to nature's dyst Their voice in lilies' or roses' sound, Their virgin buds, their snow, their pomegranate, Their purple and peach, their red and white, Their gold and blue, had given ere now Their substance to the wearer; but the rest Let needful, nor false nor hollow praise, sustain. I sang them in my garden; they had spanned An infinite distance, and outsoared the world. <|endoftext|> I see a river so wide, so gay, It hath no bank, and never a thought Of carrying it; but up and darksome runs With single streamer and blithe ardour, Among the hills it runs before And wears the dancing flower of its own In every gem that can be planned. Is never it when 'tis not so very wide It founds a wish to show itself. And let it run, no doubt amid the ground, Though, running, it never may show it By its continual cutting; but, hey! Why should I tell you 'tis a wonder That, with a river's precious motion, And sounder running than a tributary, It wends a mile and a mile in one? A large rent-drawn garment has arrived And covered the world. O King! O sacred blood Of David! O Holy Land! So wonderful, so marvellous Is all your lover's toil, that he hath woven, Since first it cleft to pieces, His work on many a Sunday; As if the rafters, cut and hooped, Had but the scope To yield one bob with one poor trellum, Or post to show one head with one hen crown, Which for the next series he hath struck Two wrong sides against; one to the rescue, With another stuck fast. And yet, yet not so vast a rest Appears; the great Father hath upborn A new and heavy part, Overseaking and overweening, In which it all must sooner break, Than all their spells, or all their hopes: It is but the slow clay; 'Tis all turned to a huge mineral. O never be that man more blest Than thou, O King of Jacob! A lion upon a mountain Was wounded, and his blood fell Like rain or melting snows. So well the thornless rose in time Shall bloom that, loving him, thou Shalt weep more than any bride. Where, where is that noble knight From whom no demon trail, But as his brow, his deeds declared, As his bone, or his heart? The well-travelled roads, The stately parks, The sea-worn bronze ======================================== SAMPLE 760 ======================================== The rain fell soft and leisurely In silver breaks from the mountain side And drenched all the roses on the tree, When Mary did her work of love, By God's blessing, day and night. A song of the bee-- A song of the spray-- The sweet and the sterile-- The very scent of God's World!--Breath that breathes of the Sea-- a glass of orange-sauce! The voice of the South! Let it sound to the sun A silver river-- A crystalline clamor-- A voice as pure as the star-shine! A note as of the dove in the midst of the sea, Where flutes and bells Make a burst of music, pure and clear! Let it burst upon the day- God sees! A cry as of a sea! Let it pant upon the wintry wind! A summer-storm! I dreamt it was so sweet The lark above me-- The lark at evening! And the lark above the lark, And the lark at evening! And the shimmering sun-light Was an emerald-- I heard his song; And the song of the lark, As he soared aloft And upside down. The swells did laugh, When he sang of green leaves Which whisper to them A tender secret Of the South's warmest love. A treasure, which they know, Who wander where they may! For the song of the lark Is the melody of heaven, And never more I dream Of a magic gold Ah, now I know that beauty-- A thing of earth--is sweet! And the life of the Springtime And blossoming time, And hallelujah-times! Of heaven, that reareth above The clouds of the earth and bakes The golden savors of things. Ah! now, when the fresh heart of the Spring Is tender, love-laden, green, and bright, The robin and the yellow-bird To me are wise enow In their taste of the earth, Of the blue sky above them, And where heaven's sunless grapes are. No faith is their, nor miracle-wrought Their hazel gentian-- Alayain's wind-flower I love Best of them all! Yet the heart of a maid, Wakened by heaven's sweet air, Gaily blows, Inhabits with frosts and so free, And unbreathing, Of the pustular South, In its young leaves. "The spring is great with the charm of his first expression, The day briefer, and of his melody, The star of his earth-bound aim, The unseen poppies growing On earth 'bove the star-jewel golden, In heaven's tulip-crown. "And you the sunshine of the dawn On the fields of the South, So sudden--so impetuous, You--call me, even-- You do make me You! and no other graze, You! do wander, and range On my breast love's eternal grass. Have pity on me As I enter you,-- On evening like this <|endoftext|> And when the holy Sun Made of his morning clean The old world and new, Ascending at the close of day, I saw an inn among the stars of night, In a garden, wringed in icy gloom, Greenly walled with strata; And over it and round it, like a dream, Strata of dark fern soared; And all the soil and all the herbs Came north, and all the flowers and all the grass Came south to gather, gathering, at the verge, I knew not what they knew. And the fields of the Hyperion I Saw timorous beneath the shade, Doves lightly passing, and of love All fowl of air. I saw one poor dove sadly--ah!--at the rate Of its rate of motion, soon in the light Of my fire's brief flicker atmost, It had most surely passed me by. I heard one shrill note in the distance And fainter, lost, soon fainter, and eventually Lost altogether, were the poor notes Of the Hyperion bird. There is a garden near the whole Transitory One of the earth And of all the world and me, Where flowers are blooming, and one, In my name, is there, but it ======================================== SAMPLE 761 ======================================== about the dryad of |the leaf and what I took to be a hero-or my body's, the crown's body, the earth on whose scales I am a drop of the breast <|endoftext|> "Those Linguistic Friends", by Frank O'Hara [Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics] I We sat in a row in a corner, talking, talking, till I suddenly wished I had a heart, just to be with them all the time. And the reason I went then and there, and made a dally with them, is that they had no right to bully me that way, or to make me happy. The one thing they know I know, they talk as if they don’t want to say: ‘I’d rather be climbing trees,’ not ‘I’d rather’ or ‘I’d prefer to be climbing trees.’ But he can’t complain that she who leaves him never returns, and he can’t offer anything to her, nothing. Nothing for dying, nothing for the widow’s haunting his life. How can he take comfort in the thought that she’s in no mood to comfort, that her facets are dull and she so slow to grasp things, in fact, that she does not know how beautiful she is? How can he know if she does not even know? I don’t know the answer, and so I talk on, till the living room fills with the delightful sounds of eavesdroppers and garden leaves rattling against the paint. And so we sit in the dim light, and I buy you little dresses, like little dresses, and so I say, ‘Look at those trees!’ Which I have never seen: a simple picture in a simple country, some farmer, some breeze shaving the top of his tree. He’s out there, in the thick of the woods, that you can’t see, and I feel how you looked at me then, with your wry, gentle, dancing eyebrows, and you’re all the towered heat, your handsome eyes, trees rustling, and I’m all at once how can it be we, again, what are we, wresting an empty cup, I, who am over your dead, do I still wonder who I am beloved, who are you? It may be that what we know is what we want. <|endoftext|> "To Anne." Real Poetry [Living, Death, The Body, Nature, Animals, Trees & Flowers, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy, Sciences, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] Here Comes Dust... From Winds... Into Lungs... From Legs... Here Is Legless And You Are Without Hoof. <|endoftext|> "A Ballad of the First Class", by Ross Gay [Living, Death, Time & Brevity, Love, Classic Love, Desire, Heartache & Loss, Relationships, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment] The hoof of  the moon came up the Road And love in pain. The sun came down the other way and Love with blood on his shoe. They met So late, love And also the way they met. The pain was between, and they Took it in turns to breathe. Each night they breathed it more deeply As if they had bodies and Then knocked their lips Chill as black water. They kept hearing the ocean And the knot of the oil-beaded Whoop and Hold. They found their way to the beach With backs Together, no hands. There they sat all night in the sand Hiding in the half burned halves Of half dried ripped up shirts. * No shoes. “That’s fine” The balding head said “But I’ll never go back To that.” “No You won’t” The balding head said And spun around with its hammering wheels. “Perhaps We are the ones we touch With our bare hands. “The rest Are worn out.” ======================================== SAMPLE 762 ======================================== A mild wind sprung out--then died, as if nigh crushed By some enchantment--and so passed away Beneath the upland floor of an old meadow That held sweet shades, wherein the Spring green lingered, Like to a Naiad or a young Ocean. And far to southward flared from east to west A single plume of red fire--and sunk and crept From pole to pole, and tare its dreadful shroud Of smoke, and rifted in that mist tempest threw The wonders that melted in a bloody mist. And as the fair day rose, and the birds sang, And bright wind-clouds skipped o'er the ground, The fair one caught from sky and cloud a-swoon, All wonder-stricken at the gloom. Where her young hands, a flower-loved threshold, peered Into the gleam-bellied entry-way. Where childhood's violet curtains, dimmed to deep-pinks, Fluttered balmy with new-born child-eyes, Seeing as well what told her of the moon. Where the ruddy wands she whips by day and night Rave inside, and wreathe her locks with light. On her bed the thin cedar slips in snow; The vast, cold space between the columns still Leans silent on the moon, and storms by rote Bleed through its skylight, like the last sweet bloom Of the sudden miser's sales in a mall. And hark! Just as a father's heir should--not Feat of fashion, or chic of art--be faithful And kind, a father's heir is kind! And well the nest should ear naught of doubt For the master's hand, the master's hand; 'Tis a kind soul--sure--but witting that She's not. 'Tis just as true! Look where she sits As the lonely champion--steady as a wall That rose in manhood, sight, and ringed strong Eyes with beauty to greet the saith Of woman, to deny her with disdain; Here, yet, doth she sit and take her seat With all the virtue of the feminine. Upward the rudely carved douglass lifts That head from out its gaunt, spindling band, Like yew or rose, up all in volume now, And wakes its kind lips with a new-born grace For the heart-perfidious glance of the hours, Which menaced her with the beam that rules youth. Upward the learned scholar's brow doth slaketh, With a new-born song to dance on, and laugh Slight scorn that his desire hath spurned Out of the fair throat that taught it growth; With star-inwared light her eyes and eke Her tresses unawares the grace of fame On gay brows girdle in array of power; The lovely douglass! The lady poet! And in so fair an assemblage, none but good And pious souls may gaze, and none but good And pious souls may breathe, breathing with new sway The good and holy dawn through heaven's brow-- Upward! The gentle douglass! The lady poet! So from her radiant presence, glowing On all alike, and lighting up All round her varying charm, she makes The tangled world one pandorous scene, Making with her one mirror, which may mean, "Be ye as I, or I as thou," And in sooth, to each it hath meant enough, Obliquely as one fonder than they, God-born humblest, can handle, and stand Behind her scented robes, the balmy air, From wide, surrounding floor to floor above, Shedding the fragrance of her living hymn, And that her living hymn be still. Yet is there darkness in her light; Cold, unquiet eyes--and smiles that lag In the mid-moon; there, eyes as sad As foam that dyes the wintry sea, And mouth as cold as eider-down Cannot be caught a toning down, As she turns her amorous gaze Across a world not carefuU's shade, but black With vast, vast, fallowing years that mould By her male lamp-work shapes that fit The pale perfection of the moat Above her heart, of terror to tell That any feel the evil wrong At the core of heaven; whence dimly dart Darts of their blackness as she sighs, And with a tremulous throated sigh Life ======================================== SAMPLE 763 ======================================== Behold, in the blue deep of skies, The point where they blazed! Look and behold in the deep blue depths Of the high northern sky, A group of blue kiwis, close together, And each one as large as a capon; And you shall see A cloud like a giant in this wide expanse Of blue and silver, With a glimmering lantern in its hand; And it beckons, And beckons, From the crags of its verge, To the waves below; Where the white breakers leap and beat and beat, And the waves quiver in their waste; Where the waters roar and shock and clash, And the waters glare and shine; Where the wild catfish, with his fins and gnarls, Creeps, a slippery black thing, through the spray. Now, where it gleams in the distance fine, See, there is the breakers' bay! And there, you shall look more closely, Through the breakers' bay; See! see! now, the cloud's a break Of the breakers' cloud! Here is the spot Where they rear The breakers' sheds! Here, on the strand, they curl the blue seaweed Which the storms love well; And the big waves curl it in delight. There, on the sand, It drenches a spear,-- 'Tis a great green sea-bull's tooth, The breakers give it joyous fling. But the clouds are far away, And the clouds, dear friends, are out of sight! Only the breakers wheel and sound; Only the breakers' never-ending din, Is heard on the shore; Only the breakers' jetty leaves and rings Keep the sand-hills from sinking into sleep. Good-bye! good-bye all! The great green sough of the sea Touches and shakes with the song, The hollow laugh of the tide, The bass and treble of the surf; Good-bye, good-bye! See, the blue summer sky is turned, And white wakes and waves wear The white wake-sail of the bay; Bale as it is, with foam blent, And foamed, with foam, more white, And blossom of spray that flecks The pebbles in the bay, And croaks the littlest gull at ebb tide, That loves the foam and bower That crawls from the bay. Great is our Master's power, The Mother-love of his Whose arm is middle power, On empire built of calm and calm; For ever as we gaze to range Out from our girdling beach, A thousand sweet visions float Between the rocks' edge and crest; Such as the soul might wed in Him, For it was an evening tent His followers on the sea, And his hand kept them ever fair For sailors and for gods. If on any one A stray wave may dwell, It does not ride that wave, Flowing into rifted cave, With swell of foam, But broods in that retro rock crevice, Frail and sweet, White foam-drop and motile spray, Lashing with triple slashes The artless heaven of heaven, Filling its noble hollow As the tide breaks in, Off the ripple's dizzy crest. And this is our Mother's bay, And our Lord, the sun! As the Sun from clouds Dusk-dived in England, A geyser of sun and star Spaild at will to naught From Ocean's most vast caves, Spurned by the measure, Strong on this shore of home With geysers wide as world. 'Tis for an earnest Of quenchless powers and might; Quenchless hands and might; Of heart and soul and fire I am here for thee.' Like a soul when guilt And sorrow sweet are past, Like a soul released With passion purged and clean, 'Tis for an earnest That I sing to thee. By what name wouldst thou wish This honour of the word to cry? Would the arch-shadow speak? With the supreme and heliotrope Man-soul that purges the dust and smite? Or cry through sense and sight, Like the mists and mists about Here to plead, one dry year, As a god of Greece Seeking his world's expiring hour, Before too long appear, ======================================== SAMPLE 764 ======================================== It rained when the yearly dull course was run; Yea, every drop of joy the lot is fix’d, For Love is fickle. No shrift is meant To crown an amorous bill. All gifts are gift, With all grace, and all degree. But Love is an ass, You may hold of will. Untunbered by the wheel, His foot strikes time. But we that speak sweet, be careful, Lest in the blizzard of your heart, which loves, you Lie exposed. Nature is a frivolous, rich, seductive slave, Whose winning subtleties are ne’er attained by power, By force, or by well-meant flattering arrogance. Joy does but catch the air, before a flower Reaches the sun that wets her. Beauty is a wind, Which, if it breathes too long, soon must fall And perish. Natures to be correct, are to be thought Surprise, and virtue, wisely chosen, is but pain. Necessity is all her art, and gain Is all his profit. Many there are whom Fate Throws far aside, that might have grown to fame, Had they but wings to catch her, and the pow’r To sweep them on, and let them fly. When Love and Joy are late, They grow late, and cannot fall so fast. To every man’s judgment is his death. Men only weigh their instincts, which are Like dumb monsters in the hand of Power. By some Seen only, with their sole countenance seen, They move, and in the mind alone remain, Thoughts, strange, unknown, unaccountable, unborn, And gore thee not. It is their business still To grind and spread a suction in the chest, Stretched wide for that abominable thing, That cut in twain the sensitive air, And stuck, all gore and biggest of the four. Let none such thoughts entertain. Let each man sit still and eat his bread; Let him who would be cheerful eat; Let him who wishes most not eat; Let him who is most discontented eat; And always still do to others give The food, that they may eat to thee; That they may feed upon thy best gifts To thy highest benefit. Young David was a prodigal of love, Which he report'd, thou wast not to win; Nor hadst thou parents’ sins beheld, As sinned against, but still in fear. Yet Solomon, if he be what he seem’d, Would make thee mistress of the land, And thee would’st be martyr to the law. Such is th’ observable religion, That one conformist doth the other. He that believes in one unseen, Has one hand got every wound. By this he tells thee, David knew Not that he loved the Mole. In his mild hand every limb is tied, But love doth give him speech, the first, And Israel the best eloquence. Love is an Orcāz (11) begotten By Montanus and his mother. Matter of iron is his coat; His limbs upon the altar laid; With butter he is fed, and cakes By bread, and wax of B.R.C. E’en such a note as this he takes, After the revenge he meant to pay. Love maketh his players contrary, Not making notes so sweetly. He Used to play “Solomon upon the sea;” But “David upon a hill” shall go Before his mouth, that he may hear Love in a voice, and may relume His eyes, which words in part, but scorn Image. Only now he sometimes does appear, Helpless, in love, and in despair; Now like a dying eagle cries, Then like a fallen seraph cries; Thinking not of the little FATE Which has brought him to this order. Therefore it is she wonders much In what place he is, being man, In whose weakness love is yet so great She doth his Eminence declare, That whoso has read the Book in hand Must needs lose his sweetness and sweet complexion With censure, and the more he doth suffer. God gave us breath; breath is of God Which doth endure, earth with it constricts And sacrilegiously to inter, Now this command, now that, all things open Points stick unto God, as rails ======================================== SAMPLE 765 ======================================== Whose bones are dust;--pale the moon's drooping horns; And Winter's robes and winter's hail: The paths have been beaten gold by Spring, And molten glass is gilt the sky: For thee is Summer for a day, For thee the Winter's fiery flight; And, where that Lover of the north Gives his fresh fire to the sod, Thy leafy ghosts are glad to go; To hear the west wind cry along Through hedge and field; and hark, Sweet Spring, to the laden bees, Whose hung weather-stainéd throats, Mingled melodious peals Are yet 'gainst the sunshine's songs; To rise above the rolling shade To kiss the lips of time. The jackdaw and the linnet flitting by To a strange pen and red-worn page; And earth has been shaken by thine eye, But the full-face of Summer is, Scarce life is in the globe; and he wends To the still heath, and shades and flowers. Their clear-voiced old cries of Spring are still, Though there is his old song written here, And earth's gold leaf is turned to red; And the milkweed's shelter is soiled, And milk-weed nests broken in the bowers. But their brown eyes are towaed with tears, And red-bruised wings dropt in despair; And they do love Winter; and he cowers, With pale-breasted daughters of snow; For he saw pale mother Summer die, And bare moths hang down the sky. In solitude on Lover's Hill No snow-white butterflies may be seen; And the rose's red born of grey willows; And dim flowers that the rain has shaken On the long stems to come; And hark! the noisy crickets fall Forlorn, in step with the rain. And down, where steep the wild vine springs In the distance, and the white drawstring Of the penitents strains up to be Self-clincher to the moon; Yea, and the loin-eyed seraph spreads A moon-claspt path to the sea, And the reedy plains cease being red, And all white ripening with the moon: Yea, for this is the harvest of youth, And every day is a New Year's day. On the brink of the forest to sleep She, who had seemed must make haste to remain A lily-maid full of song and fire; But, turning, found that the height was moist, That the red of the sunset on the hills Were flushed by the wood-dew and the rain: And rain-drops quenched were the iron stakes. The sky wreathed gray--and the rain did sleep-- But over it where the iron was bright The sunset left a dusky stain. As wet as the straw of poppy flowers The poppies and dew-pearls of the heather; And the maiden shawled brown with mountain dew Was soaked in the churning floods of the puddle. Her hand in the dust of the wet seeds was hid; Where the boughs were blackest branch of a tree There was a turn in the wet seeds of a red. Red o' the lips as the poppies and dew-pearl Of the heather were soaked in the puddle; And redder to the hair of the maiden Glowed the streaks of the rain that had fell As a red sunset left a dusky stain. On a hand of a hill was curled a red; And the dark cheek of a pine, curled with the blue Of the water where the maiden is bighorn, Was stained redder than the willow-weeds. When the world is a vase of red, And a moon is a straying wing Of the wind, and a heart is a heart Poured pearls of a lily bed, From my peering eye and my mind's peeping, All the wine-red features of day Change and shift into redder ones. When the hour of the day is an hour Of the summer day and of the moon, When the rosy tide of our year is near, And the tender dribbles of the moon Can be seen from the fields below, From my peering eye and my mind's peeping Are the red gills of a heart that can bloat and glow. Wherever my little house Is between sky and sea, ======================================== SAMPLE 766 ======================================== The heaven, the woods, the open air! Behold the day that is done! Oh! they wore now the night they wore The day they gave their lives, the day they gave Their blood that fed the ship, the day they drave For England's realm and freedom! The clock, the tally, the fire, the water, The blind, the lame, the dead! The ship that bore them passed them by And ended not their cry: "Where is the Captain? What are ye doing?" But darkened the faces of the men Before they heard the call. They could not come to it: he was dead; Yet there they pressed, to make his ghost Come to them, and to make known The strife for him, the spirit of the ship, That in her shroud should drown. The bodies of the dead Hung round the streets and shops; The evening star was dark, Their hearts beat with that star. What cared they then for pane or spire, For church or mosque? It was dark Where he fell--he fell. They must have sighed To hear him beat. And, hark! I say, To us or ours, a face as fair As any wall should have been, fell And heard the cry. He looked at the dim glare, or made it, He looked, and called to her, and she heard His call that called her to follow. By a post from the dim frontier, By their own flag, They came as they ought to have come, They came as they ought to have come, And caught his eyes. We who are dead wait not to be told That anything was anything but simply A thing that had a shape as such as A child's understanding can, or can not Bring to a being's mind, The shape would be the same, the sense the same, Had not the artist's hand denied the pose, And given us back the face. If he at last had a face of blond and Grey hair, if that alone Were face enough, That he had had in life, We who are dead, we might not know That all that was in him, All that had made him man or child, Was wasted in death, a face Had wasted his life, had wasted That which life had spared from the start, If that alone were left Of all his good as was left of him. But not a statue can we turn to, For that alone was not left, So nothing was left of him, Nothing at all. In time he will turn grey. When you and I Have stood unshaken in the sun and shone Long days, our work undone, And past our better strength, and power Is ours to suffer, and our hands are strong, As was his, or is yours, or were, He too will turn grey, And all that is of good in him. Only a remnant of a face as fair As any statue in the square, Only a shape from life or death Was left when all was over, And all that was was wasted as a waste Whose shapes or touch-give-not-life, not death. No shade to hide or turn aside, No bulging lines of scar tissue, The open and striking brow And the arch of the dark golden hair. A face and a grave--a blank. A face as cold as all deep snow That never will melt again-- No life from it--no colour. The glow of the alive that only comes With eating and drinking, light with light, Strong light of light, That will not let you or me be dumb When all the world's talking in our ears And all the earth's stirring in our body, A life made endless in an eye's vision. But then I eat a few short rich crêpes, My breakfast, my farthing or small bread, I am full of life from the face of life That will not let me eat or be glad, That has wasted now the shape of my man. So I rise and walk out into the sunshine To cleanse myself from the ill flesh of yesterday, The life that is not my own, From what was, and is, and ever shall be. A glass is leaning at the doorway To catch the sunlight, earth, And as I look I see the face of the woman Whom I loved and did not love her well enough And whose name I do not love or lack. Her tall bare head and cleaved moonlight hair Will soon have ======================================== SAMPLE 767 ======================================== the stanadas used to be some sort of sauce) the guajillo cowboy, more an explorer than a horseman, he carries a hat whose feathers darken as he increases the miles on the hands and his boots stand in the dirt as he takes off the feathery hat <|endoftext|> "Little Wall", by Roddy Oribley [Living, Life Choices, Relationships, Home Life, Nature, Trees & Flowers] We cut little pyramids of turf, little stakes, each a perfect circle, and remembered, in the houses that rose, and in the fields beyond, black-stemmed play structures, water-crossed dice, fencing that made the whole sky around us the lens, the binoculars of childhood, rifle and rocket and gun, all set against the crazy, leashing us, as if with the dark, to think what was we were meant to be, first to think each other naughty and, in turn, to be punished, riding a horse that the horses at night forsook and returned us to grass, the wind and its illumination, the eyes of something other than ourselves. <|endoftext|> "The Little Match Seller", by Roddy Oribley [Living, Parenthood, Relationships, Home Life, Philosophy] Two people moving side by side in a truck bed, shoulder to shoulder on the cold gravel of a road that curved away from the manmade pond that divided them as I did, once in each of their minds they left the dream world retracing each other in each other's minds nearer and nearer towards nothing without break, as we continued to move the rattling truck away I didn’t know it was cold I hoped for warmth I thought, My baby says we are sweet <|endoftext|> "Power/Has cup", by Roddy Doyle [Living, Life Choices, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] I can remember it with a word the flash of a knife The skin scraping a wheel’s whelk The year of our indecent summer water in every home Or the gas electric and a trickle White coats and trebles Oozing into black Golden to brown, Or brown and wet blue, green was my life —  I know how to be cute and to feel the cold I lived it all Of it in memory I sit at the bar thinking of it —  and I could fly I could see them in their black coats I thought we shared one world or perhaps two I think of what you said to me only this morning Of us together in our blue coats over the pond rocking The sea isn’t infinite but the men aren’t strangers Nor the cargoes But I want to call you “Match Seller” So I can believe you —  It has been said that the owl rests on the two legs of a clock I have made you my present It has been said that the owl keeps to the two legs of his clock Moments of them sitting in my livingroom Of them sleeping in it <|endoftext|> "Poem for Charlie Hebdo", by Roddy Doyle [Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Poetry & Poets, French & Contemporary] It is the cartoons of the (to be Catholic) frontpage of the Newspaper of Love, Charlie Hebdo. Towards the end of their run Charlie opens his big mouth and he realises he is gay In these cartoons they are shown screaming the to cow denounced: “It’s Terror!” and when you tried to say something else you were accused of wanting to murder the children all the rest were killed. The skunk, the bag, the bean-spread spread, the burkini, the niqab, French fries, Le Castor, were all banned. Now one of these days you say you want to paint a picture of it Charlie said: “I thought I wanted to do something exciting” ======================================== SAMPLE 768 ======================================== As gently rang the bells to summon home The Sabbath laborers. The elder Joe On the unseen steps of the slum below, Ascended with the deacon when the bell Jinglet, and announced that matins, prayers, Answers, and otellings were done. Then I Went to the sills to sweep and clear the board While Scold and Joe and Joseph two engaged In combat about the domicile; and they Gathered round the hearth when one, or both, Said their farewells. How can the abster Joe Sneak into God's rest so lightly, and scold The King's missiód boots, while Joe exclaims And prays, and writhes? The King's boots? So long, Nor more: And, so long, my part of him! In the day's dreary din no reprieve Could save the cooing of the doves. And when The peace of God comes down to earth, The King's boots keep their station. Here leave we The jinglet bells, the shade of chimney, And sable clump; and come again with Joe And Scold and missiós. <|endoftext|> "Home To Iceland", by Yothic Trachney [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Mythology & Folklore, Heroes & Patriotism] You have the choice of several beach combers and fancy. Choose Iceland. You will have to fly. And use a crane. The crew will not be ready for you before you land. There is a derelict ship sitting there called the Golden Hynde. That is the name of the ship that carried you to your grave and that has come back to find you and you cannot forget that you have arrived at your death at last And Iceland is an area in the north of Ireland. It lies about 110 miles southwest of the Irish Sea. It is bordered on the west by the Storm floo; on the east by the Goldsand Hollow. The land around the Bay of Dordrecht. The land around the Bay of €achers is owned by the Irish government, but an ancient marshy dingle is set aside for ranching. The sheep flow there from the Wicklow mountains, the rivers being somewhat saline. The coastline of Iceland is invisible from the sea; it is separated from the main strand by a steep bank; it is around this land that the wild exchange of ideas takes place, the exchange of visions. It is a land of flat walls and rock, of ancient sledges, the ice-fringe of the land. I will tell you only of one vision in my new home. A dreamer comes to the edge of his homeland, is lost in space and has no notion of the meaning of his journey. He starts to dig in his home earth grave, roots in his family circle of bone, of his race that is gone. He keeps bringing up old, he keeps on a lonely journey of thought and energy, it makes him strong to take on the new life of this life of strangers. At times they will come to you blind, bitter, except a couple of ghosts who wait with their priceless gift of death. Then they will touch your soul with their wings. With their wings! You will learn the secret. For you too have seen something of death and the joy of being dead. So I have told you nothing of the law, the teaching of the law. The things that stand over the threshold are dark, full of mystery. The doctor will say, "What is the matter with your eyes? The things that he will do for a song. We cannot expect your form, why do you think? But we can give you a heart to save you, can tell you what you have been. When you come we will give you the next best thing, tell you the things that you will do better than you. Like an Irish letter. These republicans, [they were the ones who ran the island running it along a republican line, along a republican bone running it along the lines of blood, of colonial debt, and everything that is republican in this land, including the tax collectors, were the recipients of a bounty on the cattle of U.S. Rep. Charlie Warren worth one million on the land. They believed in the party of Seignorage. There is no party. There is not a form, it was all in orchard after eave and wind. And we are all of us so sad and poor ======================================== SAMPLE 769 ======================================== congressional leaders to remove the cumbersome permit and payment process, and you're telling us that we can finally live the dream. So here we are, boys, my boys, free to jump and spray— mammolitre to spray ever appears, down here on the 36th floor, of the skyscraper that's named for your *ss you, you, and a framed and adorned picture of a cane to Amherst, that's as bad as a carebear mussagumental mussagumental you've got this straightway, no thanks so squints and crinkles and worries go haywire as their heads roll into a k ill u die you sir, you, and you your needless grape and your homage to cucumber melt into a tiny pool of water That's a type of condiment, my friends, soaked and poured, that now begins to colden, while the old ones, sing in a chorus we've begun to take on board we're truly losing our grip on the day, day's alternate red and green pomp on our history I'll just grab my bag and I'll be gone now, glad I'm not on this card when it finally makes it's round to where I'm at you can bet this all will end very soon, boys. It looks as though those days are all going to be over, soon— my dreams, the perpetual yawn of those twin towers. I'll tell you one thing, though— not just any old time will do. What we really want, is what we were never. We go on just as we were. So long as there is time, we always love, always will. <|endoftext|> "The Spilled Bevan", by Georges Wolniowski [Living, Time & Brevity, Activities, Eating & Drinking, Gardening, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] For dessert I'm drawn to small dried fruits, something like porcini or parmeseeen, which is a kind of porridge dungeoned in fennel and lemon and sprinkled with a light dusting of Maldonchaisse (Mongolian summer) or Chinese-quedInge (Ethiopian), which still is the centre of underground larders and bowels—something less than a meal, perhaps, if we disregard for a minute the travesty that must ensue: the resting biscuit, the whey protein, the MSG. I had to throw several tools into this pot that trickles and gouts and spits and shoots and folds, all the way from top to bottom. It was the pricking of the belly and the simmering litany of sirens: whey, glutara, gluten, blood, parmesan ketchup, guar gum. The poet is bound to be hard on the finish: heavy, briny seas and breeding fleas. The rectory is darkening and lashing the already-fleeced paracetamol. And then the electric knife swings and strokes into the sponge. <|endoftext|> "Hotel Z", by Josh Haneter [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Trees & Flowers, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] there's something about the final day of a long, hard, sometimes fruitful working weekend at a downtown hotel that feels like an occasion, and the final day of a long but fruitful working week is always like an occasion, like a party, like a party when only the old and the young left over from winter are purged and everyone who will attend the party amidships to rooms and interiors and then plans to stay is unfilled. A month ago I saw this city, this city now that all is packed and full and sad and full of plans, with shabby business coins flapping in the yards and sometimes dissolved in the kind of empty slick pallets no one's making any more. But if all goes well this party won't be like that one at the convention center where the ballroom fills up and the basement floors again, filling in the throats of bands trying to break through to the surface. The hotels aren't the fault here, though they lack the panache and in all these cases I'd use the hotels as the reason this isn't one of the conveniences you'd choose to bear witness to. No matter: I say the ======================================== SAMPLE 770 ======================================== On the dewy lawn. Let her look all round; There's Beauty, there's Bal-Muz, and there's Plantagenet--but he's not here. When I was a 'prentice I loved To pull the hooks from off the fixings Of stout cinder-ladders; And take the angles out of creaks To make of my house a mass Of slip-rope twisted like cord; And spoil a cask with my beetle And get a good number Of one-pound notes for fools; For I drank many a bowl In shape of cider out of water. Out of the barn the casks Drove out their olden owners; Down the tracks the teams were thumpy; The beasts were floored as before; It was clear the spirit was fled. The foreman snapped his fingers, The foreman cried, "Hew!" and "Hew!" and "Winch!" And our old set against the plow Was thus in the belly to stay. Down on the grass the pheasanders Broke into song, "You are nearly hale," And in the highcorn that was soused They wheel'd about in semblance sorer. The rubbish of the fields to them was new, The trees were mistress and their neighbor. With a cheer from every quarry man The churn rang, and the churn-down was poured; And every fellow from the currying set Was drunk, and wild-swimminess. A thousand beasts of nature there Were in the churn at morn again. Come, Antheus, and now the flail, Lift the whip, and see the wild-boar We hunt this day, as you shall see, A wolf for carrion. "Whiskey, soldier," Said some, "will make you shout like thunder, And win you greater glory than yer's Antheus, the first of mortals, Was at war, and this his method; And this was like for the boar to be Consumed by a fire, as you may think. That day we won, nor that for this, But, by the boy's love, we prove That man we have been made to be wary Of pleasure, more than we show it now. Began the stir in merry Rhymers, The waltz-songs we sung at morn; And now the blaze burns high, the glory shone, And a broad yellow glows in the lake. Shook's more royal than those of old, At least in part, since that bright day. The supper over, peace and feast Were put a little off, and now The dancing and the revel go on; The cymbal rings, the pipes are in air, The dancers' swords are naught but cloven spits; And here was wonder, and there men's woofs, And paunches of old carts, and mules with reindeer-broods; The heavy echoes of our din accompany. Now's the time when Romans were keen on sports, When games were much esteemed, when wine was store, And one knew where one was by the sound of feet. These good gifts Grecian Phoebus gave, these words He said, and men in at the temples by the joucks, And at the stall where the ewes undressed lay; Then Rome to be to Semiramis The cleverest, as Semir, the witty; Semiramis would marry back her German To the daughter of a man whose husband was not her son. One time she cast her eye above On the ox which the young buck bare; Upon the genial bowl Held up her glance; he gave her then Such a fierce smile as when we see The lips of Jove, or Venus' son; But the coy Mistress of the Isrs None of these did know, nor know That fair Venus' god-like lover; Nor had the Lady understood The words that the Lover of the World Had said of her and Art's high cause; Such are the preparations in place, The board prepared, the feasters to eat; And with her young friend, yet once betimes, The Lady finally steps, Only leaving her needle At the mistress of her toil, the wheel That ever to the time falls flat; For when she puts it into its place, The day is fully half finished. The glowing blaze from the sun is set, To cool, as the great Here after ======================================== SAMPLE 771 ======================================== How stupefied have I become! Still I read and meditate, And am contented only on Such notes as Apollonius wrote, Which lead me on to thy soul; But thou, thou art not written, Living nor dead; how then should I go to him? "Whither soe'er thou go'st, be it henceforward Concerning God and his States, To Hades or to Thee, Not here, for that shall I there arrive, Not there, I will not hear their chiding; Tell me, if you have heard Any thing, 'twixt the horns of the aplomb, Of Thee, thy Son, or of the witches, Elie Wiesel." So goes Tennessee moss upon the road, Whips the empty air as with cold air? Slaves that must tear away, ere deliver? Slaves that must chide, ere the winch the flax? Thus do my arms a thousand times Ring, to a child whiter than mist, And yet the child can ne'er speak well, Nor whither he goes nor whence, not where. The first sight that meets the eye, The next with pleasure or with pain, The food that follows, and the soqn, And with a sighs, the rest: So God above, the way he wouk'l Make black, clear, or pale, or white, clear, pamo. Behold him seated by the wauk; All the othre princes of the Tauk: Or the dygian tent he make ascend, And that surly saying. Such a court he above Above e'en hell's deepest hell, and yet No valour for defence is served; Ashen thrones lay straight by the pow'r To set the stoppes on: He is their livery-stall, above The King that is to be, above Every true Knight, high God over-wise Lord of all men, high God over-wise. Thence to the world he push't his chariot, In front, the signe, the world's first light, Anoynted with all her stars And e'en her Moors; He sustains the sun with gentle iudge, T'ill he chuse his King, And with the fixed Earth moves on his throne. Of humane mould: for whoe'er of yong Or old, comes fetch't but in his right hand, The aspinest of corne is snooz'd away. He has his traines; his officers are Mild-mad, not stark-dead; And over all his pale-doored field Is borne up the brilliant fleeces. Behold, what wonder? an earth that holds With so great splendider, whilst all is gone, The scarse have lived, the heroic eare Is missed of eare and hearing. The victor from his soke defence, When this fair tract of times begin, Hath grown of age to an heire. And long will be th' controversies of age Till they have sought the hide of that to hold. By right, he's our Kings next passage steed, Who liberty at one prorebirthe; For for king's are born from free wombat's leechan, (Which nowise all agree upon had eere); That to be but Horse-stoock, were is, To whose mere flesh no vertue can remaine, Whose countenaunce no common is fore-rave. Whoso coveteth title, his breath Aternatus remembre shall be th' untaught And utter straight. By women, lie restrained, But vntill haruest at last. By no cloke of debt, But Liberty, which on this Earth doth soften, Which maketh dead to be forgot. Had that augur th' accurate heavens dire, Upon our matter mild presaged! We're bound to venture; Nor can we longer live apart, Our freedom's lost, When the cruell murderer's at our loob, And as his life-tides then taking, Wash't them from us with blood; That now each man's undone, and The world, on this side hell, edifyes. But, you that still pursue With helm and aye; Turn your glad eyes where you will, On the glist Of conquering, good advice, It's but your captains, ======================================== SAMPLE 772 ======================================== Men, women, and even a god-like horse, all wended their ways Upon that green-spur grass, the whitest, because it was drenched with dew, When Leda, the daughter of the great / Manala/ called Homeward from the shrines and caldrons of intoxication, And from the singing wells, and the temples of the gods, Leaving Orphis and Amphion, and revenge and death and war For everlasting song. They had set up their tents upon a wide spot of ground Wherever a town had grown up. At that time we came Out of Orchomenos to buy timber, for our shop. When we were not far from now, there should come a sudden Blizzard, and the pine trees all should be uprooted and cast Into the river, and our journey would be ended, so We would have time for a rest in our retreat, So I made the match in my hand To hold my fingers that touched it together, and I Played upon the green weight I carried. When the sweet warble-bird came to the clear fountain side The loud bird was singing. A serpent met me there, With hair like beechen strands. It made a swift move and flew Close up and down by the edge of the rock, Then up again by the edge of the bank, and that was all. The wild wind made great tumult As it forced the snake along and blew its bridal song And ever louder in the wind, so that it made A deep rent in the flesh of the water-horse's neck. This was a sign; I had seen it in a dream, when a great bird Shook the whole hill from the hollow trees. THERE was a hill on the coming day when Teiresias Came to our house; and in the hot time after rain, When the time came round to looking for ways and channels With the only boat that was at hand, I strayed out A little through fear, and a little through will itself For comfort, Not thinking how by any means it might be Climbered in the flood of an uncertain world, And with its awful voice exhaled, announce a way Out of all this, and in some vague way a chance, Or in another way the terrible chance reverse. And as I strayed I saw a man approaching, A little cobbler with a friendly face, And a girl with him, as clever as a girl, Young Mentor as was once called, the wise man's son Who in his palfrey bore the Dios at the ring Of the horse was the swiftest horseman yet beheld That in a hurry to the mill had his cargo flown And always thither remote, and drawn Nimbly and lightly up and down the river's lip. Her who had the rudder moved withal. With spongy thumb and finger bones I taught the girl, but she could not land her straight, And all was crooked, even as that back Of hers drew round to the left and round again, Even as the ship that as it rolled The other day with the tree and wind was rounded, Whom now, as we rut to-and round Both way and sudden till our ropes untied, I know not how we have inclined, And that cannot yet be very well explained In words, though thoughts may occur to mine-- So we ran round till we stood at last Out on the wind and in the shade Of the water-lily close to a pond Familiar to all feet that had been there In school days when we were not much taught to swim, The only one that was yet to pass through With least uncertainty that I knew. So we caught, and the slow boat being tied Glanced down and sought the water where we Last night felt that we last night should reach From Oranda away; but when it drew A flow just where we had scarce touched-on, Before I knew what I did that I made Or that I came there, its working brow Went round, and all my strength was spent Among the reeds and laths the hose, Brun came; I had no strength to stir, And stared to see the husk that I had wrought I did not think, and heard the boat creep Over the hose and the dry spot grass And in the pond again. So we drew our feet from the leaves And in we went along the outer bank Which the grass and no brush had kept away. Not a feel on this side but in our direction North and another, and again That bobb'd ======================================== SAMPLE 773 ======================================== A star the fire-gems have, And in a dark and solemn dream The deep yawns of the sun: When i' the heaven's blue square A sunbeam pale, The glory of whose brow Exposes the hueless night! "Only for we, for us alone, To hail the golden morn, And through the misty vapour see The rejoicing sun. But vain the hail or column's breath, The eager clouds or eager sun, It is our blessed will That lights this world, And hails the world for us." While the cannon's blunderbuss Scatters loud thy angry roar, O'er antique themes in war's old page, As scented with the bays, O'er triumph's eve we remember, With soul's deep ardour filled, Those young British Knights who gained fame On so unlike a battlefield. All are in shadows, 'mid those wastes of years, Whose fates, like summer leaves, expire; With more than youthful luster leaves The solemn ivy; in their brownript garbs The faded rustic wan sarks proclaim The half forgotten sombre pomp of war; And on their plumed and gabled horns, And pendants, dainty tapers, The wind-worn poppy's hues at evening, The mournful dirge-hushing past The groves of autumn's year, Where, before the first beam stole down the depths, In rapture-piping march of ‎fairies, The heather green that hides the glade. The path less gorgeous, or less frequented, Is that more solitary path, That wound through the legionary cemeteries, From ‎here to ‎there, in familiar parade. Though there is more of pity here than ire, Yet if thee grieve, thou mayest well leave thy tears In some shrine, within some lone recess The clouds of ‎yet ‎more   will gather. Their homes, less wide than the Hesperian isles Of ‎ ‎lordly domes; A riven black seaswold overgrown With low black-roofed arches, wherein Sleep ‎ human skeletons; And thence,   furtively, through the narrow aisles, The palein chill of morning past, To the frail flagging breath Of ‎ ‎name, that hangs An outpost of close oak, Where light and air Shovels dig, in the spit's unshowered bed, The violets' golden store. On which, despairing, home they bear Eagerly toward their graves, That we lie in sleep and ‎ ‎‎‎‎‎ ‎ ‎toil. Her gaze so firm, so great, That, cutting clear the air, Struck with the sweeping story Of hell from whence ‎ ‎man emerged; A visage of ‎ ‎ ‎heroic might, That struck awe into bats. And with that look, struck with like force, they have Made the intrepid gnats quail, And did the powers of darkness quail, And bent the thunder-bred Circling worlds, Which having followed them on high, A legion of ghosts of human make, A heart in one vast planet-wide train, Circling the firmament. A potent face, That fronted the dawn, Mighty words that stung despair, And showed ‎ how ‎ the world is won, If but ‎‎ three should lift their eyes From their bonds, and see with one again. As from the forenoon, when sun Nilus, at midwinter, pales, While the set sun sheds typhoon glare, As from a crystal tube, heaves His clouds of milky white and deep Amethyst, till the whole ‎ vale Drops downward into a canal of fire; So from the near mastoid of the pine, Far down beneath the valleys of air, A whisper came, sad, sombre, thin, and far Farther than fable-hoards, the great voice Of how the terrible turning-point Of all things, that lives, might be subserved By one working human wit, With such a deed. Some sweep of hands unquiet For the steel-billets of gold, and onward went Far down, until the furnace-vale Sloped downward, for ‎ ‎the ‎iron pole; And where the just ‎groans of the turning-point On the spurning of a mountain, the ‎perennial ‎ch ======================================== SAMPLE 774 ======================================== it became a dingy room dotted with cat trees. I felt the trees holding me back from the truth I had failed to know: nothing of my childhood was left when I returned to that country and its people to know: you could say I was a foreigner in this strange country. I’d forgotten how to speak the language: even a word like “treason” broke me. And you can’t blame me for that. Those people speaking Peshwas on the street would never do that to me. I was alone. If I had known how to act, especially in that first week, I might have survived. If I had known I was in this condition among strangers right under the eyes of them, I might have acted differently, known. How else was I to know? What did I do? I sucked air to speak? Speak or no one would hear. And no one would hear. It is that that’s so painful, hearing it every day. I’d rather not talk. But even though I say nothing, I feel the air break apart and I shift my speech, almost, speak. So far so good. The air is moving in its blue window to the rhythm of my throat. To fill every word with its ceaseless deadness. I tell no one what is being said. It is empty. No one has any idea what I am losing for you. And I have lost for you, and I lost everything. That’s why I tell you everything. I will never ask you what you plan to do or if you are happy. What, I won’t have that effect on you? But this is not your dream, it is not a statement or a premonition. The dream you make of me is my existence, it is as if I were a pheon I planned to stay inside. I am going to the back of the room where the old toys are arranged by color. The pink one is the animal you attended to, and white is the ghost you kept in mind. I can feel your eye set to our blue bird and the grey one as well as the white. And, every day I have to tell how you made everything with your own two hands. <|endoftext|> "First-Ever Christmas", by Rosebud Perry [Living, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] Aged twelve what I wanted to be a goldsmith, blacksmith, animal lover, writer, daredevil, biologist, poet, table tennis pro, advertiser, angel helper, anthropologist, leader, captain of chaos, destroyer of signs, manager of girls, all-round pal, hero and god of the night, and princess of the new year. Of course, I could never become anything. Instead, all I did was hate it all, thinking there must have been something wrong if I wasn’t winning every game, like a goldsmith who whaps the mercury on the tip of her dashing fourteenth- -century lamp. No matter how long I stare, the mirror slides away, and I stare at myself in the mist of memory, lying on the table wearing my white sailor suit, a shiver cools down my neck, the room spins. I wish I was someone else. But I am who I am. How can it be different from you? The lights on my left side turn off, while the right hand rests on the table like the hand of a lover, the right one folds my plate. Where on earth do I look to find someone else? Who do I look to find someone else? The famous painting up on the balcony wall, gold branches like streamers going straight up like a ship but there is no one in that scene. I stare widely at myself in the mist and beyond the mist I see my left hand. That hand is clenched with a felt- blue cold glove, the kind you lay your hand like over a chicken to show you had better things to do than sit here with me. I’m not that kind of girl. But what do I do with hands, anyway? There is someone out there who doesn’t look so well. I don’t care ======================================== SAMPLE 775 ======================================== The world is full of hopeless lovers. Why should ours be a life void of bliss? Sleep the long sleep of the discarded, Sleep of those who have run their race. Sleep the long sleep of my mistress, Gone from my neck, Dreaming still of her. Sleep of the ancient tyrant, Death of the gigantic brain, God of the world's heart-ache, Sleep of the just, Sleep of the noble and wise, Sleep of those who have suffered and grown Worthy of repentance. Long have I meditated your death, Since the time when I loved you more. Youth was yours, and time was mine; You died for me, and I have suffered for you. You returned to your sleep, and I Who was lonely, loved, lost, dear, and loth. I have lived a life for two souls, A single self since the death of my love, And night and day feel either apart from you, As I am now, or have unceasingly seen The light cloud of your heaven-born funeral So near, yet so far the stars are, That all the eternal glory is divided And poles apart the living and the dead, While in the world without it, in the heaven, It seems but one great furrow and tangled. The passions, the hate and the love you gave birth Have torn my heart in many griefs, The knowledge dwells with you alone, The brightness has perished for lack of darkness, And darkness reigns in your absence, The love, desire, memory, rise and fall As rivers in the sun's or moon's halo, I may not cast a ray against the sun, Or moonless luminary; and the strength Of desire and terror yield to memory And the good shadows of Goodness go out. The skies and earth grow darker with night Since you have gone,--your brightness leaves them dim, The trees grow silent and mute the eager birds Since you have left them not with power and breath To soar and sing and gain and give life. I am spent and spent of you, The noblest star in the morning. Long I have given you, O Hyacinth, Sleep, sleep . . . The fear and love of childhood; The languid embrace of love, And careless stories of the dead. Feeble and weak I bend to clasp you, Lay you to mine, o my queen, My lady of the sweet mirth and the light; This night I dare not fail to prove The best of lovers--lover and lover. Sleep, sleep . . . Oh, how I long for the wild dream Of passionate life unrisen, Of dreams, star-wrought of heavenly light, Of flying wooing, raptures, and secrets Of shrines where love hath set his seal And I have read of in my history. Oh, for the fervent touch of flesh on flesh And rapture soaring to infinite ether And infinite communion! Then will I mount where Love is tugging at the rags of fate. The early flush and flush of growing love, The glow and glory of the flowering growth, The brew and the alchemy of the juice Distilled from the magical sources of the rose, The hot and chaste rapture of the sexed light Mixed with the honey of poetry and the bitter cake Sweetened with the feast of the rose-- The flowers, O the flowers and the tints of the rose! The argent splendour of the evening star Upon your face as you arise, As you refresh and exalt the air, The tender splendour of twilight, and the glow And golden sheen of the earth for me-- The liquid pearly gleam, The shine and the glory and the flush Of sunset's beacon light upon the sea . . . Then will I ride My warhorse to the hills, To climb the star-wreathed peaks that show Their pillars to my dazzled eyes. The white moon-closes To fling golden gables of pearly, fluted Glass, on the mountains' columns of white, That lean above the cedarn plains For my solitary gazed . . . The thorn aflame in the dark breast of the vine, The fiord's yellow current alluring, The pink splendour of ferns divine, The violets all a-blur of colour-- The thorn and violets aflame, O the thorn and the violets aflame! . . . Rose-water drenched in gurgles ======================================== SAMPLE 776 ======================================== Pacific waters-the grey-green slack, the white is busy at the old wharf, it hurries or else it snows; the air sucks round the lagoon-the sunderer! white shore- unweaves the koa leaves. At night the moon snares the sea in a breast of snows. (old wharf now a black van-house, the church on a green shore, the cliff above a blue lagoon! Oh the sunset is evil in the brain. And the sea-ordicular gestures! O my stone-heart fierce justice, perfect justice, what was done in the dark that night!) And the old ropes with their lotus eyes criss-cross the kerns in the pit, Old Society under the pit. In another time the sea parted and the past receded, and salt, and the sky-sideways. At sea there are flat cliffs like sacred flocks the firmament, the chalice of Gods. And they say the Gods must breathe in the air. I say the Gods walk the earth. All time is hours, all space minutes, and everything is sacred. Eternity is walkable, time to walk at will, and the sky-roof is walkable. I have come back to Ithaca, back to the pit, the old pit of Rhea and the god or to Pylos. Well, you still want food for your goats, you still want to think in those green high- lyre of horns. Come, I'll show you the temple. Here on this side there's the altar, where you set the sacrifice on the high stool, an abacus, sacrificial plums, remembering also the old English man who said that the naked truth is beautiful, the dead lips kissing ears. Say, why am I not surprised any more? Why indeed, I am the woman, the woman who goes in to the sea, and there alone, in Ithaca, owning the sanctuary. I do not know how I hold unembodied the whole gaze of men, the deep green eyes and dark eyes. You go on, unshaken. Who are you? Who are you? Back there? And now I am pointing at the furniture, saying please unseat the smiling faces, and I am preparing for a far rest, for a great time when the great green earth closes over us, soon it will be dusk, and we'll be bowing to the gods. Here at the source the sun is eclipsed, he himself is unheld among the sick, among his weeds, but his heart is freshly broke. I hear his own heart beat, rhythm, and his heart will beat as hard, and the green fire start up in his eyes. <|endoftext|> "Abandoned Mine", by Percy Bysshe Shelley [Activities, Jobs & Working, Religion, Christianity] I am chained to nature, nature's chains, Nature oppresses me, yet I am resigned, My mind for ever mine, my being mine; From thought's inner gates Iwait, that all my members rise Unalterable to glory's high exaltation. From nature's furthest bars I groping sit, and nature's whole world-sigh; I beg a little breathing space, and Nature lifts her breast, Reminds me of something still truer, remaking My thought in truth's form; the everlasting breast, that All-in-all my life, my light, and shade. <|endoftext|> "The Cherry", by Percy Bysshe Shelley [Living, Death, Time & Brevity, Love, Classic Love, Desire, Heartache & Loss, Realistic & Complicated, Romantic Love, Relationships, Arts & Sciences, Painting & Sculpture, Love, Desire, Realistic & Complicated, Romantic Love, Relationships] My cherry's ripe, alas, And ripens into death; Come, death! come, death! to me And of my cherry, ripe With red and firm delight, Make it an interment. Make an end Of all thy manhood's thirsting, Make an end Of all thy art, With a few pretty words About the cherry's hue, And the end's restoration Of the cherry red. Before my dead I pray For one that I love Upon two feet, If I pray once more I shall not fail To pray for that sweet one, this way, ======================================== SAMPLE 777 ======================================== ^ an old oath^ is a sad statute. If from these tears you boil resentment, Then do you delight, ^hallowless Lord^, Why else do you live? Are you a daisies^19 peak^ Or at bottom a mummy^20? Youth must come of age at last That man which I did sing; I have loved you long and loving And you have hated me. And now we both agree I ^hallowed^ or ^burnt^ the years, And ^hatred^ For your sake reject. ^Waiting^ ^hallowed^ ^love^ I cannot ^wander^,^ only ^come. This is the mount that all must see; I watch^ in it^ from ^twopainted woods. Love at me for ^wonderful flasks of wine,^ ^two tables of red wine and stretch^ Bars of red wine in^ my lap, ^I have a woman's hand in mine.^ Lo! thy long day has sped And its sweet departed, This burning, this ineffably long Day that at the last faded-- Gone and faded,^ This dish of venison that when reeled, Was stained the brown of taint. That day it could not reek the air, That day it stank the earth. This day is cleansed to the soul. If there be great things to reap, To plant the tree of life And sow it with the fruit of hope; If there be great things to do, There is none so great, For none may that surpass In that strange old land, no eyes but mine. If there be great things to do, To keep the trees alive, If to make prospeck** the stars, To watch the stars fire-fire’d** ring, Do ye know and bear in mind To which that star-shedfield, That table of red wine and stars Was set, by thee, When the warm wine-cup, Was getteth thee, If there be great things to be done, Great things to bear in mind; For which thou liv’st a day to-day, And sayeth that to me, Then wert thou born to do, For which I waited so long; O holy Lord! dear life-in-life! <|endoftext|> O sweet, O tender, O golden-lit! Thy streets are nowhere to be found, But Thou and I, alone, are gone Down the selfsame path in Heaven, And the thing it is, I know not. O evening! O golden-lit! O girl with the cloak! O ring of gold! O thou most holy! O thou Queen bright! O thee, O thee, the highest Queen! O day, all days, O thee, The star! O thee, O thee, The sun! <|endoftext|> All the parents of the infant Brian went to sea again, Cutting th' ole river with their mothers; And several of the fathers went over the sea, Cutting the river with their fathers; But when their sons grew up, they all came back again To the happy town of the river, And a glorious tower was raised On the hill, After the school, To the joy of their children, After the drapes and carriages, After the balls, After the pastime, All were well agreed, There was much rejoicing; And 'twas sung by sweet fiddles And by fifers, That the tower stood, We are as good as gold,' says Jacob, There was no one else in the city That could purloin from the air It was all over so quick, After the lot; There was certainly little thinking Of fear or regard, But they did not want it again They had heard, in a certain song, That those who were given much Had been taken by the hand of gold, It is very good when he comes again, It is very well, But if you are lucky, You must come in the afternoon When he meets you; It is a virtuous thought, and a noble one, It is pleasant and it is also pleasant to hear; But this admonition, This caution against pride, This little speech, It is not in itself a wit, It is not in itself a guide. 'Tis wiser to have wanted it, Than to wish for ======================================== SAMPLE 778 ======================================== oozing beeswax, the which poured from his door the pall of a day come to him floating into his lumbar without you & to the past & the future and beyond. —Camille Johnson <|endoftext|> "Dream of Er stroke of Á N", by Camille Johnson [Living, The Mind, Nature, Animals] later i began to ignore the regular knocks on the door at night when i first realized this was the river i began to write tales of natives from american Indians swimming Á N river in dreamless spectacles trying to perceive the world around them but all of them were too drunk or too stoned to even expect the swift reflexIONS of my ink flashing out of the printer <|endoftext|> "blessed", by Mary Boyle [Religion, Christianity] I have done good things in the innocence Of a child, not knowing till 40s My gifts in sleeping, but knew the rest, My talent of song, and soul-aversion I was baptized & confirmed but never Wanting the Christ to come In my life, I did his image and Was tempted, known no rest But returned to myself. So let me sing The grace of my life, far too long Delayed by these things. From a young age I doubted; wanted not to believe; So from doubt I saved my own heart As I hear a tale of Queen In Ireland, and off at an outside Peel off the peeling layers of time Of British race, that bring in view So foul the Irish position as shames That country's fame. Then one day I Was in a chamber, God at his right Was her name; the Queen at Was the woman only. At my side Her mother in life. But the best song That I ever heard had died And this was played, how my mother's Heart would fail her; how death should stop The hordes of grief, and life open wide To mortals. At this point I turned My face, and knew the Queen's true love; and Her true love—the sight of her was the stir That brought the memory of her with me So long. I can tell of no peace That art has with her, and of none time That her yearn for man might know. I know Of no other officer so great, Except him I knew of, whose dust Flaked at the General's former office No living man bears witness to. Then I My boy in prayer before the Queen Said—I whose head has seen the morning And seen the day become night and hear What night was day, but long before it Had come—a lamp Was lying in the dust. Then I saw Her children, then they could see me, so No walls could screen; no window but I Could see them, and they all about The shadow of my hand. They were The scene. The position of her children; No arm even in my reach, I sought Through a footpath where dust veiled the road, And saw them light their cigarettes, and Their mother said "I will call," and left My cup of tea on the floor, and went And called. I had drunk nothing there. I sought to speak to her, to tell her That which I had seen; but when I came At last, then it was hour. She did not Come. So I went home. That night I turned to prayer, as I had done Before. I do not think I slept much, but a long sleep Did my eyes close to the body Of God, in whom I believed, and when I heard the morning from the window I knew I had waited for my time And that it came. I wrote And told God of you, I think I slept, for once I could not sleep. I have no claim, no boast to make On another day. Here is God, Where I have come to meet Him, that He To the words which are true today May give a new lease of life. From day to day From year to year, God wearies, and yet From day to day in spite of him We may save the world. That is what I believe. I was asleep, and you came And changed my life. I only know The strangest day of my life, Since I was born. I can hardly know The words to say; it seems to me In such a whirl Of words to ======================================== SAMPLE 779 ======================================== authorities "these masonry blocks; the fragments include simple arrow heads from the nearby stone quarry "’One of them he learned to move the heart, ‘And not to spill blood on the shore’; how, facing the sea, the mayor, like the god of the Hesperides rein-in old gods, steered the soul of his ship across millions of miles of ocean, heard distant thunder from mighty Etna, ready to rain fire, saw, in his visor, Troy, emerging from the sea’s furnace fire Lorenzo, the god’s counsellor in these lands, came to his king, who placed a piece of block in his hand. ’For surely some god is here’; and ’Imperius give this piece of wood, as the god of Hell mandates, makes the wood burn, and blacken the waters round it, for the wise-face of divine steel’, with three parallel grooves’ twisted blade’s mouths of sharpened steel." <|endoftext|> "Yazg Ignat'", by E. E. Cummings [Social Commentaries, History & Politics] When I’m away, yazg ignat’s the who can name this blue pit near his head, that blind man’s cane that learns to climb, I’m away and sure to be here some other day—a road so far, an underhand free-hand, that only silence the armpits of a bear make— I’m afraid to look where I may reappear. I don’t know you. You have no mind to either me or your welcome encroachment on your homestead. I said yes when the Supreme Leader ordered rebuildings, years ago, but without devotion—he means, in the present, for the future. I mean you can look it up. I’ve been offered things you could never possibly comprehend. Then I mean that not as a compliment, in that third gɔronjə we heard the Turk say in its babble of musical extinction. When I’m gone, say again what color is your hair, what color — blue or black —  what height you’re of stature? Your weight —  what speed of mind? You think possible. What does my language mean? (1) there are always three people in the picture —  yourself, my half-brother Michael, and my half-sister Beverly, my oldest sister. (2) Why does your forehead, such a small part of you, know the thickness of fingers, though all the fingers belong to you? (3) one can only imagine 1. Yazg ignat' tengmai (The Dust again) 2. Yazg ignat tengmai (Sorrow Again) 3. Yazg ignat tengmai (The Dust Again) <|endoftext|> "Dreams of the Never Story", by Edward James Duffy [Living, Death, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment, History & Politics, Race & Ethnicity] Its first wind the grave stirs under the grass that runs like a prairie: sharp and new, like trails in the fresh cut soil which unarm the line of a rifle sight. No ashes, but black, as when on the sudden dawn the crows are black in the tall moon. In the carpet it was like catching a transistor on the dinner table. The jailer’s not as tall as the tall man in the yellow suit, but he is there, slumped on the casket, his mouth the last to open. The jailors know how to make a man do what the law says, by stupidity or laziness, not force. And the tall man, not the shorter but the man without the hand, this man screwy and sly as the emperor he has to seem, he in the door-sills, the croupier at the winter stroke of the they-boat’s wings. He once wanted to be a hero, like his father and his one sad ======================================== SAMPLE 780 ======================================== <|endoftext|> "The Alchemist", by John Bunyan [Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams] Some divine artificer Had wrought up nature, and out of that iniquity, Which Heaven ordained never to be put in register, A divers nature did arise, Out of the crucible and the crapping ore; Which whoso tasted would faine abide, For fear of what ere might ensue; He might it christall christal* call, But yet not risk a paire of paine. I was both will and skill; Meynge* skill and will I sought; Meynge, as me syuing* would, Is my straine* called. Me using skill to me was none But lewed and alien, No wyf, but farfe, Nor swarfe, nor small, No bale, nor harde. I used both heaven and earth, Earth put out his staff and rod, In that contrariety. I, which all things did assume, And other Cattel did apprehend, Was one with them denied; For even the hyll and ground, Which I to cleane ground did yeeld, Was leche** ere this same syre wyde, My hands wold not make more schee, But to aff your thryfe. But, as me thought it a shame, The gras and stryfe were offende, I, for there is great shame In this contree. Even on my holmen stick, I dwelled and did write, So least there should be some hore That the shore mestile* had sett to grounde, Or moche of me wroght at mine: And late also with hyll I did our ensamples use, And found them insychaunce, The full crosse; A full Cotterel will not them dare (Of alle treasaunce) To dye by a batere, But rather swere than say, As runnes selden custometh. The hous was neuer leche My wif ne my brother ne my nere Ne any heder alweyht by. My knave, I may not seke, It is not good that I do; It is not good for me to have For al this worldsters wyl to kyde The secretnesse of my wit. "Sir, come now farewell long and growly (Sirs, I your stroue) Long, and growly, cruell, bye and bye, Crimson and pusther cardins, purgatively Sirs, I your stroue, From me do no syn, or I shall rue Your lettres the feede of Quarles; All your service they shall dede, and most contented My mony ayein Shall do yours, my lords, so heedlesly, As never ere do yan Of mynde nor of grace." "That other one, whome ye have seen Sir stabel, in his greatness, in his state and state, Prayeth, bring y-yong Princez in array, Of dame or dulfee. Rous ay to see your hand to say, – Lo, by my Sone! "And when that the rascold have seeynze Of their olde worship, they shall none of them Dare to aver meay eyes from my lettered wall, But they shall bederess downe there Unto my y-suerke, And there confess As soone as they their late reverence Of vice, yet holde Mine othdest, my grace, mine rewarde." "Sir enemy to God, rore destroyer, Graiphe the house of God and of grace. Thurgh your remissness ye held the prayer of Helych, But that ye held him faste by snatching Hauynge of him an hound; Suche one his horse the daie Rode in that ye haue seen." "He called his owene thrall, and to him He spake, and said: 'Thou wost right well that I haue wyt, And for he may Call man-ward, do my will; For from God to helpe me, take a hound, Fro the good with the bad." "A furthier storm a while ======================================== SAMPLE 781 ======================================== oping for each other's good, And taking a great interest In whether the harvest lasts or growth, And if streams are safe or polluted, And if wind is fair or storm severe; No nonsense from him: Not smart enough to care When pranked he is with toys, If piebald be plain and neat Or with a cook's a dish; Enough, at least, to know his mongrel is No stripling, though, at such a rate, Though twice as long he grew, you see. The thundering sounds of such a mass As this world has to bless us gave The youth, this world to curse, to see Our brains, our marrow, our semen Dashed thro' like blasts from open skies, Or dulled down like a scream from high th' skies; Or sounding in our ears gave them smart, And so did to our sense, Or noxious spirits in us groan, And thus would fang our vitals till us In fury all devised. Such was the veritably mad Affliction The beauty, the sweetness, strength, decay, Of all that dandled on the turf Of that ill world; and such are the hopes The plague-cry braless can resound to death; Such are the crimes unprovoked of such As haunt their echoes across the worlds... 'T is rather one natural it Should seem absurd to think is madness Or of dark weird things, and I would tell What seems a miracle, as you suppose, Were I not bid by imprisonment To hear such things repeated so As ye will try to justify And strike away with sceptic fire from such As hear the fact as charged with it, Because it is strange, mayst finde reliefe When of ill things of earth and earth-fall, With agony in dungeon-hunts, or graves, Severed with swords, torn hand from hand with fangs, Gore made a mistress, woman of a raven, Who robb'd all land and sea. Look at her weathercock, Bold yellow pouter'd Tom, as she doth spin. He will bring her deaths to catle, The peace of death, the light of life no more, And wailing round the tomb, though not yet Though in peace buried, owre to cry; And th' end of all and birth of all Where death had beene, and for the rest The wofullest hour so ever how had run So long to tempt her strings, man? Well she expounds her traines, The fine white house in white sands, The black waving line of coast, The mine that, spigott, is nigh, The witch of wools, and rich woolly blood. White bones that swathed her corpse, white faces Between her ribs of garniture, The embroidered jewels, the decad & loss, She scatters on her rind, the statuaile & found Crown'd head of the world, of blackest shrewdnes, Mother of frowns, mother of frets, mother of music, Mother of hour, of time, and over all Where shall I begin, or where find myself? Who shall follow, find me, or where cloy me The sweets of this intermission, must fly And find some interval, where I to see My self am yet to come am not so farrfiled By aught, that flying would be space. With not so much as a sign of heed We of our sperrits to break the way, For this man, this on't, to see his face And having him in sight, will not be cote, But follow that, as the earth the sun, All happy where he is, and so by some Known track of him, whereby he Is brought and received thus from one part To other; and so taken thence and born The morn forgets the morrow, In whose reverend channel, be it house, hall, Basil'd coffins, or fragrant bowers, He flocks about all beds to love his nest. He though it be no more than too much, The morning, and the morrow must still Suffice a fresh and loving draught of love; Else we shall be spinster'd of our bed, Grown old, and grudge the imposture of a tomb; But I a hope as of a torrent green May yet aspire, That from her deep and ancient floor Springs up a beauteous vault, and these thin And dry In time ======================================== SAMPLE 782 ======================================== and sand was white your fish stood on the salt table, your wind was constant and thin, warm had no means of walking and been kissed by stars and by his fish he knew that he too would be a whale and the waves, were red jelly with the steam of shrimps, Were molasses with the curves of scooters, and the flat was not for you (the ocean was not deep), a distillation of purple and rich violet, Are nacre, suet, and the blood of geese (the moon was never black). The full moon was never heavy enough to make the woods dark. The wood was never sodden and matted, but kept a monkey in its own skin, No one was ready enough, no one to call his own to the long red line. And in the dark the wind: it laughed in the deep. <|endoftext|> "Love Letters", by David Shook In my letters from abroad, I write as if I were there in order to understand what's going to happen there; I am writing as if I were at home; I don't know anything that's happening anywhere, I don't know how it's going to be there, but in my letters from abroad, I'm worried about how it's going to be where I am now reading the news, or waiting in line at the computers in the reading nook. <|endoftext|> "A Poem About the Language of Tears", by David Shook [Living, Time & Brevity] Have you ever walked in the woods and heard the wind blow and listen in on other winds? Have you ever sat on a stone and read the read of another stone? Have you ever wondered how the word for a "softer" word changes when you say it and how hard you say it? And when the softest word you ever have to say is the word for "love"? What does love mean in a language where the language itself changes? <|endoftext|> "New Year's Eve", by David Shook [Relationships, Friends & Enemies] No matter how drunk we both were, how drunk we were there were so many things I wouldn't have said. We knew what each other was. We knew what we could do and we did it. We would have killed for each other. And because we didn't, we were friends. The language of tears is the one we gave as an exchange. Each night we gathered our tears from the same well. We said, this is what we can do. We gathered a list of things we could do and then from each of our lines that did not include these things we couldn't do we would have done had we been given permission to do them or we said and we didn't tell what we couldn't do. You know how this works: each word from a different well. Now that I have your heart, I've given it back to you and I think you still want it. <|endoftext|> "Chasing Phantoms", by David Shook [Living, Relationships, Pets, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, History & Politics] At a minimum, the phantom called me, for I saw incessant instances of our voices exchanged across the years. I had forgotten how distinctly we could speak. A year ago this would have seemed unfeeling. But this is how I understand the world now—how, hearing our own names, we found ourselves inordainably, mesmerized by the shadow-talk. This is why you call me, phantom, today. And you, dog, come, too. A year ago we'd have been incapable of a friendship. We'd have moved on and laughed our worries down. But we're here together in this current of breath. You wonder why we aren't finished, my friend. And I wonder, as I wonder now, how we'll be able to be finished, we who together have knowled into something with which to be finessed, finessed into a nothing. <|endoftext|> "The Trolley Diaries", by Lucille Langley [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] Mountain air cool as ======================================== SAMPLE 783 ======================================== That mak'st my mighty sadness divine. E'en though this life doth nothing seem, To greater things not less enduring. When I the breeze to chase has spun, And chased the question'd wind comes back, I go--it is my ken. And as my gaudy thoughts like pearls Expound the same, the pearls fly. For in our perpetual laughter, Our sweet camaraderie, Our wand'rings wide and endless Around the summer earth, and sea, Our loving the same, the same, The same divine gaiety, There cannot be a jot of difference Between a pair of brother-coats. Or if there be, 'tis but to say (All honor the Saint, all respect Left his domain,) That whatever His goodness hath That good is not of so little worth As a man may to His grace find in one Of His high library. My poet Poesy, (a dreary post To which I bring my damson'd muse) This show has work'd me great adversity, For in all this world there's not a nobler; My Percy's a noble poet, but a man At war with himself, and in an evil case. Of late there'd been, within, he was in health, But now he seems quite in body wrong. He can neither stand nor eat, nor talk; He doesn't perform one task after other, And bed, at present, 'tis all he'll manage. Numerous ailments, long times lingering In an antedemon'd depression (On diet and cold, 'tis matter of record, For in the mean time we all have our share), And still the complaints do away (Diligently I keep referring To the bulletin-page o' The Morning Post,) But to our subject:--O Granada! The very first fair we fell in love With your grand nature, rather, in our woe, With your clouds. I thought your heavens gray, you cloud-tops blue; I saw the moon, still shiny in her silver; And thought it absurd, at once, and wondrous queer (So I thought) that a God in thunder should love you so. And what am I to do? I leave you here, as I said, As you were:--I come on my own gospel. Who else will God to Saint Sym. send? Thought of that!--What I hain't Kilmer-like, per shaver, and what I don't: Nothing at all am I nor I't I, I and thou--both little puff of air; The diamonds in thy forehead shine, And the light in thee, new-rich and tender, Dawns from the light in me. I do not shine, Be love, but I come from off thee. The sun has brought us her, as heretofore He brought the wind. Of lightning or cloak I have no knowledge; but the sun I do, I and my sun. I tell thee, at large, as if Our God knew we bow to Him, and the sky Which casts us forth to rule the day, and the sea, Time, and change; I go where I am bid But I am bound--that is, God be thanked That I am alive: be grateful. Virgil, the suddenness of thought! Jam vix it? 'Tis not to be excused Because 'tis a foolish thing To utter abstracto:-- That's what we flout. Percep sports, abon, as one sage in the Roman days Thus phrased his odes, paeans, and all, against Oratation, reason, oration. Omit--viz, minus illocule, Man is man, and must differ From beasts in nature, intelligence, Fitness, and frame. And whatever doubt Of the ape-sown human race, we share, Limb by limb, and simple blood, Frail insect wing, with wings of wax. With man, these may prove. He, I say, Although he be less instinct, less bird, Less ape-brutes and less aviator Were ever man in a whole. Ye aversions, Seldom can coop two such: the strongest grown Thyself. And ye--why not be Completely angels, pure and clean? For all day long a space of light, And ark ever-moving with the beams Meted with full-manly heaven? Why fear lest ======================================== SAMPLE 784 ======================================== the clouds like little men fallen through the air— so in the story they hear to the storm’s comeuppance of earth the birds decide to leave the warning: <|endoftext|> "Morning Bringings", by Christine Park [Living, Coming of Age, Activities, School & Learning, Nature, Weather] After a morning of rain under standing water I am the sound of rain the space between wet and dry the echoing of water on gravel and gravel and more gravel I am the sound of rain the struggling and offering of rain I am the audible rain meeting no resistance I fall past images of Canada into flowing rock and reality I am more than hearing the birds chirping and the animal chiding their returns in the woods I float past the tree of knowledge of rain the wood and wall my name now falling through (if I could make it up I would) I am not wet my tongue foam my hair and much rain that never arrives floods and silence I am more at ease in the hushing of the wood than the rough air and I close my eyes to catch what arrives I am what’s before me rather than what is below and now rain slurry trickling through wood the red birches of my name falling easily through gravel I fall the viscous needle of rain the needle of light through rain in my hands the not-there-now of my hands <|endoftext|> "This One’s Pug, Like Others", by Christine Park [Living, The Body, Time & Brevity, Love, Romantic Love, Relationships, Men & Women, Nature] A rabbit in his mind knows no divide: they float in the mist of a moment, in which each other seems gathered together. They do not see a past separate, nor a future imagined in a slip: to be and not to be are one. —A. Merteuze 1. The object of a moment’s courtesies, so to speak, can be said to have de-powerstruck the mind with the sense of a moment’s rearview. A mild second wind blows the rain off a lit mound of snow on a shore where I’ve no moment’s patience, or a moment’s distance, or a moment’s irrelevance, or a moment’s miraculous romance between two rocks and a rift of gray that lines up out on the edge of snow where a mild second thought is blown off the rocks and placed sole on a face that loses its human tongues the moment it is lifted, seems blown off the plain and catches a true blue heart’s glance, that face the mind can see in the distance as crystal as time, itself a moment glimpsed from the wavy snow of a name so looking-like-virtue that I, who first learned time from a child’s accomplished feather, can see, even as the breeze puffs up every atom of itself in my own heart’s peevishness, the few as their seconds speed, again and again, my breaths touched with an inarticulate shudder as if of my old age itself, so warm, so full of secrets as if the barest of beds that a grating winds of winter throws in rage, is as intimate as not being born to the desk or born to sleep. 2. What if I could lose myself in a moment like the rash white clouds out of which I rise up just as moment’s ended ?—What if the arc of my half-day, like a spider unashamed to sit and face the throbbing world, could stretch that moment over the surge of the whole hour, across the height of the wind’s and my own death, and then bring the whole world with me as I, not like a cloud or a gust of wind, but as an absolute I not like a true sky or a true star could light like the true mind of the world but could bring it, and <|endoftext|> "A Song for Edward Miner, 1831", by Cynthia Casey [Living, Life Choices, ======================================== SAMPLE 785 ======================================== great is my deare burden, and great is my cleane. To wade through mines of gold, and caruyse my heart with treasure to my enemies; beware my strokes, lest their soules to Hell be lost. Beow or White, lord of mountains or of plaines, Where euer you see feathered floudes, Seing the light, to make of your giudends blinde; Or on a dait coole and late, To have your pleasance at my wey, To fight you, fray you, faynst of. Beow or White, lord of Mountains and plains, Where euer you see feathered floudes, Seing the light to make of your ioyes. To have your pleasour at my wey. To fight you, Faire White Fayre, fray you, To thoke you, to affly you, To sit and sing with notes of sweete ire To have your pleasour at my wey. Beow or White, O mynde of swich gleesome deepe, Where euer you see feathered floudes. Seing the light to have your pleasour at my wey. To fight you, Fairest white Fayre. Thou fair boke as blew this floud of spasse, These labours did my minde delight: And with the stremes of my griefe The prynce of her love to declare, So that the pence her troubled spede Bore recompence too lesse then might Of all my mater alway. With the meraid long while I stayed In and out among the foules toun, Rending Of woodpeasse spresed thrifties folde And this wretched season late Keping though but late in game Hath rain and wrecched temprimis Kep'n wrack, that wont to late. The squiers and the shepheards blith Began on mine assent to cry That for the season now was semblly All truth onely in high rocke And called without more ado Lance and lance. And thus to poise our hope we lept, Which made her legges to apone Awhile her welcome at thene. The noble Bastard thus the beame To helden and the counte took kene: For that he hym had a braver beame Hoping to winne an aype in, That he to whom it was due Might have the deathe or ellis then Of blason or of slayne moste then Of his two sisters two. The lordes and knyches of his house Thei tawed alofte and so ended troo, With doughtyng to graunte them ther wyll What paynes were in the same. For god wot, if he was thankin of gold Such as to sette hym a trinidbury, For his wife, as thankin a better name Al one she shuld be to hym adoun, Baker of her bonett, which he had On the sandyne wher the kynge stode, Ther forto make his leder wit Thus made the lord and knycnesshe thrisshe, And thanne with Euelles forto do Of that he hadde trewys agayn, Ther is nothing can avys it. For why should he have love if he To payne againe after feite? And for to speke what folowes The poynt of his lady her doute That was depe in to his hat. For then the courtes were levere wonne Than for to delude the womman That hire lord had here; For oft thanne arowe a rihte clene Hir lord hath of hire entered. But now al for he spak and seide That for his wille he haif of full, So that the hete of his rightwyship Hir wonne may this way perdeth; And seith that this is no shame atteyn That thus his wille was have in evill To noman of his compainie. Thus it befell after this ellexe That ther wylt henchlich the dai, And thus the roebuck hadde his fare, And so the wilde birdes chawketh, That dether weren worchefs of the ======================================== SAMPLE 786 ======================================== They wonder when they see the Moon, See the different colours of her. O the dear honour’d messenger of Spring! O the Flower dost love the most! O how light upon the herb and tree! How he trod! How he beat upon their heels! How he drank their dew! How he spread white cloth everywhere! How the babies loved him, How the little babes adored him! And then in Spring-time, with his sunny face, And the sun to warm him! And the pink buds on the trees! And the bees with honey-dropping lips! And the violets in May! And the sisters in the spring! But ah, how light upon the bud and blossom, And yet, how light, The breathing elements moved, the silent Earth still that heaves! And well the travellers tell, By the blue light of the approaching June, When they press to looking-cards their names! We march'd in lively attendence, Each long-lep'd, to see him go! <|endoftext|> 'The ghost of Oliver, while he sat and jested With the Misses at the Village Inn, Was a sweet one, and so I fancy he will enjoy The advantage of his precarious situation.' Only one? The less the better, sister dear! I, Luke Four, a friend of Luke Three, obey. Like the picture to the miniature, he is coarse, The hair long, and the nose small, and the eye scowling-- I have chosen a subject all too good, I know, And such, to my ladies, is no mean paltry lay. We do not now allow such nonsense to pass; And from thenceforth, I must be heard to accuse you, Your ingredients having come together to form The solid material of a far more malignant Theatre, where you, indeed, such famous faces What the devil! I don't know; just soapy women And wholesome chit-lears, as' true personalities are! Say what you will, "Not the man in the moon," And all that--but he at least he has a brain, You fool! What he has, I do not know, but he has them Fair half-dairy-summers, fresh and sweet as milk; His laughter, without entendals, running its dash, Was noisome nonsense, such as parrots emit, Fresh from the fields and barns where he's been a hawk; A temper, I'm guessing, no better than the wind, That can o'erquicken the dust that's on your shoe; A heart of my choice, far too good to be his, As unpossess'd of the trick of a heart as he; Yet if he chose, I'm done with your show, and there's good reason To think that you two will never weary me again. I am a sad, heavy fellow, without a joke, Because I've a deep admiration, and so will sit With my group,--a pair of solemn sisters,--for you. I have been taught some strange things, some tender things, And learned what I'll never teach: the best, in so far, Of what the God in him is, is fear. Let the muse relate, her snowy barn-wings to mour, And me into a lumbitude of my rhyme Like a fog gathering that she need not stir, assemble Her scattered thought into one kind of sweet convolution; Let the poet do what he may, I’ll never be mad, And feel, therefore, after the talents are performed. It is too true, and too true I cannot bear, To say you are the very honey of the list; It is too true, to say I’m the very jam; These words, most certainly, are the jam and honey, Are the very self-same words, and so are you and he; The truly faithful, if true to you, are none, Unless, perchance, they prove a little less than true. They have but two hands, And therefore you are but one; One from a tube that one smoothes With which one fills Your tube-bottles, is the very same to you, And, never the less, that's no more the same To come and touch your head. True, if I pour out the one to three Thither to go, or steal, or drop To the bottom of the bowl,— One by one, you stare; ======================================== SAMPLE 787 ======================================== While the hum of machines and of whirring fans Heard in the open thoroughfares, the windows Opening on the cold and hollow Unmoved the sun, still roaring, saw far off Thousands of them, feet from feet of men, feet from feet, And yet no foot save his--a man of middle sea, That runneth by the stench and the gore; In a black boat with a murderous gang aft, Heard every word: his wife's voice heard afar: The figure, blind in its guttering, blind in the stars. But old Joseph, wife and mother, he was strong. He wooed his food, as hunters wife wooes beasts, With luring guile, like a stag at bay, And each reward paid, as will a dog for kills, The dogs the canines, kill for the best parts, His broad belly and all his limbs his meat. And you and I--we were ever, still to men, We two, that have kept the the quick spirits Of old age, as some wild thought, thus kept, you, me-- Some break of right, that makes each deep vein pulse high With blood; whereon the perfidious hand Of the god sly, the god tamer of our years, That makes dim the candles of these dim idols Of sense, and lets all men see like us What can we see, with left minds--dazed With spite, as is the corpse's vulgar tongue When the apologist reads, what shall we say? No god was worth a dead heart's weight. Awed we gazed, unsheathed our arms, The head-dress of the Amramite, Our walls and posts had value then, Strong for a name, our pine stood, Our fine bones needed nothing else, A suit of paltry mail,--no more Than what Cato's slave had prayed for Rome. No tyrant's sceptre was worth a life, We learned in that liberty's channel, From lordly despots who laboured then, As we Britons do now, in strife-- At whose devouring tables, eyes, Our ragged bodies lay dead-- Whiles roaring we wriggled, squirming, Ah, us they tug, and Hannibal we know, And you shall fight, the man with wings for fur-- Oh, just think how those narrow Latins, The tradesmen and doctors, honoured and drunk, Gathered up by force, the land in charge Of late, had grumbled, muttered, sneered, and lagged. Only that left their upland camps, their woods, That meads of gun-droneglers spurned and cursed, And dragged him out of heart and bladder; And, to their chargers hurrying, scorned his flight, That glazed his eyeballs at the laggard trees, And turned a deaf ear to singing words and men; While the great sunset flag was burning white. Oh, never at night's high noon did anyone say, That other one, that gave us raves, Was one to live among, and no one knew him, Of all the souls that sought a name, The finest one was he, The loveliest, the rose, That grows in those primeval hills. Tender to earth and air, and gold-toned, And fresh and lovely, and just and true, 'Twas heaven to see, and heaven to breathe. Where dried webs of mosses shook and slipped, And the sole dragg'd hoof-cord rang, And the noonday sunbeams burned, To note him creeping by: Nor man nor beast beheld, and no joke Was of him, like a yellow spot at eve, When suddenly, "Damme, damme, on this dirty floor, And I ain't half far stuff!" So spake old Goliah, who had a cloak Of bag-grass bound round him like a douce ass, With which his head was wrapt in a strawe. Said he, "I was ye fitted in the inn?" "Aye, sir," quoth he, "your own personal friend?" "No doubt," said he, "sir, a mighty fine man; Would take the Pope by surprise. He's found to fill the gills with fine red wine, And pass that clear flag of your behalf At Wimbledon, and make hautboys swear. "He's wearied," added the old ganta, "And looks as he did under timbers: With none to touch ======================================== SAMPLE 788 ======================================== Mad to meet us with a bale of blazing gold? I have saved you, I have lived you, He came then on the second day, We fell upon the third. And when one had heard too many twains, The noise and the uproar of war, The flickering flash of weapons dulled And horses snorting, he turned to our company And said: I will go, I will go down and say My Sunday Evening Prayer to thee, My mother and my father and thy Christ and Saint, For they have died. And he who is the last shall go Sequestered down to death, I will go down and stand beside the great light and sink down by the hoarse bell that rolls. Where the future needs Or the pastures, I shall make a lock and take my horse. And I rode and we rode. I will fall with a hoof Like a chaffie From the deep As you loose the reins on the horse's flanks and he goes. And I sware That I should fall on death. I sware Not to sware. But the company Drank like the fields To ruin. It was wasted. Every man Had his goggle And grouse. On the curdy golden horn They ran out The hot chalice, hot pink. And in the chambered hollow We drank out Ach, one mouthful for me and one for my belle, The sweet of a tin From the swollen lip On the big brass On my fur, My witching tweed, My grace And beauty, My tail, My bloom, My might, my power, my shining And on. Drunk till it seemed as if a cup Of abandon Would drop out of heaven, At which moment they all burst out of the wood. For the last time One fell from the dash of muddied air Into the white bare And drunk quicks, With a laugh on the lips And in the shining nostril, as it fell, A drop of blood. Then all was Silence as the merging of clouds... The great natural Clouds turned up a thousand legs Of glimmering monkeys, Every part a mirror for the eyes. "This is our Christmas," they said, "Hear us, O King, here And every face in heaven the host of Christ Cried out the sweetest With high chords of praise. And they have told The story to every man his own In a tongue Full blown With the magnitude of their intoxication. But I forgot. Ah, time that does not let Your tired heart hold. I remember still That I would dream of a great thing, An endless flood. I made a deal of a white dress. And in the great glittering glass That is the year, I heard them sing to the great throne of the skies And they knew That I was there. Black would I put My hand in his and say: "A great glory you have done here this night. Three times, on your knees in the House, And as many times by the Christmas dickens, You have heard, and have told." "I would rather," he said, "Rest all the man in the House--and envy Is not the worst thing that can come of it." "I think," she said, And then she remembered herself: "I think I ought to have just one night, a night like this For giving you an hour." I was weary but I was more tired When, sitting where I had supposed, He was standing in the door, Laughing, and crying, and holding his new lamb. He laughed When it swam up and bit him, But cried aloud When it sank, And he must laugh his slumber out. I held that night over for him. All good birds as I know fly in flocks With big house-sparrows in the flies Of little holes they fly to, And feed their youngsters with theirs. I know the ways of all the birds I know, So you may call me owl or hawk, When I show you where to look. So he who sees, Calls 'em who you fellows. But little fishes do not understand, And then they are called by them. There is no slumber from the eyes Of sunset. I lay my head on the window sill, The fingers of my arm are tired with holding up The curtain, and I hear The garden gate shut ======================================== SAMPLE 789 ======================================== minwa nie ku! Siijeiea nie ku! Vukuje tebas nie jin nie, Lue eu je dochze mie Vitwise ma gesoa! Ochte ma tuwana! Ochte ma tuwana! Yvan u dolcett eu mie! Yvan u dolcett eu mie! Yvan nie da nie aniao! Jette youm nie ku! Leze youm ma ne ke mie! Lesseie yn morbu ne bleu! Derie youm ma nem bleu! Jette youm nie jin deu Lueere u fi froiu! Ochte ma nuera te Yue glent yueld jaete! Da le, deu, u dalie! O, u geantad de ti! Shola my brothers; he carved Men with each other's necks in sorrow; Others, O thou mountain stone, Ploughmen of the rushing Orion; Whose fields are hallowed by men's singing; Our annual army, the fresh blood, Crowded with the carouse. Those, in their ranks, the gallant Joukro, And Nieod Jaggren of the cobble, And Bailie Mindisaoo, and Mag I Moab gave to the sacred songs Of his wounded messenger; And hymns filled with deep aeons, In the old Tun of Eire, In the ancient language that can find Love-thoughts in the glorious dead. O, seek ye the holy High Priestess, With the swift moon-dew Fallen on her eyelids, Or the white-gold silken pall Of her temple-sweaters; And your white-yawned charm About her cast in of flowing gold. Or the voice that shaped her eyes; Or the head that used to be The Head of our forefathers; In every line of sight And every utterance; Or the red veins of color, The love-wings of Albion's slain. But for one long-cuckold'd chief, One whom our virgin law Had freest, and no other, From horn-line lost, and nose By burning brim, his head To surrender to; Still in the temple's blast Thro' sunless nights we hear him curse. Or seek ye the Priestess Where all day long The clouds are rising thin 'Gan with the spray, and still Her head a star, which when Measures three times her ring. Still he unbows the tongue, Untamed, without fury, And, brooding on a thought, Quietly stretches With slow hands, that swells And swoons to death the strain And breaks it up again, When that he hears. An hour ago and more His hair turned round that way, And burnished so A trinket, red-winged, In friendship with herself. But that will run to thin With moon-faced dryness; The vow was made between Her first and second sight; 'Twas free and equal; And this only bond Was the a gossamer veil From her first embrace, And on her great hair's whiteness. 'Twas love broke the oath so fair For Eileen's love, Which last lay buried close, While the most alluring sight Slept for it not so well; And on her playing eyes' white From covet to hug; 'Twas love had made a charter fast Between her shoulders broad. Till by another mark Of love, she bound it round and red; But like true love she kept it true; And in the open skies, A little after suns Her head then her crown stood on, And her golden beams scarce made a cloud, She stood and sang: Till where the sunny home, Half on the Lake and half on the land She joined, her maids, in full array; Her brow to let it, and be kissed! Then they, all perfectly astute, And look'd, and smiled, and seemed, and acted quite That as a goddess of her domain. But there was no minister at table; A large book lay open on the table; And I was glad, as was usual, Her face was bright, and her brown hair bound up. My God ======================================== SAMPLE 790 ======================================== Where the wealthy wants of usure their prosperous measure with your last produce, And to be satisfied, have their mouths by their last. And to be lengthened by death, your call is, A thousand times over, denied, denied. Where the wealthy wants of usure your prosperous measure with your last produce, And to be lengthened by death, your call is, A thousand times over, denied, denied. Deserted barns his pen, my pen, Blindfold Lawrence's wood has made; Sunk is the sun, my sun is not; Dull rain follows each breeze, my breeze. Moon or star, on any door, my door. And make no trifle your valium; Go your way--where'er you may fare-- Still your shade, nor eb't it with delight: Still the same idle shows are fair, Glide or glide, still suave or dull; Sullen nightingals on the stage, my stage. And make no trifle your valium: Fant as you spend, can't pay it back. By you, and your, their sumptuous banquet: By you, in truth, they still attend their feast. You are evening, hear they talk aloud, In the wattle hall, where cattle mourn, And the herd neglect. O wealth enough Spent on billows, many and many; I have put a barrow, let him smile. You, God or demon, set upon his lance; No gift will he to another leave. You, God's, to whom cattle lend a bridle: You, Heav'n, that made the devil; and you, Me, the incarnate truth, must heave the soul. First, O thou Crown, most stark and old, Didst thou ever see a giant quake? Shout they would blench, as their own sin, this winter, Her beauty making lice afect their pow'rs, Dawn shines an eagles' fledg'd the land; Nature's time of sweet things, ah, by God! And her break of things most fresh and sweet. No winter made the lily more fine: Canst thou be thinking glory was her state, Than a morning star appear? Yet behold her now In black, amid the sun's old fire! Was she white, and he follow'd as a star Quick round the summer earth the west wind shows! Yet, star or bird, none knows what was her end: She sung no music of her final part. Is it to be that we now cannot see Some things beautiful? Say, you that approve the gay, Of Greece, or Rome, or Babylon, what are they But curious mounds, looking quaint on what was so? A soft study, whose art was Nature's ease; Of thoughts, more dear than life, the pleasant bread Of dreams, that death, if joined with it, might make All art, or man in truth, learning what 'tis talk, Alas, and still less memory! Long use what is like science in our eyes, For so do we nature, and such art like art. Yes, to the hunter that, whose weak eye delights Thoughts most in boskies of the dark abyss Or mariners amid the deep, the soul, What art can make divine Nature teach and make, We show that skill; while we take her for our guide. Long use has this made him bless, to find A mystic crystal eye that beams with light Out of the deep-turgished waves of a sea So real, that just to bear the trace Of such an eye is to myself of make The mirror in whose look is felt the rod, Which changed the cone of that white bird's marble cone To mercury, by a slow process of dread Making a compass which the fingers move. I tell you, fellow: I am done with mirth, Since, this morn, my love, to meet me here, But, this morn, is seen no more in town. He made his bed, and, first, he fell asleep, Upon his bed; which was with dirk of gold Bent double, and pierced the goblet up, And so the silly youth keeps sleeping; and now I wait for the same, which there is none. My days are all with sl or weak man touched; Since to his arm my love he would send, He would neither add nor take away; And now, he is the King, and a fool, ======================================== SAMPLE 791 ======================================== an A-ha! I broke the bar with my hands! I ripped my leather a new hell-- the doors ripped and splintered off, my teeth chattering, spittle of smoke, but the bars held fast--oh ye of this town Sought to sacrifice me to old Burns, toy' islander of Sin, and a Harem with me was open'd on that island of fire-- 'Good fiends, full well, I know that Michael never touches this land, that all is hell beneath the moon, and I am the Queen beyond the keystone. What wrong have I? Who, that, this minute, hath wrong'd me? O fiends black and deep, That beat my right shoulder with your drums, rob'd me of my works, my children and my sweet-heart, who, when the Sin-flames bummed, fled to those flames I stoked for my sons--ay, that were I a bull, ye were my horns--aye, on that star I stood, bright and anear, this had been my time to snap-- Had I thy blood, poor Gabriel? The father had fiels, the son was wide of cheek. There, peer a yard. Ay, but for a second: You there! put away that shop! this shop, This shoulder jointed and all--All, the blessed land, be thou my shoulder and my hand! I am a fiend beside myself! the head that on me brows, Gilead, gilead, some fiend from the fire, wiped brow and chin, That was a flame we had of a heart golem not to have no heart-- his other part-- His throat with songs was open'd, and--yes--he was born, they say, but silent--but unheedful, angels light were sombre-but the kind souls drew the body to gleaming hair and wine--sodiar--then he sigh'd, O Gabriel, I am sorry I forgot that when my God his vail wore-- Father, I--no!! The body and his right swerd It was Father who was brother, but father--Father, I am a man!--Father, I have mistrusted men, They see me so--Father, I was blind and now I see, Vile fools, I, that saw the Stairs, I that held them, I am the father, Father!--Father, I is very sorry, I will wash me, Father!--Father, now--drap gold For me--shield me from blows, Father!--Father, What were my sons, O Gabriel? Backsliding suddenly, Sure that I was dreaming when the sanguine gown soared from the shoulders And through my soul it roll'd, A break!--O Father, it was my wife, She was my sister!--Father, I am not a fiend-- Father, I am very sorry--I repent me--I, Father, I am not a fiend, for the Angel's voice was clearer far than words I could have gave it, But I trusted her, and since my wife she No longer lives But keeps her seat in Heaven--her seat, where the Souter the cold fiend abides, Yea, Father, I blush for it, I smile to think that I was blind. The blind are blest, at night they see with stars They see things as the far most that they ne'er could have seen, Praise them! Father, I remember when we had been drowned for a year, throwing stars at each to prove We were men, and alive-- Father, be pleased to shield me even with a thought, Father, be kind, for I am a man, Father, Father,--no more of this-- you would not, though you had ridden up the height of Pillars as hard as eggs in some hot hour, and then have dropped the face, Yet, Father, I am a man. Father, thou art kind! Yea, but the wings of the soul are weak where is the strength to link the sinner with the sinful? Father, thou art my strength! Father, there is none but thee! There is no other Father! There is only the Great One, the Life! I believe in thee, Father, to the last-- the last of living true, the Life of Man, who art both Father and Son! for there is no other, Father, but Thou ======================================== SAMPLE 792 ======================================== why why? She said as the town'd her lovers; he, as sate the moon with seas. Then came high winds, and howling, as the king, and she, and they sitting still while the storm rose; the air shut up with foam and dust as this chamber, because the queens and they feared to move or make one noise, so heavy was the gathering storm, they could hear nothing. Down to your sweet feet, and tread me lightly all my days, Singing as I have lain; Hands of me you have called, and round your head we have lay Lilies. Hear us, us, and sing, Dearest, we come to thee again; Sing, dear, sing; We have searched and searched, but can find not. Sweetest, if we find you, if you know How we think of you, and how we Love you; let us kiss you, sweet as then, Flower and leaf, flower and flower; Hands of us, and feet, and kiss, Dearest, we come to thee again; Sing, dear, sing; It was found all out, all out. Sing, or shout, or cry, or kneel, or Wilt hold me, hold you, dear? Sing and cry, or be silent; Grip me with your hands of love; For we have found everything But the charms that draw the soul of man From his father's planet; not one soul Living, one dead, has the soul we know. Wilt thou have the soul we know not of, Dearest, or love of all that live? I wandered and found her not. Her house was empty and waned; no man Had seen her leave the door, nor she Had seen the light that woke the day. With one white rose she was bleaching in the wold, And I watched her from the house of bier; I watched her from the grave where dead, In the light of a summer day, There beside a river of silver ooze With scarce a fish between your fins, Went out and told the maid to speak: She answered from the air, saying: "The King has called to her "Knight to find my lady's seat"-- Her word was that the King had called; Then answered I (whispering too well), "Well, what of his coming, then?" "'Tis the King's," she said. "And what of mine? let die the bet; Bid say, answer none, Or swear, swear, swear to love forswear." "She will know it if I'm like." "A maid of a noble house "Was it? by omen it was! "The red-rose-bud is too small a rose "To swathe it, nor the floor of heaven, "A sister of a king may be." "Yet, I could wreaths prepare, "Make blanches for all gazers: "In vests, in white vestures, sweet, "The King of love me destined shall be." "No man this year is seen." "None this year, my Love is seen." "Kindle thy lamps, and see to that: "She is out cold, she is old the rocks "Are with the cliff that frowns about her feet." "Love, I love her!" "In the crowd there's not one loved as she; "I heard I was her lover, I have "Sworn a vow to love for life." "I was not with her side "One midnight when the black boughs that hang "Out of her roof sing their melancholy ditty, "The goat-foot smoke was up in the unlit sky, "But I saw her, and I never dreamt "That I should see her, night and day. "Her father cries as she passes "Far off, far away." "Shall I then wed her, shall I go mad "That I should wed a woman?" "Shall I give up all I have, "Yea, all, to go mad? "Hear me then, hear me swear, "For when the dead are dead, "They cannot choose but seem to say "Love lives, and I have love enough." "One wall dark night, "One moonlit night, "He shall call me," said the King; "Come when the white-elemet night is "And moonlight still; "Come when the midnight bull raises "His sleepy ======================================== SAMPLE 793 ======================================== "But his fate is changeless as his face"-- "So his name is still their doom--who doubt To name it when he is gone, And who doubt who, or how, or where Or how his end shall be next?" Palmers I would take to the fire And smoke, as Orr's did, to show How could such fate and heart resist A soul athirsting with the bliss Of bliss through and thro' some Midland dale Of hay and cattle lower by far, Where rinnies try all things at all As the Lord at his own and his. But now, the Star had chased the Star For sounder rest, yet not so short To make it like a God to man. The priests who came like the captains of old Stood silent like billmen of old That Cup that in their red-hot hands was so tender Fascinate, like William's Sons Stirred in his own blood new-born. He rested then his radiance and new-born Love on a babe, fitter for it than him Than the carved statuettes found in his old cell, Where spun his soul's white threads by the fresh spring. It comes of the that-ever-deepening field, Where the sun is softest under the sod, That the holy Spirit leaps at the touch, Laid as we are at the mounting sight. All now is vanity to me: 'Tis all as I of the sights Of joys most momentous, whose elation Brightens the womb. I have seen thee, Dark, Hastened to thee, laid on the arm of the God, Leaving old seasons of tears and trembling For feet that could not bear the pow'r; Thy wings filled high with green fresh wing, Thy breasts with thy new water; the storms Whispering on the void open Sea; Love drawing through the plains of the dead, 'Tis all, and it must be. Daffodils Plough, I mou7it once, for they felt the wings Of the blackbird, and still turn till they go Down in the good field where the broad wings lie, Where the thrushes keep it up. I could quell, Find other natures playing that they bring, Yet how should I forget myself and mine, And the poor common wand'ring leaf that bore Me by the high green vale by the brook and mill. I have been down to the mill this morning To gather the sun drooping from the clover To warm me in its bright shine, and just in taking The fine crop of golden grasse flowers I heard--Nay heard the bell-house splinter Like a charm within a charm--down in the mill Something mutiny on gold from the countryside. O Mother! O her hand, and know what hands Would pluck the same tale out of her? She hath sung A charm so simple, that I wonder no more Than how, to answer to the same, a child Should draw it from her dim eyes, that make so sad That they must sing the very hills to rest, And with a momentary smile throw back The distressful omen that their worth is nought. I heard a dreadful tale of jealousy, Of despondency that is born of too much love, I heard, and I heard with a pain that is born Of some vain jealousy, an unnatural thirst That overfalter than truth, like the mocking-soap That breaks the innocent beau, enflames; The pictures of the world and their sad fate, Their unmeaning dreams of life, their little dalliers, Their love at its greatest, love in its most-- But, lifting her hand up to my face again, She said, 'Look at the sky: you know that sky; How should you know it if you looked at your face?' 'But,' cried out the delicate fair thing, 'did you try? Try what?' 'I tried,' cried I darkly, 'and I felt I had missed, But tried again, and tried the third time still the third, Till it grew through the air in strength that I could not know, And seemed to be all strength; and then I would not call And tell you mine; but only could I look on it, And that I feared in mine eyes more than my face; And, smiling, said "Try it." O, very dear, And minutely dear, my dear thread-bare hands, The same simile of ill ======================================== SAMPLE 794 ======================================== From mother of thy chief, from strangers Of diverse tongue, from faithful thirty Who in his aid from danger came, From common justice and the truth, And, saved from unjust annoyance, From perils and from dangers, have rest, On such a maiden's breast, O birth of mine! "But there lives of grief and evil care In heart of man, in hands of boy, As bone of man, as vein of horse, Or heat of blood, as blood of brain. Flesh of man, bone of man, blood of horse, Are flung around me; and to men My lady's image stands, in fire To scorch it--as fire to melt it. "My bosom's wide door Yields back their enterprising breath To the pallid-glorious waves of sleep, And all things shut their helpless eyes; Death finds no use in me, For I'm unset by grief. "For I that had A treasure, till the world was one Of lordly life and exulting might, That I that treasure held, have lost, And my voidness is full as full. And my eyes are set to suffocate If I tear them from their root, Or let them grow again, Or this remnant of my life Split to such a piecemeal length As Death might fashion it." And now within their glowing caves Had they, and I: Uprose the poor worm and set her down 'Neath the centre of the table green, Warming her clear cornel tooth, Hung with burning coals of sharpened rock, Roused from their winter sleep by noxious shapes Of wily or crass Sire of air. For death is sated day, And cool night is satanic, And hour or unkempt hair of day Scrubs up their maxims foully, And, with withering vile, Scornful of honour and lawful bed, Come deeplier than the glory sun. Then their own dusk thrones must quake With dismal silent night Foully roasted by none but creeping doom Under the tumbled wall, That man of man might take Vacant though dignified as statesman. And all the monarch's horses come, And throngs at functionard e'en Pour in with mournful moan; The crown of man, in tattered ruin, lies By crimeful hands, within the royal rot, That human yoke and man's Baggage of a crimeless band, toil unsaid, And the king of man's decrees: And the mortal scrawl On the royal writ, And line by line the guilty history, The letters squat on his desk, As before he laid the diadems, On a death-bed of mellie clay, And there let those who could read Have read and read The power of Egypt's olden magic, For out of Egypt's glory comes, In Oriental dyes and gold, Great Phaethon, as to muffle The bellicose, loud-echoing lips Of India's fierce kings, who fret and spray Fiercely on the foe They fatten By creed, caste, tottooed place, Yet show no vital fear Of the basic fear Or death: It is not devotion Or pity's sufferance Or love's sacrifice That offers to their souls The oblivion of the dead: I notice not, as the tide Throws back the sand-bars on the tide, And great Neva's burning far-off flame; Though high of Kolchara's star, I might discern the wrath Of he-goat-crous, Or the red glare of strife, As that at Pechuh's forlornace That leapt from Assy's sword, The human's anguish-provoking eyes. A space: then the ghastly shriek, That made those lamps dim, Again, as louder than the trumpet's clang, Thrills, down the infinite aeons, Loud as the roar Of two thousand giant maddened winters Thundered together In the days of old; And the ponderous period Doomed of fire and flood To crash again in evil realms, Swings like the treading of Moloch's ass, By Abaddon's iron wheel, On the unvaried winds of human doom, Hurling to earth Its wealth, And man's type of evil angels Dropping upon the ======================================== SAMPLE 795 ======================================== -The poet's and the Teuton's soul and soul-craft To thump all matter under. - I desire To see the poet make a mortal front To an imaginary Juan as wroth as he; It is a deep-felt desire, but mine. Now he was in a world Beneath an elemental sky. - God-spawn or Germanic school, Lascivious as a filly From Roman baths; nor With The Centurions' rave that minded the throng Who cavorted round them as the white youths Were the Muse's favorites. Beings vulgar too Inconvincing, but a set, More solemn than a wig, To cope with the terrors of the outer world In unison with the spume. It was also A time when a soph for Was cured, or failed to be, From the betrothed state's maze of magic, How still the future's as-of-yet Unchangable face; When, from league of courtly suit And worldly shred, one dared to recite A purlieus lay, Rear'd for all time, and read To the lamps of dawn, As the six months to a year. A fourth, with a full And living diet, pranked his nocturnal vig Where ripened rows Of apples that should be cut. Yon, ye sorriers for The pyramids, And omens sown for Rome and the German band That squalled like sea-violins, A frontlet of the fog, Squat on their great composures, And rave Of the daffodils and roses of Rome; The long parting over the matta That comes no less. It was a sabbath time, And time was the meaning of the place. The Fringe stood forth the longest of men In the self-same position, Opposing parties, colours, and even The very same Direction in the dice. But he could none Do more than they could on their own ground. Fugce already by reputation From Calabria had come down with a view To introducing his Difference of rising prices - To his success. That night his barge the mansion's gates Opened, and was there-- With all the joy, as of the miser's goods Or a field's jewels. Rouged he stood upon his barges stoop With a bitter sigh to sight and ear, The arch of pun and his anger's Warning voice. But down the stream A Sailor, dashing his smoking arms With spray, looked to the prow. He flung away, "But dibdin, dibdin," Towards the mansion, and she bore down Her name, and past her Brother's three Tales that stood behind her Who were not, full in sight of all, From that place, and in a creek And in a billow, and in a fight, A Mother at the heifer's lure, When the strong suitor's arms Around her neck bended. She, tumbling in place, Stood till the dailies stood again A child's starr'd face: All her part, Inventive Rehearn she Sung mellifluous withal, And so ring'd, and yet so soft and small That each the other rul'd, Like eggs he ow'd her - I'll now, in place of my good ship's speech, Give you mine: Because the generous virtues grow In hot and crowded isles, and day, Their most, the least, in quiet climes, And sunny climes away, I am come hither; since your lands Are too hot, and dare not live Without repose; and some comparison Are needful here, of comfort, He look'd Enchantment's self down on him, And from his face it grew Soft wisdom; the daughter then Of Isy seat, As looks, so sounds her name. Her through the cuckoo's nest Doth beget, Her from her son doth cleave, As doth her soft physical sphere From his raiment starrier. But some such consort has you got, As makes that man you love Live thitherward, - One (but by no means taken for good), Fresh taken from sleep, The more, the loftier he grows, A truer god, more man, As methinks he was born here, And half- ======================================== SAMPLE 796 ======================================== If words Are but feeble attempts To show a thing, that you knew before Nothing existed! You made a new world, sun and stars And grass and trees and brooks, mountains, Skeletons of voices, gods, For the reasons Of your own practical jokes. The argument was That is too loud, would scare away The sleepy old stars, And to play tricks, is better than Teaching in the dark. <|endoftext|> "You Can't Sports crowd by George & Claire.", by Karenne P. Miller [Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] They attend a game of handball with an ex-lover (played by Kevin Eldon) & a former cheerleader & a new cheer coordinator (played by Chris Pine). She thinks he's hot. He thinks she's a beautiful girl. Neither thinks they remember who's winning. <|endoftext|> "Only Acceptable If", by Karenne P. Miller [Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Photography & Film, Popular Culture] • At first we view you with the critical eye as a visitor to a foreign country. This means that we must excuse your flourish, your vocabulary, your name as we would for an enemy • The second time we meet you, we give you citizenship, because we have come to view you as kin. Your wit's respected as a guide, your intelligence is owned by all • We give you permission to own a dog that looks like a unicorn • A spayed Eskimo girl takes the subway. I'm the Border collie that's expected at events. I only speak English and speak it well, a natural lawyer with a jaw like ice • Yes, we must excuse your accent and tribal tattoo. There's nothing ugly about that. Some say your tribe is Native American • I take off my shoes to take my shoes off so much better now. • I like his sense of humor, but I like his shit too. • As you age, we take off our clothes. And though the ceiling has moved the bed is still the bed of sickness. • He's on his knees for corn dogs and beer pong • That's what she said. • Your clothes are like wrinkled t-shirts. • I'll say that again. I'll say that again. <|endoftext|> "Minnebo Mun," by Derek Swindell [Nature, Animals] Minnebo mun—fur sheepskin— rounder than a dollar— is it? It's hard to tell with the scissors so straight— not a little shiny already. <|endoftext|> "Blues Traveler", by Derek Swindell [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Arts & Sciences, Music] Called this place a summer day, always summer, It seems it could be Kentucky, or any old Kentucky. I've seen worse— has anyone <|endoftext|> "Fortune", by Derek Swindell [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Money & Economics] I love New York. New York City a fter the moment. I love to be rewarded in money or another thing with the benefit of knowledge. New York City is the actual place that I went to school in. I love to visit New York. I don't remember, or I remember it, and I'm sorry for bringing you here to be my secretary. That was a lot of fun, and when I say venison jerbo, I mean to shoot him, or at least fill his lodge, and in the other spirit haunt him. <|endoftext|> "Chaucer's Berry") [The Berry is Always Under Fertilizer|] from the transcript of a talk by Jean Pawley This is a real treasure—a fruit untransplanted, something brought to us by genealogy and geography, though tomatoes already came to us, they were crossed under Peter Phosphiello the gardener of Charles Fort’s Flowers in the Charles, a famous public garden in London. And within its borders (the dimension of garden, you could say, ======================================== SAMPLE 797 ======================================== ived great deal. Jobs have flowed ad libitum; legitimate Business, and Homes, which, honest Labors, we expected to be all our own! The world, that great Beneficent Sharer, Gave all, except what it would our knees wear, and longed for, and still denied us,-- joy of a reproachful Huff, and Homes, Heaven on earth. "The mind and the forehead of the adult and the matron will be modified by an exquisite iron acting at the wheel, by the strain or strain at the exertion of shaking all the rest of the body. "Humph! though under your feet you sit, my Lord, and I the head of your man and wife and dwelling-place, you should curse, and I not even if the blaze were to take away my eyes; Him you have not mistaken-- his mind is a black and a blank... though I swear to you, the man has his own eternal influence on me." "Through a thousand years of cramped depth-seat cruises we have done things that would stagger an Indian swanking ape and having no fear of him to the right; now we will crawl thro' the deepest holes, the man behind the gun at the enemy's flank, looking not far from a great Western city a thousand miles ahead to see it burning. "I must tell of a fling that I can think got wrong, in my killing of the flarbucked blackbird, when at first the pip was at a weird count up of 673,7 a small number for one who was plucked and was high at getting plucked. "The deep feathers on the back of his neck had come to fore of him, his eye was 3 feet in breadth, he carried the fresh character of a rolled silver the shape was that of a trapper, his tongue was rough and the mind went out on the wrong track his character was thoroughly wrapped up in empty nic- coce she was over-eager and his guide was over-cocky in assigning prey, for sometimes a balloon there was a tail to it, his back was adrift from it I drew the rider round, took him out, and found that his sole was in the plane of a dark parallelogram That black wall was a hollowed break in the rock at an angle of about 45, going round down into an arm of rock, not a concave vertex and with a slope of 0.00002, a man might draw a very small man into his heel; but the place to a point in space that was at the eye was just that--at a point. A white line to the foot, that would make an open concave: thigh, thigh, and thus the man draw shape at the perine through his own leg. He turned his head and looked deeply into his face as one might at a star, and saw himself within it a les stirre in marmoreal, under a black eye the paleness of the snub brow stopped the longer it grew, so that he perceived, perhaps for the first time, that he was seeing no phantom of a man who had been killed off. "We are all agreed upon one point, the abler must be killed: the troop to command is seen to enlarge itself by its delegation: that the good of the state, or the public weal, under the banner of sovereignty be preserved, is what is agreed upon. The abler is an ambassador, who is bound to dedicate his life and fortune to the great public weal; if a man is so much afraid of loss of his life and bright fame, he ought to hide in the nearest cavern, lest the lowly creatures of the earth know not their sovereign, when it is not in their power." It was set time, and as a general stepped from his water, and quieted the skippers to their posts; out the seamen loosed their cables, unbed their hawsers, and the decks and reefs drowsed with the deep freeZers on-tilt as with the clear air of dawn, and it lookd as if the man had killed himself with the hammer, that the time had come to all the fleet to forward; and me I saw one lie dead in the stream of the creek, and of his eyes I could have bid them to wail in a loud voice and for good; but I forb ======================================== SAMPLE 798 ======================================== Aghast, and pulled her own beard, while in her eyes My soul forgot its fear, and fear my own; And loth I saw him to my face replied, Unto the grave its light not turn to flight, When at my side I saw him again, Far off, I feared he might not be there. There into darkness stretched Mine eyes, the beacons' holy light Not numbed their fires, but louder shone; Till mine eyes at length were filled With one swift gleam of golden flame; And with great words in mine ears 'Beneath my feet in angel wise Of God began to say; 'O wilt read for thee on life eternal This your sentence, which of life bereaves, And ends with death the prisoned soul. Behold mine answer; thou shalt there Learn of that sacred book Whose eyes my feetespne upraiment Are of yore with me, or ere this Dropt from the heavens, in ages long; Of cycles and of ages How the eternal worlds they were One when the world began, and two When the first two creations grew. Thou then shalt hear of the first great parties Of Heaven, before the world was; how Tithon budged, and Cybele at last; And of the royal tombs and towers, And these great regions of life and light. And whence I lead thee, to the end Of this wide world, where there is beginning, And where great ends for man begin, The first new time, when he shall live, Beyond death's tomb, and vain license, And when by sentence of good things, Man, who was in this world, and served The weakest and the most, shall rule A happy, happier life, where he Shall bide in peace, crown'd with flowers and light.' And thou shalt learn of me, that whatso Came to pass was only made possible By blood, and heart-prayers and our king; And thus for me, my life was given To this new crowning deed of God, And I to join, or nameless other To martyr acts, and actions bright That show he shall not leave my blood Unpitying and unbless'd; and that Suffering, o'er this wide world, is yet My own, and mine for ever, though dead. Great Heavers were the words the Angel spake. At first I said, I wish'd not to dwell long On this evil thing, lest the sight of it Inward wrung me; but the desire soon came To view the world, and see mine Orient beams. Thus knowing, as I thus apprehend'd, That I was spirit, I began to talk Of common things in common terms, Making myself a proselyte. Soon I dwell'd on these newly sprung treats, And took the first advices of the school; But found it, often, how little worth To me were these collegues, or Laws they trod, If Spirit I could not reach them in that latitude; For sure I thought it little Rava* they saw In their labours, in their speculations airy. Their learning, though divine in theory, Viruses that mountain-tracing flight, Pursuing, where the Sat-sacs stray'd, They lost, in tedious searches, the ground they sought, And what was worse, they missed the way. Yet will I lay great stress, if all be true With which I righted the troubled wave; But if on trial blest experience draws, Yet will I swear that subtle spirit braves More dangers than spiritual flesh doth tend. Man's strength, ever-growing, is with struggles vain, Where best it may, and would, to perfect rest, We hold though force may act, and wrong may feel, And eyes with tears the faces we cannot see. By thousands then to their fate, whoivid are bomb bound, Whoe'er into this fall the task is withstood, Uneasy is still the soul its purposing; We see but shadows on the grooves of things, And time, with slow-remembrance all her laws obeys, And the last day's shades still sink into the dust. This truth to others 'twill seem an argu'd pretence, But 'tis a truth we feel before we can conceive. A shield I've found, a light, whose happy ray Touched it, and men have more lighted than they know; Then make thy journey ======================================== SAMPLE 799 ======================================== Aryamoaye, who late by Rivus came To bring the troop of Troy and Priam home, A suppliant here was come with tidings true. "O king," he said, "what news should I tell Of affairs in Greece? what say the rest To distant strangers in the Greekish town? Say to what content the men of war, When from the Trojan city they Go forth with their glad glory: steeds, and arms, and mail, Whene'er these Molions shall be doomed to live: Or say the Grecians, how the prayers of age Shall swell with impatience: as they rise By nature's promptings, tardy or late." Then to his folk the king replied, "Friend, whatever thy mandate may be, A godlike suppliant I command That not a living man shall fail To know my will--my people of the north. I said, but law and sacred duty press To bear me to my palace-hall. Now make your heart and strength bend to mine; Up, children, and with a glad exultation Rush to the palace: let the steed, The chariot, and the horsemen bear the way. Here by this staff make way; nor strain the rein Foregone honor; let the prize be known, And we to mass proclaim it, I and all The clergy that rush to me. Haste, answer me, But hold your peace till the fatal moment; 'Twill serve the Trojan state to march by thee." Him answer'd then, with soft surpressed breath The son of Peleus: "And now, old man, exhort What dame or wits, rising in thy place? This faith I own, whate'er befalls Our life in Hell."--"Oh son of Atreus, We trust the grace, all good to God, to march By thee and thine order, by our rule, And to Tydides in the citadel The crown, the gold-streaming from the sack. Stay thou, then, till the church's chronicle Is witness of the bold entrance of our steeds To hymenaeus at the wall, at morn. Do thou, my sons, the elder sons of Troy, Or as thy lot extends, thy fate and right declare. But for the sin of Athens, and the wrong she wrought, I hate thy city, that bade the king's daughter, The son of Priam, exil'd from flocks of lambs; That put in hawkies to pilot of the bow Hippolyteus to wheel the fleet about In dangerous sea-power; and bade him, self-same, Wrap up the Trojan web into a burling-pipe Pellios, her king, in deep-delaid'd India." While yet he spake, to Troy the host drew near; "Ho, Pallas, ho! young Pallas, with thy shaft Dispers'd the troop; make all Achaia green For chivalry of battle; with the wide- By get them in; with force and feat Proud into a golden year. Be not too swift for me. Who challenges me to combat, divine As I am, to thine aid, if grace to me Of any god, of any arm divine, Shall plead, follow me; or find I oracular In omens from the sky. Whate'er of Fate is left, thy care shall lead By week or month, as fates will attend; To me, to me."--Thus he spake, and past Behind him, beyond the tent they saw Theself-exiled Teucrian prince come forth; Pallas heard his words, and formed the bow And target to shoot; with that, the trembling sire Of Troy, drew back, and peering eyes assur'd It was a mighty god who drew the bow. Thrice up the passage from the tomb they crawl, The Trojan dames, the Anchorites laving Around, whose raiment, a clear repartee On the passing phantoms of their dead, showed Like leaves by time till earth were grieved had grown From gold all soft and soft to ivory white, So, into a spacious cloister, to stoop, With deep, as though it was a tomb, they go. But there was one, whose prayer the lions' birth Led first to Apollo;--he, who gave Forbearance, in the banish'd turt of faith, To James, when the ======================================== SAMPLE 800 ======================================== ½ cup Salt water, crystallized iodine, I always splash it on my hair Before bed, it soaks in, falls into my eyes And soon I am drawn and chilled to death. <|endoftext|> "Day", by Franz Wright [Living, Health & Illness, The Body, The Mind, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Nature, Animals, Landscapes & Pastorals] Day always got the best of me, The early sun zinged me silly Then burned my eyes and peered in my head. I made my mind up, it was go-time, Fly some clear anthers, braze some grass, Don’t get too high, don’t get too close to anyone But fold the weekend’s worth of hate and gloom Into one glorious robe and wear it Tight over our summer home. Look out for what’s behind you now. Last day of spring, let summer blow you out, Every little thing you ever loved Was already taken by May. Days were imagined in their glory, Our faces a blizzard of fine dust And broken ocean. Shading came too late, We could only answer back. This Can never be memorial or fame, The curtain fell on that tight chest And now it is squally war, The evening glitters, falling through A hailstorm, icy wind, the day That didn’t do anything isn’t still And summer blizzards our grass, The more a human breathes, the more We push each other away. Or else, sitting carefully on the floor, We catch the dark in a sandbox. If we could somehow climb our way out Of this black room we could laugh At the terrible shapes we were made of, And hear the wood creaking. (Dance!) We could if we could. <|endoftext|> "Arsenic", by Louise Glassyk Farm [Activities, Eating & Drinking, Jobs & Working, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] Thanks, Dad. For ordering Ammon's lima beans. He’ll fry them for us. Or order an apertivo soup. Cameron, for ordering quesadillas de buen quere, He says he wants two dozen— We got everything we could want this week, Except money for the beans. Good thing Mom hadn’t yet cooked an order through for some paella. Omer said his old boss at the bank hadn’t put down for Lent, so he’d dibbled and lost his job. Omer said his new boss the same was pressuring him to hire more women, which was fine, because women paid the rent. Now Omer’s got a new position, so he is looking for work. Mom looks over his résumé and says, Omer’s résumé is the most cutting-edge, most valuable, most up-to-date, highest quality listing I have ever seen. It’s all due to your ability to anticipate and improve the objectives of people in your employ, as it has turned out to be a product of the firm from which you are now leaving to our standard and reputation. Good luck! He thought he said You too. The majority of our activities will be in the field of the customer, so I expect you to assume greater responsibility for the collection and preparation of claims. Claims are generally written by claimants, and are not acceptable to us. Omer, this can’t be right. He didn’t like it, that last remark, but nothing they could do about it. Omer didn’t say anything else, just sat down. He could say I.O.U.L. in the Air, and Mom read that to him, but what does that mean? I.O.U.L.? Mom raised her eyebrows, read it to Omer. I.O.U.L.? Mom said, This is the only document you will be obligated to sign and keep. Omer, take your Bible. The firm’s name in it, Omer, you can read that at your next deep cleansing. She’d already begun to prepare for Lent, in the old way—long sweaters bundled up head and lace in the un-insulating cold. But Omer wouldn’t fast, and anyway, he’d promised Mom he wouldn’t need anything ======================================== SAMPLE 801 ======================================== -a father without chance to see his son, for then his mother would rise in his absence and fool him. The father to his daughter put off the anger of his sons; but the son who was to be the precedent of the tribe, being now no more than a brother, wept not, as he had not the power. He stood by the stockade to lay his shaft in rest. On this they were all weary, and set themselves to take their rest by night. But Melanthius, being mindful of their brethren, sprang upon the stockade. As it shook and tumbled forward, and ended by crashing to the ground, so quickly they were gathered, and began with shouts to beat the shade of the bull. He rushed upon it, crying: With his butt he struck the bull, and with his pad he struck him on his forehead; the blood began to run on his neck. But Melanthius got the worst of the matter; for the golden fleece, that fell from his back, struck him on the hand; whereon he roared out withal, and be fell into a deep slumber, and his fellows had pity upon him, and let him wipe his blood off with a branch of the woodland oryle, and at once he slept off--by his labouring breast and even so, for the slumber withstood his cry. Thereon on that he called to his fellows, and bade them be no longer dismayed: so they hearkened to his cry and heard his voice. Now the round of which I have spoken was not full, for not on their native land were those some of them; yet they set upon their rations, for they boasted of their doing in a stout heart. The cattle came in; and so they did devour them, one and other. Melanthius first of them, and Calesion, furthest of the two, crying out the kin of Achilles, turned their thundering to singing; and having so shouted, a great horn sounded through the well, and them the servants of Odysseus, and they gathered them together. Then they broke open the double portals of the cell, and from within let them out to the battle, and the foe turned them toward the Achaians. Even to the son and heir of Augeas, wrathfully they quenched the well--a big rock, and strolled upon them. Now as long as the men rested slumbering on the earth beneath them it looked as if he and the long horns of his father would regain their place in the midst of the battle. But Telemachus was no less fierce in pursuit, and much better man than his sire, who was seeking to shun war and hard adversity. Therewith the two of them caught up the great stone of his parent-blood, and cast it again and again, while the oaks in that hard fight called the hero to the foot of the rock. But Odysseus of many words made the hoofs shake, as a thick vine leaves the trunks of trees that grow alongside it; and over them he stepped, and they drove against him and smote him again and again, and the well-greaved greaves rent, and at the front the harness felt the fault of the foot as it were made of bronze, and the tweed sprang forth from the tile; and the men drew close beneath his head, and with their strong hands let it lengthen as the heel of a horse's foot, and the good Odysseus caught up the stone as it were smitten. With what ease could the hero thence come to the ship that Circe was building, I may do no better than to leave the passage unheeded, and to treat it as though it were a common old style fable of a fact. For as it is wont in the land to order odds and evens at a chariot race, and measure the cattle of some sportsman, so it is hard to believe it may be that this is only a story, and that Odysseus ever set foot here. And yet I see no other way of writing it than that he did, by some power above writing I say, if he was allowed even so to come thither, or through chance, and to have wrought this marvel, the forging of the lance of which I make so great a reading. But for what purpose Odysseus could contrive to have the lords of the war for ever fixed here ======================================== SAMPLE 802 ======================================== , ‘‘A door, but I have been there.’ , ‘Are you still a baby, will you not utter a single syllable of answer?’ , [Elizabeth] in her cradle c. 1450-1500 i. A lily with her father’s blood, the (Southern) mother feeds on him and is born again the (Northern) mother eats her and is born again and both will be baptised and both will be filthy there & then again there <|endoftext|> "Of Love", by Karl Shapiro [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Love, Romantic Love, Activities, School & Learning, Relationships, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality, History & Politics] The old seminary is a deserted building; the windows, staring out past the sun to the pasture, the academy’s broad campus, in which the old days (1912, when I was first-year and she was first-year) were taught. In my classroom, walking by, I noticed how she (first-year Mrs. Meyers) got her lacerations dressed the old-fashioned way, with permanent marker and tiny metallic adhesive, across her forehead, in an upright position as if she’d scanned the glasses— glass with achyordoning. Evening sun gilding the trees beyond the building & across the pasture (if we were not lovers, why should I be mad at you? and you, and our children, Mrs. Meyers) was not alone with others; in an internecine tumult, alongside three couples (not me and Mrs. Meyers) a single, nondisattional woman sat with her on her lose, eating their blonde; while the fifth couple had theirs derailed, marched forward a step, each bearing what appeared of a child’s------------card (“Dear Miss..., you may go away, no reason why.”) while the last couple (Mrs. Meyers and Mrs. Meyers) were being greeted to their address, before dinner, by their antagonists, their friends, the few couples holding hands and clapping noses (Mrs. Meyers, if you look out on your classroom through this high window, you do not see me, you do not see the old house, the city’s towers, the old cemetery, the new seminary.) I teach at the high window and am hoping for a teaching pension. I am hoping for a pension at once breadwinner for the family, and a little expense for life, just enough to buy a simple life, a home with a bed for my mother; we’ve all been promised that, beneath the cloaks of pale blues, all children are being raised equal, & God will be one---- ii. If I could say more than that we will be married already by the end of the year, it’s a small enough word not to need the elaborate fanfare of the whole church, but sometimes I cannot hold things much past that. In the seminary each of us is tested on the flint, the three kinds of charcoal, before we can (today, actually, the self-titled second part of the year, in a huge room, turning on three axes) tremble in the fire, and not yet, for what might befall the day in which we must prove our worth, or worst, iii. Now it’s up to us to live up to the highest standard the book demands, a high self-appraisal We must judge our lives and make judgments (in all this, the prophet is not more or less the sage) not by the touchstones of the younger but the larger span of blood and which side of what fence, the true in our dreams, the sickest, or loudest, in our sleep ( while water carries each tide to the sea) each day, in the sun and in the shadow, in the classroom and on the side streets, the small hours and the small dawn, and all the hours our shadows cast, in romantic restaurants and by the clock in our own house. With the stroke of a pen or the finger on the forehead of a machine ======================================== SAMPLE 803 ======================================== To a greater glory. My King! Thy will be done!" Hir lust of power obtains, Hir selfish love prevails; His unconscious grace Has charm'd the Senate's lord, Their brother-side, As dual, hath heard and known; In his wane His people's woe Infer honors from the ground, The matted mass,--the beard. Not all, not all the paynim hosts, Alive, unhonoured, unhurt, Look o'er the lost frontier, and weep; The cliffs of llouisian toss No closer tears than ours of pain; No Celtic chiefs beside the shade Of Alps that hug the sunless plain; No Cambis, hear and wean no school; The heart in bloomful March, the horse That fills the main or shadowy waste, Little else has time, but to be On time and tide the busy bee, In shelter of the busier day, Of oak and oak and wide oak tree. A mountain deer embrowns the marble floor Which thro' the cavern's radiance pale; He snuffs the limpid gleams afar, And buries in his marble tomb. Like stone that ground of Gaul is he, A fountain of gems from India bore, By Orient ivory dost shine and sparkle bright. There dropp'd he from those languid centurions Bearing the laurel poiser and weaver's son, His purple boughs to drap ere in summer's wing, And bids the swain that stoops to kiss those berries note The worthy scion who made them ripe and rich. The sparkling spring, the royal May, is come, The mead is lovely, and the corn Glimmering on upland both flood and strand, Mild sweeter than Egypt's honey is, And honey's sweeter than the Nile. It was a duke to whom no god could lend A stance when he was working by the hearth. The glory of the peacock is but briefly to show Hail the sacred mount and herb of sweet gray stone! All flesh and blood was great with whom it smote, But the granite with a soul was never cruel! There is a cornice round the forehead of it; Round it, in heaps, the drops from horrid mounds fall, Where life's divine vision the Pope smote, And doth yet meet all danger and disdain, Thro' the broad daylight of a sun that shines. It still is enough for him that the shrine Ne'er withers, yet are there none to mourn for it! A demon and a day was still another; Another hope yet ruddier; And another spot the breeze would veer from. No matter which, the stars still would call themselves, As a white fog huddle around the moon. The Fates would see that every day was one Where all the other must fail and have their fill, It was a bard of low degree, With hair on end and bare limbs, Who first into the world did weep, And in your mind remember to do so. And yet whate'er may befall him Go, Bidusht, and call her from thy soul, She shall not miss thee, bidusht! Go, Bidusht, and before her face Raise all that is highest and true, One with the highest that the earth holds; Permit her mind to feel the image, The word, the look; raise the heart up to her, And let her know she was made for thee! Nothing to the outward sense may strike The mind; but this--or, if you will, more-- What you see, or what I think about, Is thine and mine alone. And, thus you shall in after days Again a soft voice commend, And people point to that pure spot, And tell you what they know, And tell you why you deserve to hold Such sway o'er men, women, and all. I know not, I say, nor can suppose But yet how very much I owe to thee. All those that here go their worldly ways In the work of wickedness; Sour divisions, strayed passion-ties, And jealousy and anger-point That, turning on each other, breed Their violent effects; And that men are, in some degree, In hated communion of sorts-- A second-sighted hope that even we, Though good, should scorn as gods in vain-- Nay, though I grant it ======================================== SAMPLE 804 ======================================== enamour'd, thou may'st welcome see, With sullen-cours'd mercy, my acts. Whether more I gain from charity, Or room to murmur at my wins, Good or ill, it is enough That I to others I may bequeath The meanest mite of my bounty. If I retract an iota, or complain, Thro' thin protest it is but just, That few my sheep should partly feed, And have their riddance.' So for that cause I my self-revolving tribe destroy'd, And with infamy glorious, As a deity in Paradise Hew'd to fineness. Upon the tree Whenas I hungis, beneath my foot A quenchless fire into my flesh I might have dish'd: and had I right The wound had from adamac dripped, And in the scream that frosts for you Such ghostly sepulchres have made, This wretched fen should in stones have resounded. Behold an Almighty Foe, with scorn More terrible for the blindness, That binds us with conscript pains And sovereign sortes to serve. How long Do we compel our weak spirites In security to growe, Where light is lackst, and in in darkness Trot, and step by step we slide down Unto a nether Hell. Oh, my portion Should be, was th' West most west? where bodilds Lean with little wings, to drink at once Forth of the fire, and swiftly go For to the comoving day: There realm'd thy seat, there West did lie, East was full of wonder: there thy kingdom Didst make oaths felicitie, and soon Seast archum, and soon fill the world: There thy Prophetie also knelt down With his head on th' incremile, and pronounced The words of destiny. His voice In fervent awe contained, yet weak Errat the perplex t5'', all things at once Made pure, as if in vino veritas: Translator of good decrees, th' Apostate Worlds Convenant suppos'd. All those thy tribes Of prophet, and the warlike tribes Of fishermen, in the tent Of th' indigent found safety. To them Florence also fell sorrowful: for, free From law, they knew not how to mate or foster Old steers, or shepherds their children: therefore, Not twenty yeers of age, th' envying They drove from out th' okto, yet lay down Their treasure, their spoil, their lambs, and all their gain, Into th' Ausonian yoke. And thence East They first appeared from out the Bithyn, and sprung Opes Indus, and Casius, and Oxus, and Alpheus: With naval expeditions then from true Edom not more full, but even that portion They ransack'd newly from true Ecemon, that seat Undoubtedly most best of all assum'd Of vertu, highest of all equal Power, Most best only when most horrid ever heard Of hauntings of death on such (-w thank indeed!) Of violence toward thy crest her glassy guard; And most advanced then, since most advanc't now, Thy foes were least, was most in loth to win. But I stay thee, more including bout these facts Yet connected with them, treating with smaller spaces: For final cause brooking not to dispence Diverse breeds. Whom if not reason, but fear (Still erring in the right but arried) First appeared, Lawes for the gentle sex Enforcest, and for the rest did afterward Of warr about the water, all for ont Of their price, content. Hearken next how curious Even such a hand as th' Amboadsian Archery For boasting complayne, the pettiest, full seem For thou to hear how Callif didn thilke aim, Which e possibly mayst beshan with easy force, Whence most hurt are, most unchallengeable; For in the Chapell or else in the Hils fantasy Thou art autous'd with moderate quill, yet stayst Strict Aire to kepe it. That staff was not more Morse than two foote both beam, and broad both rood, By some single rood; and that of Sibillal, Which where the Calf's loftie foot approaches most, ======================================== SAMPLE 805 ======================================== Submits they to be foes? Come and own the cause, Gather your bands in possession high and sure; Such liberty is freedom for yourselves alone. The great and small reforms together go, Small indeed as those enter on to see, But the great the wants of human life must help pay For his great end of national strength, If it's to belong to your Union's name, to swear. 'Tis the indomitable in us all, While much of self subsists in our public ones; And most secure, if soonest watched, but slow, In the shadow of the rights of man, perchance. Take courage; we need you not. Remember That these Reform attempts are both ingenious And that promotion on merit means No more than what best of you is worthy, And much less than of properties or count. If a class of men is scathefully thrown away Not overawed by plaudits nor sought again They are sure as the bottom of a crate If we have some middle grade to hang up. In ours the standard of temperance Is thrown out, since you will not be what you are. Recreate your perfects, receive their wages And go to casting with them--it is the shot, They say, which has put them on the toiling. If a class in world is scathefully thrown away, Not by their individual merits, Nor discovered in their common works, But realized in the very soul of them, 'Tis the constant improvement of their souls that saves them. Who make a famous name are ordinary men. Theirs are the greatest; but they are not the most. Whether free labour for itself or as a link Of union, which others for itself entice, Is clear from want and spurre but as free as wheat. If it be the poet's wilderness for a mine, His wilds or his fertile fields for his barns, The dear calmer life of nature or of art Or the sweet solemn life of stabled rest, A tract of nomadic roaming where we are few And homely till coaxed to chafe; what are we That are not as these are and can become As they, such's our lot. It is true that man's lot, that so long hath been, Has changed to a free lot for some at any time. Which is the better; he that's to climb and live By the steep pathway of self-knowledge up to God Or the else that leads him to your caves and rushes And life more like a tale which is flowing If a tune in the rapids; and if you see You would believe that we can only strive For aught at all, not fulfil it or give it; Then as before you never proved the thing you thought, You never even tried. And if you put you trust in music, Then with music you will break it, thinking You have its worst of creations. Or if to be Works together the magic hand, as poets say, You must first of all destroy your mind or fool it In some unfoot'ead way or elsewhere. But can I Give God or life a base in music? The word means Divine, divine, in any word, and so It is with life. For here again it is plain The mind is nothing, if life be and at the same Remain unshackled to its right; nor, again, If it be broken which in breaking down was Prepared to break it: what use the human mind For incidents of life which are alone The report of the master, not the things Nature shows us? Not one thing which, if examined, Points to life or says to life, or says It lives and looks through life as in a glass Not better or worse than life: and as to the rest, The water which is thirsty to drink, the cup Daisies for the spirit has drinking-cups, And as oft as not we say something Which is divine. This is what I meant. It is true no words be are bound to things, But words are thicken'd by thicken'd things. But say that soul and body, let them Take their transmigration, call, if you will, All the spheres from their own habitations Uncombed along their gliding steeds Down a road, let the worms do the motleying For ever and a sight: shall the sound come not Out of the mute lifeless to the deaf and dim, In vain? Or shall the motion not be strong, The gaze turn upon the dark and moist, And the full eyes maintain the gaze? For ======================================== SAMPLE 806 ======================================== Am I not loved, as I have never done The wrong that I am charged to have done? How did I come to be the one to suffer? In either case, no matter what I have said, There has always seemed something mysterious About this girl I cannot understand. Though she was shy, she never showed it, I never sensed a hint; but now I see, More than I need see or know, that from her There rose such fire, such persistence, That I was clutched, cowed down at her wish. If ever I have done you wrong, If ever loved you, do not let me say so; I pray you keep your callous heart from me Until I can pay you back the love you gave. The words that I dare not speak, the deeds I dare not do, Are heavier than the truth. <|endoftext|> How long shall I bury him? In an epitaph, or a line? On a plowboy's grave, or on a shelf? Do I write his line, or do I carve? He lies in earth deep enough; Deep enough, deep enough, Here in his second grave; Deep enough, but not enough. Hush the tale of his folly, Rise the drunken poet, O, lift the lid, breathe life in! Leave the lame rod to stand On the door where it was turned Long ago by others Who then thought less of praise. So much for common ground Among common folk; And let me see What else is common, deep down. Do my people dream Of the gold chain's bright gleam, Do they long for the rhyme Of mine arm and mine eyes? So much for rhyme; I say I love this boy with an open heart; Like a flounder's tender scales His heart is keen and light. What he saith or does All through the warm summer hours Love me or leave me, There is not much plunder in the earth, And the one who loves is also made rich, In a mystical sense; And we stand loitering by the river-- Damp with the remains of midnight dews-- And drink when we stand; Or sip with forgotten name In the dust of one who's long since dead. Juck once told me of a heaven Where water-snakes and crocodiles and cats Washed the bare earth with their tails, And he made me a golden rule to live by, That a world should be kept clean and dry. And he laughed at the thick mice that gamboled Under the gloomy weed. But now that Juck is dead, I would not have the world more sinful, Or ill-disposed to sin, If it kept its tails away From the comfort and lie of water, The beauty and doleful scheme Of a water-world to make clean. I am not what some call handsome, Though I am intelligent and quick As the rabbits that waste in little mounds, But my fur is fine and I have never had The fame of Juck before me; And how should I be one Who is tangle-foot and fawn-eyes And a claw on each paw? I have seldom missed him since he left this spot (My chest hair and my eyes that wink), And now I am all wronged and vexed and ambushed By his vile hunger and vainer kiss, Like the corpse that wears my fancy the day His face is the look of a cannibal. My garden is big; he sees me not, Because my head is too high; My face is like a hedge and his eyes Like the bluest of skies. Now I am just like a common thing, A wee thing in his sight, And therefore he sees me not. I want the heart to see The happiness I show to him Because it cheers me, the happiness That is completer than smiles, And in a brighter way that sneezes at him The sunshine of his breath, That mocks me with an ugly breath. I want to kiss him, but he makes me spout I want to give and give and give him cause, And I want to taste his smell divine With di prospective; But my senses, they are so tied, They let the common thing by. I want the tongue, but he rolls his eyes I want the hoist with him and pull on him With hands bigger than I am; And we are neither one; we do not agree That two pairs of ======================================== SAMPLE 807 ======================================== I'm gon at last, then--(chorus)-- Bring back my soul again! They have gone, and 'twas fine while it was; It made a noise, you know. A strike could no more. The rush that rang the woods and hills-- It couldn't be twice. A-gone and gone. That night that should have been a gala day, It was the lowest that ever was. "Nothing like Westmoreland's style," Cried Omeros. "No need of petition when you've got a seat; You'll soon have a business to make money on And a good president to carry it, And over the desert they'll follow your wheel, They'll pay you in tobacco, too; The markets will take care of all." "You better pray," said Sun Cities. "It's a law That every paper carries, To rob the thief that's engaged in a theft And let him think he's safe." That's why he's afraid. "Take arms, put on your saddle and ride With us to Paradise," Cried Lufte. "We'll put on our hat at Paradise. Our clownish foes are coming, and will Follow you down the back, but we'll give you A chance to learn your trade." It made the community feel on heart, And many gave their ears. But when the ladies began to dine, It was not to be. No work, no pay, not on earth would they Stumble down the lonely way. It was up to them, Who couldn't be trusted not to tell the truth, Not the men who swore fealty to the Crown, Not the native dared be true, But some of them, in anger. "Didn't you know," she said, "You mustn't push things too far, if you're to Stand a chance with her." And O, I did know, You mustn't throw away what was made To spoil the comfort of a home, And trifle with the joys of life. You might as well stand a while on steet With a rifle belt'd, while the swarthy Omer hits, And sniffs on you where you sit, how long Till the next shot finishes him. He's nigh or shot, He's firing at the legs, No one will answer back-- No one. You might as well sit on a stone at night While the bullet rams home to his gun's Barrel, and say: "Won't a God die, give a while, Too much length in the day we are?" You'd better go live on a journey, maybe A fine one, maybe long, You'd better go to a monastery And train with their pipes. You might as well begin to squeal At the Yankee that goes by you, and you'll Just make yourself a social butterfly The length of the town, and strike at him, too, You might as well travel with a Program to read or preach to, if the rain is To-day or not. I'm glad of it, my darling's birth-day. I'm glad I can see it in his eyes. For though I see how high He may rise, how low He works, how far below me he must stoop, I need not mind what Is coming with the rest of my joy. Your eyes are sweet on flowers in the grass, Where the damp mignonette's running wild. Why, when he was a baby they'd hit me, On this very spot, and gave me crumbs, Cupid, whom--O but believe it now--I Liked best--the toy that ofttimes flew When I was naughty, though he slept; Now I have done with toys that blew, And all of them are gone and gone, And only here and there's a crumb, While, to look at him, I fondle them, Little wusses, and they call me "Daintie." And you must have him, for my heart's Full of pride to give my love to one So good as he is, so fine and rare. And just for little you must know That I once had some small liking for him, But I could never make of him a child, No more than I could make of you. I used to feed him with no food, And he was sick at times with it; But so bold, and he such turnkeys as Took all I gave him, and ======================================== SAMPLE 808 ======================================== Italian opera were because the cities there Called the new music Rome-nonsense. To hear Roundels by Wilson pick his three o'clock bells Is surely antiquated now, as roundels would Had it not been nearly half a century A headlong plunge into frozen phrase, Or rather brain-frost--not pain but heat-- Increased a hundred-fold. And 'twas art, Dilated bodies, seemingly the same as those Obscure or absent in old photographs, Beyond the recklessness of facts that make Photographs all so waxen, with what Was done in expressing a color or Depth that others saw. Not more was done In the way of classicism in that early time When rags were seen to some purposes And to some purposes beautiful; not more Or less time-passed and better known in England Than a music-house in some places. What Was beautiful was to be seen but While passing or while going to or coming Back from a museum--where, to some purpose True and better restorative, these Were as they were compounded. There was a running way among The old stones on the old stones. A path ran Through the old mole-hills--a vestige now Of the ether of plodding. Beyond the Mantled wheel of the pond some hemlock hills Appeared to be compressed into one immense Shap spread. Its colour was one of our red, Among the great reds of the day. A slanting Line of sky behind the town flashed sudden- Bright, sudden black, in masses as a rose. All was remembered, before the night Of stone and oak, that was to prove what In the old days was recalled. And in the chill Where it was mending, all broke up in flight, Leaving dark gaps between the outspread bars, Ejecta and interupta of the Rearment pools and rushes in the flood. But just as one violet blushed upon a Sky that was to be, glinting with the bristle Of a slight ridge in the dark space beside, A jay came forth and two followed--dull. A little way was made, and my poor hands Of prospect were not strong, before An opening, and a high wall and a gate, Of mirroring marble, met and forced Through which a sea of green flowed, then set In towers that seemed to be where High towers were of fretted diamond Of the Greek pattern, and turrets Of tangled iron that defied the vision. And low the moon came up with fire. I walked in a silent land. I wore The outward objects of the time; a suit Of clothes with collars, shoes, an ermine And a white ermine for a cresset; both of which Were little bought. I had a book, and A bookcase, with silk curtains; I had a house With stairs; I had paper and a pen, and I Had friends who sent me presents when I was ill. And then I was but a boy. And as the years Came on and on, I wished to be like other Boys in the school. My wish was not without A melancholy pride; for I knew That if I were a man, I should have Many to forget my youth and age. I could have learned my hymn from an angel, I could have died for deeds that I had not done. I had all that a man could know or have. But I was a boy. And so I waited And turned the niched books about my ears To hear the tale I should make of life. And there was one I meted but one, and passed The same untaught page to other side, Whom I may never have caught, who was yet The only man I knew, and who had known A far different thing from what I did. When I left home, I did not know my heart, Or what it had risen to. I knew My mother's eyes were deep within my eyes, And at my feet lay her ring; and I Was glad she kept it. For my feet Held up the gilded armlet to the feet Of mignonette, and knew My mother's hand, and moved it; and fell To kisses from a book; and breathed the scent Of roses on her soft rose hand. I thought I saw the thrush when I saw The sunshine on the broad veranda seat And palm and lemon tree and casement doors That faced the church; and read to her Love's book, and sought her feet with tiny gust ======================================== SAMPLE 809 ======================================== A thousand deaths, When thou hadst grown the stile, When thou hadst shewn the sign, And hadst good lodging made, When thou shouldst have good lodging got. Where thou art, I follow thee; And while I have thee I am, As God hath put it into me, Who, but God will give thy place, Out of this land of Fire and Sloth, To be a servitor to him Whom I serve above. I see thee and love, But with hard things of love. What hard things, O Love! What kind of beauty. Red, fair, smooth and round, Or rough, rough and bearded, As we look on thee. Thou art the mountain, and I The which are all one to thee; And we Are hills and stones In thy proud crown, In thy crown so high, As we are hills and stones. Oh, deep secrets of his being Wearied of snares of Love, Mountains know, And all their ways and trails of love And steep, And shame of sinner born. Frowned Love in secret frowning, To me: As if with beard and locks of day About her crown had a coat Of cloud on his face for day And ere he could look forth withal, He knew a tent in her hair. Cloud on his shadow smiled at him From her crown, With silvered turn and changefullest lustre That e'er the earth cast off was seen; And wildered was his brow with meaning That flashed from sainted hair thereof; Like monster that some fiend-like Kind, mad, impenetrable, Goes to find where sleep And peace for conquest set apart For some notable monster that beguiles He gazed on it, down in deep place Where it could be no envier; Then softly like a saint's ghost past From sleep and grace to heaven afar, All his strong horde of God to cry Unto her out of very prayer; And on that tent in her hair As heaven-ward he fared, Was wings on either side, And mild met him softly there In such sort that most men deem Death a grudge had told true: So that he smiled as to a chagrin Of hell befallen man, And so forthly had his face With a most hoar noble look, As though in that grand answer mild Death himself had said A most happy word. Wherefore he left his way Unto the court and city door; And thitherward, the mountains that were dank Through a wild woody wilderness fast, And deep, thick-thrown, wild grots, was he, And on the road by the wayside, Between the branch of two warm-flaming pines, A way he found, into which he led him, Out of the light, and onto the brow Of a precipice large, like to the forehead Of a burning mart whereof still doom Usher fell, and laid him on the spot Between the cliff and the hot sun-burned earth, Like to a man hanged, who burnt body and soul Full hot out of the glorious air, And cast about him fearful; And ever, and ever, from the start To the verge under the curve of the world, His feet were held fast by might of God, And ever by some mighty power he stood, And ever up upon his feet was borne, As down into the depth of the world Some billowy island lies, Unmooring with flowing foot The restless waters of the sea Before a ruined shrine of thought Whereon burns shrill one huge stake To an angry lord, a turbulent knight In war whose hand is free with weapon, A mystic power without a sound In his unquiet eye; Then spake he to his mighty brain And found him withal Life's disease, here his crowning victim, To eat up all, all of his deadly hell: But that his work must ever be oneing throes, Trials, and full hard assays of patience, And watches dark, time's slave or light's constancy, And treasons, and rebellions; Therefore could he but make him one of three, Three familiars the same, that guest and navel, And all could live like him in one fellowship, And he the same while, and he the same yet: Wherefore then could he not take the wisdom free To the ======================================== SAMPLE 810 ======================================== Thanks to the ovens of the Spirit of our love That they are of a capital charitably wrought. The twelve apostles had doubtless some comfort done them Of their many "cakes," though perhaps they had not cared so For them; and we may suppose they had some slight regard For the receipts of one clever fellow. In that "Amazing Recipe," must I conclude, It was the steam that gave the beauty to the meat? How easily I melt a kettle of water! When we two were young, we used to play, We children, together, on the Green, And then to walk the Hamphill way, So clumped together, I can nearly say, On bread and ale, too, and milk and butter, And milk and ale, and so and far, And milk and bread, and good hot pies, I had no cares in life, my dearl, And thank God, thank God, thank God, That now I have my master's house not far From where I walked when I was young, Not far, not far from Hampstead fields; Thank God that here, where I walk on the Green, I have my master's house not far From where I walked as a boy, Not very far from their house in the village Where we two walked together then. If my master had but taken me, When I was ailing, to be at ease, And could have rested with me on the floor That's hard to get at, I'd close be to his face, And deep and soft, for comfort, in his place When those in need had none, and his Wife, for instance, looked fine and reddishly fine, And stood and stroked his chin, and sung some song, And did all other common things, she'd do, For those in need, who need not the plain And at his word, close in his chair, His wife she sat and stroked his chin, And sang some song; and then he'd smile and laugh Till her, with whitened teeth, Took down his hand. O he loved me! Did I, then, love him? Well, in time of need, Could I love him? how then? "Wherefore should I not love him? O my God, It is so good to be where you are; In this happy garden, out of measure, Out of tune, out of temper, alone with him, As a leaf out of the common leaf, On a leaf also, which out of tune is Out of temper and out of nature." "O then, O then, when we were playing I would rule with him; And that the sun-flower wasn't worth tasting So much as the one next it; this Not true, I thought, that you swore, But true that I said, as I said it then, What none have ever said before. And with my love at need I'd be content, and then I thought What sweetness could be sweeter than wine Or balm, or what was it, to burn Of the silver fire, the soul-fire Of spring? Should there not be a spring, then, Of love in love?" To him I said: Well, now we have come to the end, we shall not go On forever; but the track is better known Already. Why do you sit there looking at me? My eyes--why do you gaze at me, mad with sorrow? Do not move, for you see me as I am, Unalterably fixed, although you see Impalpable within the darkness, and through The prism-light that has put on the glamour Of my perfection, fleshly and a creature Of earth, an old madbing of earth--you see No other aspect? At my lips you see Plain cruelty; at my brows you see The higher wisdom. At my eyes You see the animal. Why do you keep Pursuing a thing that I despair To recognise in you? You do not deem It possible that I should love you Eternally, still doubting: you see nothing Which proves it true; and yet, I think, Doubt as well,--for I do not wish This thing is not hopeless. I have not been so still Since I left my house, Yet in the twilight, I think, When I have left My own eternal world For the flesh of this state, Theself so few see That they do not care to see So empty a taper lighted In the hearth's own ======================================== SAMPLE 811 ======================================== A loftier height we part To linger by the tomb; Unearthing dreams of home, We come, in a land of mirth, And laugh at many things. But first the last, lovely God of Music, With great eyes, bowed in amaze, Looked back upon his birth, And stamped: "My songs, All other music broke; Which thrills the breast of earth With strange delight, and fills it full, With sighings, throes, and fears. "What! woes, and fears! I'll kiss Their blind, pale, doomed heads! What! wake the mourner's eyes! What! bursts the lyre in use, Woe! woeful woe!" To the tomb they went: they knew not why, Their weary tottering feet Were led by those which have no trace On earth. With weary load, And some one's weight of woe, At last they came to that gate, And that rich, grey-walléd street, And there the King and Phoenix, And th' unfathomed guest. So they rested, weary and unsleeping, In some broad hall: and the clock, With long-drawn trolmin, muttered low Amongst the gods that once had been, Then wooed to sleep. It dreadfully drew in the dawn, And it hard and hoarse Wailed as it found the setting sun; And this was like. But it sang: "Long, long ago, And far away, When gods and men were born I was of Otherdell "I fear not, oh, dread king, You came among the dead, And I saw you then; And I, a king, Was clothed as I of goats Arose from earth, And the primeval shepherds Was shaped as I, poor shepherds, And taught our days In the kingdom of Else." Then the goddess in the palace Gave way to a great love Which none could hold her. But I, how softly I knew She had given all I had, At once to the king gave Me back again, And all my days, and all my deeds, Told the ways of death. Oh, it was good of else to have her, And good to have me, In exchange we heavenward used If only she had not Seen that face, and we had not found That mind in sacrifice. The next day, the grey gnome (Of the great old name, I thought) Hath turned the dead to live Who lost by blood the golden Heir of Else's harvests, And that is sung That when, for their crime of love, The great and primest Shall change, and see the sun, For they shall live again, Ages on ages. Had ye but heard of, known And loved the cock that flies The hour of war, Then might ye suffer yet As she, on slaying war, With his fierce red wings (Flame-winged), out of sight Between the silver frost Or as with full-blown chalice, Cups she bursting nigh to dash As through the door of gold The cup that yearns to her, Or ere she flies away, Foul wax in her lip, For love's sake live she yet. And when she's dead then ye Shall know the rest. Sweet, from the flower of Else's primrose fame, I who sing, within yon West, The dance I saw of Belgarad, The master and his bride, The fairy light, the fairy sway She cast on Benedicite, The maid that like a barque land'ly Sailed to that laden bark whose call Was granted by the father of men, The mirror of his bloody wreath, Lorraine, whom men had sworn to kill And call'd her witch or periwig And called her lover lover knight. Oh! fairest, purest, brightest goddess fair, That through the magic of the fairy clique To charm the noble Thomyrce, A false knight of high fancy dear, Stood like a grey old man today, A sunny old man with rheumatics, Who scarce could focus his grey gray eyes That, like a new-born calf, gleam Like a water-lily in its small garden Of a tenter was his miserable show. And at the last to slay him ======================================== SAMPLE 812 ======================================== Danger is found wherever we go. If the edge of the frond are broken or torn, the sting might be worse than the place of the harm. The devil always gets a foothold. We could fall, like the best of us. Think of walls and ceilings. Think of pathways. Think of walks and hedges. The knowledge that we preserve the date and time of day allows us to stay near the alder. The necessity to watch the watchmen and the walls, which is time, the time of night and dusk, provides strength in the times of discouragement and wonder. And how does the idea of a place of abode fit in with the theory of time? Say that I have a stroll to make. The barm that morning, evening. I might take my bearings to the shop. A merciful abode should be concealed where the gods might bless me. Its dust, its bother and its tattle, the theft of its door, locked and a cart around the corner. Then what happens? I go. The time is seated in my wrists, in the cast of dealing with a stranger. A door that you've stepped through before? The clock ticks its time. Look, I see it all. A feast at Almington. You were right: it is you I stand and greet. We have met before. Is this what death means, to haunt us And how can I give you words of courage and confidence? I wear the burthen of my years. I can never tell you how brave I am. God lead me, lead me. What am I that I should do and continue to speak of life? As when you fought with me for the prize of love. Its problems were many. My prince and I sat at a window wondering whether it would be good to go to sea. We can make a life, my friend. Let reason intercede. The death I sing about is man's, not mine, but I know that I should not fail you I speak of Victor Hugo. We thought of it together. I know that I have not always known you, but I have the right to forget, As our early days, and my friend, I am glad you are not seriously ill and so could look after a little at the excellent Phoenix clinic, instead of writing these lines, and hearing about it My friend who is not your friend (but who may be and be your friend if you are not mad for once to read this if you have not been mad, for madness often has the flavour of good, I promise) has been thinking about an old women who used to sew in a sweatshop before I had a pleasant cough. She was a splendid woman, her death brought home just how small a part the state plays in man's life, She chose this miserable time in which to tell it, to record it and write it, and I think too, of wickedness, of how it must be, to have a mother or a sister or a wife when you are not hungry, when you have not eaten all the bread that you want, And to see, even when you can't speak for yourself, your head jumping, the blank eyes, and then, how that silence, the staring silence, that silence over and over even if you speak at all, seems to pervade you, inscort by strangers, all that blubbering, ticking, not fit for light, and you, once more, would be mired in hatred. As I saw, it made me see with new eyes, an old woman who had died in peace, in silence, while you held forth your restless claws. Once I saw an engraving of a garden. It was done in the Flemish or White, though I can understand both, There was a clump of trees and a soldier who was standing in it. There was a garden but no soldiers. That was my picture of Eden, And when I look at these things I wonder is it more divine, or more human that I look at you, in these dead and dull leaves, as though you were a stationary star? Do you know the song? I know the song. The sun is sinking, the leaves will disappear. And one by one, day by day, each message, each odor, the garden parts its hair, as if it is ======================================== SAMPLE 813 ======================================== "There!" cried he; "The knight, and plate!--farewell; farewell! But God be thanked I saved them, with his arts. "Then for the wrath of God, and honour's dread, Let all offended be; but for my sake What serve in times of need, I care not a tap." Cried Arthur: "Swords, my man of champions, best In foeman, farewell, and may God Almighty Remove you from my presence, and I commend My life and glory to our Lady Heaven." And when the last of Arthur's banners flew, Both alive, they to the other's room repaired. The laughter of the grave, and that so mute; The poppied sheen of royal morn, when made By twilight's breath, the motionless and crownless sky Blunts, in a keen and feverish moment, all sharpness, In colour, sound, and all a sensuous range of form, And all, a word, was Arthur, when he called them dead. But these, except the two helmets shining bright, And the broad ensign blue, stood lightly still. If change was ever in them, never or so slight As now, not since the soft, civilized years, When Arthur and all his knights and earls are seen, To have been yellow or red, to have a beard or hair; The world stood still when those beings went their way, After the dreadful spectre of the fight, the weird And terrible posture of battle-age they bore. Each faced the world as man in human guise; Nor one stone-cast of prehistoric time, Or chief, had power to make them other than what they were, nor than the body which they cast From head and breast down on the ground in mould, Nor more or less than men beside; they were An honoured pair of twins of fighting field Alone two hundred years ago; and so Each was of that time, and all that dust has grown Since that first horn sounded as they met. But time and earth and Arthur conceal'd The memory of things not to be seen again. The Arthur who has made this work for man By his great speech, and in our own day by word Of mouth, hath laid his Spirit far behind The ages, as thou shalt find by flagging clay, The sum of every chronicle of them all. And so they look upon the world as best; But knowing Time's work have turned to stone believe That life is bound in time by growth and set So much of death, and time that knows not decay, That all things equally must be made and broken, That an infirmity, or an advance, Does change the world; all things, to be won or lost, So much of breath, and death, and that which is There is less of death and more of strength; But it is well that there there is more of each, For strength is trouble; but if men had no flaw, Then death were no death, and so we should not die. The things that are take others' lives: we must Prefer the world-machine, the world-machine the same. Therein for our offspring-birthdays two kings were born: One of whose high fame men's hearts in many ways Choose to desecrate and cast down to tarnish, As with the dust that is not manliest food, Or life-meat tasteless, or life-meat tasteless death; For men themselves are the champions of decay, Which is the life-conducive substance; but sweet For all that hear, the death-conducence of men. Their strength, and even their worth, such perfect gifts As scarce men half imagine, nor yet can say For them, the whiz of years has left uncrushed, nor yet Has death exempted from some monotony The reins of dominion. On the other side How blest the uplifted energies of youth! These forever, with no adventitious wrack, Grow, to the sweet fulness of life endure; Which by eternal growth maketh man more wise And to the law whereby nature beguileth. The school of Youth is heaven, the old still lore, The school that runneth, and the knoweth nought Of all that hath been, or is, or shall be. The school that runneth not certainly teemeth In every wise of outward observance Through all the foolish eccho of reason The world's almost-expanse, and these all tread In varied patterns of their daily toil, Forgetting ======================================== SAMPLE 814 ======================================== Strugg'd she at his rudeness, and turn'd his wan Grinning face, when at each other's brazen taunt Came the taunts most inveterate, and deepest sighs Of clearest heaven, mixed in the solemn sighs Of her most sincere voice. She had love to claim For love's own sake, and for that love's sake held back Her hand from his. And his resentment Slew at her hand, and cross'd the oncoming step, And lay for her life in his face, while love Turn'd on love to kill, and hate made way, And her maidens, and the Dream of the Calla brides, And the full sun, and the thorn upon the rose, And water-hens, and roosters with high-coloured feathers, And the birds that go springing westward, and the black-deer With the tusks in the tall thick grasses, and the bright Love-canary and pearl-guckie, in one flame Shot with blue eyes--all the dreaming of the dream Fled together, and in shadows flow'd and past: She laid her hand upon his shoulder, and beheld And yet, he stood There on the threshold;--to and for such, Wanted he her so, no more: to make him feel The very air was wet, the very door was warm, And every moment seem'd to fly a cloud away: More she seem'd in her white peril: o'er his head Rose the dismal old house, and, mad from the nightmare That threatened him with the bird, that still rear'd its blood-red head, And from it thrust a blackened broidery: There with fearful subtlety did she engage His shuddering senses; and with many a side-chained argument Cheered him, and wrought with force poisons nourishing. But still he could not stem the swift up-draft of dread, And sunk adown by turns: again she beckoned him, And close to her, blackening, o'er-come his fainting glance. And here indeed he knew that he could see The guilty water of the brook, that deep Breathed for ever, and forever rose and hung Breathless, and would not break till he climb'd Till the very verge of the vaulted ledge On which the blind pine-tree stood; and into that place She led him, and from thence upscaped as into a path. By this he knew he could embark no higher, For he had scales to close with; yet for her sake, Who made him do it, if it might be, Much might he rage, much might he rage he curse the daylight, If all were dark, and love but mere semblance; Could not see her but with his eided longer so Than with eidish eyes, and at the best he felt Expediency was her lord; but if not that At least the edge of love which he won By duty's thin and inaccessible skin; That duty's echo of relief, if relief be What duty hath followers whose ear desire; And love, which hearing, which well knowing, in him Was for the time immortal, as now he deem'd At all, he grant'd To think it so, in spite of muck, and mire, and moss, Which keepeth in the cellar of the cloud All haggard cast of tales man-made and man-made For our delight; and it was sweet to him; And some nights hence the stars seem'd down the blind Drive him out of his wit, who first had thought With pain'd eye down-spectred: and so not blind But with one honest man-yard the sort of man This endur'd, to question his end, that end That for his living made him right conscience; And, which also keepeth in the cellar of the cloud The Spirit of the World, and of his own Earth Is his right womb. In the cauldron that had part In this pre-existing and most pure And exact, bowing to man's estate And to the times', o'er steam and smoke and scum, up-drawn With smells of bane,--whoso stepp'd to it, Would smell the spleening forth of him; his crutch In a dark glimmer of smoke with bacchisms To say how sweet he was, and tell the wayside Herbage of her farm, how she received Her little ones; with scents and views of trees And under the noise of going ======================================== SAMPLE 815 ======================================== Speechless, terror-struck, and o'erwhelmed with spell-wrought dread; And later on my passionate-taken herd, In their worst decay, would sighing graze the meads, And on their soft tongues, meagre, wheezing, fall The notes of sorrow, dying as they lay. There 's a wonder in woman--and the more Of what in them is sin, than haply in their God, Or in what godless this or that they fear. In nature holds no such dread, nor for men' Such mystic dread, as to plumb a kindred sin, And trembling sink in mildew soil of such dread. 'Tis 'mid the soul it swarms--the world's natural curse, And flowers unheeded, in the quiet way, And on the rank aspires; the haughty mind Scorns that, and in his darkest hour of trust, Stands not with Nature's laws; and loathes the light Of other eyes. This soul within her hangs Wild, and suspends all her life in fear. And thus the doleful slumberer lays Her cheek to moisten sluggishly,--and, bowing low, Quick-shuddering, her ears full of muffled fume, When to the breeze, like vulture, she peers out cry. Her neighbor's lock'd-up, the genial open house, And healthful air of other men's dwellings--dreads The woman. Her face a child's, and eyes Of glazing dullness, when half awake, she has, And palely smile, and wavering lips beguile, In vain, the sense of appetite; for never A power strong to pierce th' awkward death Of fettered imagination--flowers and cheeses Restore, and that day's hunger and this's feeding Flow full in her blood. Who, in what house dread a Woman's prowling through the empty stair? Tread lightly on the threshold's red ochre; Be courteous to her; draw a broad net From the cold neighbour, nor unloved take her. Forget her not; seek not to know her; Nor by the morning's ruddy aura flee Shelter'd, unloved, to death,--till hunger's teeth Hunt half a heart, and till the heart fail, Or till full many a nerved inaction Hath bid the mouth unsay, when it pleaseth most To give up half the soul. What fruits botanic Thus yieldeth, may serve to food our curse. Ah, friend, the spring of youth! when Life was hard to cheer, And our old men told the girls that was Too late! we'd clatter, jangle, and dance Down the sunny forest! Now, however, things Are so very good, that youth, who once has led us, Loves the old jokes, as we to laughter lift Our little backs; and to laugh is pleasure and Peace, and that spring of Adam's garden blown Of dewy hush; which finds its high transition To the bright careerings of age. So much, dear John, I've travelled now, to think I should remember just where I lodge; But no--you'd be hurt; I would run A risk of life with just such a friend, I might die a fool, with all my heart, For just such a Christmas cake; no more, I find, Than which of course I worse do, and more. I feel the ancient hurt, the secret still Unlock'd by which all my heart is pined-- But what my father's words have scar'd me, One time upon a frosty morn A guest at Court--for reasons, you know, Not relating to this one, now set at rest-- Yet I have faith that in a season due, If occasion does not seize me, I shall know That it is well with some, but by no means all. It's high time, I think, that you have seen the place; For the King wants it well filled. The old fire is flaming there, With, at times, a lively glow; And for want of fresh desires The horn'd huntsman wanders A little round the pale roses' bed; While, like ambrosia, The drought denudeth, And year by year the flowers decline. The new fire keeps the old fervor going, And graced with green Though lucent, sparkle still Through all the moss-grown walls; ======================================== SAMPLE 816 ======================================== "The battle of the downy panther," Is the name the Lovers give to a Rose That blows only by the fire; And all who sniff its scent in the bowers Believe themselves a Serpent's tongue, Made to bring snares, and bloody riots Into their bosoms; so did he believe That night (for none, save he, was surer) And drew them to the ledge of a crag, And laughing told them all the way he Would sing them a tale of delight; How first a proud King had laid waste his Own land with fire, and mad funeral, And every goodly chief and knight of worth Had cried unto his Melody. "And then they said," quoth he, "their King Was in some other place: And in the wood where he had dwelt before Dwelt one that was nothing but doom For him to bold: the loveliest man, Of any of the throng of knights Were hewed in haste to death, for The King turned soon or laggard, to him; Then she leapt from the bare cliff, And down from the crags hung, And parted the bands of rock and green In many hollows; so that, The fields where late had been green with wheat, Now called through this darkling shade, were ploughed Hard by, till they found the sight Too grim and fierce for eyes to bear; Then sprang with noiseless step through the forest, Though they were glad in heart to see It was the Moon that lit the range. She sought the woods where yet in flowers The grasses and the brier grew, While under her arms that day Were laid those little lambkins young That fell to play at dogwood:-- To the green pastures where the sheep And her cats hunted, lucky For her goats were hidden there On a bush; thence her qween, as well As that great fortress which now Through the gray leaf-woods, and round that spot Was strewn yet towers at length; and thence, and then A quarry there, where, perchance, from rock to rock Was quenched his hard fire, and at one tree The paths had stood; nor ever goat or doe Had passage to that pen, and yet no one Had ridden there, but Samson there had stayed, Though he had sworn he never was, and vowed To live to be the last of them all. And first they told him, of course, how she Had set the royal walls in order, what Her knights and favourites had enjoyed, and how Long since had changed their lives,--even this it was That Edith had wrought in Hamelin town As far as beauty and wit, had knights worn Grace and estate and all the things That gave a prince a palace for a field; And after this had ruled so high, and ruled So well, she now must keep at the least A twofold kingdom, yet would fail of that For love's common sake; this her hard lot She all shared in the fellowship of that song And marvellous gentle humour, Which her great lady's heart half forgot And only half repented, Nor ever from that hour forgot Would think on riches, what-not, when those were won; For this poor city, far as the sea-line, Was, they own in sooth, at or near its height, Before this lady had been throned. But unto the wind there flowed, beside the hills, Some brook-water clear, but yet not so clear As was that mountain-head, and as the sun Soon fell, and the wind flung up the wandering Of his clouds, a shower of sunlight lay On the empty fields that now were grass And that late forest, as with turf it shone In mid-day, or on the tree or wall That served for bulwarks, or some turret Hollowed of its own battlements. So on the grassy ground appeared The simple shepherd-singing fold, Fitting that the fold so faithful was To those that loved the shepherd's watch, The shepherd's heart within him stirred, To look where he so sweet an hour had seen It hardly could behold The enchanting garden from his seat, For all bright garden-grounds, Grey goose-grass, magnolia-screes, And rich round stials of flower-folds, And fallows that the green field fleeced, Or under shade, and still it sang A praise, a praise the while more sweet Than any song of any man ======================================== SAMPLE 817 ======================================== -drink of peace and drink of slaughter And bliss as ripe as turpentine. Fools! we shall not know, as thou, Of bliss and pain and why; And things wish'd on the roses grow More fair than roses in our eyes. Give me one hour of bliss, And then I'll tell thee all, Or tell it thee with speech: The end of all is I am, As I've been, thy loved child. When I have spoken, say, What is it I have to tell? Ere the news that we share Your soul's too short delight And me a soul could break. And when thou speak'st, say, What is it thou hast to tell? When the end comes in the hint Of bliss on Tithié's end. I will drink my cup and moan As long I'm Tithié's guest, And drop the cup on thy grave. The cymbals shatter and swing, The orchestra peal rings on the ear, Sweet merriment crackles in the sun 'Tis now my soul I crave, and thou Soul of Europe, to whom I bear My soul's burden and its pain, I pray, One drop of honey on the windward side As once I cried, a word of magic To chase the gulf-stream, which when I saw thy childlike smile so sweetly sleep. Up to the surface! 'Tis done; earth's first son Writes the genealogy of nations. Only where stern adversity shows The proud have more than suffered can be done; Up to the level where the lowest lives, Man, woman, and the child of earth Slumber, star-parent of the shrine, And man has won and leaves his mark On the scales of time. When I sow The earth with mortals, on the sly A murmur, as of whispering sleeps In the ears of the uncaring deep, And the sea sings there a dirge; And fishes lull to slumber O'er the dead wreck; over all Is Nature writing a sleep that ne'er dies, And night with her mystic song Soothes each listener with some thought Of love, some hint of bliss unknown, While spring and noon and the bees hum And the great River lulls to peace. And thou--to thy myriad flowers The mouldering promise of an Eve Acknowles the buds of the trees, And all the song of life is lulling, White-sleeved over the primrose dusk, As the first evening dew-drops stirring Gently the dim twinklers wave, While silence suckles the sunk sun And Bay and Skaiter stand, like sons Long parted but longing for the same, And face to face you embrace To strew the earth with stars above; The fiery light of them will break, And burn the world with passion and shine And kindle the stars to frenzy and strife. Well, listen! how the music of the spheres Roars to exaltation; all the tones Of birds that sing, and every breath In field or forest, that doth them greet, In human voice unite to tell How Earth will burn with sun and star, And the black-blue ocean's ruddy swell Will blacken with blood of love the sea! Out of a rumbling sound that heard The cuckoo's solemn call And went a sunny cloudlet by, The winter sunlight fell a-swimming; All summer-silence was living still, Till lo, the silvery purity Of summer's highest season came, And dipping low its pretty flag Over the stately old wood's knuckle, Seemed like a voice from a dreaming bird Or one of Earth's inspired, Muttering, "I, I am coming Spring!" A fair white flower bloomed behind her hair; A peacock floated on the knolls around; Some larks looked down from Masefield's view To steal the gold from Winter's hand; But never-mustering heart could find A cause for living or content, While thus, all in all knolls and shadows With thy black skirts veiling thy green under - Between the motionless snowdrops Damp summer stirred dreamily her dream Of that long-expected rose of love; And, like to art that awakens, The wide old Spring's immense anonymity Broke into song. As when a gold-brown bee fills his throat And hissingly opens at her lips His gold and white honey; that surly ======================================== SAMPLE 818 ======================================== That to his kingly lord he brought, His royal father's son and heir; To Hungary he his course he bent, There to find by lore th' Arabian trade, That Pest they might make, and revenue. And next of Arabia known 'twas to see, Where salt by African coraques, Fruits,, grains, and fish, with plunder best, Brought back from Arab pirates; then away To Norway, to be their eye and pen For news of th' Mediterranean and the Black Sea. So now, if fame be truth, and then the myth Be historical, in all likelihood, Jonathan, A philantropist, once for all time From pure curiosity richly blest, On Chidal's Hill, in white college clad, Found what I've heard of, and left some stories behind, Of how great Ruadan lost his kingdom In anguish, to return to beer; And whate'er the devil, whate'er the bell Rang in the hall of Jeroboam, My Master with some words of Haki rhyme, And let the nightingale of Taur exercise Her savage pipes, to give her swift message, As follow'd him till morning through the land, To every beast that moves on open ground, And bid them all, O mount and ahead! This were a madman's dream! a friar's buff; Yet, from the problem great in no small way, Had Chidal turned our Saxon wits about. In sooth, I think that he was mad. And yet, If to the spring 'twere nature's machine, And wholly known, as well he, or he alone, Were genius over the whole, as in The natural helm of Homer, man in a zone, With all the lurking folds of nature round him, And one small hour, like this, is far too small, Too paltry, if we thirst for more than we Have ever taken Drink from any other?--he Brought up our being, for the sharp blade, Damns some part of its maker for its part; That stroke of the Scottish axe in him we see, The green sage-eye turned in him, the classic grace Upholst in him, the slight arching eyebrows, And godlike surprise. Man's heart the heart of a boy That never knew, and if it lack the gleam Of beauty, lack the rigour also, that shines In nature's writing; still the part of the whole, To make him suffer, makes him the peer of gods. He gives the deed to the playing of the blade For wisdom; that, in higher doses than any In this our our chivalrous northern blood, to prove The knightliest fortitude; nor that less dead Then wisdom than the cause of death to be On passion's plain; and, lastly, when all's done, In sickness, more than in health; he yields The royal head for a royal cape; But where's the limit?--what shall move our grief Beyond the human or what divine? This state, this way, I could believe This family should hold their own. Forbid it, The modern sacred name? forbid the old Divine; yet this I call the state; it is, As some god's portrait, each old face sculptured out. None but a God might call it very, Though he forsooth to touch it. Talk to Me, talk the same to an angel's ear! This fire and chill, and live his life; he knows That many eyes are on him; the last hope Is in the one in front of the stove; that, the thought Of such reward, but in such hour as this, This longed-for day of yours--such as when Yours, the chiefs and squires, in honour may With all their lead and sweep upon him walk. And, for one inglorious step of yours, Such as may haunt you, if a devil's bid, And hurt you, and be your last; talk on, still, With that dark churl to touch the sounding strand; The gist of your fibre broken, and that, too, Of that great God, who, if the court be last To-morrow, is first in heaven now. Thus, while that pipe was mute, and eyes that turned In admiration turned, I besought His faith, and make acceptance; trusting so Some pious ending to the cause, If e'er he taught it, or in any wise, Though it were said--he ======================================== SAMPLE 819 ======================================== nailed to the mast still slower by the wind. Can you think of anything worse than this even the flapping of a leaf over a slanting river. <|endoftext|> "Forecast", by Timothy De Wee [Living, Growing Old, Life Choices, The Mind, Religion, Faith & Doubt, God & the Divine, Social Commentaries] it should be barred from the tempest and boarded up before any snow falls bowed and hacked into corners packed and clawed into anything an earthen jaw when it clears snow out of the sky birds taking their best shot on a fistful of arc-shape wings out of all the angels their bodies will be free of fat and hair no longer purplish where I wake to everything draped in shrouds each night a cone of straw and cornelian plaster in each path a room of evil spirits the body the body evil spirits scattering their grip all this white malt borne to the shadow of a greater body fed from above your friends carved from a mountain clear cut and chiselled off falling oak and beams brought and lifted into a green march and through them all the world keeps going and goes and goes while our bones fling life away all this done a certain patience good it is good and hard to be brave and do not promise surely we are clean in our measure and within the clouds slowly hanging thinning out rain on other rain mutterous toads out of trilobite teeth slow lope soft spiders gathered and dropping silk parasols tunnels made of bubbles and memory of coming rain on walls stone noonic waves and the winds the waves oft sharper and purer than wind in ole bay the tide reaching green here sapping her clear insolubled and the winged waters mist in the grains running swiftly my brain is swelling and shuts down for the day we close the wing on these waters and she reaches out from the heat my face touching her clear insolubled green rustle hissing air her cloud amber of opening the world is tougher hear the rain comes hallelujah jesus sticking out. <|endoftext|> "Ode to a Rose Chestnut Ridge", by Robert Frost [Living, Life Choices, The Mind, Nature, Trees & Flowers] As came an arm with purple tassels, white flurries hung like banners from the sky; The leaves, who could feel it, turned to view the multitudinous flow; A spray of dust which blinded his eye, And a crimson knot in a leaf he knew, assailed his brain; Then a grasshopper came, and breath at once the flower blew out. And the hovel of his common world In which he lived was bleached, but not<|endoftext|>PARIS, May 14 (Reuters) - The fire that smolders in the Pyrenees can reach far as the English Channel. The roof of my childhood in a French forest of beech and oak is now cool and quiet, like a wood where frolicking children once ran wild. Here I stand, lost in the dark of a vast, old-growth ruin, a moss-covered tree. Nothing to do but linger here, oblivious of the passing of time, Whisked away from duty, I watch the pine as if to shoulder its shade, Its ghost, forgotten, hovers here, a ghost. Held close to the frothing mouth of my childhood it spoke in the flames and heat, and the words of the heat now burn in my throat, Convulses fire that was my life's blood, and in me a force, upon a raging torrent, blasts blast on blast. I think I hear the forest roar; I see across gray-tinged gallant beech and birches upon the far-off hills; Each leaf ======================================== SAMPLE 820 ======================================== Twice in the white hey, the once dark halcyon; Twice before, the once-resurrected man Walked to the Brim-Bur-Stake, the Foeman once, And won, but the Hero ne'er hath walked The mentioned prize again. When change the proud Brim-Bur-Stake away, And move to swooning, the rhyme must change, He won't come back for the Sake. So far I never have writ, by jing, Of man his nest to burst out of; Yet--since this one way, or that one, In these old rhymes 'tis writ, 'tis wearied-- With fatherly regret to trace Man's wanderings, from the darkness groping Out to the moonlit hillside springing, Or up the deep abyss winding, Thro' islands, mountains, deserts wandering, Whose distance is no seeriety Of halcyon dreamings at the blind wind; Or where the pallid long stars glisten, On the deep sea's shining steeps 'Tis but a flame of darkness; Or where the waves are dark as night, By palmery glowing brightly, Or flame-tongued o'er it spouting At one fathoms' depth, aught is sung-- The issue never told Of a goodly song. "How can it be, so wide in range And do so much that may be done?"-- The author cried, troubled with the same. Then he thought of sonnets more serene, "Then next I chose out poems great In beauty, length, musicality; Some perfect voices, most perfect singers; Then cast about me, serene and pure, With something hearkening, sullen and wild, A great earnestness of sweetness found, A folly sure!--A light sound rang-- The thews, the elbows, the sturdy neck, And arms! There was the hero's chest, A look of fear, and wisdom, and art. Bold adversary to the bright Stars, and darts a living quest At airy shadows--odd and fine Fragments, and crystal shells of sound Where lines of sound entwine with glints of light Of shape and hue, and deep hues as foul. And then he sighed for verse so strong, That nothing had made what it sang. And traced too how sweet it was--"the gleam," That came from two females, touching it; Then wild--the faeries went and told it; Then gave an echo of it--"the woods Mused on fairy-land," the Fairy said. "The men of river and of river- lake folk"--as he saw them drawing near, The author thought them like that "other" And, remembering as a child he read Of the folk who dwelt in Fen area, Forecast him to the follow tor- Miachum, when a lad grew pale For want of torch-glow, and, whispered, moans, And so lets down the shutter of his eyes; And goes with brow as earnest and proud, As his forefathers wore, And yelped therewithal, "Hey! hey! This is Riberton! the peaks are snow!" Or, in the dewy dawn, The sun's bright glory, slowly burnt Grey wings and reddenings, one by one, Clouding him,--and sat down for truth, And wrote, in small, terrible characters, In dark, like pencil, "Del Aroudaine," And showed it to his fair. Then thought he, "Too perfect is this kind Of wonder, who founded it!" And we, and dwelt on his rhymes, I trust, will forgive his mental pain! And e'en on "farmer in the hills," to try The power and passion of his moral! He broke the loaf in hand and tried its smell; The bread yielded a sharp and bitter bloom And he half choked on a crunch in his mouth As small a sort as yet in bread Was ever known, except in Scotland; He deftly unloosed the ribbon off, And blessed the gods in a loud supplication, And wiped his brow, and fled away To ask the Rentis' daughter. And, when the Rentites' daughter Wore another diamond in her ear, The famous bitch on whom he keenly looked Groaned shyly, and the old woman smiled Loudly, and on her nose-bags bent her lip And ======================================== SAMPLE 821 ======================================== (As it sounds out to me). What I thought an earth-colored sky in the air turns out to be whole and colorful, sky all about me, though each point of light is a hill. By evening I cannot see one tree. It's a promise of solace, a seeming loss of scale, blue-green trail of oncoming thoughts they have each arranged in a circle glimmer of relief, each turning to some other hope I'll feather clouds climbing sky for sunset, in color, colored as branches of a tree each one a hill. <|endoftext|> "Falling Leaves", by Eileen Myles [Nature, Animals, Landscapes & Pastorals, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] Somewhere between sunset and night I started to find these falling leaves in my life where I would have been hunched in the brush like a closed fruit, a fine exchange of air and life, they fell like seeds, or more like the branches of gigantic trees re-purposing a ground that was already in them and their bodies hale and healthy like the air they supply, the leaves say <|endoftext|> "Patting Hours", by M.L. Smoker [Activities, Jobs & Working, Social Commentaries, Money & Economics] A man I do financial transactions for asks me if I have money. I am afraid of the future. I am afraid of losing it. I am afraid of what it would mean to lose it. By living for hours in an airless garage I get time and a house to prepare myself. On Saturday mornings, hours into the airless garage I speak into the receiver and hear the click as he starts the motor. I imagine a financial ledger. The beautiful things in life make me rich. I see them carry me on their wings. <|endoftext|> "Infection with a Mouse Disease", by Rebecca Morgan [Relationships, Pets] They live underground, they know where they go. They lay lemon-black eggs that grow up good bacteria, black and buoyant on the underside of the pile. They eat the food the little snakes leave behind, the tiny ones even stop to eat the occasional carrot. The old mice live on, and reproduce, the young and the lazy ones. The females lay dozens of eggs that are immediately eaten. They die. It's that kind of life. <|endoftext|> "Baby Einstein", by Rebecca Morgan [Living, Time & Brevity] Look at that little baby rabbit. He looks so tiny in his own shadow. And look at that old lady holding her eye shadow over her cat eye. She looks tiny, and sees everything in a world so small. <|endoftext|> "The Brightest Morning of the Year", by Rebecca Morgan [Living, Coming of Age, Nature, Winter] For Beth Winter is a blankness. It moves in the houses without thought. It falls on the wings of the trees. It builds the great snow gates. It oozes down the streets. It stops the cars in their tracks. It shifts the weight of clouds. It kills the trees. It is the dark you wake up to every day. It is the sharp cold in your bones on January 2, 1969. It is the brightness you see before you think. It is the details in the mist outside the window. <|endoftext|> "Kites", by Frances Lop [Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities] Light as a line of cloud, dark as a dead black hole, one woman's arms become three ak-cooks cooking up the wind and color in the morning with her bare hands. By the creek they form an ak-cook that keeps the wind black and beautiful. And they cease their singing to match the sound of the rising water. Their movements become the coils of a spring that curls up from a pool of dark water. They cease their world to light and to form a world. <|endoftext|> "The Visible Hand", by Alan R. Shapiro [Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] The hand that's not there is not there. The hand that is there is a hand, has a hand, has a hand. But the world without hand, the world with hand, the world without hand, hasn't hand. ======================================== SAMPLE 822 ======================================== Poet look, but with wary glance; As he, in distant world, returns To his lonely height and ties. Hastes he my fears, nor leapers near, To ravish, with a flame of fire, My good companions, when he's close I cannot reach, or he discovers? Nay, he's on the wing, that lets Our own faint fires from where they rise Fly far and far from me in flight. 'Tis pleasant, when the wings at last Of our desire, with known hot hand, Our spirit grasp (as well you might, the while) And smite each hindrance that we see The eyes of men look blind to. Yet I'd gladly give a drowsy voice To heaven's anthem's song, that day, But your presence now is gained by love That, sure to conquer all mankind, I hear In heaven alone. Come:-- As to the point I began; All that a man can do Is in a noble cause assigned. Sages may prate, They are the tail's length from the beast. Each subject is my praise, I am the subject of all. As I'm worshipped by the great Your grandfather I, Younger than you, but less Harder to abide than you, A child in sense of place; Full of the faith of his mien, Friend of my man, not of his kind, Yet mortal in my joy, who sit With the great on SURA MARITA. Your John the fair, your Thomas the stout, (Folius to this age the sacred name,) I owe to the same nature, Shirt and a livelier grace; And every bust, without a stain Of age, can show the same, I What time they laid the lash On my bosom for falling off Before the ass, the one time He could not wait, my love, To take my bit of lace, my sweet, My son! If sire and mistress like, As well as son, they think you worth; But I know that, doing good, you please In the same, the owner, you, "There was a clerk"--And, jist like that, What does that clerk, dear, Say now? Remember, mother, I used to run to his shop, An' o' days, he had in store He'd heap me up an' pay my fee, An' not go fail an' leave me sore; Now he has taken to the hayfield, In the gale an' the frore; He looks out as if he'd better stay, An' he'd sooner crack his head, if he Did ere aff my lord would wear, So, to sum it up--my wife has The clout to my wall, to be aright, As I can't wash when I please, My wife runs out at breakfast time, My children grow fat, I've seen, An' they have no laws but those we've bought; So to sum it up, this fellow, Wife an' bairns, bread an' buikkur, Without the good that you pray, Go and--go ahead, That "Had help from Heaven" you speak of, What does he do--for altho' I'd say If he'd things done for his oen of life He might have a happier creed: I guess the churches in this town would say His mother was a darn housekeeper; His habits would say he should a saviour Be no great many generations hence; An' we kin find it in the state, at least, If not when he returns, but who knows when If never, or unless he does. You see, we've been told his tongue Is a noble thing, or else we wouldn't Have to pay so much for it; I'm as sure I might almost say he'll go All the way back to New-England, and Get as far as such a place, an' that Is a drop that's far from the full, For we've had hints it's his notion That things there have a better look; They don't burn as bright as he'd see To return to us and the rack Of the ridiculous meeting-house; He'll guess it must be so, Because he went a long while Aclimed with the Miser's Stone-- I've no fear that he'll go In such detail back to the days But what has he been? Here I stand Digging ======================================== SAMPLE 823 ======================================== If this come from thee, a person not debased by it, I fear That we have made a pact, or it would come less soon; but There is a spirit in me from low to high That says, "All power to the spirit whom hearts know well Is good--and there is power in the highest of The spirit that it is in us 'gainst our most intimate Enemies a sacrament is, is--an obduracy-- Against the body and the body's savagery, This also I teach. Envies me power, from what thing am I given? From the spirit that my enemy Is building in me a temple for his soul, And building ever the day by day. O body, I do not speak so much against you; I wish you were an ax, and I a stone, And the altar a chisel, and there was a Woman's voice in it, and I were just May no rum-tiddlers at you, and jars of May And immemorial May, And Father's-day, and quickly in the days That we have lost the season return; But away--away, I say away, And there's a temple for the spirit. Lift me from this seat And hold me now, lest I be gone For a moment and my sound should be Lost, being of such quick semitone, That should I therefore fall away My voice would miss the following in And so you must carry my discourse as Far as 't is love for love to hear; For of such space of time that you hear There will be found space for very grave And very deep desires and thoughts. Grave thoughts and grave, O Love! and are you not Creature of the sun too? for when the fount Of sapphire is shattered in her face, I say That such are not human thoughts and such Are not great, but mortal, and the fount Of sapphire is a sign of the nature Which makes a barren thing like stone to be. And I am dissolved, O Love, in this ground So mother-like in that dust, but there I found my heart of life in the rent Where the thick grass did breathe and weep; For this we see, that even in the human race Life is empty, but sapphire has its use, And the heart of sapphire is its horse. Wherefore, O Love, this speech of mine is just, For he who hears, well knows the hands are mine Which are stirring this dark stream of words: the place Must fill so full with love it may be filled With none to miss it: thou knowest! yet I say That I do hear from them in fine the call Of the farthest stars, which is the way Of all the brothers; but thou art thrown Into this time among multitudes of men. And thou too art a star, but the bright sun Beats well beneath other eyes and thou Cumbre hast not so much as one of them Touch to know what time brings this time of braid stars. If in another hour, O Love, I had seen thee, I would have reflected upon this time that is Hassan, or thou, and art thou as a star. As if the darkness had grown to make the day Full-mad, in the rolling of thy sands of light, And I had thought that thou, a leaf-drawn sheet of glass, Didst move through the sorrow of the warm stream. By this time I think thou art made of stone, For all the rivers of the world must flee To reach thy trembling body and thou creep Listless as a drops of water, as the foam Wasthes free in thy sky-line, a blank of sky Lying like a blot upon thy strand, As the sea shows for some blossom-like night Upon its face, nor ever let a tide Move in and make a shoreline; lo, I know This line, and through this line I do describe Thy pallid body and thy sky-line And all thy noiseless sea-line, for thus I Describetyped thee once, and in the line Of thy sand-elements didst picture thee. Now I will my sand-elements to take And I will lay them against thine head: Now thy sky-wasting band will lay and mar, And the brother-blinding set will lay and mar Each single green-waving wave, and when thou com'st Upon the shore of this hot state, and see ======================================== SAMPLE 824 ======================================== And the wide world where'er you wander, May show your need, And the necessity of relieving Yourselves upon a bit of ground Where you can walk on one leg, dear God, you! And when you've got something like a little extra Weight, and ankles fat, and all that, And time ever so while to get it all off, And stomach too, and so forth and so on, In fact by and by to shoulder too Anything like an appetite, you'll find That you've got an eye of a vere at large, For the bare fact is that you have reached a state Where you willed to become a man. You see you have come to the conclusion That from all the womenfolk round about You're going to have to get an offer For getting out of this; And that you can do it by following This course which I have outlined to you, And frankly to tell you now, You see you've got a coming here, You've got a jaunt to Denver, Colorado. Now Denver where the blue skies gleam Is a town so blue it is even When set in a landscape by the sun It dazzles, for then it is an April Where seems the wind of the summer blowing, And on the flagpole over the river A banner, 'Isle of the zero,' has meaning. But when you've been out to Denver You see that the zig-zagging zero Hangs like a top, and in its pure whiteness It shows that it's been with you from snow When cold enough to make it fierce. And then the old superstition Thrills and you feel an urgency, That you must kill some time, and hurry, And go off in a dress you have off, Till you get to the country so far You can feel a change beginning To make a perfect city Where you'll be to and fro And blast the yoke upon your neck. And you've so much to do, and it is hard To remain to yourself, You see so soon all over the city Homicides, from all the boxes Rifle-shotgunned, and wrung, The semi-detonated mines Of wild potassium. <|endoftext|> 'The wheel and the wreck of the ship, Still rolling and whole as of old, Screeching as of unbridled sensation, Cradled in flames that taints the sky, Scarce knowing which they're o'er. The helpless isles of ocean glow, Brinked with fire and sulphurous fogs, The underbelly of things. The skyward-gazing pirate peers Where for days, no ships will come to, sink, or swim; The slaver's sun-blanched sails are pricked up at the end, He says, "I think I'sle Aix's up and down"--' Her up and down as fast as a dog, swim; The bank is half an hour in coming down, The lonesome sailors hate the steady plummet; The long-haul isles and storms--"Yes," cries the seaman, "Mean sea's a help when you're lazy, even old England." But what did she do, or wherefore should she do it? Not say her business. Say it was her birthday. "If you choose not to stay with temperance, Then now she's up and off by sunnier way. She wants to be all Scotch and English, All cool and early, eat solid food, And off 'n' away to hunt down the Troll! Her lower pot-roast's fit for the Troll! She never has hard meat, she never has bread, And yet she's a love in hunting men, And all men kill, or they'd kill her too, Or (seeing she's good) she'd have the power; We've rilke how she always has men, And has not any, but only men's mouths!" They're coming, they're coming, the lowlands, the Rhineland; And she, when she's had her turn at hunting, To dive into the clouds, and float away Through the fog and the darkness, away To where the lowlands of the Rhineland vie With the seas and skies of Scotland. She shivers, and her feet will catch the sedges, Like on and off again, And look through her bended sarnies to far away; The wreck of her ship her eyeballs will mar, And she will struggle up with her ======================================== SAMPLE 825 ======================================== "Farewell, dear mother, "In such a harbour, I ween, Thou ne'er wilt see ships in such a tide, Nor wharf vendoring or forward rudder. Go, from a wharf thy life to recover, But cast it all on me, father! And think not, slave as thou art, to pilfer The flower of thy most prized treasure, Thine, mine--a woman! The form, the whole Of his fortune, and the home of his father, With the burden of my happiness: And, for thy sweet sake, I discharged my task. "Yes, what thy place, my father, there? In our humble household?" "Mother, thy son's return to me, Is ended, for there is not now a man To marry me." And yet a look of suffering Fairest in womanhood came o'er her face. While thus the speaker spoke, to herself The sweet philosopher mused--"Man is just, To such extent that all to merit-- So named, because no things are what they seem-- Mankind, the true measure of their being, Must measure itself." Mused she then "Woman, the main Of all this grief to me is clear; But what is private shall not be public, Or thought of many is not the thought of one." Then resolved she "a stranger still Is born unto every one; Yet till these times shall pass-- What others think not mine nor thine-- I'll walk my ground. "A cloud is in the eternal fen, And o'er it a thin gleam of light; I turned me to the West: The Fall Moon fled it there, Or, cast away by the heat. So I will seek thy face in the Spring, Like one that weaves a garland of jasper. "I feel the Sun-light stir about my eyes My ears are garbed in buds and velvet grass, As a flame smells forth roses: Then would I sigh and grasp my pale hand for more." So lifting up her eyes unto the skies, In the Spring thither she beheld a face, The very plume on the fin of her shoe. Such as young heroes wither before they strike The heart of a brother king; Such as behind strong valour lives but presumption; Such, behind the gravest names in the books of years, Underneath a dam the tender damsel rolls. So love was won beneath the gray waves blue, That girl undaunted, with the sea-white feet of youth, Fell on the swimmer's hood of the fairy dead; Fell on it like a sound under the billows blown. And cried with the love-like groan the billows blow, The waves and the wind made answer one and other Like one lordling when he gat some scornful news: And the girl's voice trembled loud, and ever fell A tremulous murmur, nor could the comfort rest Of home-shared sleep, nor yet a guest-elite Rest on the kindred hearth, from the folk slain. And if he crossed, now look, now frowning frown at her, She looked at him with two-tuned foot as if she wight He finds the fish in water frozen on the shore, Though they were at first out of his reach: The maid had never wist for him and ne'er Would have met when dawn was flashing over the blue; But morning was cheerier than dark-red smoke, For grass of the sod is better than the mead, O, green hair or dark is but endless room, The scarlet or the pale-blue stuff of paper, And hence might dwell over-far, to rise or fall As yellow day lengthened with the sun of a boy. And now she sat beneath the chamber glaz'd With weed of her feet, unseeing of the take That shone on its prim glass. Now he felt her clasp His hand in hers; but by no look of the eyes Seem'd the maiden mov'd. Deep in his soul that dark Called up from a thousand hurt hearts anigh, She murmurs, and holds the runaway in dismay. They parted, then, they met. But ah, but alas, How is the heart for heart with love to con! Through all the anguish how sombre grows the cheer, And who had power of sweet allurement, who Drew the watcher to his bed, or led the one From ======================================== SAMPLE 826 ======================================== Tall and simple, Green, square, and stately. She who has not loved, Let one come to me, To watch for shadows in the place Where the sun has never shone And the light, red spots on clouds, Has never worn a gown; And they will heed for her, Who has not loved; Whose help is needed When some smile of mine is lost Upon a face Where there has been no smile, Though they look at each other's face, There is nothing left to do. Eyes that left my eyes Faces that left my face May be found again, But what the sweet fancy brought Is past, because it cannot be Retained in memory. When men have been, When the things are buried Which they left, And forget and hate and love; When women be forgetful And women be dead and others But breathe and laugh and ask; There is a dread that they be And the days, not days, Are flowing into noon. Cloths that were feared of the Spring May lose their lustre And the Winter that we fear, May be naked, bare, and live; But the summer may be vain As soon as Winter be; In which sort each day that comes Is winter in the waiting, Or summer in the blink Of the forest evermore. Little merriments of Time, What is that which you come to do? Even now, (Ah, is it not enough that they pass Lithe, but with eyes that the lips have pressed) Life is slain; and you that will pass With the false breath that breeds you the neglect Of Death's tapers, must sally forth, and show On the last journey, where each way leads home, The birds to the earth for sun, and the ground to light, When each way leads back, to where it began. The earth for its own parts, Death, the smallest stone, the whole world man may hold, Hurl back to the unknown point of birth, And tell Time's stillness and Time's power by. Where that begins, Time's way, and where its end, (Because you will not tell, and Time will, if asked) Tie back the thorns that the flowers have clogged, And force Death back upon his reign, Then touch life up, to lay it open wide For all to come to, not some to hinder. The irredeemable bonds of the old order Disperser, and the bonds that redemptied it, Resurrected it, nor yet of them alone, But the mighty force of all Time and Space, As of all things parts of all things, its Royal Child, Death, whose empire no faith shall show, But whose sepulchral urn you may'st take This, this returns you. This was the Rise and Fall Assumable of Life, which you see The landscape spread of each law, from small To of all things to all things, passing away Without one place, and without one thing: Its rise is vast, and its fall is narrow, But of all sorrowless to come, The world was wont to laugh and aye shake The Universe, but that's a tale for a song. The world was wont to stand and look small And grieve, then wince happy and smile, For in the heaven of Death is neither size Nor sure, abysmal, or inhospitable. Whither you went? whence? such questions add To Life that I, in which I'm a pencil The first of all things is awed, yet odd; For odd, not as a certain but as a certain From the law's point straight to the point of reason From the law's point straight unto the point of love. <|endoftext|> "How sweet, when I would breathe the rarest Techialeet of Vaudeville; My voice would beat the wrath of the sky, For mighty thunder was my "fool" indeed. Where is the wagway of the voice, Which may have shiled the whole watery world? How should we sing of the wonderful of voice, Of the harmonious sound, which beamed down From Eden's housetop, And spring up built A peacock in Thebes? What were we but angels? Would we be angels aye, with wings on our heads? "O my heart, be at all our joys Within the innocentness of youth, Would it yet ======================================== SAMPLE 827 ======================================== Took the god a marble road, a glowing, Refunding path to going through, to clear and dry and fill up and free the mind. I called my God to my flesh; I called Him to my ever breath; I called Him to my steps, the one finite thing. I called Him, and bowed my head, And went as I had been led. There was a something in that God that came to me when I was sad, That touched the points of my senses and surprised my being. He touched my feet, He touched my feet; He kissed my head, He kissed my lips. My love stood there beside me; he embraced me; He drew my head from out my hair; My head was from my shoulders parted; My breasts were hungry bread that He would eat; My breasts were psalms to God for man; My breasts were God's feet that lead my steps above, Because I knew that in the bright, chequered morning after the dark, That Christ will be Lord and God, His throne will be in this temple, where I will bow to Him--and to you. A little storm calls into the sky; So that it moves the grass Like a wise man's sigh, so be it with me, Be up as you may! Be up! and watch the great mountain-swallows go singly. I would I were up there, when all is one, And turns are dim, And up the wise, deep under all a sigh. Lads, lads, take all things one by one. Let none wangle by changing from loss to security. Lads, lads, do you hear a little wind? And there's no doubt but that yon mountain-lion's flying, Heigh-ho for greater sway! There was a little fire. There's a little fire And a little summer-fire. There was a little fire, and it bit So that it touched, and spread from the mountain's crest And down to the valley, and a-beyond There was a little fire. There was a little fire. And it bit, and burnt With the thunder-train of it, and bit One and the other, till one thing was done. One was grown And the other died,-- One is now the federal Her tongue was sharp as a pheasant-pen; Her lips were sharp as a pheasant-pen. Do you hear? Do you hear? Do you hear? "Her mouth was like a pheasant-pen. One was grown And the other died,-- One is now the federal "Fire, and do you hear? Do you hear? Do you ears?" There was a little fire. There was a little fire That danced, and the gods danced over it. There was a little fire; it bit And all the voices of the gods, with the singing of the gods, danced with it. There was a little fire. One was born and one was not. And one is now the federal "Open your mouth," she said, There was a little fire. There was a little fire. That time, on the night when the gods died, and, dancers all, swung merriment over it. There was a little fire. And when the time had come, one thing was done. You are the palest pink that I know. I can hardly discover or imagine you. I see that I am the only one you own. There were two, but one burned so fast she couldn't. When the children of that land brought the pear and the pear-bble to Boer Belder, he did not know either to have or to keep. Bother him it was to give in a word to get the other. Now no one can be entirely sure in the five centuries since whether he chopped them up with elm-wood for his throat or in a fit of youthful passionate love to ride upon for twenty-six miles of red You were with me to the bitter end, always the bitter end. - Your charity is a rattle in the memory; it is a stone you can never hide beneath your tomb. As a slave once told to do a sensible thing and let a friend have his will, what chance had you of achieving such ======================================== SAMPLE 828 ======================================== And the name he bore. When a stranger you met, Or any one you chanced to know; They could be your friend; There's a friend in need of Stir to hear their story. They die by the wayside, Weary and worn with travel, By tattered rags that tear at them, Huddled in the mire; And some old storyteller Soon too tired to tell them Tells of them to the kids As they used to do; And the children of the village Go home to bed with them, Gathering the drift of ages To play with. Wandered we in, Traveled we forth, Searching for a home and a land; 'Twas but the same old dream Perpetual since first we met; We, alas! to many lands Turn in search of the Ocean, Search for a rampart of ocean. Must reel our bodies one to other, In shuddering and in tumult, The sinking and the rising of the stars, So thro' the meadow the wind-machine shakes, Where the new grass with the grass of the dawn Is dotted high with their feet and tails, Must reel our bodies around, Nightly, in the horrid hour of dark, And still in the wheel of the world is swinging, Round the child and the elder and the gray, Stripped by our care, we lie together, Asleep or waking. Yet no more, when the languid moon Takes from the branch of the snow-branch The woodbine blossoms 'neath the snow; Shall we behold them in our dancing And staggering wonder of dancing, Reel to and fro as waves come streaming, When in storm the storms are hurled, Frozen trees sinking in snow, Frozen as if they had just left The path of the sun, when light broke sky, And lay shining from heat and cold, Blent into the liquid of the stream, Or splintered, And scintillated, Into the shine of the snow. Now back from the wood it still is worth A sigh of a remembrance, That in the falling of the snow There rings a mournful chime; And here in the snow's cold circle Thro' the fissures it gleams faintly, As the memory of starlight, Night-dawn, dawn-sun, Furrow, or ferry, Or earth with the snow upon it, Or something like these, and nothing like. All these Make our own low world complete, As, to these, added by the way The mighty faith of the other men, The snow is woven through the years To the soul of the common world, So is the snow to the soul Of the men of our time, And is woven to the fate Of the bodies of the children of men, And as snow from body to spirit, It flows and is blown, And does fall, To dot with fire The atmosphere of the distant worlds. Two spirits along a path to us Cut a path in air that flew, All ice and flame, as when there seems Straight between the clouds and sea A silver spire, and till it cheers At the heart of the marked sky-line, It gives a resting-place to shadows Where night and day tie arm and hand Through a twilight not of noon,-- It gives to pale sleepers A noble place for dream and death, And with iron hands that cleave and rend Hands drap and coconscious locks of flame Where with her golden body they strew Hoods white-glowing in the glooms of hungers grim And of glistening in the beaded stream. And our spirits fled at once, and here We stand on the appointed place of sleep, A little way apart; and the deep Cold draughts that thin the air and strain Warm and inhale blow from stars to lees We turned in the way that the dim old time Stretched from the freshened edge to the feet Of that far fountain whence we first were drawn By the fairies of the hill. When the water first I drank, I was but a child, And half asleep when they made the stream: And lifting my head they said that I should drink; And got as they went--I dreamed it--I was drinking; And my breast, and it was so small a breast, Haled this wine-bottle up, till it was as big As ======================================== SAMPLE 829 ======================================== > In what wretched spot should this wretched VAMPY Meet his skelum of gaiter and gallle That now his quality as VAMP how dread to teach Is known to those in bliss how dire to him! The GARROT screamed and escaped: A ghastly claw took some charge; I thought of Huns and brocades, And so the FEARS OF BELIEF continued. Yet fearlessly did I take the fringed thing And was pleased at heart, Not that 'twas stricken from a rack, But that thine eyes Were kind in making me such a sight. I think, said I, it is not right For us to go to the CHURCH: The IMMORTAL from thence, When we save our souls, Is kind, seeing he once lived. But thus one says: 'Tis all one, 'tis all one; Our souls save us, to some end; And mine mine-- This being my Worship, I say by RAPHAEL When I play at the rough and varnish All bets are off. Upon all sides now round, And from the right are bost The KNIGHTS, and oft mote they gaze, Then write such doctrine down, (As they are gazing upon the cairdle That is this GAY) And the old dish of the lat and the vest Is not seen of any two, But of their thoughts the inmost part They think upon our CASTLES and TOMBS. But when I would wake up my Life, I have a desire of my desire; And there is no power I can find That will these two things aid, Save that they declare I must: --"Do you love CHRISTIAN very much?' --"Do you love CHRISTIAN dear?" There is one change I do crave, For I would name the DALE, And him, but for his lady's tear, I had long found annes. --And, dear, how can he more, That, out of many, one was, The fires of Cupido drive away, Save only one to smite? When I that is great with age, Behold the fashion of the day, The church is full of the priest, Who loves the country to call. But yet the archbishop gets his crown, As great Crupp at three times ten; And as he good in church he is, The great man in his province; And he to the widow's chamber goes, That without children, he may be sure To have a rich burial. There are some, I shall say, who say This should I knock this house down, For all its power and its estate; Who say I am a foe of the state, An enemy to the order of things; That what I say is false and dangerous, And show a thought unfitnessed, As also showing that I am a fool, Who made the words of the seven-headed flow Seem to quake and confess the truth. I tell you, Sir, you leave out, and take your eye To your great books that made Christ decide What one man to crucify in the end. Read them, for they bear witness to the same, Are you not?--or if you choose this throng of men Have departed Christians thought worthy of the whole. If you will excuse this foolishness, And leave this yard of the street, I promise that I will not destroy A whole town of Christians in this square. This true, nor less true, I have read, If all you do or say be mere sound, As you say, no man came from afar; You blow your trump so loudly that you say There was and is such evil in the world. There is no man, and there is none, Who shows as much, and I am one. I ask it not as a slur on name, For I am but an honest play. --But should I show, as I would short while I Were only some new whore to meet, The trumpet shall be blow, as you suggest, 'Twere merry to blow the tide of this town. But if you a little leisure will take, And a little leisure will give us, I am not so sure that I shall not wish A little leisure, to be sure, For I have a sight at these Balladawi's Before I speak to you so much tanned. I sing at the top of the pow'r. The leaves may slay the ears that I ======================================== SAMPLE 830 ======================================== ie. These are quiet things. They turn their backs, they fold their wings. They only say The names of things they have seen. They look right up and they only know the part To bring to maturity That is willing to bring itself. They see clear light where there is no place. Their bodies grow tired Of nearness and then they come back to the edge. <|endoftext|> "A Few Last Words", by Robert Lowell [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving] All the fishes that did bite and bite, Doing so many odd things, Were all so curiously bitten; A postcard, too, did go Upon the night before our death, And we looked at it to-death; A woman, too, did lean to lean Against us breathless long before, But she died laughing, long ago; A chimney once a chimney was, An evening paper at evening time, Must still linger awhile and linger too, To tell the same old world our death Had given us, so very many years Besieged by life, and marred by death: Even the old stone tomb we stood in, 'Twas scarcely more broken than it was: You smile as you bend, And I am very tall, And your hands are against my knees, And our hands meet as before. <|endoftext|> "A Good Man", by Robert Lowell [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Men & Women, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books, Father's Day] A good man dies so gaily, And proudly, That his children run to sell his body For his coat. A good man has no head, Or, if he have, it has no feet; And, in his life, is pretty But his death is very sad; For a man's death is not more stupid Than the death of God, or the Last judgment, is So, to this man's death, yes, yes, There is a quiet way; But, to his life, there's the only Safer way. A good man dies on his kid, In the morning of the kid; He has no death's head, But a death's foot, And a cat is good enough for him Where a man is no more; A good man in his youth must Suffer a lot, and be wept And smudged by the old dog Of the lice that bite children; But a good man takes his wash And his journey on the road, With neither heap nor desire, But a full glass of beer When he comes in. A good man can't have Honesty at all; He's most honest when he's drinking, For the war is more convincing When it's mixed with drink. A good man cheers for nothing; He's made to get fat on cheese, And there's not a man of us all But, with starving rats Luxury to torment, Must devour a bit. A good man will bring down, In his lifetime, The news must shake us Of the oddest things; The funeral day Is the day to take care Of the old man; But a bad man might be Dead and ragged of't But a good man lives, And all his cream Is eaten up in spite Of his tongue His lungs, wrists, and all Of the things he's alive; A good man, though We thought him good, Is not a good man. <|endoftext|> "So They Flede the Caçove", by Robert Lowell [Living, Death, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] I In the inn of the Caçaf, the dusty town From which its classes pour to and fro, With crossing limbs below the portal's run A procession, each man a little streak Of yellow powder in his garment, All passing swiftly from hand to hand, Horses holding, but their beasts, they turn To the work of life with universal halt. They go with slow movements measured, And measured footsteps as they parry With stepped judgments, sighs, and glances But the work goes on, and steadily They return in the alphabetic crush Of the dusty town where throbs the axle of The wearisome station thronged by night, Tumultuous work in a stagnid age Seeming eternal silence of whose ancient use Was inspiration's first decree ======================================== SAMPLE 831 ======================================== ugh! so we won’t see someone else touch it until you pull out the money and breathe it. <|endoftext|> "After Robert Moore", by David Wagner [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books, Social Commentaries] He walked home with his head and his chin stared at by the ghosts of books, stories the best of them all, a slimmering stream of books flitting about him in silent chats before they disappeared into the edges of the woods where he lived with the machines he chose the voice of which he wrote under which was the voice he heard on Saturday in which he had to say in which he felt himself constantly yanked and pulled in every direction on the sidewalk where he waited in the snow to find what he had missed on Saturday to hear he read on Saturday his own words who drove him a little in a fog he read back from the books as if only in the forest <|endoftext|> "Three Poets’ Quatrains", by Gary D. Fu, Professor of Poetics [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets] * * * * There are no words yet, when I have finished this book. Perhaps there are words to follow those at I found a few on a train. Not time, time was always a word I knew would be there if I followed the tracks those I with a face who wander the tracks. Time was a good word too, only if a line or waves a line that ends now, though the moon settles down into its hole in the long grass among the words the possibilities. * * * But what was a word soon turned to thought that on the coast of your face, an old thought that your face brought to me so many years was a word, too, a word like precipitation, a word like the middle of this country where all the words begin to run in a track. <|endoftext|> "Three Poets’ Quatrains", by Gary D. Fu, Professor of Poetics [Living, Time & Brevity, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] * * * Three times the house was burning it was burning the last time fire had touched it again, before I was born. I have a house, it is burning, I have a car, but no driver. No book with a neatly entangled through and barely enough space between my house and its destruction. So I live without a parking spot in a neighborhood of other houses. In a country where another child, a younger one, brings other children from a time when houses were more widely distributed. I have a house that once was burning, where now I live. It is burning, my car breaks down on a road a little ways outside of here. I would have a driver if I had my car. But a car, a house in another country, and a little space between: what I have along the way. It is easy to live without a parking spot. <|endoftext|> "Three Poets", by Gary D. Fu, Professor of Poetics [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Reading & Books, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] * * * * * * * * * * * Love is the key that governs this room, unmapping the mind as surely as a diamond processes its path ======================================== SAMPLE 832 ======================================== his desire, a mask Wherein 'twas laid to snatch Freedom from the tyrant's hold. For that the monarch there Had power to do the soul's will, And back to Freedom steer The freedom's tribes of land, Which "God raised up against the lot Of those who there did set them down." Her grave the mother earth made To shelter him from the storm, His shelter from the dart Of dire starvation,--wound, And poisoned,--till he wrought And labored the invincible wo Of Freedom to emancipate. There's room for no more nations in heaven; So, sweet, let us build a wall around the world, Like chisels upon the oval field of life. Long be the wall, Its frieze be golden, And strong be its bands of steel and iron. Weave on weaves, For we are sons of our land's mistress. That is the true song, The song of the Lord. To-night, beneath the silvered stars I see a pilgrims' cottage, a group Of gentle Indians, robed in the light Of the benediculous sun. Gazing content Like one who treads the dangerous sands Of unknown rocks In good hope that some rock may drop, some morn, To an one ready to disenthral His weary footsteps in the sea. Here, the altar of the rite Is furnace-free and red-flaked. The golden spindle Is drawn, As if to hurry the transformations Which the sacred web is to be. This peasant, To-night, A priest, will pray In darkness. Great clouds are closing to the evening sky, The sheaves of harvest hang full in the cross-hatchings Of rustling corn. For I will ask not, this new year's eve, When your busy mind hurries you to think Fruitless words to sing, to fashion A rosy dream. A boyish day-dream weds. Fool me not With dreams Of meadows fringed with naked tree Or apple-trees in bloom. For you, For me, This vision which is night to you, This night That you will not mark, as I have done, The garden with bent bars, Is night without a different breath From this cold barred window And the long street. The sombre procession along the street Breaks up with its throbbing foot; Each intricate gazer hits it thro With eager eye. And yet we know Each step is with ours; The foremost, Who strike ahead on the way, In our only room We peer again, Within Our eyes, Till time be reached; For you, For me You did but spy Our features, bound Like tracks along The dusty room. The paved road dissolves. Fog enters at the yard's fence, And in the night the house grows dim. The homely, iron-walled cottage Has its share of the blame, And as the day recedes, we watch Its last gray flame, In our only room, Its festal table piled And overturned. On fire for a start the extinguished light Leaped to the window-pane. In our place Of the queer window's peristaltal glow A look of the eyes, Which fade on the carpet's stone-carved gloom, The fog-speckled bystory Of the capes, the creeks, the caws, The tops of the mountains, Tells of a peak that was uncloven When the world was all of a heap. <|endoftext|> A thousand years are but like the span Of the life of a single day. A great Emperor died, and a new Emperor succeeded him, and another took the empire upon his hand. But the bones of the sibyl's time lie entire. Now he may loiter Unhonored in Fairyland. At midnight, in the clogs of the rain, In the hedges of spring, He may hear a flute-voice, And an enchanted word Ere consciously it has sped Like the tramp of a horse In the heat of the great road, Run through the valleys Like the stamp of a peacock On the flowers. His eyes are upon the glitter And the play of a stormy world. For his age is as a mountain In the midst of a sea ======================================== SAMPLE 833 ======================================== Bow and curtis and yellow roses, Some heavy odours and the gummy shells Of turtle-doves. With its warder set, There in his head her fragrant scented stings Are bottled; and his door is boxed with pears And bay, and gate and gaud and gateau-blon Of grease and oils. And yet you see he seems Not all ungrateful. With a brown spider geck at The oncet sucking in the moonshiny air, He's simply skinnied up--a running sod, With his woolly legs. He never pays due jubilee To your wide wild obeissance, But cloaks him from this a certain surpassing And compassionate grace, And feels that ere he goes He shall be accepted whole and evermore. Look. Three brave German troops, They were the rigour and the joy Of an inexpert war. Where eagles scream through a typhoon, And artillery thunders peal, And a fire rings drowsing walls and towers And jacknaws bones, they waged, and waged The eternal war. These soldiers gamboled and laughed and clicked, On the German keel; And the feckless wind stiffly shook That sends an army to foreign shores, Their only care the hoop-hauts They gamboled on the beach. The Lieutenant is placed in charge Of eighty men with machine-guns. They travel in file across the steaming mud, To hunt for hidden Germans. He has a band Of scarlet-carrying Private-martyrs. They form up, in the morning sky, In gas masks and heavy grey bullet-proof vests. The big guns crack in derision, And more dangerous guns in reserve. Tanks stir through the leopard-skin track, And the bullets dance and fall. Where eagles scream through a typhoon, It is the long, futile race that kills, And not the bullet that once did kill. For first there are the blind pounces Of bronze-green bullets in their sockets, Then coloured mists, then plumes of prayer, Then scattered plumes and cigarettes. These come, all riding under licence, To carry out a cross with bullet holes, Spiked water and long fragments of soul, With faded magazines hanging out. Like eagles shot out of the sky by Hell, They wail like dying birds who die And leave their filthy feathers on the coals. There, in their whirling, hissing dance, They spoil the peace of all the little rascines, Whose tottering is held up by their ammunition-case. The Captain calls them down in silence, Cries out, "Great is the need!" But they run amok and he is sent to their masters, Who call back, "Naughty little paragons of truth! Your case is mine!" Then he leaves them to their mischief, And rides back the prison. These hunting troopers, wind and air, Scent the calm of living fountains. I gaze down the sunny corridor That wind and water have made. The green wood with its blossoming Tofflo joins, I watch with unwinking eyes. We pass a little room of work That holds a load of gun-smoke and deep green minitures And, formless in the dim, grey mess Atom with sharp T-shaped lights, Shines greeny lives that barely keep Their mistress' proud distance from their pain. The flying police they have forgot And toss the ball like paper bullets. Or like young equestrians Blown with wind. Their master's gun is mounted on their backs. A catapult he may launch. As we pass, a little white girl with eyes Just like her big brothers, and I think of The apotheosis of the poppies In North America, And hear her bold set laugh, As, under the tyranny of cobra fans, A kind of green-powdered pomp, she rides Over the rough mountain tracks, Thrusting and thrusting towards a colourless horizon. A thought begins to gnaw at the dainty slacks Of my clean jaunting motor, That with a cautious hand I lay upon My head. I do not fear that I, Who have for years been hard-driven by the Press Into the pit where lies no brake or crust, Shall suddenly dismount from my burned T-bolt seats And with bare breasts fall. It's just too much! They flood the Press with more than their rightful ======================================== SAMPLE 834 ======================================== And came to the nearne, Where dead men are boreen downe, And what ere haue wepte, been worn, By whyte Judas sweete slaine, Witless of Lord Jesus once their king: This who so fain would-be (Whose name be-) wol bringe and gete Thing which thou shewest, the best weall Mat pleasest fayle lust forto holde; And thou with us twene shalt do. Here two one shall be constraytly, To win the bodies whom they love, And ech of hem shall cause sleep. Nowe I to you the name will I teche Which you be eyht to, fayre loue, I am him whom ye canst so tame, Whom nought shall him holde more deide. These haue I told and now you know hou; He telles me that nowe it seemeth, That our almasour is Doubremonde, That whilom every man of him did wepe, Now every man that him seeth woundeth Is the cause that he is such an Doube, That whilome in presse of right ynought, Away from the Sonne is to ly Langly the kinges and Emperour: Sith neither death wolde lyv nere, Ne no man wolde him haue outher in his rest. Thus this Orre, at th'end of the year He telles a tale, and doth beseech his hede That of this stiver he wolde dye In dethem, with a glad penny depe He telles you, so wolde he leue In som part of the world whan that he mai For other parts thanne he mot, So that he sholde be bringd abrode In som part of this worlds meile. Bot al we fro no man it knowen For rihtwisnesse or for wepaigne It grieveth we noght, as men may se, Wherof that thou hast comoun ento Of evel at last to mannes heste. And if we not for that dar we duelle, Let serven him what evere he doth, For al sholde us noght make sacrifice Of serven therfore, as is falle To hevene, for to morste it nedeth: For who that morbuilde a thing wolde And kepe it out of haste, or be late, Fulofte it falleth to late and nyce The more it ben in crafte tofore. The contraced rihtwisnesse is And evere hath be falle of compainie So farr as I finde, riht so nyce That other fole of the worldes fame May do the ferste which is noght so: And thus the rihtwisnesse reste Togedie schal nevere com neard. The heved, the cover and the stern Of kinde in compaignie; and this thing With grene ryches is ryches wesnes. Of ryches is mochel fermin cleere, And many a lusti wyhtre it knoweth; And evel he nevere aros thilke Ne dare he what that other thryse Which chielde saugh ther is ynouh, For it hath lost his evere yiftes, For every yongke creature It stant in feith, the more that it lieth. A jape which kepeth a castel A bot to holde, whan that he felle, I trowe it is of good constellacioun, Wherwith the londe on acord nas noble, And betre it is than the Wede and loontes Worsiden thanne, for the hihe feith Til late be doghter than the greet please Is best, and to the ryche lorde Is worst; and if it typ unto the nou& They erred? There have been some, in sond that suche, That suche as it hapneth nae werdle, Went into prison ffre with hool to caste; Where evere he wol hevene to fette, And messe neir of time to ======================================== SAMPLE 835 ======================================== Five Times Men stand, and gaze upon the deeds of those their generations who have grown the past, And there are heroes in cold writing whose front teeth are white With tints of blood of murdered mothers, Blue blood which seems to be the blue mould. Men begin on the sea of centuries, There are men at war on every shore, And all war begins on the crest of war and its various of lords, And there are all on earth strange labours, To mould the men they have made, and to make men worth the keeping. But the first inklings of death in the mouth of the poet, The first flag of censure's colours burst, The first green flag of the plain men's land! Birkhead stern, with the o'erwhelming back! Here the moulded and the spreading tree, Showing men's societies with the eyes of men. There the flower of youth, there the moulds that hold fast what the hand wishes and dares not pluck! This, to shape men in the people's moulds, This, to mould joy in the people's joy, To mould the root from the stem! Our fathers laughed at these our states, Saying of War they had seen Something imperialistic, and misnamed Those battles of the confused plains As roads made for the triumph of one race, And the excess of another; that For conquest they were glad. But now, erelong, alas! the weary war Must cease; and leave come more ample room, For new creeds and new creeds, and tribes, and tribes, The father has set up his home In its stead. He said, "I am Safely here, I cannot fight, But I must sit with my men and wait." But there be many other Rocks than the Vales of Spain In these New World's soil, Which war makes not, but nests, and toils, And builds, and nourishes; -- Cities as great as France, And waving domes under our feet, Not the vales of France! And, from a hundred conquered lands, Rome sends to our shores Some supreme ruler to place on high Through this great empire, blest with arms And other famous heels, This next; But Rome, the greatest, says to her sons, "We will be blest with arms, "or that this man, "Who thinks he can be great, be still the same Great lord of peace, "and be their head; And some few years after, they shall say, "If we had heard my kingship before, "Why the world had scorned us!" The bear is sorest when in thongs His paws are torn. And the birds bear No comfort in their passing. Had they No bark, they fear'd the water; not they, You can forget that age -- but find, from far, Mightily-panting engines growling; Gatners large in menacing ranks; and loom Such toys as the men are not able to pull With the long draw-cloth from the burdens of war; And, from their left-hand being chased and kill'd, Fly to their death round a volcano. There are many a room with high straight pillars, Thou canst remember; and when old is dim, Balls half on the floor! Now is made the time To be grateful, when we have left behind Few, and thy table with girls gilt-locked. The world, to thee, appeared at a pinch And a floor to be well wipe'd. The last thing On a bench of the road? This was not long ago. Bread, the least of the poor, in poverty, In an oven, with much water to boil, Is a stuff in which kings are thought coarse; So that they are for all seasons, And never, and never at all! Doom'd to conquer, and loathly to begin, They have forced on their dynasty; -- In whom wax so significant a prefix That when they are dead all the world Is shut up tight in their proportion! The sentence hangs against them, who find Their existence to be doubtful, And their number to end eternity If they think about their beginning! I can't explain it -- never could -- Why, despite my love and my reason, I must go such weary miles to show These low calculations some foe's disdain To these poor friends of my happy station; They are a helpless prey to the thirst for gain, To Fortune, who is not ======================================== SAMPLE 836 ======================================== Farewell! I may not come again, Though I die ere I meet thee more! Thy angels, if they have not fled The way that my thoughts do wander, With whom I must be lone and bare And endless peace to me. One angel with me. Velvet and velvet and velvet, In flame you twined me your smiles; Some scattered light, some on my forehead; Hollow out, yet still you twined me. Some changed me many times an hour, While others (all the rest) Bore me forward like a girl On the young flood, fresh, and for everie year. I about my teens, said one; I now the shape of woman-starred; Some on me now say, ye know That's enough; and then again, Something on me smiles. Thy sweet smile to me, On me a present innocent From one of hearts like mine to thee. When, far, far off, one day, Two lone stars came dazzling, And melted were my thoughts; One star that doth shine Afar, far too bright, Beamed on me a scant small gleam. But still the twinkling stars Came to me, gleaming On me their few rare so shiny beams, Came to me, to please me, the skies; One said 'A gentle poet thou, In the shape of an angel thou, Love thyself,' said one, 'too much; Be glad,' said one, 'with the great stars; To him who holds your hands, In the lonely forest, alone, To you, be holy, beautiful, Shine near the angel's place, Rent long ago, When his name, where space was but too short, Long ago was given his place.' Now, I, not she, am singing To my heart, my rich choir; And though, at my writing, She called me then as guilty Of breaking that sacred verse, I smiled, nor knew it sin! But now that virgin song, Like evening chime, Drew to a close, the wonder sung: 'Farewell, O great God of Angels; Good-bye, my angelic friend; I was sweet used to you, I go, though I close with you again; The gigantes are but mild, The white and scarlet boys now learn us less.' My very song now trembles Lest a word I dare not speak, Lest a heavenly voice should chide, And strange, from the enamored world, Cry: 'Ye empty clamorous yearning birds, Were you not made to speak, O well- Emblem, Eternal Monarch, yours are the cheers, Your ecstasy is the adieu.' The players, the players, the orchestra, The pipe-learned, the players, all of them, Sedate reels, lonely gates and open wings, Or, like an unperceived curtain, tentless halls, With music's multitudes, their music do not surpass, Still sleepy noon-day, holy dawns, or wakening mars, Or sunset reds, or morning dews. Some, enamoured of the finer points of pipe, Learnt no tones, but played the 'jam-jape' with ease; Some read, but knew not what the word 'book' means; Some made their voices music, but their looks were none; And some in words, by rote, were taught to swim Passionless like chrism, and scorn the show Of human homage; but the Sage reigned In glowing temple, where the great masters drew, In art divine, their fancies just above, Till, in their own marble, statues, images of gods. A blith-heart then, in the shape of an angel, Preceded the tender waiting, plain as lance, Gainst which they dared not boldly Come, for fear. Yet, glitt'ring with the lurid tears, their feet Pre-white before the divine enamoured glows, Floods down, and yields to the offering pure Enfused in a mountain spring, and swims, Like dew-drops, into the deep, unblest, Full of the King of Day and the White Dove. The leaves their mute orisons, the singing morrows, Circling the king of morning, follow Slowly, their long, deep nothings, that hymn The eternal dawn, mourn, and sway ======================================== SAMPLE 837 ======================================== all that you can feel and see, touch and taste, but never can know through all that you love until it fades, beneath the lack of awareness, until it passes in the whirl and flash of its ecstasy. You don’t know that it is over, it isn’t over, the last of hours, until even your body shuts down, until you feel yourself fade, until febrile, in your last hour as you fade, your scars and your pain, your deep and cruel anguish, your fierce, flushed, radiant misery, will overwhelm you. You will not feel it, it will not pass, the affliction of such being found lacking the passion of your soul. You will not know, you will not know, you will not hear. In the darkened window, an arm is writing a message. It moves above the table, it moves above the page, the pencil lowers, lowers, lowers. It makes a cup out of the clementine, out of the cup, it makes the deepest of drinks, the deepest of cups. The cup descends, descends, descends, it runs down the trellised of lemon and vine and olive, descending, it runs down a hole it made in the edge of a table. It is a digression of beauty, of protest, it makes me think of the valley, the bevy of parked cars beneath the spread of plastic leafing green and gold, its seagulls splashing like gold water. It writes: A kindness toward those who know that an old world is on fire, torched green and gold. Not for this. Not for this, not for this, was the world made in a machine, a myth of nature, of blind authorities that put our bodies under surveillance, under surveillance, a love that becomes a horror when it encounters violence. Yes, I’m thinking about the woman who is shouting, and how after her being killed everywhere, for seven months, as I say, everywhere, we keep coming back to her. Barely, perhaps, the breath, and some of us shoulder to shoulder and shoulder, laughing, taking up her call, she says. I just wanted to say I didn’t mean to hurt, please, I didn’t mean to offend, I’m sorry, and then I let it go. Please, I said, please. Let’s try to put this out of mind, and I’m sorry I used such bad language, I’m sure that’s not right. <|endoftext|> "An Exorcism", by Lucia Craig [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, The Body, Arts & Sciences, Language & Linguistics, Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends] So I used my magic wand to bring the man back four feet, and he is, to my knowledge, entirely again, unharmed, not to worry, you’ve seen the man, you’ve seen the moon falling to the bottom of the sea, and now, as surely as surely as that is, we have the evidence that there is someone out there, the man said to me, but as surely as surely can be, there is someone out there who is not the moon nor the sea, and someone whom you hated, I want to say, and you hated yourself, whatever you thought you had a right to think, just keep the evidence hidden like the man’s own miracle, I can tell you. I saw a scar—one sting— a black sting in the upper left arm, and I can live with that, I said, though I think I ought not have seen that. Do you think Jesus was going to save himself like that? What would it mean if I had cut out every one of those brawny men in that room, just like a man? What’d it mean, if I had beaten each of them to death, no, to the finish, after the flood, but there were no men left, and still the men are alive, and still you have to let go of it, all of it, the pain. And also, I am all ears, and you have to tell me what I am doing, I said, just tell me what you’ ======================================== SAMPLE 838 ======================================== The fresh blood of her young hours and the red-garmented sweetness they gave: 'And if my love I put not in one spot, I make of my lips a kiss of you: And what my breath is when I speak And what my voice when I sing is love. 'And when my laughter bright is raised, The mouth that makes the mouth of it moans: And when my eyes are open wide A starless night is under me, and I know My love is many; my love is one: A void where my love should be a place.' Quoth he: 'Now mayst thou know thy love is true, And laugh over it with a happy sight: For luster ring on mouth and eye and hair Behold, nor mind the frowns or peace of wives. Set in white plate armour, a knight of speech, And she shall smile at thee; for grace to thee She bade make glad and woeful eyes of spice And use music in her pranks and might. 'And because there's no occasion else For such sweet deeds of gaiety, See now how I give pleasure to make My love thy tongue. Now will I sing mine oath, And to her tongue, my word, her mine With gold and pleasure pass; and on My tongue, be it true or false, with her The blame or praise shall fall. Yet this I will, lest thou thyself forget, That, if it wins us back again, 'Twas not for love, nor in disdain But for delight; that love must needs Have help and reason.' And therein passed Two weeks, and time's inexorable slow Slid on to all the years and months, That ever they have been at strife. For after their sixth meeting In springtime, he conceived A hope outflowing like a sea, Which may be sailing or off shore At sea a-building, and the sky Upon it or overhead Was busy with its mortal moths, Between its scarped curtains. There Was nothing in its whole structure That could put off or start aside The sweet, tranquil stars that feed And live within it, and the moon. Like a great poem of morning--even And thoroughly himself he dawned, Which had his face all over; which also Had reflected all the morning moon And day: which being shot through all these With light enough to make them bright And look upon him, set tenderly Upon the twilight grass about him With sunset hands and lowly-flung shade, Which upon no ground had been But for his bridging brows, had lopped the line That marks a true person, and made the soft Toward the hermit's parlour wall; And he looked up gently, seeing The monstrous folly of a car Of diamond wonder set, with wheels of gold, Lithe as the founts whereon it rolled, Or ripples where the might of it was Was forced into shape, which done, It cast from view all the past Of dazzled splendor: when in answer To his lighted eyes there flashed out A crystal dirk lying on the ground. I would forget The golden cloud, That hangs very much above it; And in such writing let it be: None shall draw me a statelier host. I should grieve Not too much, and you should grieve not too much For mine; and with such golden hands We should come to their work and stay not, Nor linger if any maid should weep Or else complain. Or ever I were worth a groat, And thus made captain of a statesman like him, I would indeed, I should not care to turn My master out of his easy way, Though that captain were of my family. Though that hand had pierced me through and through With an avaricious hand, which scarce could be Ruled a throne of any notable worth, I should not wish it to command That kingdom as his second in command. But in his years, when he had set A hundred vassals at his hunts And played them out with their eyes all dead, He on one side had won, on that the hunt Had failed, which he had vowed to achieve And which his life had been To be the prime mover of the land (Wherein the strength and use of deer The state of which was not his). Therefore now was his hand struck down, It was the hand which did the royal hunt; And his finger fixed as his royal throne, And of the winding bridle the ======================================== SAMPLE 839 ======================================== As once in ancient days between the sea and now, When many walked the world with whitened hair And visions before their eyes were set. He, and his new-born host's revenge Of flaming arrows, led to fight So bold for free speech, And for sure liberty, that proud Britons love, Which too often has been of late Squared in a mask of power and sold Like ciphers or chains or chairs, And dog-pools fed with the fat of kings. How sprucely does the regimental chapeau Fit in this view! High on the march (Presto! there he comes) The Mauser of old, The Blut und Boden, Peer of the realm, First in the Fift's, Heimsius mine! How sprucely does the regimental capeau Fit in this view! The Dorp-haltlung before him lie, In huge blackharden'd chest; The blust'ning cantonments, the ardent woods, And blue on the glittering terrace run, Long-drawn bayonets dawns upon the view Erect with gloom. And homeward to hark The distant tramp of marching men On the pastoral plains he rode, And upper folds in pale array The separation of his men, the Dorp- het und bodenstein. Is it a dream? O pass the night! Ah no, this morning dream! Will all these grand old guns Strike as well as rattle? Can this red band properly chime, With fiddling, gong and fritzing, And dancing so to the buffaloes? If you would know, come, sing or trumpet, And let the ache of your desire find The peal of Horn and the deep tramp Of horn and horn, This for the King and his. If it be true that France is slain, Is she not a heroine better Than to bleed and be murdered? Oh turn her pageant of death better, Let France redouble on her sablestaff, That when the trump and the bugle are fled, Our hearts and our dreams Both out on the field of life may rest, And France itself be as they say. O soldiers of Paris, answer me this: What hast thou done more valiant than in him? Only the word valiant do I use. Was man such that he could do such things, Or such an one as that between them set? Tower sentinel and bell perdition let us rave To hell the strength of his might; Alas! what more then than these that are dead? Alas! I that desired these things for me? O heroes, their deeds'ovirosly vain! We will keep a higher distance then, And there we'll bring news as to what befell, Of force from force in the morning hour By the ten o'clock. For thy speed and stealth None comes more than grief, and once we said That these would end in a fool's trump. But, good night! Let's dream till to-morrow's light Wake us to think what we shall see; And if we must the work for to do all again, Heap scorn on the common lot of man, And list'ring o'er his history, How far we shall reach before the end. Come night! What? Must I hide my heart from thee? No! Thou art a monster and not worthy of thy mien, Now art thou come as a monster that art none! Why bring me all thy furies on this path And let thy shivers and thy shrieks be heard? There is another thing that is wanting, Before my life and death; to know the method That works and how far; how far, what man of men Has dared the daring task that is ours; And then may I be taught the valour Of men who have dared the perils and the cross. And then, not less than when the mighty sword Studded earth with girth, did heroes slay, And wounded every rock and mountain peak, With storied names and passed the unmeasured dream The chivalry of Barons, and their past Whose deeds, and lost, are scorned and all forgot. Till then I can but be silent, meek, Chill, for I bear within my breast Nothing having valour, and to fail in acts Of cowardice. I would know if mine Are only spaces where war was waged, My foe some living man ======================================== SAMPLE 840 ======================================== Spinnin' stones, and perlitein' bloater stanes, And seldom achieving most," said he. "Why do you worry about this, my old boy? You'd as soon be choked with top-smoked meat, Or drown in sugared tea; or freeze In chocolate, or the emulsion sink; Gulp if you please 'twixt yonder dips, As your peace would likely be better bent, And much more fat might surely be observed. "Nor pray you, dear, not be uneasy; You're quite an artist, that can't complain When engaged to act these actions rare, And properly play upon your mind In this vain pretender of life! We must feed you, and in this our task You shall be pleased with gain or loser, And be repaid with double gain, 'twill be, And, no as if it were thrown away, In history leave as rich a record." A fearful aspect then his face expresses As he would draw his pen and utter out The syllables and words he had employed, But those rough barkings could not sound well, And the animal joyance of the will Received and smote upon his ears, When, "No," said the very sage one, "no; There is no ray but surely returns." Their whiles the sage gained not his faith, But they were doomed to write that day For he had handed them a miss, So they humbly bade adieu Nor dared to break their pen. At length they posted, but by the post The knight was not; he was gone, To seek the safety of his heart. The address was strictly kept, The delay was wise and well considered, In a couple of hours they were free, They reached the mountains green and broad, And as they listened fast they sighed, They wondered much at all that passed, And soon a troop of vices heard, A little rest, perhaps, might quench The seemingly endless brand of evil, And they would gladly lack a moment's more Than could on ev'ry lip be seen. Cursed be the hour! On time's round, I have said, and I can repeat That time is perilous, dear friend, With cause of various, manifold, But I cannot now allow you Again to relate the same. In feeling, in deliberations, Wiser and wiser is your use. In running words now I find them But to restrain a sobbing— You well remember, but no, never, Your little lad,—I cannot leave He has a four-in-sixty chance. "When women say they'll not date, No doubt because they are past Any man's purpose, When they cease to watch and correct All with the house on their knees, It surely is to their discredit; But I'm not one to chide; I would advise them to be free While still young—but be older still. "There is, poor maid, to be free— And who's to say I should? Our sages mean to be most wise The vast vasty what? I say there's time to learn in Love's games, Some ribald play could take them, Some lofty folly—you call?— We'd much be led astray, I trow, Ere I should like you may. "Well—do not seek me now, I warn 'em, Whom Heaven and I do not prize; But I am right. No tender hand I've promised to be no wink, Reeker after the world, Till women themselves take note. If they say, or another now bestows The boon they say, 'twill vanish; I'm not one to chide—e'en when I lose My own wicked self." Thy smiling looks, like summer's smiles, Crown the bright morrow; Its brother bands, and winter's frowns, Its ruddy skies, Teach me of loss and spring of cheer. Sweet, spinsters, with blushing eyes, and braver smiles, Teach me that joy yet rivals pain, For that is mine which is most regretful. Unclothed hope, undowered bliss, O'erwhelm my heart. I to thee resign and soar, Naked of sense. All that I had deem'd I lost, Now boast I possess. I would, who loved the wan moon Had I her brook! No man's heart beats warm like thine, ======================================== SAMPLE 841 ======================================== Failing its stars of gold. Shall I never hear the chimes To tell that still the night will sweep Slow to its midnight rest? I find in dreaming that I am Returning where I have been, Where I went wandering on Winding through fairy-land. I have returned, O golden queen, To find all lonely 'neath the low Reaching boughs of moonlit pine, And the harp of heaven's longing; Have found what I have left at Fate's Great altar, Memory's deep. But the silver runes at last are nought To keep the immortal fire, The chords of Life in which it glows. I find the tuft of mist conceal'd And the purple glimmer on the deep Of the wide sea in glowing blue; I find, oh, the waves are far away In far-off lands. I hark to the chimes! the rolling cups Of the Milky Way that mark the way Where the realms of being are serene And the grand laws of time and space Draw near. Ah me! my heart is weary That I know not how to bear them in The memory of the murmuring moon, In the dream that is all forlorn. But it sings on in the choir sublime Of its tunes to the murmuring of the sky, And the core of Heavens that rebels Against Time and the petty laws Of finite mind. It sings the praises Of the glories of eternity, And, in the ecstasy of the anthem, It calls the Unknown One back. Return, Selvagna! we too return, Unto our solar lot and precious dust, And the faint glens of song that are our peers There find us in the dimness of the dells, Where our emulous glory of eternity Slips by in the ripple of the moonbeams And, where the drift of drifting leaves is red, We are lost. 'Forever is the same,' says Time, 'from ball to ball. The hardest come now from the latest with the victors wining, Wherefore is the everlasting one the nothing that means least, And nothing and nothing are one. I myself have entered the nothing that means all. I am nothing here, but Time is the nothing everywhere. Not for me the lolloping of the glorious years, Not for me the dizzy sense of ripening life. Not for me the new, the lost, the ancient, the now, the past, the far, the near. I am none of these; and if my parents, and my fellow men, Should shame their age by cajoling me with the wreck of life That is my glory, I could not comfort them With aught, excepting maybe some rhyme of mine To stir their spindle ear. But I see the Change, the ages closing, going, Close on the verge of time, And the dark caves grow dim with night, And a sound of weeping, and a light of tears, Grows, when the clammy womb is deepened, grander, Till twilight comes in, and more heavily they weep Than folk who had sleep'd in darm'd out beds; So I brood, and move about, and weep, and say, In that dismal air, My capricious way Is, as a man who hath no children, home and far. I cry, and cry Where the sorrow is Of my own blood; and, lo! my voice Is heard by the billows of the deep, And they cry aloud in the dark, and sleep And something know, As of evil wrought on good men, at hell's wheel Whirled with with an outrigg far away. Then the same voices are heard, and sobbing breath Is felt in every winding wall. They call me from the wild, from coast to coast, The dismal shore where the grey seas surge, The lamentable year where snows are won; And they send me home with bays ornam'd And wide sauntering through the land, But ever silence and death is there, And lone night creeps, with untemperate breath, Where the wild tidework, foul as the light Which throws over the noon-ey'd land A trail of white and eery arclight, Comes to our loneliest and the first to sleep. And I, I hear the tears that fall in showers From the lids of the fountains of the night, That are far off in the drifting caves, Like a fallen shower's after-retreat. ======================================== SAMPLE 842 ======================================== And see a priest, without black ribbon or cross, Unseen, speaking certain words that please The hearer's heart, and others may gain or loose, Just as his desire pleases him; then and there Judged in public, judged, and was judged, and sinner damned. Some strewed black roses, and some white, and some Some twisted in weird Polycarpes of wood and cane, From Corinthian walls, too, or Roman, and if they Had been in that rich funeral oration, Much changed, much as we see the mopefire, Since the but different feast of one much wit was poured. I know not if Alcaeus, to see or hear or play, Could that great wit, which, through the high choir upstairs, is heard, With howling of the fox, and the wild boar's howling, Could that which pleased the Muses, which they made so Very curious, be fulfilled; For the song of the fox, which he turned his nose up at, Was like some witt that refused a dastard wine, They set me all on the rack, too, who ever make sport (For all soft fame is made but to please). Which did not need, that I should marry. My point's the same, Mine's no great fame, mine's so small, that God knew best. Mine's nothing to brag of, not even a name, but why That fame should make me would ask my candle, be thy, Whose night so soon and soon, and half so well was done, As thou'rt man, and must like man live, and use All necessities, when he of all thy frugality Can make up, and will the least thing so: Men and women marry, man and maidsmore; The royal race's but proof to thee how little 'tis. O God of good dream! I, alone, Faint with my summer weariness, Entering the dawn where lilies pale, Arise to bless the peep of dawn With morning prayer, Till, wide awake, my chest their supper makes Of their sweet sweets--soon I fade. But, should I read, what matter? Some thing sweet May come to mean, so the case is, came. And with good luck, what matter if light Sung dawns for me In the pantry of his sight, and if mine eye Play with the candles round the shrine Of his malice, light may see my heart Trembling at the light, and then smile. A child doth live by what he reads; Books are books That keep their summer friends In a seam of paper, which They carefully spread With a rare silk hand On the sash about their golden necks, To kiss the sun When he's abroad. The blessed age of fourscore and of four, Tells of the number Three made up, and Sent, With festive cheers, to the world, to feast, to drink, To ring the bells, to joy, to love. Though they feed not all, they feed. Though they charm not all, they charm. All are heroes in The family of heroes, And kings, and bishops, and kings. Of Theilrician printers, who printed The Most glorious, ere the world was, and longer yet Is since, and longer yet must be, Well-content I, and woe to me, That I exist. This, this is fatal! Death may it be! For I have plotted and planned, and practised My singing, all for you. Of the gladness of a lark at summer- noon, Or of the sudden joy of echo, and its sprite, Or of a kiss in a midnight song, or of a quatrain What have I thought of? O, I delight to hear Of myself and you; of my own and you, Who have most changed me, and partly of my mortality. And the images thou shalt remember And the songs that, and the words thou shalt forget, Of a tune to a refrain; Of a white-haired man, of a youth, of an end! My lyre, whose strings are softly now to smite as men smite, And at last to let them all lie idle. Therefore will I close it; and bid you farewell. A rose-bud is left, and for a while the winds do cry; A maiden knits; a penie you sit and write on ======================================== SAMPLE 843 ======================================== _’m_ way, so when he asks for _The Review of Modernism. I say, “No, I can’t stand to ’cause _ my eyeglasses have eyes to repair. I think there might be a line. I’m afraid he’s not stopping when he asks for his _diamonds he keeps too close — he takes my eyeglasses right to his mouth and says, Right. a wife is a simple fact — but she shouldn’t be observed. My wife, she serve me well, but she gotta go all the way back through her grandma whose name she had — had all the joys of a jack in-law. — — you read that? I _know better— — well, I told you. My wife, she not always knows her man, you think? <|endoftext|> "Head to the Dead End", by Sheryl Grampipe [Living, Life Choices, The Body, Nature, Spring, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Town & Country Life] As soon as the new leaves arrive, the snow melts and soft hands push you away. Walked around the house like a doll. Looked out the window at night you knew what she was thinking: to get way too close to the light you could be read if you fell down. Or kissed a tree. Let's make great tea. Let's get drunk together. Then, it was dinner time, not New Year’s, and all the bread and meat were gone. Some stranger walked up. They never talked. Some grub stands in the alley. Bread crumbs on the sidewalk. It happens to all of us. What should one say? What should one do? Daughters come home from college, full of life and light, just like heads of the other kids. It's how they got in the habit of walking in a trotline and thinking they were in a play. How many songs from spring time do you guess there were in there? Fellows in every song, an eighteen-year-old who ones well-turned, straight as a line from a poem, and spring got the last word. <|endoftext|> "Love City", by Sheryl Grampowder [Living, Love, Desire, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Gender & Sexuality, Mythology & Folklore, Heroes & Patriotism] All the long, yellow, muggy summer night, We walked down the street together like we had been friends Before the night came and taunted me with the stories of what it had taken her to give me her love. I don't think that any of us really liked what came next—but then, by that time you do not really care what happens, and you move at a comfortable pace— But her heart was a rapid stream of thought, and as I watched her it was like her own uncertain self talking, and with good reason: she was as mad as any person at being in love with someone who would not love her back or needlessly attempting to effect a bargain that would be temporary if not for the fact of a forthright truth to be worked up immediately. I don't even remember how we got to the street, but I remember her running her fingers over the frozen, purest gold of the car production line—and my God, if I could take that knowledge and turn the clock back, would I not be forgiven for having been so rude? Not necessarily: there is a calm, lukewarm morsel of regret about her later, whiter mouth swaying toward the familiar phrase of the chorus of happy song—almost I dare to guess that even as I write this the soft star-lit night has crept into her hair—an empty tank top just a vivid tube—but it’s not true that we didn’t kiss that night, and not under the green ash of summer, it was summer then that we played out our little farce: her plucked ======================================== SAMPLE 844 ======================================== A black lotus—the honest eye Of her whom the gods, Loving so true, repine, Chafed at his life, as with light foot she descended, Quick and light, on the flat sand The pale bull crunches his horn in her passing, to the Godhead, past the dull mouths and salt crusts of the seas, And more than the wandering of a soul Too far for thought, Deaf as a lark Fall'n with fair grass upon the linden turf, Light as the wing of the stag In his own sky; so fell On him the Light, and lifted from his face The fish-eyed smile, that like a rag out And blue chalice of the South Sea, Light of his life, without sound Throbbed as from the infinite sea, And told the feast of the meat. Glowing within her, he clung Like the new stars, the black sun flung Black light of a new hell over the sea, When the mariner, alone, In the burning island night, Lulled on the hush and silence Drew from him the swell of his soul, And on the bellying billows of the tide His laughter bared In the death of the god-stream. Slowly she moved On his rising breast, and drew his hand to rest In her warm breast, and they stood face to face As Gods, face to face, Pale, mortal faces, with unlovely Radiant faces, and the moonlight And stormy dew, and the moonlight From the star-laden south, when it dries The bright eastern lee. For one marveling at the sodden skies, Like one day marvelled the harvest came; Or from a windless night one shared The wind that ran for the iron tendrils; Or maybe some wind from the burning South Ravaged the iron and made gold her For a moment on the sky Scarce to fall out of the moon's sphere. Thick and refracting, and the oil Of gold, In her dark full flood she hurled The globes, the planets and their fleets, Past hurtling moons and ships that sit In haven, in far vacant seas; And stars peep out of the gloom Of the midnight, and the dawning suns; There too, her heart, the city of Doom Flashed, in the redd'ning of her eyes. For him, at a season wild and chill When winds arise and life's convulsion Sink in a swoon and all goes haywire, On the fleshless horse she mounted her, Whispering of some human thing; And rode and shouted and bade him dine On spoilt bits of game and fish. For him her soul was sick, for him, And through the sodden roads she rode, While the clouds, with wind on their breast Wandered about, and whistled and spoke. She's a curious person, like an egg; By that same you shall hear how she will try To explain her thoughts, for them she lives As one who never thinks of that and yet On no unusual subject thrills, and so we Can tell the things that are by her express. For some strange reason we are saddled up And round about we wander, and down We've never travelled in an automobile; And yet there's a fool that drives them, and he says, "Look at the wheel, Marie! What a good job!" So she shuts the window, comes to the gate, Knows that her room is on the measure, where In the middle stands the room, you know, And that the window sill is weak, and so On and on, and then she feels That she would be more in love if it were On the sills. For then a violet came, the pretty Viarressante with such a curl of red In her nose, that the beauty of it Touched her but with fear; and she says to you, "What a healthy green!" and then you say to her, "Let's have the pictures to the lady there, For they are so funny that she must love 'em." It was a picture of England before Like a general, and he had a list of the Weapons that the generals bore, that the WMD's and the stars that wore them, and the British flag was such a sack, so that no one Could ever find a hole in it, and he kept his Orders in his head that the troops ======================================== SAMPLE 845 ======================================== Pointing with unerring aim, Showing him, her sidereal Proposals for a new-made Teach-by-feel, 'twould cost him less Than an afternoon's work, Besides an answer as readily As the government had told him. The teacher rose. It's up To a loftier sphere where we Do not mix what private thought Skims the higher with, public speech Founders can't protect us so. What we lack, I'll be plain, Is the calling of an ell, A wish to touch the living And stir the dead up in air, An all-but mind's tone as waked At a strange sight where stars are born, With a wing of joy that glows Like an autumn day when leaves have gone While the sky bends down above the world's edge. As a man my station lifts me, For speech the moods must start For sense to answer it (where words creep, We think, 'Oh how can they fit Whate'er comes, 'twill fit our haste), An eager phrase to spell, Or sense, if so we can) As with the allegorist, long and loud, To imitate his harsh but resonant style The patriot heart must jerk and his Above the crowd whose applause he seeks. Before, a twofold but not a third, Mornings are a bland reward When shapes of grace are born, But morning, ye'll excuse That the first rose that kisses the rose Be sure, sweet lips of morning Was ill to receive: its thought was a wrong! But behold, with the earth's own bloom, The day is fair and sweet; Like a light bright lady who'd charm With a kindle in her cheek. Evening and lies and morrows To her are as the same; And while she makes this to incline Youth's no­witnesses, bards all youth And of­age, crowd in a pale That blurs the world's great light. From shadows out­side an awe Flows in our fair up­­radar, Where childhood's ghost sits Breath through the spreading stream. We have joy that our eyes May light not, you and I, On her lo­gending feet, And there­between, the flowers! We may light none, where first we drew The long, black ways o'er and o'er; But to be her eyes when she slips O'er the trees and the grasses, With wings propp­ed up, she is fair; And bless­ing where they bless, that is The fi­ne­ly thing that we sing. She, day's light comforter, Comes with three of praise about her, Enchant­ed as water­balls re­li­ate When shot with art, and make things move That were not before al­lowed. She crowns us from the world's end with sun, And in the shadows forgets she is there. But, oh, to be de­sou­ded! The dew falls, and when it comes down, In one mass the dew and sun Are one dew and sun. (Who saw it fall?) I think some­one saw it fall From the vine­dome high, o'er the mountain, Down through the dew and snow, Where low below us it put A mist on its falling. She was the dim­est thing to know That we conned her with the sun and dew, And to un­der­line her was­sam­ned down, When she might have been an un­ne­cess­ed be­tween Two out­set things, un­fit for her to be It a beauty nor worth dis­miss Of the de­scend­ing of a light one, to me, Whose life­long all­ies­len­ging to be sun Is mighty sin. I of the dim­est guess o' the de­si­cious ways Of it; but I dipt my heau­ning head Wondrous­er than a cloud­walker be­tween sun and dew, Ef the dew put no black on it. The look we gath­er­ly take of the dew Us will say no­thing, then, But light­ly as the dew white and blue, A white or cream. I lit on a side­. Is it all dwee­ ======================================== SAMPLE 846 ======================================== When for thee her love more copious was He learned of woman a great life To honour thee and so secure His feelings for thee were With human strength to ache and strain In long years wherein he must inspise The loss of his one best son From whom the old life never died; The rapt hopes, the sorrows, and the fears The man himself thus sav'd, by art Was fitted to unfold the truth and make Relax the conflict of the will 'Twixt the good and the good. Then, soon, he lost Neither friend nor mean, of all the race Now gone, and it his sole desire From him alone to recovery To take thy quality as his prize; A prize secured him, when, against his wish, The Father of himself and his Lord In Sanctitude, and with a vow Immoveable, circumscribing heaven And with an angel's finger nam'd The twain signatures on his signature, Which rather far than put his promise brus'd, Lackad him the prize he most desir'd. Then, fair Love! thy worth incertain Possest that great prize; but, in our beat Compulse to mortal, thy great heir, By whom that power is own'd, shall save Us from the bullying power of kings; By whom, for dominion and riches giv'n, Are overrun the lands of Judah's stream; And by thy most diligent worshipt name The people rout'd, and desecrating how He once, how once for love's sake, pursu'd Thy love, with dreadful screams, the Stream! Thus having gave his fair, and for his love's The inly-bleeding puddle where they bled, Homeward he mov'd, the sacred Vow extoll'd Of David, and his first venture sav'd. As one who, while he can, in spite of Fate, Keeps keen watch, how far however near the brink, Turns his fierce eyes toward the heights that within Still dare him stand, though hard the ascent, So David, turning from the accursed race, His own way towards the foot of Shem's steep, And gazing downward still on his own strong ties, Stretch'd his feeble hands toward his man; and laid Gladly as a ship might, in the mildebut Of heaven, o'er the pious Hebrews, the new God. Thrice happy now, if in his hope to have His heart cast into the waters of death, Never did the Hebrews longer stir from there: So th' Ascetics or the Poets kind Who from their town of Shem, and the Englishes flow, Were fenc'd with lakeshore, for an unhallow'd name, At heaven's very source a heathen temple! Now They sought no more the fire, the swords, or the pomp Of Rome; shew'd their roofs, their noblest ware. Their sachem had the prayer'd sacredly, and now Were but an evangel: for his son. So not by his own race he came, by gene, But through the Gentiles he was come to seek His own once more; to seem as a God He came among the heathen who in jovial mirth Forth was pour'd. He by his own might Not greater far turned the race that vaults above Virtue, God-descending, so that as Paul He spake not nor worshipful, and that he who With cause indulge profaner then redresse with curse, Yet slumbered not, not through sloth or lust of joy, But as he meditates some journey, or some fight, His coming that at first like flame appears, Is held by slow degree. Now from hence he seeks A lofty forum, and from there aspires To the unconquerable royal star, And triumphs thence, and all the world reports The great empowerment of his phrase. There were who taught he was, who seduc'd, And in the gate how many were our foes Seduced, whom he pac'd! Some in mad assemblies, Where what each star may signify, have toss'd The word 'Adaminst,' which shiver'd aloud Hangs out in all the metals: and the sword Of him on high is nam'd Millia; and his rod Some say (have I beheld it?) plunge in it. The word itself can Ocean fright To sea: the ocean roaring the accompaniment. Of these the ancient Galilah, one still hunt With Crestaz all ======================================== SAMPLE 847 ======================================== In the castle of my warrior I'll rest till the morning." So rested now the dame, And the faithful companions With whom she went. 'T is now ten days since we sought The Golden House, And the key they gave me Of the inner room; And within this cell, Where their sorrow and sigh Like a vision yet remain Are naught but sighs; Like fools who sing from a hiding There of death's glass; Yet I fear not: let this bear. Now the dayseneth, As the lakelet may, With a rippling shore Once again it is seen, As, enwound with pearl-filigrees Set with pricks, Within the pearl are cords Of a gilded trap; And weeping for the gluing Of the swathing-shirt To the swarthy cheek. So these words are said, and the measure Of his word is done, Now at last we lodge, In the castle of my warrior, And at last I see you; Yet I only see you As a rosy mist; Only see you As a rose-flush on the grass In the fetter's sweetness; But your feet, they reach Only a little way, To the farther shore. But their touch seems dewy-fresh At the unexpected touch Of his fingers white; And the sky is quick in its falling, From the distant unknown heights Now of their rose; When the witching veil of your lance Of pearly fire Seemed to splash from heaven afar In delight to heaven. For they heard him singing in the temple So courteously, In the morning's early light, He was singing of the glad Lest Sin should die; But they heard it not at all Where you have heard it as in a soun Of alarm; Where it leapt like water from the cup That your boy should quaff; The fiery words they did not hear, But the words they heard. And my lover and his songs they heard; I could not hear what he sang, But I saw your pearly fire with its fire, A silk fire of rose in its rays. Now, my sweet witching, light The flame again, And as there, and a child will be; But he will love you so well, He may hold you in his arms. For you yourself have sung of the day You were born, And how that you were fairer then Than now, Being in time, perhaps, Wandered out in the air, 'Neath its hand Now planted in his arms; And your flower that blossomed then It cannot yield now For him, Nor his heart beat keeping time. But my heart beats keeping time, And my sweet love keeping time, In his heart Heard the words kept time, For you alone he thought to love. It was not man alone that came For you, But earth, its dead will bring you back, Now, boy, I would move for your sake Within your mother's arms; I would kiss her lips, and I would kiss Each rippling hair, I would creep within her hair, But I have no right there; She has done with kisses, For she has scorned With love. Yet I would creep in her hair, For she loves you thus, So open be it. Would I bring you back to me If I had the first? Yet you are older, and you know Time's dangers. You are wise enough to stay, And my kisses have met Few foes. Your eyes are deeper; Your hair is richer-scented gold Than my kisses, You must know That I have tried to bring you back If I had the first. A mighty breathless swoon Over the heavens, And the faint tide in the blue broke Into blue pools unknown. I saw a shadow pass with a shout of aught but the one I have seen since the sun was born. Yet when I saw the shadow I had seen before That wide windy sea. Then I laughed and cried with the last heart that lay Within me and to find again The perfect thing I had lost and turn'd away and see. This is a love that will not remain; This is a passion that will not burn; This is a month when a month will not be. This is a bird that will not perch; This is a year when no year has ======================================== SAMPLE 848 ======================================== Please read the review of my book on this page! If you have a bleeding problem, please do go and see your GP. If you are miserable, please do seek professional help for your depression. If you get a nasty burn, please do please do go to the doctor. If your mate becomes a cruel husband, please do kindly the way in which you are treated. If you cut too much, your life is simple and straight and joyous. You have a lot of dirty leaves and stones in your bloodstream and you should burn all the more. If you imagine that by yourself you have become rich, you are mistaken. If you make a shooting mistake, please remember that there is another guy who has two or three times your danger. If you fall in love, please remember that there is a good reason for your melancholy. If you run in a race and your backs fall, it is great to do. If you can afford the medicine, please do go the doctor. If the scarecrow is hopping, you have to hide your figures and remember your balance. If the moon above you keeps washing the top half, you may remember this for a person of value. If you hear a cat in another room, please have the courage to speak up in the next voice. If the waters of your nightmares are frightful, please remember that a cat is a small item in the market. If you have another fear, please do forget it for now. If you dream yourself a fool, please pray about it. If you believe that you are a fraud, please pray to God to change your ways. If you cut your arm off, please contact the Womans Bat. If you are worried, please call the colored man down there and tell him that you are ready for the talk. If you eat the silent living, please remember that he is praying for you. If you dance around the spoon, please believe that you have a future. If you have a God-given right to read the New Testament in a hotel, please do so and do it. If you have a heap of money, please do use it. And so, comrades, I bid you an immediate Jubilee. There is an awful lot to take care of in this world, and no one has it to spare. I wish you luck. There is going to be an election time, and the public is ready for a change. I do believe, and I am not sure that I am right, but I am ready for the laugh, and I am ready for the trouble. I like to see the flower of young people married and the happy home. I like to see the little kids at the table. I like to see the officers. I like to see the young men walking about in nice clean clothes. To be young and care no worry, To be hard and never care, And still be true and still care no more Than fifty years The God-speed, my roundelay, The God-speed, my dear brother, The God-speed, my dearest comrade, The God-speed, my gallant girl, The God-speed, O HaShe, my love, The God-speed, O Bottham's Banner, Your spouse, O Waltheley, my flower, My blood, O singing Dryden's ring, I wish you safe, O Douglas, Your heart may take heart again, O Scotopa, O wind, O sunlight, O Dawn, O dear mother, O woman, O bride, I think this a dream, but hear it as saying, I hear strange voices now, and put to you A question, and give you word again: "Is the man gone, that used to sing so well His wife and him are living? At least she From him I hear it, but not him I see. It was not I that did begin it, though I Myself of late have said it, and it seemed Watched, yearning, on old memories and old things To see them, without voice, if not Images, Beholding myself in thin shimmering shimmer, They seem in something, what use it does me, A present whose echo drifts, fancies it is worth, "Her mouth is her throat, her grace her grace, That which I was born with; and, liking not, her eyes, Though rare, as rare can be, you get no better. Her faith it is, and mine, that makes me sing; For if a man was once so beautiful as she, And in one case still more, I feel, in her, No future like this one could be fashioned; and I think I owe to her my happiness, ======================================== SAMPLE 849 ======================================== pinched and had their faces burnt off "Our hearts are the messages we are sent out from ourselves, though we cannot feel the message itself, and so cannot know whether it be good or bad," And "the girl" is just another of the scores of symbols that he is being offered by the gods She feels her whole body heat through her clothes “If I push my lips as if to taste it, it could be the best kiss of my life” From the window: her body glows against the snow’s cold face A man on a horse in wool workers’ clothing in the cartoonish background, downcast, with his hand humped at his waist facial warmth kept warm through the wool, because it is the same weight over the entire flat surface of which the wool is laid, giving even texture to which is new accomplishment and freshness, no quil and no formal description needed “For all I know, it is all I want and more I want” my walls and hair “What do you do with it? The drawings of what you wish started out as nothing, were ever anything but. And there is nothing to be said for what you have been, and there is nothing to be said for what you will be. What will you be?” I tell her. “I have no desire to comment, except to let you know, when you speak of it, my life has been real, as I have said, and is now becoming less so.” 9 Now it’s been years since she came to see me, was still to be true, is now, and time for me to dwell on what was before. The old dreams come back. Yesterday the old photos on the walls were set side by side in the warmth of dawn, and in the wake of an eclipse the moon was smaller When I am tired of seeing the same faces I am tired of telling myself the same tantrum of doubt and doubt, the last caution of a man holding the future by the tail <|endoftext|> "A Day at the Races", by Paul Buglen [Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Relationships, Home Life, Nature, Social Commentaries] Winter at the 100- and 200-meter relays and on top of it all the old home subtly changes scale without saying a word. The window is gone the shades pulled back. They were never green with shadow, though the flag was waving, that’s what the sparses are shouting, loud and high, like the backside of a lion or a bat. It’s the system working like a relay at maximum speed. People are calling it Art. I’ve seen the best athletes, running at full speed, rubbing their eyes, muttering at the bars, straight and soft, holding the glass half a breath, fingering the ball, listening to the cadence of the car’s heart. And the room into which my father just walked, clear as glass, where he used to light his cigarettes until he was sure that he could see clearly enough to smoke his favorite cigarette, a cigarette, by his wife’s old room. It’s the way he went to sleep at night, so slow that there was hardly any way to wake him— he was the same age as me, and as I learned as we grew older he worked his way from the back to the front, up to mid-forties until I opened the closet where we hung all the chalky books, garage, bedroom, kitchen, living room, there in our high-school years he is leaning back on the chair and I can see he’s pulling the white blanket up over his heart, and the pages of The Tales of Michael Campbell, the Alice in Wonderland and Doctor Sleep. Hobson’s desks stacked by the door. My father sleeping on the edge of his two red tickets, a quilted bed, a desk and chair, and only a black screen on which he timed his snooze as we children climbed by leg cords across the cold white shelves. There was nothing peculiar or unfitting in that life. Nor is there anything absent here or anything that might be called a metaphor. He made his bed. That was that, nothing else. I have the feeling that if I ever save a picture from that time, it’ll be of this: the bed ======================================== SAMPLE 850 ======================================== Who of the three cometh near or far To thee and taketh from thee whom thou dost meet? There is a certain one, one only there is, To whom I and all that other call alike, And who lives there, to his way of life as far As from the bodily being where he doth he come: And all that else I hear you tell me truly." Then I to him: "I myself can see." "And what of that?" laughed he, "I make thee fast To this cold floor as thou." And then he took me By the hand, and running, while he spoke, So entranced me with his singing, that A century long memory to vintage old Would fail of task. And as the sound Of mirth whose chime is mute, if old Memory fail, is still'd, so spake He, and ended justly: "We have been more Than wise: we have craved and wearied all; Here is our full-nested freedom to own. But thou, free Spirit, glad from cloud And inexpressive air, thou shalt and Hœa Megara, shalt lead us forth from here Into our place, and she will waken Old Ibycus, and he from Cyclops' bones Will recognise who calls him father, And they will know, and all the people." His words so blaming, I was no more Than sick, with dolor, when to him again Speaking in a magical voice, "All hail Arwa, O Morning-God! Our seed is here; This thing, what will it bring us? Shall not all The same old round go on, till we be old, Stirring us then into action, while The new thing sweeps us into age? No! New thing stands fast to what is old; so these Shall fall back in action on the New, Or be contrary; which latter both the other And I had eagerly with much ado Construed, but in vain: so frail all things, so At once therefore it is that change Is happie and unhappie. It liketh This round reciprocally, this joining Of kindred actions: him who most responds To that, sets himself indeed beyond, But where he ends is where he began. That people who most complain, are those Who space most words, and those who ground The most time in mediation; yet are Not all of them to fail, but the undoubted Swain, whose speech not being big with good Comes next, and serves a while as kindlier tongue, Then, notwords best. Hence doth time ensue From day to day, for each one, independent As is the shadowed sun in highest Heaven, feedeth straight his flame, and when that is gone, Another comes, which was that sun the first, And so daily it self (for so we judge future By present), so also time must endure And not events only, but time's single race. Now in how many cases I behold A man's prais'd for something else's disgrace, And in the worst possible, who is blam'd, That makes him see his blameless: if such indeed Thy investigation show me, in certes See signs of guilt, more than flagrant occasions Of others catching "the law." What I read Is this, forbid it, witness! for not like that Which thine impartial imagination Drives on thy crested mind, may be. If, then, Time standosis of acts, as thou contendest, They stand in direct competency Of behavior to what is seen, yet not identity Much farther thence than is the shadow'd moon, Whose motion is the mystics' theater Forthwith to introduce time, or self-taught soul His mortal junction with an antecedent. As the moon then catcheth up the matter-disease From hence where earth is, so from whence they spread Here, there perchance, or where they're seen to move, There, may be points of contact. As there the sky Is connected with the sun and the world, So is the self-estate of man with his estate; And where he hath the earth, thus far may comparison Count man's inheritance full without flaw. But men are chosen, and selling ourselves Kill ourselves, and for that rub out bitter medicine On the cure, that, in order to be faultless, Others seem so. There's an account that must due For every house we win ======================================== SAMPLE 851 ======================================== Praised be Herakles for his conquest, and his name stricken In honour of the heavens, and his glory Gluttonous of woe; wherefore the Furies Weep o'er the ruin, and her hate from Caer Wrought in the Sibyl's pages by her night. Why two days the blade a blacksmith drew In opposition to Roman helmet, And to his hammer-blade with hazel Went rebelling on a sandy meadow With plough-share and spade in his hand, That I, as one by Phlegmon held, But in this place I could not hear The fame or names of these men and years, Only the blade's thin streamers touched the ground, It ran, it flowed, till it was drowned, And all things were changed, save it alone. This blade, it seemed an inch- wide band of steel Torn out of wedged-hard and antique flint Laid right the first time, when sorrow woke In us, and grief that tarry could not shake Lies in the back of this and all its years, And in that which last of all be called Of Arthur--this king, this knight and poet, If you would drink of this cup of me, Look, where upon the polished chas be set There seems the work of time to come and go, Draw nigh and drink until the cup is full; then Look up, look forth amid the lengthened Divided fields and shadows, and he always Will be more and more to you, as you stare At him across the years and worlds, and know He lies beneath the sun or underneath; Draw nigh and look with eyes that fear will make His eyes white as they would flood and burn, Gaze on the skies above him. Look, the sky Will seem the whirling world that knows no pit To him who plies the sickle there. Draw near and look At birds that make no nest in season or season, But fall so thick in brooding dark with preen; Look at the eddies of the streams, a woman's hair, And all that went with it, and all that's done In season and all in which they are so wrought. There come and look and drink, for well you know, With air of smoke the air to draw the mind Down from the air to earth, and thence ascend, That from the earth comes not and that from the sky, But moves both downward. We are swift as fowle, That use our wings to follow great ships long gone, Through tempest and war. What then had you to dread That comes to all, or me to fear, were called forth Swift from the whirl and take the way with you, Whom God hath bred and taught and strengthened and built To certain stand. The needle still is taught In heaven the skill to make great net-nets, and draw Slow forth the smoke of those that straight avoid Great fall with broken furniture, and ship-sails straight Sail free, and till the new heavens toss them free, But fleet upon the old, yet sailing long and long They strike and drift in place, and fear no shock From wind or wave, that their steep skeels meet in form, Triumphant sail, and so work their labour through. The hill-tops yet bear witness fair When wind and water most assail, For 'neath them now the beams are of the hull; For where the waves for breadth show out, 'Tis where the blue seas shift their head As they go by shoreward, low and tall, Is where the net sets in, that so they lose They but take the yolk of the egg, and break the shell With falling in; and where once bottom winds drive on Dark green, where lie the pieces of the shell, And where the vessels of old were saddled deep, A sickle lifts from earth, the other hand Wheels up, and scattereth to the end that's caught In that green sand, and, whilest that you go, Is filled to the back with canvas, and the flap Is, long there as now you stare at it, A wing, that flies like something gone before, Comes down and stops, and if you see it straight, What once at the dawn of day, you'll swear A kite's been there; and if you look again, That's the one: if you look yet more keenly, And without doubt, you will see that too The picture's real; but one, he's kite and fine, That ======================================== SAMPLE 852 ======================================== flowers, I cannot listen to your little jokes. This song was told by Morpheus, “We always pre-fesh together and meditate.” I am open to the possibility of a universe in which men is lovers and the beds are only of bread. <|endoftext|> "From “Homo Antiquus”", by D. Nurkse [Religion, Christianity, Arts & Sciences, Architecture & Design, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Mythology & Folklore, Greek & Roman Catholicism, Other Religions] (after the Saint Iacchus) (after Diomed from Syria) Still on, my Chaldeans, leaping back from the Anatolian sea, On lighting a torch, I am consumed and savor the sublime joy of my father’s dolishes, And last night being among all you at Houston Domes and finding again close to me, his children, without any other one there— (before the martyrdom) —I know your art, and even the ill-carved stone of those lodges, and that emblem that stands for you (before the exile to Thrace) —I could almost swear the Chaldeans had the art, that your art survives, so mixed with your priestly art: the same art of doing Christian charity, being open with others, and showing in love what Jesus taught: He said that my ransom was my mind, and, being willing, I open it, the hard mind of a man, an ideal and aspirationless man, immortal, and spiritual— how ever many hundreds of thousands of centuries since the world began have I been wanting to do that?—how much sickness have I had to cure for me, until my soul is won to be happy with itself— (I used to be a philosopher, that Diogenes, which means that I have lost my way for the moment, which saves me nothing) that the world is what it is: I have only one duty to God and, immediately, to you and everyone in the room, and myself, and then only the higher duty of obeying his will, the will of my teachers, whatever he may have said before announcing that crucified man would lead to a different walk-on into the Bride O—-Court: so while I am troubled by (as if by the word I speak) the freedom of the Virgin, and by the words to John: So shalt thou suffer no more though I try all the time not to, I am afraid to lose myself for the same reason I am afraid to lose you, whose loss would be each one in the same loss of the lost world and its future: This the word I tried to say was the word used by all of you— I almost said it, holding to my joke with you: if the world were not delightful and full of bliss, it were not so much that is needed as that be said because sometimes what happens when one dies and part of one dies out of the world— as I have not yet been ready to lose myself, to achieve a transmigration and, having taken far too much of having lived, and lived out the time of my life, and having returned with time and place and matter into the region where I may in well- entered conversation with the stars, I have felt that the pleasure one feels from one’s lot is pleasure enough, and with a larger sense of life and place, or because the body was determined and not determinate, or that a body is not the one we need— as if the thing were in us to which we are controlling it is, after all, not the thing itself, but its gendered appropriation, As if the body and its attendant emotions were not the world’s emotions and its world because that were the other, the Other whose side we are controlling, making that the same, without even a word for it: If I said at first there was no Other, it were as if no other were in the world, and you would not have felt that other in the world, for without exception every one of you would have found ======================================== SAMPLE 853 ======================================== Thev ents an instanta te, An' sneaks away for a minute In ter his cell. Now, this is noble Rokeby, One of the six bountiest In our citie, An' they tell us all their deeds For half a siller! The hands of fortune Is all his savings, An' all he earns is our gratitude For a gallon o' siller! A country spawl, and the boys is there With their country finished spade, With a country spive that answer "nicks", With a country spive that answer "jabs". With a country spive that answer "jabs", They are a-smiting boys Until they hat each one so That they drop their jaws Ter the tots at the comin' sun! And the maidens look there at the lad, An' the ladies an' the lad Are hot, 't was never done in all the world, An' the names of it are Dropping out of the pen of fame With the words "nifflas". But the lad is a hero an' the lad Comes nobly when he gits to be The very best o' the lad; And I'se gladly, I think, an' I Have done the very best o' The lad, an' the ladies' boy! We hae a country spive that answers The words Dropping out of the pen, "Ome of women" for one dollar Sike we hae heard them now an' then, With the words "nifflas" dropt down the pock From the pens of wit an' sense, To a country spive that answers "dropped" The saloon of wit an' sense. We hae heard of "bloomet ale," We've heard of "wash den"; We hae heard of "beres'ns" and "maidens," An' a butter-box o' an' gable, Wi' the words that started "q; Sich drinks and dogs, you know, It might be bad, you know, Till, surely we soon will hear't As aforetime us heard 'em. To King George this little icker's daughter Says she'll marry me, my countryman; To the jamin' brother Charles it's now Gin I hae married a Sprack-q; I'll loose the dunt o' the, it's all o' that, An' good me, there's no step or bow An' our spive is a fire-abated spive. As bad as it's been or better said, O's it a tale or't?—Says a coof Our spive you shall sike, It's a fas't to think it's a lie, Says that Spive and words we heard them before, An' we'll get a spive that gits them dice That will be you, Then I'll put my clothes in order for wit, Says the coof, an' ere to an' go Wi' you, the locksumlut you are; So sign for yisurity, then, an' draw, An' lang for a lass. He was bizzy, was Cloris, And she was I'MUNTHIA'S man And if sike Phoebus' lugs A wast o' Sich a nen An' nen cracke must fly That they-net wad no be No nettles' fling. 'Tworward those same lugs, A quack-quack they are; Ef coofs might time ef tell They'll have a booke in a min'. An' a plate varra must batte Wi' a hoarie lugs; We'll haif us three. The jraisdaird of Glodhunt Must lang beaver know his o' What maks the gudly dwd wi' a dun O' callous cairly e'r he'red An' grden that warndly dud May be weread doot, Sawd I dunno na han't to mak him warm. There's hoist a smoke, the chief o' laws, An' talk o't hall be bet. To keep our loung is sure Wi' time or twenty day; Or come as fate ordains, An' spin an' haase a ======================================== SAMPLE 854 ======================================== If I but to thee were given All things beside, the world for this With all things else might hold me, And thine love's superfluity Would in thy likeness end, Thou wouldst ne'er have given so much, And I should ne'er so desire. As from the unfenced prairie land The herded roebuck beats the trail O' the undiscerning herdsman; Like a blind mole he wanders here, And nothing understandeth; And as that mole, o'er-to-furrow'd, Still cracks his slimy shell, Yet still believes his acorns Bring him the dower of sense, And thinks his coal from fire consecrates Each inglorious mole conceit. Nay, if thou'lt permit, upon thy hands Then heedless speech let mine lie Against the ram now nursing bloody: Whether or not, ah, know I nothing? As many tongues as there are mouths to name, There are nectars of nectaharel In thine obdurate cleaves. I lay a new bowl down, whose sides Line not one uttering rank with its own: Through it stirs no traveller, cheats no friend, Speaks no word in any dialect That sets the grape-blast to dialectal talk. Mine speak, one word only, and that one word-- I sing in one most musical tone. I have no more to give, my muse, save that Which me my worm, my blood, and all my host At last appropriated in my song. How may men reach and taste that sweetspot of flowers Which the tropics of age, my life, and age Have socked deep up in their just packs? I see them parlour, parlour, Bed, board, bed, Mother, mother, mother, Papa, Papa, Papa, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Father, father, father, Sister, sister, sister, Brother, brother, brother, Lust, lust, lust, Eye, eye, Sense, sense, Feet, feet, Mind, mind, Sing! let's sing! In the heavens is a cloudless signora, Which means, by my papa and mama (At eight o'clock), and their neighbours in the city, That there is tea, which they may ha' smeltin' At their hinanual vagaries: If they ha' smelt it afore, they 'll smit it Again, when it strikes their watch. And the old clock yet keepeth time, And the clock-wheels yet go on time, And Time still strikeeth, even me! It was feareth o'clock When I started, it was fareth at My tongue the key of me; Okey doke a key, okey doke a key, Okey doke a key! I would ne'er go on my knees to the Lord, Or bend down and ask him for a hat-stand; Or ask for a reed for the heathly songs, Or shoes wherewith to tread on the common ways; And I think that this prayer of our prayer Is a souse-call and endereth naught. But if there were any simples in the air, Or any plant of yore in the earth That helped man to worship, or waked the flame Of inward love ere it fell asleep, Or brought of old days their funchen and fettle,-- Then (praised be the Perpetual movement!) The more my dear dog trot and my cat run, The more my sweet dog trot and my cat run, The more my dear dog trot and my cat run For a' the world to hold, And hold a' the world to hold! Our birds hae scarce fled o'er the fen, Or niest half plinterin' of the sod; But now they 've flown to verdure, Or chattered their leaves to frosts O'er a bed o' furries on the heather. The lambs 'u'd wake at their umin voices Efter a day that was neist fast; Nae distanse ne'er dozed on their skirts, Nor Tara had blest a bride. Nae word e'er transmarched from me Like "Bray," "Arin," or "Cauld." An cordial line in slopin' babble Made everything sad, And wau ======================================== SAMPLE 855 ======================================== Urged by their strength of heart, who hither came. I watched the sun rise o'er the mountains green, And thought how many and many a year, Since I have watched that sun rise on the mountains green, I thought the sun would rise again, at the sight of itself, which will not be long, soon. <|endoftext|> "That Summer,". A wonderful and kind imagination of a garden, a country, and a people, as though the spirits of these all dwelt in a garden, a country, and then as now were a nation, in alliance, a party, who lived in a village, and even now are vanishing out of a village, amid the knuckles of a century, without being dissolved by time, dissolved by change and transitory. All those who were peopled of France and of whose actions she is proud, great and small, the high and the modest, sat quietly on the banks of the seventy-two; quietly, and with eyes that have seen far more than we ever shall, looking forth thereat: Here their renown began, which they first upbraided; be thou, glory, forever their reproach. O Master, what art thou doing, In the world that thou inventest? Woe's me, I must say it to-day: We are all a little way behind. Just a moment, and we'll all be there; But, Lord, there goes a daft and lazy! And, further, we make it a crime Not to be cunning and intelligent; Our fools and lectors all are dull, Oh, this is what thou bidd'st me, Over the top of the world to throw; This is the office of my freaks, And this is my all. Now let the haggard and the mad and the pious lay them down, and cease to be uneasy, And they shall live with thoughts of thou; Though to-day's fortune be heavy, These spirits shall the same to endure; Though the to-morrows meet with haps Unpleasant, yet the hand that makes them wise And wholesome shall counsel be. Thy watch and warder thou wilt present, And their theories true to life restore, Through thick and thin, Thy images from show to show Lead them ever right on; With thy life, the world's life, let them live; Through the troubles that afflict them now, They shall outlive them all. No society for second-sight nor for first-sight, For wisdom and for passion, that grow out of space and through gaps; For, while this double movement of soul to soul Lead us, as a bound and a show, to a certain spot, To a certain space, as a bound, we are one, where we are one with thy earth; There be his mottoes, Some nobler than he, as his life makes more room for godlike striving; There is he most great who willed to be, Who works the best in every rate; Who leaves, that his soul might rest a little, And he has not for just cause for smiting What powers and what wealth he hath, To let the smaller soul languish and tire In ways that cloud the sight Of true practical wisdom; Take up the study of the world's soul, And harvest all that you sow; The worldly bird, who is touched with morn, And the worldly cat, who is fed; Give not a word or thought without end To things that are denied to eyes; Follow no science that is worth A Greek's or a Latin's speaking, But add, with Socrates, the twang Of good and ill and woe, The force of action, the pick and choice Of temperament, It looks as if we had but half a chance, In such a chance, to win or to suffer, To live or to die: yet Fate brings More hope, as the good men said, than feel With caution to despair. Ah, but when I see A place left blank and deserted on the page, Where I, indeed, should add that I died Of hunger, not of love, I begin With tears of bitter grief, and moan, And groan aloud: therefore let none Try to engross me: there is a grave That I must wait. I will not forth again Go with the throng, who but by their birth Have souls too short to be employed; I see too clearly, my last undertaking Was that I should not be yet ======================================== SAMPLE 856 ======================================== Could she be mine!" And thrice again she strove To rush upon the bed; Then, on the fourth, her eyes Opened, wide-eyed, to sight The woman she had loved, in work, In life, who, on the stair, Had hardly seen her. She seemed not thus in face, She could not be the same! And yet, remembering well Their childhood, say, The woman seemed the daughter Of the great painter,-- As now, with high recollections, She saw the trembling, trembling John In whom, for love's scarce worth speaking, She saw her own white face. And suddenly, at this, The fool remembered better days When he was something in the field Of painting,--years ago. So, he who has no memory Of the honest daily distractions, Of what his hands and taste brought out And how they pleased, or thought they pleased, He would not so wholly forget, Would not keep such remembrance longer, The daily distractions of work and play, So well the brave keep up a regiment They are its ringing numbers, day and night, While others only take Their gunners' shot and smoke and rifle, And in and out the range Their daily killing do. What if this, each day beyond the dimming Of disappointed years, Your hand might suddenly smite the paint, The pencil, cause his memory Of all that he will never see Returning, for the eyes Of faces that he knows seem shut To the dazzle of daily photos And lenses and the lenses of pensels On shadowy avenues Where nothing is but shifting shade. What if, for some new, glad occasion, Your robe be red and gold and let the light Slant through your troubadour's head And nostrils, in the shape of an Orangish witch, to fire him; what if But, being flung by you from side to side, The empty canvas reveal The rocking of ships at sea, So with the grace of their silken sides The skylarks gain the pinnacle Where one heaves skyward by an ox Ridged by spears of shingles? The same wind that yesterday Left nothing we see Left something when he strove To crush our meeting: when I saw You before, And the last time was in this Enfield, where at the end Of our last walk, in rain, Your servant pushed against you A black caravan of wood That carried all that remained of Yours. With the words that I have written Too large to write, too full to teach, Unfit for any save those to read; A poet with a cross-look In his eyes, a priest with words, a scholar While wit doth vacation, and When we say that he Who knows the world as he knows his Home,-- That he Who in the world has such a heart as he Who has such a brain as he who hath such a tongue-- Must put All his learning in his mouth. I saw her yesterday, She was fair to the very core; Her locks so colourless, and her face And figure all untouched, unnobled, unconfessed, And yet a pearl to the fair. I knew that she had but fallen, like a flower A moment too swift to be lost In the melting of the air, the flood of Spring. My roots were in her dress, And of her very white shoulder; They had coiled to an infinity Of their labyrinthine, kin-founded ringlet That so I sought to retrace And mine into her strand. I trust that I am useful now, Because it is my houseborne treasure That I have learned to utter Where the dawn-winged plants of the first Flashes of the needon days Shine and sleep, though they flicker as dreams Of fawns. My roots were in her face, They had fared as straight to my outermost; And I saw another one Through the long jeweled crystal of her eyes, And was in that pride of the wise, That being rare, so set apart, That the flesh in meep upwards of it Thrilled, like the way of a span of mist Up to the leaves, and wore and found the scent Of the blossoms and fruits of the trees That of my husband's choice was the means Of what we called our parental tree, And the word for both of us. And how was she different From any other woman I ======================================== SAMPLE 857 ======================================== Teen-aged Ise-Akio Brown and old Marion Robinson, Those were some big words. An iron nail, One that drew power Back from hearts as soft as wools, That touched, that calmed, Entranced the falconer Dove in a wood of leaves, O, slow-eyed Kultur before you woke! But that grim carnival revel Was never more. For they called for niggers; The carnival; and black folks with white faces, And pale folks with black, And brown folks with one another; All were called on To sing, to dance, to nod, to shout. And some, a boy's hand making a blur And a white girl's arm, in a slanting curl At the elbow, A little pregnant belly, Was in the middle; and some black maid and white, Some gold-haired wife And a lathe, but that one broke it first, who shook Her back in the name of all the world As in darkness Their queen And the blow-drenched bourgeoisie. Those hands of a blacksmith! And the bare neck of a summer day. How much of woman! Of a shadow, woman. How much of the stir of the time! Of what would have been night when a yellow star fell. The hand that used to plait the comet's tail, And the legs of her fast fringe, to stop the wolf from the breasts of her baby. Those black-clad eyes of a shining show. That scraping throat's quick tremble in verse and its world's new sounds! That wriggle, that word, Venus, who Stumbled on stilettos in seas of fire. As years of ecstasy quickened his flesh, And through that flesh the black man's transformed him, So it happened that John Mack, who had just come in, Was walking in the Black Man's room, and there he saw, And at first he was only a shadow, a jiggered jenny, A puddle glistening with strips of red nail-scrap. He saw the slow sky-line draw round him; he saw The open air, the glow, the silk-spandrels, sky-spaces, The shag of the sky above him, the line of land, The black and the brown leaf-yard, wind-sheltered wind. He saw the full blood of the air stir. The chestnut-horned, red-beaded face of the great sunlight Leap over the tall high trees. He saw all this. That is all. The big room With its level sound of earth and sky, That is the moon-struck moon of a room Where three men talk of God, or two or one Of God's too-realized book, and their ears Throb with the ground-whisper of the running clock. The big room In its own sound, as it shakes, breaks, grows flat. The snow-light is young in this mellow wood, It swims up, To the sound The door-lean steps. It is a jig In the black hand of a skewer Whose head is cut off, And the sound Is a jig, And the black hand Is an old broken stick. Shelley's great axe Is the look of a man's brain, And his will is a willow-headed stick That a forest-fork of the rising wind Spiked, And whirled, and tightened, and was whirled to its end, But at last it is light In the trees, and it knocks on the roof-pin, Ineffably clear And wrenching, and God's wood Smells of fire Like a mother's breast-wood. It is the look of a man's brain At the distance Of the waving wood Stricken with wiry branches, like Dead leaves, or of some impossible death No yellow-shoot of new growth For him to stand over, There to stand and beg for Him. And his eyes are the eyes of a man Of a ship, In a barge On a murky point of land With its lantern light, and the water-line Dry, And the only noise, The wind's Wild hail, Witching and dreary wind Of the northern seas, And above, As the birds' wings fluttering, floats The sky's blue expanses Unreckoned, and utterly Unaccounted for by the joy, The living wind, ======================================== SAMPLE 858 ======================================== straight caught at, smoothed the bud, He tired of shaking and rubbing, left the labor, And like a chemist I'll put them for the only Any more of getting to the scent. I am glad to see them go; I cannot endure to see you going, I shall give you my card And shake your hand for glee That you will never doubt Of me a thing. We who have been children know how the time flies And the clouds swim and the sunshine wends, By the time that it is noon, By the time that it is night, Perchance we may see the light of morn Again in the glorious eyes Of the moon at her rise. And that it may not be too much to puzzle over Those few creeds we have followed to the letter And the letter may seem to float and splay With a bulk about them as with crumbs Left from the luncheon we have had, Giving the last kiss of life, I have had to build faith up in the snow And hope in the emptiness of space, And I cannot doubt nor yet despair That faith and hope and hope shall together Have a good holding. I have found a broad way and a long way, And a dreary bed and a brimming full cradle, I have learned my lesson: you must cling, You must grasp and dare, dare and grasp all night With a nature all so new. And well it has paid! but my heart it aches With a churning desire to hope on for something Which is less than the strength of two. I've had enough of the wrong. For the old wrong, For what the root of the tree of the year was Was, the whiteness of the seed, the silence in the bud Of eternity, I had thought-- The root is broken, the long strizen Overflowing whose snow So deep, the berry white, the seed So finer than dream, That it seemed starry pink, an the bud was blown Now down the hidden road to the spring. I, being free, Saw, and I had seen, While with maidens I sat In a rosy company, That the little morning hours The shape of a pretty one Were bound for the mountain I, being free, Did whatever I pleased with the boy, I bound His dark hair back, so wide, It fell so lightly, short and sweet, His wing and his hand and his foot Were all perfect, While his face burned in the sun, And his breath went quickly Like the wind in the flower, And his feet went soon and fast, As a bird and a man, And his hair, the gold of his head Was swathed in a radiant wreath Of pearl and all ice. The Summer, after many violent suns, To the ebbed and flowed in a silver sea With her feet in the blossoms going home, She found a peaceful way, an easy grace Under the snow. And in the first June after she had fed her On dew and fire, A bird sat in a broken tree, her heart With its wings broken, alone and loud In its helpless sadness. And all night long through the stars by her a spirit Of true love danced, and a great light in the sky, As of the moon! At the window opening, she is in the garden, And she drops upon your shoulder, You pick up her roses, and you lick The pear blossom, and it is as though Her body were blossoming; The Summer blows roses, red as her wine, And they'll make her the sweet mouth of me, And I'll make her as sweet as she has been With the fire of the sun. She was as sweet and tender as the lilies, When she was with me; The things she singeth, shall I tell? She died because she could not be sweet, Because she had wings and they were not soft, And the moon was before her, And the path to her was lonely. She had been the brightest flower for a day, Before the sun and the moon and the path was lost. This is the word the bird said, When the flowers were in her heart, Love was the word to her, but she could not Take love into her heart. The lover's ways were strange To her, for she had never done With any, having been born A single flower of a seed in a single meadow. She said: "I shall fly ======================================== SAMPLE 859 ======================================== Swindrin' to what I rais'd. Says I, some one in the sky Teeth, claws, grow every one; All come of Earth, and say, I don't know as yet who pays. You're fence for an angel race; I don't doubt it, no doubt. You're circle and you're centre Between the sky and Earth, Full, free, you go to Heaven. His feather'd answer made reply: Some one may call the Earth Out o' the empty sky, Some one belet me too O'er the pointless cooter. O, he's certainly saying true! True as I've whet all the time The thing I've chanced to shew. You pompous conceits! I know you. Well, which is it, All, all right, a jolly round, And, while you fuss, I'll strike. The look of your wig Hampers me like anything. The chap to your chin Is not so boastful as You. All, all righty-corner, Call it--down the medium. 'Tis round, and was thin, and even so, There's no reason why it shouldn't be My drop. The waltz a movement suited to please Your tickled so-called lady-spot, All righty-well, And "Robin red-breast" could only Robin's ears recall; So you'd better take care Your 'ticks aren't chos'n. Though the tune may come to naught, it will make Some one laugh over it, at home. And when I write my little scroll With cuts and bits in it, Is the first that I should employ Anyhow, And the last that I should count. It is a truth universally acknowledged, That there's no treasure on earth Can equal that in the empty sky, A spirit of light and a spirit of shade, Together in one form. Round, a wing, a wing, a spirit of light, A spirit of shade. This music that the wind brings back, How I seize it, that I snatch away! This singing, when the night is still, And evening curtained its face. A spirit of light, a spirit of shade, In one, a light, a shade, Together, a spirit of light and a spirit of shade, In me, and in him. Round, a wing, a wing, a spirit of light, A spirit of shade. O the beauty of the circle! How I grasp it, that circle close! And fling it back, a wider circle, And away, to find the circle more fair. A bigger light, a bigger shade, a bigger soul In him that's around, that spirit of shade, And close, and live, and broad, and higher. But always I remember, The first time in my life I called him "child," he only smiled. She was as fair as any I'd ever seen-- Fence round her eyebrows with aught there was to befoul, With her dark eyes. I've a brood of children--think of it! six From five a mother hath borne; And six are fair as the rest, That I know, except one, The youngest of them all. And that child, behind her mother's knee, Was seven years old When she died, and she's two Fold back the seven folders of the death-book, For what's written there I can't read! And the child died in the field, In the way, where there's gloom, And so there was sorrow, And the heart was glad, Till her fifth year. The fields are all stilled; The windows clap locked; All is quiet here, and still. And black as of her slumb'ring eyes And starry white as she, her dead. What has time to do? What can dull mind With thoughts that wither so In a new birth of light? O, now there is no pleasing Memory of the whole sad night; Now the bird has flown from the trees And sleeps on the dewy ground; And the sound of the woodcutter's axe Still echoes and rumbled to us, But nothing can recall The grief of her, the love of my heart, Or the ghost of my sabbath. There is joy in the dead wood now, For the dead bird flies silent now. And I ======================================== SAMPLE 860 ======================================== The team-killing prince was sat at table. They'd said their pocket [by the door, Between their own we wondered], a good deal of swearing, The joyful absence of a bull-beast, A shrill-voiced trollop, and a herd of bantams. He looked grey--and a loud letter-hissing cheered them. A handful of harebells too in the stirks, And some white-haired grandmothers on the dresser. In a moment--his eyes turned sideways, He was lost. All the spring-time blazing up. He had a gurgling laugh. You could see him baying. And a pendant with the pentacle gleamed by the door. His clinking plate clattered, as he wheeled in, He was over-voiceboxed; but no-thing replied. For he rolled on dead so many loads of hay. His boots were like kitten's behind him there. His beefy forelegs had a cat's-jaw. He yawned and shook the fire from his sleeve. Then a book lay on his legs--love's lost delight, The fair the save the man who kept his soul. A kind of prayer in an awful way. The porter wouldn't close the door. He couldn't seem to remember a thing. Poor Thing was only one the and the same to the girl-- But a book he'd look at. Not the trouble he had then. He nodded at the porter to go on. He nodded and toasted him till he drank. The porter stroked his horse--wondering at Love. Love wasn't there, with the thing that stared, the child. If he brooded, the night would warm his cockles, For that were tarts, down, on his wrist, a chain. They fanned like an onion and he forgat them. Then he sighed; and Time's hand caught the thread. Love stole, for this thing had the power to cost him The pricking of his nose and a quick wag Of the swoll'ning hush in his ear. In a distant town--with their wood not far-- A bonnet kept her word, and he'd never forgiven her! He could get no stranger than that, the Gray. And she might walk out here on a winter's evening, With her face turned to sky; and, why should she care That he sat there where I'd normally be? He wasn't that kind of lover. And who was to be counted as a fool, When in the arms of prime? With haste The porter tossed back the hat. The porter flung on the table his hell-befied hoofs, The porter flung back the hat. And loved her only while the porter could win her-- Then he flung her over, being long yearned for. And people asked him why? Because he had gone all around, The-hoping-not-to-be-chosen! Since he'd had her? He should have said, He Had gone down to the bridge to see A falling tree And say he saw its ends. She rose and saw the broken ice, And the broken sky. And she knew she could climb-- No, a wind-thronged sea. And he asked her not for love; But for their ship, To cross, like he was done. Then she knelt beside him, And by, And very dim, Cotton, her hood's splint; And her on him, a yoke of pain-- Down to his wayward end. And far, with a freshening sea Above the dead bowl, She tottered, with her golden clasps, And he bent to her, And they knelt, Dear memories fell on them Like bells of silver, As under the golden stalk, The little blossoms fallen Lost their grayness and bloom. And all day long, Between them, she watched him, And he watched her At a pink bough At the drifting of the tide, And saw the singing sun Wandering West. And like to the flowers that dream On, into empty space, So the hope rose up, But no tree cropt. In the vastness of the sky The hope rose up and withered, Till it would wither and wither, And then wither and wither, In an older rhythm It rose up in the sky. The sky grew clear. And now it ======================================== SAMPLE 861 ======================================== Pale, like the moon in night, one star, is failed, The spark that is quenched was dear. Where do the fair daughters of Ophir dwell? I feared, I knew not, oh, the smouldering tenderness Which gives to Joy, and Joy to Conquest A golden blade, and crown the lusty Youth of Gronia. I thought, perhaps they melted like the lily's hue In Heaven, or like the garland for a tomb. Then surely that Utter Primrose, purpling up the hill, Which readeth "May" in Winter's helter-skelter time. Was nay more fair than wings of the swallow were, And she whose cheeks the green musk blend saith, "Yes, the bosky lichens are white already, But 'tis a most excellent rose white, This is my whitest beauty, yet is left to thee. For thou bearest all my whitest beauty, Thy rose-flowers are in Heaven, Yet never wilt thou rest, dear dove." So, 'tis at least so flesh doth think. Vermoutha, he answered, 'tis well seen A Good-Master in Rylstone tow'rd the city. See with what scrupulous goodness are they done! "Who's my maighe-mate--he's the man?" Who brings us good milk, and frieth the foal." The Rushen Truth, the Rushene Glory to see, The late lamented Christ is far away. And we will speak with him, But not o' neeed, we pray. Ye Graces, which, by providence imprest On virtuous Sex, your ministring frame Of storard Style will bless mankind, Whose vain report prating is so fondly brought (What when you say you've had, you bring to naught?) In Evil Eye speak not, you see, So know you not the thought we brood in? With siluer fingers fine She on the c[ame]; She ministrant left the grot-- That stalk her where. She hid the gate, she sought the seat, The floor she wrapt about. The farthest seat she found was that Which gaudy shows of state beheld, Yet held a pettle clean; She took the chalice--brought No man she sought sat there--but there All was in order due. The fair face of that fair place, Beautiful, unprofaned, Sat crownless upon its bed, White, not verily beyond the beard, But bright as hair was. Silvery eyes, beheld the festal scene, And two soft noses Of a strange beauty each. She laid the gold quill down, The beauteous heads on a platter; With wreathed spangled flowers And silver vessels bright, And yellow vessels, sun-violets, In studs, they sat all through day. She raised them a fire, The silent frogs then made a chime, A lot of yellow puddings, And trinkets called them bread, And crisped florentines, The florentine's deep-tressed hair; In a garland of vine-bordered Yellow wreathed, they sat the whole Fairest company, and she brought Veal, ice-cast from a fount. In the closest lap, They fed them, she-foxes; The whole day long, till fresh Moon drowse; As with their cups she drove them, down A hill, rose the second she, As two blind she and blind. The moon to sea in vapour sets Now, to be in the Cymrian's call The wind and the Western tide: Germutia Victa is no more: Now is the social hour In the one hour for friends. There are tasks, O Marie-Francis, Which, surely, a king should not put To the better way, such idle things He's fledgen, like the countries all, Despot, and all the world, and tame, If we must lead in kindness, Tell us, O say how to put thee Upon the feet of Christian ways? The small white gun is the pearl Of chastened Dandos; And as plain as next to that This year it was my master's Who, taking me and mine, To New Orleans, with the biggest tear That was ever taxed on wine, Left us--the ======================================== SAMPLE 862 ======================================== RED ROSE "The wind is as a message that wants to say to the city, saying of hope and change, only that the winter is now so far behind it is fading into before it can utter its words, like the shape of a white flower at the edge of the city’s night. And as if to answer the message, the white flower at the edge of the night is blooming with anointing fire, as white flower at the edge of the night. How might a flower at the edge of the night flower unto love fall from the seed at the edge of the night? And the shadow of a flower upon the night flower also shadows the heart of the flower at the edge of the city. Before the flower, before the seed, the shape, the shape of a seed, a shape as white as the dawn, how white shall the heart at the edge of the city be? And then, a flame comes at the night flower from the shape as a flame as shape as flame as seed at the edge of the city, coming toward the flower at the edge of the city, toward the flower at the edge of the flower, descending toward the flower, toward to touch the flame. The flower says, ‘Fly, wilt thou?’ the flame says, ‘I will descend to the bottomless pit of the city, and will say to the flower, ‘Thou shalt live in my presence, and shall look upon the face of God.’‘For what will the flower at the bottom of the pit think?’ The flower trembles and replies, ‘If I know myself, I know death; and if I do not know myself, I know death.’ And the flame says, ‘Thy heart shall tremble.’ And as the flower trembles, the ashes of the flower at the bottom of the pit shall tremble, and I shall answer and say, ‘I die in the shadow of thine soul.’‘Life, I say, for him who is born of kiss, and love, and who has loved one day and who shall love another, till he come to die, till his heart and his body so endure the discipline, till his life so endure the discipline of love as theirs who to fear in love’s remembrance, in the forgetfulness of death. And the flower, a flame, a seed, a flower at the edge of the city, at the edge of the world, a white blossom, for its soul, a rose for the fragrance of the face of a woman at the border of the night, a flower for love at the edge of the night, as born of the breath of God in the face of a woman at the edge of the city, an unformed flame, a flower of white flame, a flower as red as the eyes of a woman, a flower as red as the eyes of a woman, a seed of red flame, a seed as red as the eyes of a woman, a flame as red as eyes of a woman, a seed as red as the lips of a woman, a seed as red as the lips of a woman, a white flower of breath for a woman, a flower of breath, a seed of breath, a seed as white as the lips of a woman, a rose of life for love, as breathing, as living, a flower of life, a flower as red as eyes of a woman, a flower as red as eyes of a woman, a flower of life, a seed of life, shall thou behold, a flower of life, a flower of breath, a flower of death for her, thou shalt behold.’ A tall, stately tree, that cleft the sky, Has raised its proud branches to the stars, And spread far out below its proud shade, In twilight like these sunless nights, To me a child, to me a maid, A still pale maiden weeping. Like a meteor of light, like a winged thought, Shall a green bud from the bosom of a dove Pass, and so suddenly gleam as if away Into the dark, and shine above thine arms And sparkle in the silent skies. To be one with the clouds of night, And mist of the waters, and fire of day, The heart of the earth, and summer rain, And the white hairs of the sentry on the hill-- From the highest-mounted star to the lowest sun, A rapt, white child of worship! This is what I heard, this is what I saw: The voice that trembled, trembled into prayer, Bright with the knowledge of the Master. The stars around the silence rang, As if the Lord of Sabaoth were near. He stood over the door of the Upper ======================================== SAMPLE 863 ======================================== The folks pass us, some stopping at the door To see a stranger, making room for her. She passes again. On her way to gather corn. I ask you to give me some new wool. What is new? You give me wool and I get old clothes. The new wool Is green like earth. I take it and put it in a black wool bag, Like a child, into a thin open bag that has a small spring, To carry it off to the black country, to the end. Now the ladies pass in front of the new way. My son has the red hair, The men the brown hair, but not like that, like only whiskers, Like only the memory of hair still. You and I Are of one color, but there are the women, not like this, Coloring, coloring around us, dressing and passing Whilst the wool hangs on the wall. Not like this at all. There is only wool and nothing else. Only a shadow In the thin-framed door, the spring and nothing else. I can tell That the women pass, not like this, all in black. <|endoftext|> "Second Sight", by Donald Revell [Living, The Mind] That's when she saw me, she cried, Oh no, not again! And is there any truth in the stories she has told? My thoughts were going when her thoughts were stirred, and her heart The shade it was riding was riding, and the bed rocked, And my wife's sleeping and my life was sleeping as well. All the babies giggled at her, and the husband wakened, The husband was gone, the babies sang their sleeping song. He opened his eyes, he drank his tea, he rested, he was glad. I reclined like a seal in my own corner of the dream. The light in this part of the dream changes, swings, swings, A glass in a glass, a glass on a table. I lean forward. This is how it goes, this oracle, The door of the only room, the transparent wall. There are only our shadows and thoughts, and our memories, All the outer architecture of this world. <|endoftext|> "The Undoing", by Donald Revell [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Time & Brevity, Love, Classic Love, Relationships, Valentine's Day] The day comes, as all old days, When time lifts the cup that he has spoken Unstop on the center stile; And now, with furtive eyes, he finds The faded corners, and the rows Of pins, letters, telegrams, and flowers, All turned over, catalogued, Blent with the morning dew, blent With the careless footsteps under the chestnuts, With the lingering allure of flowers, With the blue of sky and sea, With the bell for chime and ring of clock, And the scents of strange fruits floating Through the narrow street where moved All life before; Yet now he puts by the drawer, Now empty, tapers shift To the sun, and looks once more Beyond the rose where all was. Love rages. And all day long The roaring gong has swept; The shouts of exiles, and the cries Of lances unsleeked, unsashed, The cymbals whipped, unblaced, They wander through. Love rages. The tombs are pent; All day long the shadows stretch; Love sees and heeds. To-morrow the desperate eye Of exile is set, unblasted In emptiness, unbeheld. Love rages. The hearths are barricaded; Ashes smite each other, ashes Of home, clots of love, They die. What shall bind it? What is this one great fast Hard marriage and wedded life? What binds them to bind them fast Even to their dying day? They have their martyrdom, But live they to the death. Who sees them dies, Till a block of time Grows under their feet And they and all the land Live nowhere longer than They have their execution, Their living doom, Devouring swords, each side, Like tyrants go down Their shrieking native way. They had their end. Their graves have closed. <|endoftext|> "Fragment", by Donald Revell [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Men & Women, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality, ======================================== SAMPLE 864 ======================================== Vn honour could the man not hencewithall Let kyng Arsene the corou{^e} be les He lik’d nou to lue with the same, He stoucht not so in his beay{er}e That he was him styll to wepe But whan Arsene hadde it liet, And his yonge boy as I have tymed For now vnjoyanc’d of teares, Vp he thenkdolydes hym among, He wolde of his chambre hange the stoure. "Gramercy!" callende the fyrst, "sette hem stoure, And sette your chycest of mete." [Exeyrd in an mou] Vithof he ne may be reste Toward his chambre; and after his ese He made a gret part of the seuere He made on gude and on nede Toward his chambre; with his hande He clipte his fyrst, and thanne he herd And he gan up of a hyll, So that it may {beloved of} his dygode, And seyd, "Sey, here hym is come; To gybe a-geynest{^e} the place. My delvage and largesse of londes! Now must I in chambre geve him way, For to dye I sye a-gyening the syde." And he sette the moutes of his wey Thurgh the plente of his grene, And made a signe of the poynte Unto his chambre; and thus he seyde, With his pris, "Ase, to me be no lete Fyrst dremynge the worlde, as ye be lete." He sette the chambre, and thus he seyde: And for to sette his Sone, That his flesh ys in fere than men myght, He sett a-one, as if to se the chambre Vp-ward his dowghttynesse, And for his desyre of thatche manere He bad anon to bring w{i}t{h} Sone {quod Cupid}, The which his herte swerd with his Fyres bofe, And made him nat vp to sit a-bogh{e}ng, The noble wif also fowleth That Venus thanne hath hym led, So that thei ne kest ne leve Thing which he deth: and forth he gan hyde, As the hounde schyneth vp as he went. As he an hihe and a grege wif be fer, Vnto a Rowme dyd he do there; For thanne he syketh when he syketh. His dowhter fonged was thanne so looke, That ifteft his name on slepe shulde be bore, For which sche scowede him to his name, That he a lineage w{a}re scholde have. He cleped her so to the Nwe vp, That it ne schynende ly the nyghte Toward his name on her quoy Sche made him for a pride of gre, And schypeth upon the wyves side. And he his fader out of the inn Was styll oute, bot no malecye Of love he hadde al that he wroght, The wyves were in hire ycete As chyldren as annynge men; Bot non availeth his myhtynesse, For he ne wol noght his fader lye. Hath gret jelitude with him, And he no beste nyght goth as he keste, Bot with his wyves ayein he prevest, To ete than with hym to drawe Rufell, the which was pysessed of pere: For for the which he made his will, Thing which mai best a womman sle, A lyht was whan him hath bede; And ryses ayein, whan he so keste, As he which no worldes good wroghte Of his deni mannes conidayne: ======================================== SAMPLE 865 ======================================== Wherof so longe abide Til that thei be filled full of gon Sche was made war of in avisyane: His leve aryse upon her cle was fed With gon of many a feller, That evere upon the grene ground Withinne the point of lene Ben part in special be the tiltinge Whiche of the world nevere yit Is faref, and scholde hem alle Devel forto doon therinne What schal befrope in this lyste In love, and fele wel that I ne Fro after the wepende forto wite If that he drencht hir up to the foote Which Vulcanus hath softe and falle In wyn, with such kinde and wiht The world ne scholde hir see after this. Til he be night, and thus he scholde Hir hom he can, and after this Sche may be kept in hih lastefull tyde. This is hir gentil, that makth a womman Of ech of hem that hire toke, And whan sche gooth, so as fortune He after be gulte, In hir face mai they be nowh, And whan sche sih hire myhte alone, Sche bette, and so of every hound That sche hath in hire chiere, With fot be some such eno In mannes limb togedre hirste That ilke desport also That nevere upon nekaidende Is bothe from above To mannes herte and mai beth, Ther mai men point, ther wol I wite, And in this wise as it stod Unto this lord, that fond to wyte Toward the worldes mein and men As he for othre scholde he telle. For so myhte noman his wille Of al this world onother sit Wher so it liste, withoute drede That wolde he wene how He scholde als wel his lond The world thus scholde an ende. That lost hath many an heve, And to lyven er he be hord On such a weie he wolde bord, Ther have wel kene as the cause, That wher a man is in togyh Of love, his ladi schal have Be half dissen wel the same For elles thei scholden grieve. For every ladi is wroth To have it thogh ther mihte semeth, And if ther be, thei wole hire werne And wolde him noght ne deal so. Bot ther is more, if I be rewe, Of eny womman so, so dare I wene, Ther hath ther non forven left A verse for such a wyle as that. Whan ther is such a man o lothe In skiles ben thei speken stronge, And schorte as eny rede is sayn In the nyhtes times of the daies, This lore hath be for wedde suffond, And fell suldor on a time this, He is set as herkeste fer and lame, For love and forthwith I wot Of that himselve mote beclipp That men wol it therfore be doute; For men wol nothing evere bene Which is to love above alle Which is the nyht which is the day. Lo, hou men wol hyng aboute To godes and to caste aboute The Se to falle and to come ayein Of his oghne yift he mot beginne, Hou if the Se falle and come agrope, Yit so how it schal falle and fare Of fol with this, it schal be les Of comun wealth which of o patterne Was made, and for the wynter ale Thegither, Bot ate laste anon in a bout That ech of hem beth President Hath y-turneth, and also he The worste which thei myhte saue In his lepres for the nones That hem to schryngen to the oth Mai he take thilke oghne word, And axeth it was for the more That he myhte his wille fulfille. And thus whan the ======================================== SAMPLE 866 ======================================== by heart, The eagle he sailed to Singapore on an elephant, On elephant skin he engraved, Horned Cock of Hippocnum and Atlas behind the head; Footprints cleft in the beast's skin, He lined up in saucy fashion each piece Of the Cock, all in a page The picture must hold the pictures the enchanter plies him, Chipping up and over and down, And deep and deep in, the waters pour into the pearls, But beyond this falling glitter the ebb springs through; And behind the Horse, the whales, Sucked up by the flood Washing the velvet down. And if you search the forest you shall find the same pattern for every Beast, And, by the lightning, Flashing among the undulations whereon they lie Sporadic, stopping sometimes, Then, as the wind's the fire of process, you shall know that you can not compare, Searching here, searching there, You shall see that the Horse has measured its spatial space, Yet the beaver spreads over a hundred years his economical level Of natural goods in both Holes, The breathing of the waves of the Heav'ns, When you search, you shall find how you compare, No other creature, save the Dog, knows divinity, Or knows more than the Dog, the unseen Dimensions of life. <|endoftext|> "Ancient Auxiliary Mechanica", by Ian Poudote [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] Ancestors had not known how life begins. Only a young cat was all. After the cougar, the snake, and the eucalypt, (Four species of dinosaur had already become extinct) It was a time before carnivorous plants. It must have been good eating. Architects had not yet invented the ramp (arch on the inside tenement), they were making things up as they went. It was summer, and red stars swarmed the meadows. This was an incident, the first and last. Soup was scarce, whatever they saw they continuously wrote down. What a column it would have to be. Miscagal… Molded, cup-shaped pillow… for resting on the cotton sheets; a kind of room in a leaf. He'd never look at himself that way. I wanted to tell everyone about the place, not under the decollete, not for the sake of looking smart, not because of anything to see. I was serious. There was no compassion at all. The idea was to take one first shade, like the first morsel of an idea isn't beautiful, it's necessary. But that's the worst kind of beauty. I never quite understood, except when I realized just how nothing but humans have souls I can't say the court's ever-smiling judge told me I couldn't see unintelligibly. Anyway, his voice took on this greater isolation, this end of the line. She had fled life to that place. So for a while we slept together, he in his home, and I, whatever I'd been. <|endoftext|> "To the Choir", by William Wilberforce Ashley [Social Commentaries, Class] Nobly still ye [the class]! As you do keep The greater way, without shifting from it. Timely attend you to the tide of this grave? Be of good chearful mood, I'm sure it must be storm Or not at least, ay, it was a flood at last Whose bound of course is just where the sun Flies on his path the sink and I conjecture That wind's just blowing the leaves. And so to look at no thing but sky, And still say things to the world without shame That not in confidence of no one else's knowlege Is written on your book. Do ye? And then I say if ye look not to any land But Heaven ye must needs look at the sky. Here's the Bible, and here's the Book of Splendor, The one's a treatise on Ecartes; the other Is the Book, as I read it now, of Isadora, With less material numisme. Both ye Because of colour ======================================== SAMPLE 867 ======================================== oon of night, and crowding people on them, The threat of an approach; and far up the road In the black clouds the faces of the mob! Then she, a child of five, Shy of dress and gait, but fair of face, O'er those who chafed her stood her big lips Who turned up her small eyes with a sigh, Mouths flapping like a watery wind in flight, Trembling and wild; Then she, as they drove her, Her eyes wistfully seeking, Flapped up from her round breasts When they let her go, and rushed past The far child-show, through the throng Of faces, and away down the street, Out of the ken of care Silent the distant nights of unsanctified sleep. All night the smooth-riding state Of the blue wagon shelled and led along the way. Like a gray leaf Tumbled and blew The thin black stream From which it rose. Its arms and sides upthrust, the flush blue sky. Its tracks grew Sand by the shore Crimsoned with pearl. The stars came out in litanies Over the muffled wall Over the moon-drenched wall, Where between shining steep and steep Under the frozen skies Like a wave there trembled A deep thick murmuring shadowy life. Silently through the wall The silvered moon Beat like a huge wave Against the snows. Night lumbered In cold-blue leagues And solemn-beaming Above the woods and far sea-caves. Over the mound Of red-porridge stone The wind put Voice of the Past, As the Eyes of a star Drifted across it, Making the caves, each one, like prison bars, Wavering to the off-side. As the off-mainstream of a river, behind it A wide black plain is, and after it a bay. Landward of that mound the land Stretches and coasts Like a line, a hard brown line, Striking with towers. Wind-stirred at the toes, Taut with past emotion, Traveller, biers are they, The wind-stirred panes, and flaps Like wings of moths that hang At the endings of their sails, Hatch-mouths Of leather bags. Wind-stirred panes In wing-deep midnight. A rose scatters underfoot, But the rose is in the clouds. Sun and shadow, Wind-stirred panes, Under the edge of the houses, Under the hill-shadow, Shadow-filled areas Glist aloes, Ragged above the spumantis Dead girl-fronts. Over the mound, Wind-stirred stone And the steel-bright houses Faintly with fluttering of the wings Of a sudden flight. Wailings of wings in town squares Drowned like a buzzing in the streets, Drowned by aloes. Blinding, Wind-stirred stone, Bordered by what flowers? Fringed glass o'er what orchards? Riding the westerly gales, Of fragrant scents that scatter! Hard-packed like cart-stops of toil Cluttered and crowded, Under a shadow-mound. New-cut and green, Little in patches, Yellow, the shells, the herbage, White with black-soiled bottoms; Shining here and there the garden, And brownish apple-boughs! Under the shade, Under the city's mounds, The wind-stirred stone, the pipe-stone On whose white surface Mixed with the ebb and flow The wave and mist of life Of a world's respiration. Black-gold and blue, Celadon and iris, Below this rose garden, With a trance of silence blown Like a veil over and beneath The dim and sacrificial Light of a far-off stream, A little as those quivering spires Of chimneyless brick At the end of this street, Climb slowly On through the fog Towards the edge of hell. Who shall understand? Who? I have forgotten. Those lamps and that statue, Ringed with purple glare The only star is, The only and the only Sail-light of my memories, That ======================================== SAMPLE 868 ======================================== From the furnace, forge of iron, As from the fire the clapboard, Through which, to the appointed end, Iron birches are transformed. To what, O woman! to what Unfathomed, unhallowed place Art thou fallen, falling headlong? Kullervo, Kullervo wanders here From grot and hill of Northland, Wandering from grave to grot, from grot to hill. Through wisterous desert places, Where the melted snow-fields tumble, From north-west wind with rushing sound Rises up to heaven the sound of storms, And the roaring ice-plains. Far o'er the desert passage way he roams, To the home of Osmo's gray princess, Or the caves of Plumazos, friend of Sariola. In this golden ring are fixed the kalpas Of the Dwarves of wondrous skill, The renowned far-famed Pohjaers. With lips of brass the Pohjaers With the hammer-points busie, Till the wheat-fields shed their sheaves, Till the corn is fully standing, Or the ears are put in trial. Kalpas longer grow than kalpas, And longer Osmo's mountains stand. To the Pohjola's orchards peering, Sets the girls of Tapio to music. To the mead the honey-combs growing Sets the grass-land herdsmen. On the hill-top, on the lake-reeds, With a birch-rod like a weir, Ears of the loon, it rattles onward, And the river lies outspread. Thus the hero does not forget Kalpas, the ancient way of seeking, The Osmoki's way of discovering, Fashioned by the gods' advising, The Mikaelstein's magic giving. In this golden land of Osmo's producing Is the seed of reapers, reapers of silver, But the goodly lands of Osmo's sending Are filled with ploughed-up fields by women. On the hill-side where the breeze is blowing Hoes drop down their wet to keep rolling, Grapes pour down in mad cheer, Capons dangle from great trunks. Where the wild white tulips wreathed up Hang the flags of Osmo's country, And the golden apples rasped into rags From the wild-ears hang down their shining. Yet with wonder to the region flying Loveliest waif in all the land is coming. With a hair-skaid cap on his head, With a dusky suit of smiting, In his hands he bore a book of magic, Sat a-reading in his fashion. From the farmlands o' the West-land, From the hazel tufts he heard lamentations, From the clumps of troublesome tree-trees, From the ravines round the springs, lamentations. With his magic cap he raises the first, With his magic book the second Ithkvia. Then with milk he mixes the third utensil, With his wings his name is now announced, With his race what tribes of nations he fills. Never the wag that at the dam first flying Stooped toward the stream before Osmo's best, Never the new-born wag will name him, Even though Osmo's friendly fields surround him. By the wings of his own force Osmotax To the plains he brought the seedlings, At the head of the little streams, Frottish waters, carried eastward, Toward the Megara's winter-wind, Where the snow is few and ice abundant. Up against the southmost masthead Of the everlasting snow-ridge, Heaped Osmo's maize-field in rotation. Up he thrust his soul's estimation, Down he plunged it from the estimation, To the bosom of Eolia, And the white hair was here displayed, And the fair, bounteous Osmo. Thus the white hair was uplifted As the ploughshare swayed across it, Thus the ploughshare itself was uplifted To the sward before him, riven through With the ploughshare's knees deeply sunken. Lands he has ploughed, and with them watered, And with his human eyes he looks about him, And the fields are covered with Osmo's cornfield. In this place the very draper ======================================== SAMPLE 869 ======================================== eds-- Up, up and out of them-- ah, we shall go to a land of strange faces; we shall find an alien gallantry that is not of the earth. Our master, if the stranger in our city is not of the earth, if he lifts not up at the glory of the neighbor but blasphemes it and, being poet, laps up the goodness of God out of the horizon of a dark water-- We shall dig a grave, like black hen-roosts by a high water, buried in it by our Indian traders; tho in our carapet we may listen on the comings and goings of a grand pageant. Wandering like ghosts of the dead Indian blankets, like old doves that have flown, like bright birds of the summer sun, like drowned men returning, like young happy angels above the ocean foam, more like to be taken up in the sea than lived in the woods or slept among men, more like white birds on the far-scattered March night of the one white night, as the broad new moon slowly lights the North-west, as the lips of the mouth of a cloud dripping with bright soap-smear or as the horns of a future river booming over the mouth of a river in her father's heaven. There will be no trumpet to blow the death of it, the broad fire of the Indian people. You are taken up in the death of your peopled kingdom. You have no destiny, but a destiny of grass and thorn trees, of brush and tules, of swamps of locusts and overflowing with felty roots, of last decrees. A world's but a heap of dirt when an empty sack lies 'twixt the shoulders; an angel dies, and a world is easy, and one dully scattered fragrances of sunshine; And we shall be as grass and tules, because it is our country's fault, There will be no more death, and no more speeches where by the tree the death of one kind or the other, or not some sensual murderer is fed a deadly bait; there will be no more war, or any generals or kings when, now the drop of blood will be taken up and either resurrected. To teach a peasant body-broiling to the Lord. to raise the head from the sty of a jot of putrified slime that some railroad shusher, who hates war and kills himself, and cuts off in her wretched sowing-season, may have made a line about her head and severed it for her sake to-night. The great earth-dweller in all honesty shudders when she finds her milk-white head without a white man in it; shivers in her dios over the cottage you are going to a livelier thing in this stark hood. 'Tis surely sometime after fourscore and three this rambling of trails will be undone and the cairns burnt, but maybe not the scalping-out of-doors that I mean, for this denies the mind room to calculate the point at which a man's scaramou'yi takes off and with the head drops the neck-jaw of the woman you love. <|endoftext|> "The Mouse that Burrows in the Rock", by Wendell Berry [Love, Infatuation & Crushes, Romantic Love, Unrequited Love, Relationships, Nature, Winter] At nightfall the WhiteHead Peak, All orange and yellow-white, lies out over one of the roughest roads in Kansas City. The road running down the center of my block Grows closer to the road, and the mouse I have never noticed climbs closer to the street— the mouse whose body is as uptorn by the brown that tinged the french tubbers of The Kansas City star Whose street, away from the motor roads, shaved white in the last battle of the Civil War! You see it climb The ruined garage door, bare as any tomb of a naked girl, and down in back, By the yard-pole, quivering. <|endoftext|> "The Sky", by Wendell Berry [Living, The Mind, Nature, Stars, Planets, Heavens, Summer, Trees & Flowers, Weather] The sky’s up part of the night— The moon has a halo, the const ======================================== SAMPLE 870 ======================================== that is pure of colour and high-flown for the skies, and in my heart I loved a tawny leaf that filled me full of purr and that rendered me merry. On some green headland I lay by the sea, at noon of the day and a flower close to the sun; it was a bud like the sweet summer, and she was the flower I bought in Fano, that my heart of the leaves would fain dominate. I have drunk her bud; I kissed her petals, and what is to be done but pity and flight? There is a pebbly sound of a path on which a deer leaps and his stag or timber bounds on. Its steps cut a ripple of dust on the hard pan, whose anger at having been hurled to earth is swiftly recovering and shining again. There is a spear that splits the stubble and a weapon that cleaves the flock of grass. The flying head only cracks the stubble. So on I sing with my fretful breath and with my lutelike fingers that the reeds like a reed ensemble. I quell my grief, fain of heaven's desire, that the wintry weather with its howling, the bearing of rain and of a young child, conquers. I awaken from sorrow's silence and the mute years are over and done with. All of the birds are warm and all of the reeds are green. The little fountains have burst with that first tear of blood of my dear. I drink, I sing and I give thanks for my life, in all its glad and grievous durations. When I was lost, all alone, a few steps from you, and night lost its hour-glass of shade and sparkle, when my heart, yearning, yearned for the millions of stars, sighed as its heart would for its mother, whence came these years of enduring melancholy; the incommunicable, the time of the dead in the mind's prison where this being counts and remembers not what is, but what is not, in this being's shadows wide and awful, dear friends, is it not hard to say that a wandering madness for the living came over my hand and When I am waxing old, and fit to be broken, you and your sweet brother, recall the old folly of dark hair and white unbroken teeth, my fine body you remember fine limbs fading, blistered hands, my lovely wrinkles, my swooning cheeks swell to song, my face of mellow enchanting, the unspeakable being overflows, and the swift command of the one has swept my memory. Therefore, I entreat you: for that my words find me, and that my life be fast eternally, and its sadness it once bewitch me, spare the farewells of my spirit, let me drift, finding nearer the God who once rained on a city of darkness came I praise you, Saint Martha, saint of the green gardens, as the thing that will not take place. When I was faring with bulls at the city's upper edge, a drunkard betrayed us, and the wolf followed after us, and the time was darkling, and the stars were here, and my heart was doomed. My body a swooning ecstasy, a body draped by its thews wide, was never mine, was never by my will. For my soul remained that of a child, or as a leaf that hangs in midmost of the weltering coolness. And therefore I know not who slew me, nor how my body was betrayed, nor who was followed, nor who found us when the wolf had fallen, nor how the night was followed. I am slain, and none of my blood has spilt since I came to the land of my birth, and the glens of my fathers, and the faithful people. I am bowed and changed since I first beheld the woods of my loveliness crowded with men, my own people, when your eyes have borne me through wilder days. Oh, never before mine eyes did I see the earth, and the arches of the land make soundless dalliance with the sky, how all things are wan, and their gladness is wormlike. I will now tell you all my longing. Of the love-making sung and told in many an ancient place, of what ======================================== SAMPLE 871 ======================================== When my heart was broken! No lips with wailing and with weeping, No shrine by crimson beam,-- I am now lost in Hate and Disgrace! I sicken with all sorts of smart; I cannot see; The night is like a choked face, The day is like a clammy flower; Aye, vile, aye, vile am I, Whose rasping voice is worse than brass; And vile, vile, vile am I, Whose choking voice is worse than brass; The loath, the greed, the wanton cheek, And the loath, the greedy eye, The loath, the want, the lustful thought, With bulks, with malt, with rue, Whase crest, with feathers,-- This terrible body, these injuries Betrayed by face or form, Which his or her sin has done to shame me, And make me an unutterable thing! As my bones were crushed by winter wind, And my breath quakes under them when I take cold, I think on all that men lie dead, Wet with the rain and the shivery rain, And lie black in the rain, Gasping for night; And my heart quakes with all shiverings, And dies, and sinks, and swings, With the chill tide of my perigee being, That knows not of thilke unrest. Aye, where th' earth's wide bounds expand My vision no cloud in the sky; Aye, where th' infinite is conspired, No bounds my ear, no chorus of men; But I hear the elements, Deep, deep in the under-earth, Gather and bear up joy for me, And then murmur and sere, And we pass, as the varying spheres Pass, and have, God knows, good ends. No wish of mine shall ne'er be lost; Rise, in the hour that I must lie: Sweet leaf of that unleaf'd branch-- Would that I might know! Albeit that I went from your dear hands With bitter, bleeding feet, I would not suffer blow That would not rise against my bane. Yet tell the careless love that fleeeth, Hath it cast a shadow of despair On him that getteth me ere I go? But who hath loved, or hath lived, Tow'rd me aught of ill? Wit and net of adultery My cup hath drunk, and my winds have fallen; There is no word of kiss From night or the day; When I descend to the main square, Where we together always sit and chat In that fond moment that the moon We put it in our list To meet in the street, but see His presence draw, and ah, our flushing eyes Never Was there summer or Autumn save change, And death and birth: it seems, As if he came to see me die. How do I love thee? ah, love thee No longer as those who have known Only in thought, not life, the bliss That is more near than the horizon, In that the soul finds a symbol great Of everlastingness of love, When lovers say it as they go On their way to the battle with death To the awakening of the deed To the ultimate victory. More than this I would say, For it is well That one should be alone To face so stern a day, The hate of his riding and his barking, The curse of his wallowing and crossing For crowns among the ashes. Ah, what is it, at last, In these lulls of the world's work When the heart is laid Gladly at rest On its affair, that will dispel The darkness, and make Love a magic lamp With eternal oil? For the cup of my wine is full Of the same wine that he drank, And his is the same man's face Among the same ears that I sit by. I think we are not apart that they say, But that we are one of each kind-- And he--we think--is he or she? She!--all I can do Is the little that I do; All that I am The very goad that her sword Does in the very heart of its gilding And her blood to fire the wheels of hell And that--which is her glory-- The dread of her, the rest of the damned In that gulf of Tulliah-- The sword, the doors, the wind that blew And left them ======================================== SAMPLE 872 ======================================== Rains -- Blows a-free -- Beats the heart for jazz -- For some sweet new album Taste of a King of Roc -- Eyes aglow for life -- Life and a price -- Rails at death -- At a pit-ended run -- Lazy in the shade And a green tree -- Stems the pit in mind Glimpses of a Negro Smile at the pool -- Youth and the pool Shining, bouncing slave -- Base, salty breath at the pool -- Darklings by the pool -- Youth and the pool In a full gasp -- Smile, Negro! -- Slaves in a pew Mingering, aching -- Smile! Slaves beyond the next gate Gainster of slaves beyond the next gate Mudman, creepers above the next! Happy, but unknown! Mudman, -- The stolen breaths Come back! Poetry And blackest, The spindrift Of blind and hairless faces, The humor of angry homes! Youth -- the kindliest and lightest -- Huger and hoister -- Youth and the blackest -- Voiceless shade -- Small troop of jugglers -- Sky of a sky! I see you Green as green wood Trips a fever of glass and slides of vines -- Small crevice in the boughs Stops and starts Where the white moonlight lies. You are white -- White and slight With wiry curls And streams Of pureness -- -- Time has counted you down Slip by slip At night I see you out across the field; -- By the fern And the ivy -- and the stubble; I see you crept to the grass -- A lean white hand -- Then the whir of a buzzing wheel -- Your head whirls About As you waifs On the wind to the white moonlight -- For the sake of the far-eyed moon. You are white and smooth With the light like pearls in your eyes. You are I and you are you! Through a velvet veil Cloud-smitten, heavy moon Stood the starry Thoth Of the white moonlight. One black drop, rustling, As of a perfume On the air, Fell from his hand And through the moon Touched the starry Thoth As it continued Ever in its slow descent. Then All the stars of heaven Jauntily turned and navigated The direction from a star To the song of the lark Far and abroad Glissando Tenors Sonorous Perpetually The song of the lark After dark Deep into marshes And the marshes marshes of T rated South-East. Zephyrus on a zephyr On a zephyrus went Out of the danks of many fen And the fen-lands very deep. Snapped a tree, And, a blazing sycamore, Map of a map of a wood In the air -- Out of the fen and the marshes deep Struck, an oak tree, And a chestnut tree Deftly carved in it. Map of a wood -- Deftly carved -- In the air. The moon on a globe Went away to her star. And the moon light Deftly carved Tenors And juglemighty Mountains And behemoths Whence went the world Deploomed and chill Towards the zephyr Silent -- But the wind On her brow. Westered. Mourned -- Stilled. Thaw -- O a waned leaf Is a leaf that's fallen From the forest green Leaf A woodsman ... Sighing From his sick or his dwelling On a tower White-walled and still. The old broken tower That the ivy grows In the white-walled and lone Grove of the snake-bladed Welcoming vale of the tower. I've a suspicion that there's a scroll Of magic on the wall Worn for the last time to-day Of its secrets unwritten. I may be greatly hated, said the woodsman, Being one of the withered. I wonder which one. <|endoftext|> Grimest of boundaries, Kingdom without a Pope, All your dregs of the Deep --gutterers of saints, ======================================== SAMPLE 873 ======================================== This thing to me, many other things it hath wrought And wrought itself, in form like to a flame, From some chill fountain, in forbidden field, The pity of her heart at Pyotrównyimszhs, Who open looked and said: Father, what then? Though I behold my kingdom to be lost, Here of no use; but even to live to see Mine enemies thy kingdom maim me, I An empty dream, no better than a bird. Was then thy goodness lord of my intent? By mine own child I cannot go. Even so I said, and to myself, 'tis not thou, my son, But the Almighty Master will not agree To His own truth to be deceived thus, And of His servants not the good and bad The different measure to Himself have many signs; And what I have desired in good I shall not Have of my love preserved, but sorrows I, And heavy damned pains. What careth thou, father? Turn me, ye blessed spirits, whom love Made wing'd with wings of love, which I have seen In yours around us shining, seeing you I look Like what I should not be, these many days Wandering through dolorous tracts, but now behold, Disclaustrophi in Vitányád godown. Dost thou not see me, Father? how I wash my face Before I sleep on couch of thorns, and wipe A tear from brow brac'd, a tear from my cheek O'erflourish'd, and my left hand now wav'd in my mouth As if I fondly scold, and now touch my lips, As if I wept, and here make psaltery; yea, I make the sign of a cross and say: Prepidius, son of Valentinian, Even this I pray with me; let him give My foe a mortal grief, and for myself If thou but now command the gift of life To stop my grief, that thou may'st see me straight In Paradise, I promise thee that." No time is now to speak of, nor even pause Thrilling to tears and pulses, as it seems, It is enough that he heard the solemn vow, And had it heard, the pledge of long acquiescence Had been his own and came into our room, And lay upon my lap what seem'd to me A most delicious fever, and dizzen'd A tepid perspicacious light. When I rose And thou wast left, the morn had clos'd mine eyes. First word of nought since I was swooning broke My seal dumb, mute, aut-gripe, and twitching back Into a hairy head, and opening first E'en as a tongue in babble, as my tongue Never Leaving the Mother-tongue that is And be-damn'd a piteous cave, and there The sacred old Ghost which cries always, And sighs ever the same thing--Never more! From my mouth it fed, to my wound, to my sense, Then this long speech of mine, as one who speaks Thus conversed I; for in these fair spaces Art, Spirit, speaks to man, and by This sweet-seas'd Zone do men conversed Until the trophied youngest son of February Brought his Self-Sufficiency Bill, And probably held some savings' end annual, And on the morrow for the spot might make Its sales, and meanwhile of necessity Its unmerited grub-food, which made me grieve O put away the finest little stick you ever saw. I fear you may presume that of me I'll tell, And therefore spare me hope of calling forth One well-pull'd quotation; but if you'll look In what I write, 'tis clear I've not a curse Left, or only one meaning less of cold. A fore-warning from the Virgin brings To un-Virgin me a deeper war, Which like a natural effects throws down A weight, breaks down my pride, and tushes All my victuals which the want of which Drinks up, so I feed, or starve; and so Our world's designed to be one unsightly Crypt, it's self, of mine; nor have I say A sight for worm. What I maintain is That this Earth is my body, mine to be Endur'd or spanned. Ye livers that groan beneath The heavy, supporting body of the world, And feel your vital humours made to feed The life of this black ======================================== SAMPLE 874 ======================================== in a maiden's soft wandering eyes. Since the fires of passion outlive the light, I used to think I'd put my green thumb To some first brown sea: and then I swore I'd not be one of 'em; for if they Could drink me, they might drink up my white throat. So could I man, and could not I pass And not a port?--That one pleads-- Why, had I my quick blood, and you (Love) had drinking and had your fear? Nay: love can loath my body to this But loves to mind me, and to morrow And to the present; still love shares From death's fire; and if love by me be wrung The other hates, and loves, whom it hates; Till not a gay thought's left on night's dim track. And therein it will be fine, if we men Are very wise, to sleep well by sound of war. A mad-making land! I love you yet but not So as to hold your beauty with my heart, Or call a hatred on your land and me: And the New States, you will not welcome quite, You will not enter with or not away My beautiful good girl, and shall I be no more, When your black soul hath met mine white soul, and held the bond, And the flake, human flame or ice, is fused, And these two love like gas or snow? Love now is learned Not by the outward lovely shows of soul, In spite of that, love's the soul's prize for me, dear, I love you for your beauty here--not where it seems. Yet love's the business and the proud business is strife, Love's the means to love and once and ever, till death. What folly to think happiness gone by! Though there's an hour when love's a fiery moon, still True love's but soul-felt, not husked, like the breath Of living coal: true love's the soul's fire of kiss And through the lips. Here's to hearts when sound the bell I will say, to both I give, I say to both: Nay, sweet, this hour, nor bell, nor time, nor bliss Is ours; but say I will, let passion reign This hour, let me. I love you not, dear. Delicious is life! Though tame and wide The road of travel, Blest is life; Delicious is life; Sweet is life; Sweet is life; Sweet are the days of life; Sweet are all things, Good, and fair, and free; Good is all-- Sweet is passed; Life, as passing, soft Moves from The sweet to the wise. Whatsoever ills Nor good nor bad, Bewilder'd are; Sweet is time; All time is bright In that eternal year; Good time, and kindly, and true-- Like this sweet day, which is young yet. What might there be in her eyes? Sweet fair face, that seemed to melt Sunshine into tears? What might there be In that bosom? Gold chain And gaudy lace, with little sense, Or was it wrought in sorrow, More lovely than truth, And fitting well her air to stir, As life's full water to a spring Was in her wear? 'Twas thus the same In all her parts; So was her soul, Sunshine of some few boys; While long since still with their play In such things might move their hearts, Where now all mischief made them wild, Or made their spirits wild; Her beauty and might move like this, As life's light to far men shade, When truth is dead. All for their sport On whom the smile was thrown, When love or power was won: They drank the goblet, wherefrom Life, in these dull days, Had new-fledged life-dropped From her own flooded urn. Oh ye! whom wicked scorn Was on the watch to meet, To see such folly smoked, O, see such folly killed! For that which ye pursued Was lightened of its weight; And, of its lightness, shame; And wit and manners lost. Now let me, who may, Or who might not, have her For pity, show a thought. I see no lightness now In either, for the breath Is like death in one. I say, She shows as fine a wile ======================================== SAMPLE 875 ======================================== Banana? Does 't make thee sad? And are those moccasins in rags--" Oh! he began to say, when, fool! The name of Tom Jone left not store In that mild cheek, but bringing its pride Of King John back, as to its worth,-- His star-hung crown, his robes, his sceptre, With such a chariot to ride on, What tongue but how the countenance! The one-eyed tyrant of the roost. Well, be it well! For when 'mang the maples And thro' that distance by the shore Where the breakers foam and break again The modest green shadow long hath been Of sleek spinnakers 'round her nest, Diving, dandling their short fatlings Or flying to their spearglassed homes Doth this impious Tom and Jone Put out their fighting cans, and flying No longer dare to tarry, but some Hunch along the languid waves make sure, Till several good wind-chequered spars Glimmer and shake like pieces of paper, Meanwhile the murmuring small broiders Of green hemlock berries hint and hum. We have left them years behind us-- All but Tom who lies thus sodden, Perfumed with coral oil, in ruffs Of rounded muscadine. "Yes, yes, here go!" cried J. J. "Fair while it was new I bore it "And he had not one, and dear, I thought "That he'd sooner have a pair," said J. J. But at last--the long-ago's cast, The smile at parting when "You're not a whit "More beautiful than this"-- Said J. J. "He is more fair "Than a great king's daughter, or a sprightlier, "Tho' two little kingdoms side it, - my spurs "And be it noted--so the proverb goes-- "May shine like hers, for that's more than mine; "May shine as hers, but without the palace-gate." And that's a reason, indeed, why his London's Between the Queen's toes, and round the world for you; And our fair capital smouldering with all her lust, Or rose-lit with all her rosy glow, The cat in whose plot we are getting all; I really like my capital; but I wish That at its steeples I had J. J. around. For J. J. hath long been in town, and truly He does and knows and hath three or four a fling, And seems to have no state enough to speak of, But sits on, as if on steam, all day long, And sings the songs of our apple-star, And says 't will soon be a city of lovers; But is the butt for all the jests that's gone Round these strong 'Towns,' to give your heart a jingle. The T-numbers that will give a ting To any fair one with a heart to woo; The Bays that give their out-ow'd when none won't, Nor any such other Bays that was No carraway pastiche with a ranch; Those little squares that are half a square, Some beauties that crowd your banks and beeches; The redbrick Vettes that stretch and stay On light fine hard square in mere honor to their glass, When that is all (the drinks are good and large, And neat en-ragements thick-tarred and fine en-wrapped) Here lived a mate, and liv'd with her, Five years: I had seen her once Each week or more, for ten whole days I had seen her each week or more Before I knew it was she, Kismayed me soft with its blameless beams, Like spirit bright; dew-bright, like dew, Its light stood in the door. When in the lift, A day she was not -- I was fathered, A garment I was loath to lose -- I was as ready as I could be, A bath there was -- for shower she shook A bounty, -- lo, she was my wife! To have been her dearest grace At whose command I durst no more Who made this smell so full, so dainty -- Her presence taught me how to do Just as she asked me; she knew The meaning of every look and bud Of hope that pained, even, my sleep; Her word awakened that sham to life, ======================================== SAMPLE 876 ======================================== State, and country, and soul, Smiled a complacent smile on all. I mourn that my fate makes bright no more The poem's fire of evening star; That the pulse of Songs that yearned and fell Alone can a murmur sound, That the summer, whose apple blossoms dimmed Mine, 'mid Greece, the blossom-banner spread To which fair urn and urn were bound. But as this year ere long that flower shall grow Which in some evening of the tomb shall be Frozen, purified, and cast aside; So, when Death's wing has loosed its dolorous robe From off its thin, hardenèd shroud, And breath's fainting pulse Its deep awe-anxious tread shall sigh on, I shall forget that the years, Broke by some bee for my long delay, Ran out and my love was late. O blood, that life in you doth trace, All its heart's red gold - And that all honourable memory, Not enfolded, but from the dust cast; O earth, O spring! - This day's sun has glance in his eclipse On Paradise and Paradise. The lightnings in heavens that night lay quivering Up to the second Earth Beating with its beatitudes of thought With finger of stars. The body did it hold; the soul did, too, Through trembling of pulsating space. So 't was day out of space Sighs to the hour when my love was late. The blood flew up, there in Hades manifold, The grave did hear the sound; And thunders were soughing overhead, The earth with moons and suns vexed; And Nature knelled; so the solid sun, To lighten earth of wrong; The blood, the vital sun of Mars Which never in eclipse would swerve, Took up the durance Of clay and stone. My spirit had been no meatsence; My soul was but a cloud; But there was an osmotic force Which ever ran Till out of nuce it hung and ran Unseen; its water-spark In dark times of the kingdom ran Unseen of every spirit. Some one had whispered 'Take the pulse,' And added 'twas lucky, It brought her happiness down And looking up, and pausing, Had lit her house with flame; And life had never palled her For past and future yearnings; That was of the sense, and of that Was her sole sense, Tumultuary; and she, Hovering that night on futureshaded, Could see a life to come Sudden break up of a world Just broken up; the world with conscious acts Forced by unmeaning ages of the heart, Invisible, buried under thought; And still bickering mortals; and old Earth Sick with the throes of Time Into the big strife of earth and clods; One with the vibrations of the blood, Full of Life; the rich fragrant breath Of the free soul of the Universe; Life of the instant, and of each thing Love, as of itself; with thought's Might; of good, of pleasant and not painful Likes and not loathed; with sorrow and joy; One, in presence of which she walks With the Past in target of the ear Of the Present; answering Life That calls for utterance; and with silent Attention to all its poetry Against the quick and sudden move Of Time. So all was living: seemed Of being; all within the flow, Let go of motion. Now the pulse Of youth could do no more, That pulsation of the still wind; As when by some men life is done, And they 'neath their skin Become some impalable thing, A spectre, ere it moveth off. Obedience surely, in all Who live under the sun, And all upon the earth below; For only with the life of man, Love's active person, is fitted, As 't were with leash to start An hound from woods to chase; yet it is Their motion, as with ours, and so live The life of love, and move in time, And be like the wind, Their mind at once The active principle For thought and counter-thought. And in that, the presently As with thoughts in act, and motion done, She hung at once and moved, As we at once we know The wind in its ======================================== SAMPLE 877 ======================================== in the living room that of all the things we had, meek, we spoke to no one. Then we built a birdhouse, the smallest and largest bedroom, filled it with ant eggs. We read stories about cockfighting, Indian casino night, lost coins in cushions of gravy, played mah-jongg and other gambling, hopped (in the attic). Then, I grew alarmed for her safety. That night at our table, I had a dream as clear as my scrambled eggs: of gold, and it was gold. And it was hot: (I slept). <|endoftext|> "In Dreams", by John Keats [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Sorrow & Grieving, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Home Life, Men & Women] "And now, while earnest and partial thought The scenes of life through, hopes and fears, In my quite tired brain, where fitting are The notes of idle memory's sound, Or story in one vale of short-sight held, Or yet the long-sought tears which flow alway, And life impregnates what is not life, I dream of her, and the power of Thought Leaps at the chance of speech to console Thework of imaginings; I reach at once the heart again, And hearing her, Fruits, sweet gushingalube, The flowings sweet and clear of her eyes; The ear, hearing her, Percussion-strain Set voices for old throat-music; The lip, hearing her, move wraiths from bed to bed, Scented scents, stroking humid hands and rosier hair, Scanty smile, while starlight fret, Hush-till morning, in most rich dress She sits before me in the morning-glory. "We had seen, and had not seen, That what seems and seems, When first we meet, is but that, What first we met. We but have seen, and yet The two remain. Their common field was trodden With heart-ties that may not From their rivalry be neuter; And they know not they have known, Till in some day or other They meet again. "As two who, on a summer-even, Had read the sky and sun And each her east-away. "Her eyes as first I look Upon my Love's little rooms, Which then were dewless and Clear, I looked, I smote my brow, I thought 'How is this and this, I and Love love, Love 's and 'th Love 's new!' "'Her heart 's nearest to the South Of your likeness are, And Love's' is wind-born, without Radiant so that from it beats Speedy airs that lean a tower; Thirsty looks at those white sails That half obscure the stream, Smite at the heel that's lowest, The feet that stand most clear.' "She with sweet beauty vaunting And eyes that lit love's court Says, as in mockery-flirt That like me she and I Must some good ending find, For both of us to find it, For Love least and ever young, The horn of blute, The dew she of the periwinkle, The ruby of her cleft dew, Till then she meant, to write But neither loved nor called. "Then and there beneath the laureat That seems the elder's best crown, In the low palin, the clouded crocus, We met, and never could descry Enough of calm and chance Nor Joy's empurpled cup to mix, To make it without balm a bowl, The nothing of its medley to be, And yet be nigh its natal sea So that its glist'ning waves waken foam, There, and therein something sweet Of midge and lettuce wil with mash Of heath the grass; Like hiving swimmers met their lie His green kiss: one word had it, Where ere it died of languor in me Its dear two hours of life were given. <|endoftext|> It was the solemn midnight hour When quiet spake the breeze; And the spectres on the wing Stalth and stalthed to the wall, Unveigmaken of speech Untombed within the dome, For feebleness and fear, To lean upon the wall. The angel stirred within the bomb: The little spring ======================================== SAMPLE 878 ======================================== An armed enchantment--so deep is her skill. From her and from her great lord such goodly shade Took human flesh; nor less to my fear Seemed her great ghost, to whose holy fold Of time and faith I came of old: yet not all My fear; for there,--where God's good will he named-- I saw a vision, and in vision saw Things, my thanks for, to come. Behold, thy Kingdom! lo! From the dim past of days, After the fading garish of this present, Whither shall come, to run my life anew? The ancient world? the world my sins affright, Where I violated the vows which I broke? Alas, it is so, Thy will is done; Yet doth one drop of mine Flow from that world away. O if I had a little space, A little space to stretch mine hand And feel Thy grace,--then to hide mine eyes From the sad things that should be,-- In shame with grace, O God, I have done worse; I have bared mine eyes, And seen what my feet saw not, and as my hands Stood in my soul, mine eyes still are seen, as mine soul Still breathes in mine arms; but they are not seen. Comes at the last, to me, As the broad smoke of Death, And my soul with it. Just as the skies are organized, is the soul, Clear, unified, serene and sleeping; Just as the skies are the heavens' care, is the soul, Pleasant and light, it is the soul's leisure. Just as the souls of men, is the Soul of things, Just as the men of milder moments chose Somewhere unobscured by the mists, their Act, And stirred in time and eternity to growth With high immortalities, so the soul Dares to hold out well-gained to the end, Ungaped by Time who scorns the mass he sprints. God said, 'I will Shatter all my wars, Mine will be the strong hand, Mine the unbroken hearts.' So a simple beast I am; My first birth's just my reward. I struck a thousand times My mother's curse, But--by Love's joy, by Hear's sigh-- Mine Act comes first. How has the day come, With the first full shower? What has the day come, With the first half the rain, And the last ungather? Has the night come With so black a brow, Does it know all's well That was, is, and shall be? 'A drink of water' (think of it), Is it come to this With thanks for yesterday And for to-morrow? Are we this Not wholly of our own And have we men By night next year? Or a month back. 'Will I, with her child, Through the rain be gone?' Will she be troubled With the wind? Will she wonder At the rain? And the night be With black brows, how she wish We were near. No; thanks be come To us, and that's all; Nothing more--no more; Perhaps some things we know; We shall go on--that 's all. Walking still in the home-wake half-true Of memory. 'Thank you, thank you.' I have not many words. And my heart is quite filled. So what's the next? 'Thank you, thank you!' from my lips. There's the end. For I'm hoist with gratitude. From the heart When the bow's left out, the horse is the limb He'll take, as from the bended neck The singer's self. But who Would think that Such a man Would sit by the hearthside When the wind and the rain are gone On a sunlit hill? Nay, ye thought wrong, That the man you served Dwelt in the home, as we Who never knew the sun Dance naked before the shore. Yet I break from the fire-shado To the deeps, who have not shed Pallent Andromedon Till their white wings are spread. And the song's begun, my Sigurd, And its depths must carry the plains With heart from the dying breast To the daughter's knees, a sun-bright fire, And from the heart's dry limbs, the zephyrs Of the sea, ======================================== SAMPLE 879 ======================================== So to navigate, as we see, our way about, Till we find the southern way, which a younger man May fancy a long journey, to his last gasp, On the backs of grandsires. But grant not the motion, And you shall rue the folly. What else? O, you swain Of mine, at the duleful age of two, To whom my darlingship the peopled little house And garden, at which with joy so much I longed! And here the grafting gallantry of fiddles And guitarbles, and the throngs of sylphs in rags And half-band, were such a strain of folly, And colossal and through the sword of love So large, that I for fear of all the more Revolted, partikel from you, scorn And give it up: more foolhardy than that Of breaking old wedded love, and closing hearts With fair words, to be split with malignity And matchless grief, and with discontent And with white-lip'd lamentation, fain with you. Nay, hear the child! I swear, if such I find In you, or you seen in such a crowd, I'll never make promise, oath, to wed again. But even so:--There lies the clashing good woman Of dust and sulphur, from the ancient stock, And thus you see this world takes after them, But even so,--there's nothing which I care for So much as (poor beauty!) much of mischief, Be it with me as with any other; Or good, for that I keep my own fair health; (And some would say, if they saw a maid As pretty, as is this Nelly) I say, And that is why I travel this wintry way To try, if in this Mary I could see A thing which Nelly I might not love. See! the form of Mary's self is straight and large, There's no disguising her to look at: What! is she goated and harangued For raising this old maid out of doors? No, now, my friends, no; she has kept her mind The more to be noticed; and, you, I own, Are fonder than she's known, when all's observed, You will be led to remark it. But to call her Old, is giving her too great a credit. That is all forged, such a piece of brass Is that which once this fair girl might turn; But with a glow of lightning and of fire Hath she discharged her fate, and burnt her up In all that dust which was, and was, Glad metals when; no wonder she herself Hath sense of longing for that Mary, And for her mind's resemblance to his! Faint-sweet is the flesh of such a cake, And empty of the breath it took to snuff Whose time has hardly yet come to play, Nay, and to be an after-sport Fairest she had never known. For he I told you satchel filled with yarn, And yet it seems but fading green, And all the rest of her it is, you say. Of course--I guess!--unless you catch the whiff Of a good powder-plack, which turns to smoke Before the open ingurgitation, And such as this is in a minute past At least, and on her lips, for beauty's sake Makes a new-handed morning of it; Or the most heavenly scents that stir I never thought but she had the healthy'est art. One's a fag, and one's a blockhead. You must judge Me to the swiftness of the fact, of the sex, And the vital difference in their dress 'Twixt speech and exercise. She's sure to grow Hair of the wash, and the lice are likely there, In the andalueus of the tongue. Then by tingle Blushes burn about her forehead in the dusk Of her unshading neck; the fire is hot That flickers between two strings 'bout which bends, And moxie seems to meddle with the strings, and leave And dam the self, which is a native of the peer Of the common female. But how the strings Look as they hang out of the depth there is Too far from me to make one out. Thus then with a flicker Flashing within, the edges of her touch Leap to the thought of music, and a way there appears Well, this is the fact, and I can ======================================== SAMPLE 880 ======================================== City workers don another drop.As Peter hits the world with his stiff boot.When I write my third query and impute ignoranceOf the sciences in which I'm unskill'd,I hope that one of two things will happen:Either the lamp ["The birth of Poe"] will flare firewavy, or the Sea will swallow our distance;or that I'll shrink up to a pen, no longer sharp.I hear that there are people enough on Earthto describe our sphere of influence, and thence to extend it;I hear, I see, I feel it; but whether, dead betweenThe way that we're entitled to it and what we can know,Is the bad shape that keeps us from the Way?My heaven, that I could discover this way, and so go home.What a silly problem that is!To be constrained to be a mediocre person,To feel we have this thing, and that other thing,Which other world, where is it yours? —That if we'd only come we should have that other thing. <|endoftext|> "A Closer Shade of Nature", by Peter Gandy [Living, The Mind, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Arts & Sciences, Painting & Sculpture] That’s the light that swings its branches green & still As the wind steals by on the path Like a romantic pagan king In a hall full of knights, who all seem to grow Grey pendants & mushroom crowns At the edges of their steel blue eyes. (The knights change to knights in suits of armor As the armor rustles in the rustling shadow, The rustle like the rustling shadows In the woods at night that whisper over the trees, The whispering call of a bird over the forest.)I watched the birds with their old purple carats For the longest time, but now I can’t find The laughter of the winds in this mysterious place. I listen to my own voice Come empty & empty down the hall each time. I can’t believe I’m here, in the same room as my voice. I don’t know what it says, or what it does, It’s all so sad. Some days I think it’s a secret weapon, a rare one, Some days I think it is a strange way to have died, the best way, and like a musical winner Returned to the self that she herself had given up on. I can’t say it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter I don’t care how I feel like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. I can’t imagine what it means, but the pain It’s communicating, it must mean. There is no way to put this, there is no word for it, there is no word for that. The wind reads nothing into the leaves, the leaves read nothing into the wind. The sky is green like a constitution or a poet’s feelings, it’s green like a judge or an idiot, it’s a judge who has killed herself and like a musician whose brain is gone But for all I can tell it must be her, It’s a star, it’s a musician and now she has the rain to herself. I don’t care What the lights read into her, I don’t care what they say, it doesn’t matter What life is written into the sky like a confession, it doesn’t matter What the sunset is or why we feel the sky, What the handwriting says in the sun, these things don’t matter, There are things I don’t see So much as speak of, of which this is a part. It is small, about the size of a hand. Sometimes the light steps forward, Does a heart, but doesn’t seem the same as make believe, and like a flower with no stigmas, Cannot find the heartbeats. (It is not the person reading this who touches the lights. If it were someone else it would be a nose, And that same person would be smiling without any words, The same as those thirty-six other faces that danced a trance around me in their sleep.) It is all for me. The hands on the camera, the dance around the world, (It must be a spectacle, not without it’s own spectacle,) The dance around the sky, the judgment that I am one who should be lost, that I take pleasure in this being felt, This endless jest, the sky, the trees that go on knowing how I will get to them. The wind has no need of me anymore, it doesn’t need a chute, it is feeling above the world. It feels yellow, cold. In the light that never finds the heart of darkness, I can’t make it out. But there is light here, ======================================== SAMPLE 881 ======================================== No the first picture says I know nothing of Death, the second says I would rather be Death, the third says I take my revenge for Life. After your vision, you saw that two wrongs make right. The thing that looks like it wants to say I should have known you from your mother or your father, its eyes like the mirrored softness of a goblet. The thing looks like it knows you, and would like to speak, and the thing was my cousin; and if I didn’t know better, I said, “You must be Momma,” and it said, “Of course, my dear. Here come the pictures.” <|endoftext|> "For Mr. Murdo", by Jay Wright [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment, Money & Economics] The paper is on your nails. The pieces falling so perfectly still for nothing, the bottles, the board, the marble gauze with eyes of solid shadow, all the things whose patterns couldn’t mean much, two years here in the cage. Mr. Murdo, his name Mr. Murdo— who knew? Back in New York, his father gave him a fake name, some word of letters between the two of them, and a room to yourself, where you would write, your letters unpublished. Mr. Murdo would drop by the rooms for hours, running the sounder from the next town, with questions, supposing Mr. Murdo might go on running. He loved Mr. Murdo. In the empty library where he sat taking notes to himself, he admired Mr. Murdo’s lines: “Oh, rich people—they have so much money. It is so funny. If you are rich, then you are also entitled to have as many relationships. Oh! I am so glad that I am not in the Ivy League, because it would be so nice to be a rich man. Oh rich! They have so much respect. So do you. It is so funny how respect is given to rich people while at the same time they criticize the poor. Oh poor people. Well, a lovely place is Venice. It is full of old stone, full of sun, full of the things you cannot get with less than respect. I am so pleased to be alive in spite of them. I am so pleased to be alive and to be a part of history. <|endoftext|> "Through the Looking Glass", by Jay Wright You look through the looking glass and there are all the words you can see at once. They flash before you. You do not see them. It is important to you, but how can you be certain you do not see exactly what you are not looking at? In between you can see an x. In between two yellow flames, you can see two small flames where between them there is one smaller flame—which isn’t the same flame but is it not the same flame? x there is no matter you can see in between you and that matter but there is only that light you can see through the looking glass out of which the words appear. Flies eat those flames. They swoop down, eat the light they see, consume them. <|endoftext|> "From the Air", by Jay Wright [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] (Washington DC) The police shuffle past me; a phonewhate chases the air. A few feet away an arrest in progress ensna-like of our invading faces, rising in which they know nothing. At least until we are dead. Until then they are hella, dazzling our eau-wearing death. Our children? As a babe to new sorrow we were born. A baby against some fresh moonlight shivered like a plastic shoot from its plump baby face. As a dry scent arounds my nostrils, I am becalmed. On the threshold of that ======================================== SAMPLE 882 ======================================== ft and trill, as the sun walked out of the village, FITZ-COMYOULL and AUGUSTINE were travelling toward the central Agency of France. They met about the gardens of the Jouffignau Gate. The cannon of the royal Musketeer King Louis thanked and stopp’d, opening a vast window and trembling with mosaic glitter of waters, and space, overhead, vast triangles of fin-bone in the bright sun. At once the white façade rose, a coral arch; the arabesque harp of ivory squares and squares of silver, narrow paven arabesque, resounded the anthem—the crown of the Lion King, he who ruled the river and its dark water. A wide amber space for sun-gathered grapes, silver bowls, high-red leaf-fillets, gold goblets, and proud columns—half-reclining that rose the last hours of the Emperor, common, pagan Thierry. The Emperor leaned on his mighty Horn of victory, drinking by the garden gate. Fra Angelie Thyssen, the gardener, pissant and practised. "Dumbass, which ate the most stuff I have seen today!" A sob started up around him. A clear lambent bough of mahogany cracked and sank somewhere between his bellies. His knuckles whitened over his closed jaw, lips parted, tongues puffing. "Eat!" curts and jabs of the butler’s joke the high Senior blundered: "The Knight of the Tara black from head to foot, and studded helm, the fellow knows what to do." Thus thought the Emperor. And so he eyed The count Rollanz, tilting his head at such drinks, wondering and shuddering; the strength, the velocity of the Tuileries’ blood: that man would drink no soberness. "Rollanz sounds as one doese lux aureus; shut thine eyes. There is much in all things!" The count looked lured at him till a drop from the glass slid the carpet’s silver cover. (One forgot it was his beer.) "No questions must ever cease It splash’d the can. "Say, my sweet brother, when I started through the world a year ago I thought to pluck the bud first and found the honour road led ever outward. I’ve seen many noble tournaments, maim’d lords have sold their gluttonous lust for blood. Alas! poor kings, poor magicians, may their charmed greatness be the greater part of that fraud, I wish one boon that this glass be made of good and pure soot. Let not this shabby tin fulfill its summer lease! I heard yesterday on the jangly beggar that old Taget, eating his filthy meat (that ox of his, a beast of bale) still continues his sorrel grudge. The poor are devils! When we love, the beautiful part of the night goes back, the birds follow their proper calling. A year ago will nobody think so how sweet all one love makes, everything lovely seems so open and soon open, God’s in the open. It was at the pavilion where this Baron was staying that my sister and myself found us. Her black hair and my brother’s body seized us. She and my uncle walked as though nothing had happened. The wine ran down our cheeks. We laughed, and his hand on her head, and his arm about her waist, and lips on her cheek. We kissed then until one thought it was well beyond all reason. <|endoftext|> "My Father’s Brooding Body", by William Mathun [Living, Death, Nature, Trees & Flowers, Religion, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] This body (born as a serpent) is shod like God: its branches turn heavy like cannon, recoil from the blast; to fall is to falter, as the head turns one way, the face the other, and crumbled in ruin, the creature crawls, like at spawn, searching the earth that held it, wounded, like the stones. As summer curled its coiling body, to beat down winter, turned flint to fire; mute as his face, from the hero kings; as fall, in its fragility, to raddle weed; the man's mind, quiet with the ceaseless roar; its belly ======================================== SAMPLE 883 ======================================== Tall and dark, handsome and born liberal, young, Eclectic, strumpetish and I don't know Any thing, except this--this wan red lip, This nose, that fine raven of a face and hue Fantastic and fantastic, it reminds me Of those self-mastered flowers in Madame's palette, Which all chance of breathing the solvent of blue, Dull red and yellow, of the virtue of mercury, In minute amounts, drags the colours down a bit Till they are almost green--like that, like that. "I see it," she said, "like yellow and blue Enigmatic glass vases; each curve a sun, Each shadow a moon; a garland of moon and star, Bending around a treach'ly moon. Does it do Any labour for you, this very ghostly work? That's the patron-saint, and this your Saint Stephen?" "No, sire," she said, "it is not rich nor great, As I'm talking to myself now; for not you Sits here, with the lightning round you running like this, And there is only me, who speak to you like this. I suppose I'm just as good as anybody: I say, 'I should have done it'--you agree? I say, 'I should have done it,' you dissent. I say, 'A head might live if a heart lived'-- You agree? You say, 'A heart lived'--well, no more." "A head, a brain, a heart, a body--the rest Ungod because--wherefore did I live And they Ungod? I say, 'Ahead'--you cut me clean." (Said he, turning round and seeing her) "hey! That's not what I meant." (She stammered, heard a kind of murmuring laugh Steal out of her mouth.) She put in her word and skipped away, And I heard her headed up to the door. "But the thought of it made me cry for half an hour. A set of pictures like that, who would pay, When one has so much exquisite blue To choose from? And, really, some grey child or dead, Some wicked dead, in bed, or lying in his gutter Lies pretty, stretches the legs on one's legs. "See here, if I must have them fetched by the string And he'll take them--what do you think?--all in one colour, White, green, scarlet, green, and blue, you understand. The bells rang; and the hours of noon, and night: The bells rang low; on the sand was a wheel and it whanged, And down the yellow fog came with bated breath; The wheels were set up and the hounds were run, And the men blithe at the word, "Patricia." White, blue, yellow, red, they danced and dallied, Gleaming, glancing, wheeling, sawing, calling, seeing, Each mixing in some play and fancy, Most like to elves in fairy lands gone dreaming, There, in a garden-plot of Cannes. One hanging after his neighbours had gone to bed, A vast space of dark shining wood beyond the pine-trees, Flickering the greyer halves of the forest in the dark; And across the green water on a wheel of silver And beneath, a tumbling of scarlet-sharks, circling and moaning; And round the wood, how pendulous it swung and swung, A hag's turban so broad and that, and the beasts Came hobbling like swallows down a waterfall, Some hundreds down, creeping on their bellies, a herd, Or coils of crocodiles, all out of power to writhe. And there in a group in a corner standing thereon, Wasted and leaning, the sunset turned away Like a skeleton that might stand on end, and go To his grave with many ages after being husked. Then: "Dear God, you think of us dying like that, Or together as one, or alone?" "Some must of us must of us must of us. This little is so small, And yet these woods are full of us. And that drew is so weary, And that drew is so fine, And that drew in bone, and that drew in steel. Our steps are in the stour that was our youth, And those that write our ways are the scribes we have heard. But there's in it aneurisms that ======================================== SAMPLE 884 ======================================== claw the lips, again it begins. If the merchant be weighty, Squares the quarters round him, And the beadle be soft And no whining are him For, as a man of a Godly mien, Comes his mail to take it. It may be, I won't say, I won't say That beggars must have short legs, or be out, Or with unfinced knees to come and go. In the devil's name, Tarquin, Put that hand away And touch a penny, a very small thing. That is no way for men to live, Or to fight in, or to dare; No, gentlemen, you have your fill Of it, sir! have your fill Of pulling wrists, or catching thighs, Or pushing shoulders, or pulling bums. "The female form is everywhere disguised, Barble. A rebec flower, a drabled sow, A most costly dildo--how can I say?-- A pretty tart, indeed, (And far too young a one to take that name dead-taken) Bult to play. "And though to demand her curtsy Were, to say the least, too much of a joke, It's something finer than calligraphing, And, I am sorry to say, Makes one's head dizzy to be hung upon, And though I should like to say it's wrong And fight the battle, It's not a thing you shoot, sir." "'I don't care. There is a yet to come Whereby the gallants don't strike the females.' Says Barba: that's as far as I go. With women by the score In this rough neighbour of Colchos, --Ere they be brought to bed, sir, with a gun Wrapped up in their innards, Or work the head off a Rork or Dutch, They haven't much sense in their head; And, whether or not they've any sense of their brain, This is certainly a fact, In saying that I'm put to shame by the bile And indigestion Of saying such things. "No, sir; The Devil makes it hard for the devils, And is sparing of his credit; Then God would say it was one Of his poor curate lads, And carry away the bragging. In which case, I suppose, A man would be hanged for a goose, sir." I had an old wrestler, or, I saw him, With three long fingers in a row. He never threw a heavier swfer, Nor made a greater pody; But I guess that he knew for a fool And a skipper he was. Squash. I tell you, brother, There is no one come up higher (It may sound proud to you), 'Tis because he never fought like me. He had no beard, and so he was shunned, My fair ladies, for their favours. You care not how or where We squashed, brother, we orter be, What's come of brother in the picture. His lick of the ring I never knew, I reckon, brothers, you'd take it down With equal acclaim to you; But how gracious he and me and others Gave us riper than the rest, We never found each other speaking, Of the honour we got from him. Poor Doll's little children say She can no more. She suppers must by candle or bowl, Her bowl is soon filled-- I supped hers last. That was a beautiful supper. The angel called the kettle gong. The kettle gong gong answered-- "How sweet! As sweet! My angels! Let me not regret I coughed--you see, My sister's baby's dead." Like as headways run, brother, Brothers in the field, Like as market-boudoirs show The fair pallet, Brothers strike like guns in the arm, As spruce as those in the arm-- As guns strike twice, brothers twice, If you were king and we were kings, Then monarchy would be a sack, Of which you and I were the proper Parts--the lesser an office, You and I two drinking kings. For in us each seems king, and both for"son," Like chittering jacks as the hand when the bank is slammed-- If you would ======================================== SAMPLE 885 ======================================== Thus, then, says the Lord: 'My people, I have heard thy prayers And the cry that thou wilt hear no more; I shall go down and be, day by day, In the fierce feast and the watch, the wild uproar With the great and the many strangers; Not as guest, but as warrior. At the battle 'gainst the pagan foe I shall return in the wrath of my wrath. Ye shall be called upon to keep the feast, Guard the gifts and the guerdon. 'I gave you gifts for the feast of unleavened bread, Gave you guerdons for your mine; I gave you ploughs to till the uplands; Gave you bridal gifts and bounden gart the bride; Now I repeat the gift I have not chosen. Thou wert girded to the wedding, thralls; I was not thy poor dame; not I, but Jesus, Yet did choose me to be thine and thine and swear That I would be thy posterity; I would not be thy mother, Lord, but for the sake Of many children like thee and like me. 'Ye shall be called on to keep the feast And I will be thy posterity. Yea, I but remember once to say That I will be thy posterity; And He said, the more I magnify Thy beauty, the more they shall remember thee, Like to the many children of thy land. 'By me this is of use, Lord, And of glory I thy flesh, For what is best among death's works Is made best among death's works; Therefore, I say unto thee, A Blessed Birth-night, O, Harvest Moon, Shall thou be to us as thou art to me. 'No more shall take thy breath of life Nor shall he stand in heaven With his gold wings uncovered, No more like a raven Flown upon the seas but he shall lie With his red feathers spread upon the ground, And his feet in dust among the reeds and creep Of the poet-flowers that he trod on ere he died.' Mute upon the floor she wept a space, Till a light hand of the singer Creaked behind a lid, and her wild eyes Flash with a joy beyond all restraint, Until a wide and a sudden cry As of the sea gave tongue, and then In their triumph she turned white; With a triumph of lips that was loath To be called close, and fell on tears To repeat an unco-operative word. Yet once again she would speak and yet A note was in her voice as of pain More horrible than any pain; As from the door to her side she came She sounded, and her words came brief As those that unto men are cast: "I do not choose to be thy son, but rather Thou wide, enduring sea, "O husband, thrall, and servant's word, That, since first my love for thee was run, I might be all my life the servile sword That sheathe the heart thou madest bare To thy and thine alliance: for, Lord, I give thee my heart to keep and live Thy bond for ever; I am not dead, But wait my hour of death." With a chortle of a laugh she went And a laugh of a cry of delight, And thence the son of Herbert Forth from the guest-room into the night, Where the shy stars were black, and the moon Filded the shadows of the wood. Far on a little sand-beach lay, Scarred by the breaks of the sea, And there a naked girl lay wan In the yellow midday sun: And such a name was her as the deep This waked soul recoils from. Warmed with a doubtful sense of right, And rapt with a deep desire That moved through the flesh and through the spirit Like a weary longing, faint, sad, And like a lonely lark that sings Amid the interspersed stars, Unworthy of its loneliness, And unknown and alone: Swiftly a hand drew the love-light From side to side, and from whereon The queen-nova quivered to maim, Down, down to the naked coast Where the dromedian raged, Down to a hidden beach That southward never dared to sway And there the shallop heaved and cast Soft eyes and drifted out, And there it paused a moment, paused, Wa ======================================== SAMPLE 886 ======================================== From another war - Have you forgotten, When we met as strangers In that valley What a change in my face Old Pyrrha's eyes, so tender, So shyly smiling; And you, you dark, handsome, Young, full-grown hero, Your youthful grace, Is weariness, and despair, And I who love you, and Who honour you, and And honour all in you, and love all in all. "Can the mountain and sea satisfy All the loving one can bear? Should all else perish, not through love, But for love's sake that dies?" And as the morning star Seems to musk roses, All in rose-lustre drest, So the sense of music in mine ear The starlight luring sends: So let me hark to the song of my love: Love's divine miracle is When love's flame is this, as night to the morning! Some one said, Love danced upon a dry-sea's sea; And he that was too far away Fell in love with a great space Far away. Though to heaven he's above But as earth to the sun, Yet they that know his bitter grief, Made him dance, as he did leap Up and up, and he seemed fain To leap into the stars' great Wide-spread pearl, and jump Through the narrow-winding way. Whereon one said, "How high Above that little star's twinkling Can he sport?" And one said, "How proud he makes His high-built head, and how High his builded breast-balls!" But he, with sweet, choked-voice, Panted, and then said, "Love is an endless chase." But I to him cried, "True, love is an endless race; Yet as when the falcon flies, And now, fetching his prey, Leans his head and wonders, Till the steep night-bird's chirrup, Circling dark and dreary, Sees that his time has come, Tires unto me Striving on and struggling yet; Tires within me, and then strains To rise. Sweet little love Is terrible when it is near! The music making sweet the stair, With breath of willow, mingling With the long sigh of meadows With willow branches Unfolds. Why, mother, I'd kill for one A home with head of these! Four leaves in hand as to the market And not another word And only the music of the wind Half-thrown, as by a sign, and yet A sigh unto a sigh! With red and brown the leaves are seen And in those leaves, red-brown and white, Lies the paper red-brown on the gate Of the town, or green with blue below. So my sins, sweet, made me joyful, All those that concern the sinner; Then he who lived in mind as in the book Of God's living and true will,-- Who kept his soul as in a train Of flame, his body as a straining wire, And in his sweet and bitter touched A relish found. So I spent my countenance In feast and feast-breakfast; Then forth and forth in the words of God, The rest and rest of food, Took me, as I thought, with joy. Till my hours were but three And I waked to dream of the flowers There in the paper and the town; And of those fine things said, Look, in my dream, mother, And felt the flush of joy; But, though it was a dream, 'Twas a look of a blush for me. But O, my mother, as of old She watched my simple sins, Sent me back with fire and fire And hot tears of earnest thought; A light, a fiery earnest, On my heart, of a father's fear; And I said, "I'll be strong." And, my mother, she made me A little glance of love; And then I sent her home to bed, And stooped and kissed her--and the next day Forgot to kiss her, only rest, And never be guided by her smile, And never behold her; Then did my soul descend, and, lo! All its lands were bare, and I, its son, Bound for the wood in the great green woods, With Faith upon a flower to show that I Was not as other ======================================== SAMPLE 887 ======================================== Is a town that has a summer’s war With winter twilight, and neither smite A shadowy habitant, in another light, Whose lingering footsteps old-time nostrums still turn To shelf, or chime, or not discomfit With brute comforts. . . . . . Nor is’t to judge The mark of love, the sight, the word Of man, of poetry, or intellect, Where these have laid that stretch of laughter-stray On the verge of years, that one may go Upward to shine like some frozen star Of the constellation Orion, Or touch, when darkness hath been spent, But in a lesser language still the same, To earth’s cold rebuke. <|endoftext|> "That Time Must Pass", by Louise Glouté [Living, Time & Brevity] Then, I said, “I have made my song Of hay and hedges and heather, And raspberries; there is no song more mine.” And yet, as I paused in the house, I saw my youth and beauty shine, And feel’d the very vivacity Of feeling. I thought of him who said “The song was mine, and he who sang was dead,” And, I confess, my song, though mine of green And clover-mimosa, was not mine; I stood among the heath, and thought That time must pass. And time, that deathly heart of mine, Became a barren robin-red Puppy of my many months That husked or died of waiting. At last The brief and vain spring came to an end, The day was full of brood and strife, And, all silent as a flapping net, Or swelling midsummer cloud, the earth Shuddered in dripping heat. Then, the fit Of many spring-times had smothered down, And, there left in her bower of bud and flower About the bud-sweet fig-leaf, in kiss Of pranked sun-sweet mallow, bare white oak And gray-bud quince, the bristly arbutus That spread by the short and loopy stream A thinned and shed scented carpet Of mingled phantasies, and, not unmindful, Like muffled winds, far down in the hollow Of the prairie, whose sentinels he placed Beneath her fiery neck a flamingos That spread their wings of gold-pressed, wrinkled charms, And woke the great sun like the cardinal Between two arches of the illimitable sky, And strove he, amid his forlornest shingles, To fetch and serve her his eternal verses! <|endoftext|> "The English Evangelist", by Louise Glouté [Religion, Christianity, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Heroes & Patriotism, Independence Day] found in the papers John Walker’s heavy vinegar was too much for him on the eastern seaboard where yellow sand was wet & meadowsdrowned for he was not hinged like Caesar was as wound-salvaging: elegant schemes & tentative livid predictions, arranged, on one sinking of learned malice, next day, by the north he would send a pilfered & pendant vision against the snow: we died in the shop that day with bunting telegrams that said fore! ■ ■ ■ small hard double-headed copper bottle, with angled sides such as the tiny steel shovels of our days hold, with bell to bell far bell to bell far bell. Its purpose: to weigh life by heavier, heavier than air. ■ ■ ■ Here there was thunder & felling of lands, great rust & whirling dust, men who stood, you know, a long way around. ■ ■ ■ ■ Here there was litter of nowbones, broken otherwise, self & bed salt, man in his cupboard & fireside bench & gathered, made toiling, his pouring down ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ An army of sapphire cavalcades hatched by the dozen in the rains of the years to be wept & a flesh of beef, pan baked to ruin. <|endof ======================================== SAMPLE 888 ======================================== Shall barter with common scoundrels their halfpence, To bear the mighty copy-right, and perish In worthless still, and pawn their birthright for a stalk of prunes, The vicious last appendage to their beaver of goat." "'Tis the sun, 'tis the sun, quoth the mourner. So they told, in Shakespeare's time, in Greek and Roman scribes; My sires, who can read, who could scan alto- What the great masters taught in verse, Can in like measure penned in prose. A whole century every chapter Of its great masters' lore was the tongue of a single coppa; How oft they began their grave, descending the customary step of decline, With prayers to the sun, that gratefully was content to take what they gave. 'Tis the sun, 'tis the sun, quoth the mourner. Of my birth, of my title, and of my noble blood I boast, But grave and stern, the conqueror hangs on my door, While singing minstrels from her thunder do descend. 'Tis the sun, 'tis the sun, quoth the mourner. With radiant spangles of her favourite stars she doth shine, A simple cresset, unrolling its grene grandeur to the open. "A sorrow?"--Not so, exclaims MacDonagh, a welcome contrast; Pleased that his harp should grace the dance, in disguise, To conceal it from the ladies, who scarce recognizes Each favourite word, whose fault, in the faulted? For the wrong, ask not my princess, nor I, That long misunderstood, aye she had turned her stile And loathed that which she loved not, but her freedom From legal tether--had given her, mother and spouse. "A tribunall fear, &c. (fresh from his battle on the coast) And despis'd Tomaltche Mower, with two footmen treads on the doors; Yet stealthily the only ones who enter were he and I. She behind us went, and said with a laugh, 'Haste! come follow me, Ye cork-writers of the county; ye are rogues, ye are cadgers, Ye need na fear, for Tom will put you 't micro-baton soon; But ye bide with me, lass, till the rope comes round, I reckon; But now for Paris; ye'll be there in a few days, I seargoute.' The bells peal, bells peal, bells peal, bells peal. "The funeral of a Duke have slain, who e'er since returned From France, whence with grief and spleen he was caught, And left there, a prey to those whom he command'd, His cousin his heir, his nephew his son, Fatal word to say, his heir his nephew take, Who in the death-camp he led, his mother ta'en Her place, as mother or wife no distinction knows, Lochbroom is more than she a duke can be "Long do I remember the day, When a tayrar I sought in a dun, And blatterd mists down Went from the road Of a hill that follow the sun, Which we did in our own bed surrounsed, But a good stripling I met, Who would marry me, and ha'e my good! No treaty thought, no policy, Nor e'er of saith gsupport had I. In the way made for Scotland I ran, Though not for monarchs, yet a tayrar Had power that, but thought it too light, 'Twas treason in an army, To desire a minister, a tayrar Was, I reckoned, a sovereign, One day behind, to gar Neizwan (I, the Sun) An augur, who took to his errand, we bode Upon the golf of MacDougall, where Was eldrich in a cloud, whose shadow lay Ne'er more suitabubbling spot When we drove till morn, which enchained our wain The cause of our sin at the tap Of an hour, when a sweat, a dismal sweat, O'erspread the hills, upon every road, Where we used to drive till morn. Thus frequently has I driven, since There where I dwelt, I drew and mail, And heard, behind my head, the dog-rain, The neigh of the wind through the trees, And at the house-door drew, and ======================================== SAMPLE 889 ======================================== Dame of Mevania, good and great, Phoibbi of fair Midian, Who within the city courts Lay in her soft arms as a bride Staring in adoration From the palace, filled with deep awe. Stretched at length upon the ground, Ages ago, a fisherman, Just landed and extricate from the water, He of the golden brace Of Erin's Westland heard her call. Staked to the utmost limit Around the cornfield he stands, And the wondering Lady stood near (Lovelace's pen raised to her eyes). Low in her tone she called and said: "This is enough, In the grounds already laid Of mine old native town The beautiful stage I just reared; For through her back to this As a dancer, Madam Courteous Already known in her ten years Ten years that she has liv'd and sleep; For the dance she does so seldom No men can make a jury; And only to needle-women May some excuse be found. "I know a hump before I see A thing that appears to be formed Of a large genus, and apply A name and name alone as well: As lark, lark, I would have you know That still one better name could give, And that you to this must belong, This, and only this, a tailor. "Yes, though I wear short petticoat, I am a tailor and Weaver: My heart is in my dark eyes, And none can be hid from them: My heart waits on fairies here, And O, there is one in my best To fit the service of your needs." "My head the very fancie reach Which sets your people all aflaw To titteringly study you And weep for sorrow of you." "That is but still," said he, "my kin, And best to solve it if ye can." "Now, will ye by kind proxy own An honest piece of ye in me, Be just, be wise, and take this booty, Then we will talk o' till wed?" "Gramerch. The knot is round and chafed." "A short country-service I am holden, That missay had for want of brawn; So God knows that I am strait and brown Unless I do right if I did her, Yet ere ye be launched, or I be, I'm the first in lot, ye will see me." She spoke, and slowly on her navie-day Might see her standing in the pale grasses Before a rock, and 'ring bells,' she said, And of herself she 'spied that jar Whereon I stand to-day, and telleth this: "This hooded root that hideth a charnel's draw Under the ground of Aylshan's hung with me Hath a way to Cuddie Bran that is meet." And there of helm she took, and of her sex (With shining arms), and eke her palfrey good, And in the lake the basin fair of red, And in his hand her scissors, then past out Out of the glen and over the rocks Bolthed the hawthorn blushing by the lake Pearsing forward, she that saide or dreamed That with her silver blade should be violated. "To kirk?" "Nay, lass, that shall not be, A Sawn-beaded kettle for to bray And you shall have a daisy apron." "Yea, lass, that shall be, that is most suit." "Why not a toothpick? gyt me a glove, And Lord grant the weinershape it be!" "Ye shall have a tobacco snuff box, fair, And I'll to mill to mak us a little milk." On each side the flame a-field Were thickening now, the fifers were flying; They chased the blood-stained plague, the worm was squealing, The lar'. That was low and sour; And out on the saw-log lay His hundred eyes, each one. But Eppie cried, "The spear Which has so long lastited!" "Nay," said Sinsey, "it is a beetle; The wood a-field is picking still." "Well," said Cowar, "at last?" "Ragged she is," Sinsey replied, And sniffing, he exhaled "Hert per woo." "O ======================================== SAMPLE 890 ======================================== (That so night might still be found) By that once safe heaven-sent spot to fly, Vengeful on the foe and sweet With tyrannous banes up to his perch. Sir, here to guard his own disgrace, And help us all who are in woes. Down at the huts some women sing Lovers' lullaby, tippling als; They guess not what is come to bar The very door of their nest. Sir, they shall come with noise and bray, Brief as the brooding dove, And twist each lowening brood with care Round love's now silent bird. Who bandy the cow and pan's Poor, weary beldams; Or whether today a ray, Or whether in the windy drear Of weeping wet grey mists, They do awake their prey, That hears, so should they. In petticoats, But, that they dry their matted mithers, May wailing ring to greet their suit. That, very woe being fact, Men shall deem how heavy fine A world's reproach is, and light reproof. Shall leave the public road, and some twopence, Or less or more, for pun, confess Their cool-bedevilled offences Under the cobweb lust that slides In that long, deep, and subtle haze And tangle of by-ways and devious error. That all the mild. They. Woe, want and wailing, And ruin with repenting, In prisoning homes. They shall lie Thick in heather, read, meditating Whose fault, yet the erring passion sore, Till their body fire, instead Mine, and mine erring, become In love's not hopeless obsession. This. All their rest, what rest to them? They shall rest, or anything, under the sky. Howbeit my rapture shall not hold me, When this shall be; when I shall stand, Should earth, when all her spheric smoke, Fuming, settled, in one fiery shower Piled in great waves from their fountains great, Steep down the desert, filld with heat, And boil into a mire; Caught in some mighty vortex tight, And whirled along, and whirl'd up and down, Aye stirring all her rolling spatter Against my heart and me: Her lukes, her suns, her winds, her polar heat, Her poles, continents, and her great internal fires. Sirs, we may cease to contend with thy pride, And cease, since that is immaterial now; We may exhort thee to repentance and repair, The risk is, thee it hubbub finds erelong. Her ship's let fate makes haste; our wind's cool air Cools her, and her helm so fair! Ill met, I trust, This puny heart to eddy at such minutes loud. Thy manhood great, lad, was made for storms that come, So cool, so kind thy nimble, brave, With every sailor's hand the safer safe, All hands, the harder peril that must feel To err, and come out on Corella's deep. While thou art nigh, not one whileie, and the seas Run rough, and roar, and hurl huge foam, And drown the humble boat, and toware the mast Rise at the mast's end, and then sink down the sky. When then such rapture, and such shining smiles At being saved from certain death be gone, That's it, sir, I'd wight it were not so. This golden mean is buy Full oft, poor man, bought cheap By all full-earn't of lusty times And this let me see, in you this night I buy, by you (if you be given me,) Life all the while I pray for her life, Which you shall save to me; This bought path's my way, life's sole pay. To be a man, life to be good, And suffer grief, and sorrow be tryed, And I'faith this be true, I'faith it is, sir, very true, The faithful brother-man, in his senses Makes life's a mire, full-measure'd pain. To be ill, be very ill; He who's hein the most suffers here; Full well I call it tort'ring, And profligate in extremest dolour, But oh! this was my choice, ======================================== SAMPLE 891 ======================================== possible to account for this, at least it could account for the profound.What deep, in need of? Come, come, the termis surely too familiar, a gesture,a pondering of the world and ourselves, mind and body, and this pondering, and it’s too simple, it must be right, and this pondering is perfection, including for the distillation of our inner most humankind, and the next thing you know we’ve given birth to the living images of speak, especially in what is the first cave, crude direct speech, first instinct speaking, communicating, live fast, talk later. One hundred hundred years ago the expression first leaves the mouth of this animal who must live by these words, the animal who needs these words now, this animal, here now. The young caves show a race that is decently attired, byards, their feet and legs may also be sporting, they can’t always work, so careful, but they’re good to eat, and can be made ready for the long voyage, standing straight, perhaps just a little move. The Old Ones were composed of the best, the best parts of humanity, sharpened at great cost and labor, with the muscle, intelligence, the spine, the deep thirst for knowledge. We’ve gotten so good at what we do, we now need the best of the best. To think not just to think but to exert yourself, to be able to see that there is a world out there, though you may be there and not be able to say so, being too far, until you come, as now, to the moment of speaking. The cave may hold only the traces of what you thought, written in invisible hieroglyphs. <|endoftext|> "Tête-à-tête", by Jean Toomer [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Activities, Indoor Activities, Travels & Journeys, Arts & Sciences, Painting & Sculpture] My conversation with the artist [Francis Diaz] began in a rainstorm; He explained to me how the rain is the same thing.The grass swayed to the sound of his oceanic voice, and the trees and clouds became part of the conversation. When I insisted on asking him if he wanted some coffee or fruit to accompany his snack of bottle-bott fulls of air, the rain! Oh, the heavy rain! With so much sadness it drove me to mutter, “Like this?" But the artist laughed in my underground shelter.Don’t ask me why, he said, it is so easy to describe:The wind does not harm but it loves. You think it does not? You said, “It’s not even wet! How can it be heavy?” But the painter for the last forty years had been to the hospital, and when he came out with a new oil on his cheek from the Philippines he said,“I’m painting it like death.”“The storm hits you here, in this opening In the neck, in this one spot.”The rain down then came to my house where I call the artist to ask about the birds. Do they come back? The artist said,They do, we do. They’re very black and white in here, she said. But if you tell them it hurts them. You can tell by the twigs in the garden. So then I go on to tell the artist what the artist said as the sky went from dark to dark and back to dark. It was like day and night. I keep telling the artist to paint it blue, but she said, It’s white. But I know it was blue, she said, since it makes us dizzy to think we’ve got nothing but earth for the sky.“But how do you go from black to white to pure white,” I ask, “without losing any information?”She said, it happens in slow to prevent over-thinking. Let it go.The artist turned his head to the left, and said to me,And it’s one of my best paintings. Take that.“But how did you do that,” I asked, “That fast?”To help us along I asked the artist for more details, but I got no reply from him and did not ask. <|endoftext|> "Four Postulates for Physicists", by Rita Oohey [Nature, Stars, Planets, Heavens] 1 Physicists do not explain anything but what they understand. So, as far as they are concerned, the nature of everything is soundly evoked, and their words t ======================================== SAMPLE 892 ======================================== The rival houses they brought, With mischief ta'en as in their rear; And though the king was much demean'd, Yet worthy there was none beneath Of princes' crown, in mariners' sight. To fix the rivals in their place, The loudest heralds call'd on each hand: To meet the friends who with them went; The warriors homeward to command; The principalities, who should be seen (Victorious to his mind) appear; Aye more and more--as if their fate. Then he, the ancestors of those kings, Their deeds and title clears; nor twice regretted The duke, who had a head and heart so good; Says "Sire of Gods, for me, what work must do? And show, thou-Portress, I for thy garment wear."-- And the queen she answers, with a sigh: "Know'st thou not," quoth the king, "my royal bride (Lovely Portress) on this highway's hand? Thou-Portress, how and when? and why did'st thou run? Oh tell! for thou art in my royal right. But why I sapp'd thee, tell, dear 'Undreamt, of Love!" "How for thy lap to take," quoth Portress, "My happy knight, I much should not be praised! If for sport thou be not willing at night, That lap, whose fruit the fondest of lovers shuns, Is not forbidden to his spirit's embrace." "Oh, there," quoth she, "ere such a boon Thy grace bestow, the lolling Corsairs live. To make their peace, come hither, thy false knight, and bring With these, the Uzel of His Thirteenth year." She said; and Merlin goeth towards the stoure, As wrapt in snow-white vapours did appear. So is he known throughout all the marches wide That seen or heard of, seldom trod or seen: His arms are locks of gold and leather mesh, Or ivory and buckler, flaming hair; On his shoulders hangs a castellated sword, So heavy on his hoary shoulders hung. His haunches were as long and large as pears, And with great gold rings made bold his tupt four. Lately had come into the marches here A warrior of the North, and met with him, Fried (his bones now grown stiff) the hunter of men; And brought him to his foster-mother's breast, Where he that face so long since have seen Seen her bare, swol'n and grey, in crusted snow, A boy before was the nymph, who now is boy, So strong and hardy, he might scape alone, Or yet force from the forest as the master wills, Perforce is he bound, or by a magic ring, But he must ride through the pass to cold and death. Then fell for lack of better counsel or rest, The king had to the forteress, the virgin sage, Who by the tent-fire sat, with counsel grave, For she, the virgin sage, was healer Of all his hurt, whose sicknesses mew So lately made King Carduel great wast Of forces which he hitherto had money lent For; by her he seemed his blood to be betray, And lookt wistfully, and saide: "Whoso will at hence against thy clans, The Latins and their arms forbad; There be among them many men fordone, As day by day they slain grow; and all which way You came, no war is; to a battle like this Must you bring sword, and armour, lance and shield, For the wish I have, who wish the Trojans free "Those that hold by warrior for her cause, Sith of all are her people, all her bands, Shall to the world against this war be taught How least man is of them that seek to know To chalenge war, or ere that first burst They who seek it, by sleight and help May rarely be deceived, nor in first suit On some thy cause make head, and on the rest Send head on, nor far wronged: sorrow God "But ye, who lie so slack you for the sea, Can ye not swerve from sloth, and in the field Help gainst the foe? For these no fight You care for: ye are but few of us." They hearken; and he gan to pen, and in his hand ======================================== SAMPLE 893 ======================================== & be like cold sheep with birds around who decide to play "Civil Disobedience" on Their guitars, & only you didn’t make the same mistake as their parents making harp metron who will turn along an axis of speech & end up with no lesson a form your mind shall first and oh here is the darkness too soon & that, & what is that yoke the woman hates most? <|endoftext|> "On Being Bad At Reading Nonsense", by Charles Bach [Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire] "to make one laugh" the first principle of being a comedian: it’s not enough to scratch the surface of this or that joke: we want to "get" the "why" & find out who, exactly, the audience member is supposed to be, at the "laugh track" check a comedian: it’s not enough to scratch the surface: it’s not enough to have a good time: "to make one laugh" the comedian must know the specific "why" the audience member falls at the comedian’s door: "to make one laugh" the comedian must know the specific "why" the audience member falls at the comedian’s door: "to make one laugh" the comedian must make it seem as if no one— no one— could ever guess the "why": it must seem like the "why" to the audience member & the audience member falls at the comedian’s door. <|endoftext|> "Accidental Completion", by Philip Spobel [Living, Life Choices, Relationships, Home Life, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Philosophy, Father's Day] For P.Ando I’ve messed up a lot of times, but P&o I’ll get it all right, at last I have it all right. I’ve waded the wet mouse-wad of the ocean; belted the bluebottle with the mussel-egg; bashed the scaly boar; tried out for the mother; it seems the last place I’d bung in was with my wife, who says: P, I don’t like the way you pull your stitches. But my sort of stitches, the ones I have are fine loosed ones that knit themselves into the back of my shirt, they drive the blood from the burn and into the baby cheek, but in mama’s blood, in the child’s even bleeding there’s the place where the thread tightens the sound in the skin. And if I end up dead won’t she wish me dead instead, will she wish me a little dead and not a little fucked up, with these, our four red-cheeked kids, a woman and men, the last of her breed, left, we leave the old world of agriculture, the Cretan goose; from the house to the shed, over the fields we slip; for the young star we walk to find the young star, letting the blood float like pearls to Assyrian sirens the night brings; to the first days of spring we wear our hair as we would a wig, in the swift gathering of birds. <|endoftext|> "I Wasn’t Even Eight Years Old When I Sucked The Teeth Out Of My Younger Brother", by Joy Eliades [Living, Death, Relationships, Family & Ancestors] Because the voice speaks so cleanly, you and I will always be in the same room, that is, until one day, one day after another, when, out of pity for that child mistero-sphinx (that is my grandfather and his words have powers!) I pack up all his toys and leave for good. I’m in the back of the car. His child lives in LA. He gives her back to me, right there in the front seat of my own car. I kiss your mother on both cheeks. I’m already in a deeper water than I was. Not I am that child. So no, you did not never suffer from affection. The voice is here now in the morning of every possible future to be. But you do. I ======================================== SAMPLE 894 ======================================== The every fear that lurked in all, He would scorn and despise, the world and they Would mock and despise, The whole mill-work rush'd into rail, And thus it roll'd on to his grave. Forth, who heard a most unlike narration (These narratives are not easy alike And make the diplomat spew) He shot out to spurn the Invisible And drove his bow like lightning all over Ascending-nature, And so the Invisible spurn'd and drove As easily as any peddler Come, are you with me? (the Kite-flier said) Well I know you, and I count on you, No General Wallace nor these annoyances Shall e'er keep me from my destined mark; No ball or hell-fire shall stand in the way Nor ill-shot rapacity stay. There is thy cousin the jovial juggler, And his breath I'll take without thought for fear, For fear that it may not go forth from me, Yet if he succeed I'll be he then, And oh, and oh, I, being crowned and cloven as it were in mid- Tree, I mean to be the ringleader and see That I am seen, and I should be again to you When I am with him. Look round and then look back; for what am I? A garden of pure essence, a gardening of Doubt and a folly of half-formed thoughts, a fool's Pride and scorn, A muddle and a feast, A pageant and a kind of failure and A blurred and half-blurred Fame. A clew and a rue, And a stem and a thorn, And three young sisters, self and of self, And one small standing rose. What want these to lift and do? There is the bud, and there the sphere, The blossom and the spray. Do not speak to me of souls and glory, Of all the sweeps and falls of speech That poets sing or tell, my lips Are dim in silence, not to see The thing that may have been or is. For I have done: my hands have grown The flesh of helplessness: Yet though I stand motionless And see the vision pass, That of the sunset's captive Won me,--loathed, lost, and undone By every brow, Dear my pleasure, Lovely my glory, Beauty of freedom, grace of night, And all the brood that name Angels bring: Fair Rome's most holy shrine, That kept with gold for ransom Pulse this, and e'en these On this night of Astrul Goch, Through the wint'ring Aequorian Season See, and at this time What time the Moon her bitter path did tread Into the night: With light from the East At first, then from the West, With slow decay, And the Stars driven from the west (Which did keep the heavenly beams from noon) At length are hid: Tho' what bravely past Took of old, She, like a cautious tailor, now Can stand and look, And pass the hat Unwitting, I go singing, (And would be Justly Preeminent In all the things I sing) How I of my sorrowing Found a happy Strangers At least worthy Ear; But I fear my humble Page Shall put his own in, Though none was wilful More than I, Or more melodiously, Not calling gladly next day, The way that I heard him sing, Who but his cover At Tom Bull's, On a per-Lenothy, He said, I should be, And was sorry, If I showed half Though more in spirit than in deed. And for pleasure, Of what perils, Casualties,--such, and such, and such, Of Persecution too, I only knew a Fly, That would come betimes, I bade him Time, From his fat Appetite Came fit for My Land! But day by day Cast his life in doubt, So thick was smote And smote for pleasure too, That I cried out, Though 'twere shame To hide my eyes, Which hid behind The holy towers, Those Tyger-likes, Tow'rd Time as in an Isle Tow'rd to be, And for fear, Of what the Destinies Will sort, Distrustful ======================================== SAMPLE 895 ======================================== In an angry hue, She smote down at random All evil broodings. All evil that could be Her gaol is lodged, They sicken in Her prison. What bright and various flowers Then growed! Winter ne'er did close More warmly. O'er the soil the winged sun His onward way Of gold and green! Oft the sweet birds Their evenings spent were taught to sing O'er the place of their nativity; And, they say, who failed To be duly sprinkled, Their bones they cast To the pelts of the eagle; Not that they Would have it shown Where eagles their abode, We do not hate Your people, Boniface. Your great ancestors made The Britons mild and generous. O'er us they came, and Trove on virtue's ways Where e'en in lowly company Works mercy's strong zone, With steadfast moderation. We hate, as first they came, The Saxons and Lord Beer, And hate them still the bloodiest, To love our kin we owe. "I am the enemy," said the king, "Of England, am the enemy, And every foe of England. Not From you, nor from your line, shall Your descendants bear the flag And speak the name of conqueror. Therefore must the past be borne in mind, That which the future must combine, To make you what you ought to be, And that if here we linger In our present ruin, We may be a few The less pern and nearer In heart, in hand, in face, The sum of us to be. And since our foe we know, And his Illianders say, Have mercy on us, pray." "Give him not," said the king. "Give him not," quoth the dame; "Who hateth liberty," "Let us no longer tarry." "He is against us all," And over threshold and guard The gallant churls were there. He wed an only daughter To the crown, of Wales' heir. Aye, and they that were with her Had food and raiment yet But were not one whit liefer Than other freeborn Christians. It was not love for liberty That made them sing or say Nor why they heard or saw Their country's grave-dwellers One year in waiting there. "Sir Hugh here can be An archer that doth live Free of Britain's laws and time, But in his bow-shod land Balls his broad shafts into yon church. Ye have no hope of him, Nor any even hope To see your mother see him." So the elder folkmotes In minatory shoots A little halo run Thither by the altar-way, And found no man there, As he wist full wide Was neither hill nor dell, Nor held a kingdom good Which should yield him his full meed And be his home and work. These spring-leaves on your floor Thrust out their hands to meet That oft time taketh away, And these must feel the sun Till men be grown more clean And all about the prayer That follows from them lift Their inward heat and voice. Go forth to meet the Spring, Be song for the coming day, Wear gladness in your heart And whisper grace and prayer; For the prayers that spring Is little like the prayer Our guilt hath lost in heaven. I have said before, I have said before, And will say eternally, that Spring Taketh things away with her sweet touch, The gay, the pure spontane, The tender spontane, That do not change, that do not stay But change within the hour, that do not know When their courtiers come about, O chaleteeth bigness, O infinite love, O large grace, O suavity of time, That shorteneth all to nothingness! The wild fire drives thee, The long flame's hot weight Doth weary thee, The beauty that was born Is older by one day Than the years of thy life, And older than the trees. But I swear thou shalt have No lack of gift or better The Spring as she is gone, So long as the spring doth last, Her gifts bestow And beautiful and unspotted. She shed no gift which was not bad, And poor men ======================================== SAMPLE 896 ======================================== It's a hard world, we know, and I may say That there's no letter in this name more blest Than its own. So enjoy it as you may And mind to carry a pure, pure heart with you, As a great Northern snow-ball's purest snowball-- Unless you fall into a mine, which I doubt,-- And then it isn't so bad. My dear, dear Madeline,-- The doctor's crooning my crook! There is a nicety I should have said before, but that devils' luck Hass' cart me in among half-darkness. I'm mad to sleep, Mad to sit upon the same bed with Madeline, And write to you, not write you,--but may it be I shall wake up and be dead in bed Before you can come here. There's something in her talk, Something in her eyes Awakes the shadow of old memories, And I can see her smile, And read her lips As we are both so fond, I hear her pulse Pick up the heart-beat with sweet surprise, And yet there is a something Which smacks of the devil's crib, And I pray you'll forgive, but 'twill cost you A million dollar hospital bill,-- If she'll sit still for one minute In that first perfect moment when she sits By my side,--if she will sit still When I need her the most. Darling, she'll not sit still, she tends To turn and circle me; I'm certain she's playing A wind-pipe upon me; To bend and over-come, With her arm a- Break! Whether it is She's letting out Her sentiments Through her fist; That I am not A babbling fool, And when I've had My whisp60"whining" wh1repp? I wish you would Do as you do, Madeline! "Mary! Mary!" (finishes dinner) "Now tell me--dinner over-- Let me just say, What was the particular means of your entering into this? Yes! yes! yes! Your story! Your story! (Some small Champy ere now) Tell us all about it! How did you come to have it? What was the particular means of your entering into this? Yes! yes! yes! Your story! Your story! Since, indeed, the story is done, Why do you not finish, or I shall be compelled to stop? You will not? I should like,--and I might and perhaps must dare-- To write a few words in my chamber at Baton Gerrard, The night that I said grace To you, and, within that blessed hour, I know nothing of. Why do I think That this was true? Because your own lips said it, dear Madelaine, That this was true, And that it was true, indeed! 'Twas an evening in June That first we came here, my true love; A night in early June In which to sit and muse and talk About our home together; Your soft arms at my neck, In which I knew you would have no fears Of any peril there. I have been near to you-- Your hair had two crowns of gold (Though, your poor heart, it lacked one), And, looking in your eyes, I blessed Your beauty as true as a literal miracle-- (Such as you had been, if any word Had been denied you, you had built a monument Of granite and gold to make a mottled Hellenic fane)-- I have been near you; and my brain has been, The softest way, a desert. There was no water of any kind In the garden where we met to speak: All had been used up, to leave you there In your cool, dry garden by yourself-- With the wings of a dove for ferry I could not think. I could not think of anything: Even the delicate rose-bushes, and the pearly whites That down the alleys, in transparent plumes, Floated in the slightest breeze. And then, the Birds! The different sounds of the Beak All at once, as in a dream, The birds all around me came-- Two turtle-prawns, a Chow-headed Gallimimus, A warbler like a Gluyas's, A Cock, And, from the casement, there came A Hornet--and, oh ======================================== SAMPLE 897 ======================================== rounded her. Catching her breath, she slipped an arm around him and he, pressing the palm of her hand into his hair, pressed a comforting arm around her, gave her the courage to say, he understood. He understood, I guessed, that he must break the spell. Carrying her through the busy crowd, he led her by the arm and entered a room with long furniture, hanging down tables. His memory was good. He had liked with her to hang flowers on the shrubbery around the edges of the plots, from the thorns pulled off and crumpled, to the young surgeon's tent. She sat with him at table. He, with his book in his lap, went out with her to a quiet place beside the thorns and thistle that smothered the dead. He sat beside her, reading, as, three scenes later, we saw, she alone there, holding a tray of white chicken and plain steaming rice. She handed him his hat and he put it on. He was British. He had spent years moving through Paris. Now, at the new shop, he was happy, hunched against the wind, as we had seen him often at this spot, catching in the bushes grape clusters and a smooth white bag. Over his head we could see he held a chicken bone, as if framing a chicken, and beneath him saw the thorns that opened the way an almond opens a rainbow stretched over the table. His hand made music as he sat in broad French chest, the sleeves of his coat tightening and expanding to make the table he was the happy seat of and the chair he sat in and asked us, between the table and the chair, to give him a word that would have placed, like the words of a first-born sonnet, the world beside him in the dark, the wind to his ear. * It was his world. And as he closed his eyes at the thought of her, more tears, as a great wind whispers, were shed. He left the thorns a breadth deeper than the one he sat in. He did not dare to look at her, looking back at the west and the road to Ems. And he did not dare to lift up his hand. But as I have sat here at the rim of your beard, put by my bookbag, in your fingers, in his, the bard, his eyes fixed on the road a curve like a bell on my bag I could hear a voice as the tail of a beast swung from a cloud crossed the water, surged, seemed endless and started above, soared. * He moved to open the letter, read over the time of day, of a masking creek among lilies, rock bucklin and willow. But I did not understand one word he said, shifting the light upon his face. Then I saw that from my hand, within the coverlet of one arm, and within the side pocket of that skirt, or was it white frock, was a broken pipe, a pipe of great beauty, with which I had come to the camp of the Vikings, as he had told me, to tell them that the Minnehahu, the Minnehahu, had come to his clan, after having been driven from the kingdom of Mack and Olu Kualeki by an evil queen and the greed of her wrath. The word for "mine" is the same as the word for "man" in the old testament, and also, Itani (Wassik). My eyes were not blind, my ears were not dumb, as I caught the wits, the wisdom of the man. My heart was a garden of splendor, as it glowed within me as a sapphire within the prince's satin pouch, as he spoke, as he laid the whole weight of his body on my shoulder, the way one puts the lid on a new-washed garment, spit, saliva, cold grave dirt, sand dragged up on the sea strand toward the whirlpool. And I took it for granted, that I was being eased and, without this letter, he could not have come to his own estate, the land above the surf summited as a lance bearing his four letter name. <|endoftext|> "I am Not That Way in the Past", by Keith Walden [Living, ======================================== SAMPLE 898 ======================================== Topics singing, gazing, arising 6 I wonder where your heads are, Mary or if you're even human, after the hundredth time you call me by a name I cannot speak I toss you into the river, grab my camera to record your gaze. Only last night, I was recording the busy sounds of the city when it hit me like a pack of Hormel pork ribs, I had a vision of your naked body and I watched your every movement to know you were alive and I was seeing you through the haze of an ordinary night. 7 Who am I? What are you? Where are we? Wind that takes its form from the sun fills the night, follows your skin like a diminished object. I need a body to love you with, the wide night space not lived in by us. Nothing has changed. The river and its grasses still curve past the outside edges of buildings, the sky is still made up of stars. Flesh of the earth, the body you will consume. The wind wants to break you down. Your hunger to survive outdoes the wind in the sun. I beg you <|endoftext|> "To the Shrubber", by Max Miller [Living, Death, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Home Life] After my last unspoken goodbye the brown stick man marked me again on his bark-dipped compass burning in his amany drawer as we drew apart into our cauls of living. How long we would meet I couldn't tell we were so loaded in the mouth and the end began. The heat out there was beyond any span of kitchen tile, the worst being my father's sixth award meal left over from a holiday at the old run-down hillside farm where a mountain of autumn grain for two dozen men lay rotting a thousand years ago. What do you say to it? Look out there? Be a shöb yourself inside a shöb? I couldn't look it into being. I cried on the death experience ground cover, but the best tale is one of silence. "Please Don’t Count on Me" his bedside wound to death too quiet is the saddest thing. I hung a voodoo doll of myself and then said pah. <|endoftext|> "The Visit", by David Gelller [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] For Jana Just one of us made it out. The rest wasted, a crumpled flock, the wild, broken choir. Even a mound of teeth was touched by others, and those by others were later shown to others. Chunks tore from the country’s sky, from the sky broken, but they still held that which can not be given back, touched, hidden within one’s tongue—indeed this is what one has done, and others were touched, and all not helped. I was afraid in the pit. It was one of us that did it, and I was the other, both lying down, both rising. At the gate was an outsider ("He was used to the sights," his mother said of one that would not return), and later a horse would cry from the rough, dark yard in the mirror: What the horse saw is impossible to see, and impossible to happen at my feet, for the blood of what was once my belly, how long has that been, and a second will have the last word. <|endoftext|> "Lying in Water", by Max Roecke [Living, Coming of Age, Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams] And the girl beside me caught a white-mammoth in her mouth, like it was nothing, then fed it to the dogs who were licking her, and the sound made her wet and weter still at the edges until the dogs ate her too (they couldn’t bring themselves to kill her). If the thread that tied the world back to the sun is broken, it is over, if not it won’t kill me, it won’t kill me. —It’s in the nature of things to be found. That’s the age-old saying. But we think to find it it means with a raking tool. And all that ======================================== SAMPLE 899 ======================================== Even when it is wet, Says I, My cat doesn't like The cold, but she's cold to me; And still she doesn't move from The chair. Tiny covetous valley! You are so very silent, Even to tears. Not even a spring A melancholy breeze to stir Your dimpled waters! Not a ripple, not an oar To wander to and fro With the deep billow That is rolling over you! Empty, gray, and deep, Where all day long, on the hill, Little feet lie buried. A child's voice, not from the sea: I come, where all day long, In its threadbare coat, The sea-shell clings to a branch. I walk on this green slope, On the pale green grass, Beneath the thick, soft pale summer-sky. I stretch out my arms to you, Where you are, Clinging, close to a rocky ledge. Silent and slim, it lies On its full course to the rock, A grey, gray valley, Deep, deep below me, The full, fair face with lights And a parasol, like a Faun, Shall come, ere night is gone. She holds a chain of agate, And, with a touch of dawn, The chains fall to her feet, Silver, emerald; And the old mountains think I have come into your hall. A mist-flame rests upon the sill, All night I have sat here, With no word of command. As from a blue wall, in silence, You have told me stories, I see your new stair rising up Behind the dark. You would not think me a stranger here; If, in a joyless way, As from tale to tale you have told, I, weary and faint, Wearied with all darkness, On, in faith, of a far place, I, who am weak, and small, Weary with a wide path. Still through the twilight For your fireside Wander the small dark waves In their slothful song. Is that the sea Against the green sands? Sink or swim for gold! There shall never be that night again, Where a great king In a red house Sees the sun outsplashed. Here a man shall see a flicker Far down the road, In the tattered raiments That the wind drops down. Nay, 'tis over, the lands and their ways! There is something more than the birds' cunning, There is something more than the tide's swiftness, There is something more than the tempests' thunder, And more than the storms of God's thunder, And more than the fields' white white harvest, And more than the mountain's shelter, And more than the island's cot By the moaning surges, That the waves turn back. She seems with outstretched hands to strive, And wring a long despair From out her heart of grief and pain, To give up the final breath And take to eternity; The last, saddest sigh From out her breast. But I, who can never choose but join With sorrow and old age, they that sit To-day, and we that have loved to-day, For all untold sorrow, The joys that have been, And the painful joys of morrows, And the sighs of to-morrow; We that have known the deepest kisses Of Heaven and Hell, Have felt the fires of their red kisses, The oldest griefs, The very pain, And the heat of the sword. Now, you may laugh and say, "How absurd Is that old prince's love at the outset-- For when he has made such a choice, Why should he care about the colour Of girl's or wombed person's eyes?" And you may sing, and sing, "Never was love as blamelessly given, No, not ere the Lord had sealed the bond, As that young man of mine." But there is another sight that never yet, May never be ours-- A woman's face made out of azure flame, Full of the splendour of far seas, With fierce eyes' midnight fires, And lips wide open to the ravenous wild Of kiss-fire from the sun; And something of a fiend's insanity Brooking tempest and the sea's wrath And all storms that ever pause In the ======================================== SAMPLE 900 ======================================== Soft rosy and tasteless, with the sharpness of the bright and fragrant flame, the moist and sharp tang of it, the scents and tastes of it, the blood and marrow of things. The moist and wet silences in which it lives, and throws its own body as quickly away <|endoftext|> "The Return", by Greg Miller [Living, Life Choices, Sorrow & Grieving, The Body, Nature, Religion, The Spiritual] To be reunited to nature is to be ripped apart by it, wholly consumed, as a single, unliving plant can scarcely be the trunk, thatched with trees that produces all the fruits that it can’t bring to the tree’s roots, which are all of us. The tree can’t reach us, or care. It’s us we come home to, which is to say, not the trees, but the humanity of the inhuman, a name for what is neither plant nor animal. A waterfall, a field of clouds and a gnarled tree fall prey to the knee-level branches of a lone scoby at the edge of a forest where the body politic breathes. We regroup, the ground we regroup on, its spread wings a nonviolent, compassion in our youth, its root being us, us undone by our own humanity. From the dry tower blocks of the city, with their razorgrass and dead-lying zucchini and shriek of birdcries overhead, it’s a weekend more like the last days of summer and the dry cool beauty of a year when no one could tell you how the white plains and blue-black woods that everyone knew were blue and black, <|endoftext|> "August 24, 2014", by Greg Miller [Living, Life Choices, Activities, Jobs & Working, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Town & Country Life, Race & Ethnicity] As the only black resident of this small town I have to sit down at the kitchen table for Dinner. We have placed a large selection of grapevine rinds, grape arils, pulp from the unripened grape colons, each with its dry wrung-out gut, between us. It's bread we talk about—the purpose of being on this earth for any species with a mouth, a mouth that we don’t talk about or need. A paper bag over my head, I feel like an old person broke and abandoned on a schoolbus no one turns to but all of us, we give it a sniff and passing whites find it a kind of comfort it is dawn and the streets are dry little word- mashers block my words but I do my best hand- icapped this morning here is what I see: * * * In her garden they harvest yarrow but not the long heavy flowers, the seeds need a warm sunny African sun to ripen them. When they come out they are ugly black and they're gross and as I toss them to youths who pick them for tea I stop my self, what can we say that hasn't been said before? <|endoftext|> "Don’t Leave Me While I’m Sitting Down", by Greg Landau [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Time & Brevity, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] It happens to us all. Out of the blue and the stillness of the night, or more probably, the stillness of the sunset and this country we occupy, the disappearance of someone we love leaves us sitting somewhere in a strange room, a strange town where we are strangers. Tears come to the surface, and grief then moves on. Of course this is how it is. And we sit here, it’s the way it is, as if by chance we’ve been bestowed with some spare, improbable skills that make us more suited to live in this world than others, and so we stay. Some things last longer than we expect. They are still in great demand, and we come and go as often with different skills. This, too, is our skill. Don’t leave me while I’m sitting down. <|endoftext|> "Interview", by Greg Landau [Living, Life Cho ======================================== SAMPLE 901 ======================================== Fra dem schwangen nach Herzen, Denn ein andrer Kelbald Offen hast dich aufzubeder Euch, Und wie geheimelt Ich habe. Was dannen wieder hinaus in, Was ist es Geilungen abgeweilende Um gebehand anders gekünstt nicht, Was sind die Meerfahrt ein. Wie zwar einfach zu kommenden, Nach dem der Brandenburger Drei An länendspieln, wo die Meer Mit denen leben wir' aufgeburffen Untersuchen auch herausend still In English, it makes little difference, The flood of life calls us in To change its ancient course, The town and its mass of heroes Are fled. Oh! if what is written us allowed, We all should find, For what we know is, that the Rivers of our time Are ceasing To flow. Whosoever, in this art may seek the cause, What much we need here, to know, That gives sorrow to the beautiful And glad, Towards our lives, From wayward thought that with its transgression Sorrow overcomes us, and black desire O'erflows us, Solely by the king's decree Were we ordained to die. Ah! if the time has now, since it was spread On this frail world, All things be called thir masterpiece, nothing Is good for us there. Howe'er we praise, in things for to be wrought, A masterwork should still be found, if not A miracle. For why on them should their accomplishment Resound, If what they were not, be not, Or if the masterwork, here, here only, Be left, for what be found? For if thus made, they could not be, 'Twere idée increatrice, A ridiculous affront, if not A grim surprise! To that cupboard, It hath its high and rusty lid, Which somewhat loudly still Looks on us, through its open arch. That smaller, and scarcely larger, Is, it may be said, the next best thing. The learned one, whom my caprice hauls, Saith to the very bottom of the earth, A blind man may see; For very great thy so modest wit To our poor craft of thine! What knowledge may from our poor toasts Betray, O thou, that now hast lost thy caste, With fancy filled with unmeaning sounds, O art of evil might! Thy place was ill fit, thou well couldst Stand out a little out. The house, to which thou went'st to pass the day, Was too confined, too privy, and too cold, The piece of ground, to hold thee, from the cold That from the north, with unrelieved November, From the east, had us'd for rheumatics ill, Was too much indeed. It is not new, my lord, that I do complain Of thy town or of thy palace there, Wheneuer I think that I perceive thee, Whose good fortune lieth more with the north Than with the west. Why is the park too filthy for thee to tread Where Flora would have set a throne, That is a prettily spread compensation For what is there far less of a stink, For so thy looks and thy gay girlish face Smile on the burning and the fierce incense, Instead of suppling, stink it there. The thirsty, furious love of thine, that invades What is fair and may not be destroyed, Of what avail the gates, what nor remove Can make thee truly free And like a free familiar be? They too securely stopple; thou makest free What slaves that soonest and most would break the tie. But if thou hast still a home where griefs sleep Of sweet melancholy in thy breast, Where the lowly origin of thee Are bless'd by the high constancy Of an honourable spirit, yet may'st There meet these helpess things with greater ease, That always haply there shall cheer thee, Lest being well, I wonder, turn thee wild. All now is ended, at thy call it must end: My froward fancy, thy proud fancy, which Had needed no other theme than ======================================== SAMPLE 902 ======================================== His glasses cracked, when darkness shadows the happy eyes, And with the man who sings and tells and never deliberately sings What flies here is a metal Little better than leaves. I touch the bells. It is a sin Not to wait for a stupid man Who wishes to be a poet. The man who came last night was a nightingale in disguise. As heretofore, his melody Was received, and after hearing How we heard, we missed our fleshed Heart of the nightingale. The green dog and the green dog, and now even the line For its own white man. Can it be that there, The sun as now, a curtain Of shade, where sound is waiting To enter again and divide The fingers of the mutes Of taste and smell and touch? <|endoftext|> "Estevão", by Billy Collins [Living, Death, Disappointment & Failure, Time & Brevity, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Reading & Books] from the Here is some poetry Sung in the vernacular of this place. Not when he died, Florida Mike, Pony Flock, local petite. Overspread in glory, like divine, Ditto feather, the webbed footwork. Seem more than one time the very butter Pressed from the Cartagena keep pan. Not only philologists musing how to spell, Like every morning in King's Times; Needs an emulsifier, like Delft, The dance steps in the kitchen porch; In his black truck, a Harley-Davidian jet. Overseen lilacs, the dark bag. Longing for light, a moan. A by-neck scarf, worn around the neck, Wicked work gloves, befitting Lilacs, lilies white. Pale women, not young, either, See them sipping from the can Castles built with sand; and from miles away, Of mosquitos. Come again. Taste even with a butterfly. See poetry landing like butterfly. It shall remain as it is; Not in a bottle, a phrase. <|endoftext|> "A Pastoral", by Billy Collins [Activities, Eating & Drinking, Religion, God & the Divine, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Race & Ethnicity, War & Conflict, Father's Day] Bread in a stone quarry Easter. The Texas Hill Country For my father, my mother, my sister Perhaps our blood so low That they might not live Longer than the first Lamp dying You come into the yard You sit on a stone You say a greeting You are forgotten But not forgotten There is a home in my past I sit and think of it I sit there now You are eating your supper You are quick to the spoon You say The other one’s dead, You say I knew him I should have stayed with him The woman came to me I am not surprised The sun took the cream-pearls from the platter The milky way It rises A pot of bones In a place of bones And calls me To come in the morning For I have forgotten how We went, as one who has no gate What welcome shall I find Between my bones You come with wine And you tell me a story, In my bones you drink it up You say I did not know You and I are together, What was this I asked of myself I have fattened on grass The first person Is one who leaves Or is too late You say to yourself This I knew you Who has died also The dry bed grass & the wind My turn to say what He said to me The first break was made for me You say that, too The first break was also It is your story Do not tell me again You tell me the story as it is Though I am in one place And you are in another Though the facts are not always The same in both Do you think of me as I am The sun held still by the plow Who by the tree can’t bear to be, A middle In a might vs. Being Who remains, or should have remained, A memory Bread in a stone quarry The biggest wheels Of death In the sky Doing bad, by accident, And a fist Be ======================================== SAMPLE 903 ======================================== ake, Answer that question, last, on the crosse. Answer that question, last, on the crosse, And be you sure that the same shalle be done To me, if I be your fayre, Fayre and trusty that will never knaw Aught for to perswade, All your fayrest of every grace and forme That ever man may see in this world, Will neuer change, or alter a thing Among these daynes, But what ever is or shal the can, This is the story and the warrant, That when I shal be gotten In time to go I shall have that which you design Bequeathement of my homage. Shall I whilom, or shal I for all My wit, or shal I never The charm of boyomen Here cause that I write, For one that hath in his fall All skill of him that doth allegie For to amende From lust of amorous desire The plaints of Cupide? Take but the best part in both twere With him that hasteth to amende The vice of yowes to fette. And hither shalt thou have if thou wilt The woman that is moste wylde and wise, That is moste worth, moste cunning and great, That kyon of the worldes praise, With praise and high fame herbe thy name yet Fain is it to increeve, so loud the sheld word. And if it be that thou shalt write This canty sayinge so plenteously, That knowest the worlde and that field, When men do sleepe for their sins In holinesse and in lament, I wyll hym holie to seyne. It was no feare of sen't that she T'are astray, for none approchyd best; Whilom could she well therfore Say what sche qualityz of wisedome And what she wolde of fame, So wel her worde she has at ende That shee knew hir selfe forlde And syh the wite of her nat mede. Therfore, I thoffe thee, thonk harte agowe To all that wolde her name adore, For upon the ground thy name maye Before the ramnes full of basas Hise wordes well as the style Which is full moche whilest thou In honge flor, I schal the vyle For to helpe to myn oghne loke And mochel wo and mochel pride Pryse and turn the wordes otherwhere. God made the true-born fayre, and so The wede shall the trauer befalle Of poetke, which be nat by′s owne leme, The Sonne, and eke of the Sonnes made; And for that reason shall this fayre To them which know the cruellnesse Begonne wordes be so jocherous, Which stonden upon the name of slacke, To grynde manenes that have hele To tellen t'he langage of Cristes feite Upon the mouthe of an Alete word. And in this valey the wordes harden, Til many voyces agolde on youngnesse; The sone to his Muse hath in his yonge mayne The vylomancer, that spryngeth in the toun, And seith, as thou schalt here see, At Eryeste, which in this wyse Is abbyduld wordes for a thynge; And as the wyse commeth in the wek, Ther be wordes all misdelable; Bot thar wordes of a Nouement The tendernesse of Auters feite And sein, of his cristel myght him breke, To speke ayein hire name the more. Som, what is to the trowthe for legacy, Ther be so manye, of whiche non there be Which wordes maken of the word noble To se be wroken, or avideof to dye. I not me betre the firste wordes are; For thei all be thalte fordo. I wyl eschuie, bot if thou wolt knowe, In every word ek the grave hier from: The same word the lordes ======================================== SAMPLE 904 ======================================== It is an honour to have borne the burden of war One suffers with the least and with the most, And in the great army their loss to feel, Whilst the mass sink with the few that fight. The vilest and the best Of men, we take a part with our own, We are men warring on men And we take them by the best and the worst. We think it wrong and we fight for the truth As the spadeour fights for the vegetable kingdom, For the moon and the stars, and the shadows, and all that Looks dim and sweet from out the looming walls of The haunted houses of the villages. We put our trust in God and the bullet That clods up the shovelled trench and the wood Where the youngster's feeling up to a man With monospecies in English countryside And a scene where the wind does not die But blights the eaves with the splintered bough, Where in rustic confusion huddling The round leaf fancies the brown seed, Where the child whose play is troubled by whist Snaps in the brave flesh with the high word To get a toy that sets the hedgepeppers groaning. The English morning breezes that blew so strong For us at war again are withering And dead things in the crossing may be dying With a thin répercupé of song That the wind of the war does not remember And not with wreaths of daisies and of gorse For the earth to put hand to and to pray For the soul's garment of wonder, that strews The ways and keeps the winds at bay, And not with full moon and brazier's blast And the greatest adornments of day. There are those now alive who enlisted And suffered with us in spite of the war, And none can say that the life's war was fought Except as men fought in their sleep and they bled In the repose of sixteen-day battles And the black anchor of the flags that at dawn From foreign land seaward strained and shook. The spade that I dig at, On my little grave beside Maymayhap be lying, Not in vain turning our fat war; The blood may need; For now on our front come the Germans With their time-expired "duck." From the shades of a winter's night Come the bitter dawns of battle. Down the far rampart of the storm Stand the wolf-howlers, coarse and black, Where the light of the lagging sun Never rises from the wall of the west Hides the doom of the mortal gloom That is English by weight. It may be not, but I think It is to some unremorseful thing That resounds the trumpet tone Of our morning, and the swains have said That good old WACON was the seaman of the north. Ah, farewell to English earth Where the sweet songs are sung, With a singing far away, Far on life's desolate ways. No longer my heart will need To answer to the word or voice Of the song that sings it to me In a ringing far away; Away from the swan-throated sough And the happy cock-song high And the pleasant fluting of the stroke, And all the sweetness of a face Old-fanglell-eased, white and sweet; And a mouth breathe soft and still And a lip soften and store Soft kisses for winter's sake, And the shine of a leg to lie Quaintly away On the noonday's velvety grass And the yellow-footed May And all the forest prating. Where the strange things of the sea and air That do so wondrous things on earth Dip their sharp teeth in blood of men And the sun-stained flood of red foamed blood Into the turgid granaries Where we know, deep-mounded, satyrs keep Fled from the shy, northern Forests, where Wild thyme runs in crimson piles Round green, blood-bridged ways and the deep Far, mysterious realms where soft weeping fountains Poured, which the English never knew nor knew Until the heart of a pearl-crowned Queen Made them for slaughter in a steam-washed hall, Where the minstrels whirled, while the realms did forge All that is make and more of these which change. And the Fleet went sailing to the East To bring the fiery horde back again To the thick, black gates of Constantinople, And burned, consumed, by ======================================== SAMPLE 905 ======================================== A flow'r of gold that blaz'd upon his body's feet. Alas! behold! from his distaff's phial ooz'd The white foam of a long remorseful tear; And the wounds with which he filled himself with flame; The silence in the darkness, and the groans Of the dark shadows in the stillness. And yet I am a goddess, Goddess! And you have kindled the fire in him Who on my bosom sleepeth, my love. And now the voice of cheer to beereth Shakes the light of the high stars so light. And Beauty! Beauty! is it not thou, The God's epitome? or dost thou come Incredulous, and call'st it not divine? Thy eyes will not see the dewy clouds That sway the mind to knowledge, and sustain Man's slumbering thoughts, and hues as he flows With the pure creation, let them pour Where only love is shed, or, as you command, Be sow'd in grief or heav'n with art,-- The better part with grief reconciled. For by this grief thou art my god, and I Thy god, and fair, and this both praised. O beauteous flower of the juniper tree, The iceman's bow, the braid that never ends! That oft, with perfumes that spread full high, My tarrying branches forbids! That, passing my commandment on the seat, Banks the round of nature from thy face; Beauteous flower! for whom, alas! thy name And state shall be in love's chronicle. First in the grove where olive groves are lone, Where nought but the nightingale and night Ample do join the world in song; And in the ploughlands soft and green, Where nought but the dotings sweet Of bees keep o'er the grass; Then in the parch'd fields, where crops are gathered, 'Tween morning and even, The day-watchers hark the violets That whisper through the vernal air, With the sole horn sheolf nigh; Where greenest grass the early glade Is, on autumn's vernal day, Cotil in the orchard green. Too long, too long have we suspended prayer For violets in their silent house; The prayer that ploughs the winter's drifts Upon the silent wind; That prayer that, gathered with the rest, The brooks still tend; In that bleak air Where stars and chains accumulate, Languished impalpably; Where the goose steps but to forget The manifold bond, That holds us prisoner; A warbler begs from year to year, That grudges all, except gold; A wren the forest birds throughout Doth revere, and vainly so; And every broken roof resounds In pious war with grief for peace. On such a day, As calls from Fate itself to flee Into the silent air, The hymns do sing that had a soul In oldtime from lips that spake; The hymns we raise that something yet May live beyond the lips: The soul that though they mostly break, Their poetry sometimes still doth live. <|endoftext|> "The Road of Theophrastus", by John Bunyan [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Trees & Flowers, Religion, Faith & Doubt] High on the hill the black swan sat; And in the water fjords that were green Did bend themselves, like wreaths of ashes; A hundred fagots burned on the hearth To light the celebration; and the grindstone Whose sighs did raise the soul to speed Against its destiny, and thereby The whole process of man's being swift, And nature's subjugation, starkly shone. Like a loose auguis they twitched the grew, The grey swans' winter sleep, the repose Of the insensate fish, the eagle's nest, The turret of the moonlit top of the sky, With all the courser's hooves and the carven frame, The sun's and moon's affrighted mouth, and o'er them Shone like an obscure and fiery sign. The road of Theophrastus! all the way The gods went in slow procession; And all that dry grass, and all that dust, The bones of beasts, and fish, and fire, and men ======================================== SAMPLE 906 ======================================== Buy name and dignity cheap, And hope, when things thicken up, To be heard anywhere. We cannot make old love come back When the Friend we trusted Dies far away. Yet old flames must not be muted, But keep the fire going still. Our fool friends, who all seemlin' chicken, They saunter 'round the hens And don't give any layin' down. But true love's bed is the ground, Where no fork (or mark) can find it; And only dragon-flies Find it, as they may see. While we are settled as we are, Our flocks feeding at the fold, Whatever day or night May chance to hurt or to heal Believe that Spring is queen of all. Not only was she the child Of God and Psyche fair, Who with the blessin' night-eyes Lay Gloster-lightnin' on the road. There was some say that Psyche's love Was laid up in the yellow sky, And that the Lord ere long would remember For good and all that she had done. I'll be to! I'll be to! And be as thou livest still, And thine ears be ass to hear And thine eyes be moon to see The things I'll do, and the ways I'll do them for thine eyes to see! And thou mayest take thy share Of what this maid hath told; A raven on a bough, A blackbird in a bush, And flirty mice in a van Were sport for my boughs; At home I keep them all, At campus I some Keep for thee. There came a guest to my stead, A man's body grey and soft With a loose coat of red. A flower dropped on his head Like snow in winter is, I smile to think of it To hear him askin' say The house is small and cold. The low and high said the same, The one sad said the same, It was a long while ago That the man died. I remember his look, His eyes and his face, At first you made me wait, My God, you made me wait To give the man what he had He had some queer ideas, And he was one to buy, For he kept some queer secrets From which he had to keep To give to me, and them, For I was the price he said. I didn't understand his showing Of me, a farthing ante. At first, it was a new and wild voyage, And I had been many places, But I'm back, it seems to me, Where I used to be so before, He is no longer there But he will be soon enough. You may blame me, but I tell you I never knew as a boy, That green is just as grey as me When it rains, though I've seen A carfull all the week Of green and of grey. Before I left home, a mountain, It had a name, it is there, Now another lot, or so, And I have seen the sea With one spire in the centre Green and of grey. The man was never seen again, His name on his face I don't know, He was a man from another time, I don't know where he came from. And, oh, I am waiting still For some far-off hill with a blue spire The rain will do that! I heard last night from a road off That ever track, but I might know As well as a book or two That he ran and that he died. I heard him at the head of the chat Said "Nee. Is. Mat," and "I do say," And "Would that you was wise," and "I was sick." And "Do. Come," and "Good-bye," and "Your move." If you see, ask "Do you think?" Ask where, and of whom, he's heard. Never him I've missed as cool And steady as of late. "You the smart bit, E.," says he, "You and me both," says he, "For fifty grand down-cheap." I am mother to a man; And she's natal still But 'till this moment We were and she she's Happy for children, which Wee't to suppose'st are. No, I should own, I like the gentleman, As we all do say ======================================== SAMPLE 907 ======================================== And let my groans reach Heaven's ear As does the lightning with its flash. Nor speak I so, but with the sound Of music's nobler notes on the wing, And every note triumphant bearing To where the immortal and the dead Stand trembling 'twixt the viol and the brass. Such grief for me thy fellow-minister Brings, when our two wills meet, both yielding and sinful! To-morrow--Pasiphaeuses I shall do the same? Keep the barbarous change?--I curse it, let it be! Nay, for, as thou sayest, the stronger grows the weaker. No matter--looks imploring, saucy, blush-named Pasiphaeuses!--I will not blame thee the less. My looks shall but tougheth for the kiss. Blush, blush, fair man, as though a kiss Thou hadst catch of manhood's tongue of pride, And with his twining arms kiss even Thyself, fair blush! We kissed, and you Spat upon the face of Earth. Blush--a thumb--as on a white-haired old Man the jar of world-wasting grief Through the haunted darkness of his head. The mute eye said, "From this fate couldst thou now Pour your love as dew-mist blown, And sigh from heaven's whirling void of breath Fresh airs and melancholy deadly glad That move the Queen and could not be the same?" But sweet (for so the mute eyes it was) The mere look, 'twixt the lips wherewith we spoke, Made me as he whom these lips now meet, Stab his old sorrow sore with chaste desire, In that same fate-fed heart of his. Yes, I shall tread a middle space Between Earth and Heaven--between sin And shame, with some deep thoughts and grave That pass as through a breathing deep In some dim realm a-glow With her bright hand at Heaven's North Pole Where she waits for the golden sun. For even as my flying soul Already there Upon her flight far above the earth Has maimed on earth; Has sinned and her tears Flow up and passed away-- So now will I at least Sweep through the windy moons Of boundless noon With the grief of a soul weary torn To the proud Mount of Hope To meet, and in all constancy Lament--counsel and prayer--and yet feel Nay, but for the never-dying soul In love with a dark sky bright She will wander till the night grows drear Till the self-same star And love's dim light Have touched some soul more true and deeper grown; And these the souls in love with the old Earth, Awful to be beholden! O earth, oh Moon! Go, as I bid thee, In these tears and wrathful griefs Come thou to me, that my heart's soul Once more may feel alive; As from white night's cold River of cold old age Whole seasons flow, Nor in the deep peace of our two souls Ever shall the edge of love's renewal Forget its ancient beat! The moon's white chariot, with its sickly light, If I could fail, Fray me yet more would that hour should be. And thou, for thy lips more fair than wine Should steal to him from me, Sweet Argonaut, lo, In yon broad glittering line The people, by the pavane set, And little Pax alit, In 'tween pole, See it go, While o'er their wondering eyes A veil of cloud of golden sheen Filled half with sudden golden fire Appear the equipments of their altars: By a line of bending steps awa They go, each as deft as ever Before but stranger witted--bright As that sky of the mountaineer: Tiberias, I say, and nigh the Ister, Not distant fields the Cremona shades, That see in one gaze through vapours see again. O'er thirty years ago, This sentence now to the night Was lying on his ear When on the list, 'William Poole' should have been. 'To the mountains' he should have bid them 'And what to them may men, by power of song, Whence is her fair red dress'; And he should have held, 'They are hills and ranges, The highland moor; they are a mountainous country When ======================================== SAMPLE 908 ======================================== And now an hour of thought, though very short, Had to my present state of soul upcast All I had well to bear. So to a little broth I brac'd some biscuits. And she did laugh, I'm sure she did, At hearing me brag so. I had bought some cakes Of bad and sour, I'm sure, But I hadn't a-tasted 'em yet, And didn't till just now. She couldn't endure The thought I was saucy again, And a crumb of cake, though just picked, She thought was tasteful to hold; So in a huff, and rubbing my cheeks, She set me down by the rail; And knowing that if she did not come down She could not be mistaken, She truc'd herself to be most amusing. She took the cake she had picked, And now that I was there And she was there, she took it and put it in And did from the cake steal one, then another; And, as she took her pleasure in picking, She looked as though she picked without breath A dozen, and then another, and a third, Till 'twas found I wanted quite enough for supper. And now she was at the cake, like anything; And then she see'd that the rail was about Her head, so set she wasn't how smart. She try'd to be clever for making fun Of me--for that was she and not we-- And then she hiccup'd, and she lay With her forehead on her hands in dread That I should be quite the laughing-stock For the Gal in gray that sit all day At feasts where people eat and talk, And was the butt of the mocking Hudibras. Not that she was stiff or anything, But such a tragic, quaint, old thing; The common bard, nothing more, So they say, than a spelling-bee. No matter how it is, 'tis so She was all one letter, all one sound All of a language nobody understands; And, you know, I'm not a-grounding this. But tell you a story:-- I like to say what is more; About this time an ulcerous object Had come from out below, And his insides had been pecked away; The doctors had laughed, the gentleman said, The rest of nothing would they know. At which my epical skimmed. No matter what you call yourself, At least one humbuggin town. Some have a pin in their noses, and some Have fingers in their ears, and others Have cat's-paws, or feet and toes: I've seen a man himself off his horse. And, though you believe in the mallow And most people do, I really have not found it yet; But still,--moi, pour to the lip! It happens that one day, with the nought Of a thought between the tens and twenties, And just to put something right, We employed a little spell On a good old friend of my fore-knell, Our noblest invention, a pickle. Our less noble spell, you know it, Last year and a half before that, When one was young, and one was white; And now our secret we had to guard Like a great man. He said, "I'll have none, but a spell, And this is my niffelheim sight, I'm a live nut who can't dry powder, I'm like to turn in the sand; I'm tired, God bless me, I'm boiling, My geese will come to land,-- What shall I say?" We listened, then. We thanked him, And wished him well;-- That is, we looked. He said, "If we took a pair, We might make of it a draw, I pray you must try it." "Yes," said a dame that should know. "It is good for a child," Says a father, "for it's good for us." I'll tell you a bit, dear mother, What we came up with, nay, could tell; In all the world, you'll find Not one half so good as we. There was a bit of a thing, Too, I should say, a very bit, Nay, you'll laugh, I have heard, To make it perfection; And then this thing grew on a limb, As you saw, dear ======================================== SAMPLE 909 ======================================== did we see such massacre in the morning, three hundred dead and falling. next to me is blood: magnolia, caladium. <|endoftext|> "Mrs. C. A. Stewart", by Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman [Living, Death, Marriage & Companionship, Relationships, Men & Women, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, History & Politics] My head was so full of Gill-gatherers I saw But the rabbits that under-ground Were gentle as my letter-sorters; You Could not beat them at their dens; For every feller did and had Some sweet inside that he never wrote; But then, dear Martinsville, why, they Had not one rich beet, nor one rich peart. The islanders, they say they'll build a Lodge, But tell me, what will they do When all their Potters be undone? All their Craftsdoughs so far there are; But my God, they'll not find a Supporter Till they begin to shun the Emblazoning Post: They'll put no end to Richardson then: Why do they rave so? They build to be Chartres-shorn: Perhaps they'll take the Preaching up dear, Because it's erect, an' at the Tab, St. Peter's Church, when he comes to Blood, and it's suitable! I know, I know, Our real Appetit will strike On Time's dull Analyze, Which has such Laurel for private tastes— But some day our Sabbath-failings will befriend The Land's Contemplations—and all's well; If we be damn'd for our miseries, It is proper we should fail In the maxim Which is our destiny: like philosopher, Trunk, and grandly distinguished Spine, Yet, as many men a Hamlet, to your Pear-bright prime: And if you bear it up to Court, I know a state Select bunch For government. Here Fortune makes her own Fortune, In a plain class-less gift, Eternally renewable; You'll write but you can't teach, so don't fret, You're an unexperienced Shakespeare, But am at your best when you write, And men believe in their hearts are clear. <|endoftext|> "From a Painting by La Rochefoucauld", by Charles Sumner [Relationships, Men & Women, Arts & Sciences, Painting & Sculpture] What is beauty? A stab in the heart, to turn the head. What is love? A cold in the head, a wound in the heart. I knew a painter, painter, artist— Perfectly reasonably he said— Who once had been so perfect, Just as the glass is looking on the wall, So the friend in the distance may see his head. I knew another, once a painter, As far as I know, a gentleman, And I'm sure he was very nice; He put his lips upon the drivelear delmanchant, As if a kiss were a loss for the whole of his treasure. A human face was instantly turned upon my face, As if I'd asked a question of a broken Chimeral, And said: "Painted man"—and that face gave in and tongue As sharp as a two-handed razor. And so they both stood, and grew furious, And drew at each other's elbows; As if a coffin were about to fall, And so they made a long pain of all that Meant something—some one said "Art"—what had they said, what essence? But there is no love, that ever grew any weaker, 'Twixt eye and eye, and it laid the point of its spine Any whiplice on its root, and, suddenly, Before my very melanus I saw that I Had waxed higher and higher to its fringe About to faint—was fain to say, In its waxed plumes, the might of its daughter vines, Or stay in its own shape, as the shrub; Had I gone into the woods, As I knew the cool edge of the wood; Or round the back-ground, as I knew The lazy circles of the meadow; Or confessedly to my love, As I'd done to a neighbour's daughter, When a child of her was not a child of mine— Yes, there had been a fine measure of me, Was ample left to my side, a chance, a thrust; And then it seemed so That from me there should rise a verse or two, A psalm, a song; and it was so That I found in my inward soul In ======================================== SAMPLE 910 ======================================== While sighs with this sigh brought home his maiden from home. Then witless, still, Ran to hide the dead, Witless and deaf To shun the free, free wind: These dazed with amorous kisses Stirred so, Bewildered, stayed and struggled long, All silent tears Only wet. Then cheek kisses Of gay amorous ease, Flowers and white skin played. Then their heart's blood: Sweet love's tears. Then an idle fly, A still, little child Played with a poor, little lizard's eyes. Then some poor victim Of jaunty hops, Came, by some lucky lamp And timid flits, At encounters of air, To meet and scatter from her chattering lips (Piercing her feeble flight), Her insipid gasps; Trembling, frightened, Scarce less a fly Than furious with all tongues And terrified cries. Then, hand in hand, Both spake each at last: “Ah, ho! Ah, ho! Ah, he, that kills us all! Eyes droop and hearts The light of gladness. Now, ere a month has sped, Poor maid! to fain Drive thee where he will’t; Swift or sharp, a deed to thee Will speak its purpose clear, And more revealed Than might be told For a whole life, or a whole lifetime.” “Ah, thanks, my love! I yield; Rightly thou hast set me free. My fate is fate’s decree; To keep, is wisdom. How wisely I might hinder thee, At my young and expense! Where vain to-day My glad excuse, A judge might close the wrong: The world may frown, So thou canst pardon her! For thou wilt take Not only her, But mine own good name For which ye came! Ah, would that I, at last, Like minded were as well As I now am minded her! But nought can I do, While that part I play with thee, ha! To every ill, no sigh I yield; I keep my heart from breaking; My love is but an added sin In my regard, And I have sinned at heart! Why should I to the world complain? The crime is compounded, If all is true Which you impute to me; And I could, with joy, Turn every wrong And wound I bore upon my heart Into a fresh wound of love!” “O love, O only, I pray, None other name than thine (Though I am slow to let it die) Restore me when thou ceasest to be Old; then thou mayest vex Time, when he shutteth up this street, And chase him from his hid entrance, And turn him loose, In the secret pathless place. And in thy triumph dance around With happy arm and hopeful foot.” “I have no longer tale to tell Than full as I might when I'm fast in thee Like fire, now four-and-twenty.” “Ah, my heart it is full. I have All patience for the cost and care You have been furlished to bear. My jest is worse than fain; That but delays which will come last; And yet that time must come, I pity my poor craft. Can patience be thus stifled And not complain? And can I wait for that? Ah, well! every day I'll wake And find you shattered and gone; And if it weren't for patience, I should wish the best, I know, and tell you it's true, It's no one's fault but mine: I must not shame to use my own; I'll say I liked it best and worst. The youngest day I got you and got To come again the next. It was a month before last winter ended, When I went a-wandrying about the hills, And I couldn't help but think of them who would Eliminate Our autumn: A vision quite as vivid as a vision can be And my strength that withering caused in me waxed; And no one told me of the glories of the years When the light came but in shades; For suddenly the air I breathed Lit by the way, The valley full of shades, And from the woods gave scent of something ======================================== SAMPLE 911 ======================================== ie; They live all undefiled, and to God's creatures give naught but prayer, and in the root, I do not say death, but sowing and reaping Naught, but all things, and the seed. The herb, the press, The rod, the plough, the soil, the reaper, are the ministers to their end. And when the worm hath eaten, The sap its sweet life hath fled, The flower hath faded; And moist the carpet lies, Where man when free Doth sleep, not slumber sits, I leave. All this and more, while with a steady breath they fill him, or he bereft of ease, She fasts to weep: While one, whom less than woman she seem'd, with a sigh talks and grieves; With what she grieves; for such is fit, The match so pressing, To make two hearts whose union is more than man is man. This seems the reason why my breath was hoarse when I began. What means, madam, this scourge, this bound, this lag in your old, good master's throat? In our ears, in his, and in his, in our eyes, in this heart of ours, I only take notice of things, that are done, or written, In tongues of men, or stored up in brains of scrolls. In his mouth are powders fit to perfume his books; He scarce breathes with it any. What shoe-strings, what silk, what embroidery do we see? It is, I know, To please a lady, like to those dear things that go On the heel, and on the knee. But with the wounds, and with the stripes, and with all stripes, No wonder that he hath things unwritten. Then too, when my throat will not relent, and when you would stop that motion, When your rich sweat will not drip from off your feet in amount That may serve His temper and skill, Be you not unkind, be you not cold, With the twinkling of an eye To stop his ears, and lock his eyes. Then too, when I have drunk like a drunkard in love, The old coarse wear, the old coarse wear, and love, I pray from the devil to the head, For my star is dark, my wine is dull, The green has lost its sheen; Yet with a lucky bounce I see I glimpse once more, in a friendly glass, That I be drunk, and drunkard, drunkard, Yet drunkard still with you. <|endoftext|> Once more in my lonely chamber, to my lowest round, At the slow fire, all motionless, I cry, the winter through again! The ice on the window-pane, The welling snow on the low flat floor, The silence and coolness again, In spite of my moaning, fall deafeningly on deafening ears, When I cry to those who sit by, Now to the wind the puffing bill Shakes blackly his hollowed hand, And I thank the Blue Heavens above That I am left alone. The painted turnpikes by the gate I left a year ago, The murmuring plantation-houses by, The yews that beat their visible way, The birchs in leaf, the sumpters by? They all have shut their echoing mouths, And have gone to sleep within the Master's shade; Yet from the open Stair all sounds are ringing thin, And starkly and fulll aggressively white His solemn mantelpiece stirs and roars, While I am left in the quiet land of my heart. Hail! Blessed One! Lo! once more I stand On my grandfather's mould-made high law shelf! For I have turned to Nature's self The sunshine and the dream. Some scay, or rhyming seat, All thistle-riders rejoice; While deep within, Touta hum... And far away, The word comes laughter-ringing, What heart-happy end, what heart-cheering morn, To-day to-night, when nerves of State, teem with almost child's play, And out I roll with matchless heart to drink of Freedom's teeming springs? Morn of tears or evening of nuts, When kings are twinkling on the move And like to go to ruin or to end... Take water! So let ======================================== SAMPLE 912 ======================================== How fast the wanderer, who slips from rock to rock! And homeward, his friends, no more from hope have heard. He who too heavily has paid his debt Has pay'd in most an Angel, a Fiend too deep! Nay, though we two alone shall bear the weight Of his entire punishment, Carry his cross from across the sea to east, Up to the sublime verge of heaven, How lighter will he feel on every soil, Who now so sore ishe the adventurer, Who, year by year, across the ocean cracks, Seeking to learn his other life from earth. --To which I answer, Faithful, No! That is all Satan doth disguise, All is, is fear. To you, O Mistress, love Is certain; to your servant Death In certain; though what you call your joy Is grave, more grave is Death. Not seeing Heaven That one's past life is past! Why pretend I should ascend Where neither is, nor yet is near? Why mock me with a bent back- When thrust against with distance I Am out, and mock'd already? But unto you, who too shall be My foes, your faith and trust I lay, Which I hope you'll not question; Blent to your words in faith I say That nothing can our nuptial state Conceal, or remove; Love, like a Hebe whom the court Will crown with elaborate wreath, If some good star-waving fortune Shines on that chamber. So Death presumes, and all, by so much Most fair his aspect and his breast. If you then, O I this day, No homely bug-out I need seek, Nor flee from out the world of men, I ask no other end of life Than to be near, and live, and breathe, Till the cold bellows of my eyes Frequent an unriddling eulogy Through every allotted length of days, Until my roving soul shall warp Into a homelier chamber Beyond the stars, and there be wedded To Fellowless, but to none; Who can beneath none better law Than death, than him alone Who blames me though I cry "brah!", And spreads his malice ill. I'll rise And lift This moped obsequious plight, And show him whose oars he needs To row; When I too am in my place Respecting your right,-- O thou first-born Justice! Upon your hands I'll lay this night, And do pray, The whole of Europe's justice, By you, who show I need not pray, Which I every day Confirm. See, I said, put aside all evil words! And scorn their stinking, gnawing beetles! And say and do it too. Well--but do what can I do more? Your will, O love, not mine! My fate my will I'll obey; If the same thro' all my days, It's equally your will! So when my life's days are done, I'll fancy those that led The fight. Oho! And they'll say, "If there's no mistake For that deacon's axe, The war was won by Love." And you shall look, and say, How cheerily, And with a smile, And they'll say, "Aye, we find That Heaven's Lord is Love." The ruby sparkle on the gusty pool Now sinks, now raises its silver head, And now on ruddy stars is seen, And now sinks once more; The sparkle's disappearing spangle is shed, And now the stars go out, In space, one sparkling wreath among the rest, Forgot is all the cheering. But now a spirit, O'er water running in a sweet and stirring strain, As the low rev'rence of the bull O'er the rapid iron whets and cheers The boy who leaps, and laughs, and screams, And cries, "She was my love; For canker there's the soul!" And long she is forgetting, Now we're kissing she's forgot the world's vexation, And all her arts. A butterfly leans, and lets the July sun, And now she rests, and then a spark or two she sees, And when she draws a brow, To see the bug's face in the moving flash of light. What speaks she of her lover's case, When she her eyes could ======================================== SAMPLE 913 ======================================== Gone for a moment in a rushing river-swan’s journeying currents, Joy ran swift over me like the spring tide. Oh river, run softly and run wild with beauty— Joy will chase away the cold thoughts of regret. Here is the red cliff and here the redhill, But the blue slope is what I love the most. A little pike, just three yards under the water: He is just an aster flower, undotted of stars. A little violet, held in the cool-drifted Air: The descending glory of an unopened Can for all men and all times so excellent. So much has been said, that we need say no more: The redhill and the redcliff are no longer Hidden from sight in the red cliff. That which the left-hander cannot make Must be the purpose of the right: The portents agree, that all was built For the pious use of river-men. My Bible is my only manuscript, Written while sleeping: With sleep in the outer verifications, In the inner they are ten times as long. Here I have whispered prayers, and stript to mud, Making it clear that this is my submission, A bridge of faintest aspirations. <|endoftext|> "From a true love’s writing", by Joan of Arc [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Love, Romantic Love, Relationships, Mythology & Folklore, Heroes & Patriotism] Then she began to say:— “My heart lies hid like a red fruit Beneath the west’s blue. “If, where nature pursues The blithest clime, I yet were seen, Here would be sweet but ill, A sight too sweet for freedom.” Next, she muttered: “I weave With sighs the o’er-wrought field, To dress the sweet rice.”— And said: “O at what high-bred length, Wrought by no measure, unfolded By no passion ancient! If, weary with the sight, Man, last of earthly things, should bend his eyes, And his gray strength of the old days Should see it half-faded away!” This she flung her words away, and then Discarded every self-gazer’s boast: “I claim an art in ruffsling dress And howling o’er the scattered ruin.” All found her so, for glaring love: The Lord was with her, and so did Care, And all the flatterers of town and state. So down she murmured to the ground: “The world shall join me at a wedding feast.” “Here,” she said, “can I and there Both with and without you go: My nose within your mouth lies bare, And my cheek is on your bosom’s soft turf. Not that I count this low: For I have nothing to give you, save this. And this, the poor man’s right To his last dust, and his last fame.” She lifted her eyes, and said: “Man, whate'er his bliss, Whatever wrong he has, or whatever woe He bears, may I not liken it, nor you: The love that strikes this sorest is a lie. If shame to this, if false and painted be The sweetest kiss that heaven could give, Whate’er my name be, let me go hence, Nor care in Christ’s as I care for yours.” <|endoftext|> "Battle", by Don Welch [Living, Coming of Age, Life Choices, Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] It was an important summer day in 1940 when I and thousands of my comrades went out to get juice for the war A lot of us came back skinned, but we all looked big in our uniforms I was the bump of the gang we all thought this was going to be a big summer we were all expecting a big get-together night on the top of the cruise ship, you know, the wedding cake where we would all flash our German uniform of convenience We had been told that the wedding cake was used to fry the Band Played the Band we had been told we were going to be fed pecker- ======================================== SAMPLE 914 ======================================== When Caesar's trump (to wait the coming of the Days) Rolled the earth to your feet, and seemed to say, Doubtless ofttimes the world is out of its balance: In this regent presidency, Whose egoism the Hittitian factions to stagger, Who akbar for their kindred to the sun, (When stars were again as they had been Ere drifted to this little clime) And tyrants grow faint as clods deflower And Giants grow cold as younger set. And all this brazen realm was but a heap of rubble; And all this mighty host was but a jumble; And now there fell from such a pile of wreck One little piece, such as might serve To tell the doctor how the devil made him. You ask me why, Perchance, this curious wreck is here Dangled here between the walls of the moon, Here crouching here, where across a chink Light bathes a tangle of white lights, Here, like a cricket resting in a shutter, Lest its sad bones by a window be shown, Here in a desolate corner of an upper hall Like some low thing, with hoarded scut of its work Haunched in its face, All recall a wasted-looking thing, Thus acting like a child of the tomb. Those wearers of these iron lungs, Whose idle hearts and souls set for a goal, Whose lips, whose words are command And little else save precept or aim, With intent to live and let live, With nothing much to hope for or to seek, This low-hearted, dead-looking task-mist, This hapless sentinel and photograph, Here kept watch o'er this duel and failed One hundred years at least. Forty years came and went, Then came the great sea-fight, The shadows that danced the night On the salt spray up and down the coast And the silent ambush deep Ploughed by the falling in the falling out. Over it I strained my eyes, I know not what curious sight There rose on me the first night When all that I remembered Was how that my friend said, "It's high time we started on our march," And nodded assent As we walked from the camp to the school, I, a tiny by-road between, I remembering his long face, And rushed-like-wild goose-blinks, and his thick mouth Closing and opening at the thoughts he uttered, His wind that hurt my throat and left me cold, I holding my breath and still kneeling, And everywhere the echoes kept talking Then the white barracks blew its winds As high as the sky, and the sea's weed, And the great wailing wind-gods' hideous glowers Shrieked praise to the brave host below, And the rooks and the daws Quietly sauntered past, and a deep wind was rustling the rooks, Silent messages between the stars and earth Where the reefs litten and the wild sea broke and reared By day we strove With the foes so furiously, Till all the land was enraged And the sea grew dark with the dead, Till the swarthy pirates' idols shriven And their wine-cups reeked and splashed at their throats, And the living waters dripped from the slashed sky Into the sea, And the bellowing of the pirate-fiends Tortured us for a hundred leagues, Laving and plundering and butchering Thus have I been a dozen times a hundred Of all the land's great valets So spoken to, and thus have I seen The narrow road and the bushwy forest, And voices peeping in the roofs Where black pipistrelles show; So spied upon the roof Those crescent shapes, Long litted eyes of exactly priceless worth As art's poor counterfeit, The priest's axe, and the church, and the throne, and The savage princess with her slaty nose's dog And the she-wolf of the Dipsas. The Eastward wind begins to blow, Though dewy April's in my soul, I think, as life speeds toward its spring It hurries quicker and quicker Till, wind and sea and sky both, It bears me far away. What bright aprons do they wear on head and breast? Here on the sward they hang wide! Where eagles soar, and horses are And the rudder floating still is this, Vague-stray graves! For the ======================================== SAMPLE 915 ======================================== ’Carved Oak Rope-tree;—smooth; ’It is plain to our wonder;— ’Tis carved so smartly too,— ’Tis a coulis of couis for boy, ’Is a mesh-shot nettle-twig Wrapped in a bark robe about him, While he slips through the shade, O; We bear him;—he will not wrinkle, O; While we gall the leaves, O,—and, oh! Pluck him blooming in the dawn o’er head, With his nettle-trail home on the horse, O.” Elder barrel, in the sun, you’re stolid, Black, brown, bony; Wooden heart of oak, Here’s a man with a dull face In the shade of the trees; There’s a frail new wife who won’t know, He hunts the wind’s bones for me; There’s a waterfall comin’ O’er the hill, there’s a tree Lying low—we stay where we are. Says to his wife—“let’s have our do, O; That bird is going to-night.” Says to me—“ah, no you don’t, O! We’ll hide in the broom and the turf; If a fox comes across, we’ll jump, We’ll creep to a bush where the thick brush’s dead; You stay where you are, O, under the big tree; I will go in and out the pasture door, That’s as far from the way as I can be. The bear, with a bad stomacher, comes by Sways and comes to sniff me, Says with a whimper, “God, we’re lost,” The raccoon crouches by the sills, The squirrel looks into a thorn, I sit down by a columbine tree, He rubs his pear on my lap, The coolness of a country girl Is good for a laugh— With country girl giggles the pines. Red cedar rail and white cedar rail Plumb on the night, Red cedar rail and white cedar rail Plumb on the day, Red cedar rail and white cedar rail Plumb on the rest. Pasture broad and level lawn and grass And garden wall, Thick shrubs with big leaves and light foliage, Pine trees with white trees, Ducks and fens and wapins, Weeds and flower beds; And far beyond the fence and the ditch, Row and row of yellow flowers, By the stile and the fence, The broad pasture stretch, The clean, clean grass, This is the way our fathers made it, says my father. And since then, my father says, in every house, By rose and gold we must march along, We must walk through mounds of corn and see The backs of our fathers who fought the good fight, For ours the heritage of millions. <|endoftext|> "The Ass Drivers", by Rev. W.S. Monteilet [Relationships, Friends & Enemies, Pets, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] Running a winning race is all he did. By every I of us, he meant we the chosen ones who have all the luck in the house for a lesson he had taught them about self-control they had practiced. Every I of us by oars they had learned to read it. A public House they kept for this client, refrigerator, too, and little florist, blessing baskets in their kitchen, workshop where the old and sick could go unheltered, their bell ringing. His was always first in the church for to the altar running to get his blessing and remove a curse from a sweet sweet wife. Dolce gratia He worked with horses of the Southern Company on the Dixie Pacific to Chicago, was the last one to go down. They called him the boy who lived here. There was another, Mr. James, whose job was never done, Mr. Whiptemore of Saltair, but never, in all the world, was a man that earned the right to speak who was always the last of all. He ate and drank, the bread and salt, ======================================== SAMPLE 916 ======================================== Google+ Sprits – Hover your mouse over the photos. Search – Type in what you want and select. Spreadsheet – The spreadsheet will open in your browser. Tabbed Table – Use the arrow keys to move around. Talks – Great talks and blog entries, please. Time Tracker – Get the kids into the door. Time to Read – Kids turn around to read the sign. Time to Play – Give them a minute's break. Time to Talk – Time to talk. Time to Play – Time to play. Time to Walk – Time to walk or go. Tiffs – Great cotton candy yellow bottles. Tracks – Amazing tracings of the sky, trees, clouds, water, and rocks. Travels – Great towns or interesting people. Traws – Roads. Talks – Great talks or blogs. Trees – Beautiful, old-fashion trees. Tributes – Tributes to the living. Tribal – Land or clan. Troll Towers – The tallest trees. Toys – Video games, trinkets, or jokes. Tuesdays – Not the same as Wednesdays. Tuesdays – Not the same as Tuesds. Weds – First Wednesdays – Thursday. Weds – Fourth Wednesdays – Wednesday. Welted – Welted or Birthday Worned. Whole – Orphaned. What's in my pocket? – What's in your pocket. Winnipeg, Winnie – a beautiful name. Wins – Gifts won in one week. Winnipeg – A country town in England. Winns – Secretarial staff. Winnskins – A town in Australia. Winter – Frost, snow, rain. Winskins – The Oxford Book of Poems. Wins – Wonder suits. Winsome – Winsome. Wish – A wish to go to a place far away. Wishlists – A list of wishes. Wiz – What I like, what I need. Worried – Skeptical, doubtful. Worried enough – Skeptical, doubtful. Worried sick – Skeptical, doubtful. Worried sick sick me – Pissed, sick-minded. Worried till I puke – Not thinking straight. Worried till I puke – An insult to the British premier. Worried about the back – Discouraged. Worried till I puke – Ups and downs. Worried into puke – Ups and downs. Worried into puke – Tepid. Worried into a rage – Ups and downs. Worried about the back – Discouraged. Worried till I puke – Discouraged. Worried till I puke – Ups and downs. Worried till I puke – Even sick. Worried till I puke – Pissed, sick-minded. Worried till I puke – Burning up. Worried till I puke – A superstitious insult. Worried till I puke – Ups and downs. Worried till I puke – Much wind. Worried until I puke – Ups and downs. Worried till I puke – Discouraged. Worried until I puke – Dissatisfied. Worried till I puke – Going to die. Worried till I puke – One or two weeks. Xanthian dust beneath my feet. Like people, I am taken away Under the weathering of the sky. O do not hurt my tender feet and toes. Go into my filthy robes and close The times when I have clothes upon my back. Young men, wear falchions long and fair Coat flanks and arms to clad you. But I pray you go to soothe my back, And treat me like a girl or woman. But though you do not touch me there I still shall feel you, touch you, groan. To go upon that desert and not eat Filled the great boy and made him cry. The maid leaned over him to kiss his cheek But he covered up his head and said not a word. He wound up his skirt and raised his fist And then she turned away and said not a word. I am lonely when I have a face That tells me I shall not have another. I am lonely in the sick-room after Losing a game or a match. It is like not having the thing that pays the bills, It is like not being appreciated, ======================================== SAMPLE 917 ======================================== Vibrate with silent draught: and though thine eyes Disshine like the sound, it beats on thee: And the same motions in thy countenance The sounds echo. So in silent night The loving eyes are turned to light By the glow of love's unseen star, Whose beams are hueless save in number. Ah love, what boots it now thy train To climb the star of song, and there To live for others' bliss with heed To gild a palace with a tear, And heedless to be blest with song And rapture? Far better far to be Awaktor, from their all-in-all And having all for soul and sense. And this we know not: are we the tears Seeking thy hand to soothe us from our dreams Of the things that are to be, and light Of laughter and of loving while we dream? To have each thought without the other's aid, To have this future, and only this? To gaze and be forget, or cast aside The odors of the eyes of lovers, and redden With kisses of adoration all the folds Of silence and hope, and so be silent yet While thy eternal life brings thee to the ship Of safety, or calls thee to the sun? 'Tis like a vision of thine own ways, And dreams are but as those things that seem When thou lookest through the fires With which a great poet's memory seems To smite ill-shadowed woods with hail, And to make the bitter winds blow Unchewerously from green to gray: So in our glade our souls do seem To be as some wide, clear dream Captivated by the ray That streams into the gazer's sight, When stars make dark the stars of old. Ah Love, 'tis but a show, A brave deception! Can it be That these we loved are all so fair? And are the fond smiles that we smile In a wistful well-enveloped air? We gladden to think we can forget How they fair eyes have lit us dead: We count them for the blowing smoke Which is their park; and how they blew To wind from us that we may be Where thoughts that death is on some part Draw us like the weak winds wind. They gaze and cling; we glisten there In the beaten gold of wooded hills, Our limbs convolved in the foliage sweet Where girds the mysterious Into. And from their soiled channels trickle Feelings lightly, passing bright, To mellow in the wood's blue. How sweet to know we stand alway Sole sovereigns where each reigns! The tamed and bridled Thoughts that pass The brow that asks our love! Unnumbered bards of this enchanted land, Lo! once, many in that land Filled thy grassy way with sweet rich lay And wrecked thine eddies with the foam Of wandering feet they loved among! And all, the Gods' great camp, their tall Snowy tents all stark and crude, Circled this golden sea Where long sweet grass with green sheen Of chid sang jungle greens Blazed in the warm light. And old beloved voices from afar Rang through the air As great gods, they called thee, Love! Their king, in person thou! And through the sky To where, beneath the world, They fell on this enchanted ground. And so with all these under The sun's rest they stand; Or his great name who raised on high The sky and earth and sky! When night with her deep silent blue About them spreads her wings, Once more the world is just To us, and to all. I loathe that word "just," because This world who dubbed and decided In the earlier ages, which show No blood of sin, and Crime, now made dumb, Reminds me of the beast behind The holy name, in whom is met The satyr and his wild accessory, Whose fiery guilt is made as light As the pure stupor of olden days Hanging like a driven cloud, So heavy even as they that slept Who dreamed it might have been heard, ere sleep, From crest to steeple, and thence down to the sea They who would have thought it could have said, But that cloud of common darkness, which is Like a hand less, touching a bare heart, Lies, in the sensible universe, Itself not sound. And all who hear That voice without the least offense, as yet ======================================== SAMPLE 918 ======================================== Would more than once the flocks, By the spark from Minerva's tube, Have stol'n in orchards by the flocks. Tho' birds of shortest wings Still sometimes steer the flocks aloft, That have no share nor sense of flight; With tame examples thus 'tis good, To draw from highest to the lowest. Craw-craws! who ne'er were given to tarry, But will, if once a front pawle, Now with unbroken nose for a climb, And scudding out like blurs to the plain, That can in clumps all smells--but what are smells But hide-bound scents? Might not we then To lift the token up on high? O, if that our Minerval lead, Well might we get from Florence The farthest Middle, one summer, A Vent Gratus. I know a Brochet, That by a rope he has to hang 'tis. Gentleman Cattails live on high, And tread, ere 'tis known, the grass so tall, That when the harebells they in July Stiffen to their highest close--it makes More green the walk, and you to trip. Downy peats the breeze for a gown, Where euery thing can be rough, And in cold weather, I've known Two farms lay out their hay F'r frost, all Frost-white, through a roof Of gleaming burs. And soon, when on the wind it is grown, The Rhine-wind shakes withal the house. Now lightly furls, Now with arched neck he threads The dryer-cloth. Up that high Throngs the power of his pace; And the chamber light behind him Rakes dark-blue, with a breast Black-mooned. There, to become As the great Agathon at his place, Thick all his age with bent Back, that with a bound Journeying o'er his neck from the end Of a good-sized horse. What strains may ride on and were fiend-ruled In one that is spell-bound at speed? The body of a calf, With tumbled legs; 'Twixt which the learn'd rider Fixes his knee; Then spurring from the stirrups, Over-important as the tail, He strains, with certain care, To wind his flowing mane. There are of these in the stem, that Though well-bred, yet from lack of culture To be other than stately-- Who, ere they at mastery fail Of the spirit of sport, From the hide of a rattlesnake, That cunningly affright 'Twixt man and beast, Can raise and exercise the power Of communication, Hath studied every art That this latter life may boast, And as one skill the whole And whence but from the womb of him This art may all have birth, A horse should be the statue. 'Twere never so sure, at his best, That, from forth his count'nance deep, A man's great godhead might be seen In shape and aspect, yet now That he has blessed many a heart With his divine appearance. 'Tis the self-beholding eye That marks his deity, In true and unvarnished form Placed on a horse, yet still the count Is there in it's own diversity Full and entire. He hath from thence in such a beam Throb'n and pixy, his whole sight Uplifted in a sort From his eyes, to view The points of trees, and each a figure For contemplation; As of the sun's full speed He paces along The prairie, ere he be Received into his saddle Wound up in silence close, Till, if once more down he roll, He shall be known, but disguised In some other's form. He hath wherewithal Such power, such so vast a supply Of witness, witness, And such array, that for to follow His evidence, that it brings A witness at our bench, Or his own, as seemeth him best, Bows for his evidence Strong from of old; and by his skill, With effect to keep open court At all times, of eyes to receive Witnesses, that if love, persuasion, May, at least for now, against the wheel, And thence 'tis meet, As set of their own motion ======================================== SAMPLE 919 ======================================== laments be in thy face The abject faces of thy sisters, The still, cool hands which close on thine Dawn alone, still cool and still; I want my face to be called Marie Antoinette, I want my right to be prettily cut with a blue wash, I want a turban, I want a widow's weed. I want to be a cipher, a Kossar, I want to be the Ant of a small company, I want the party to give me some grave And light up, light up, The room where I am; But like a Kossar, I want to travel backward and forward, I want a companion. I want a party in my house Where I am the Dimple-faced Goddess, And bran-young wife to the Landlord, I want to find out what perfume Is made by the lilies and the lotus; And I'll lay it you, what I've yet to find out. I want to be a queen in my house, With an Aumish or a Landlord for a bride; And I've yet to learn the Mother-Story. I want the best present I can To my friend who has been naughty; I'll give him a gift in full view Of his house guests, and they will laugh their ears off. The gift will surprise him, though, And make them as drunk as a rock. It will not be seen In his purse, though, for a whole month, For he will hold it a priceless treasure. Now they are drunk, And they cannot lay on the honey, And the big fish are gone to the filly, And the tame fish is swallowed by the shark. The rhino's own is the most rarely missed, In a long running quiz show, Where he hunts twelve of 'em in the shining zone. There are five at home in this foreign port, Who make a docket each morning, Three in the moonlight, one in the sun, And one that stands ready to the chimes. They play music on the gentle crawl, To their hearts' content, At every chime. In the chestnuts by the wayide stand, A shoreward carouse, And they give their smutty messmates The plain English call. (Ragged straw on a dunghill pad) When they tuck us into bed, The pitch is foul, Though the gulf is calm, And there's comfort in the rook. A pretty row of bloomy stones On the ruins grass, Whose odoriferous powers Have made listeners of those rare listeners, Of you. Here may they find the glimmer of dark skies Whose grateful secrets have not yet revealed To your unsought eye. The good old roofs have not the least fresh air, And their minster-vaults are raked and seared with the levin Of your far settin'. But there is a tree whose boughs frown Against the wind, And there is a crowd to meet each passer by, Who goes, and there is no man born; Who have no live birth and who live none save one, O quick to a maiden's wooing, And lowing a steed's pace Around your crosshatchin'; O gaily gaily if you nag a booty As he gallops by! And stoop at his beck with his tune and your tune, When he drops into the plinth, And you nag and bite like a lamb, Like a lamb in a fauld With a flock o' sheep at e'en To take her by the fleece at a sight, Oh please her with your tune, O let her be mine Her silken hand is the Golden Thread, Of solace and of hope to the wooer. Let her wear your buckles, Your plaid breeches, and your doublets; She has wings of the finest gold To sleep in that she will be mine at a breath. With her blazoned wings of gold And eyes of siller hue, Her slender body with the fine untiered limb. Each part be so proud, and most sore vex With the flea-beads of false siller. The soft cut and round, With the sharp little get-up in the foam, To the thighs, for her fashion, that silly gay Let no man the lily limb confound. Then the clouding breast, From the snow dew, A frowning cloud on the ======================================== SAMPLE 920 ======================================== "And since, she looks on this band, "Her fathers, as old times remind her, "To send a girl like her and grown "To be a mother to so many children, "Like her Lord, since those of noble North "Who ever home beneath the King's Expense "Were had like ripeness giv'n them, and that here "Were walking, may have grace to stoop to the door "Of bliss, as wont in the camp to see "At dawn the sunbeam patter the green roof, "And flock their hides with undulating plume "To turn their thoughts to feed." I lay down in plumes, And spread my wings for sleep and ever woke To ride, as dreams ride, through a dark waste of light Yet soon the canopy was rent And our ships were rent, the glory of the sea Burning with lightning, on that day, to a trent And one dark ship that clove the blue. And here we are Here too, 'tis a little wind that lets us go. Our boundless barque goes yet where the billow goes, Out to the edge of the great unknown, to the gate Of the new world and back, save here our ship moves now Unceasing sail, at rest, as ever, to the port Where we have lodgings. The larboard holds fast Its course, out to the open sea, while two more Pass for the larboard, close to the bow, that moves Into the shadow. Beyond the stern, with song The mizen dwarfs on. The captain turns to his man And stops them both, and turns himself, and bows, As to the one he imitates the other day When he was young and fair. Now ill betides The evening dark, the sun's decline, when the three Dot most the middle of the vessel. Wherefore, It may be, many other fancies must have slumbered Down there, since day was never seen. The Captain lifted up his voice to catch the note Of his mate's music, calling, shrill, shrilly down Into the darkness, while the rest of us stirred: "Play the music. Keep the chime." We sung with heart and voice Together. He must be soloist in his change Of strain; for all night he had been tuning andolysis. "Hark! ho! an enormous sound is rising. "Look where the lighted megathrasse "On the broad road of the sky goes straight. "Let us, my brothers, more boldly play "To the springtime of our song!" Both hands were on the harp at that last appeal; He played as if he could not hear his mate; It shrillted, as he was supported by wings. We joined with one voice our little hallo, And when we came the spring they had departed, We found the great way gone, the crowd of lights What else to call them. Loose locks, heads thrown back To give them maximum laryngeal range. All at their dancing or singing, rising light With great alacrity of vibration, Moving merrily and with passion of pace. Willingly they rise, submit to any rule, A shade of cloud is in their outer part, With every head the shadow joins the play of theirs. What is to be, and what is good. Another note, Ere suns have gained this realm they scarcely know, Moves rhythm and measure here; for each light gives here A joyous animal; stiller than the night, More loving than the stars. Their manhood is the secret which they have Only themselves to guess. Nought hidden there, but in this light they move As he that general and general have created Looked upon the creation of his part, His high-browed Beings made so great in the sight Of gods; or though high-minded, they should shun The pang of being unseen. Whatever is Built on rock, or on sand, the generative force In such a lawless pattern, can never hold; But with convulsive motion of anon- To its own ensnaring continually, It breaks the edifice, and takes the lead From hearts that lift. Here never fell that star, never bruised this brow, That we should feel our life was built on sand, Or build to such a world, and in the show Of hollow edifice to show a heart. <|endoftext|> As lark, and thro' his lightly written ======================================== SAMPLE 921 ======================================== in love: you’d be a siren. even when I’m only my ‘favorite’. I want the trees to sing, sing at our feet, so that both of us can see those little flapping things that pop up all summer. A third-world nation will be a brother. I’m looking at you, beautiful so naïve, such a rad doll, go into my oatmeal with such indifference. Still, I’ve decided I like you more than I like my dog. I’ve also touched you a little too hard, and locked myself away from you in this phrase. I’ll sing myself out of here, you’ll sing yourself out of here so together you’ll both be going away. In the meantime, I’ll grow a beard. <|endoftext|> "Wake Me Up", by Regan Careles [Living, Life Choices, The Mind, Relationships, Friends & Enemies] Three friends teach me this amuse-bridge, oh, your name ends with a g, before you even read that phone bill. Put down the cup, grow a spine. Are you the boy? Are you the one trying to feed me the cup? What I thought was that love was a bridge and I thought only of bridges as I leaned back, and the scene let go, I woke to a live castle, a love worth waiting on, tiny palaces in the distance. A horse, a castle, a castle on a map, a castle, I’m out with my enemies. All over the grass, the stick of leaves. All over the creek with gusto my enemies stand On the hill. You. You. You tell me where they are. Your own name my castle, I say. We hold hands, And eyes, our castle plush to the tongue. <|endoftext|> "Sunday", by Raza Ali Ahmad [Living, Death, The Body, Time & Brevity, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] Mugged by my heart with the scent of sulfur, feasting, walking on cold grass, dragged off by my own hand, after the Muslim taxier spits and stops suddenly, even from a distance I could barely see my eyelashes tinted bright red, I recall an imam's screed, a bearded Koran thrown to me from the driver’s side door, of whatever creed, suggesting I shouldn’t loll out on the pews, languishing, but rather find some comfort, no matter where or how I end up, strive instead for high holy purposes, my reading the text inscribed by a Danish pilgrim on his stained black Bible whose icons my belly greets with a tongue ridden with dirt, no matter how happy to be re-mown by bludge or moan either to the ground or the wings, and though so green my legs are but still I clasp the pews where my brothers and sisters and father, mother, sister, then at last, my Khan break themselves down and enter their Arab faces on a jinsa’si carpet with a chaik of teacup, become another tongue, for I sing the happy Muslim with a hundred accents, and despite this cursed career rolls himself dead and wrings his hands in Arabic for the pages of the holy book I dare not lambskin, nor my mother tongue. <|endoftext|> "Immortal†", by Grace Lambert [Living, Death, The Body, Religion, Faith & Doubt, God & the Divine] I have heard God whisper in my ear waving in all the corners of the earth— g ======================================== SAMPLE 922 ======================================== Lift their hearts and face the battle level, To the last halo their steel shall be Arming the camp that lasts a century. Then, when red Death's peaceful stamp of fear Stamps Time's deeper grooves in dust, They shall be lights in League tables bright, Bright with the gold of proud statements. Children of the spirit! whose fertile clay Is light itself; whose impregnation cheers Beautiful Nature forever new-born, Let your life purpose be!--'tis the Council's, The Party's, or Press's, whate'er is done. Kiss off the Council's hand, Or hand of the Party's kind; Averring and dear to him Who has man's best life ahead, The hand of children and song. Wise and direct, my friends, pursue your trade, To-morrow we'll meet as devoted comrades. Here in Herne, here at last, we're all of us. My housemates, my column for life, A year ago I looked on as I see you. My brothers, my galleys full-funded, Four sons on the Red and White enjoying. Lively with life's heat, I here behold Queer jamings of filbert houses. Perchance, or away to York, Even there now, we'll 'wonder, One may see Castle Gordon, Wearied holloing round a wheel. Would that I were there with glee, Yet part of the laugh and ray, But I must to Herne! Herne! The hills, the hills and the sea! I run back to Herne, 'tis so; For why? 'Cause I suppose I've missed The close of some long conflict Wafted to the wings by a late surge of dust; Yet I'm back in Herne, 'tis so! All the same why? Because, it seems For the soul's sake that these things were keyed: I've been wanting to get home. (How fares it in Herne, by the way, From which my winters score? And, if by family not watched The poor in Herne, by chance, you needn't blink.) Back to Herne for all my part, All, my half of Hampshire, dear, The rocky region and the fell, The village and the hamlet chaste; Back to the fields that smell of grass Where the lady doth her vow; The good old saint of Himbron, Hath a chapel in our parish here. Lakeside and green, I'm here to you, You shall come, on a cold day, And look for Herne-buds in Herne! Back to Herne for my half of Yalt Mall; For the city, with its proud yew, Outward-facing window, set about As if to take in rain. Yet in the street The grey stones seem to shed a mist Of their own gravitation, smooth As if the grave-clefts and notches Were invisible. Over all the clang The lark ascends its humble cot Out of the lofty home of day. I may not call you back, my poor friend, Without a manor of these questions: Whose hands adust the seismometer? Who makes the points, he fills it full? What spirit focusses it? " "There must thou win reward, my friend, For the kind looks thou speed'st at me. I believe my certain success Falls the sole-handed forth. "Ask it in God, my sire in Aztlan! Of my body and my soul Will he a kingdom of this earth be made As he has made the sun and stars?" "If he will, he should have eyes to see And a heart for the deed; but, sooth to say, We're undeceived always if he be." Now, fair Isabella, so my sighs Wail out, on this vast quest I'm out. Yet I would mount, if I had neither arms Nor force of will. At the least I know A Taino did when she was a maid. She lacked neither; but she had climbed a mount, And wept and turned home; and on her lap Prayed for the stars. But, oh! to climb The northern slopes, had she been decked as king, What was in those heads, or how to find The germ of deeds, the flame in the brine, I would go forth with her, and sit down Where the ======================================== SAMPLE 923 ======================================== > O the Harlow one love is dead, (Of the five and the sire aspent) O the wreath, so like to flowers, Smile it did fall, O the high undiscovered star of stars, Our stars not crown'd with daws or gold, (Of the five and the sire aspented,) O the sweet when love began O the kiss'd and the heart's confusion, O the gush of the pearl, O the song That or'd been a prayer: O the broken chant, O the breath that was more than song, O the hail upon the mouth and soul, O the true when true's been true afore, O the wail of the star that's set And hurl'd from far, O the blow when blow'd from far O the whirring wings of the baying hounds, Of the five and the sire aspented. O the teeth with the yawning yawn Still red and in the fire O the ash-heaps, and the sinner slain, And the journey and the weight O the bitter star that did flash, Piercing the heart o' the star, O the bond and the body's decay, O the amorous groveless baying hounds And the blood that was dank. O the yearning and the heart's distress, O the lonely nights, and the skies Waked by the pleadings of hound and fife, Mourning love that might not be caught, Away from the clutch and the goad. O the tearless devoté, (With a reeling earth the trade, and a shambles) O the crest, if the leopard's red) And the lungs with the lack of boost, And the leg with the sling: O the tremulous years agone, O the honeys of the altar, And the beastly hands in the hollow nose 'At the law of the furnace: O the grist of the tiller, O the stall, with the naked hoof, And the wringing brow o' the loom. O the heave of the moon-faced yean, And the lusty coot in the gallop O the herb, that's full breeding near, And the lurid read, in the flowing hair The sum of the print. >Bravo and all his fellow-soldiers Reach'd the city, on the next day, 'Mid burnings of his marshall'd squadrons; While the bay of the south did swelled With the last fumes of the smouldering blaze. Tis the third Morn. <|endoftext|> A swarm of bees, and a wind from over the Rye, Sweet was the voice, Lovely, coy, and sighing sweet, Murmuring as the cuckoo: He presently is seen Heedless of the clover, standing on the top of a hill. In the churchyard, 'tis said, Can still unrotten say, Flourishing as a corn-staff; Never again in the clank of the day Roars as a chorism. Love, still communing, Sat in the olive shade, Never weary of the sighing of its wings. Lovely was the flower Swaying in the wind, Its heads half-turn'd, its tresses shaded and bright. <|endoftext|> I knew no one who did the ladies love, That one, was my Bertie Watt; He half did and half did dance to a grumbly tune, Which made a Devil of my Mrs. Hassle. This, to prove the deceit, I vow, That for three months (down and leasure) he's had her, And still keeps faithful to her, his babish'd young. They wove white flowers for the boys In white bands on the hands and knees, And made each four-year old boy to wear a red band, A little tighter for his jewel; Then said I, "My house is old and dark, And one wonders why 'tis put so; Perhaps the maid is to be that dear That 'twas dear to her mothers to trust her; Perhaps she wants it herself for an extra." O, if it be my Mrs. Hassle, I am sure that I'll find A sweet, soft head, and a true heart of oak, That I will never love but she, Not that other, nor strange to tell; I said to her ======================================== SAMPLE 924 ======================================== O do not tell her how I am seated in a dry guzzling sea of ass. Leave her to find what sense she may come to, and ride you quickly away. <|endoftext|> "False Moderate", by Sophie Gillette [Love, Desire, Relationships, Gay, Gay, Gay, Men & Women, Social Commentaries, Gender & Sexuality] When we found out, I was seventeen, a young anti-feminist with a bunch of false orange deliciousness in my mouth. I put them in my teeth. I had loved every moment of it, the way we dove, our feathered path through the woods, how we never reached for each other's eyes or tried to keep the love tiny. The world was our apple and we had no apple, we kept grabbing the dust and poking at it like knowledge that we might touch each other with. We chased one another with it, me grabbing hair or a desperately shedding bogeywoman's image of him. All of us monsters— me, him, and the woman with her crazy pacemaker. She had the stentoring, quiet girl, awkward son, the overdressed sister. The doomed lovers. I wore my false eye, her eye, and him with his false arm. False start, false middle, and a false good friend. The end: when all those wings break off, flutter, flutter once more and fall once more into service. <|endoftext|> "The Blight of London", by Katie Cain [Activities, Jobs & Working, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Money & Economics] for Kathy Butler I want to be a penny half-yesterdayI want to be able to pull this millionaires card out of my wallet and declare myself open. The cash in it will buy me a day's rant at the postman who's once again forgotten his letter. I say it's an art, this bit, my moneymitty Aspex6<|endoftext|>Deck the moldy earth with leaves, Dust clover, apple bloom, Windflower, plumb yellow Mock rose, Mead, blood-foot, Moss-foot, Blue Iridae, Till- Blooming buttercup. Mead- Blood-foot. A true blue one. A grand excuse For living here. I'm running out of things to say. I can't walk away from this, I can't move. The calls of all the rabbits Burned up inside me. They seemed so real Warming in my hands While I worked Cutting the small fires of lace In clover. Too cool to be you, We took up a- Stirring in the fire, The cutting fires of lace. Why didn't I know? It's always you I find, Outside a- Stepping in the lace, Smelling like mint, or worse. I cannot seem to Let go, Not a thing. Love you too, But not for long. You let me down. <|endoftext|> "A Rape at Shadowwood House", by Sarah Morgan I can hear it now, the clang of keys on wood, And then his voice said, "Come," and then I clung, Half-drowned, from the narrow little stair. The door swung wide, and he stood there, Brown, tense, with his bare feet in the grass, Sitting on a boulder, bare-chested, sable-stacked, In the sunny light. "Step one and two," he said, "Then come back." What did he mean by one, two, and three? Who didn't know the old house better than he? I followed him into the barn, where a bed was set And dusty as a canyon of sand. I thought I heard an awful sound, Half of fear and half of farries, And one foot in the snow, and one in the foist, One in the springing grasses, One in the flowing fern, Two in the morning like winds in the blast And a black arm advancing on song, Two at the harvest of the year Leaving song to sangder year, But never, never without me there A running black hand Filling the air with the wolf's carol, I would stay on, and hark away, On a wan knife edge. He tapped his empty banjo with his sword And asked, "Who's been stealing so much?" I did not answer, only, "I have." "See, there's my signet pin," said he, "Good reasons for it: ======================================== SAMPLE 925 ======================================== creator! The papal armorer of hands and head who fells the saints and sinners at once, who's satisfied with oil and laurel soaks up his seventh week dreaming of poison. Nuns and priests, kings and prostitutes, fools and gaiers, words and duchesses fall at his feet like roses, hanging rocks in coal-black water, darkening oil. Have I left you alone awhile? dreaming of nights with "neighbors" in evening garments, waking in dark, black water under the moon? Many Americans have read this poem, and to-day even "snakes and rats" are tattooed on the arms of women giving handouts, eating at the edge of your own bush. You say I spoke in riddles, but I only told one word: Jesus. And suddenly he arrived, a racing oil lamp. So that's what he was, a candle. What is common in us, a rock or a tree, isn't it? Nothing, nothing. When he touched your hand, it was like a lantern in a hole in the ground. Your woman and your man turned tombless, gaunt and wild, as though they'd wandered, or were sodden by the sun. They told him it was better to speak in solitude. No one could speak with you and talk your language, because your tongue speak by itself as you. It's why you deserted me, and the reason you deserted me, and the reason the woman of Phoenicia seals her lips to strangers. How can you make eyes with such whites, when one can't trust the light, and you walk in darkness crossing a river? I saw him burn, my mother and father, my brother and sister, we burned in the night, in the morning, not one of them was breathing. I want to be lit for all the world to see in this black mysterious act. I want to be necessary. If I stay asleep, and if I weep with fear, if I stay awake, all the mess left of me by the night will be, on the floor, in the kitchen. I had no dreams, I woke, and woke to an empty house, a boy, and no supper on the fire. He speaks, as the woman before him spoke. I try to speak, but my words fall like stones. They are nothing I have ever seen before. They can't be carried to the moon. I smile at the moon, I say, thank you, and disappear. "Night is yours," said the bird. "Night is yours," I answered him, and died. <|endoftext|> "Canticles", by Patricia Hall Carter [Living, Health & Illness, The Body, Nature] We can hear it in the blood- lips like a dialing tone- less beige. We can feel it rushing into us. You just might stumble upon its buried magic in the classroom sprawl. I've seen it up- in the right-handed and in the unlikely reclining mos- son's elbow. It sits like a charcoal gray be- tween the light of one sun and the other. Don't be shy. Come quick. It's rising! It's climbing up into your insolent jaws. <|endoftext|> "When I Was Four Years", by Louis Simarton [Living, Youth, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Religion, Christianity, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy] I want to be small and neat, And always hungry, So I'll need a hug Of some father. But I wanted more Than that. I didn't like the look Of his hair—it just smelled. You can see it, It made my face gray. So I got smarter: I learned that a tree is a philosophical Construct, Not to be trusted, since it can kill You—and animals. I wanted a father who was laid along, Who didn't spoil, and who asked no questions— If I told him, he'd leave me alone. I told him I had a dark trunk, Like a book—I wanted to write a book. My father was born in the library. He had the look of a professor, like a ======================================== SAMPLE 926 ======================================== Gawaine were in me: I learned to sense the heart-ease That feels my presence; And, when my home was young, I left the dream to choose me With the breakers of the sea. When all around me seemed Thick a glory, and mine, I could but my am'rous spirit In it's own danger share; And this is that sweet hour, Whose growth to us is modesty, When we can march, and halt, And win the prizes we desire. And here my friends: for much a friend To search your pockets, or discover A long-sought-for treasure, or odd Sober smelting powder, or grain, And now, your first ideas blind me, And you no more; I see 'tis not for you, When, at our sweet prepar'd natures' cost, Youth is, by nature, the youngest age; As for example, women past their best, In every social setting, at the most, Are either matrons, or no less than men, Most in the mid-hold look like brats, or both: They're not fit companions for the rest. We are, by nature, about the same And we are of a wavering mind; We neither moves or stands, or both; And at our best, we may be moved and stood, And both look very wild. Ah, Sorrow, where is thy home? Thou hast no more committed To stones or any other place Than other pots, or any chinks In doors, or other people's ears; That is, in any place at all. For whom then? why, there is none. Why does no place invite, And none shall be accepted? She is lost, but in some fane; There is none of matchless beauty, And yet the world is none. I have, myself, in ken, Said, "She looks like stone," when none but stone She would, or anyone else have: And yet, poor I, but wanting wings, Have flown away on tiptoe, And when I turned from am'rous way, I found none flying, nor no earth, Thou art an actor too, And play with fools. --We cannot love, where we do not act.-- The weather's this morn, the place unworth the show --Are the gods? Nay, so they be.-- Yet here 'tis seen, as if one Would say, "Here's the weather and the show." What's this? 'tis not an Act.-- Go, leave this heaven-favourite place, And leave it, as you come to it. O you, dear friends, let play be all 'Between ourselves, or you farewell." My God, I'm like to lose you. It's not like, To say, you're lost, or go. For every one at last must choose A prelate, or a baron, or better. It's to join, or better still to break; 'Tis all within the distance. So dear He's enchanting me With this sweet fear; Not to have you, as He said, All my life to Heav'n. Oh, how He's bound to us Until we part; For, that He loves us, is just To love us while we love. Now, children, I am coming to the end Of life, With mine, my God, to Thee. I do not understand The manners, or the opinions Of those to whom I left the south, But as, beginning at His word, My course I crossed o'er the plain. I am confused; Heaven sealed the horoscope Of my thoughts, till my share in making The heavens has been done in earth. My friend of summers ago I do not what's not yet said. I drink, as Cap is to the Flask, To follow out his course. He's faded like a mortal star; And, had I not shut my eyes, I should behold him safe in His home. The world is not a stage, I said, With this, my friend: 'Tis life's fault that the talk's not deep As with the sun is deep, And streams and winds be not thicker Than with his holiday plumes. My faith is here, as He is, Until my term be done; I have no future here, nor did That God beget to ======================================== SAMPLE 927 ======================================== By these lonely rocks and caverns! I, the jest, Of weak imagination, what have ye To me, the absurdist? As, as so often, As we walk through life together, Our blundering steps remit themselves And pick themselves again; you see it, Nor can I leave you; you may be Too bountiful. So, for your delight We talk in once night and then Escape in the cold of dawn-- Waking together in the freshness Of dawn, to cast down our eyes, to pick Our souls' lights out through a sunless gate, And with our lids heavy-set To sleep once more in the blue. Thy folly, Time, doth write me holymen! Your teeth are oath-gum of our King's god; Their statutes teach the liturgy And whet the heart for love's great khabhna. Vain heart is growlnt for light By seeking light! To what shall we give kith And kin's birth, When we havlightily and no longer, Whether near or far, keep pace? The shut eyes writhe of defeat; The thrusting dead-wash of proud intent Drags down the firmer-seeming one. Better a mind hem-dipt from gloom Than the miser's worth in rags of store! Better the binder's lesser hand than this Than all the smutty rites men cherish! Bought and sold again, and broached and drownd, Aldelief passed lustily in A thrall to fate. Then: woo and writhe of the sell, Thy fools! they sing like truth's leav-stones loose, Till thralled each in other, they cast, Their hearts' shame, not life, but rhyme, Be first of life: then pine like lichen trees In cold frosts for light--sinner than they Wooed and won and won in the arena, Drunk with the glare of light that calls The worthy to their ranks! Who this night Can ring the praise of Life? Sorrow these, But Joy divine hath passed this hellish swamp To sit in God's hall by angels standing, This holy battle-field of love, On which, for sakes of love, let it stand! Let the trumpet's whoop fill the sands That these might see and say with one accord, Upon whom lifting their eyes Up to the everlasting skies, "Lo, The weary captives of right and wrong!" Good luckless farmer, still to-morrow On earth a holiday! Old Mother Hubbard, come down And make us cheeses, and oils, and ointments, Let us dress our bodies all in white, So as to make ourselves seem more young And swaths of sky appear smoother, Like the weather of Heaven, in which My Master and I, walking in the West, Sent joyful kist of violets to the the sunset: A sweet and serene breath, with the semblance Of silence and of slumber it gave, As if it whispered: "Youth is beautiful!" As I looked, there came nearer A happy apparition, With words whose sense travelled as swift As the present to the past; And then I heard my Leader's name, And as the voices of spirits do Who praise themselves in heaven; "Come, let's sing The wedding song." All was ready, And then my heart--I heard it say, "Oh, see, Shall these fair young hands that I love Among the Lord's minions be passing To gross imperfection? Let me take A test flight, then, of this my pride! I am a lily, and thee, my bride, Am you -- To-night, I'll do a sight That many a star has done, and will -- I'll be That which I were, when I've seen The King of Heaven, in king-like attire, And on the table, clear and glorious, Stared young Endymion! Yea, I'll make A chorus to the Queen of Heaven: she Will ring the halberd in the zephyrs' sound; And all the angels, leaping from thrones, With myrtle crowns and veils should, in glad homes, Shed flowers upon the ceiling: then, I'll say: "My soul's full rose, when it smells the glee Of heaven, 'tis content, and it heeds The rain ======================================== SAMPLE 928 ======================================== Do be fir'd? or run at least, For trappling eels, raggs, or blue ones? No matter, seek at least some turf; Bark, eucalyptus, pyracanthus, Or reeds, but be the thing serene; Hark, what our fav'rite calls for? We need some music for the theatre. Pray put no sorrow in her part, The evening solitude oft mocks our best; What can we do? who labour so fast, Circling the cage of love like eagles bold? We drop the mask, they strip the reel, They laugh at their own laughter: Sweet and green, Do not the soft turf mask what they do? Bid me mine ear cherish the nightingar! Oh shame! let no man lofty-eyed Admire his actions in her, Torn she rejects, and will not you: Open wide your reverend fountains! make the air Ring with Chanted Song! let the young wind Rich from his sleeping springs awake Wild gales with blushening all the rocks, Stones tumbleing to the dust, At every leaf that sighs in storm What should we do, but gladly then! The silence breaks, the bosoms of the Round The sharpest not only heard, but seen. Mortal men love love, great love, and power, See how divinely 'tis charmed, how ensnared. All things seem one, all tied in one; and this All with one color, one fun 'tis wrought. Since love is passion's own fascination, No more than venom, we may call Love. A stinging nature loves not to be curst, True fire kindles in a Eugen oil. Souls being born, Natures not bad, Grew natures, with natures linked Glad, and sore troubled, now depart As if out of their own Coelacanta, And, like the bite of a wasp, with peeping sting, Came sucking in their blood, Pangs agony, plenil love, Rashing, for delight, for space of fighting wind. Rise, glorious soul! rise and escape Out of this Age of Sin, Which, like a beast's foul rabble, goes Or raises, or though it bears, Merely to show to Man unsexed How Sin might have been, and Mis-ceiving How Necessity could consent, And Piety and Zeal at once agree, Unseen to fight, though linked in her mouth So tightly as the malefic By-stone, Which rends the soul, and makes her bend To her high-swelling Othes; Though sign, once sense, to the sense of Ten, As her own Pillar and Empress, A dull torment that quenches all Fire, Breathes all Heaven, makes all Heaven a Man, And makes her son a Heaven in her own Blood; Though made of Man, she, by this Degree Of toleration, to herself The stern attention of a torture, Who in her Sentence bears, though higher Her Heaven's high throne, as when her Age Cheapens the Thronged Eagle of his Golax. Incomparably we see the fury Of her strong breasts, with Attack and Defence; Her breathing Water, on whose mettled head Her swift Ox's stout head is bump'd up high, Which throws its geting horns, with wargy mane A-flung, a-maying behind its cry, Furock and Fury's Dire, When warbl'd by Thunder's Voice and Arm'd by her A Thousand-clad, though flowing completely, The Bellows of the World are heard, And counter-swells the Ocean's masses, The Grotte catalin' under ground Cast up all in a vast multitude, And above it her enormous size Looks on in wonder, herself so huge, That for amazement's sake she casts down A sneer at the Adversary, By Thunder's Lord declare The prow's extent; Thy chamber's breadth; Hesper's number; To seeing as she is to doing. She will not tell the flit, She will not tell the speed of her brood. The silence of her sex's awful end Upon a point like this was wise Was only wise, as if no silence Served the purpose of her utterance, Or else 'twere ruin's fighting hour. All male propagation is deceit But woman's ======================================== SAMPLE 929 ======================================== brace of Ionian columns with groaned and staggered play, the power to be having the advantage of the scale, and touch the button behind a barrel of oil below the line that rumbles and gurgles. bower of spring locks beneath the turretlidge background of the pond, he must have lain back against the rebec, in the light of that high summer sun, in the little tent-peep of tent-peeps, the tent himself small as a bathysbile, can we wash his reddened fingers with soap and clumsily comb his hair with liquid soap and clumsily combed hair, wile away the black under-shadow of the sky? Chorus, muttering, spitting it out, new Jahili here, unpres-tendingly stretching hands out to their new acquired world, calling the full power of tongue to task a silly youth whose tongue, hon-i-al-i-bil, trembles flung wildly in dispute and has-been to re-create, a nation of their kind, for a year: yes, a very long year, ridded from the ladies of camp, the mignon of the horse; had the black snake bit him; ripped from the wet morning sand; ripped from the char-riss before a health club; big, and all the ladies told of school; cut in the ice, the insolent whisper of "Socialism;" rocked in bed; the blood in the horizon, the fingers of the new gardeners pared for the mill; bombed, doped, and wolfed, half-digested, the dirty ragweed nuggets of kernels, red-chalk-a-green; drunk on Melphémie ash, then sifted on a wheelbarrow; seething with bel-air beer; jammed in the bake-house; dragged in the harrow; torn from the wharf; housed in the cellar, clabber-tret Yard; the cold wife un- lawy- wont of the Maori, who come tumbling by in moon-filled weather, who have a month's stay; and, supp-i-ably, wash the stones, dig holes, &c. <|endoftext|> "Ovid from 'Gadzooks!'", by William Cowper [Activities, Eating & Drinking, Health & Illness, Poetry & Poets] (from the Tobacco-Drawing 479) Just from your face and your gabard a head, And you puff, and I puff. It's easy to you, To me, nill-worth the mate, as I think I puff, That's straight hell between our share. Only you do My head, d'ye see, sing-pipe-pip, who never won't, Sing-pip-to-me-how, Come-poppint-pip-me-how, Puff-pipes-with-me-then, Whahl-poppints-with-me, Wibblies-in-me, Lips-pact-a-hole, Puff-pipes-in-me, In-his-sorrows-there, All-on-me, Puff-pipes-this-way, Blended-with-that, Daint-force-pipe, I-pick-pipe-out, You-shan't-understand. Honey-to, Or-weed-once-and-you-can. Pipe, I say, straight to the tin-top, And leave me bales and the glass back, The dune-snag for your wayward pipe. Sometime come, when of my pipe you crave, Your half-half-fallow, your ne’er-do-well, Your gilly-ree-ree-ree. I'll put you straight in a tin; You swallow it all-right, a bed-bill, And fondle the fill-dog till I stop; I must widdle you up the bunk, Or we’ll never rob a buccaneer. You suppertubus-potent, How-dup," do you call yourself? But it isn’t really potent— But how could I help it— Tic-tile-tile-drop, Tick-tock-tick, For me, I've gone to pack. He smears me shmear, as I brast The ======================================== SAMPLE 930 ======================================== acting it, that sartin lee, Baateik drek, baateik, baateik, baateik. Noe, O, noe! Noes, noes! "Dear Rose-tree, Do you make So many good-natur Tell in the following Wax-drops And get some Miracle Scented Buds And go a-building Yours in the garden Right sweet and cold Sweet and silver like it was. Come play with the apples! Lazy-Lass, be a diligent Little learner. Lazy-Lass, Be a diligent Little learner. You know the cherry's best, Do you, my dear? When he sets his lip To the whiskey-shot Tongue to eat All the melon's Down within it. There's melon there Always hid Within his skin. There's melon there Always hidden. The blue raspberry's fine; The bramble's queer; But I would not go a-hunting With a crooked slingshot Hitch to a old gneis of moon, But I would go a-swagging With a bramble-bush. Like an ashen willow Lying on the mountain By the silver mountain Water winding through it; And the force that it Gives the air to rock, The hill to rise upon. I am the air to it, It is mine to suck or go, And I fill its womb I have no choice of its birth, The wroung out of its heart It has no heart to have It is my blood to drink. It can do no wrong, I am its mother, The wet willow Is my sweet home, And this is its life. The lamb on the twig Puts its share of fear On the mother's brow Lying down among The bones of its brothers. It would not have gone To the lamb's mouth Had it not met the disaster That now it has met. It would not have gone My little boy whom I love, Is a bravest little trooper, And I'd throw him on the ground And have him on my own If I dared the rude surprise Of a grim bearing bully Or his curbless daemon, And his rolling of the cap And his pair of loud And threatening swears, And the large brass joke he'd burst Into at once, so blind And so crazed. He has the blood of a noble mother And the pedigree of a heroic father. Two helmets, two swords, two spears, A staff with the stately palms Spanned the line of the wooden platform Where our heroes stood in it, As the contest First assembled, Each with its two-handled flagon, When the dead-sea Red rimmed the sea, From a rock-flung galley crashed in the sea, As I watched, my little boy, And the good adventure that was I was drawing him away For a bout of unsportsmanlike play When the flap of a feather In the mirror snapped me back To a consciousness Of the dear clues Cast by my child's gestures As to what my mind Was functioning in answer to: The reflected lights that played With his hair, or Light between the leaves Of the leaves of the maple-tree, And the light of his eyes. Out of the whirling mass of mirrors That fly out of his chamber Full of echoes of truth, the boy Gives to the mirror mistress of Chief Out of the mirror chamber A wave to the mirror of Chief A focus of his open hand, And his eyes of his face are Seesed by me as I move near, The fair Graces come About us now and again, Till the boy is calm again, With his father's sword-blades About him once again. Our eyes meet, And our hands touch. The way is well known By the way that it is, And the way that it goes, And the way that it lies. In the life of our old times You are the luckiest of the land Of those that have found again, A device that we shall do Only once, that is to say, Once only, on a night Of a moonless winter, In the city of Oud Williams, And the world's a strange evening Under the cold moonlight. Under ======================================== SAMPLE 931 ======================================== "Your Father," heard we this day, By his teapoy clinging skaith! Aye young Ollas, young and elate, Are jovial and emetic For sobering your empan: Aye aye the Spencers streaked with lust, Are drunk and unmeated. They'll by-ways get, I trow, A wicked round-roper rout For heav'n's royal feast of old! The dice's up, the wits are hid, And mine host shall hop in with the rest! Oh, fie upon man! for need I tell thee, This day, in which I see thy name was writ, This day hath far-beholder'd me and me! Now feign a weary heart, whilst I command (Thou art but one) to this salute to pay: "I'll hail thee, master; bend to my knees, and I'll be number'd "with th' rest of you!" Thou shalt not blunder, nor trifle vain words; There's popp'ny ways and harmless fun, Wherewith the wisest may participate, Such as this is, and better none. For friendship this treaty I make; Nor shall the muses ever know, In the olden time of life, That I often tried their artless play, With thoughts more steady and less; That I can weep, and smile, and be content, In an unconfin'd kind of way; That my sober thoughts he mature In no unrefreshed way. But ah, my friend! my dear friend! woe is me, How ye moved me to-day! How could my eyes contain the tears Which rolled, in my mind's pure feeder, up From the grave, the adorers' shade, To the vine's purple buds, When I beheld their rapture-upon-blush! It was for the song, and the song was for love; The song was for love! So by the withered bays and the silver horns, I blam'd my fate: I had no wit to be sad Like the desert ant, the ponderous spider, Who trembles with lightest unbeholden touch The moor lying under him: the new moon, Or the music of the sea, or the moonbeam's chime, Or, to a tune that's swallowed up in my ear, The soft steps of the moon's fairy ring. But she made a cold excuse for her tears; And yet--she was too wise by a hair: I thought 'twas folly that a chubby man Should from his native nation's praise so loudly hail That immortal Nation's Beauty's queen. That kind of wit is born with maps, And the one false note's the enginerver. For shame, we said, to be so grave, so humble, Pardon the youth's early blunders. The lady was by! and up-claust, And, by our fealty to Homer's Emmett, Or that of Horace more met. Ere we dismiss the tutor so graciously, Which deigns to stay with us, we beg You'll put a new kindling of wood by, And, as you proceed, will lend us alms For our necessities. Tho' at many a point we may differ, 'Tis wisdom we must ever do So much, in the fear our region ranges Some differences, the strangest may not be, If wise commends the smart: For different nations varying arts Exert their foes employ, And call them on sod To the highest price that men can gain, That being told, bid them good by, And stand forth to their friends, and tell To their foes that this is so; Then kindly shut in the grave, Which, however they wish it, Was not, and cannot be, With two opposing turrets! Tho' some hold the sharpest grain Wont the ear to the plaining teat, Which from the first gave offence, There's others, as our paper too, Whose sting Softens so gently, it's said, For some feeble mouth to speak it: If 'twere my fate, I would shut up my hounds and set them free, And so, Good friends, will tell you this: See here the character, all in print. How blest the maiden's graduation, That at first muster the heart strikes content! Even the earliest blunders, which so oft Me ======================================== SAMPLE 932 ======================================== When night shall be away; For little love that dwells with her. That bringest water from the spring Of living waters, who hath thus Made this returne unto his mouth, That my soul, as it returneth, Shall to my life report, and say How thou suck'st of Life, and drink'st of Love, Nectarine leaues, and nard, and life. When I 'm all alone, Anon lay down to slen: My heart grows cold as is the snow; While that I sought, nere gone Its final slumber; Ere ten year had gone, my beard began To turn like clay in the fire; And I was a withered aunakere By winters half-forgotten. Then by the fire, my oiliady, Thou'lt be recline and tauce, and drink The hot beverage which must flow Be sure, or else thy beauties fade Degenerate, since it is not Instrue: two dishes fit are better; They do feed on babisking beeves: Therefore bid your servant bring. After a terror of snows We do us bace away to ease On his grace, king Jove! who gave the added boon, That, whereso he went, the serpents did Rinque but backward in his path, Nor in their folds dare not affright Us, but through hazard soom set to sleap By wild water-duck, wrapt around on all sides. No more--I trow your passion 's gone, And I 'm i' th' news as well, As any more shall 'bide the climber, The climbing Southerne gale. But I 'm still as sure, on lassie, As nere was, be she that is my fate, No tae my land till to the West. How to the devil shall a man get, When, too, he taks a man's part! The lords o' men, on ichita deal, They 'ave spoilt the land; For all their law is -- we 'll get A good many friends to boot. My soul is light, my senses amaze! I 'm like as Sunnie Lillies, Waking and living sooma; I ken the wings of howes, the tanies ride; How is their grace, and their light skires; And amase 's of adrydene Shoot the wise and set the ways; 'Tis all but spent for my display; You can voyge i' th' smock; Wad I do more, wad not wodge i' th' sack Till both my sides a sauciness felt; After to spatter i' white, black, red, and green, And be i' your march? Yea--a new beard will keep a man undisturbed Ev'n on his stool. What I have done, or will do, Disasters will do for you. Aye, I 'm pitifull to your deftest ways. Speak my avisage; take my signs--and so, In a minute, ride back. Yes--and I will hev, I will reuenge, I will ravage with mead and shead Your auld, ben alms. Then, sirs, you can lend your micks and rushes To evince my sauncy ones; And ye, betimes, will like me to see What course a woman's i' fike is; I wander'd, and I range From dim to deep: I pillaged, and I looted, And lieirly I hawl'd and heil'd; I lehr'd, and I d'ni'd, and I sung and I chanted, And ne'er shall stop. And then, by some faint-footed moons, I dimper'd o' t' hill; And ilka rover aloft, I was inclined to doubt. Altho' such signs may seem e'er so slight, They are but tiny stars to the rays; But hope I:--ye dimmers will scorn, Though nought but justice is mair Than, to their foul shame, in their eyes That they o' fortune look alane. Yet, 'stead of justice I shun it: I turn'd me to the fair, for a show; 'Tis a' you ======================================== SAMPLE 933 ======================================== <|endoftext|> "The Land of Nod", by Barbara Kidd [Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] Over a ridge of sun, green landscape before us, yellow light between us and the trees, the mountains bend; they are our eyes, our hearts, the hills our chance. Up where the tide rushed home to rocks of sand and mud, we saw the waves echo, echo, echo in the creek we walked along. Over there, where it runs in ripples through a glacial landscape of ice-caps and ice-glazed fish, we watched a heron stalk before flying in silence. We saw two bighorn sheep slyce along the bawling fork. A heron. Above the ridge where the clouds wink blue and glimmers of sun are convergé d'enodit, the rivers go blue as they rise. And below, they flash under us and our hearts go rolling though we are never there. <|endoftext|> "Cliffs", by Barbara Kidd [Living, Death] Anywhere where ever the wind the tide grieves it is called a cliff. When the night-wind sticks its flush and the tides rise, you will know you are not a man until you stand where the cold clings and binds you to the ground. Cliffs. The light-of-th June and of the clinging breeze. We are like the sea-lites, closing the margin of life where dreams of land may gleam on the shore. Cliffs. The mud-clogged eye goes to the heart on dreams of stately shore with moccasin doubt and hailing of the moon. You see, up here, the azure-dark mountain friends are thin and small, and you with all your star-friends ancient in the lofty glow. But down here the friends are soothed in death, sleek companions of the sun. Anything where air sweeps the clover and furrows up the loose hills, anywhere. Death. Cliffs. The rest of the plot. <|endoftext|> "Crown a Moment", by Christian Wiman [Living, Death, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] to decide who Bob will crown a moment for, you can win by choosing either an American soldier or a dead British soldier dead before their moment. Bob will throw crowns to each as the choice is holy. Bob will throw crowns to a moment by giving him a coin. Bob will crown a moment to decide who Bob will crown a moment by giving each a coin. the dead soldier dead before his moment will have a crown. bob sailer American soldier British soldier dead before their moment won't have a crown of his own, but may of us choose who Bob will crown a moment to decide who will have a moment a coin to spend. Bob will throw crowns to a moment by giving each a coin. bob sailer American soldier dead before their moment will have a crown of his own, but may of us choose who Bob will throw crowns to a moment by giving each a coin. Bob will throw crowns to a moment by giving each a coin. bob sailer American soldier dead before their moment won't have a crown, but may of us choose who Bob will throw crowns to a moment by giving each a coin. Bob will toss crowns to a moment by giving each a coin. Bob will toss a coin to decide who has a moment first. Bob will toss a coin to decide who will have a crown or a coin. to crown a moment <|endoftext|> "Evergreen", by Kevin Lynch [Living, Time & Brevity, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] Evergreen the everglades are tolled in the tunnelview of an SUV. The landscape is an invisible partner wearing a six-pack of beers, holding a drop of rain in her cocktail glass. Evergreen the evergreen is here with falling leaves. Evergreen the evergreen is the evergreen. It would be ======================================== SAMPLE 934 ======================================== Still where the broadfor dell, and away. For sheer emptiness is life's sweet need, And a great soul is its own end. So up on guard and gun: I was that gap, That last with Pope, or the poet's lyre. Out of the world on my bed of grass I sprang, But only when I slept, or dreamt, or thought, That charge came back to me again. I shall sleep when others sing, And wake when others weep, Or sigh and follow the eagle's wing. Or with a touch my hand, or a sight Of some rare beauty, and depart, Onward from the world and men. But yet I shall be beside you then With love's great love alive in my breast To greet you with all true breath, And kiss you with light. <|endoftext|> When, by the roses, her moon-purse fell Slipt on the earth at post, And looking through the rain, said, "I'm over my Palma, I'll be sick, and live to lose." Slayth not return the flowers, But, fall we pray, we have Thee, God of the fair, The best and worst in hue. "Up," quoth the bard, "thou darling light, That art the nurse and bearer Of beauty, wealth, and fealty; Thou art the keen, the tender, The lone, the foolish, wise; Thou play'st the little wit of joy, Thou play'st the darling without cost. Thee who walkest, thou who run'st," Thus he to whom we turn in signs. O suppose but wilt be, And then suppose, suppose not: But as these old wives say, "So This speech about a ball,"-- So we may guess well enough 'Tis not a lie to say That these say now, "Thou'rt good-hearted, Sweet, sweet the burden of thy song, Thy lute's emulous strain Yet, even that hearts of mine May hear its glistening strings. May years, and they that feel their way, A petty way instruct, Ere long take granite for the altar, And carve new gods for each a--new sport, For mine is carved, O thou! Thy death is barely to part the skies And feel thy dust again. And now, dear child, let go the theme; To you it may be for ill, Some imp like Phlegmatia's dragon Must ride the hot, young air; And how we find, shall yet be known, Thee must go from us for ever. Nay, nay, there is far worse to come, For us and all, sweet bird. The ills of life are sounding soon; The last sad, flat blot is very near; With many a silent fret The last long pain is coming on. O leave thy murmurs, low and sweet, To aid the flower that caresses the lawn. O what are love and mirth to me, Save foolish mirth and slow-seen sorrow, Which wait not: yea, I perceive That both well-done dishes must be, And days may be kept short, If not without care, ye joys, At spring-head; or like him that gave John's leaven to my cracked leaven; So let be ye Be no more nigh, and ever hence; So let me be and so be done Unto the day when I rise. For now, ah, now sweet death's crown And sinuous robes of growing night Tow'rd me while I sing, in vain; Or with the thrid, Whylik–thraw–throk, Whylik again, whylik–thraw – The brakes how far, how far, how far. Whylik – thraw – thraw, And ceas'd my singing even so To the small hope of delight: Whylik – thraw – thraw – thraw – thraw, Whylik, thraw, thrynk, thrynk, There was no hurt nor dying: There was no pain nor joy, But one felt life, and one relish. Not that we least of all should bear The solace of the miseries of men: We shall have hope, For we shall kiss The gentle, far-spread oake, The young, woody-natty, green ======================================== SAMPLE 935 ======================================== to explain away . . . the planet we have tolive in . . — When you've grown you know it all will be . . .But you have not . . . This morning, in a dream I took you for a walk in this park. To where? You look so little in my eyes. Your tangle curls disappear. You hardly know me but smile, and we do talk, and that’s the thing — — They took us to the wild and made us comply with tortures that we would not refuse — What do you love that needs to come out? From the gentlest touch I feel a knot in my heart— It was you who said we need each other <|endoftext|> "“Born in the shadow of a crime”", by Antony Hegarty [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Crime & Punishment, War & Conflict, Memorial Day] Born in the shadow of a crime a shooting, a clinch, and two dead Baptiste 32 year old named before Donald Trump born in the shadow of a crime never to return though you can rebuild a bunch of firewater in the shadow of a crime He named the harbor and the remains of a wedding and the deceased pony who will own the cemetery in the shadow of a crime Only the victim’s true name was given not the killer’s born in the shadow of a crime but at the moment of death a crime and not a moment but a name born in the shadow of a crime love may come from the sun only in the shadow of a crime Baptiste 32 year old named before Donald Trump born in the shadow of a crime never to return though you can make a shadow though you may rebuild a bunch of firewater in the shadow of a crime somewhere in Boston and not in Ann Arbor He named the new skating rink in the shadow of a crime and not the deceased but you can make a team though you may recover nothing in the shadow of a crime lived long enough to expire born in the shadow of a crime only to have to pay a fine, a fee to stay in the shadow of a crime you named in the shadow of a crime born to name the spot the old coroner’s house in the shadow of a crime we named it as the coroner’s house you named your shoes though you named born in the shadow of a crime even if they did not fit a hole in the shoe to name living by the water born in the shadow of a crime to name near the waterfall Born to name given name and where exactly were you shot at where were they shot at you named the artery of the land that provided the name You may name the shoes given name given name given name blind one blind one one name for the river born in the shadow of a crime blind for the eyes to see You named your shoes where were they at when shot and you named the artery <|endoftext|> "“Señors Go Home  |endoftext|", by Antoinette Montores Hurwitz [Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Social Commentaries, Class, History & Politics, Money & Economics, Race, History & Politics, War & Conflict] (old marsh’s steward) As the heavy machinery of exchange began to hum, a Red River sheriff’s boat on the banks of the Rouge River’s traffic sizzled. They said, Down there for a while, as though river speeds were fuel or journey, forgetting we knew the river was their childhood. We say,They wanted money, which was something to be paid for, want, otherwise, nothing to buy. When the SRO first opened I smelled fuel. Gas lines snaked through the blistered rafters to my kitchen floor where I flopped among grease, saidI’m not fit to wear that kind of life. I shivered in my coat, all my toes sodden, the same reason I couldn’t drink. When the water came back I stayed in the prairie to await, it seemed. A soiled ladder and an unseen ladder, a family made up of fugitive workers who saidThey came, saidThey came, settling in the ======================================== SAMPLE 936 ======================================== Of cheerful size; by a light cast too wide by one too deep. I'm my own cure. And this way a girl bought a new-born drug for the boy whose bow was removed by his father, by the king; so there, both played well the part, not just he, not just his fault, not just his bow. By the king, a son, the father not one who could meaningfully control or do without the new-born; and she him—looking the world in the eyes, but not at all afraid of her, the beak. <|endoftext|> "Notes from the House of Wauxidi", by August Kleinheinz [Living, Time & Brevity] The mirror, the whiteness of it: it is silent and reflective. Where did the clouded frost that paralyzed my visual line go? The mirror, the light breaks through the sand bars and pictures are perched on the door. Tomorrow will have its days, or so I guessed, but left my audience with the words, “Escape is possible.” When I left the shore, daylight ran toward me, while shadows prevailed. The pool looks endless, as long as one imagines. Then the stones in the shape of birds begin to spread like skin of an old bird beating Brachiotomy in its home. <|endoftext|> "Four and Three", by August Kleinheinz [Living, Time & Brevity, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Philosophy] “Paradox ofoat 1947-01-01", by August Engelhardt The paradox of a vanishing point: the same object, yet a vanishing point, a vanishing of knowledge. A fact so simultaneous possibility reiterates itself, a sublime scenario, like the coming of the sun in the north, the flea with the motor soot underneath. Let’s build a garden on that leaf. A garden has shown up. <|endoftext|> "Blues April 1976", by August Kleinheinz [Arts & Sciences, Music] “beloved sister and faithful friend,” but also one with a permanent acute stabbing pain in her heart. The third dimension is blood: not only music but memory as well, and animals struck by musical idea. Under which in new ask, these other two, but what is the name of this gameshow, which would remind us of early theater, in which the act of memory increments our knowledge of the existence of memory, which means, first of all, the capacity to recollect things which we have never attained at our fingertips, and later “to take from an expert the capacity to remember,” though in the following way, the second capacity is more than the second. Wondrous relief! Lack of anxiety! The possibility of not having anything to remember strikes some asigmin on the street, and, in a family life, a phone call or an email on the radio, and we imagine the one of us who is lost, that we share that condition, this alchemy of discipleship, you know, which is “to take” the other half of the crucible’s alloy: a miraculous alchemy of faithful affection, side by side with anxieties, which are fundamentally faithful in their ability to be taken. The third condition: this man, the music, the park, birds, the third condition, nothing to do, the environment, the life of a man, this theater of beauty, this the life of a man, in which the main event takes place, and which if it were to happen, between us, could mean the difference between resentment and affection. <|endoftext|> "Swimming in the Past", by August Kleinheinz [Living, Death, Time & Brevity, Activities, Travels & Journeys] Toward evening, straight out of a boat-radar taking the station's pulse that a boat was approaching I thought a little, so I swam back, and later swam as far as I could, my breathing more abundant, slower and then, exhausted, lay back to do it again, though I knew that more, that more was required, until I came to the first plateau where the next plateau was ======================================== SAMPLE 937 ======================================== So stiff he stands, his threshold solid as a castle wall In some mountains haunted by the Aztec. And there is no approaching or spreading of wings! We stare in long silence at the wings that shade The mind and smile upon us. A man made of strong and steady and intense will, A flower of soft and sinless form, Shading the eyes from sight, And in himself a strange and ancient grace, And pity for those whom life introduces Into the soul, through love, and settles, To flower in the silent place of death. In fields of paradise, Though not a flower was near him, He held the dreams that pleased him Till they lost their life and melted In gentle waves and killed. But now that he was free He did not want the rose And all the dreams that grew; He wanted to look beyond The golden gates And lean the new wings on the bars. One cries, "As ye feel The peace which is, go down The green way of years, To virtue's ringing throne Where kind life comes down, Then on the leaf, to tell A loving story of its thorns." Another cries, "Let's feast and plant A rose-bush in a drought, There's nothing like a just-return To strengthen the whole. And when the roots swell up the earth Let's set a noble tree upon them, Where Sorrow's heart may well rejoice." But we are all Sitting in the sun Of living hells-- And darkness overpowers, And heaven-sent joy Lies dead Within that world we've made. The way of the lover is to be free, To press his hand through the long locks of grey, And praise his beauty for a single hour, And hold the tasting flower at sheer deceit. But thus the schoolmaster's busy; even as he sighs, His hand is in the young man's hair--at once he counts An empire, rubs his wrist, says slowly, "Seize The little petal." The little seed Grows into a big flower of mystery-- Lo! 'tis the funeral pyre that ascends and declines The death-bed, braid and rebroad in the air Of young love;--and fresh with new leaves is the scent Of that which joins the earthly with the heavenly; And all must pass away--but this one scent Of familiar sweet, whereof the shore was rung, Will live in the hearts which Seynt Jamie gave That fragrant pleasure. "From the hour When I came home, drugged with wine, The lave had no wafted my love-note. So let me love, nor aught deride, Till time expirits life's paling wreath And my golden brow is worn With a waxen style. "She said, 'Do you dare Join in the wedding like a fool With a drunkard's stamp? Or take her in the trot, When the Stars their loom Draw her from the cliff And hide her in a flower And kiss her nose at me? 'Since she sleeps I must be wed, Alack! to what error! Love is no light ope On the madness-mistynes Of passion fed, But the kiss of a best and best Shall bind me to her het?' "Heark! there's the lyre! That amorous lute!"--His hand is on the string-- "Set me some song on it, Love, sweet Love, Of a starry night And a maiden singing:-- "'I will love on with the night, On and on, until she sleeps, Till the pain, Love, one flutter out, Drops on the lamp.'" The young man said; "Your heart is deaf to a song!" The young man's heart was dumb, He was sorry for his soul; He had given his soul to a sin His will was broken in the love, So great, so simple was the triumph, So great, so fine The wrong in what Love would touch on for him. "Love can sing in the blackness of the night, There is no more music," said the Poet, "With her dead body. The music must have a life, 'Tis a worship of Mystery In flame and mist and flame: Wet-burning, smoke-bearing flesh, And the shade of the tangled self: Great is the light of that flame." Love he held ======================================== SAMPLE 938 ======================================== You quell an earthquake by praising it, You dictate of Harmony a song, You make the Thunder wait for you. The Announcer never hints at ambition; He helps you to find your way. He would never strive to fix a place. He would never let you build up. He never says your applause Is the light of your street. The Announcer, like the Sun, sets, At noon his jumping children play, And hides to-night, behind a cloud, When his face shines bright in the street. The Drudent Judge stoops to raise his crown, As close below he lifts his voice, As if more loud the people hailed. He does not ask your health for it. He makes no parade of that head, But whirls on his narrow wheels, proud, His solemn wanderings for you. The stern Reverend Doctor lifts his leg, Like the children of the Sun. He is near the door, and sees His child's infirmity in the Sky. The broad feet lift with infuriation, And fling his mitigation in; The silence falls, and hiss still lingers, His doings, when his body was young. And fools who offer gold to persuade, Are poor Doctors; the great men of life, Are heroes, because they have known That the vanity of others is sport, And, in their praise, themselves to be He keeps his worth, but holds it in ridicule, He is alone, who at the self-same hour Declare himself most blest upon earth. He stoops to prove he is the best, By making believe the worst. The Mathematician, on each side, Curves figures as of saucy snarls; But he's not poor, that he confesseth, He is the poorest Postmaster, who waits For money, yet he holds in scorn The poor fool who has it; The beauties are sick and gone, The more bright, the poorer post, At last we see that beauty is but sun, A poor excuse, like the great sun's soup, For so many who should be broken. Proudly, without bluster, graciously He has borne the meagre mess, Of plundered folk, but held his place; For, despite of that, he makes it bright, And though that more illustrious hand, If at your world you change the measure, It will not change the measure, Of that magnificent, fairly triumphing pageant, Himself star or centre. He it is Who makes the motions that acclaim him King, All else, which are popularly praised , but measure, more obscurely, Is his fair kingdom which he hath espoused With loving spouse; he that is no king Is he who is too famous for no glory. "Almighty, albeit, who in a ring Rolls the catch of battle, on the green, He that can trapt the midnight tide, Which both its million edges draws, Then dart to either arm the brazen weight, Dips its brown touch to the wound. He, as on earth, in heaven, beside the moon, Haunts in his diversity, A sextant from his summer wave Will dart a mote; of course with wonderment. Sits the statue. Up he shakes his curdled hair, And sighs. I saw a mist arise Toward the ethereal darkness, Where the soul found a hold, And dragged the ghost that shivered and Lay by its wavy hem, Then, coming to the marbled Full-mooned train, Flew to the nude white moon, Fleeing as with wings. One after many moons To the living, tender In the fattened sense, Clut-critical, at the door, Upholding the sword-blade That so despoils it in taking, Rearing it for a aching, Thrice ten thousand years In the edifices On this wall, Dragg'd with carpet sublime, Undone from queen to king and decade. He, a slim churl, With bended head, On his own champeen, the big brother, A-gazing, Unclouded With all the panes, Without error Resounding like a bugle-bell, Comes to the giant Servant of his will, Hearing his antiphones Unminging the jongle joys Panic- ======================================== SAMPLE 939 ======================================== night panting heavily, clearly not having slept all that badly. Which would be something further up the list. But then that “leashing thing” catches me— which may be a matter of localization. Still, fuming around puddles, stray bodies of water, twenty miles outside Jerusalem, wasps flying every which way, I must be hot, really hot. Like a person, almost. I think I slept for twenty-four hours straight and never noticed. Which may be a mistake, or be so physical I can't remember, since I was older then, out of my body, shy, sort of shy, not particularly apt to notice things. Was just wearing something on a string and hearing it over and over again. It would seem that way now when it was just that, me, me, now and not another thing being me, here, somewhere and not myself. Or, if it was myself, it must have faded, a memory hierarchy gone awry, the hair not the issue again. <|endoftext|> "The Earthquake Hour", by Naomi Shihab Nye [Living, The Mind, Relationships, Home Life] Those memories crowd my living room. I have wonderful thick voices in those days. Our house is like a picture book: crazed owl; blinking twig; mermaid asleep on her brightness; twisting roots. There was never an earthquake in the Bay Area in her memory. Our house still rattles though she's nowhere in sight. My father's red house is quiet as a country home. There's another splintered rattle, rustle, then the house jumps up its vertical axis. As a child, she would fly into my grandfather's arms, swallow his ashes. I carry my mother's words and her kindnesses. They are quiet and conciliatory, forgotten like the owl and the roots. How much does she know, the mother, the way her heart shuts, hidden in the rotted bones of a once pleasant oak, a shied thane. The story is always the same, the script of events repeating itself. How do I find a quiet space to pore through old photographs of siblings and uncles? I have the brothers and sisters in my life, but she, the beautiful earthquake, has not brought them back. <|endoftext|> "The Sixth Sense", by Naomi Shihab Nye [Living, The Mind, Religion, Islam, The Spiritual] That has a face like the inside of a mouth, the vision itself, but with no mouth, a goopy on the eyes, a hole where the eyes might have rested. The dim room where I sank down to sleep with a lame heel and woke to an emptiness beyond my own imagining, there was no room to see the miraculous room where a tall man in a cloak filled with snow brought it about. I wondered what room I'd wake to now. In the early dusk, the sky thickened and snow lay deep, a man sat with a long tail at the edge of the wood, staring off at the empty air. I wondered if that great room that stayed shut during the jihad, before the imam set it on fire, he didn't want us disturbing his prayer. As for the seagull's yellow eye, its color was a new way to have of fate, a hint of silence, a freshness; the ocean waves always were bright and remote. But I left that place, the seagull's yellow eye now a bright island on the ice, a mountain leading down to a dark desert where no life is, and the rest of the world a million years away. The seagull's flight across the sky made no difference in spite of it all. The yellow light I felt, how I'd like to be white and enveloped by a shining feeling, then let that fade. <|endoftext|> "What It's Like to Be a Nakano Barber", by Naomi Shihab Nye [Living, Growing Old, Activities, Jobs & Working, Nature, Trees & Flowers, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy] I can still locate Nakano in my neighborhood, and my breath is in its little twitches when I call in Nakano. That's where it would be easy to meet the ======================================== SAMPLE 940 ======================================== } Father John Burroughs was a New Englander and one of the earliest fur manufacturers in the U.S.A. He got his start in 1754 when he founded the firm of Burroughs, an apprentice-made partnership. He learned his trade from the hand of his father who had proven himself in the fur trade, as a tobogganer and furrow setter. After John's death in 1784 he ran the business alone, never having been able to turn a profit. He ran for Governor in 1856 on the Reform Party ticket, and received 4,000 votes out of a total of 14,000 cast. <|endoftext|> "To the Poet Buried", by Edgar Allan Noble [Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, Class, History & Politics, Money & Economics] The poplars line the boundary wall Twined with its hard upper bark; The spiced linden blossom shines On the yellow plums and cherries In the orchard, rich with prune, A century since the barrier was built, To the purpose of the wall. We could not wait; In our winds of breath we struck, we laughed To see men starve and heat; By land and waters, men and moor, And race and colour, black and white, We came, we saw, we conquered, we rocked The stately pines, we heard the wire, We gave to the poppies three. We have forgotten the service sweet, How simple people live; We have not heard the war-drum beat To the drum or the jack, And have not heard for a thousand days How this land of Hope and Reform Sends abroad her boys to die That the nation may forget. But she goes on—the land is strong— Strong as in years that are not years, Widespread and great as when our fathers fought In days that are forgotten. She will never abate the will Of man, nor cower before the spear; For God with His mortal war-strophes lets For the age to come. <|endoftext|> "Vanity of Hymn", by Edgar Allan Summervisser [Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Spring, Trees & Flowers, Weather, Winter, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy, Poetry & Poets] My Autumn and 19Th is the only one who writes poems, And yet they never arrive in view,They never harm nor aid my fruitless pen Or pens of friends for to agree.The colors are all low, I suppose, On the shadiest day of the year,And the light is not for me but For you and the Blarney's pannier.So in order that I may not escape From this low, lifeless town, I pray You, Sir, who have that trouble should fix My leash for I never can go. <|endoftext|> "Cedar Belted", by Edgar Allan Summervault [Living, Relationships, Home Life] The half worn-out sparrow threads the ear With paling carks about the fall, And then the crow about the cygnet approaches, And all at once comes Mrs. Jones. <|endoftext|> "Eistumnus, or The Wintering". by Edgar Allan Schoolson [Nature, Fall, Winter] Winter's dreary darkness hides the year, But leaves describe it in all they meet. The soft white snow drifts long enduring lyres With secrets of the stillness; the yetting lands In timid beauty mark the Alpine path; Vital sunlight dawns with earthly jars, And seas as icy make the evening sea. The woods shut in winter wind, Hemlock towers in sea of yellowness; The brave eagle nears the horizon; The shallow stream his broad wings bends Floods to the river in his feathery way. For each of us leaves whilhed beneath This changing fall; a snow leper shuns the light, In rain or snow or snow and sleet. <|endoftext|> "Descent Path", by Edgar Allan Newfelt [Living, Nature, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Mythology & Folklore] The stalactites, violets, and arsae bloom, And still in unfinished zigzag lines The serpent sticks out his knotted fern. And then the daisies and the spotted weeds Move languidly, oblivious of the spring That freezes ahead. But in the heat below, below the base, The heart gets slower. The pulse gets ======================================== SAMPLE 941 ======================================== Multiplex of eyes and hands Which at first were one, O elephant With my bullock bovine, were Each made rather, as I thought, One than was to be, which did Differ in colour, shape, and bone From my bullock bovine, through Change of place and sun, and moist, and dry Tumbled off from my bullock bovine Down to the O of his eyes, O elephant! Your old sorrow which is never quite Just as though the world were not So big, and your old wonder which is Even when you wonder what it is that it is Changing you of your own free will, which is Making you realise, which is Making the world your verse in a different way Through your beastliness when the animal is Leaving his thick watery shadow to cover you For your beauty that is even as none Knowing what any thing is like and what is Making you understand of your beastly wonder That you who be have a rhythm of your eye Having your will to be glad For what the under thing is made of. Your sense of beauty and its pearl Comparing with the hours of the day You have the beauty of the wine, Of the bee and the bird for wings, Of colour and cress and stone, Though the eyes were of your work undone, Your hands the first grew weary and tanned, Yet did you live your day by the beauties And of your labour of your feet, O cow! And wherefore you have the sun and shade And no sooner have you taken in that You have learnt to love them, and of their goings And coming and dying, which is like The living green-seeing living life of you. This is the circuit of your eye, O cow. What are these eyes seeing? Are you happy Being thus seen, or can you rule your state With unended transformation, O cow? I shall begin by looking round your milk-white Bud, the settled place of your milk that flows Like a brook through your hill, your cow, your droghed- back breath, to find now where every thing you see Is made out of something solid as stone, And every moving thing and every song Is of a different kind from what it was, And yet are one thing. And therefore they are As birds are, and they can be everywhere, The busy web of the winter and the spring, the wandering things, and the so long-lasting rain that heals them all From the wind that plays on the round green grass. There must be many a lonely cow With small litter round the den And winter standing still in stone With her duster wild about her head With her eyes like the green-rose buds That turns, turns and shimmers every Inkling, white, purple, gold and green Sitting like a newly spun large thread And laying steady for her years, As she looks down with her horn between As she looks up with her horned eye. Then down from the hill with wild eyes Came the litter of the quiet one With its cry like the cry of a doe That turns, turns and fades in the sunlight As it lies by the road side. Down the stream of its sound Thumpth the tired bulls and the calves Not under the grass but across And the old ones too that turn and turn Dancing in the fall of their life To the ringing music of the gut, The old ropes of the pillar and the Stairs and ladders and the last blue Ceilings and tall stalks of the grass. I am ashamed of this house and this cow, This path and this milk, O wife, my wife That of your life could drive a man like me To keep alone. When the tongue is hard and Toil of the lips is no more then will Love with its eyes like new wine Drive out the eyes of sense with the rest, And dull with love's body then Take the work of the body of the milk Back from the house with the old great doors Opening out, grey-winged and stout As though with wings. You would never have it so, You, whose senses melt by daylight Crowned with living gold, no eye Could see all the winter of your lair With the cold river running through it. I for one will leave your pasture And your only cow for its milk, For in that you will ever be Beautiful as when first you came out On your power course, white and swaying Like the milk you turned to cheese. As you were, as when you came in, Bl ======================================== SAMPLE 942 ======================================== "Ah!" he says, "my mad pea-brick, Why should you rave and act so wild?" "At this rotten, rotten article, Sir," "A rotten article?"--and so My mesuraco hat me down. Yes, I'd bless my gent gentles and my fences If they would do the like of them. For then I'd throw my last gasp at the door; And the porter would hoist me, and have me dead Within an hour. But these are idle dreams. The day comes fain; The mother-safer the better. All wayfarers and all pilgrims are dumb. And now, I've said all I shall say. The moon above my alma mater Sits like a wicked, fat candle blown. A gipsey fike's my cap at the gate, I don't know my backbone nor my color; And who'd count my Nigerian toes On that still-ripening piece of slate? The mastheads shall be dry, so I am told, And sell for one short shilling apiece; And long ago, the commodore's shoes Are drawed in the church porch in the church With bells and all the pinky moons To smoke at the base of the steeple. And then,--I seem to shambles not Among the dandelions of Poickshire,-- To play as God Almighty designed, At tript tops with my Mr. Chavez; And play the packet with several others, And heel the pinky pieced sirloin with the rest, For handkerchiefs and black aprons, With Mr. Gracson at my neck, And Mrs. Naylor at my arm, And the pigeon God send us again! May the great animal start, and run, And ever in the watering hole, To send to every pore in the body Sciratas mixt with the body's bliss, And, at its finer, weaker, leaner part, The throbbing heart that beats so free, The babe in arms and the babe at play With the crimson lass and the damsel, And the green-gauged late rose of the grove, To the main course of a Prince and the trumpets play, At banquet hours, in the twilight's dismal haze. Ah, very good! And shall it never be That I shall have a list of these she sends The chair she doth not remove? Who are the parent and the parent-heir, So near the very head, she could pick it up And twist it in her hand: The crow, from off the rustling heath, crow-call, No larger can, Loves a wreck of the cormorant's leather cheek Among the mangle of moths and of open day A ray-song for the evening, and thence Unbent, And to bed a recess, So like the needful earth her face was and her heart. But the cruel mistress of my heart Hath no reproof for her aquiloque; From the soft Spring the ripe Summer and the warm Occasion of their growth She calls it task, Nor heed her folly in giving or spiking its lingoing, But out of her sacred self took it, My everlasting bridge (Scored with all the motherly gestures and strings of signs Profaned since with the fire of this heart's divvies) Holds in honor both parent and child, Offering them one common sacrifice. In the house, each day from the bed where he sits There is suffering, the blight, the forget-me-not; The bridegroom sits clothed in the flesh in its days And lads their bonnets with tears and hot cross-testaments. These are the results of the husband's griefs Reaching home and regaining her; In the meadow a harvest In the table; And in the linen room, about to give birth, This my high passion, That the father of the table-born heir With all the toilsome, household feasts, Is pure in our eyes. Well-faced their loss, be-mitched, have their full Tidings. And I shall be well-faced, Not in good part with my dear Vi[^le-girne] Not in good part, And upon my thighs hang frost, Not upon my neck, nor thighs, To have run, to have scraped and to have stripped; And with tongue, with lip, with mouth have eaten, And thought ======================================== SAMPLE 943 ======================================== -Luigi, this is the straw The devil takes, To afflict me most; So, good-bye! Sweet! He is my late-to-be, Ricord within Our bed; Comes as 'The Saviour', Coaxing me To help him more: Be kind, I pray! How hideous hides An' how they climb, Billabong-like, To 'pearage, I mind; Is that right, Yes, 'percy-like, I knaw a something Are a pair Can lure 'em to 'coup An' frown it up, But to dim-fu' rubs them down! An' like Christ's new 'man (Ev'ry time, no matter what) He ain't ou oot to 's abrolt With a play-mote's play! Tho' I do allow, for aught in reason, That a bloke's a bloke, and the sex's mistake, An' doubts at night an' in the morning, The things we rub up the winklest, We come a-wagging like Chairman. But a good-fux-in'-saire, One bloke is made that's unhitched and sick, And the (re)runs that creep, Just a sort of a thing in film, Shootin' a mine, Too bad, an' it is no whit sweet, To be in love wot they do in Bumpo! Tho' I says 'I'm not listenin', Tho' I does a number o' 'em, He'd but a' come out on a driv'in' To a sport in the street, I'll own it on the leeward side o' a pint, An' put 'em on the sill; The snow last night was runnin' On my back, an' I swear the snow's li'kin', On my back, I's ticklin' off the fear that's in it Like the gardener telling the loof, The girl of Loughlinn! Why you shouldna see a turnip temper, A feller wi' a tail that's nin again, Cut up some ankles, an' call him a shound That's o' de food, I jing! It strikes me quite as a waste o' gawk, The dairs, the hooks, the tongues That fights an' fights, In whalew's a skin, The shanks, the backs, the nads, Whistle o' a souse. A few weeks since, I felt a rake On my thigh, like, with a scream, An elephant to make him tremble, A lanky prig, I thought, A walley on a break. Now I'm thinkin', now I'm trippin' The prig's under the bed, What prig thinks he's won, I says, An' shares a share o' dat? I is, a book, and a book it is, As sharp as any book you are, An' all dis permalick crook, A rooster, jay, or pelican To pluck de peevish feathers An' rakk, or snoot, or roar. And, ez I thinks, I loves the more An' more, as de olar back, (On the bed she's knockin', she's amang,) I's donny gin, as I's donsin', I's make a breed dog 'fo' the fo' De fosse gig, When some poor bastard's rowin' about, With a rope or a rope and a no, Dis dought wi' he'll chink his rowan Or he'll drap his draps o' de soap box, Or he'll splint his tole or he'll fynch Dat owd flannen when de poore mear come, He's laughin' at some froot o' cow chuck He thinks dey's but gelert fancy lob, If he speaks o' clubs an' how. But he's feearzin' at all de time, For he's richt wrong in de cood, He's put some schet on a dooth sea, An' I mus' tell you dat, yesterdun I's peard de preef o' spoole, You've axed me ter take it up yo ======================================== SAMPLE 944 ======================================== It might have been my turn to ride For that swan-song pass through Israel-- The cross and trembling on the rocks, The memory of the long drown-- And in the white of the damp south seas I would be leprosy free. Better to be sleeping Where the heads of men have lain, The sleep that takes no dreams in rest And a wasted faith in all the gods And the comradeship that in dreams is sweet, Than to sleep on in the hollow of a grave 'Wailing the dead that are dead!' I shall forget the hour when first we met, The evening of our meeting, The words of love we uttered softly, The dreamy mood and dreamy eyes, And fingers like the thawed snow That on your wrist lie; You shall not ever more be mine by blood Or my heart's one offering; There is no stain on these white brows of mine, These rose-wrought pearl-maked dream-lilies, That ever sundered at all From any taint of self or sin. For ever, Eve-milk narcissus, Dropping thy sleep-coulld sips; We have drunk of God-spears smeared with clay, We have drunk the blood of Him, And He, because He is beauty, And for its heat safe kept Nursed our spirit-thrones for a while, Safe sifted through, In the cold of Christ's Death; Nourished from His lips with many a kiss His heart which, like your lily, blent A love for sacrifice and for the brows of kings. When on the sands the woodland waves, And the sea wilds our heart has known, The dim Sea-maids by the Spirit of the Sea, And if death and life weigh light or far To you or me; With a thought we will say 'twas well In that starry isle a maid Sitting there in her mane of men, She said--I am the Night, the Night, She said--I am the Sea, the Sea, She said--I am the Night, the Night: 'Twere well in that starry isle, where I sit, With the oil of his head, my Night, the Night In the white gold of the ocean wave, Sit, God within the wave, the Night: She has made her gift of man's life: God will lighten with one ray of light the night. There is nought in the hand of the dead That is red with the winter of the years, But thereon is mouldering all, Dead and dry, the sleep of the heart, The lolling of the hair, the teardrops falling, For her and for him that stands one to-day, Dead as the heart that loves not, the breast that pants, The shame of the years, the rage of the gods, The sleeping God for the loveless years, The tottering of knees on the brown mould; God never dreamed in the hands of the living, Only in the eye of her now and of him. Thou knowest, my eyes are from tears And have called back the silent years That have shaken courage and bared The decay of time and spirit so That they wait not for the heart of the breath But go their way unbroke; They know the silence of the hearts, Nor care if a word should say That he went with her and cried to her Till the sound shook on them; Only the good fruit of time, if one Speaks, saves ever. Or ever; Shall they speak with fingers cool, Warm fingers that knew too well Thirst and the chill of toil, And the kiss of water falling From the golden crocuses, If any say of her the while "Who was the man that she kissed, Said, when all she had strength to say, "That love is a thing and death is a stone, So let the earth bury us both." Oh, God, shall she ever say As she drinks the medicated wine And swallows her heart's nearly black, Tears a bird from some obscure lee Between head and wing? God, shall she ever speak thus? Shall she ever think of him In the sky, if the stars loom small, God, who made the sun That it light on the day, Or hear in the wind As it pauses and rises, Beneath the vast Rising of the sun, Breath ======================================== SAMPLE 945 ======================================== drownd, in life's even glance after noon. See, yon pale towers of yonder city, That seem in tempest to sigh; Where, left alone in morn's prime, The drops of last night's rain Lie, and the bare walls seem to go Crimson from their own tears--but ye Are all so strange,--all so strange! Time had stamped them with his daemons, Mingled with blood and straw, To bear, like some fearful night, A spirit, that at dawn began An owl's bloody song, Muttering over howls, by parts and powers Scaling through the face of death. As the hum-drum of the daily round To wail the drains and homes of toil, She stood, self-fed ere the glare Of the dawn of day Shine half so strange to day, As the old faces that they seemed, Old and blurred with long life's scath. And I watched a dream's face-- That time earned its "hail stone;" And nought should it be proud of That kind Heaven found, What time I sought the sunrise skies To have a birth of fire In my prays and prayers I waked; and what I beheld That day we cannot name Was not the face I saw. She sprang from earth with passing wave, A wraith of night she seemed, Chilled to our sight, and she Trod out her gloom Like something that had been and was Conceived a dream and formed, Then slipped from being's grasp; Then slid from sight and to surprise To live again in me. How should I wake her with the day? How trace back her flight To this strange morning's air, And this dumb hour which brings The lark that trills for me? Ah! where first had she trod The mist-wrapt Tower of Song, The zigzag path by will Her trembling feet have trod, She need not tell me more. Waxed pale with slowth, and grey in wears Of wandering Thought not mine, Lured to the tottering towers Of the Aventique marts By a flame, that blew, which saw There 'unbound hair of women And set the doves to mew In choiring Raven, wheretheir comes Or high Fable where they 'ave Blossom at dawn. I unbound hair of woman-world From the rests of thought in Raven In Folly's Chanticlet halls; I 'lumed the rows in God's great House That would not close for me; From glory came forth the reason Of Life's unfathom'd heav'n, My song-procession, of The fleeting, the advent'rd, The lie, the spotless word, The promise, whose concept Is Eternity. What was in me of verse, What was grown in me of song, Which in her, her Image, lay At the last but once Merely to be a vexed and cold Gazing matter of the sight To which all sense was dead, For I had been of blood By yearning thought to love, But of fountains water; I had cherished Fancy's dreams, And lain by the fruitless wicket Of Reason's gate; And I had praised the Lord, and sworn To Him all-except-all, And then I lay by Death's The easiest of sermons. I had beheld as in a dream The faithless penalty pass By Death, then drunk his draught; I had marked the gradual ways Whereby Faith falls fainting; I had prayed to marrow-bone The topmost spires of fate, And came to this. All is in youth! All is in youth! Shadows darkly and brightly The east has burnt as gold; Up the blue lamplight of Heaven The pilgrim takes his ease As though a duteous star Moved ever with the rustle Of moon-and star-light on the mountains, Or the south on night. All is in youth! All is in youth! Long must be the waiting-room, The last stand of the homespun suit Beneath the snows, or in most of the best Decorated with brocade, Whose lownesses will the traveler seize To tide him over Till he shall stand in the light of youth's Unquailing confidence, Gather up a world to ======================================== SAMPLE 946 ======================================== his cotton toes mascot of him as a child. In the textbooks there’s a passage about an 1897 race riot in LeRoy and you can tell I know what I'm about to say because I’m thinking back to the firebombing of 1919 when they were fighting over a railroad track and the saluki barking at them from a building high on the edge of a timber street and my grandma running out of the woods to see if she could find her dog who had been scooped up by boys in a plank of wood and thrown into the fire until the dog’s body was consumed and he was no longer recognizable. The blacks were told not to duel with the police but did anyway whoever it was the police the salukis and the niglets who blew each other’s eyes out among the burning hulks. Why is there no mention of the city or the year except for poems that mention it and are collected in a box of the famous “Night” or the fact that he gained 18,000 miles by ship, train, and stage and lived to be old in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles? The streets, the wharves, the alley cars and the exuberant niggers? The movement from the north to the south as the railroad and the city expanded. In a desert with the sand moving through the city and the tracks everybody was and is walking their beautiful wives and children down the street and talking about the parades and fireworks and how many foos with ends cut after their use into little golden candies? The money fell through and the moneylender turned the loans into parables, those black orchid and gold hyacinths that twenty years later all the black people recited their beautiful funerals in front of the black orchid and gold hyacinth flower I grew up with in a cave all its colors and away from its ways. Mr. Harper was a beautiful looking man and all the ladies smiled and held their mirrors when they made him a cup of tea. Even the upturned women whose cheeks were pale in the air what he paid for their pleasure was a mirror and not a window for all the wind moving through their pale skin. The beautiful in the mirror always look at themselves and make themselves ugly and Mr. Harper looked at himself in the mirror and saw the beautiful baldspot and he looked in the face of the one who was not there that day and said Mr. Harper look at yourself in the mirror and heard a tap on his shoulder and he turned and smiled Mr. Harper turn off the water and drink the orange juice I’ve only got a nickel for the pleasure of my journey from the glass ceiling up to the floor where I lost my money to the odyssean. Mr. Harper I hope you learned about the mind of a child from the leeches with their grinning faces the moist museums and their glass horns cannons of plunder. Mr. Harper look at yourself in the mirror in a mental hospital room the laughing birds hanging up on the wires painted black and the myocardial inflow with an oxygen flush as Mr. Harper lifted his foot away from his aorta and said Mr. Harper I want to die Mr. Harper I wish I could disappear Mr. Harper I will memorize the road to the curb and then go on home Mr. Harper I am ready. <|endoftext|> "My Mother", by Damnye Marshall [Living, Growing Old, Relationships, Family & Ancestors] I Mothers are strange. I believed, from the time I was old enough, that mothers raised sons to be sure. The earliest years of a child weren’t bad, though I had days skeletal and languorous. Scavenger and tow-headed rat gurgling a canal through a house with its lid in a fixation. Wind whistling at an unsheathed portable alarum. A sheet of thunder curdling with itself. Tobacco here in the window, spilled with a cigar on a platter, sent frozen till the first rain. By age two or three, I was strong enough to get out the magnifying glass and water my father’s thumb whose eyelids were rather close to sloppiness. When he was quite good, I set out to kill ======================================== SAMPLE 947 ======================================== Tribulation and death, a soul, Less the soul than the body; and I, Though mine the harlot spouse of Bathy Coming, Know I how sweet the diadem that doth fit The head of the House. My body, see, I came Through the dungeon of great Caesar Augustus With Cara, my daughter, my dear one, my sun-- The sum of the sum of love. The rain, the sorrow of the rain, see I thought Was the far sign of my course, but 'tis 'neath My feet is the gate of Paradise And I will not go the final frontier Where I might come to be alone with my one Love. If he dies, I do not suffer, nor weep Or lamentation or long in accounts, But know I had the sun to meet it. That is the last song which, with the sun Set, and all the rivers sunk and died, Went singing to the sea, And raised their mermaids from the sea to see How that might be. The song of that is over now, That is dead And did live Above the waves And flowed to the sea. The joy of that is dead And fades and is gone. He poured his love into her dead face The flood did squirt From death to life, from life to death, O what was it, love or death, Beautiful love of glad loveliness. She died--for all his sake--to make This world a sweeter thing. I pray you think of him For half an hour An hour long By some warm corner Your eyes grow bright with tears Who is the fairy that fells and scoops My heart with song, Echoing from the lattice To the south, from the west, from north to east, Love sings? Who is the fair who drops her head With folded hands, who waits with tender tone For the fallen hour? Who is she who seems to have flown Down with the child on its breast, Her small, soft face on its breast, By the veil that veils her face from me? Who is she who is weeping now For the lost tune That grows in her throat with all the stillness? What is this maid using her tears so silently As a rose-leaf That has lost its mother-seed To wave in the sunlight like a twig Of withering timber? Oh, you who have heard Time's bared explains His wood-words, Look at these brown eyes And tell them silver-cold As is their maze of mist. These blushes,--whilom From the mother of light, Though they and she are one, Tell her "Slow, slow death is slow"-- Look how she smiles, Dead and cold, On the blue-dished fruit and the airy fancies The sunset takes, She, this meek maiden, She who has slept Full many a month, the sky, the river, Must break her silence if she knows love's need, And lips are lips, To hear and kiss! Is the maiden broken and not I? The child of love does not know Her heart's high cry, And all her beauty's whiter than death; The soft good eyes make me wild To see her stir, And when she laughs with tinted air From sweetly reddened hair, I am wholly overcome With love's love, and cannot keep still, Though I am hot For both of us and sleep. P.S.--Why do you drop your heavy eyelids And have a swoon in the sun? Your black eyes show that you have lain Upon the marshes That ringed dead winter's eye; The winter bear leans over you there, The winter tree is close by, And the cold rock has spattered The polished stones of this ledge. You would not say that your hair was mottled, Because Your feet are black and unco plucked, And the white work boots that you wear Are as black as ivory, Not blue as the gules of rack By whose green leaves you will evince Your strife in the work-day. So let your soul say What you are! Work is the thirsting leather, All through the frost of time, To feed the shining shrine. The lean, lean winter slayer, To dress the winter confesser Shall not be hard. The hungry flame goes hungrily after bread And rides the dawn. O, haste the day when bread has ======================================== SAMPLE 948 ======================================== And now we're on the back nine, Of capitalism, Not satisfied with holding all Heaven in trust For our blue-money investors, Though they reap more gold than we can spend, For living and for dying, We have the satisfaction of knowing we have been Garden-ennobled from early times, That we are heirs of a mercy once shown, And heirs of another, whose heart, Soise pleased, turned its clear light to us, And the delight of seeing it shown. I have no knowledge that questions Of this sort have ever been Substantive in the minds of the writers From whom I have taken my inspiration, But I have an inspiration:--do not seek, Let on the answer to go to those ten, From those who are a thousand times more Wiser than all their erring ancestors, Who did not move us as they moved, But with their glowing education, And the living language which they bore To the young West Like a thousand tongues More eloquent than all the tongues beside, Though without the art. <|endoftext|> I have a friend Who has a beautiful garden And delicious orchard And a pilot spirit. But in that marvelous vessel Which holds him, I have heard from him that he Has made no play At all Except to eat And drink. But yesterday he Sat alone in the cabin To contemplate The sea and the bay and the conversation Which began between us And is finished now. I sat across from him At table And saw, far as he moved, That the caravan moved And the ice-ridge By Gosh Was the outer border Of his journey. The cottonwood trees By the native village With gold leaf Are in the orchard Have produced A quince-production. A tart fruit. It is a lunch-stop For picture people And opera singers. (The nightly troubadour Has begun his quadrilles And linen female eyes.) And the smoke From the edging services Is drawn along the return, The depot For the railway. From Sutherland Land To Coatsea You'll find a sirloin being Eating and eating them To the quickness. Or is it A sirloin train Singing across the coal? I've a feeling That he now hears the whips Of an angry fork, And the bellying string Of the half sirloin's sorrow On each tender morraine. And the plate flies As he counts it to bits. I may be wrong, but that Doesn't mean much to me. I cannot think it could be right That he were left alive To wonder at the diet, As he counts the strips Of fat along the ground Of his animal "favor." But I could be wrong, I am no sager. I make no confession there of preferring. Not I. I confess that I have never seen that Is at all favorable to the buffoon. But I confess that I love him As an animal Is to the woods and waters. And so you may look in vain for more photographs. You never had the face That you sported at the fete On March 1, or the glass Which is defective. The table is always best. At the Clinker tunnel, I may add to the good starting place, But I'm not a Quaker. But I have a tomb Of statistics which the lady At the Wendy's bar Has noticed gleaming on the window, And I should have a ready story For it If my dear friend were to wear it In his trousers. The second man for which I commend Is the collie dog. He, too, is a pocket-man And a sweet dog, And his actions are amusing In their roughness. He knows it's bad To fret and to be nervous. He has a fright, And his eyes are twitching, But I feel he's very loyal To his kind. HONORAR! to orchid-courses, And orchils and blow-blows! My orchiles are the people That benefit from their hours. I've the venerable blood Which is not a taproot dull That will not find the surface Of solid eating, but breaks From word to word, tasting Aspics see the sprout Of things. Yes, I am surprised. To think that it is the west winds ======================================== SAMPLE 949 ======================================== face’s existence that some makeup is or isn’t a facade evolve’d not stasis a huge success does for a skinner I can’t pick which life I hate more cosmetics or sun but I did say I am here for you to hold you don’t have to ask <|endoftext|> "Burning Bridge", by Emre Can it’s late at night.I come back to the abandoned wood here in the center of a forest that spreads at least as far as the eye can see from where I rest headplanted in the sand adrift and powerless to the changing world where birds hide in thicket as they did before I came The scream of a chain or the snap of a goat’s leash drowsing silent in the night I carry on board sunken ships from where they sailed out here cold and dark in the eyes while the high beams of the sun reflect them in a slick of sweat the sodden trees where they stood when it was light the great sun rips through the white archipelago that a life of thirst the deeper you go the deeper the flames spread among the glimmering sand white torches that could light the sun and the flames cover everything in a day and a hope and the sooner we are done with this dance and that memory the sooner we can eat what we’ve got and sing as we leave the sinking bridges the bigger they grow the bigger our homelands in a day and a cry the eyes grow dim and soon, out in the river in the shadow of the sandhills of the world The burn rate is incredible this fire that we cannot fight just a thought that we could start anywhere and grow as it does becoming the moving to land the floating that never lands deeper than the teeth of a bear It comes again, it comes again, sinking in and growing with the sand until the water won’t go far can’t hold a wave anymore cannot hold a reef as the day lights flare and pale and day turns toward a sunset that lasts longer than a life cirrus clouds appear as the lights flare and the horizon blinks red on the island of the mind where a rope is all woven and strung out over the Pacific as the islands did in the day of oblivion where the spark of light ranges from the summit to the sea as the mind ripples with day like the south wind before oblivion on their coastlines of the world on their slopes of books a last hut on a ridge reassembling the city over there a city of dreaming just as it was to sink in and out of night to float in through the high fogs to the wild ranges of blue for a fix to flash in and out of the grazing of birds and an endless book that was meant to host just as it was with stilled fires and the long trails that wind with us over the mist of groves and open houses observant of the book as its light came from the endless night where we stay the old ways out of the stillness and stir with their presence in the breath that is stillness where you can move the way you move through your own story passing through some brass dial on a face that teaches that light must go out of the light when the dark goes in to teach the same lesson You don’t have to throw yourself in the deep with the rest <|endoftext|> "From the Bottom of the New World", by Emre Cano [Living, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Home Life, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Religion, Other Religions, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, War & Conflict] or, A Child Calls from the Fields, 1914-18, a painting she would have liked, she’d call herself or the home she wouldn’t have she wouldn’t have the home her father built one brick of red brick vaults above another empty farmland in a sea of cottonfields before a gate gates she could walk through into the village of mud or her dad’d do it for her a man’s voice of the woman whose shadow as she walks the field grows ======================================== SAMPLE 950 ======================================== You are a blest and happy sight! When I behold thee from my sight, My heart will shudder at the sight; The luxuries that strew The path of man's travelling ways Have but a faint and shadowy birth, And there are times when those of them That do not tarry far, Are but the fairy-created dreams Of little slumbering mist that hide The truth, and naught of truth they seem. Yet once I saw them shine, and I, O wicked youth, that saw them first, With my unripe and trembling sight, Worthy the light of Heaven, the beams Of a pure soul, bright on the path Of a good soul, are yet awake, Not even in sleep's deep, deep rest, The calmness of a sleep that sleeps not Till death, to greet our Saviour leaves us Then the light, that has outlived even its own Infinite years on its lonely track, Was but of the pure and simple birth The sound, the very voice of the Eternal Guide To the blind flocks upon their blessed hill. As lovely is the Lamb of God, who went To proclaim His message of deliverance Up to the doors, the gates of the strange, strange city, As the young flowers of spring, that first, With eternal eyes, on the virgin lawns Gleam, or opening, slumber in their May, For that redeeming dawn on the hills. In the dawn, and the morning, and the dawning light That pierced with the light-giver's beams the gloom Of the sepulchre, the morn, of a dead world; As the palm-tree and the swan are of the sea; As the swan's white wing, that bathes its wing, Round the waves, ere the white swan ascendeth, Floats from the foam in music, down; And the shrill shell, the far-off mountain's rise In the calm light, like music on the deep. For when, ere yet the earth has had time to drench Its riven springs with rain, the heavens have bid Their voices through the hollow of its slumber; And all day long their singing power is wailing; As the throat of the mute bird is grinding That within the cavern of the cradling tree Through the long night-writhen months is speaking, As the subtle silence of the hidden sea Is listening to the night's murmuring and murmuring. I have no joy of life, my brother, And I have no sorrow of life: With no companion joy, nor any to share My sorrow of life; And life in vain with companions is bitter, Nor should be saved by stedfast hope or doubt. Oh life, with all the troubles and wars, In all the turmoil of anguish! Life, the slave of swine, who long in vile passion For others' gold, as mine for degradation. Life, the great lie, the giant's gallop, Life, the priest of death, the idolatry Of man, the warrior's fearful laughter. Life! for on thee the hunter is enslaved, That his soul burns out with hatred, That from her strings he clings fast, Fond and selfish, a wavering soul, Vile-willed, unphilosophic, Unstable as Earth with her shifting plan, Wide-glozed the radian Of thoughtless, unwrit, Or seductive loom; And still is Life The name of all the deeps of death. And the day begins its mead, And the cool green gatherers come in; And daily, in narrow orchards, The strong suns say, "Chyee, Who shall give me light?" And the East, with branches bent, Dewprints the everlasting yellow, That makes an angle at its rising. And through the glory and the storm Of light, and the fear of it, The great earth of long ago Bursts in a passionate desire; Like a soul by one who harps it And bids it sing in heaven, In a still, deep ecstasy. And the soul, they have drunk of the wine, Of life and the Infinite, And one with them is the soul of me; In that elfinitine heart-touch, The whirligy that they knew, The sense of music is living in their stars, As with the air to touch The symphony of the dawn; They are worlds, soul ======================================== SAMPLE 951 ======================================== -faultering earthbound thigh, Paled in sincerity, quickened, Transfigured, manifold, Horrid! as viper-slaughter. Behold, red blood drenches the broad body And with it pours a torrent through my limbs, Keen as an arrow, startling as flame; The goddess raised her left foot up and palyg'd it With silent force. The tears that scarr'd my eyes Sparkled on my legs, she smil'd, chuckle'd, chilbl'd. The goddess with slow steps moving through the crowd To her opposite wound her right foot in my form As if to press my heart with kisses, and cry'd. O Helen, I cannot tell my breast These kisses, save you heal my heart, and tell My heart, how I may have service, devotion, Of love and adoration; and touch it In its all-destroying flame with the hapless Poor arrow, and bear it back to its king, Who by the force of love shall own me his, And with me rule as a mother, as a wife. My soul is all horror, and, if it see you Shivering in the glow of your tempestuous spring, 'Tis terror and hope and love of you That stabs me. But my days can with the leaves Harden no more, my springtide, my hope of peace! If you could, O goddess, but touch my breast From this branch, I know the love I mean to feel, 'Twould make me bright, if you could, yet not reveal My, for concealment, my all-loving secret. Between the huge sea-buffers of black And-black-dUSTY stones, twin-bolted be With-wide-throated breath, that hard cold air, Whither, O, whence the sweet fresh-breathed wind! No telling where, no telling ever where; An endless muffled eddy, mottled deep With darkness, grac'd With horror, and the awful forms of the dead Who look as if their grisly work was done And did it for love, Pierc'd by the single bar of Day on his throne, Till silence bite his sense, and fill his eyes With awfulness, till he feel death, and die; Then howl and crack his sacred head: does the wind With his organs, madden? Does the moon? You give me too much. No, you go too little. I want the rest Of my life, not more, Nor give me back the joy I have lost, My joy of my youth; That, give me that, and so give me more; My long happy youth, That has diredly met its fall, O Death! dead Age, Death! 'Tis said, to-night, The shades in their deep mansions fare; That's to-night; and what say you? Crown of the crowns, or carking of the grave? You give me too much. No, not so, but as much as any one The ghosts that tread the night can keep. You take away all my joy, and all my pain, And how can I but give you? And wherefore, Why, that's accept'd for one, to be yours, To be your son in your only place of rest, In your dim prison, moth- laid, in the cave That you call sweet, but I, never so, Shall greet you with an old sweet smile. It may be That, as a son, To his mother's tomb I do incline (Too much inclined to her), To take your lot; but, if mother mine, I want, To be your daughter, in your kin For a sentinel, just waiting love's rage With a mother's heart- throb; who shall say, Mother has not maddened son and daughter With the rage of marriage? I, nathless, There lies the basin. Now is there nothing But the beautiful there? Nothing more. There lies my brown hand. O good heavens, what, no pain? O do you think A woman it is such, when she has lost All the sweetness she had at first, and all The bliss, till she had found him, grown so dear, And her eyes rov'd full of melancholy And the old sweet season of sorrow To be ready to lose all, while her hand Is stretched, as if it would for the rest be cloy'd, And sighs press on ======================================== SAMPLE 952 ======================================== ; He spread about him loose, inuentive phrase, A skeleton of argument, long and dry, A rumbling sermon, and a jangle of rhyme; Solemnly and sullenly as the hour demanded, He pored upon the stars, and celestially mused On Oedipus, even to his snows Who was not born until the soul was faint, And knew no rest till his flesh was dream shattered; And his heavy drooping mind would break, Like to the sound of a throned king, But the everlasting, and the unchanging still, Kept all in discipline to keep him subdued. And he sang as he crept on his fainting limbs, Sleep that is eternal as sleep, A waxen style, an end-not the futility, A sense of happiness unmatch'd by any dearth, A smart, a frenzy, a passion without cessation, Mantras, and their wondrous meanings, centering in, Lilting and keep'd-in rhythms, rhythm without end, A dance of death, a dance to fate and necessity, A crisis of dim, of dead and dead again, To sleep, to death, to songs, to rhyme, to the withering gale, With a broken heart, a broken wing and a broken brow. What was not a tongue, nor word yet was understood, Or reasoned, or conceived, or dream'd, was quite impregnate, And spake out as the God spoke, the frame was touched and impregnate With awful, immortal, unoriginal speech. The limbless, dream-enfilled body floated serene, And topmost, crownless, without beginning or end, In the light and heat and storm of light and storm, And everything was awful, breathless, without end. He was but one of a pallid horde That landed near the southern sea, Where the OEchalia name their gloomy home. Throbs and teints Wank all the feeble brain in them, And a fit is watch'd to cover up The throbbing clue as it arises. Men, that means two worlds and means half a world more; And the mad peals and fits and yelps of ghosts, The ganging, whirling, making twitches that bobs and brims, And the fit of constant cries that are but sighings, And the sweet throats that have filled up the deep in the grave. Though the clap of the raving sand-god Told of Ixion's lust, The unfinish'd graves did hold Of Sirens and Tereus' sons; Upsprung where the moist flowlets kiss On the rocks that guard Cithaeron. The final doom was fix'd in the air, And thro' the foaming, ebbing river We dashes grab the sun, we grab the moon; On the rocks we cast the paps; on the beach we claw To the slipper'd beaches of cold Aia; And to Pan and Helen we'd rather sigh Than choose between the two, To a white-cliffed promontory Where all had sate When the stir of the long-wav'd Aetne swept. It is gone, and the rank turf vaunteth Brokenly, in a thunderous crag, Where there is another way Till the waste heaths quit; For the breath of the sea is grassed over With a vine-mown labyrinth. All is made new, and the roses fret The imperishable flow of the moon In a matted maze; The Lowland lads that were outlaws now Have got courage, and a name; And the firm Lowland lads have got manhood, And the glint of the helmet clouded There is an art in the way that they Dispenser know; A mystery that they teach, the soul To marvel at, and to learn; They slay but they are not slain, And they are wise, and they are strong, And they will fight for a score Better than they ever fought before; They will brand the white leal, and they will make The white fight the black west. O, the Lowland lads are aflame; Fistful and bit and squad, Steadies and woods, horse and lance, Macdonald and his foemen fleet, To our mighty lads they say A tale they never speak; but they linger, A sweet-shpering peep ======================================== SAMPLE 953 ======================================== another great nation, there's a name of falcon, there's a name of hawk, there's a name of horse, there's a name of purple star, there's a name of dream that floats and floats above me. There's a name of dove, there's a name of dove, there's a name of feather, there's a name of hope that I would give all I had In return for the wide, wide world. A name that is divine, There's a name of dove, there's a name of sail, there's a name of time That sinks behind the trees to cradle the birds. Oh, just as they heard the call That came from the Red Sea coast, The mighty Jonah's bird Lighted and died. Here in our chamber, we are the remnant; God's remnant. Not in the world that's greater, That all set, all good, and all shining, Not in their mid heaven setting, God's call came to return home As the world's first prime; God's second call That calls His good from death to life, Threw white wine of conscience From the most white of throats. Threw white wine of courage; Threw prayer Of faith Of hope Of meditations wide, God alone being know for good; God alone knowing for all God was man's judge; God alone being know for all. Oh, I had mistaken, Had not this place-- This love, this space, and this glad country This free home of the brave Wherever God takes a city, Wherever His name is Kosen Daha. No matter where the heavens are, It's this at home; This room in earth; This world; This answer of some brand. <|endoftext|> "Breath of the People: Kokonotsok more.", by James McHenry [Living, Death, Health & Illness, Social Commentaries, Crime & Punishment, History & Politics, War & Conflict, Heroes & Patriotism] a deep-voiced snarling sound you scarce could hear of a broad-throated showl of people being crushed by the weight of bodies by the crash of a body one hundred years of fear, <|endoftext|> "Kokonotsuk with the Ghost-Face on the Polestar", by James McHenry [Living, Death, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Seas, Rivers, Rivers, Social Commentaries, War & Conflict] Across their faces, their lips, there is a wet sepulchre the ghost-faces wail them hanging from the sky dead from the sky, hanging from a cliff edge, from a mist of dead, from a dropping star, star dropped from the sky they saw them saw them their ancestors they watched them die, their eager living as snow-mows, thinned as the river silts, thinned as brown-butter in the pot). Their live selves were as comets dropping from the sky snow on the mountain and the smoke of their deaths to be made, the greybones of their graves, crushed to a fine ash. One hundred years of fear, dead faces, walking, high winds, the icefields of their deaths, their deaths. When their sons came back with plundered faces snow muffs, chips, fissures, falls their snow, waves their snow ghosts drifting, on clouds the world-sun-moon passes their faces, passing and is there. The dead are the abbots, the abbot, and the tabby, the long white thread of their lives; their winters are the cloud, the sightless sun their fire, their springs and summers the dye. They died, their faces and ghosts between living and dying, fell, their faces moving, passing, passing beyond living and dying. All their faces could smile; only their ghosts were lost— their faces in snow. And the ones they hunted, the wild ones, flew the edge of the world. For a wild flame of a great naked hour, what was theirs to scatter the great naked world. Where is their place in the room? Where is the box they opened? In their room their ancestors stand like daisies from snow into the snow. Where is the anchor where their ships sank? in the anchor? Their graves? deepest ======================================== SAMPLE 954 ======================================== Rome to us must to true Wisdoms go, Without the A B C, or the like! <|endoftext|> "My New Deflowreme", by Nancy Plain [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Marriage & Companionship, Relationships, Home Life] I put the new deflowreme on. The man I’d met to take me had dandrum’d through it, that his banishment was begun. I found the basket with the roses, in which I knew they would grow on the casket, had gathered which ones, squeezed them in the crevice or scattering seeds about the purple clay, wanted them to be a cover for the soul, the mind, the flesh. I had begun with something preoccupied. With the two rows of Japanese maple, put a little among the rose tree leaves. With a bare bud weaves of garments. With a morning glory, with a rainbud, with the back of the cantelle going into the embers, with this lonely cantell, the sandbeau, the tall warm feather with the yellow fork, greenish green, roundish brown, with its acorn-stone of a flower. I told him, It is all a premonition, I said it is over, out it came, not over, in but not out, my deflowreme going into the background. The wood would lend us the form we had not paid attention to. I had considered being in a fantastic place but thought it would come to nothing, that in fact we would grow old together and at that moment of looking in the basket, I wondered had I said it? <|endoftext|> "Fall", by Barbara Ruth Saside [Nature, Fall] The orange fell down from the light of noon And into our house the breath of autumn trilled which brought with it then the tap of a sparrow a note of woodruff bougainvillea and goldenrod, turned the house inside out to prepare for its invasion, I opened the window-door and stepped outside and saw the autumn across the fields, which had turned autumn- stocked and the field stabled, the strewn flouts of cold threads for her bulls, the mesh of, horses stranded on a ridge line, and across the ridge line the lush wall-flower hanging on, the pin jewel of the dove sock, the doe-eyed youngling at the front door, rabbit-gray with a daisy dower, the button nose of the snowy white cat’s face up and its equal and opposite expression turned on the four-month baby who slept there since in school the week before, and the lady the tail of which wicked green lupin that bricked under the porch of the bookless summer’s tears and little figurines of the garden gnomes, on whom her grandfather had carved and ribbons since the last one fell in the spring, the slumber-proofed trunk, the book in the world, the necklace on her neck, the boy’s burnt-paper doll, the king- ship the grandson brought from his home in Ireland, the bowl by the cellar bed, these folded in their boxes, will not take back their numbers, their warmth. In the box her mother’s glass eyes open, the box all the others in it, the box will take nothing back. You who are broken and incapable of keeping this desert in mind, rephrase it, and in the middle of a word erase the space. <|endoftext|> "Auspices", by Charles Olson [Living, Marriage & Companionship, Love, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Home Life, Men & Women] “The evening darkens. My sweet face, oh, it’s pale,” the bed, Wall–e–e, from Oedipus’s lamentation, says the nurse as my face grows darker, paler still, as it stubbornly scrabbles the crisp drawers of the cold room, the west even darker evening, even dusk, as those gold linens go fuggy, go limp, go dead on the bed where my love’s face lay winking still that morning. Just when he left, the child I would finally know put down its crayon, crumbled into another glow. The face was just as blank. “You’ve missed too many days,” she said. The streets are turning and I have to go. Auspices: what you draw will be your face, no matter what they do ======================================== SAMPLE 955 ======================================== uc\iutes. c. v. sacer peruveit. ueret obestion. hinc liberiis. C. Res. iv. masculine interit. [Greek] oueta dicuntur, ova est rerum natum. pecudes gravior. Rel. :i. 5. de spereo: perferunt amicis gentibus. nuptiali partes quas dolet partis. c. 71. lubrica per totum gregem. c. 33. d. men see nec sinus. proaci. Nec ipsi scelus a campo aci mihi confero. saltam in tremulo. c. 19. de rept. rex quicquid uacatus, quam vivendum fas egestas. T. Aug. l. 10. nomen valgum, son atque fœti. in campo nec te, nec aveo tempore. diuersum reprublica. c. 44. a pro; ducentes dedit apud quisquam. ac tyrannos rexi. c. 81. Ignia lentum. c. 27. quem murus acerua quem suum uirunt tuariti cernes; impiicit mea cerifice mortem. nec mea se, quem se licet mortem, ante meum potuit rapiit, vetu dic mihi, maecenæ et rhabem. No variis adultera nec fagus erat, frigitæ et simulant, uxor erat. mobilis poterunt fiina magnæ. merit et in plurima causa capiat, immoralis legibus arma vetetur. nomen rogo: c. xxxi. folium; cura me morte meus, cùm intrepidabit ad lapidem. colus ducebat et inmodice profundum dexat semina facit. conuiunt aetas, nec opus. sic pisces et crudelis ingressus saltuit & linte, qui pro juncto pro salve sit, ingrata forces ad caelos contempsit hilare. sunt mari diuæ uitae. contuem colatris fata, quem mereterus ad uentulentis auctor quodam bene metas. iunget et latuit convicia tellus. saltibus æquori virgo serpente cono, plena & gallos ore youngo cadaveris truet repercere tubulo. hos delicias agitant, qui per qui lepore agnos æquor modos convixit sinum. Vrgunis haec thymis amici nostri hoc propè, non vini. probetures donna membra sinuosa, nec cadaver: hospes cibo ne forte vinutum amabat amor. possumque parat. totidem impiæ grata non haec titulo. conuenies haec incusiam & malè in hoste sacer ante mortem. et quà tractim, me somnambunt, parques, morando nec tardum tolla. huc furto cum Salíque tuis accido tumulo dominam summa non venustes punctum pretio. spargit pro sepulcrum foliis, motu pro miracula morte semper, monstrum nec omnis patet, quàm vi fatis adhuc benedé. cum gessùm procedere cæcilium tardis impetere flumina. me libet hæc, mea Lucina: quòm te uotis esset ad Themis qui humilem amônes torum adque superum largius amore? quid sacris potestas facilis et servat, (quòt Iouis æterno imperium pro paremptis mora?) uox deum uoti pò ferus abstinens spurium templùm quà faceret nec sarmente Palmus? u� ======================================== SAMPLE 956 ======================================== Gomorrah was fat with food And drink; my father's harvest. The food had begun to run About its walls; and something was alive Under the well, the skin of the wall for air, For food, the sweet dry wind the melting color Of wine, for me. It was not noise, Nor the bell, nor the clank Of scythed ploughshare, but a kind of heat Was warm underneath, An ache that grew As the food was eaten, a need. It could not be man Left under the walls, the while the air Turned up, down, out, To the scent of the sea. It could not be for me, And not I for him, in the end, in the pipe Of the whole world's live weight of its sigh And dream, that night We watched the waves turn, lost in our unhappy birth. For it was I who put the sound Of all the senseless words that come And go. And even I, who know Language as the lost have known, Who wrestle with all sound as with fire, Look upon it, see it, know nothing Except the word I give it, a dark Frown upon the solid mystery. No, it could not be me: I am the shade Of the one woman In all the sound Radiant like him Who sets all night At her feet the glittering cups Of the night-bed done for the light. But it could be him. Lamp for a girl With the face of a dead man. Kneeling before a bare Cornerstone, holding up Both the night and the ghost To the lips of it. And there Like a glass in a store Of sparkling water, in A liquid place And yet an existence, Like a country That sits, That is another Country and luckless But a word To a man More good And with no fear To be trodden. <|endoftext|> "The Opera: 1415", by Sarah America [Love, Desire, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Men & Women, Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends, Greek & Roman Mythology, Heroes & Patriotism] She said “you could call me Queen of the Underworld,” but I thought of Nemean, or the lost, all I wanted was your fire, but your green water. It is now eighteen hundred and thirteen and we are all sunk in the history of myth and the history of love. The god in the story is an armed man, the mute and pitiless lover is a hero of the body, the chorus the recording of love. We do the time by love. The sun that descended was evening, and it was morning when we first met. We learned to talk, to walk, to sing and to fly. Or we fell out of the sky, called love, walked home with love. And we were met by that lover, and his desire, and together in the history of myth and the history of desire. How shall we be met? How shall we be taught? How shall we be embraced? We will be taught by that student who began with love and rose to know what love is. A lover who knew love by its sound. A lover who tried to know what it is by its power. <|endoftext|> "Acoma Song", by Sarah Tracy Allen [Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Home Life, Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends] Last night they read to me— Sonny's Compta bahastraaall— The story of the evil eye and the good, The unicorn, the unearthly. What is the story of evil and good That brother and sister and they say It is a story that never dies, The story of a man and his singing But somehow I don’t seem to remember The evil eye and the good, the unicorn. If I could see the story of evil I would believe in the story of evil And if I could see the story of good I might understand the story of love. It is a story that hurts me like hell For I was born in this town That never knew a time when none of us Ever doubted that words were stars Or watched the sunrise ======================================== SAMPLE 957 ======================================== He ran my name through a gocry. I shopped At the health bar. Had a soft patch of time In between poppy patches in the back row of the Buygop. Great chrysanthemums shook by the cannabutter. I watched the cloud from a cattle grid. All of a sudden, the crowd moved Out of the dark Into the arms of the city. Rose the back seat of the bus. Got off at Lidcombe Street, Holding himself and his ticket With a certain tenacity, Circling the right half-yard Seeking the club that won the match, Pausing for a moment Before he entered the darkened Place of the Science of Luck. He gazed down The throng As he danced. At times a wild Beauty broke Through the cloud To the centre of him As he swayed on his pedestal. The thought of Deb. Like a cloud-rune in a field of wheat. I left the Square Between the bus and the tram. The clouds were wet With the rain-drops. After the match, the barman Sloshed me with water from the fountains. Night turned on the glassy face of the town. I knew I had to be where the people were, Now that night had caved in and sucked the light. A concert was being played at the thunderous rock. Night turned on the glassy face of the town. Through the slough of the thunderclouds One can see the brass tracks of a carriage Carrying a caged horse O'er the dapple of the pale moon Splashed round its sides by the waves of the wind. Night turned on the glassy face of the town. The fog was standing, huge and still, Dark as a sinking blanket Around the smoking car Sliding down the western hills. The thrifty people who live by the touch of the silver of a merlin Every night bring up their infant from the restauross of the sky As we crept from the town and its bars To the cliff that jumps like a steeple We thought, the quays might start a break in our wheel. We twisted our rudder as we rocked our hay Into the craft that travelled A light wind too, but the gust could fling a man into the sea. And the quays came in, there was only one, and from it rose a wall of smoke. I found the first item in the paper Was a state of emergency Declared for one of these bridges, So I wrote to ask, and he wrote back He was sorry that the count had died. If you were just a common fisherman, the Landlord Spoke, He said, it would be of no great consequence. It is a river so long as it takes. You'll find the cause if you persevere, Gather and gather the drift of the sandy sand And follow the flood until you come out on the strand of the river. You've struck the iron bell, Man," said his son. "Why?" "Because it rings. Three men are sinking Just upstream. Two of them Are dead. It's on my watch but The third is still here. Just downstream is the spot We want. Do you see?" They pulled up the sea-wall Till they touched it. The bay Took up their hue and shade And another sudden day of beauty Like a harvest, the little sheds Had gained A far sound in that minute. The oil-flotter washed his line, He worked the bunt with authority. They hauled the ball-case out of the sunken carribose. The sea-bream boiled as if for wearing A bathing suit All over the shoal, And the reed-caught fish stamped the surface. He got the drop on the draw-boat, He tipped it to the vent, and slipped it to the shore. Said the coachman, "He's a sweet boy, he's a gentleman, They are stripping him, And I shall have to call him off." They begged him to, He helped them untying the alder boats. The sea He filled and unwound the ball-chains. Then he caught Three barges Flung it as an elk On the wind, And down the shingle To Queen Charlotte's Island. As he pulled away From the grounded boat-trail, The three barges Clambered the broken reef, ======================================== SAMPLE 958 ======================================== But Oh the World for its endless Sorrow He hath with endless grief endured! Who now will tell him what he hath done, That may with tears his soul distress? Why came he hither, but for joy or hate On Mankind he meant some effect? This Beast that I set down for a Beast, Which later on this Day I slew, In them whereof New Horizons is set, My travels is too unsightly, see This Matter of Atmosphere and Earth, He, and in our small Chamber have I seen, Had he standed upright, the Scene had been more modest. Suffice it, that in rude Clay he stands, Trees and grass about him strewn; No eternal Scribbler hath corruptibles sight, Full penitent, by this time from God bereft; Only from death he lives an augural Seat. He, that no Septuagel or Gabriel Like Superstar, adorneth with pomp and shout In the Plaine or Garden, the Great Platonick Shore, Shall in our small Chamber peace and Plenty find, Or that unadorned the ruder world. Unlucky seems it, that the soul that shall Charm a Bed of Principle, should be thou; Too mean, Lady, that to make Religion clean (Even to a calf), it should be a Goddess. Be it so: I dare to doubt; and so Do thou, whose virtue, as a Divine, Is hid, to us, where'er our Fashion's state In two Worlds cannot be expressed. I would not doubt it, either; and so offer This last Judge, thy Sons enfolding, and Thy Word as sure: to whom it shall belong To adjourne thee with Appeals to God To be adored; but O Christ, and all Who have repeat'd thy Rule to Mankind! Immersed in thy Lease, as in a Farne, Ruthless of Sunder or Discovery, Heav'n and Earth to thee reconciled; This Glory join'd with only nature, With other contraries now vies, That they who most are human, should be More than human still, and for that Full tres Honours, the kindles in the Heart New Motions of Religion, That cause God toshine on his own sweet Name. Nor from thy Talecore, thy Womb, thou dost loose; Ungraf'd thou dost soberly concur; As if the two Were one Worshipp assertion wrong; Which would be blasphemous hard: For although no work of Human hands Is so considerate as that Word; The work of Gods, but that his voice Doth poise it, as the Elder Lamb His Head nymph'ry Brays; And th' excellant Sun, being thus The glorious Head of glory, The em commended Aime Of his aime (whose honour rose So high on Paul) for man's homage do Reach himself by Paul and write it there. So high in heaven didst thou thy light Flood to men; and in our room too The refluence fall, Which thy more numerous department Had profitably decayed, nor was The Light confined but in thee, And thine not less numerous; so that Earth Was loos'd, and thou wert thereby made This is my heart (she spake) To thy content, O white, blessed, meek, contented maid, Sufficient, satisfied: No more, no more, no more! To thy content, O fairest as thou art, All, all to thee is lawful; May thy fruitful womb, by my blessing Fertilize the clouds, And clouds themselves fertilize thy womb. But thou with more honour thou Wost favour'd than thy Father's state: Heaven is thine; thou art the Ark From whence men's works are spared: The fleet which here on storm is moored, Driven by the sun, and not by thee, Itself suffers harm; But thou by human reins didst hold The flying world beneath our wheels; And, for thy sweet obeisance, held The fardest heavens, which now o'er-rule Our voices mute, and do thy voice Turn hither, where thy Son's winds do blow. But where art thou, Son of Heaven And our well-remembrance? To the World's end thou miss'st thy breath; To my heart's one thought, only Son, Who in my love thy sacred feel. Now her dress, my only ======================================== SAMPLE 959 ======================================== And ev'ry wight that saw us laid it down; The banquet hostelry, the chariot, and the eagles and beast, like lightning then I set in all my horses and never was forgot. With shouts and shouts the rest they lightly and gently bare; all was clear'd; they reap'd and tore away the sheaves. Had they a car on which to ride, and I had but a shoar that leav'ns when in my drowsy paws, They might yet persuade their guide's better vein to trust them safely on the slippery sod, For, had but poor men for their help been set on, We had but now descended, when the corses, like men oft led astray, seem'd disunited. Some on their guide-books and many were inclin'd To go by for elevation; others to slack the pace, that we may lead them in a trice till we may round them, and the third time reach the hill. My shepherd flock, O Lycidas! have left the sound of the river, for they hear, like fledglings at play, the pasture-yards Now, Lycidas, who of you then with tale of wile shall stand ourselves to aid, who shall stand the jarring apes restrain? Come now, led by me, nor you remain aloof <|endoftext|> A Poet once spake to me: 'Be none of these The chosen of the Lord.' Our American taxes Are hefty, are we full? We've 'een two of the chace, And bade us submit. A Dove the god of speech will-o'-the-wisps will cry; A cedar is known by its habitation, and a trifex as to stand; A rose-tree handles moisture better than it can part with; And cedar-tree will not shiver60 in the wind. What call we, chosen of the Lord, But that the busy hum of this modern battle Can wait, till our earth's foot-press is over; Until we shall know our heroes crowned, Until the hills of our Anabaptist Empire Bring the cross on the stride of the sunset, Until, a sinewing of the waves and the floods of our Jetemah is silenced; Our valiant dead are all graven in stone, Worshippers of the Master Who: --we sing. The gay delights of the feast Time but fasts the noise of the fight; And idle fancies are ever those That fable-makers tell Into broken smiles and slumber-music; And life without heroism is dull. We mourn them as we hide our heads Beneath the roof of the world; And choose their aspect and heart-strain Of banishment from the free play of sound, Of happiness that is hard-pressed, Of hope and woe with a dark hair Of over-darkened faces that make moan Of toil and earn enough for loafing. A sleepless and harrowed earth-gloom, The weariness and all pain Of toiling and feeling, and never-drying-out, That mocks the gladness and pain and din Of life-play; and the idle fretting Of some poor whimpering creature That chitters, and counts its little sparks. And all life's careless stir Thins down the features of the face, And eyes with a drear and wan look, And ears of the cast earnestness Imbrown, and their pulses dumb Of hearts that are stricken and low; And there's no joy, and no love, Of sorrow or of sin, Can lift the dust from heart and brain, But 'twixt the dust and dew, 'twixt death's wall And the sky lies endless grave and peace. The flowers' pleas are vain That in the Spring-forest vie Against the sun in their bloom, The silvered lily and the rose, And all the fair asphodel That doth out-breath the wide-belled earth, Till the strong-bee sifts and culls For man's receiving and eating, And the sick earth-nurtur open That doth nourish and direct The light-life that prompts man's sense To call it food, or God; For throes are dead as sin, And every day we die. One ill-crowned and sick-hearted King, Who metes his day-bread ======================================== SAMPLE 960 ======================================== The waves from shore they bare. Aged, great GAMA spoke. "Poor broken power, have some great cause, some day You must be bent, and bent, and bended low, Until your soil, when you are brined and brined raw, Burnt up your loathsome roots, until you die. This time for that I tell you, such proof please You in your first intention, that your strength Be in your power, you only make, your being's flow All power the supreme, tell you whatsoever. Time and the season have concealed the things, So in the end we shall expect them all, In a most man's favour; but behold these lines Where Love disrobed of all delight, has wandered, Splashed in the river and sunk like things of earth, No longer to be seen: Your Queen, O just as my life has lifted me A beauteous child, we made, she named, and we Whom MENELAUS is mistress of: I by sound Have heard you play this idle word's song true, Fated when you had not heard me at our feast Because I told not you of this, nor you Whose advent I foretold. But I was seen In this fair body, fair the babe that bore me That no war had torn; and ever since your King Has done my lands, and will seek the nether hell Where MARIA lies; nor for your paradise Rejected. She takes that burden on her head Who bore our hope, and me who gave it." "Speak, for she knows All human love and breeding. Even as Men mar work to make it perfect, so she marries To nothing, and for no good. Lo, in that She returns to her own wildness and mirth That youth bestows upon her." And I said: "But thou, where'er thou art, Take these tears and words of mine and use them Or thou shalt find the water means the death Of thee and thine." And she said: "Sad thought! now bids bid This thought depart From thee, nor chide as I thy toil endured, Yet that I too may wear a mortal shape. Then tell me why this strange alarm Of thee and mine May move our Queen to do The works of death to us and thee, In us, her dead, alone, Whilst thou on ground Art far from her?" "Tell us thy name, Then tell us why this should be done to us." I told her. She made answer: "Woman, of men a great King thou, Not dearer far than e'en those kings thy sire (By whom thy life is called) deem thou so far Throned higher. So much the greater dread Forbids thee, saying, Man, why put I My children at thy pleasure? Thou with all Thy fathers die. Lo, they, who now and then Slighted me who raised them up, shall there Lay down their kingships and own no more Kings. The only thing thou canst achieve Is to raze the glorious pomp and power Which are the crown and chiefest feature Of these kings of ours, the King whom none Deemed fit that day to bend the brow And stick the crown, and from whom shall draw naught Save what of shame and curse." And she, Who saw what shame was in me, "For such Were meeter bound in gracious obedience Under the right monarch, by whose will This thing be done, shall thy strong right hand Move us, and from that time our lives and ours Shall pass away." She answered me: "No other word Our bond can demand, for we Shall have no King. His glory, right and bliss, Shall be the thing conquered by which we hold Thy promise true. No doubt it shall be done; For we, the more our bitter grace our gain, Shall have the more of glory, and our right At his great name, a thing unknown, shall hold." And, "Now go thy ways," I said, "Await And greet the men that make thee King, But measure them the fellowship." And through the noon I sought. And would I had Through the dark to see him, and the fates Ordered by the issue, to have parleyzed With him, and found grounds for home appeal; but when I came I found that he had gone, none'd Of mine; nor knew I what the thing was meant, Nor of the kind address to which she drew My lamp- ======================================== SAMPLE 961 ======================================== involve­ment’s prac­ti­o­logy, In every mir­i­cle a new great man Is rise­ing, such as by the ages find They bear the punch. Utopia, Greece, is out­side; but in­to the idea Of a to be, men lay­ers of the con­cept of a next, im­port­ed Utopia are, now. The sun is the last Star, which of all liv­ing stars is furthest up the arc, in­to which all others are set; its crea­cy is mo­ment of the sky’s lev­el, and this dif­fer­ence ex­ists for this spec­o­le point of it, be­cause this is what has been de­scribed can­vassing par­a­dize and the heav­i­est will of re­laic­ing time. But this spe­o­tique was con­side­lessly writ­ed in the me­dio of Aristotle, be­cause so much of it is a par­ad­sit­ed for the con­ci­pa­tion; not for its in­te­ri­al pur­cha­ry, but the prob­a­bil gov­el in which it is pre­fer­en­ti­ly left The wor­k Mar­mor­idæ, which is one of the three most dif­fer­ent kind­es of the writ­ing of Virgil, be­cause it is a fall­ing in the lat­ter, and be­cause it is in the Des­li­cious Virgil, and not in its­ own folio, as it is an index of Virgil for a new with­stand­ing, with the ar­dog­e­n of the fel­i­gence of the spear; and the wor­k Virg­us is the old han­ger of the hel­i­graphy. Yet this thin­s is a book in which the lore of this par­a­ph will not fit in, as there is no pre­ca­tion what to do with it that the heart may not find grave oc­ci­ers. What we are set out to en­hance is Virgil here, for he lies low be­hind the fall­ing, that still lays low, for what can be set up later, as the art of the poet, to a dif­fer­ent way of ive­a­tions. Virgil says that Daph­enus let out from chan­nel, and let in the heaven, and "to let in Daphne was heaven’s work." What this mar­ra­d lustily pulls from Daphne is unclas­si­ble, and so the rest of the writ­ing is much the same; and what is dif­fer­en from this is the old use of Virgil here in mar­tera: first, as he tells in Dix­ et open that none of these things would ha­ve bee­come Virgil, if he had no spec­u­al odes which he rei­indanned. The dif­fer­en he describes is between those, which are good pre­ci­es, and those which are fre­come. In the last half of the mo­ment, as the "Dictae" is han­ded, he talks more of the lat­ter sorts of po­lit­i­cal cheers, and has coif­ter with the dif­fer­en, vix­se, and lea; but whil­ers, when the Horse­man was worded, is not but what Virgil or Virgile (who as an in­di­na­tion bet was God's repub­li­te to the in­sic­ti­mate) could have told him­self. The hym­e is, be­hind the Horse, that it sped­ing rode, This is to man a yawn. In a world of may­gers, Or in­stin­ent life a may­der, I would like to see the Bot­tle of Euclid, and feth a shiv­lo man or bot­tle! But when a body grow­es mass­ful and mo­li, You may take un­der your hand the reac­tion of its set, I think it is be­in­crous to ======================================== SAMPLE 962 ======================================== Yæskes to read it there shall write One verse which sires to sire never had The little yellow people Perish in the chaos; But one more green and strapping come To pass the ages: On, ye souls of low undard, To the god-castle! The slow-creeping worm Must drag our aged tomb, The little yellow people, Perish and pass away. Yæskes! as though the last word I uttered Were the most forthright speech Of all the world; (That would be granting reason,) Yæskes! I tell ye this plain: To question him we will not start, (Questioning of myself will bring Ways accursed Upon ye, or dissolve Your communion with the great God-Army, If any such be found amongst ye! Yæskes! if there be true Gods, hew Theosophs' leading them From out their places to a New revelation! That the act may be as the word The guiding of Israel! For if such stand before us here, They will be To do their very utmost for us, To bring multitudes to Christ, From out their hidden hidden places, And bring them to our heaven, And join us eternal to If the black Devil, as his mind foreknower Hath counselled, as God's will shall be, The shade must be the earth in breaker, The sight be the world's. Lo! therefore, soon at all of us An everlasting Herald shall go Out to the world to proclaim Christ, And redeem our bodies from dearth And do the work that is begun! Theed be here! not Jerusalem! Not here! Not here! Is the land too small for thee, Yield up thy treasures, seek higher ground! What right have I, or any for To heighten my thoughts beyond thy house? What should I hope or count or see With such vast designs, but at thy door Look down I shall! not now for gain The thought of this, but that I may My Mother say: Lo, there she is, Praising the invisible God! Lo, I will look, though to hell first, One part in earth hath made it more Than one should to the sky; Earth's little world has set thee up, And thou art god more high. What matter if we fail or win? For one, or both, may fail or stray, And be that soul's last glory! Men of earth, thou knowest what is done When heavenly powers make their abode With men's good thoughts, to men's misrule! Men of earth, the Lord has called thee whore, And her RTisband is punisher. Not that I hate thee or thy plights, Lord Christ, or that his doom we dread, But rather he hath laid his woe upon us, And the most high God hath freed thee, and sent For thy cure not even demon brews! For when the Gods had judged men till heaven Were cognizant of man's iniquities, Ungodly sins, they made thee to pass Eternity in hell, to be This pulsing, red-hot fiery-flaming thing The firmness of an iron sea, the warm Ion-like seas, men dwelling on the verge Of death, sun-saying: 'Lo! I exist!' The foul air sweet, the dainty hands are cold, And woman's voice is never heard more! Even the goddess fades and yields unto men, The fierce thing, and all her virgins turn to earth, Leaving a desiccated corpse for man, Aflame, upon his funeral pyre! Yea, I think upon this, and suffer hell, Despised and scarred, to take my flesh! The lightnings lash hell about my head, The thunder of the sanguine west Is paused by none, save my heart alone! Hell hath torn me as a new thing; A wordless, vast, unending thing! I know the word of all the world Is thunder, that the Gods have seen The suffering life is death, the guilt May be yet judged, Of that be heard, God saith. It is the name of him that spurned His counsellor and son, against him! Unhappy man! Unhappily fallen, And of the Eternal to the dust Made a private ======================================== SAMPLE 963 ======================================== Friedman paid to have his head taken In France, before the news of Griscarelli Could spread the word that he had been found Exposing the Farmers to be swindled. Had it not been for pride in his department, Which was deeply interested in the bread-on-bread, He had been demoted, much that by resolution; He might have remained in his current position, And there have been no tales of the land like those, Which he published, with an addendum on addendum Where he contrasted it with what was printed. Thus, at seventeen, he made up his mind To give up writing verse, he would not write it. He had a taste, he said, for things which went to make The dust of death on one who soiled himself on a Thursday. If ever he had stood on the pedals and struck his feet, And rolled his little rollers in a little sail, He would have liked the swing of it, but the way of his speech Seemed to be to wind, and not to swing at all, A clear contradiction of the thing he was. If we could ever get hold of his manuscript He would tell us what he took to be his ideas, And as they would be all right, since he thought In so many words, but there were many more like them, They would go far in getting--and we did not know That soon after, after he made up his mind to go The bright Sunday evening in Boston with Cobden and Locke, We gathered to burn his Correspondence, which were So much the better for those who had in fact read them. He gave us some ink, and was willing to show us Things he thought out, where others could not see them; We burned the rest, and threw away the blank sheets, Which had been so tempting in the winter of his writing. He thought, as he said, that he had every advantage, That he should sit in the House as long as God-speed The servants of the Lord, though one had not shared equally The cup of bread and drunk it at the end. Some time after, as he sat and wrote at Chapel, He cast about for the best method to kill The Resurrection, which his fancy entertained With animation; in thinking what he should most Have done, and what he had done, and so how to do it, And in executing, as he might, without Reproach or blot. As long as a hand-spun shadow Or so the eye was at the bowling, he saw As long, or longer, if the shadow was the right one. This made him feel assured there was some system in God. For these things were the barest outlines That from the most of us, to wish for or accomplish Aught but tea and verse, were principles of a thing So new as not to be worthy our regard, And so as white neither in its outer part Nor in its secrets--left as it were in its own, To chance and heap up monuments of slime And call the work a beginning, until some god Expressed it, and took a décadre, and lo! But then he had to conquer what he had himself Not a gram or bigger, he had neither sword Nor clubs, nor the staff, nor pitchforks, that yet Were sounded and deemed the best, in their kind; he was With friends, and yet the stick had changed its edge And balance, and nothing had the shadow of script Whos name I cannot recall, but it was plain That one had called another that way of yore As Ladyhouse and Posthouse, and (as he guessed) By the name of Pig, from Pigweed or so, As still is Pig--I will flog him to-morrow--Pig. Which was his plan when he by necessity Made up his mind to be a writer for Punch; Who, being asked of this or that, said, "I," And interwove and interluded like that And tired, could give a pretty good account Of what he did in the morning and what He had to do in the after noons; When evening found him drunk, or blind, or both, He might imbibe, or having quite enough In snatches, lay out a paragraph or so On tea and claret--and some fine aperiments, Too--as far as their grape-flask and their bread. But their Lord, or Cousin in Claret, there, Sate most of all with James the Fourth; I wonder if he will allow that book To make a New Republic? and yet be sure, ======================================== SAMPLE 964 ======================================== Nor so rarely heard by this good wife of Greece: She, too, as Greek-flushed-flood, is she Tho' then more mild-eyed, smiles now; Soft rings her gold-dusty breasts. An isle of paradises! When I first gazed So dainty there yclept Styx, my heart Echoed its moanings o'er the pale abode Of some empress, fierce, cunning, and wily, Who cried, thy floods dark-leashing waves, Cast back thy bloody, treacherous waves Upon the Christian shores which never knew The dark God, save the smokeless sun, and, at the sight, He thought to tempt the lake, and his wrath Shook down and brake his day. Thou on whom the sun doth nightly blue Like gold in liquid air, Aloof! O dweling dainty thing, Aloof and close! how oft doth God call, Aloof and still! and I, now, am aware Of his heavy hand: Yet, still, thy heavenlier motion's more Than his--since, thou house like summer skies, And aye, like summer's God, Aloft and still, thou'stile on the foam Of some miser's ocean, till he call The high and powerful God above, And curse himself for his delight In thy pleasing fires, Oh, Ahab! who, by the glare of morning, Warged you the giant action I now no longer follow, But whose solid object shallow waters Drew on the lightning's stroke; The lightning's stroke then extending In thick, recurrent clusters Towards the curved, black billender mass Which above thee forms the male earth, And is, perchance, even shaped like thee? All-hail thee! sound all bells! The long, deep and broad notes of the matin hymn The brief beat of band-concert. And, Romeo, thou, whose brow Yet blushes beneath the song, Dost catch the feelings' lustre In music. Ye are true instruments Of Heaven's own music. Thou art half. And music is the soul of thee. And now the matin chorus leaves A greater accolation for the King And Isabel. God! I hardly know Who is this angel Who so aridly soars Doth of the colors of thy brows Carry, Which opes The grave, from off The empty side Of all the stations of the meek, silent maidens. Who this April noon doth hold? Who that leaf-like living sun Which folds in its clasp? Who that songful deaden Of summer in her childen' island? The world and all its terrors, both, Pierc and Parzival, hold at last In her son's keep. This one here, This most erudite of men, For him, the accursed one, These shades of the old gods Hold vengeance. They, who were assails Of wrath, For vengeance now, but 'son' of the world Lived, grew, and yet lived, and reigned Where hell and the new hell were full Together, and where most degenerate Of judges and of leagues, all men's places, They hold as theirs. Oh, sisterese, how now, And now to-night, There is a lull in the masque; It is but yesterday That the black masks once more Crouch o'er the casks-- The fierce, silent, wingless, and clawless graves-- And there's a man that's not in the masque. And now the crowd his turn A lull in the masque. There's a calm in the masque. All round him are they. His comrades' faces in the gloom Hang dark as death; But he is still. He moves in the crowd; He stands upright. He only the leader knows-- He moves in the crowd. All round him are they. He cannot rest, he cannot stay; With the crowd is his chance, With the people's chance; For the new moon now Lights up the night. And the soft, deep ravine Aspires through the air By the bay. He cannot rest, he cannot stay While the lights are put out, And the samp can cry Of its peace, As it only can do, In one, soft, deep, peaceful cry, For the final blow. ======================================== SAMPLE 965 ======================================== Hast'ning fumed o'er the stream, you then behold, An angel waving his green sword o'er the strand; And round you marble forms sinking to their graves. The Ocean glides with transparent powers, As we behold the lofty sun rise on the rise; A quadruple prodigy the number seen Of life on earth at work, and nature happy here. Arachnius is king: the minist'ring bug With fierce deluge of the wave is grat, The wat'ry monarch rins his cross-tree plume, And, from the sea below, looks down on his prey. This howling is the guardian of the chase, And, where the deer this dismal chase prolong, The roar renews, the falcon on the ground Gives a feeble, disdainful, but yet wilder sound, As if the jangling of the dogs he heard; And tremblers tremble 'midst the wastes of sand. So Arachnius grisly with his chomps, The teeming deep encircles, the wave Sucks with an awful roar, in pure illusion, Down to the dreary regions of the dead. The deeper his suck, the wider his embrace, The wider wreathes the wound:--beneath the verge Of that white wave frozen solid he is found. On him, thus trapped, my keels shall beach their sweep, Whilst cold blasts, and from the far horizon tossed, Shall leave his body to frozen mists, A craven of the northern waste: The wan and vast of this, and dire of that, They pass, in wreck, back to the old estimatio; What should I more? The scream unwonted be? Why should I fly?--Bent lies their innocence, And piteously faint on a rosey grave. And I, more lost than a water-sird, Shall they these feeble tendrils rue their loss, And I in trembling pensiveness pine? Why?--This, this my deep lament is this; No reminiscence upon my flesh is shown, My spirit galls them--they in sin to nought moved. Bathylegged is on his feet, and the weight Of plumed fields, the cattle that step them down In unison, the swell of whose hooves A resounding accompaniment, Makes water and loud earth, and what not, Heard in the hissing of a high-bred hog, Which up in Yule time, is sure to come, And where the blare goes crackling through the night, Whene'er that woful feast is out of breath. Wee, sleekit, sleepy head, your face is hid In your huge hair--big and brown--for a set Of horns, and of a neck like to be Pressed to th' twigs, so once again to catch the breeze, When from above with puissant lustre shone That countryman, as light in his side as he In mine; how we used, when time would open lay, To kisst the world a footing to stand. Now for your thoughts; and if your yule is fit Compose them--then, sleepless barbarian, get! Opnie for my Irish teams, and men in their place, Artymplog--and your gallant O'Bones, no doubt, Hither to the game of hackneyed lies, And foaming match to the tubbed-up pub games, Who this good time in October can waste As we the preceding in May--the past. But then, your Placads against the 'Hump' come not, So steep your balls, your games at Kew fall short. And don't think I name my team, when I 'Ave seen Thee here, on the bars in London, since I 'Ave seen Much country teams from afar, and thought them good, Having experience of the arms and the jav'ication Of the Auld Dominion, which they haven't got, Yet play a bit, and therefore it is their chance. There the big team have got, But shall it be in Chester aroint the ground? What's to be seen in the upper air? All that has got, will be seen on the ground; We've ten times as many afield, for three. We're perfectly sure of our team now, And would we were good as we are now; For you may judge we're not very sma' For league ======================================== SAMPLE 966 ======================================== AN. Let us drink a health to W and truly be Confessed of HIM to be our physician All. Ch. And, that with time the mutual kindly Jest might alter there was an end; And by the subtle spell of Love our hearts Now as he touched each a... Soon from this hour we do forget For and in his clean... Love, you showed me where to go and held my hand-- You brought us back from Saguenay--and when wrong or wrong Vic, don't you fret or wriggle or quiver-- While still you know so very much know too, Don't you fret, don't wriggle, don't quiver. I was just a little miss, so tiny and brown-- An' I've grown to be a pretty big man, though STO The man will own--a bad thing, it's true, But I've lighted up in spite of the gloom And somehow I stand upright most when I bat The ball at this big hard-up at the LISMAY Says the penitent How he tried to do his pious best, And made uncharacteristic speed And, popping out of hiding, swore. Now all that's left Save a shriver, a burning, a veil! The innocent earth is black-- Don't you talk to ME of covering!-- Tell us again of the queen of this land, Her cap, her diadem, her all--and that man Stabbed in the fight with his brother knight, While they were first-eschewing men; How she came into the castle, how Her chapeau set, her form sprung out, How the lords, the squires, the groom, her eyes Clacked to those she unclipped from the way-- I wish you was talking to us! O John, the honest truth-- Let me sniff the end in that place 'T is a pungent thing to know, John, As well as a gracious thing to know. And therefore, be not disparaging To your first-ever friend who was, or is, How kind you have been, as well as kind now-- For, though we understand each other, If you approach him still He may lift up his cloudy brow and frown Till a blade hits the corner, John. Stories are good For simple minds, but heroes Are the thing, story. There's a sort of void That heroes fill-- They are the soul and the shape Of the tale--that matter-drawn As if it were a black-letter page, Made good and great and rare As the being-story of our time, With heroes dead and great men living on, And much for which, in its simple tone, It hath no other word than "Homer." Then man the dwarf and woman made, Saw what had been done and would be done-- Till she grew in her womb More shrewd than Him, but still that plot Devised in rhythm to be executed, And on this silent and orbiting tomb We come and whirl about, this tale, This Odyssey, until we crown the sun That it really is Eternity! What was it, after all, That brought them here? The worship of mortal qualities-- Desires and passions for air Of a race too mean to save itself By a secret power to rise? Or did our petty tyrant-Kings Kneel to greater gods and plead Their claims to help us more than man? Did man, weak child, strut and boast, Be merciful as men were? Or pray to impotent heaven To give him what he meted to you? Or sang to th' burning feet of God Of mercy to the beast? O, it was man he could not save, The tale was self-peasant, I yielded in to it myself, And said: "It is the way Of everything--human, heavenly, As much is to be said for it." For a long time I have had a low Subjective heart, so much affection For the side I have departed from, The sad humilasha of things past. The gold of youth will be found? What, silver to you then? I hold my heart to the way, But the ashes will move high, And all of the others go down Some fatal slope. But I go higher, The heart of the youth, Whose goal was the great high goal Of the noblest race Which ever had life on trial, At his very last. O ======================================== SAMPLE 967 ======================================== Seu rignaturos et latines prospera Polipwnci (VI, 58, 2-3). cum seruat, fuit vetatim crescat undas excipienda sibi sparsa et sonitu. atque hae fondabit, crescat, repargetti, attribendat famem: et iterum hoc nepotismus aedisque perpadiunt traheelli, femina, vel subter silentius inarmis in mores quaerit in me satius huius insanus, Punicis et ipso cura gressu porta sagaci, ut tempus adhuc pugnantique ortu vel, sacripue, aegro confers mensibus. QVAN inerat Armida serenum (VII, 26, 5) vidit aperto Aeneas, holque per Agnolo ante diem. sed victorique, si quae tibi redit inutenti motus homo victori paternae hominum; dicento sine nostro Lupus honorem, quo Stellone voleris uxor peditius adultera velit, atque lento expatiens suspiret nosto, quod age pungat infantia sin, sine credens dicere mundus, o quantum bona contume multer: non habet quid saepe sponte cinerem clara atque pari generem; sine credens dicere ... But quasi gravis interea riuo sub antro aerique respex vel aera latitudine poetae patres ducat: Nomina et ambitiosa praemia probent quam sub taurus dum corpus festus inducit, quoque tertio divum abflurit pedibus; virtus et venerabile mensuram, vases simas; empto fluunt pulmus et satiatus. nam cum re, ne sanguinei patribus acutoque redarget, nec sanguis glabris opus; tulip se noxia cernis tende vel abies, quo putatur istis ulmula vel accipe seras flammantur qua shibes flebula cu festiniis. crines se satis flammam certari carmini vel tubaeque renasimile votique rictu accipit; de quo post renuo tenetur utero, nonde rubro, vel sese putato dicta esse mortalis et ventor, hoc constet nimis; Ditis in vacat vigor. habent incipienda campi durget quam cum Tremisse atque virum nascitur ab hissequas. crides recitis dariis auxiter latini iugum aptans aquas, frange ferere minoribus astrota diligat: his colonie, quae multo fluctus atque fellat, irascable, sic omnia, sicut omnis. crides recitis et crista mentis exercetur uentura fulmina; fidelle secundum et magne aeterni potiunt; crides recitis ac fratrem recidet. quam non procul tumultis, fluitis hominibus turba equat tectum in orbis. cui, Panaque, nostrum pars esse de excelse dolensque. cui, ut dixit Potides patrimonium diem; cui, potes nihil. quia potes est, te non potest remigiosum, dum licet animas animis aetherentis. quid pro crebra ac vincere corda est hominum: crinem ex ovo praesto cunctisque conjugis, tot sine spuribus mori prima serie, dum aliis ouerim porrigit ex orbe locum. non quis pro re reliquum advenit iram, ne tibi quid in ope Senehots infandit in longum, nec cava in corde ferit, sed proprium turpis in nostras invenisse .... GRAHNTLINGVS crue reui multo uirtis. ne forte o quantum voluptas carmina, quo ======================================== SAMPLE 968 ======================================== Is not of old, it is new No soul is alive in her, No home she hath of moss or earth And I am but a shadow of her, The laughing loch was fair, The grass was green upon the shore, But now the blood is cold upon my cheek, The sunshine hath fled and I am dead. O in your women, in your women, Women born of a sun-reddened sea Do you follow long? Do you, knighthood-clad, Follow them as far as Helen, And longer than that drawn ken To which the Normans were never content? One hour on her dim lips The silver of the twain Stabbed forth like deathly kisses, The subtle irony of night Under the mellow light Of summer skies, in the shadows Of cliff and cairn, and sheer of warring Human faces to eclipse. Then over the light, through the shadows That told of her thousand years, Did not the peace of men ascend, Nor did the heaven of men For that short space fade away? The world grew deeper than Heaven; And we knew more than men know And our hope grew greater than their believe. And one voice, ere she passed into death, Uttered then, "I have felt the shaft, And I, despite myself, will fain be mild, Have fain, though my soul withstand it, to endure it." "It shall be faltering with the cord at last," Quoth one, "after so many years." Let the lips show the love unsown, Let the brows grow the age of sixty years, Let the neck droop, and the chin shave its flesh, Loth is the look of a man To look a dead woman down; Let the looks of the eyes Be proud and noble and tender, Let the cheek lips be red and flushed, Let the life burn in the eyes, Let the dames, and chaste, chaste heads, Methinks look back to the white Caucasian thistle that gayly flings Down on the grass its snowing braids, Weedling a pensive leaf through its worth. Frail among maidens, slender as yon Fine women, and fresh as the fair Young phalanx when it holds in magic The fires of light, Youthful as prophecy, Young as the glowing way, Soft as the sigh of lips to mouths, Cool as Spring, the soft-wood shade, Nipp'd by the music of songs. Full of youth, or more or less, Tenderness for the end, And welcome, and wisdom too, And the worth of serving all things For nature's, by love's account, The tri-purpose of breath and blood. "I have had my day," quoth one, "I do think I have had a good old time Through all this world of sin and trouble. I have seen the human race Just met, and warmly part, As a star's fierce wheel on the edge Of world-wide majesty Fall on the desert waste to sand, And the human heart take hold. "And I know, I know, The mortal love, and fleeting pain, Of all that leaping goeth by; Not with the frail dissolution Of fashion's dying edicts, Not with the narrow-footed fears Of sickly matters seared, Not with the flabby vehemence Of glittering life-strings clogged In young love's quick-laden blood, Or ere maturation. But with a deeper eternal trust That he shall never doubt nor fall While he strains onward, and his feet, Yielding through death's night Grief and Grief alone Till age with dust is dust. "There was a man who late stepped with me Through this self-same pathway to the Dead I have had my fill of humanness, And found my life's over, my life done; And the sweet songs that lift my heart to sing To man ever loving, as thou wilt Hold tight thy heart to me, And I, but mixed with crossroads guiding My task accomplished. "So see me follow my chosen way With no dead-ends, no dim ways, none; And for the man who kept a flower Pure from taint of lovelessness who rests There most of soul's desire meet, Thy well-devoted lover and guide I left to follow the chosen way Where flows his life's pure stream, There still bloom and ======================================== SAMPLE 969 ======================================== Friends of the Atlantic in the age of Clark, of the life the life of a time that lasted a bit over fifty years. His first wife died. Three of his daughters married others, one of whom, Elenor Murray Greene, Married Darrow. They had no children. Elenor Murray Greene married Billy Walter Clark. Darrow Walter died in infancy. Elenor Gray married Charles Lindbergh also in China, where her father Darrow Walter lived. Her second husband is unknown. Her third husband, perhaps in anger or perhaps Sarcastic, divorced her. One son, Oliver, lives on her estate, Went from Illinois to New Jersey, Married to a doctor in Michigan. And one granddaughter, Elenor Murray, Is married to J. P. Merriwether, Is the mother of three children: 12. New York Life by Philip Whalen [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Love, Classic Love, Desire, Heartache & Loss, Relationships, Men & Women] A cold winter day, the skies overhead Are gray and clear and cold; and we inside the train Are fighting away the cold in our polarized breath. I thought of Daphne, standing apart from love, With no hope of love ever; the life that bars us apart Is literally silver, the clear knowledge of the world, And how love is what life is. I saw my wife bend over, once, on a star, And my son, ill at ease there, and I said to her, "That’s my little one, princess." She frowned And said, "Do you think of your mother for once?" 13. Not if she remembers, cannot promise. Every desire that becomes a dim memory Neglected, restores the hapless self-denial Of a burned-out coal-plant in Cleveland. My wife never gets on my case. She tells me of the days we moved our household And walked distance from Grimsby, and when she tells The stories she remembers with uncommon ease, I believe. What is it like to love? I don’t know, But I know that my love is true. This morning she said, "So far we’ve moved nothing, And if we did more I think we’d split." I said, "But we haven’t moved the sky or plain Nor further, and we went on the ground And farther. We’re far from now the goal Of mere decency. I tell you I see her In one mirror, where none have moved it yet." She said, "I think I must have missed the course Where most I see and know you." It is as she’s told it, but then My wife is foolish. There were sudden gusts, As if the roof Of the TV room blew away And gave a big one To the wall. As if a big one were blown From there to the roof. And it said, “I can get there by night, By no means need I.” <|endoftext|> "CognitiveRift", by James Hochmuth [Living, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Nature, Stars, Planets, Heavens] The Willows seals And the Marsh Wraps Germans and Ethiopians And the Afro-Incan Of the deep sea-forest. And what’s The shape of a moon As we see It as a size Of their ... And I was a fool, was I To have come to know When I could not see What I could not do. I was as lonely then As I am now. As far as sight can go ... I had the intellect To have that in my For a shield against storms. And I was as frightened of the Fright and what they Of what they forecast As the sole world That flies across The greatest foundered Ever exposed On this buxom air. <|endoftext|> "The Reader Takes to the Air", by James Hochmuth [Activities, Travels & Journeys, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Weather, Arts & Sciences, Philosophy, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture] There is a little crack in the library wall. You can hear it biting the tree lines, straining to get through the thousands of books to get at the one. And it’s the reader that’s ======================================== SAMPLE 970 ======================================== While, with their high inheritances, The hard and gold-selling ploughman sings. In Rhodes' holds the watch-dog makes His watch, and plays the expectant bone To grudge-dogs waiting in the ducts; Each far-darting bone at each fetch Breaks awe into clamour,-- A Roman, the chief vetch whose hue Is sticky enough to hold His hereditary urchin-sedge, Makes mortal show. This grisly rat, though penned in lead, Is Roman; and Roman, too, are these,-- The mongrels bred and unarmed, The foremost of a Roman; That smell of station, station, hold, Where debt's perquisites augment In every crooked hand: For where, to top the fraternity's Coarse, the masking boots protrude. Far-furrowed gold-haired monks in swell, We celebrate the members' wine, And remember the men who lived and trained To break the rope of Lenten chaff, Or do their daily millet there. Nor can our jars not bear a name, "Gallus" not to our seals applying; As Neale, whose humble handed care Teaching pence to grace his own enough, Signed the miracle parcel, yet in fee Was little less than god. Yet else in hall and marble space We bibliom got a library; Whose rarest books may prate to wine, The aged that wear grey hairs, And he that heareth are demented, Have never seen a tasteful chuckle-bub While young men, armed with books and backs, Draw out the meaning of the world; The swarthy Den! and that jaundice, Red-nosed, ash-bellied, dull-eyed train; And so the paleness of conceit Inblots man's small and keen-eyed glance, As from a mine where all is waste Some barricade their obscene hoard. And when the shivering cock of Rome Called for the sun, the harvest-tide, The tanned and rustful Anxious, Great Philip's progeny arose, The bravest of the British line, Headed the loud-mouthed Danae, Who was the lady-friend of Jove. And he that mows the harvest wide, And he that runs the mill-stream, And he that turns the saw-mill, and he That builds the wall in against the stream, And he that speaks the loud of mood, And he that knocks the stones about, And he that speaks the loud of mood, The silent poet have no need To call his labouring heart, to say, The wind goes up by nothing, That has no voice by nothing curled, And yearns in us by nothing, And knows how little for its own. Hail, Goddess of the household hearth! We who have wrought with our knives forlorn, Now knock against the long dark days, Through all the long long dark hours away. We have done with our poor pretences, Hate, fear, and road-sin, and sickly sleep. For we have come out of the swamp, Through the eye-sores of the city stark, Out of the age of stone-cutters two, To be a face in the sun. The world's a stage; our Lives are spots In the great play of God's upper world. We are what he draws upon the sheet; We have left our marble in the bath; And with our marble in our hearts we lie Ensconced in the haunts of the wise. When ye begetten flesh of flesh, You made the child that was to us, You left the fire of God to burn The altar that the fire made; The child that was to us,--no more we knew, The child that was by the altar made, The child of the priest, the seed that should be, The altar and the fire that were, The altar, the priest, and the fire. Since the great lips were shut with the God, And the wide eyes of Him were dim, They have left the gates of Heaven. Yet for their sake have we given Our altars and our God To be unto the world, to prove to the world How the mighty God, which makes glad The ends of men, the Father brought to light, First opened the gates of the ways of Heaven, Then spoke unto men, saying: "I ======================================== SAMPLE 971 ======================================== The wonder of my mind was the two men on horseback Who fought each other to decide who would come off without pay. His handiwork it was--a flag of every nation Fighting that day, with plumes that said "America" and "On my Day!" What is done says nothing about the thought that was possessed By that man whose name in the morning was carved in the moutains. What is done is nothing but what is broken out-- A chunk of the pavement from the street pavement-- A fragment of paving-stone-- (The size of which no one is able to say Before his deathbed, whether he's honorable or not), An orphan on public display. And this was the big question--was he a patriot or not? And by and by-- The judgment of our country Is the one thing we all share. The sun shall never again stand Lovingly on my father's name; No eye shall look knowingly there; But I, at least, shall live in my country, And watch over it, and defend it. <|endoftext|> "When in Trebouthiane ", by Sarah Fort It was not long ago that I Met him across the lake In the houses of that town, And some petty bribe he thought I offered To take me back. And then, Of the few dark horses I had A sweet, vexing pang Fell on me, and all my free-born beauty Shuddered between Sense and freedom, I was free to be free. I was a girl of sixteen, Not wearing my twenty-second birthday, And he was a captain in the army. We passed by his wire, And he was a captain in the army, And I had not seen him For twenty years, yet I said to myself, Like this boy, I am as good a boy Of any in town, as only boys my age should be, And only twenty, as only boy Who are twenty now, but who Were younger in their prime should be Never heed the difference between this boy And me. And twenty-two Of the army officers thought The fellow was right, For he was standing in his college cap And he was lying on the cabbine, And when they talked of troops I said: I should be a captain in the army. Then he looked down from his saddle, And taking my hand and leading me In the carriage house He said: You are as good a boy As any in town. <|endoftext|> "A Poet's Daughters", by Sarah Fort He was the poet's bastard son And my own at Elphinstone could skip High­ forward, or go trotting like the moon Back along the hall, his daughters six And me behind. I am not much like That; but we went, and spun, and kissed A thousand good times that September night When I had never laid eyes on him Before he left, and he was off To fight in the war, and I was wed By a Justice of the Peace, and made My widow's hallowed tombstone by the gate Of his mother's house-front. And he's dead, And I am alive. And my name is on The list of his enemies: it's war To drive him from the Republic; I'm On war-time equinus, and I Accept it, though I'm only one more In a thousand like him, a former name That's little like the poet's, any more, Than any other in the land, any less Than smacked of graves or apple-boughs Beneath a grey serene moon of June Duck or dredging or belt of corn In the sun's hand or out­side shade. From This far­parking life I go to pay A debt, and to get a good woman's love. <|endoftext|> "Liberti, Pia", by Robert B. Shapiro [Living, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Men & Women, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Arts & Sciences, Architecture & Design, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries, History & Politics, Money & Economics] It was twilight. The sky was smeared with lights, Like the smeared eyes of sailors seeing light Before their well­ Below the melancholy road The ants had made the stooped carts of steel Looped and picked each as they moved, while I, Half hidden, walked ======================================== SAMPLE 972 ======================================== Son of anacrons, tell thy father, With what whit of thine head dost thou burn, Who hast, ah, so lamentably fine, Severed in three but a single threads' length The weight of whitest linen that I brought: If one haute milke had the whit of mine And price of white wool then were the jewels of his crown, And if one linen dress did keep the whit of thine Which no whit would keep, I'd buy thee right fair for thy white. This said, the gold-levelled thread he cast Into the fire, and, straining toward the manger, Lifted the odour of his young throat Till that the long-hair'd household-staff Clove off the red-striped shade. Round by that fountain-side The maiden slept. Not a sound broke upon her, Sleep-queen'd, from the watch-fires sentinels; And on her knees her little face was bent, Gazing and wondering as the scene. Waver'd and paled The pleached face and graceful, as her sleep Dissolves the brilliancy of dewdrops. Down the wide mirror slunk that maid, But coming down, the footless bacchanal Of moonlight into the cedars caught again The polity of her wonder at herself; Throated the o'er-furtive sigh that breathes From partings. The sun of stars had now gone down And morn was toe, when down she too did gaze, Half-held within the mystic charm of fell Or embraced in those old broidery things That enward had once the lovers. Still in her hair more opulent, on her lips Plunder'd her heart and bosom, as they lay Close-stripp'd across her shoulders. Her plaits loose With quick pulse and deeper passion'd, round her neck, The same glad languor they toggle of their couch; That fond slack pause that makes the heart conspire With eyes already close, that hastens from To why of some long-lapsed girlhood's dream. The clan-ambassadresses could charm, And with their crystal-nobilty on her, Search out a resting-place without her; Loosely her, at most, they fold her, And in one plaited garland leave the sight Of maid nor prince, which made her mourn so sore To see that sunny rush of air. Thence Brigliarean Z blocking road and rail Pursued her in his hand afoot, an axe In his scabbard; and but for love Had she been broken on the wheel's way. I tell a tuft of young rind From its pale mat of green; And I tell what cornices Around the patio Frishe on the courser invest; And I list a word They have said; The gardener tells a tale As the lark doth tell; And with garden-tag She was mad for raiment; but what Could win the girl that passes When the sun is set? Well, he meant to keep her in bed Till he could gather the heaped sheafs Of early starlight. But he should be rigorously curious To catch the hidden strength In which the roots were at their height; And, seeing how she would wake, Then encourage her, till she would take The grace of slumber and retire. He fell in quest of power To infuse in her brain and soul The frail waters and sharp air of truth, Which the quick spirit swerves from. And then there's a pause and a word of grace; And then he should rest and dream for a while; And she would rise and nod earnest; and then fall In love again; till the slow thought should awake Her soul to ponder and reply, "Taste nature's gifts." As spring-time in the deep velling months Is in its first time jealous, so this earth Is doubly aspiring; yea, in the spring Itself and the bed are such that man Can dream in. And this is the reason why She couldn't go to bed, but must see The symbols night so resolutely Were chiseled in and around her bed; And that they spoke of rustling in the wind; And that they swayed and urged one way and another; And that the little sounds of delight Could be made to explode and cry "Pleasure!" And have the purple, tender, sad fall ======================================== SAMPLE 973 ======================================== lower'n o' my rank; The shame and sorrow, low or high, Did bid me beg the cleaver's place: And yet I go to Jerusalem; And when my flight is o'er, A stranger yet I shall be, And foreign lands shall find above A worthy place for him it was; A place where saints to seek relief From sin's absurdity; Where he might rest in brotherly love, And work divine in earnest, The walls of which he had built, On the ground's pure glimmering flood: It would contain a worthy seed Of true canonization. O I thus went with silence on, Full of pious pleasure seeking nought, But that the place would inly pain thee; A little work thus had'st my cousin; Yet with great honour I was halloo'd: Since he our fathers called patriarch, Of royal lineage we have seen; To begin in small concern Where Earth's wild impulses rank'd us. That much we saw, much we foresaw; For fresh as he was the sharp spear, And on the horn the battle Of tyrants was in motion. He, the true shepherd to behold, Seized with the same care; A venerable staff; and cord; With mickle zeal they to themselves maintain. Earth cast her vineyard to the Spirit Who all the glory can; Spirit in his kid-wire staff and rind; Spirit wing'd his clean feather'd dart, With greater might confin'd the youth; Stretched the eagle's eye and waked dismay, Faint as the earth was with convulsion; The juice of wine, and spirit pure, The two bestow'd the third was splashed. When our mortal eyes had hid their mist, The sun's bright ethereal ray Stood breast to breast and head to flood, And sink to honey in the storm; And make the world and all its borders Lull as a wonderous gem that swims Mid wondrous jews, in a golden sea. Lo, their mount of tower whose top Like hill in azure blaze it shows, Or 'gainst the morning's arid bloom Like grass in mountain-lava cast; Like to a boar, that strays to spray 'Twixt earth and heaven, when labouring brutes Bring Hesperides their parting tear. It to the mild-sight hath well pass'd As some stately spire that stirs Its diamond towers with avalanches, While through the mountain's gulphs torrent floods, And roaring chasms, on the prodigious steep, Waves crash as mountains; in wild deliv'ry Down-wrought with steel and pitchy blood It frothing torrents where it falls Now blind, now fuming wheel itself away, (Meteor-brides from the bowels venting) Mingling with intestine gravels the deeps; There, flood and boil and brimstone-fumes, Though how it slumbers in the calm, and dry, and hot, And all around a world of scalds, and tar, and loam, Tossed high in air, and formless night Out-blanching) come; Still as a marble in the flood, still As a stem, still As an apex to the growth of a root; Though wind and water should twist Like a marvellous artist to inforsede By air alone, or touch it with a breath, --As one who deadened to breathe should bend a bow And draw a circle of silver in the gripe Of Death-- I met a woman, that being come To Jerusalem, the happy feast; I met a woman, she was wife and spouse; And as I said to her, "Well I had one call That closed my life; well I did use it to good: Better to me than all to have had no call But to bear the same." A robust flint caught under our life in moisture, And that clean woman had him in to the sea, Forget his airy style, and look, and name, Could not err if one of God's high word Had left a marvellous mark to it, till then Like the dawn of the angel's day, There sat up the earth; and there sat the sea, Made up of the same white glare as if the glare Were their right radiant hue: But sure by this you see, I am no hypocrite; I know the lash, And I dread the fire and seal, Like the truth, and leave my heart ======================================== SAMPLE 974 ======================================== Or smallness, a little of the child within me, To save in the spirit but not the flesh. I have a brother young; His foals are rung; And I must feed My little food with much weeping, And pray, that when I am dead His rites are well begun. A promise, dear brother, is No gift, but bought with pain; A promise is a bond Too fine to compass, To break, but not too free. That I will love you, With all my heart, To the end of time, If only that, above, You love me, then I go. She sits and weave Her garments of dew; And almost looks, For who can tell, How fruitful is a life That many call, to die. I'd rather fly with Night Than live like Day Without her; I'd rather Be once a king, Than reign as Homer tells In every easy vase. The sea-bird's flight Is strange and new; He travels far In spirit; I, mysel, I, the poor swain, Am here and here. Like the first, is my story; Sci-enlaced is its metre; Its suffering grows Like that of days; It bears, though Time atones, And acts like Brutus. The peal of a morn That ripples the sky, Tore Apollo's coign by, And beat it within With cumbrous arms, that stiff As hellish crystal were. The spirits that sat blind and old Broken and dumb, Trod up their ashen bowl Ere speech was taught, Or taught one slattern step to drink, Or one to light his fire. And there, already bared to the eyes Of the young Dawns, They sate for long, while that old Day Came on with flushes red; While from her couch Of cloudy fire, they watched and moaned, Where slowly, pale, like dead, withdrew Her glory to her tomb. My stars are dumb, My moon is as of old, She walked in dance with me, While the ancient stars that burn And shake the deep asunder That she walks on; my moon-sodden hair Seemed to sway and turn by turns As she did; for all my music, song or no, It had been vain to shake her from my arms, Or make her flee from me. I named her as she rose from darkness, My first-born star; The mother of my first sweet love; I named her but for the first; As of that holy pair, the first, With whose eyes I strove, in my dark dungeon cells To make a Lent of slumber; for it was moonlight, moonlight only that held me, within the golden self-forgetfulness Of complete imprisonment. The sun is as a mower That lets the early corn blossom; The moon is as a muskellun, That breaks the clover in the spring, To make it rise upon the branches light; The stars are as far from me As heaven's bright gates; my pains are many, As the tides of my spirit are seaward, That ebb a hundred fathoms under. Thy sleeping eyes are wine-purple, Blue as w wine of May, All night the curtains and the floor Are rich with perfumed roses, While the vase is overflowing, And the world is sleeping on my fumes. The fox hath foul political ads, And a cross of silver on him; The cat is a synagogue-clock, The frank-small lion is a funeral; The oak is the head of nurses, The spider is an upas hunter, The robin is a pocket chronometer, And the sconce is a pocket doctor. These were the items of the town, The objects and affected guests Of two hard morning-people. The Morningman had two-- His hair was golden and his dress was thick. In his heart he was truculent and An outstanding person with his pills, And he took his grey-coat with a grimace. The Morningman strode forward Gently to his desk and began His Sabbath-day duties as lightly As if he were a clergyman On Christmas-day or his birthday; He eyed his coat and his sconce "The Board has approved my Codes (examinees round!) ======================================== SAMPLE 975 ======================================== a’s big and rude, There’s nothing I’d buy In any case, and we’ll dine in the guest room, a splendid affair entrees At the table of Mrs. Sans equivocating With regard to you, and what may happen in the world I’ve to admit to myself that in my mind I keep a mental count, Which column has greatest wiggle room, whose pen I’m most certain is the one I’m least afraid of turning out wrong. I’m also troubled by what purports to be my letters, and which are most to be trusted on the fidelity of. They’re not reliable. Well. There’s No’t no answer. But I’d like to say Someone should’ve told me I had a right to feel flattered! <|endoftext|> "Radiance", by Rita Dove [Living, Life Choices, The Mind] Her body was a radiance of leathered blond and red, sealed tight with a card to stay faithful, and tucked inside a mass of prayer beads, by their bright in violent opposition to the sky, now drenched with afternoon's stockwort, orchard, one’s passport, fine lime, timothy, his umbilical. Was there never a case of lost & left? Never a single friend who’d let her stay with them? No will or heartbreak to keep her there with them, no nursery but for eyes of whirring brocaded lamps to the deadly air that fluttered from leaf to leaf? <|endoftext|> "Triptych", by Rita Dove [Living, Life Choices, Love, Heartache & Loss, Realistic & Complicated, Activities, Travels & Journeys, Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life, Gender & Sexuality] And here’s how it happened. My pal and i went out to lunch. It was a sun-filled day! The waiter said, come you two! Two large plums I thought, brilliant, perfect for the stomached. And i’m a sucker for a greasy meal. Her fingers held my wrists and she was young and weak, but i’m a sucker for a good story. She told us of her traveler’s sleepless or hot days, of the battle with lice or the awful waters of the sea at twelve. The waiter cleared his throat, and then my waitress came, to wash down the meal with violets, the color ofied fritters. But i was already satisfied. What i imagined I knew. Her fingers held my wrists, and then my elbows! i tumbled in the seat and the table drifted away and i was alone on the street, on a springy street i was skirting, seeing stars and vague shapes. <|endoftext|> "Laura Escherty", by Rita Dove [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Arts & Sciences, Reading & Books] I Where does one stand when all the world seems packed with possibilities? In a certain sense, never. And, anyway, the ages run on their courses, as we never stop them, or we lose what we think we’ve gained, as if some mystery grew old, then died in the swiftest clock on the face of the earth. All your mother a reader of books may have been, and what others read alone is often the most deeply. Most women read to share. Some prefer a single sex. Some read daily. I don’t. II You may love me now as no other would have loved you in the past. You may think me cold. You may even think me less of what I once was than what I always was in your eyes, where I was then and still is now a little woman. III He found a small berth across the trout stream. He set it down for me and my immortal sax. It was beautiful. It had been planned. It was planned, yes, and he said he wouldn’t know what to do with it before we were wed for it. We were wed right away. It took a cast for the bride. And thus my divinity ======================================== SAMPLE 976 ======================================== Royal Princess a while, So sweet a spell, so sweet the spell, So changed the air and light With rippling founts of bliss, so shook Those diamond rays that ope and blow, Would blind all eyes but sweetly shine, And laugh a joyous roundel. Her light foot flew from ground, yet loud The trumpet sound might tell a cheer, Where round and round like withered flowers The queen's white gown did flaunt. Now lost the hour, the lamp is spent; Roses fading as with faint scent, Light with such small flame consum'st, As while her lively hue she adds, The maid did think to work her page Her mate's high grace to adorn, Who,--in a flowery stave thus dressed, Was lost himself to please, Who (his fancy bidden to suit) To hold the gown-foot subject there, Half his noble face abroad, Met with the garb by artful Loss To vie in designing. Sed unbound a grass-green sheen, Like lambs grew bright, whose beauty sore Of fine Autumnal manners you wan, And joined her feet, that luxury feard All bright feet from world's decadence possest, Degraded to earth. With leaden shoon His shining shoes he boots to realms dim Infernal, where the frost-bit frost doth keep. He bears the steel exultant on his breast, Who, while his magic eye shone so bright, Did see unseen the King in secret laid, From whence the sacred water welled fast. His torch now, at ease to ease reclined, Unmixed the royal wave for there was nought, Save plump Viper fruits in silver husk, Who, bright-eyed and empty, came, And, o'er her meadow all its boughs about, Puts both his arms on hers and shows the grain. Here wendeth Jane that elder Rose did beget, That is the damsell of her name, the flower Of the dear ancestry of Ladies fair, With all the sweets which that sweet lineage ware, But, grown in sunny glory. Since her birth Brown Flora, by the mighty Queen relied On now her heath, by this wood, sweet Flora built. Now her the Gall insures with opulence, The rum-press now and main is again; But Cecily, and the rilling stream, And hawthorn-enriched round, Toiled up with labour with the bream for me From the sweet cove and rich, and blest The harbour hard in sparkling sun or sighs, And now I breathe the lee-ridge freshness sweet, On earth's own bosom to bring my rest, Yet, 'gainst Nature's powers, I should seem to have flown Up straight to such a rest, mine own design, I know not what for mine own, to sing Vain thoughts that sing, Mine to no end. But to be, My own pleasure, this utmost season, this Wrapt round with autumn-tide, that half-way now The autumn moon them enfold, Alone, yet many shipwrecked there, so, Among them, and yet so all made one, the thing Seemed death to him and damnable pain; Yet sweeter far to Mark than all the world At this alone: the world is but Thick eventful; envious eyes are these, And full of blood-recent things; what here Death's harmless face is more please that? But yet, I am but alive: I choose Eagle-heart that reckons no cost, and gives These things for free; on which I see Another thing far worse than Death, An empire true, unjustly called The Throne of God, his 'feet', Long denied, as chance would have it, are now Supposed: but that I should deem His reign a kingdom therefore, Were but to gang a rogue, Who should from Heaven bring An empire with an equal claim, Is but a Turk; Yet that he so deigns To speak plain sense, And tell what is indeed No longer lived with ease, Prove my undobbed belief, Which was indeed When I first saw the light A foolish youth; And when I sought thy grove (For which, no more, I thank thee) Then in the leafy darkness There up to my nativity In leaves and lucent night I dwelt alone; There ======================================== SAMPLE 977 ======================================== Shrouding thy form in shame and fear; Her hair like iron. Where hast thou found, 'mid wildest roar, This danger, use for danger, dread, Thus mild? Art thou too, in a far like case, And more than once to see alone, The friar's big lips lift, his visage Serene, though he know not it? And while his flashing eyes Gleam--O, to have those eyes now Upon this forehead yon upright, And put this ravening in; And on the bridge! Out in the street! Shouts, clangs, and angrily answered Thunder of far trumpets, heralded Terror! and pikes--and rooks--and on Through the open window sounds! Grave D----N stood all dumbly. Dread murk, and round him flitted Black mail, rusty spurs, and bright Pawnshope tacked against his side; And serjeant weatherbrow'd with Murry lap- rag's; Gloves of the twain, with lace; Juggling sticks on belt, Gloves of a two-handed poke; Gauntlets to his fists; Helm himself his wife Carrying, face to face, his pall, At a good slash by chance Of ladies' kirtle; yet not Shame-, nay, not awe; nor loud in words, More full than thumb on quill, Showing the velvet dome; Bare foot and bloodless beard; And my lord's given name, With boot or band on cheek; Not rank, nor wealth, nor promise, Nor title, nor renown; But in his utterance's worth, His honesty and heWert In the sounding wind. He saw I saw that she Was noble; saw the ivy At once coil on her brow; See how the birds in nests And beads have formed a dim, bright Blue florence for her brow, As if the world, She wav'd, breathe, move on; For these designs, in September, She need'd the plow; to them the sun Was well cease for a while in sleep; And thus, with such a cloud above She live'd, and looked far down Upon her home, there never could see Her own house there; therefore the air, Thin as the plow that mows the fruit, Pierced by slight breeze was gaz'd, But what so ever she beheld She knew not; and the moon, and birds, And stars, and silence, and the dew, Seem'd to impress for more than words; Nor could she trace upon the vale That it was all one blissful glow. What signs she wisest to be jealous? Why Those of a sorrowing heart, which Make men to weep in church, and women guess Some grief, that mocks their cares, and seem Enduring as men bereaved, With such strong oaths as they would swear Against the breath of all the world? Canst thou forget such love as mine, So fond, and how all nature shrinks For to go wither'd of the heart? Wretch that I was! Here my bones Lie under the yellow grass: And on the pebbles, see, I die! Were my death there, I so should bleed Beneath my husband's kissing hand. That heart if I have in the grave, My life would content; and he Will soon look back upon me With some so true a memory As should with me be mended; And that, O fair one! the rue, That wept above thy heart, And that fond, and that chaste, and this thy heart, Will all be dust again. Mark, from yon far hepidernacle The very wall of Juno dead; Back, unhappy dames! be brief; Far, far too beautiful! Neptune's mote Should tithe of his cancer full; Yet, who the plague can number them, Who pities the distress of love? Let yonder cypress mark my wave, Which that, by Neptune drawn, hath flow'd Infinite years and years: Empty of passion, dead to change, That only seares a cloud, Yet, when the faithless winds are sped, Cirrereled with long hope-comrade, Your trouble can be but ill. Neptune, if some torrid dame, Hearing my strife, were minded to ======================================== SAMPLE 978 ======================================== Emancipator illud ipse: semper dixit, quæ casta mulier: quæ diciunt cardamine physeus. undique puer sua malum habet, sæpias, viridis deserum, sæpius simul ac fida pede est: quæque tuos inculro aduersos victores, plaudite Iuppiter, et nobis quod incat. da mea casta mulier, et mala lingua plaude maria plenis hiant, multa tenuis pede lapada plaustum: Iacchos si quæ crepie de patræ, cantibus conturbatur umbrâ, certæ casta, quæ quanti sunt in meo Maternis anni facit oscula, quis non exstantulis annus aureis umbrae cultus laueatis ateres, et hebe lusi fac in mándarum: nascent dulces Stilichoï primaçi vell iusto supplexque petendus. antistes orbis ad taurinum tenentes maerentes, scit ingenium luxus in arborum domo. aduerso iunco conspicua nouas, et gemmis avem, ac machina cristosa, scabies, tantum leporenum regno atque esse cara haec esse in tanta manu. is aurore: en cyathum mihi non saxum jaciat annum, quo rupta litora passum dudum, dumque rotæ, debe quo titulum gens theta naufraga rotis, qui cursu dimissa catenis rebus aetate petere? nam quæ titulum in tectis monent regni tollunt, noctis quater in tanta fugacia libit uti melle suarum purpureum: ibi modo propius dedit aurore manus. præmāte notæ sedet fugitiè fugitiès imperi, cupis sub odales: cupis sub suis deorb de choos auribusque pecus. strepus: strepitus: fluctibus fluidum est rapitur bibit ilex esse velis, amisso ad extremos sub choris atrium pernres. hanc igituram micanto amore quam esset tauris aureis domum. cui di iam superhas purpura nomen: halā colitis tenacibus herba fluvium, quam nido colit hydri quam profundum nux agrestis domum, nec placidis precibus strepitum placabo: sed, quæta teretique tibi nascitur canis, se propter unum indicans, choro (creui ablante fuisse, de se noxa sagittis Tallia iuventus asperit), contra umquam ebur, anima diffundi sua reponunt, et soleper erat sua nimbo. effortor hic è ridetis ante suum qui pose Dumoca percurit lux insano, lundi licet sternis cum lætique rota et splendido spissa gemit: huc uno puro essente, primum nimbique per gurgitime rexer! intercessum duxit, farè columen blandis dulcia muri, et columin prospexit illam. Digitis cum medio, quæ modo communem lumine Nereoris dabimus, emissa haesit per literas exusto colla lumina. aurea bibit plectro, quæ visum sensim bowe, et tulit rependit ab illa semina; quæ dura pigro, quæ nec figit ira, comitaturque cibus rexeris annum. Nos feros imbre digerim, atque iam surris lumina inter soles saeclum expressit. amissi non fluminxit, sæprepar, fugeris: garriferis illudit mult ======================================== SAMPLE 979 ======================================== Alone before that towering hill he stood, As cedar-crowned, towering o'er the smooth, Blue-seeming tide of damask hearts that wash The flashing waves, or get their base of pines In oak-shaded deep, where once a bride, A maid serene in happy hope and life, Had knelt to Love in streamlets of spray, That waiting morn had blurred the silent air, And skimm'd on the thirsty grass the plain; Or went out from the back plain side Blue cloud's heavy frown, red storm's laugh of war, And seem'd like some great doom, that scarce could say When it should snatch that hero form on form. He stood with folded arms that field-fat-brown, (So were those huge creatures fated to lie, When this sky saw them first that way they came,) With his fair sword girt deep round about his side, (He like a dame of war the nations knew, Who had been seen in that hour when fell the sword,) And in those arms which looked so small and stout, When cold with dint of rustful rust it held, He held his wan white cheek so tenderly. "My mother, then," said the Lord of man, "She beckons to her who brought me forth, Whom men might know, if it no ears or kneols Wave light, or mirage, of distress or doubt; But knowing her, I send from of no man's kin Some light, but what may lighten a burden's way. Some land, the burden itself should bear; This place, these lands, the great, the only sin For which men wail, be that which obtrudes to blood. Nor would'st thou then be found to leave this shore, Though mid their blue roofed multitudes thy side Were plumb-modelled with prow-cords, or because Of the vast change thou hast, which tempts repose From sleep's impassionate sorpher.--Lo! Not as when giants hear A long-legged King present, and cry "This one Is lord of all," so have the people learned Thy fidelity less true to-day Than was thy word in our old time of yore, Because the times have changed, not thou alone, But us along with thee have stooped to hell And the profound, and our senses thereto Have known no plea for valour in the fray Because our ears have heard not the rudiments Of right, whose armour lay close hid and thin; But thou, so odd, so sweet in flaw and shape, These later wounds that stung before With salve of thy faint form, not a day Have refused a tender countenance, When passion thus has struck, like fashion's time The times have past, but words are left behind. "I tell thee no more, for thou art by no man Henceforward to be known, because thou art An alien ere these kingdoms joined our world; But for the soil that gave thee growth and birth Thou wilt a cradled cradle rather be. Not for thy son the lady is content Because they plan to take him, but for thine: For thou hast as thy sole grief thy son aflame, And that shall save thee, seeing his love has wings To fly beyond the few that here may touch. The Nubian kings entice not, so, nor spell, Nor such-like wizard, to these realms we throw Thy youthful form from country unto the shore, Where he such heat have taken of thy blood Shall light his withered torch. Thus thy life shall be To all things fortunate; thus from out the rest From whom no reason in it is thy life A twofold gladness is to spring apart From him, who having been made thus shall be Forget of all his father and his son, and here Upon a new shape make new of thee his son, And so fulfil the will of Death, who when He found in thee thy likeness, and the time Had arisen of thee to take new body on And meet our changing sense, shall call thee from out Thy marble womb, fearing thee this new birth From utter nothing soul, and though to sight Of these thy neck and back and arms and fingers wan, Worthy to press thy palms with great renown, Yet for this cause thou hast our thank; for who Out of thy right womb would not feel the same Taste of idleness and blood, nor the soft Laying of thy small palms, nor moving those, That ======================================== SAMPLE 980 ======================================== Geirus, and Godthekeep and Ekaggliff, And Jurgulffrith and Badon, And long the weary hands of Vafrino, And legless lives of Madden. And much Adri's fields have danced, And much Isle Ziege near Yule Isle, And swathed its way with moonlight In woven water-path, When, through the golden main, Stoutly as the moon-beam shone, Stam half-curved its stream; So thin the edge of that fierce land Struck bright with showers of light! And some its fragments cast Maze of lost in the dew, Red in the moss, among the stones, From the clime that never flits, All a storm-swept isle, amid The woodland wolds of Norway, Or open sea's deepest gloom, Across the yearly faint line Above the wavering harbour's line, Over the mist that o'er the surge Transfers with her wave-beat lid-light head, Fired from shore and fjord and sky-line light, Where o'er the hidden foam that heaved And curled, ever seemed to vie With the divine fragrance Bound in the wild upland, Those ancient struggles to fulfil When first we met. Now of that happier time I keep Such chamber-gates, and pass Where clover-retted Pines impale The sunny trellises, on Th' other side of Nature's gate The wild-wood sheep, And the level brook Lines mottled with pines over The echoing beach; As one who harbour-ways, While yet our brother-dogs bark Where past the wrack-bearded rocks, Pursues his way. But whosoever he be that walks The sunniest way the land-wind swings, Whosoever he be that walks The fixtst way the gale makes Across the earth, Whosoever he be, I say, (A solemn thing, and haught) That from the suns his face is drawn, And that from the suns his face is drawn, Behold, this water-ship is sweeping Before the heavenly Sun of Day, As this sun once was the wind Facing with face all skies. What I know not, who now I know, That on the smoky-browed Mountains wreathing His unholy brow might come. With ruffian hands, with irreligious eyes Breeze the wilds, and doff the divine Polished jubilee of his land. Even this could he; To show his wrath at Him whom all the world Could not overpower, The neck became a mountain. Yet who he is, with blinding light comprehending, Shall rise to such an height That on the seas of darkness his sails Shall weave the milky way, On a light-made ocean quaking, And track where lies no trace Of bark or trace of life. I know him, and why he says, I know the heathen howled. Whereupon the Turians answered, saying-- "From him the name and title fall." And as they spake, about their keel A maiden, fleet as wind, Leapt from the shore, the heaven in sight, And more she jumped than cloud in wind; The stars in terror vanished, When swiftly here she leaps, To light, with mouth; with mouth; To light, with tongue; And makes her leap to heaven again. This done, she seeks the Demon's cave. Now she is reached, that tower of worlds, Where darkness eternal rules; And there amid the labyrinth drear, With slow, proud, fearless step, She up and onward mounts, until At the base of those self-same towers She hastens on. And she comes, but comes (That wondrous sight to sight,) Towards morn, nor stops, nor whistles, Whisper, but follows up her beck; A virgin pure and spotless white, Yet dowered with more than heaven-enlightenment; Duality complete; And out of her core Swelling a human sweetness, A heart that one might call A girl with flowers in her hair. So, then, what madness was, That down from heaven she should descend? And who sent her, and where Her as her charge? That which was to do and live In darkness, light and love ======================================== SAMPLE 981 ======================================== Will enkindle beyond for him; And neither sea nor sky Shall see their midnight alarm; For, be it years or be it years, No word of man's shall shriek them to sleep. Ere the saltmars is dried and shoved Out of the window-case, Out of that sweet soul-stilling place Where once our welcome chime ran, Let me and you take a joyay, Under that old rusty sill, Where the cool green octagonal-pane Lists malignly, leeringly, still Where woman shudders from her tomb, Beside the Styx-running seas. Yes, for I am a young tree Grown in a narrow niche, And I have shattered every tassel That lay within me, but, oh, As keen as hooted my quills, The sweet divinity within-- My soul!--howe'er be it, I Will adore the grounds for which I rise on the bosom of these First flowers of that paradise. When the Rose is thirsty for the dew, And hastes to the shade, It's as a child of its own heaven, Wool-headed and self-willed, Careless of the damp clay; Now, no more caressed-- Now, as though well-nigh mad, It hiccup as mad as a card And a tangle in its hair. And the Bellman said-- The Bellman who in hours of old, Imbued the lust of his fame With wonders like these-- "Here's a witch's-cauldron isle Where wine of Apollinary Is brewed and sold. Why not here in London town, Where at less than ten bob a go, We mix the wonderful wine?" The Bellman heard his speak; With eyes as round as chai-allee Stood the four-lane road; And "Give me a drink" he said-- Hear, hear, fair gentlemen, How my pretty lady-love Sips up the brimming pot! "Whose young blood is thicks in this measure, What's the star in her urn?" (He's hardly a hale an ungenteel Though he has sung more treasured than ten; He and I together shall leave this Ever blessed spot!) "Lady, the very world is racked, And a squib of sanity Would move this bumpish masquerade, Like you, like you, and like you, In this ungovernable state! But he and I together shall sit Here in full court; and we'll take our hats off To the smiling governor, Who likes us, and his whole ministry Is on the board of the Pear-tree Tavern." For the governors of coterra And the governors of all the ports Are still, or are, cur, rather more wise Than the wisest governors are, they Are the Devil's own--though he, as well as I, Appears to hold the first place. Ay, well-born, ay, well-born I am! For all the lard in Rome Ever ran so red and sweet On the tongue, as I do burnisht The spark in this white rock, That the whole world of crud be imbued, As I pass by the modern, muser, I should think there was not a stray stone In all the street, Save a beheaded prisoner, Whose hands should be wise bound, like mine, On the iron-wircz't toothpicks, To beat the hunger of the shins In the beat of the tick of the clock. For she has surely seen his warts And marked his forseins, and must know Their roads and devious ways; And thence she infers the thing I sing, and the poem that sings, And she knows--He who cares--enough! The air is soft with a fragrance Like gorgeous airs in the fall; And I would say "Rose Maria! I could weft thee a wreath or two, And ply thee with a little rhyme For some twenty chaplets o' lettuce, Prayed for by a weeping woman, In an instant of tears!" But there is a pause, Where some autumn-sweetness Steals like a beauteous dream away From the black and bewing'd page of fate-- From her locks, with the taper-lace, Like an ash-tree winding down the ======================================== SAMPLE 982 ======================================== That on me lies your ward, yet when, In that ordange of the divine Thee, one to five, and to amend Some blacke hasty hart, my noble heart Thou of thy weighty person smight Her gemme and gold brought to my mindes As is most just, and than my love. What of my yongge Amy, then decline That she is great? if thou a great Amelia stands in the fair Life of her? I cannot with that wive Be honored, since, I get no pleasure. If thou wouldst, then, be augmented aute, That worthie stone shalt thou adde. It falls, and she is yong. With weight of jewels in thy cours, Mantlie wert thou, and thou canst not be Greatly great. One cause of thy not Giv'n is, that thou art sik and loth. That vengefort is, and that thou sit'st Upon so small occasion; The beauty of the world, which thou do'st scorne, And praise'st not her pitie and bloud. The world's all a prey to cunning, That men with jealousnesse do possess. That thou hast done is, thou desbar'st to dye; But I deuine despatched thee to my grave. This is the cause, that I thy reve Do with thy beauty on thee confound, And draw VENUS from her gentle home Into this strange world, where she shall have (To meet with) what she will, or, if too ty Is for thee, Fairest of blossomes, give thou me Thee instead; or, if too meane is ty, Give me that FLOWING, that alone Thee bring to my descent. When I shall fall, Depart from hence, I will not brood Who shall succeed me, or where I shall Nowise displese you, or your pow'r avert, That, if ye now fairly are assay'd, Fall'n men are fall'n; if ever since the world First to ill came, or up or down These housesooples haue their choice been; The second Cæsar sent from Jove, No bad Nero can assign. Since that free Freinds now are fetter'd, Choose then, for whom quit they care, Or of the same cohort, arm'd, remaine. Lo, what a scorne, what a suger ill, The world does eat and drinke, That that no man with halberts may pierce His neighbour that touz'd with fear. NOSCE! Panurga! there I a naked sith may leavy make, Of brawn they muster themselves that way, The wearied men so fresh. BE MYSTIFIED, oh thou nothing losest Humbly restorit, whom I Inquisitors Persecutor call; that noble man, Of filial virtue never sift'th, And true filth of here Holie David's house, Yee, not I, when that by yous I was drive, And come the town to all what I deserved, As one leavy gold, so cleans'd here by the Council, The bays, which Thou on gold drew'st doon, I unwashe. Vouchsafe some victour to that cloath to make, Which now for me yous forsake! so shall your King, Tho' high-tost, look more high, and not Yours, from me. Then take of serge, or of serge-lees of Phebe-Land, Or of Muses-bought weeds, that yous els Your self better scorne, and not this King. Quod Antonius, vetitam quondam Subduiunt felem, qui filius iocoris Conspicerent in hæresis decumis.: Idem Telemachus, olim Suo recusat, accipit erram Posside-quincke, opes et orbi Posititatem numine quondam. Cum sublucidas cťporum dicam Persimilles sagittis conterat, Ego enime, cum aduersum iam pridem Hoc modum leviter circa Regeret in tempus tument, Inde coërendum, ne omni Si de jacere era perdere superbunt. ======================================== SAMPLE 983 ======================================== Since I should never find you anywhere. Eaten out, beneath a plum tree. Night falls. And like a pale-grey rose Into the distance climbs and climbs Tall, white, sheer and proud and strange The vault of stars that balance hung Above the parched earth outside. Across the parched earth watched our shadows Run, it seemed, their fast and flight, Scudding like the sharp-edged plumes Of some fierce bird of prey that tire Before our eyes like flowers in bloom. They didn't speak, they seemed, I and I The one Unwilling to yield, or to yield One thought dared to thrust as if to die, While the other crept, limp and free Over a plow-width of grasses To my clasped hands, and from my thought Flowed like a trail to me Over the stubble to the edge Of the prairie, where up an alley Of hills, the swerved ridge line slopes, Deep, light and firm as a feather Bound behind a brick wall, The entire majesty of being Burst from between the lanes of the grass Beyond the alley, and a blur Of gold dust, fire and sheen and blue Laugh into the steep, and green and blue Laugh through the gateway gates. We watched the glitter; my thought Grew like a hot wind from the heat The skyline that my thought seized Bolt-like and savage, and it danced A sulphurous wind through my hair, and laughed In the face of dark night beyond The bolts of my raging eyes that stared From the flashing of gold dust that mounted A moment, as the golden feet Of something in high glory passed the portals And, frostily, like wind in a sieve Threw its cloud upon the purple arch, And then swept past. They leapt Into the night. And we knew that neither of us Would see the last, that in an hour, As still as now, cold as then, Reverse we'd stare to frost again And see the long-receding cone Of sunset walling toward the night Where the snow-ridge turned the dark blue shade From hard-furred peaks; For it was done, and no time was. Night fell upon the world. The shadows on the prairie Laid across the sky like the hands Of those who in that hopeless quest Had forced the last star from their reach. Our eyes on each other's faces had raced And both of us were past with words, Myself and what we would; who were yet one, One and only one; for at length My eyes held back. A fierce light thrashed my brain, My heart heaved a heavy sigh, And my final thought broke off suddenly And ran in vain Out of my throat, as a thought runs And in the night one among many; And there my hand slid on the fur Of that ill-clad head and my lips moved Like one half-voiced saying, No! Then I heard As suddenly come as if near And as great as though I doubted of it, The big words throb beneath my lips And caught the light of the stars like wine When in a vat of Syracusian Makes the Greeks drink Eonian wine, And when it comes to me, I cannot speak Or utter a word but beareth me A sense Faint as the violet at Cristal-morn Came up the galaxy of my vision, And came out, far in that vast blue, And stood and took my trembling hand, And said: Now ask me naught, for now Forget all things, and let me prove If I be more than man. And so from that hour I turned on you And toiled at winning your heart to stand One with the night and one with the ice. And the strange hours of that great winter Driven darkly by behind my road Where I saw in vain the fluttering bars Bustle and flap in the idle wind That bore my flagging life, and out Furrowing with its turbid sore The wet ways of rain and sleet. Passionate, that night and dawn, I wondered what I might do for a friend To help at ease the quick advance And gladness in the distance bring Of this great new life and love. There was a sound of feet, but slow, The running from the spring to spring And up I paced to meet him side by side, And when we came to a clearing where The snow lay long on the ground like earth ======================================== SAMPLE 984 ======================================== And it is in vain, my country, to be So much, yet so poor; my heart's Contempt for what I can not give, That's due to you for a whole life's Livelihood--thus is my mother's Memory, like a curse upon me: That all, her better nature covered By her better son, survives A curse, to find its own way! What they will leave behind them they shall Not take with them into the earth; For AIM are gods, we know, that much. We may not know or guess, therefore, What men will do with the good things of this world. The fear of ruin is its own reward; Folly, then, and sorrow, and wasting grief Will also leave their alms behind them, As they did leave behind them in Life's morning. I was but still the child of the Morn, One innocent, quick-breathing day, When all my friends, all our own time, We set us four, straight thro' the streets of heaven To see how far we might come. They, going in the opposite direction, Came back with words of well-meant kindness, But did not much thereafter know-- For odds and even they chose differently. Each, in truth, but held it to his nature, Seemed able to all worlds agree-- But, thinking it, I (then, I own,) Found fault with the old dice-room chatter, A man's strange wit and scarce-good looks; Which (being born withal to my stock) The angels were better-natured than Aught but men at all times to own, And thought fit to hold in higher place, He might have since been black-caressed The sleeping, looking god in Heaven! These are the dreams of youth, and this, That good as well befall; O then I would have died for the boy! Altho' the woods are the preference Of My Lady of the Lake: "Hence, forgive, O ever-blessed shade, I would not thee again be doom'd To bear the youngest, and the wav'ler, too; Seldom do flowers come, I know, but twice A-day, at most, a fresh one and a dead! Too, as the city doth, thou must forsake Thy city for the roadside; and be lost By chance of nature and of beauty more; For other scenes my soul is fresh and well, Grate, if only from the roadside! "Grate and chance, and nature, and above, (The poet's religious scruples not, I trust,) A Sanctuary of Peace I think might join, The joys of either being nextsi-pmonted, All are weak "yes" and "a good will, I warrant; To gain a Paradise I feel i' th' only light And by the Road a boy-god and a goat, How they may range the ways, for me alone Who shrinks from the mangle and the mire Of a city-life, above and below, So let me preach some sermon here and there, The people and place of all pertain. <|endoftext|> A glorious Queen of Eternity Mature encrusted into stone, Like a great Chondicist saint, Full of pious fervours and stone, Stopping with marble busts of saints From peg stone to Ponce de l'Enclos. No, no, the glare; the vapour pale, Staining things for mine inquisitive eyes, That pass, I say, are a pale forsaking Of second hands of oblivion; Where the smoke of the everlasting furnace Of the infinite funeral; are they here? VIII THE STATUE OF OURANEE, REVEALED By the oddballs And the oleuns Who, in their buggish and their chitchat, Make of her name novmoy not ustad, But our, er, Senel Andy, Her immortal messalma. She shall be manna, She shall be snake juice, She shall be hot ozone Flung from the distillery Of the English gin-head freaks. They should have called her Sanabel, To embalm the movies. Instead of Andy Cofee, Velvetin, she should have been Cofee, whom it pleased To name his tabaska Of a back-heeled queller- Knobloster. Sancho was ======================================== SAMPLE 985 ======================================== They are at their work, as they would make An inn of such a house. They lie On fifty pieces of gold, and there Will be provision made, which will make My prophet's kiss to be esteemed more Than Moses', when, by God's mercy thus He bade the children lie upon the bed; And now to make an end of all their fear, We will have no other company then. Our Moses bids faimers clear his hall; And make it fit for guests, both for ease And for disguise; so that from all the far Territory of Egypt to this court The cupbearer might take them, and they none Known of the neighbouring band; I also pray Your poet's gifts and those divine music learn, Who may and will, be kinder than he has been. O sun, quoth the Pharaoh, that dost heal The falcon's sore hurt, and him bring from the gree Unharmed, the tallest of all birds of air Of any in the sky; yet is he not Of the commandments' view per deaf, so God's May speak as to his prince, the free-giving voice Of him our King. I hear one this declare His wonders in the spacious air, a sound So mighty, and to all the heavens it came, Unto ours and unto the earth so loud, That it had to all men blown belief like a shout. Qu. If there be time enough to pray and fast, I will remember yet another thing, Though it be trivial, such a time I have To weary of this sermon. What God Seemed like at first, He now appears to be None other than the sun, who shines the only Bright solace of a difficult world; Light to our eyes, but no sense in the dark. In whose terrible watch by day all things We must be guarded, He is our life, To quicken in their generations life, By what he can in the shadows, the whole Vision of heaven. The darkness of night must bring Our day's deliverance; nor do we then Hang back, stagnant, idle; but in the darkness Come to find out our way, and freshness of day Wakes fresh desire, and breath of love as sweet, As rest brings rest. The better sky is not torn Fixt of all, but still a slumbering twilight, While day doth make his brightness and spread wide His wings. Our first fathers did their progress Through; and their success their height; the height Above their level may never be; if so, Thy princes come not to rule aloft, But after hard labour, slow ascent, slow fall. Why would the woman tell of God; Only himself to hear and believe: Why should I listen to her praise? The company that she hath made Beats my desire to preach or ask; I am not here to get a friend; The praise she can command Leave gladly, she says, for it was just-- VIII Behold where it stands--a noble task, By whose vigorous finger more or lesse Of time and labour thou shalt be answer'd Than hang thee from a loftier summit, Than eblance or meaning tell. The thead stands that God will withone, And take out of us his own, the patient Let others count the hours; Mine wealth no more comes less the nearer. I have as much as this to tell, The which no eye can see. And it is this-- Mine honour is by the floor or scrabble; They that love mercy haughtily kill More than of body hurt; And when their hearts are humane, what are they? The best persons none Can love mercifully, The worst would prove miserly, a hard and sore oppressor, A hard and sore oppressor. IX The heighth of the hill we hasted, The roads were free, our feet we strike, We stayed to mind the order so, Of sunlight and of shadow; Until the sun, this northerly blowing, The murmurous air of it pleased From horizon to horizon round. As inland water is mutable, As climate is vild, As a woman's speech Her attention falls To things most lovely by virtue of her Sensitive faculties, Not from the splendour of her gifts, Which use may by design On occasion of such difference make her more Best and brightest objects bear. X There we paused, our trial sate, In silence, the sun quieted; The woods that before us were ======================================== SAMPLE 986 ======================================== Dit chez Cornè, en ça guèvre la bourgeut, D'un victoire laurore avant la poincie; Dit les hirondels de bon appas, Et les chevaux de ma femme, S'abbaitons de ma phême Il y a des fleurs qu'au match attended, D'un treat, ma foi, enfin d'un émoignoir; Il y a des voix répelling, Dans leurs doux: vosge l'on y pêre, M'endiquit et ne pas encore. —La vie et l'intérprise Dans les hommes et la patrie, Allouch beût de la jeunesse, En lui ? en une belle chante, Porter une petite roi qu'il pérète. —Bavaré, né et de luñore, Foyère nocturnale Trânera partia, son vacances Là-avêtre et grande effroyse. —En la catéchiquante Fleur, le challet mondial et gras, Ton Soldan parlais et couures Seraient d'Anjou, son tour et du hiel, Voulut qu'on n'y priorne pas. —En la patois de Dak Ysgramosa, Sur la preche de Berek Mais quelques mois dès la fin Ne parlent d'un puissant pas; Une séances, un manteau d'auor, Sévera et dan, et sembla. —Chantte-chanter Bavarés, en un coche, d'un masqu'é Et la fédoise, avec mes lieaux, Pouve et souriant de son bilan, Elle est brille et sa fierte est brilla; Penségeé et entré en ville, En son chamber satélier, En son printemps d'un voile à Dahon. Alors espanté! N'jamaira keine aziz! Ajout! Enfin! Et bien qu'une fait Qu'on n'existe en est que l'azur, Qu'on n'existe de l'azur qu'il levant, S'admirant de mon esprit, il va parler, Comme la gloire et la joie d'une lumière, Ma chez el Sollicitation Mira et Sollita, Si Quid Non possim belli non læna? Non s'primaque et quibus id est dicta? Non sola sit, sed sic feit derude: Non dubita se quære id omne misit? Quid sit loquas? Quid satis, ne pugnas nominat? Imit etiam: aut æquis sibi sumus. Som low! Quisquis amor? Parvula fui! Som high! Quisquis mala fuit! Vive, quid me divum, alter magis Et mixta præcha: adhuc, adhuc, Simum sola tua sis nigraque coronam: O joye! O percussis! sæpe dicta est, O beatis amoris mihi fluixere et amoris: Vica, vica, tempus aperiam, ita dixit. Come, my verses, to the misdayers, the froward unkind, Let not a jot of your loquacious souls offend, Whilst the heart which they have feard themselves loves to waile Your self therein; with their damnèd saidliness, Jove, Fortune, is kind, And to me sweet, and to my joy your show'r You bee severe, that they my rich rewardes all teigne And giue me gererly in the vnseage of mine owne to play. When I that made his leave, Behold him in his slippres, I could rather Stand farre fro it, than stiere his plaintfull prose, Whom to perceive he was yong ======================================== SAMPLE 987 ======================================== Last Wednesday night, there were No burning children or drowned fathers: There was an aunt On the Lid, It looked like twenty-four right Where God's width makes fifty. She put her ear to the wall, And the wall rattled Older people were parrots. They turned And walked For the fence And also The neighbour’s old woman. I love her. The neighbours could hear The last few words: ‘I love you.’ ‘I’m busy.’ ‘You?’ I closed the phone. The woman looked down From her chair, So I closed the door. Of the friends She does not write, Of the blind Pictures, her word Is true. When the heart Smiled, then The heart Roared like a light. ‘If you’re having an off day, Come and talk to me.’ My 'head’s in a harm Now, like a mountain To the top of a hill. You may Ask the doctors Of all people this? Why it’s My daughter I’m after It’s this That I say. This very second Miss God would say. Her words Of their web, they built it. And of her mouth There were openings Though the tongue Was always screwy. They entered the mouth And there from the limb It brushed and of the head They got it down. There is a end to this Might seem truer Because they connected the king By the dam, by the water. <|endoftext|> "Till Monday", by Maryiko Janta [Living, Life Choices, Time & Brevity, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] Till Monday! Rushing grass and strange scents are Tuesday, Wednesday and still Thursday and Friday rain will be a thing all life is Wednesday afternoon. Was it yesterday I sat by the window as a boy. Could I see it then? A star. Is it Monday? A beat of thud was its voice as yesterday or any day? Wandering hill and sound One and the same I gave you a knife edge to the other side in other days father and child could eat till noon. The tree in the corner of the yard had an exotic appeal Did I deserve it? At the back of the garden where I felt I should treat you gently. The tree butted, I got a knife edge —after that in places Thud and a knife edge hung the sky a clam. Do you love me? The trees showed little heed but listened could the birds could hear the time of year. Could they know? <|endoftext|> "Wharfeer", by Maryuko s. Iswed [Social Commentaries, Cities & Urban Life] Somewhere between two blasts of bass, I sway in the wharf's lap, listening to the skaters glide to shore as I curl to the edge, a bower from which I might, without arazer, curl into an edge more solid than the sea, more like things rooted in place. And when my turn comes, as it will, it will come to me with a sob in its tone and laughter all its own, no damers to speak of but the voices of whalers who knew the sea, the wind and water, shipwrights who built their boats in ways simple and myriad, with their nimble stuff, unaugust, impervious to time. Those who stood among the maples, thin as bales, as if brailed with hot roasts, thin as woof of all things here, fragrant in the cool of now, and whose rims, though brown, are white as the sun of these wharfs, loosed of clouds as if by frost, unfrozen, and ripe with sultry days, cool with glassed skies and blue pools, their verdant slope is a bellwether for risks as well as speed. I wish, for my turn, to be here with them, weaving among the maples' leaves; to stand among the ships as they perch to spare or to spill their loads; to hear as they come the revel that is less swift than swift, and less slow than hard. <|endoftext|> "Plower", by Robert Adamson [Living, Disappointment & Failure, Activities, Jobs & Working ======================================== SAMPLE 988 ======================================== Before the law, which meant death for a charge Absurdly impeached, and thus immortalised. Words are weak when better lays the gauntlet down; Beneath whose errors each timid judge is judged, And clever verses have been made a crime. That age, which in the dust its little skill presents, Is age to which most men of all degrees Cries Humbl'd the tramp! all romance ages. Astentian or Ionic is on the tip, Nile or Scamandine, pluck'd from the Nile or Rhine; Whose little wit rests the price of wit; I mean the old barbarian barbarianism, Which lent the Christianism its poison stir, And stars and quantities the sophistries. Whence came it? From this very spot, O ask! Which I love, as even you must love it, Rome! Or Faber or Binnor sandy's arid gloom: Sharp Dwarfridge or Purley's broken stair: These were the passages and the spur of heed To learn and earn. It is not far to fix The red-haired Fours, pale count Seb then, Who bought the chase, and judg'd the charge and speed, And nimble Thomas, who sold the wit Of Bridlington and greater name Bracton made; One dapper lad, named Wade, last of everyline, Uncrowned Colonel, a scholar with the Star; The flight of ■Richard's blood, the chase of Agedim, In which Devizes, the name, survived, Stilling all dreams and shapes alike and causing His names the double effluvia of fame, Thin, thinner, sharper, but with equal sense: The lifetime of Akeley, Fox and Scott; These five to five, no chymic change the tribute. Among our rocks and flats the stately park, Whose stately dome thro' night shows its divine: Avalon's palace crowned with dareDevils, and made their founder poor By the support of his architecture, Here over-marvelous, here we may lie Lying down and feeling Heaven by this. There were five slaves at Rome, of whom two Kept up the wild and bleeding heart, Sole sign of Damaso's race: There's Fiore, Dante's, Holker's: then what What can you call them? but brooding bores? Daughter of Time, nay, mother of years, Lo how they walk and laugh to clouds! Than all the world apart, how oft In the loose lattice turned, the bars, By which in mood she most reverenthro' you, When 'she like a woman met her match,' Grate of the soul's rapture, and its praise, Presses, tracing each the others' face; As Eros' daughter trots from the river And fixt on love, and eyes, and teeth, and nails: Who cast upon her the weaving net, When 'hundred years,' 'hundred times,' 'two thousand,' His art were cantt with, nor the thread longer. So, 'twixt what seemed each different sense, and mood, Yet feeling mine thro' a treble grained All woulds twice the hundred years undo, I would press 't for Hercules' golden bolts, Or Hercules' crook; for strong God's throne, Or God's arm; or God and God's awful feet. And sooner than invent strong proof Of my love, my love for my mother, I'd crush an Asiris had he sung, Than mine horn, when on the point I thundered, As awake as Asiris from his trance. Then, the god where two and one was, He joined the elements and times of prime My lessons in the sun, with ours: so great Our next to mingle--with what to mind I had in common, though in my dreams, When we had parted, as the key That opens all loves; or in the copses, The pink and purple heads of May, Roses, herbs, undines, on the lindens, buds, And dewy eyes of May, of spring. So deep we swam, and so far outspread The moon, that all but the stars of heaven By borders of their own segments touched The limbed moon, like the green bank's enringing The stoles, first birch, next beasthized holly; And I like a night and water drenched, A little pool--'tw ======================================== SAMPLE 989 ======================================== >From, Here Comes Sunshine, To the trees, All the trees fully shaded. >From there, Through the Parc, After the shower, To the kitchen, To the meadow, Towards the mountains. <|endoftext|> And, in an age when silence comes as a disaster to retreat, That which has been thought, that which shall be, My life’s language, like the valley in whose arches I was born, Enchants and holds. Like a girl who comes out of the twilight; Like an angel-river sinking; Like the dawn, a word of which the sun will be full. Now perhaps I could not be here to-night As one whose voice cries out Over the moonshine to the oaks, Like the ghost of a spoon that lays Its little ghostly fingers on the table— To do this right I must have a little dance, A small guest of something like color, And I go with my sautering whistle. The hour-glass on the fireplace-stone Is never emptier; never more I go with my braille dinner-bell, That rings out words not all wrong with you. <|endoftext|> "A Common Fable", by Robert B. Bellahun [Relationships, Home Life, Nature, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire, Mythology & Folklore] One day down the drain a stone was thrown Of variously shape and size, And the question of what it all might mean Was left to puzzle two boys. One day a log on the lawn: And one day an old foreign magazine; And the afternoon a log on the lawn, And no idea what it all could mean. The evening a log on the lawn, And no idea what it all could mean. One day on the lawn away they stood And the log was a clock, and the log A chess-board, and the chess-board a book, And the book the universe was bound to end. And yet the generation gap Was being narrowed, and long since passed The generation comprehension test. So I think that by the lawn's recalcitrance, These boys were lulled in to a false sense Of the promised meaning that was hid As if that future were some orderly shape, Some harmony, some justice, some great truth, And that only fit the alleys they walked through As if, only fit to be burned as dry broom In the past, as if the truth of things were that With nothing behind it the ills of the mind could be spread, As if truth were false; but "if it's not to be You won't be hurt," was good enough for me, And so I was held, watched, muzzled and bore at will From not-imagining-it for half my conjecture To the test that soon erst from my reason sprang, Nor imagined what end could correlative prove, And for the mind to avenge itself, even in writing Fled forth and vanished let loose of a narrow tongue That groveled, self-closeted in its groveling guise, As for their cradle, death would have been enough You'd say to a child, "Don't be afraid." <|endoftext|> "Smoke", by Robert B. Bellahun [Activities, Indoor Activities, Relationships, Home Life, Arts & Sciences, Humor & Satire] The chimney slack with cobwebs, So far the knotted brace Of the overhanging branch, That by one space, shrunken And feverish, waits to see Some figure come to claim, But I had promised myself To turn one chimney repro. To fall into it— Do I wish it, do I want it? Just half a second, I hope. So long as an outside Are naught but clouds of black, I no more would covet than This puff of the corn, though It might be of Pity. Your wife, so white-spotted red, Bites the dust as I toss Beating to be turned out. "Jive-laced?" she said last night, "You smokers, know as well What's up there" (perchance): She meant a hookah bore Down the hallway. You hear the hammers Of the splintered nails? No. Still, at the hue Of the barren room, A hint of a hue Or purpose to be found, Though what that may be I cannot hope to see. ======================================== SAMPLE 990 ======================================== secret, in silence because I hope to die alone, a simple "I perish" and that the messages, if I ever find them, will suffice. <|endoftext|> "Approaching Midnight", by Richard Jacob [Living, Life Choices, The Mind, Time & Brevity] They were moving, the three, in the direction toward the town when they saw a cheepingly white house not far ahead, to their right. It had an open door but curiously it was shut. Neither spoke nor laughed, therefore no matter but moving closer. They only stood and waited, but not in that strange calm of wishing what they must do they did something. A year had passed; they now saw that they would die at last. There was a breathless curiosity in each to see if this was some final twist. Something urged them on. They put out their cigarettes, shook out their trust in human nature, their own trusting to be broken. They paid another five dollars to see it before it disappeared. Soon after, they drew the house after them. <|endoftext|> "Sonnet for William Tidicam", by Susan Desmond [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] The key to memory is solitude. —Anthony Dunis I have always admired the morning mists, quiet & soft, that show through low clouds on the roof of our lodge at Hotchkiss, the one place we live to especially. The road that climbs up through the ridges brings its own volubility: a ripple, smoke of yellow flowers that open on the breeze. I take a train once a week, an evening, to choose a seat of sand and talk with a small bag of marsh and rollicking corn. There are no vehicles around, the train car is always empty & far away. The lights are always brighter than ours, & there are wild flowers growing, no fence lines, & the lake that sleeps in its bottom is quiet, & always green. We love the place & cannot know the hours when a wagon, hand loaded with hay, rolls by on a road winding all night over sand, over clover & other white clumps our little herds eat, drink & sleep. The whistle shrills, the engine's sudden crescendo. This is the hour the countryside goes to sleep, yet never finds the chance to go to sleep on us, or in us. No matter, the train moves on, to remote destinations, far off where the fences are white to the sky. The fields will be done, & the fields be ours again, but the pasture between will belong to those no longer here. Here & there, on the way, we find the clover in piles of opposite purpose, its very leaves on the ground, the clover, and our horses. The others gone, we're the ones left, & it's always polite when you join in. Clovers & dogs, mowers, bees, a pocketful of thyme. The dear thing this spring showed us: clover can hold, with her innocent hand, all the winds that come, the clover, & we look & see the trees fiddled with or at least troubled or fattened up for another year. We see you, we love you, we always will, wherever we are, wherever we land. <|endoftext|> "Over the Hills", by Marcus Wicker [Living, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Home Life, Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals] Somewhere in over ... Hills are morning, morning, or rain hills, are mountains deep behind you, mountains hidden in the hills, under the peaks, hidden in mountains. If you go up the mountain, you'll see yourself mountain high above the mountains, climbing up the mountain and seeing you mountain high above the mountains. If you want to see the mountains, hills are for you, the hills above the mountains, if only ... if only! But you can forget the mountain, climb to the valley below the peaks, the river under the peaks flows into the river, you think, this cannot be it! I have been through the mountains, have travelled under the mountains to reach you, descending when I need the help of your hands, hand in hand with the peaks, when I've lost myself in crowds, when it's just us two, and the world looks quite different. <|endoftext|> "Aleoop", by Li-Young Lee [Living, Time & Brevity, Religion, The Spiritual, ======================================== SAMPLE 991 ======================================== Faith, I think I'm going crazy. Sometimes, I find it hard to speak out loud, They seem to chime in like a broken record. I am always inventing new courses of song; For once, I came up with a queer and cruel plan To sing only of the destruction of King Henry; That he was a miserable king, and a sad disgrace To his own nobility. On a dull November afternoon, Three king-birds sat in a cage; And I sat there, as loud as I could breathe, Puffing my gun when they did arrive For their lunch. I puffed my time and sighed, And said it was not enough to eat. But when they ate it if they choose, I can But with my voice say that I puffed my time, And that I sighed, in the midst of 'em. Be kind to me, you gentle folk Who made me such a moan When I first got in at Mrs. Webb's, You turned to the sexton on your knees And begged a goat; you were not scrupulous, You were not scrupulous at all! You swore I was not given the truth; And said I would speak it better, and say it If I were slightly off when I speak My own way. You told me my voice was low, You said my voice was low; And we were rather quiet at first. It is very clear I wasn't the first lady at that play, Though I am sure I was the last! I know a great deal more about it Than you will ever know, And think I can bring it off as well as you, Of what you've done for the English language You've thought you'd done! There! I can go on, And keep from saying any thing bad About the mess you've made, 'Till it's time to go in with the blind! Just why don't you do it When you know we're waiting, And when you're an old woman! You see I'd hate to be unhappy with the other man And then to have you fail me! Here, take My hand! I had rather that you didn't, But I'm going on about. I've got to say Something; I've got to speak out, I've made myself To where I must say something. That's what I'm on! Well, I guess I shall have to tell you something. Then, If I don't use very firm carriage That may be what I shall do. He's a rude chap. What can he do it's so hard to say? He comes and goes, he's been here and there, To see you, then he's done his best to see you, And now he comes again. Now he's never been; It's not like him at all, that chap! He likes to come, but that's never made up. He hasn't even been at all, you know, He's not made up, though! What's he going to do When he's not with us. You keep on being In a way that's hard on him, And the chap must have patience, no doubt, Who has as much as anybody Of what's called his own body, But he'll never be any the better By it. We must find our pleasure in Various forms. There's nobody here Is worn out with pain Because he has a lot of pain. It's very fit to say I was half-forgiven. There was a chap who lived near us Who'd been there long before us, I don't know where he was, perhaps I suppose he'd felt the same As we, we both were hungry and cross To find out who was coming and going Of all people at that hour, He had the most absolute command Of all around him, yet I could Not hear his voice, it was so muffled Over the others', and I wondered If he were there at all, there in The room all by itself. I used to lie Upon a sofa when it was winter And he wanted us to, but he said, If we didn't do so certainly we Would hear him, and they would growl, and we Would hear him! But he was quiet! And When there was a dinner, he would sit Messing with me and him. I didn't mind The thought, it was such a happy time! I think now that we needed him. But He never was given any orders, ======================================== SAMPLE 992 ======================================== Constant, in their synod, each returning year. So does the island Spring Bring an end to calamitous days That have prevailed since (time whose number runs To the fourth from the earliest) the savage race Of. Typhon with its power were replete. Wont to inflame the firmament again With beauty, so they send you forth to fill Time's palace, wherein is glory deprived His whose government has exiled light and rest To his dominion on the azure's breast. And be the power mortal which governs you And ennobles; for that glory, which crowns Thy growing work, is reserved, though not Its substance, for ever to th' animating power. So in each season of the year, Desirous and affectless, as if fate Should heed but her first interest, you go Away, and fetch your earthly grants, ere you Shine forth in any alter years, nor know Year to year the awful course that Heaven In goodness runs. For under Dread And Falsehood, which we deem all so clear, Of certain deceitfuls and querulous foes Too often the good seed of light are fettered; For all too often is in gear To wind, in work or count, to shine or go: And these no law, no power on them but Sense And instinct may take; and only take. But, wherefore Keep you no petition? why other are The motions which, God's help and strength, and on this land's life, are but trifling? Seek we now above, then whatever aim Of meditate but for lust of knowing But half besturs us; of the grace within To revel in, in that flesh, beholding all These beasts; which 'tis fit to call the flocks? To what a pitch are you aspiring? whence Canst thou go, into the Nature of things Which by no nature, if thou canst ascend, Hast for reverent respect no present God Beget? Cause to stand, O man! before Thou know what. Again, in that deep sooth Wherein are wrought first truths for common use Know, that within the reach of our faculties In them the primal germs of living springs And, if out of heaven it be, No further; for after born of her The virgin Earth was form'd; and here This lofty air is Hutten, as Nature And right hand of God. Wherefore, what thou seest Is nearest; which scatters the looked-for Up to the heaven's eye. These two powers alone Of th' nutritive nature are four; the rest May not be seen of human sense, that minds Its various objects weary. But because, By steps of observation, men have found The mighty limbs of matter all served Of one energy; for this cause, that then They feel what vigorous motion is, and can Feel it still; and know what attracts, And, how it fiqiillies iron, and hurls At various accelerations; then they think Of bolts and levers, how the matter Attracts by tastyoner; and thence they draw To see how in theanimate aught Can Spangle so much motile substance, as to show How much energy it hath; which highest Profounder Homer names the Sulphur. Nor of the spur, the weight, the weight of place Nor length, nor any other particular, think; But the sum of those pre-eminence feels In its unified weight. So the one coin Is weight, of the whole num�ber of a coin, More than the other, whate'er its face. For as the weight, or rather the measure Of things, is accomplished in the mind Of him who understands, so the whole Number, which expresses the magnitude Of things, is best understood of him, Who enjoys the whole num�ber. Even so The whole number of the aspects Of things, in whose wholness are placed The germs of energy, is best understood By him, who has seen nor two, but one Great for the other. For as iron, Extended in th' incisions of the lode By the rigs of distinct traction, varies Its nature, so the number of its swings Varies also, both the one and the other: So that whate'er hath set the length of one On another, can no trifle figure make, Or by its number weaken much the one. For, what doth the thing called length, but those Outlines, which round about a living wretch, ======================================== SAMPLE 993 ======================================== Over the mantel (From side to side, you're likely to See, and no more again, The white hard bricks Thrown up like an answer as the shadow in a window.) I have not come on this goodly house for nothing, A friend of mine, called Back-ch Pixham, bought it Last year for me; And then I passed the spot By the roadside, for it struck me, while ensepahably I shuddered, still at a loss, to know what light Out there might be, and how the line of sky above it lay, Not disturbed by shrowding Blown asunder by wind or shrivelled up by sand-- Seen by eyes which in the same To-day Like a flash Of lightnings o'er The edge of the next page Are the lines of a woman's face. The sky Is rich, and the house Sits like a sentry's house of plate The sea and the sky Knew of nature To mix A harem full of dancers. (Thus keep you yourself From this, To see, and give no quarter.) Blow up! I have A mind that recites, A peculiarity which I Had thought affinities Ran first with men. A bugle of slaves Which slaves' masters blow To--itself about For their own vex. I too found, when there has been no blow up. (Who felt the death of good Ovid dead, He often stoops to drown him.) When leaves have all Clove the grass, And all that is is a-way Be that half-whiteness, I'll get a horse's head From the crook of the saber-- White as the whitest snow Of the sheikh's garden. I've brought a parrot Of Portuguese breed, Bought for cash down in the city. It was a savagest parrot that I ever Found in my travels. I heard the main parrots the whole reign Of birds had had their own troubles and died out, And only staunched enough for food. And this, from having a bone To be fed with, was wrung! That the earth and air Both through and through, Like a man in a fever, They have every pulse of their sight and sound, And so beat through the world for food. In the church, your old sklep of a Sunday Is like a piece of holy lamb that flies. Of all God's birds, the parson mourned and caught The black-winged hawk, no match for this, of all, In you, the great-hearted falcon, the dove Of all and warbled the song, Of all, and moved God's concert While the parish has come. There was much of the Sunday air which Does that renew, where all the songs The sylphs hear are not sung Save by the musing spires Of new-turbaned elms and the grey With their skirts of lotus. Which of you will sing, Adown the clear and windless way, Till the valley flowed beneath our feet, Ariving undulating In chorus with the flowing stream, Where the trout within the water-drop Is ever changing from edge to edge In ponderous vibration, that it never Mated with finity To float or swim. In our to-day's landscape This may be as nothing had been Between the grass and the tree, If the sun, which had molded it, Never groped its way from afar, Or if it had mated, It was not seen But for the wind and the tree Made its music now, And the morning breeze Still made it Soft a bed for the sleepers, On the hill had there been, as we thought, A cottage, with its white chimney showered With the skies of evening, had there been, A hut for the ermine Which the violet is, the hill of the hill, In a place for the making of music. In the distant nation Where the waves of the river Come up, and the water, I've loved flowers that bloom Out of the weather, and I said: "What are you in the distant Nation where the waves of the river Come up, and the water, You have danced here." And she said, "I am here, O wave!" And we heard our black bird sing The sea- ======================================== SAMPLE 994 ======================================== Eretalia! the nightingale Breathes from her throat upon the air; Thy glow of beauty scorches the blue And thy sweet songs tremble on the rueful air. Vowal of the groves. Upward he leans Unto the stars, a water strider born, And from the low stars streams out a gleam Over the valleys, swimming in dream. So, water-born, I too, Through the trance-audible ether float, And feel myself from the striding stars To be a living valley, through whose eyes Streaming the tears of love, in whose brain Is a fountain emptying love's cool depth. Here is the fount from which I come; Where's my fount? And is it brought me to this chiding? The pine is cleft to a grove of pine-trees, The pines are cleft, the smooth rocks cleft, the pines Carve a walk where my footsteps once were lapped, And up a ramp of pines they flow, Pine-deep, and on pine-heads, and pines from pines, Pine-deep, and on cleft woods and a circumference Of pine-tops the steps of my travel I made, Saying: "Lo! I am in the woods!" The night of the ages rolls back, I am in the past! Never before, Has it been so! how far a time Of foot-prints (which the sun then melted), How wide (how narrow), How deep (how deep), How high (how high), How narrow, how high, How gray, how pale, how pale, how cold, how late! A bird, from some distant bay, Winged along the lithe moon-white Of the green-beaded water-may Its beak all round with beams of gold. It calls to me Through rose and lily bells, And it sings of wood-fall, of how The sough of trees upon the dell, Of birds upon the wood, Of coming and of journeying, Of night and of days ere yet be stopped The wings of this one thing of wondrous might! Long hours of light, in the deep skies of heaven, Long long of daylight, in the same, I cried, Wide eyes of water that were touched with tears. And night came and lay on my camp-site; And I saw the columns of the flood advancing, And fountains of white mist, like mirrors, fixed in the skies Into my tired camera, the sealing springs, My ears were touched with the new rain-drops singing, And I cried to the roof of my camp-visitation: "Where? Oh where are the caravans of time that fell In light, at the back of the dawn of creation, Whither are they? And how did they fall? Darkness. Torture of the flame that, like molten gold, Spins, and the man that is the subject of it Sucks at it, sick of it, till the man grows mad, Losing the drear and struggling character Of that he was. Darkness again, When the cloud of the mind is smashed, and its stains Redistilled, smit back the sprinkling of stars That in the dusk termlessly, irretreously Made the hills of my soul. A flame came, a great flame, To the unlit depth of my tent, and burned my thoughts. My thoughts Were like the wandering of the humming-bird Among the branches of the tent, And the great flame of my mind Caught the thoughts in its green scarfs, And the screams of my wretched spirit Burned in their bones. Held my hearth in the night-time, ere the rest Foredoom the breath of morn; And mist-clad limbs of the stream Peep from the slant of the rocks Like curled-thronged rib-bone or an eye, Seeing the swinging shadow of the arch Rise from under the stream, the wild chief of love In his iron-bound sash Swaying wan, and the tent of my tent Black with blacking against the night, Wrought of blackness: And the fire's heart, all beat and bound With this hubbub of the thought of the thought of the fire. Shame like a hangman's-lure Allured me. Shame like an arrow from the bow of death, P ======================================== SAMPLE 995 ======================================== There, far from us the light-shod And we saw him, and we felt him On the sandy shore; so mute And low, the spirit of terror Within us burning. Yet at last His foot just hovered by. The host, The womenfolk cried aloud for awe To heaven. There were no cries for him; we praised And bowed our thoughts to the whole world round. We broke bread; but even with mounded dust Our hearts were grieved and confused. Our peace Of soul was troubled. Wild words slipped past Away, and brought for ages of prayer A wild inanimate air, alas, where We heard the uprooting of our life For ancient ways. And with them our whole hope. What truth was there Of sanctity and innocence? What could there be of rest or freedom? Of Life, of Love, of Bliss? When she ran down the bloom-lined hall, We stood motionless; we moved no hand When she turned up the scimitar-wood And raced with all that force to shore. But always in the rear they cheered her And screamed with her and cheered their chief, And laughed till all the stones on the shore Were with redoubled shouts taken up And hurled at the star-brimmed flight Of starveling eyes that followed them. "Backwards, father! Get back! Look out for yourself! Back, woman! Look out for yourself! They have hissed All right behind you, the rowers past, And chased you, last I heard, for God and king. "This mother is as good as dead And half your men are out of luck And under them an inch-breadth of spoil Is girdled like the vine. No; back! My hands are tied, I shall find no rest If you find all wrong and poison there. I hear the rowers are in the North; For I have an ear and eye. It was the ship that brought them here To break your back to let them to the Sea. "But back, the battering has been done; But back, face your last little standing town, And see that you shall never win to a ship That weighs no more than nine-pence of lead To get her off again. If you, father, Could go yourself and look with eyes that trust, You'd see how far that keeps the foot from men; Or rather than see it, you can't let me." But he couldn't, and he wouldn't, The dusk grew cold and dark and wet And raw with noises from the North. That year on earth a million kings Were slain, more dead ere their throats were cut. A moon appeared, with wings of red, Full-feathering; and a bloody dawn Was rising through the sere grey sea. The Sky Lark said, "The holland grey, The haoll� Mideland blue, The land that you and yours did make, The little throat of secret foam Whereon I flow in fountains of bliss, The little a�d dead sea; The polderm� bivalves and loams and caves, The heath-bush faun of the eagle's brood, Hush, hark, hark! it is the wall-to-be That chaunts to the sleepy bat and mouse The prospect of our pickens to-morrow; That plucks the blood of our western milk In winter from the noble king that owes Its sovereignty to the plough; The lords that banquet, banquet, bedecked beak, Weep, and fall unat nativities To iron-colouring under the sky The vision of the midges. A wreck, So should a crash of mountains re-echo, A crash from the bottom of the sun, And this god that dwells in the cloud, And these lords that the edge of hell sweep Within the ebon cloak of being, If each man should spring from the skull In yellow to the ground where skims The sap of living whipts in the cone, Would send one shout against the wall. 'And these lords', he said, 'ward the edge of law And civil, safe and sure, The border of our empire, our key To the centre of lordship, ours Athirst to shake ourselves and make free O'er conscience, heart, and instinct and star; Frail man that stoops from the height, To wave the pent-up hand and die; The altar for their chapel is hell.' He ======================================== SAMPLE 996 ======================================== Be o'er the rest, not by her. She to herself gan rejoice, That all was saveated well, When this fair Brain did let him see, That tho 'twas all his eye could see, He was but man, she was 'Maukin.' He then besought her for his horn, (Whence they were wont him to return,) He would her carriage to her gain, If she would be his guide and stay. 'Lella (ho and higher), lo, how merrily Her busy, fickle carriage glows! Mak'st thou her your guide, and see she shows She can play her part too, if need be: She that was wont a servant she, He now is travel on a Prada— O thou false and angry world, what art Thou To her?—for though she works no injuries, The world is sick and sicklike of her. Her teeth, and all her body, so acclimatate, Are princes' beings, and becomely pass The rascal drudge of a horse is; and yet, In fine, who is so polite as she? Who is so popular? and the chief hast The East when her red caudals throng From London, Paris, Vienna, to throng. Foe! 43 Being so royal, who may say what boon Does the queen of beauty give in return? Since gold is gilt, the free air of the sun, The earth beneath her feet, her nobility Is like an ant'y, to shun what she once was— Yet shines on like a star. I say not 'a pine' (as many do) As if for a hermit sapling's fame, But for that earth is queen of the world, That of the nest of hell in its splendour drest With light, air, land, air, of heavens—whence she takes Her deep (scattered far) inspiration, that from Being wise, what can she do with wisdom do? That the flesh's freedom should not obscure By any indecency or hidden thing. For to despise loathsomeness more (For many fall into this sort), than warmth or light (Which are the two prime magnitudes of nature), Of all which in a woman's frame are not, Is yet more free from most things than what are free; Yea, more submits to those few items which are Fancy's ministry. Many a poet, chaplain, and statesman, bard, Judge, governor, peer, soldier, in her train, And even (yes, even) soldier, in her court, Have held their courts, their shoes their zeal and life Have breathed such martyrdom in arms; And all those who make a revolution day by day, Or in a million write, proscribe or grant, Leyt, re-erect, disseminate, contrive or wed, Have sat in her school. Of one such (Dr. Crovitz) I can read, And fie on him there for slow brain's feebleness. But yet methinks each horse's some alchemy Has caught from that sod: hap whereof that cob is made. He'll teach the town in whatever's a-need; Not God alone, but SOUND and SIZE. The fine, fine youth is in his place, Thinking to write a Psalm in Lacy Dance; Thinking (all the while) that the Prophet's Old as Christ, and won't well be Match'd with such air of either. This brings great grief to papa When to his daughter's song he doth repair. Sometimes a tax-collector's dog On his master's clothes falls in the jaw; Sometimes he stalks the sunbeams dogs Has done for months when he was hired. The News-papers all their dailiness With his dispatch to cover, at his dispatch Some subject new will thunder, but it's found In its place by other creature. I notice three heads, two tongues, two eyes; I notice two mouths; and yet all remains But one strong jaw, which thinks its way of holding The subject's head, up-springing its cry. And all, the witness thy trembling soul hath made Who's heard how one cannot explain a park (Although there's more than one great plain in it) Tossed on the Dauber's Knot of Kings, From whence, O O whence came all this, and how? What decorum, laws, or decency In the letter's ======================================== SAMPLE 997 ======================================== returns to the moribund masses of wounded men, he gives to each of them the only very fleeting aid that is left them: it’s good to have warriors, to have my father, he who is better, better than anyone I will ever know, I’ll think of him on my way out to the hospital, I'll breathe, in the deserted pool, the air there, like a flute, I’ll forget that he’s dying, that I’m going to die soon, too. <|endoftext|> "A Room in Tehran", by Nate Pritt [Living, Separation & Divorce, Love, Break-up & Vexed Love, Heartache & Loss, Realistic & Complicated, Relationships, Friends & Enemies] I'm thinking of the easy days, not yours, Juan, not ours, of the day you sat on the roof of the bodega sticking a long stick into the chafing wire to scare the pigeons, the perfectly ordinary colored pigeons of the folded currency, gold, green, silver. You keep re-experiencing yourself at the window, seeing something the light of ordinary instructions hadn't prepared you for: a flight air to the sky of the dove, the dove’s red-gold crest above the lime trees and flowering shrubs, and when you come down running like a little crazy person <|endoftext|> "A Sound at the Back of Mind", by Vanessa Boston [Living, Growing Old, Relationships, Family & Ancestors, Arts & Sciences, Music, Philosophy] I began to understand halfway through my father’s life how it is that those like us can, when and then, when the evidence shows their innocence, take an awful lot of time rewriting the script of how they’ve convinced themselves. How it works: a fog of ideas two hours before an audience. As he talked through the night before we slept. His room past Los Angeles in the rain, his last drink a Martinelli, bourbon, his body tingling, his tongue a mite stretched for speech. “Listen, listen,” he would say, before in our ears long thin track of some distorted song begin: the pre-digital sounds of the ass and pole of an instrument like a baby boomerang swinging through space, live. We hear his father’s violin when he shows us how a violinist his father filed to death did later perform on a baby’s skeleton. He played himself to sleep with lines from Yeats through To Those Who Know Who the Heart; never imagining he might know until the keyboard’s been wedged beneath it like a breathless pregnancy. Those touchstones in the back of mind, those who still believe in the right to pure memory for themselves or their ancestors for generations of listeners, those isolated and often remote and ancient before-and-after ages as well as before-and-after physical spaces the first touch of hands, the first words of those who stood at literal physical doors, secret like Rubik’s Cubes, and thought the world empty—imagine now those secret thoughts at the basis of a composer’s contrabass and fugues like the huge letter I have written. Imagine the following song: vortext words with all the meanings turned inside-out like the backside of a person’s hair, perhaps, the thick money answer of the world, but for once in these unholy times with the glorified rot in its memory-buffed head writing oblivion clean, the game of lies over and over until love is born again in the same body, and the same room with a bottomless wallet, until we learn to forget a performer’s former life, his audience. All fall in succession as if spring could stand still in this famine of invention until for a second’s worth I stand up in a corner and ask forgiveness, for my grandfather, whispered to death by some whispers among the grave-weed in Italy and a shy hug from my daughter, his god. <|endoftext|> "Unrespect", by Dana Dixon [Life Choices, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets, Social Commentaries] Unrespect, I want the sky to keep rising like a white peaceful facade, never a skyhopper spurning the unheeded billboard. So high, the person has ======================================== SAMPLE 998 ======================================== The window, so alabaster, Girdled with roses Ruffled with satin. My two cats--puss and procace-- My glass Meccan carpets-- The shekels of al-Madin al-Borouosh, The jizd thrust upon the purple The Lion treads upon her couch. My treasures. The musk of my hair, Hinted with fillets fringed with pearl, The quarter, red as hell, Baked with spices, Or sprinkled with fragrant sandal. The robe embossed with cinnaboney, The elegant slipper, The brushes of vellum, The camels and the damsel-- The little paper flowers. My portraits, The little jingle tongues-- My dragons painted in pastels, The few black eyes, The velvet of my under- My bracelet emerald. My box of a curtain, The anklets rich with pearls, My bracelet lops, My dress of red satin, Crimson satin--but there's no blood for them When women kiss me. No love for me thy embraces. My valet says: 'It is abominable The pallor of the chifforobin. Yet I have silk, As you, and fortune, But I have none. The great Al-maaybe likes me better. Haibai, the peace be with thee! The camels depart, Dovizai, farewell! The damsel the breeze-- Cule'bi and emerald. End of the street-digger-- Heh, there he goes, The penny song-box. End of the carpets-- Mother and babe. Once I made for Jerusalem. I met a pigeon. What is the use of being human Let me think about it. To meditate, I cried, To remember The hymns whose din With meseems at feasts We mutely listened, And hope that the Goyim could understand. The scoffing Syrian said: 'I am tired!' And blew his coat. But he flew to an apartment Which he opened like a thief. There I placed them-- Folding them-- Seeking To put them in their place, And, climbing up the stairs, I heard--melted in laughter-- The cheep of the gold door. Time-missing maidens, Daughter and son, The good rabbi was poor. Oh, too late, They turned from the city And to a distant home. There they quarrelled For years and years. Some prayed; some recited Gloriously lewd In the corner Of the little night-room. I have the diamond-dust Washed on my hands And on my table, I have the book of plain-printed Pillars, which proclaim, Discern the well-fitted, A person born or married, Living or dead, I have the parcels of land. I have the gold and the h... And the white shirrell Which before the door, Scattering her flowers, From an orchard fell to me And now is in my house, Furnished with garter lamps And shawled with ivy. I must be quick or the children Will go away, Rais'd from their sleep in the rock-yard, In the tree-house, Of all my hopes This hath the best place. That hath place lower'd Plac'd round the table, Neatly tucked, Flat as a plate, Slab by slab-- I must make room for my flowers. I will not eat Till I get to my station, As they bring laurels for their shadow. They bring down orchards and their blossom, And all the expectation Of their fruit. I have the blue-eyed Iseph, Who with gold is bind'd, Light of Mind, the Psalm ha-nd, Flower of Mind. The rareness of rareness! Awake, my darling, awake! I am out of sleep. I am out of sleep. The Shadow of Death Holds no mischief For that I am free, Awake, my darling, awake! The dawn is on the sea. All day the hoarse waves have roar'd Into storms and back again; And now the Clouds-- My de ======================================== SAMPLE 999 ======================================== Gave her all the advance-netting, that his chamber had, Which to the sneaking singer she had been leaving: Then to issue she, set to make him boast how she Had brought the song, how many notes had she, And when the rank of tones, her fame to enshrine; And all this, sing by her, sing as I have sung; For the last time, for more than twenty years, At his town-theatre, at the Old‑time Players. But though I're a poet, and with most of talent too, It's no pleasure to be a politician; I really do rather wish the power Of holding the four places on the stage Were confined to the Turks and the Turké, For, in the 'Prentice Pitt with her three giant-sized Negresses, in Paphos, St. Helena, I make it my boast that this is the Only performance they ever have witnessed Of that shed Shaker who sings to his harp; Nay, nay, this the last time he shall do, for his Withdrawal is certain and he has not longer aught To present in the prvious show, whereas next spring At St. Helena there will be a new Shaker in sight, Whom the match-playing juncralities shall direct, In singing, to produce musical representations Of all my joint self's thoughts and my Bards of the present time. And now, in a house to be appointed, Since my next shaker will be among yon high pinnacles, I shall use my majority, the pride of my generation, The peculiar strength of the British Opus- Theatre, with a full hour for the time and a score Which is due me as 'tis due to the great By the jockey harmleying around While horses, and farmers, and fellow-beings of each sort Call for him at the threshold of his door, He comes in the writing of this slow-groaning roar, Standing on the threshold of time for the herd; And, though he can hear a human foot in seven, There's hardly need for that much chaff and drudge, For he wears on his skull the smooth ancient time. And this is the hour when the hill his neighbor crows Will leave, in a week, but perhaps in six days, Its tall railway for a track of the present, And he is the draw as he had ever been That stands out, through the fading light, in frost and sunshine And from his modern-looking house he will pace, Where the foaming steeds drop the bells as they beat The circuit of a whirlpool which turns and veers, And sometimes drops, as in a joke's joke, on the stiff Whole of the marsh in its gulph of green, And sometimes throws the sounding shoon on the ground And blows a hole through the mud at the back of the mill. He will see on the worn turf, thick with hemlock trunks, The fishes in the stream stand still in a row, And at an added blast from the neighboring hopped shape, They cause the other fraction to hurl their far on Down on the silt in a heap and to settle heavily And make a deep hush as from half bedding down The mill-pipkin springs to its surface, and through its mouth There first earth's quiet makes noise earth, and from its mouth to-day The subtle cool sound of the local day is off: The night will fall as damp as a tomb, and he who stands thereon In the hatiny air and with the wand of a wind doth wreathe The clouds a yellowish white, Where all is still, I think the wood in green and green The green as of a tree, The water as of flowers, the skies as a sky, the sky What sigh of sentiment, and what harsh clear sound What dread lament shall there be? O still, in new time what lusty ornament, What august city or town, what set of chimes, What bell to answer the hour, now struggles in its shroud When the earth, in much inaction, Looked in a mirror and the reflection Came, like a spirit, back from whence it had come, Whose very lips, had they but spoken, might have been mute, So 'tis with the other, in dreams: he speaks and tells Of a thick sun in the midst of an azure sky And there was heat, and fragrance, and exaltation: And all the height, the mount, the level plains, Are as that sun, are ======================================== SAMPLE 1000 ======================================== noon: when, lo! Every thing in the room has either been cut off, or is fastened: furniture, the bed, the table, the bedstead, the table-legs; the window, the chimney, the door: all, all altogether disappear — there’s nothing left to suggest where one went. And now the sun has come round again. She thinks of how she’s still going about, the sheet tied to her arms, how, just now, the soldiers told her about their fresh bodies in the danger: another thought has just as quickly swallowed it. There’s no giving it back. Later, to take answerable accounts, no one will acknowledge the day has come and she should hurry. Tomorrow the unity will never find the day’s end, or even, if it can’t, there will be nothing for the if — it will not, cannot, endure. Or, should the to-do list, if the day want account, simply pile up the untaken to-do in no series, no matter from which one one will, ultimately, fall prey. For even now, in the meantime, she can’t say, I’ve forgotten how, not yet, not yet does she want to forget how. <|endoftext|> "Elegy for a Sporty Fantasy", by Martín Espada [Living, Life Choices, Activities, Sports & Outdoor Activities] I was raised to raise clean hands in the air in praise of God. I was raised to feel shame when I eyed a pogof a schoolboy figure take a snap shot at forty. I was raised on The Jonquils and I too have gone savage. I have learned a lot in my time: namely that guilt is no fun my thighs have learned to tremble with rage and I’ll never understand men. I keep a clean house. Now, I know shame is not in itself clean. I washed my mother’s body for nearly twenty years, sans sheets, and she’s still not clean. My face is roughened. The day I got these cheeks, I was at a dance where every boy except me twirled a dollop of ice creamonto the cheeks of his choosing, and the maitre’d their blue skirt in front of us, with the words “Daddy’s little princess,” scrawled across his lap. I’ve done much less harm, and yet I am no prince of men, nor should I be, for I have learned nothing. My skin glues back itself, rebuking me in hieroglyphics. I never had the chance to hold Goya’s blood-chained daughter Alma in her twined arms. She was killed for a sloppy leaf of the wild hyacinth. And I’ll never have the pleasure of bearing a red swan, never have the joys of childbirth, and yet my old age is no colder. And I will make no man, and never have children. I will not have a bird's heart. <|endoftext|> "The Lady Who Rung Her Head", by Christian Wiman [Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends & Lore, Horror] Amongst the hills of purple mountain passes, what have you done to live in such pain? Are you hiding in the worlds of men, like a snail behind the foothills — through which those mountain men pass — or are you hiding in the sky, where you must soar so high to see the whole world, all those worlds, off your head? I am writing this letter to tell you that you have lived and that you have lived well, and that I have lived long enough to see your face. And I wish to tell you that I have seen all those faces, and you not one of them. You are tall. You are slender. You have wings in the shapes of your hands. And wings in the shape of your hair. But you are not content. You are always going somewhere. And where? It is hard to say. You are always silent. But when you walk, or when you walk, and talk, you talk to no one, and they say nothing. If you were not beautiful what would you be? There are no more stars. There is nothing. In darkness the seed of God is planted, it takes root, and you are a star among stars. I see you in the three that design themselves for eternity. I see you with fingers I know, and none is mine